The Twenty-One Balloons PMC Read online

  Everything worked pretty much as planned on the first few days of my trip. Doing my laundry and washing my dishes by dunking them at the end of my fishing line was fairly satisfactory. Reeling in a wet suit was quite tiresome, but I was invariably pleased to find my suit nearly dry by the time I had pulled it in. Fishing was poor from such a height. To reel in a fish at the end of a fourteen-hundred-foot line was too tricky for a fisherman of my caliber, and I dropped many of them long before I could even distinguish what kind of a fish I had hooked. I exercised by walking around the porch of my house—that is, I exercised my legs in this manner. My arms got plenty of exercise reeling in the laundry and dishes.

  I sighted a small fishing boat in the afternoon of the fifth day. This was the first sign of life I had seen since leaving San Francisco. I soon noticed that I was going to fly directly over it, so I decided to try and signal it. I knew a little Morse code, so I took a mirror and flashed the message, “I am Professor Sherman of San Francisco and all is well.” The fishing boat, manned evidently by a Japanese crew, slowly flashed back the simple message, “No speak English.” This to me was just right. I wanted to be alone, out of touch with the world. This was the first sign of life I had seen in five days and it couldn’t possibly contact me. All was indeed well.

  The sixth day was perfect: calm and uneventful. My garbage was again beginning to make its presence felt, but it wasn’t too bad.

  The seventh day, Ladies and Gentlemen, was catastrophic!

  I shall never forget the seventh day of this voyage of mine for as long as I live. Just about everything went wrong, and my dreams of spending a year in a balloon were shattered. The first thing I noticed on the morning of that fateful day was a small speck far off on the horizon which couldn’t possibly be anything else but land. Land on my seventh day out—I had flown straight across the Pacific Ocean at a fabulous rate of speed! I had originally hoped that the winds would blow me first in one direction and then in another and that I would spend at least a month without seeing any land whether it be on the Asiatic side of the ocean or back on the American side. But there in the distance before me was a small speck which was slowly taking on the shape of a little volcanic island, most of it mountain, with a column of smoke slowly rising from it into the blue sky.

  Then, seemingly from out of nowhere, appeared sea gulls —the same sort of birds that had seen me off from San Francisco now forming a welcoming committee for an island I hadn’t the slightest desire to visit.

  At the sight of the gulls, I instantly dumped my garbage overboard. This I thought to be a fine idea. I was not only feeding the gulls but also rising up high enough to clear the island by a wide margin, to get away as far as possible from this unwelcome sight of land. However, it didn’t work out quite the way I had hoped. The gulls plunged avidly into the water after my food. One of them grabbed the remains of a carcass of smoked turkey I had been living on for most of the week, took it onto the very top of my balloon, and settled down to devour it in comfort. The other gulls, after having dived for all of the smaller pieces of food in the ocean, flew back up to where I was and noticed their comrade comfortably feasting on cold turkey on the top of my balloon. This instantly set off a loud symphony of cawing, and a big fight over the carcass started to shape up at once. This was all out of my reach and all I could do was pace around my small porch, praying that nothing would happen to my balloon. I leaned over the balustrade, looked up, and saw one lone sea gull gliding very slowly over the Globe, his head hanging down with that frightening look of a hawk studying his prey. This was horrible. I hadn’t thought of bringing a gun with me. The gull circled slowly around the balloon once, then dove. He plummeted straight for the turkey carcass. Whether he got it or not, I’ll never know. There was loud and confused sea gull action on top of my balloon. It seemed to me they all flew away at once—and then I heard something ghastly: the sound of a sea gull beating his wings and cawing for breath in the rarefied atmosphere inside the silken bag of my balloon.

  On this seventh day of my trip, which was supposed to last a year, I found myself with a hole in my balloon the size of a sea gull.

