Twenty-One Balloons

The Twenty-One Balloons
by William Pene du Bois
Report by J.J. Hinrichs
9-25-07

There was a man, Professor William Waterman Sherman, who wanted to fly away for a year, or months, to be alone. So he prepared a hot air balloon with a house beneath it. The house had a bed made out of air and when he was getting ready to go he would give the command and he would go.

Professor William Waterman Sherman left from San Francisco and flew over the Pacific Ocean. The days were sunny days. When he needed to wash something he would just dip it into the ocean with his fishing pole. When he needed to go higher he would just release some junk, or old food scraps.

Then once there was a sea gull what went right into the balloon and got trapped inside. He was terrified and didn’t know what to do. He started throwing all his things off of his balloon. He made it to an island which was called Krakatoa.

On the island of Krakatoa he met a guy named Mr. F who helped him to go through a jungle to a diamond mine. The diamond mine was so sparkling that they had to wear dark glasses. Some of the diamonds were as big as little pebbles, some were was big as baseballs, and some were as big as boulders.
At certain times of the day the whole island would move. Well, all except where the diamond mines were. After they left the diamond mines the volcano started to shake.

Mr. F. took Professor Sherman to his house. His house was French. The next day he saw all the houses and they were all different. Like T was for Turkey. One of the most interesting things was that all of the men’s names were after the alphabet like Mr. T, Mr. F…

There were 20 families living on the island. For money they would take a few small diamonds and sail to any place in the world and sell the diamonds and get the material to build their restaurant on Krakatoa.

For fun the children built an airy-go-round. Where you build a merry-go-round with hot air balloons. There was a tall pole that was like a screw thing and inside a little round thing there was a screw what went up and when they landed the commander would tell them to pull the strings and they would pull them and they would go up and around. Then finally they would go off the pole and then they would just go right around and go until the commander to let all the air out of the balloons. Then they would let all the air out and they would land in the ocean.

The day the volcano erupted everyone was in a restaurant and they saw the wall break into two. They all fled on a sort of platform and finally they got off with parachutes. Professor Sherman had to run back and forth to let the air out of the balloons. He landed in the Atlantic Ocean where he was rescued.

Of special note: we read that there was a volcano named Krakatoa which exploded in the 1880’s creating the loudest sound ever recorded. Krakatoa and Pompeii are the two most famous Stratovolcanoes.