Five Weeks in a Balloon [15]
"Oh! well, that doesn’t bind me to any thing."
"One hundred and fifty–three pounds," said the doctor, noting it down on his tablets.
"Am I too heavy?"
"Why, no, Mr. Kennedy!" said Joe; "and then, you know, I am light to make up for it."
So saying, Joe, with enthusiasm, took his place on the scales, and very nearly upset them in his ready haste. He struck the attitude of Wellington where he is made to ape Achilles, at Hyde–Park entrance, and was superb in it, without the shield.
"One hundred and twenty pounds," wrote the doctor.
"Ah! ha!" said Joe, with a smile of satisfaction And why did he smile? He never could tell himself.
"It’s my turn now," said Ferguson—and he put down one hundred and thirty–five pounds to his own account.
"All three of us," said he, "do not weigh much more than four hundred pounds."
"But, sir," said Joe, "if it was necessary for your expedition, I could make myself thinner by twenty pounds, by not eating so much."
"Useless, my boy!" replied the doctor. "You may eat as much as you like, and here’s half–a–crown to buy you the ballast."
CHAPTER SEVENTH
Geometrical Details.—Calculation of the Capacity of the Balloon.—The Double Receptacle.—The Covering.—The Car.—The Mysterious Apparatus. —The Provisions and Stores.—The Final Summing up
Dr. Ferguson had long been engaged upon the details of his expedition. It is easy to comprehend that the balloon —that marvellous vehicle which was to convey him through the air—was the constant object of his solicitude.
At the outset, in order not to give the balloon too ponderous dimensions, he had decided to fill it with hydrogen gas, which is fourteen and a half times lighter than common air. The production of this gas is easy, and it has given the greatest satisfaction hitherto in aerostatic experiments.
The doctor, according to very accurate calculations, found that, including the articles indispensable to his journey and his apparatus, he should have to carry a weight of 4,000 pounds; therefore he had to find out what would be the ascensional force of a balloon capable of raising such a weight, and, consequently, what would be its capacity.
A weight of four thousand pounds is represented by a displacement of the air amounting to forty–four thousand eight hundred and forty–seven cubic feet; or, in other words, forty–four thousand eight hundred and forty–seven cubic feet of air weigh about four thousand pounds.
By giving the balloon these cubic dimensions, and filling it with hydrogen gas, instead of common air—the former being fourteen and a half times lighter and weighing therefore only two hundred and seventy–six pounds—a difference of three thousand seven hundred and twenty–four pounds in equilibrium is produced; and it is this difference between the weight of the gas contained in the balloon and the weight of the surrounding atmosphere that constitutes the ascensional force of the former.
However, were the forty–four thousand eight hundred and forty–seven cubic feet of gas of which we speak, all introduced into the balloon, it would be entirely filled; but that would not do, because, as the balloon continued to mount into the more rarefied layers of the atmosphere, the gas within would dilate, and soon burst the cover containing it. Balloons, then, are usually only two–thirds filled.
But the doctor, in carrying out a project known only to himself, resolved to fill his balloon only one–half; and, since he had to carry forty–four thousand eight hundred and forty–seven cubic feet of gas, to give his balloon nearly double capacity he arranged it in that elongated, oval shape which has come to be preferred. The horizontal diameter was fifty feet, and the vertical diameter seventy