  I was heartbroken. It was impossible for me to get at the hole in order to attempt to mend it. The Globe had already begun to lose altitude. I had only one choice: to try to land on the island. I saw immediately that at the rate I was descending I would be in the ocean long before I reached the island. I started throwing things overboard to make my basket house lighter so that I would fly above water longer. I had no idea of the nature of the island I was approaching, so at first I decided to save all of my food in case I needed it to live on when I landed. I threw chairs, table, books, water-distilling apparatus, water cans, dishes, garbage containers, cups, saucers, charts, globes, coat hangers, clothes—everything noneatable. Clocks, scissors, towels, combs, brushes, soaps, everything I could lay my hands on I threw out through the doors, off the porch, out of the windows, the fastest possible way I could rid myself of anything which weighed anything. The Globe continued to descend at a speed which was far too great if I were to make the island. I had to throw away my food. I threw all of the heavier canned goods first. This wasn’t good enough. I threw the fruits, vegetables, smoked meats, everything in my house. I looked overboard. I was but a few hundred feet above water and the island was still over a mile off. Then I discovered something new and worse in the way of horrors. A school of sharks was following me in the water beneath and swallowing the food I threw as soon as it hit the water. This meant that I had to make the island or fall among the sharks. I was desperate.

  There was nothing left in the house to throw overboard. I emptied my pockets, saving only my pocket knife. I threw the clothes I was wearing next, all of them except my right shoe. I walked around the porch and, clinging to the window sills with my arms, I kicked the balustrade and uprights off the porch with my right foot. The balloon still had a half mile to go. There was only one thing left to do. I climbed up on the roof of my basket house, pulled the ladder up and threw that overboard. With my pocket knife, I cut four of the ropes which attached the house to the balloon—one from each corner—and tied them securely together. I looped my left arm through these ropes. I then grabbed my knife and slashed all of the other ropes supporting my house. My basket house fell and splashed among the sharks and the Globe gave a small leap upward. I dropped my pocket knife, kicked off my right shoe, and prayed.

  A minute or two later, I felt my toes hit the water and I shut my eyes, afraid to look and see if any sharks were about. But my toes only skipped once or twice on the water’s surface when I found myself being dragged across the beach of the island and the giant deflated bag of the Globe came to rest on top of a tall palm tree.

  I was exhausted, burned by the sand, and too weak to crawl out of the sun into the shade. I must have gone to sleep on this beach.

  V

  A New Citizen of Krakatoa

  AFTER HAVING SLEPT FOR WHAT MUST HAVE been four or five hours, I found myself being gently awakened. I opened my eyes. My body was bright red from sun and sandburn. I looked up at what I thought was a man kneeling over me, shaking my shoulder and saying in perfect English, “Wake up, man, you’ve got to get some things on and get out of the sun, wake up, wake up.” I thought that this must be part of some delirious dream. The idea of a man who spoke English on a small volcanic island in the Pacific seemed so odd. I shut my eyes again. But as soon as I did this, I felt my shoulder again being shaken and heard this same voice which kept saying, “Wake up, wake up; you’ve got to get in the shade!”

  I shook my head and opened my eyes again. There was a man kneeling over me. As I sat up he stood up. He was handing me some clothes, and he was dressed in a most unusual manner. This man wasn’t a native, and didn’t suggest an explorer or a traveler. He looked like an overdressed aristocrat, sort of a misplaced boulevardier, lost on this seemingly desolate volcanic island. He was wearing a correctly tailored white morning suit—if you can imagine such a suit�
�with pin-stripe pants, white ascot tie, and a white cork bowler. The suit he was urging me to put on was just the same as the one he had on, only in my size.

  “Am I dead?” I asked. “Is this Heaven?”

  “No, my good man,” he answered, “this isn’t Heaven. This is the Pacific Island of Krakatoa.”

  (When Professor Sherman mentioned the word “Krakatoa,” a shudder of excitement ran through the audience. Only recently there had been news stories telling that half of Krakatoa had blown up in the greatest volcanic eruption of all times.)

  “But I always thought Krakatoa was uninhabited,” I told the gentleman in the white morning suit as I started painfully to put on the clothes he was handing me. “I always heard that the volcanic mountain made living on the Island impossible.”

  “This is Krakatoa, all right,” he said. “And we who live here are most pleased that the rest of the world is still convinced that Krakatoa is uninhabited. Hurry up, put on your clothes.”

