A Balloon Hit by a Train

The Gordon Bennett Cup, which kicked off the other week from Brussels, gave rise to an unusual adventure, one that the most daring novelist might not have dared to imagine.
Among the competitors was the balloon Elsie, piloted by the English captain Johnson and his assistant pilot, Captain Dougal. This spherical balloon, after flying over Belgium, headed for Calais. As the wind continued to blow eastward, the passengers of the Elsie soon saw, in the moonlight, the coastal lighthouses and, beyond, the gray immensity of the English Channel. To avoid being pushed out to sea, they decided to land and began to open the valve. The balloon descended. Without them realizing it, in the darkness, the guide rope was returning to earth. They were then just above the railway line that runs from Boulogne to Paris. At that moment, a freight train arrived. The locomotive caught the guide rope trailing on the track as it passed. In vain, the pilot and his assistant shouted to the engineer to stop. The engineer neither heard nor saw the tragedy unfolding near him. However, the envelope continued to deflate, and the two men made heroic efforts to jump from the basket and escape death. Fortunately, everything ended without too much harm. The balloonists were thrown into a wheat field: one escaped unharmed, the other with minor injuries. Only the balloon was seriously damaged.
Every cloud has a silver lining. Without the unexpected intervention of this train, the passengers of the Elsie might have been lost at sea.