69 pages • 2 hours read
William Pene du BoisThe 21 Balloons
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Concerning the Giant Balloon Life Raft”
Sherman joins the others at Mr. and Mrs. C’s pagoda house to enjoy a Chinese breakfast. The cuisine is quite different from what Sherman is used to, and, somewhat like the children, he picks at his food.
He tells Mr. F. that he’d like to go for a swim. They don swimsuits and bathrobes and walk down to a lovely beach. By now used to the rolling motions of the rumbling island, Sherman notes an oddity about the beach: “the ocean was quite calm and the beach was going up and down” (136).
They walk into the water up to their waists and find themselves on sand that rises up out of the water and then drops until they’re up to their necks, up and down repeatedly. To do any sustained swimming, they must venture farther out to avoid the rising and falling sea floor. They reemerge and sunbathe, letting the ground roll them this way and that until they are nicely sun-drenched on all sides.
Later, Sherman studies an atlas and realizes he must have missed large land masses—the Philippines, Borneo, and the like—while ballooning across the Pacific at night. Landing, of all places, on Krakatoa seems unusual, but it’s a typical coincidence for balloonists, who are lucky if they manage to get within 100 miles of their original destination.
The professor wonders if residents of the nearby islands of Sumatra and Java might notice the Balloon Merry-Go-Round when it soars above Krakatoa. Mr. F. says it’s unlikely, since the ride is painted sky-blue, it never ventures far from the island, and the volcano is known to belch strange things into the sky. The balloons would appear like a ring of smoke.
Also, several years earlier, the volcano rocked violently, sending waves that flooded the nearby coastlines, and the people living there moved far inland. The Krakatoans were living in huts at the time, many of which were knocked over, and some residents sustained injuries, though nothing major.
Sherman protests that the island is far too dangerous in the long run. Mr. F. says that, if the mountain explodes suddenly, this would be a “painless death.” If, though, the volcano gives warning, the community has a method of escape that can be ready in 10 minutes, a “flying platform” lifted by balloons.
Impressed by this idea of a dangerous conveyance, Sherman remarks that the Krakatoans aren’t greedy and dull but “incurable romantics.” Mr. F. counters that the balloon platform is foolproof. He draws in the sand a diagram of the platform, surrounded by balloons, and notes that it’s built from lightweight pine wood and designed to handle much more weight than it will carry. The 20 balloons, some large, some small, will have a lifting power of 45,360 pounds, and all 81 people, including Sherman, will weigh 10,580 pounds, with 34,780 pounds of lift remaining to haul the platform itself.
They walk to a corner of the island, where the platform sits like a large dance floor with a railing. Surrounding it are four vats of water that contain and protect steel cylinders filled with compressed hydrogen. Hoses lead from the vats to balloons, currently empty and folded, that are attached to the platform; valves on the platform control each hose. In an emergency, each family will fill a balloon with hydrogen and manage it thereafter. When all are filled, the platform will rise up and pull the hoses away from the vats. A compressed-hydrogen cylinder onboard the platform will top off the balloons as needed.
The entire assembly, platform and balloons, is painted beautifully in hopes that, should the Krakatoans land in another country, they’ll be welcomed as dignitaries and not as invaders. The platform is too big to land without being dragged and torn apart; thus, each family will use a four-person parachute to jump off the platform when they’re over a place where they want to land.
On Mr. F.’s advice, Sherman goes to the M house, where parachutes are made. Mrs. M is happy to construct one for Sherman, though it will take a couple of weeks. Sherman says, “Take your time—there’s no rush at all” (154).
Chapter 10 Summary: “What Goes Up Must Come Down”
The next morning, Day D, Sherman enjoys a hearty Dutch breakfast, then he and Mr. F. visit the beach again. Sherman is pleased to find that he is getting a nice tan. Mr. F. asks for news of San Francisco, and Sherman regales him with stories of various social events and the people who attend; these include several persons whom Mr. F. knows.
Mr. F. asks Sherman to give a lecture that afternoon on the news from their home city, so that everyone can catch up. Lunch is Javanese curried rice in the Dutch East Indies style; Sherman then elaborates on the talk he gave to Mr. F. at the beach. Each mention of a name from back home brings a smile from someone in the audience: “There would be much nudging of elbows, smiles, and faraway homesick looks” (158).
He speaks for three hours. As he does so, he notices that the ground outside is rolling more vigorously than usual. He points this out, and everyone looks through the windows, but Mr. M says the house, on its diamond foundation, hasn’t budged, so there’s nothing to worry about.
Sherman continues, but suddenly a huge crack opens in one wall and sunlight pours in. Windows shatter, and the noise from outside is thunderous. Mr. M barks orders: Parents run to their houses to retrieve parachutes while children hurry to the platform to begin filling the balloons. Others grab food from the kitchen and rush it to the platform.
Mr. M tells Sherman that the families have diamonds sewn into their parachutes; he suggests that, if it’s safe, Sherman go to the mine and grab a few diamonds for himself. Sherman tries to get to the mine, but the ground is moving too violently, and he realizes it’s hopeless. Rushing to catch up to the platform, he sees houses burning and collapsing. He reaches the platform, where hands reach down and pull him aboard just as the hoses release and the craft lurches into the sky.