  I had put on the white pin-stripe trousers and the shirt as the gentleman handed them to me. The shirt had starched cuffs, a small white starched dickey, and a detachable wing collar. I didn’t bother putting on the collar, and started rolling up my sleeves. “Let’s go, lead on,” I said.

  “Come, come,” said the gentleman from Krakatoa. “You can’t come and visit us like that. Is that the way you would call on respectable people in San Francisco, New York, London, or Paris? Roll down those sleeves. Put on this collar, vest, and coat.” As he was saying this he was smiling warmly to show that he meant no ill feeling but was merely setting me straight on Krakatoa style and manners. “I’ll admit,” he continued, “that on other islands in the Pacific it is considered quite the thing to give up shaving, forego haircuts, and wear whatever battered white ducks and soft shirts are available. Here, we prefer a more elegant mode of life. You, sir,” he said, “are our first visitor. I am quite certain that you will be rather impressed with the way we live and with the various aspects of our Island. I hope you will be impressed anyhow, for since we believe in keeping this place absolutely secret, I believe you will be finding yourself spending the rest of your life as our guest.”

  While he was talking, I had obediently rolled down my sleeves. He handed me a pair of cuff links made simply of four diamonds the size of lima beans. He handed me diamond studs with which to do up my shirt front. I attached my wing collar. He held a small mirror so that I might more easily tie my white ascot. As I donned my white bowler I was filled with many emotions. I thought that this was without doubt the most extravagantly absurd situation in which I had ever found myself. I was also giving a large amount of thought to that remark of his about being a guest of the people of Krakatoa for life. It was with deep, mixed feelings that I assured the gentleman that I was already quite impressed.

  “Well, come then,” he said. “First I’ll show you our mountain.”

  He led me through a small forest of palm trees. The underbrush was thick and wild, quite similar to the untouched jungle life found on any Pacific island. My host walked through this in a most peculiar way. He was holding up his pantlegs and gingerly picking the right spots on which to rest his feet so as not to disturb the creases in his suit. My suit being a borrowed one, I felt that I had to treat it with equal care. We must have made a funny sight: two gentlemen in white suits and white bowlers tiptoeing through the jungle.

  Suddenly a remarkable change took place in our surroundings. As we neared the mountain, the underbrush in the jungle became less and less bothersome and then ceased to exist altogether. Instead of thick wild roots, giant ferns, banyan trees, and the usual webs of jungle vegetation, I found myself walking on soft green grass which smelled and looked as though it had just been mowed. It had evidently been given all of the care of a lawn on an English estate. It was like a tropical garden in the zoo of some great Capital. I was quite astounded by this and remarked about it to my host. He explained that the underbrush had been cleared everywhere except for a fringe of jungle all the way around the Island. This made the Island seem uninhabited to passing ships.

  When we were about a hundred yards from the foot of the mountain we stopped and sat on a bench. I took the opportunity to introduce myself. “My name is Professor William Waterman Sherman,” I said, extending my hand. He shook hands with me and said, “I am Mr. F.”

  “Mr. F. what?” I asked.

  “Simply Mr. F.,” he said. “I shall have to explain about that later. The reason I suggested that we sit down on this bench is that we are quite close to the mountain. The mountain has been quiet all morning. This is rare. It is seldom quiet for more than an hour at a time. When the mountain starts rumbling, you will feel the whole island move violently beneath you. You will find this to be quite frightening and disagreeable at first. We all did. It will take you some time to get what we call ‘mountain legs.’ ‘Mountain legs’ are to us what ‘sea legs’ are to sailors.

  Many of us were sick, in the same manner as a passenger gets seasick on a rough voyage, when the mountain used to rumble before we got our ‘mountain legs.’ I am just warning you of this phenomenon so that you won’t be scared. The land is roughest near the mountain.”

  As if this explanation had been a cue for the mountain to perform, we had no sooner left the bench and continued on than we heard a noise like muffled thunder coming seemingly from underfoot. This noise became louder and louder, and the surface of the earth started to shake and roll. I ran back to the bench, lay on it, and clung to it with all my might. I looked at Mr. F. He was watching me, smiling amiably, and was calmly moving up and down with the surface of the earth like a bottle in rough water.

