In the heat of the afternoon, one day, the sky was crystal clear, Hannah lay under the shade of a banana tree. Talbot did the same but at a good distance from her. With her eyes almost closed the sun was coming through the leaves and colors were sparkling on her eye lashes. Although she kept her eyes still, the colors were moving horizontally. She found that strange. Opening her eyes slightly she saw brilliant colors but not from the sparkling of the sun through the leaves nor on her eyelashes. She opened her eyes a little wider.
The sight made her sit up. There just off shore. Just outside of the cove. There just suspended in air over the water - an object. She rubbed her eyes believing that she was seeing things. Perhaps she was not even awake but dreaming. Afraid to shout out for fear that Talbot would think that she had gone mad.
Talbot was fast asleep. The heat had exhausted him. Everything was quiet. Not even the birds made a sound. It was too hot for singing in the trees. The water was perfectly calm. Everything was at peace. This "thing" did not make a sound.
If that were not enough, she began to hear voices. People talking. It was not her voice or Talbot's voice that she heard. It was not distinct but it was definitely people. Her apprehension only grew.
"Talbot!" She shouted in a whisper, running towards him to shake him awake. "Look! Look!" She was pointing, shaking him and shouting in a whisper all at the same time. Then she started to run to the shoreline.
Talbot woke and jumped to his feet. He too started running. At the same time feeling really confused about what he saw. The two of them started waving their arms and shouting to get the attention of the "floating people."
"Ahoy there!" Talbot shouted. Accustomed to that as a nautical expression when calling from a ship.
The three men stopped talking and just stared at the people waving to them on the beach, not believing what they were seeing. Two people on this island in the middle of nowhere. They saw no boat, no ship, just two people. They could not believe their eyes.
Hannah and Talbot were thinking the same thing. Is it possible that there are people floating past them in the sky in the middle of nowhere? Hannah and Talbot were overjoyed to see other people.
Then they heard, "Look over there. Do you see what I see?" One man said to the other two men. "Can we get over there?"
The third man said, "Yes I think I can make it over there." As he said that he pulled on something and Hannah and Talbot saw fire.
Hannah asked, "What in God's name is it?"
Talbot was thinking and thinking, trying to remember what he read. "It is a ......it is a....oh what is it called again. I read about this a while ago. Oh yes! Its called a hot-air balloon."
Hannah smiled and looked at him with her eyes wide.
"Two Frenchmen are credited with the discovery in the late 1700s. Although it was first Leonardo da Vinci that discovered it in the early 1500's. It is a balloon that is full of hot air from a fire and that hot air wants to rise so it takes the balloon up into the sky because the hot air is trapped.. The part that the three men are standing in is literally a basket. The balloon rises and falls with the intake of heat and with the release of the heat from the top through valves in the top of the balloon." Talbot just stared while he was talking and smiled all the while. "Magnificent!"
"Hannah!" He looked at her now. "Do you know what this means?"
In unison both of them said, "We are saved!" And they embraced each other. Then as they embraced each other wholeheartedly they became weak and unhappy at the thought of getting to the United States and never seeing each other again. 'Their' life was now over. A sadness enveloped them.
