Outside Golden, Colorado. October 12, 2007.

The Western American Explorer’s Club, in the city of San Francisco, was honored as it had never been honored before in the first week of October 1883 by being promised to be first to hear the details of an unexplained, extraordinary adventure; the biggest news story of the year, the story the whole world was waiting impatiently to hear—the tale of Professor William Waterman Sherman’s singular voyage. Professor Sherman had left San Francisco August 15. He flew off in a giant balloon, telling reporters that he hoped to be the first man to fly across the Pacific Ocean. Three weeks later he was picked up in the Atlantic Ocean, half starved and exhausted, clinging to the debris of twenty deflated balloons. How he found himself in the Atlantic with so many balloons after starting out in the Pacific with one, caught and baffled the imagination of the world. When he was sighted and rescued in the middle of the wreckage of twenty balloons in the Atlantic by the Captain of the freighter S.S.Cunningham, en route to New York City, he was immediately put to bed, for he was sick and weary, suffering from cold and shock. He was treated with great care by the ship’s doctor, strengthened with food and brandy by the ship’s cook, honored by the personal attention of Captain John Simon of the S.S.Cunningham. When he was well enough to talk, the Doctor, Cook and Captain leaned over him at his bedside and said in excited tones, “How do you feel?”

“I could be worse,” said Professor Sherman, rather feebly.

Excerpted from The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pène Du Bois. Published by Penguin Books, multiple years.