  The earth didn’t crack or split beneath us at all. I thought at the time that being in Krakatoa was like riding on the back of some giant prehistoric animal. The noise could be compared to great abdominal rumblings. The surface of the earth was like some huge bit of hide, stretching and buckling over monstrous muscles and bones.

  Mr. F. waved to me to come on. He was standing in a very casual way as if on firm ground except, of course, that he was moving up and down. I felt positively drunk. I fell down four times between the bench and Mr. F. To my complete shame and disgust, I became violently ill while attempting to rejoin my companion. Mr. F. helped me off the ground. He grabbed me by the arm with a firm grip as though he were escorting some drunk away from a lawn party.

  “You can see now why Krakatoa was always considered unfit to live on,” said Mr. F.

  “I couldn’t be more completely convinced,” I groaned.

  “That’s the peculiar thing about nature,” explained Mr. F., “it guards its rarest treasures with greatest care. Every year on other Pacific islands hundreds of natives lose their lives trying to bring up pearls from the floor of the sea. Man pays nature dearly for pearls. This noisy volcano on Krakatoa has frightened men away from the island for centuries. This fickle, dangerous, and fearful mountain has a mine at its feet. I am now leading you to this mine.”

  With considerable difficulty, due altogether to my stupid inability to walk as easily as Mr. F., we reached the foot of the mountain. We were suddenly standing on a piece of ground which didn’t move at all. I can assure you that I was considerably relieved. There was another bench on this motionless piece of earth and I ran to it and sat down. I looked out over the quivering landscape and listened to the thunderous rumblings. I found I couldn’t stand even to look at it for any length of time, for just the sight of this billowing lawn and the bending and bobbing palm trees almost made me ill again. Mr. F. sat beside me for a while and then suggested that we move on. He took me to a wall of the mountain behind this second bench. There appeared to be an entrance in this wall, an entrance covered up by an old wooden door from a ship. Mr. F. reached in his pocket and took out two pairs of glasses with dark lenses. “You’ll need these,” he explained, “and whatever you do, do not remove them while in the mines.” I put them on. Mr. F. moved the old door to one side and asked me to follow him. I
obeyed.

  As soon as I entered the mines I understood why the ground above, where I had just been, didn’t move. I understood why the walls about me didn’t move, why the ceiling and ground beneath me didn’t budge, and why this was a peaceful retreat in a rumbling, throbbing landscape.

  Ladies and gentlemen, the walls, the floor, the ceiling of this mine were hewn out of the hardest of all of nature’s minerals: pure, clear, dazzling diamond. I was up to my ankles in diamond pebbles. The floor was covered with diamond boulders and diamonds as big as cobblestones. If the famous Jonkers’ diamond had been tossed on the brilliant floor of the Krakatoa diamond mines, it would have been as impossible to find as a grain of salt in a bag of sugar. This was diamond in its cleanest state, ready to be cut; pure crystallized carbon unblemished by any form of dirt or impurities.

  I was naturally dumbfounded. I had read about and seen pictures of the famous salt mines of Poland, the crystal caves of Bermuda. Here was a sight a thousand times more blinding, infinitely more awe inspiring; a sight to make reality of the most imaginative fairy tale.

  I waded around in the diamonds, picked up great handfuls of the jewels letting the smaller ones slip through my fingers. I juggled with two heavy diamonds the size of baseballs. I suddenly felt like a small child let loose in a candy shop.

  “May I have some of these?” I asked. My voice was trembling.

  “Sure,” he said, “fill your pockets if you wish. But come outside with me for a moment.”

  I eagerly stuffed my pockets and followed him out of the mine. The light in the sun outside seemed dark in comparison with the sparkling, blazing, spangled brightness inside the mine. Even without our dark glasses it seemed as though the blue sky had suddenly turned gray. It was hard at first to distinguish any color in the tropical landscape. But then our eyes became used to the comparative darkness of sunlight and the grass again became green, the sky blue, and my companion’s complexion took on a healthier glow.