Everyone is shouting, crying, or screaming. The platform, rising slowly, floats toward the mountain. With frantic efforts, men attach the hoses to the central hydrogen cylinder, and the boys at the valves manage to add enough hydrogen to the balloons keep the platform level and get it over the top of the volcano.
As they fly above the crater, a blast of hot air pushes the craft high into the sky. With no wind to push them away, the hot airshaft holds them in place for hours into the night, the heat and red glow a sensation of hell. In the morning, the airshaft fades, and a breeze finally blows them clear of the caldera.
As they fly over the island of Java, 27 miles away, Krakatoa suddenly erupts in seven piercingly loud explosions. Shock waves rock the platform, tossing people about. The volcano disappears in “a thick huge tremendously tall black cloud of pumice, ashes, smoke, lava, dirt, with I suppose a few billion dollars worth of diamonds thrown in” (169). The cloud envelops the platform; for hours, it pushes the craft along at high speed while its passengers choke on vapors and worry about a sudden crash-landing onto a Javanese mountain.
The group has three cauldrons of a meat-and-sauerkraut Dutch delicacy, plus a jug of Dutch cocoa and a crate of Gouda cheese. Mr. M dishes out the food sparingly. He advises all families except one to jump off when they sight land; the last family will stay to help Sherman manage the platform, as he has no parachute. When they see water ahead, that family will jump and Sherman will guide the platform to the water. The cheese and the remaining other food will be his to eat. Mr. F.’s family volunteers to assist Sherman.
The next afternoon, the cloud thins and the group sees ocean below. A day later, land appears, covered in jungle. Mr. M reckons, from the tree types and soil color, that it’s India. The families prepare their parachutes: Each contains four small chutes attached to the corners of an overarching sheet spread out by bamboo poles. At the sight of a smooth plateau, 19 families jump at once, and the platform, with Sherman and the F family, lurches higher into the sky.
For nine days, they soar across “India, Persia, Turkey, Hungary, Austria, Germany” (173), taking short sleep shifts, eating what they can of the rotting food, and exhausting themselves rushing about to keep the balloons properly inflated and the platform level.
At Belgium, the F family parachutes away, leaving Sherman to put the platform down on the water. He discovers that detaching the hoses takes almost more strength than he has, and he won’t be able to finish the task in time to land in the English Channel. He waits until he is beyond England, then frantically runs back and forth, detaching hoses first on one side of the platform and then the other, until finally the craft slices into the sea and breaks apart. By great luck, Sherman is rescued only 20 minutes later.
His story finished, Sherman receives 10 minutes of thunderous applause from the Explorers’ Club audience. He then takes questions. One man asks how he’s able to give such a lengthy speech in his sickened condition; Sherman replies by leaping out of the bed and confessing, to laughter, that the bed looked so comfy that “I’d be a stupid fool if I passed it up” (178).
A woman asks what he will do now. Sherman shows his cufflinks with their giant diamonds. He says he will sell them, build a new balloon with a “seagull catcher,” and finish his interrupted voyage: “one full year in the air, one year of truly delightful living, a year in a balloon!” (180).
Chapters 9-10 Analysis
The final two chapters describe the escape platform devised by the Krakatoans and how they use it to get away from their exploding island. The platform is a device that develops the theme of Balancing Risk and Planning, as it allows the community to live in a dangerous environment but feel secure in the knowledge that they have planned for the worst.
The author wants the story to be plausible as well as technically interesting; he achieves this using the mechanical knowledge and resources available to the people of 1883. The story’s details are elaborately worked out. In Chapter 9, for example, the escape platform’s balloons are described by their dimensions and capacity: “The total hydrogen needed to fill all twenty is 486,000 cubic feet. Free hydrogen has a lifting power of roughly 70 pounds per thousand cubic feet” (146). Several more sentences continue in this manner. The escape from the island is minutely planned, including its precisely managed platform and logical order of procedures, with families parachuting off it as early as possible to save resources for Sherman—the only person onboard without a parachute.
What’s left of the island of Krakatoa lies in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java, the two largest islands of Indonesia. About 100 miles east on Java stands the national capital, Jakarta. Despite the 1883 explosion that obliterated nearly all of Krakatoa above the water line, in 1927 a new volcanic cone rose up amid the ruins. It’s called Anak Krakatau, or “Child of Krakatoa.” (For more about Krakatoa, see the Background section “Historical & Scientific Context: Krakatoa Volcanic Activity.”)
Part of the story’s genius is its ability to conjure up a barely plausible situation on a volcanic island, then use history to wipe that island off the map. This removes any chance to prove that the story, with its fabulous diamond mine and an entire community of wealthy people, could never have happened. It’s thus a perfect fantasy: unlikely, but not impossible.
The author adds a final touch of veracity when Sherman, at the end of his club lecture, shows the audience the cufflinks he acquired at Krakatoa. They’re made from four large diamonds whose sparkle confirms that he really did visit a mysterious island of incredible wealth.
The age of exploration is long over. Today’s satellites, which scour the entire planet and photograph all of it, expose every square foot of our world to observation. Despite the rebirth of Krakatoa through its daughter cone, Anak, there may never be another chance to tell a tale of a hidden society that lives on an actual, historical, active volcano.
