CHAPTER VI
OUR DEPARTURE
FOR THE MOON
Very early on the morning of November 22, 1914, the day of our departure, all the members of our party, at the command of Capt. Ewald, convened at the residence of Mark P. Hoover, a prosperous farmer living in the vicinity of the place where our ship was moored, to hold the last consultation in regard to the equipment for the long and perilous voyage.
After we had been gathered about three hours an intelligent-looking, comfortably-dressed young man in working attire presented himself at the door of the room which we were occupying and informed Capt. Ewald that all the supplies had been packed and loaded on according to directions. The meeting at once adjourned, and as we all walked on in the direction of the ship, Capt. Ewald instructed us to keep our real intention strictly a secret and to convey to all persons not in any way directly concerned the idea that we only expected to take a record-breaking air flight.
When we reached the ship, we found it closely guarded and protected by a strong force on the inside of barrier ropes and surrounded on the outside by a great throng of noisy men and boys. This rough crowd had gathered, no doubt, to witness a great calamity; but they were evidently very much disappointed, for everything worked out that morning in our favor in the minutest detail, and the beginning of the flight in every way, a most prosperous one. The point from which we made the ascent was a mall rocky eminence in a little meadow on the farm of Perry G. Lowman, situated on the right bank of the Missouri river, and about eight miles above its mouth.
Exactly at 10 o’clock A. M., central time, we were commanded to go on board, which orders we promptly obeyed. Then the moorings were cut and the massive door closed, locked, and sealed.
The promoters of this enterprise took their positions at the running gear, and the rest of the party, for reasons which they could never thereafter satisfactorily give, quickly gathered themselves into a compact squad at the center of the sitting room and stood with bated breath waiting for the results of the first attempt to rise into the air. Then Capt. Ewald, acting in the triple capacity of engineer, pilot, and captain, pulled a lever and briskly turned the steering wheel. At once the great bleb-shaped craft began to quake all over as if it had a violent convulsion, gave a long, loud, doleful moan, and leaped wildly from its ponderous foundation and started upward. At first it moved slowly with a few slight jerks, and then with the swiftness of a skyrocket rose steadily to a great altitude and floated gently away through the aerial regions in the direction of Hillsboro, Ill.
As our ship sped upward, I heard faint shouts from the excited crowd below, and the individual members of this boisterous assemblage rapidly took on Lilliputian dimensions and finally disappeared in the distance. countless villages and small towns scattered about over Eastern Missouri and Western Illinois almost suddenly popped into view, and the woodlands everywhere took on the appearance of great briar fields.
The morning was almost perfectly clear, and the day being the Sabbath, there was practically no smoke in the towns and the cities, conditions highly favorable for getting fine landscape views. From our elevated position the City of St. Louis more than twenty miles away was in plain view and rapidly shrank away to a mere toy city as our ship steadily drifted away to the East. In about one hour after our ascent this great inland trade-center had narrowed down until the skyscrapers resembled box-cars standing on end, and together with the adjacent towns and villages, disappeared in a southwesterly direction.
Plate 8. Our Departure for the Moon
At first it moved slowly with a few slight jerks, and then with the swiftness of a skyrocket rose steadily to a great altitude and floated gently away through the aerial regions, in the direction of Hillsboro, Ill.
At 11 o’clock–just one hour after we begun our flight–the thermometer recorded the temperature on the outside at 6 degrees Centigrade, above 0, and the barograph registered our altitude at twenty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty feet, or about four and one-third miles. The exact latitude and longitude of our ship just at this particular time I did not know;
but, to the best of my knowledge, we were about ninety miles almost due west of Evansville, Ind.
The sky had by this time become somewhat murky, and for this reason I was not able to get very sharp outlines of small objects on the earth’s surface; but all large objects, such as farmhouses, stock barns, etc., even within a radius of forty miles, loomed up well in all their coarser details. I was able also to trace with my unaided eyes for quite a long way the courses of a number of small streams and two railroad lines, and to locate readily at least two dozen small towns and villages scattered here and there over the country. From my viewpoint these more directly underneath the ship appeared as clusters of large boxes, more than anything 8 p while those more remote resembled scattered flocks of geese.
While some seven or eight of us were temporarily engaged at discerning, naming, and locating objects on the earth’s surface and exchanging ideas in undertones and whispers as to what we thought would be the outcome or end of our reckless venture, Capt. Ewald who had for some time been aside in consultation with Prof. Rider stepped quickly forward, commanded attention, and said: “Gentlemen, we are now ready to leave the world, and you may at once prepare for the longest, and fastest, continuous ride that you can ever reasonably hope to take in this life.”
We all promptly took standing positions and clung to some nickel-plated rods that extended from the center of the floor to the ceiling. Capt. Ewald and Prof. Eider immediately took positions at the helm, and with the expressions of the intermingled feelings of dread, hope, and defiance, began a rapid, skillful, and harmonious manipulation of a complicated system of wheels and levers. In another moment the giant craft hummed aloud and for several minutes rocked slowly round and round in the manner of a spinning top, and I felt a sensation as of a great weight pulling down upon my shoulders. Presently the sky began to turn black, a gloaming darkness gathered about us, and objects on the earth’s surface began to grow indistinct. Just at this moment I heard a locomotive whistling and a large bell tolling, away in the distance, but I could not locate them. These were the last sounds I heard on earth until we returned from the moon.
In about thirty minutes, after having traveled directly upward a distance of about one hundred and seventy-five miles, we discovered that there was no atmosphere about us; or, if there was, it was so highly rarefied that it was not discernible by means of the most delicate and accurate instruments prepared especially for determining such conditions.
Here we “cast anchor” for thirty minutes. While our ship floated lazily and quietly about in the free space of the heavens, Capt. Ewald and Profs. Monahan, Purnell, and Rider were aside from the rest of the party holding a spirited consultation and studying the directions. At the end of this short period the sun was directly over our meridian, and the moon was plainly visible at a point in the heavens 65 degrees east of the sun, and was just five days on the journey from new moon to first quarter.