PERIPATETICS: Flight by Moonlight

“The idea,” explained Joseph van der Straeten, mine host at La Paix tavern in Belgium’s seaside city of Knocke, “was to float slowly over the beach so that everyone could see me, then drop a trail rope to a waiting launch which would tow me back to shore. Generally speaking, it is a good idea. I’ve done it more than 60 times before. But this time it was not a good idea.”

Last week, by the time Joseph’s balloon had cleared Knocke beach, the wind had freshened. The balloon was 1,000 feet up and heading north at 25 m.p.h. The men in the motorboat made one grab for Joseph’s line as he whipped by overhead and missed. Joseph, who had faithfully promised his wife that he would not go more than ten miles, was on his own.

Cries in the Dark. With night falling fast, the errant balloonist took stock of his situation. “The altimeter,” he said later, “was the only instrument I had in the bas. ket. I looked in my pockets to see what else there might be. There was a pocketknife for opening beer bottles, a handkerchief and 1,650 Belgian francs. Nothing else.” Bravely the bold aeronaut straightened the pink tie that hung across his cream-colored shirt. Belgium and the motorboat were fast disappearing in the gloaming to windward. As Holland’s Walcheren Island coasted by, van der Straeten noticed a steamer below. He valved gas out of the bag above his head, came down low and shouted, “Help!” A sailor on the deck of the steamer looked up. “What?” he cried, but the wind had carried Joseph’s ghostly globe far off. “The sun was sinking,” remembers Joseph. “I expected the worst, but I had no fear. Mostly I was just wishing I wasn’t there.”

Back in La Paix tavern, happy couples danced away the night to U.S. song hits while Mrs. van der Straeten served cocktails and gazed anxiously northward. Far out over the North Sea her husband sat patiently on the edge of his basket, his feet dangling over the waves that lapped ten yards below, “so that if I should go into the water, I would not be entangled in the gear.” The moon was full by then and “traveling swiftly on the very edge of the waves,” Joseph recalled. “It was like a fairy tale.” As the waves came even closer to his perch, Joseph dumped the last of his sand ballast and busied himself cutting up his trail rope to throw that out piece by piece. Soon after he heard the cries of sea gulls and looked down to see the lights of beachside restaurants and hotels. A woman was walking down a long, straight road. “Madame,” called Joseph politely, “s’il vous plait, l’Angleterre ici?” The Englishwoman looked up. “Oui, monsieur,” she answered and continued steadily on her way.

Deflation in a Desert. The landing which took place shortly thereafter, says Joseph, “was smooth and magnificent. It was in a meadow. The first thing I did was deflate the bag, wrap it up and go for help. Then I discovered that my landing place [Orfordness, near Ipswich] was a desert. I stumbled into bogs, fell into brambles, sprained my ankle in a slough. ‘Mon Dieu’ I said to myself, ‘have they ceased to be watchful along their coasts, these British?’ Finally I found a house. The people took me to a post office. There was a pretty little clerk there and she made two telephone calls—one to the police and one to the Daily Express in London.”

It was a happy arrangement. The police gave the balloonist a night’s lodging. The London paper offered to telephone his wife and pay his way back to Belgium in return for an exclusive story. “I accepted,” said van der Straeten, “and suddenly learned just what journalism is—six parts money and four parts acrobatics.” The acrobatics began the next day. When the other reporters arrived, the Daily Express men shoved him from one room to another and jammed him into closets to hide him from their rivals. “I need,” said proud Joseph van der Straeten, home at last in Knocke, “no man’s money, but I was glad to have the Express’s. Now I have one of their reporters here as my guest. He will stay as long as he wants. There is nothing like a sudden descent from a balloon to warm up international understanding.”