PERILS OF A PARACHUTIST.

Southern Cross, Volume 7, Issue 35, 25 November 1899, Page 2

PERILS OF A PARACHUTIST.

‘ I need not assure you,’ said a wellknown geronaut to a writer in the August part of Chums, ‘ that it requires downright nerve to drop one’s physical organism earthward from a balloon, at a height of a mile or two above the ground. I have done this 31 times. I performed the feat at first with abundance of courage —much more than I now possess ; for I confess that the more descents I make the less heart I have for them. No, I have never met with a serious accident, for which I am indebted to good fortune, for with the best parachute ever made a fatal accident is likely to happen at any time. The danger is not so much that the parachute might give way as it is that the manner of descent is so peculiar. ‘Few people understand that a descent is not uniform, but that it consists of a series of downward plunges and arrests of speed quite sufficient to try the nerve of the most fearless seronaut. I once had a whistle fixed in the orifice at the apex of my parachute. This whistle, by emitting piercing shrieks high in the air, heralded my approach to terra firma far and wide. Most parachutists when they first descend give themselves up for lost. They release themselves from the balloon and —drop like a stone ! Just as they, are thinking of the debts they haven’t paid, and the promises they haven’t kept heigh, presto! the parachute opens and the fall is checked. Then begins a sensation, too, as if the top of one’s head were about to fly off; and this, with the loud rushing of the air from under the wings, and the yell of the whistle, if you have one, creates for the nerves a confusing state of things for the first four or five seconds. ‘ I have come down hard, come dowa soft, on to the roofs of houses, into the middle of rivers. This is the worst of parachuting —you cannot choose your place for alighting. Once I fell on a hive of bees. Luckily, there was a cottage in front of me. I entered hurriedly —need I say, without permission ?