inside the other. It was connected with the air-pump by a tube, so that when the cigar-shaped balloon began to shrink, I could swell it out again by pumping in atmospheric air. Hélas! the air-pump refused to work at the critical moment. The balloon began to double on itself as it grew flabby; and soon I was falling at the rate of sixteen feet per second. The air-ship fell thirteen hundred feet to the ground, and it would have ended fatally for me had I not called out to some people who had spontaneously caught hold of my guide-rope to pull in the direction opposite to that of the wind. By this manœuver I diminished the final speed of the fall and the worst part of the shock.”
All his friends remember this sensational trip in the autumn of 1998. The air-ship rose above us in the Jardin d’Acclimatation. For a while we could hear the motor spitting and the propeller churning the air. Then, when he had reached his equilibrium, we could still observe Santos manipulating the machinery and the ropes. Around and around he maneuvered in great circles and figure 8's, showing that he had perfect control of his direction. Then, according to the program, he started in a straight line for the west. As the air-ship grew smaller in the distance, those who had opera-glasses began crying that it was “doubling up.” We saw it coming down rapidly, growing larger and larger. Women screamed. Men called hoarsely to one another. Those who had bicycles or automobiles hastened to the spot where he must be dashed to the ground. Yet within an hour M. Santos-Dumont was among his friends again, unhurt, laughing nervously, and explaining all about the unlucky air-pump.
“I made a third trial with No. 1, this time with a long rope, like a captive balloon,” he continued, “but I saw that I should have to build another, I built it, but never made a proper ascension in it. It was the same type as No. 1, but larger. After a few trials with the rope, I definitely abandoned this long and slender balloon model, so seductive from certain points of view, but so dangerous from others,
“My No. 3, which was completed in the summer of 1899, was a shorter and very much thicker balloon, sixty-six feet long and eleven and a half feet in its greatest diameter. Its gas capacity was seventeen thousand six hundred cubic feet, which gave it three times the lifting-power of No. 1, and twice that of No. 2. On the other hand, I had decided to fill it with common illuminating-gas, whose lifting-power is not nearly so great as that of hydrogen. The hydrogen-plant at the Jardin d’Acclimatation was badly served. It had cost me vexatious delays and no end of trouble. With illuminating-gas I should be more free. In this model I also suppressed the compensating air-balloon, I had gone through a bad experience with its air-pump already; and the changed form of the new balloon, so much shorter and thicker, would help to do away with the danger of doubling up. For the rest, I wanted to try the stiffening qualities of a thirty-foot bamboo pole fixed length-wise to the suspension-cords above my head and directly beneath the balloon.
“This was my first keel. It supported basket and guide-ropes, and it brought the shifting-weights into play still more effectually.
“Being filled with ordinary illuminating-gas, the new balloon (No. 3) lifted basket, machinery, my own weight, and two hundred and thirty pounds of ballast—ballast which I might now reserve for great emergencies.
“On November 13, 1899, I started from Lachambre’s atelier in Vaugirard with the No. 3 on the most successful trip I had yet made. From Vaugirard I went directly to the Champ de Mars, over which I practised describing figure 8's. The air-ship obeyed the rudder beautifully. After circling round the Eiffel Tower a number of times, I made a straight course to the Parc des Princes at Auteuil; then, making a hook, I navigated to the manœuver-grounds of Bagatelle, where I landed. At this time, remember, neither I nor the Aéro Club had a balloon-park to start from or return to. To go back to Lachambre’s at Vaugirard, surrounded as it is by houses, presented too many dangers.
“Considerations like these made it desirable to have a plant of my own. The Aéro Club had now acquired some land on the newly opened Côteaux de Longchamps at St. Cloud; and I decided to become my own master by building on it a great shed, high enough to contain my air-ship with the balloon fully inflated, and furnished with a modern hydrogen-gas generator. Even here I had to contend with the conceit and prejudice of the Paris artisans, who had already given me so much trouble at the Jardin d’Acclimatation. It was declared that the high sliding-doors of my shed could not be made to slide. I had to insist. ‘Follow my directions,’ I said, ‘and do not concern yourselves with their practicability. I will answer for the sliding.’
