tioned pine framework, of great lightness and rigidity, sixty feet in length and weighing only ninety pounds. Its joints were in aluminium, and its rigidity was reinforced by tightly drawn piano-wires. Into this keel, twenty feet from the stern, I fixed the new sixteen horse-power four-cylinder motor, connecting it with the propeller by a long hollow steel shaft. My own place was in a very light basket, twenty-three feet from the front or stem.
“In one way this was a disadvantage, for I had now to command the motor at a distance by means of cords. I could not put it in movement en route, although I could stop it. For this reason I longed for the bicycle-frame’s pedals of No. 3; and I am still studying a device to replace them. In all other respects, however, the new keel was a great improvement, distributing the weight and lending great tautness to the balloon above it.
“The interior air-balloon I now retained definitely, it being fed by an aluminium ventilator. Both balloon and air-balloon were furnished with valves whose springs, of unequal force, were so arranged that in case of an excess of pressure the air, and not the gas, would first escape. Valves, motor, fuel-reservoir, rudder, and all other functions of the air-ship were connected with my little basket by means of ropes and pulleys. I will not deny that it required coolness and experience to handle them. Still, at the worst, I would always climb out and along the frameork of the keel to the spot needing attention.[1]
“You know what the end of my No. 5 was. In the early morning of August 8, having called together the Technical Committee of the Deutsch Foundation, I navigated from St. Cloud to the Eiffel Tower in eight minutes and fifty seconds, turned round the tower in forty seconds more, and was just reaching the Bois on the home stretch, with eighteen minutes to the good, when the catastrophe happened. The balloon had already begun losing gas before I reached the tower.
“Had I not been making a kind of official trial, I should have returned to the shed to examine the balloon. Going round the tower it was manifestly deflated; but I had made such good speed that I risked continuing. I had not been four minutes on the home stretch, however, when the balloon swinging like an elephant’s trunk, it was so flabby. I felt myself falling, and was about to switch the motor-power to the air-pump to stiffen it out again, and so come to earth as gently as possible, when the aft ropes, losing their rigidity, caught in the propeller. I stopped the propeller instantly. The rapidly emptying balloon now obeyed nothing but the vagrant winds, I came down, without much of a shock, between the roofs of the Trocadéro hotels, the balloon ripping up with the noise of an explosion. The new keel saved my life. Its two extremities rested on the two roofs, one lower than the other; and there I hung, sustained by the keel, until I could be pulled up to the higher roof by means of a rope.”
“Do you know the cause of the accident?” I asked.
“I am not certain of it yet,” he answered, “though I suspect the automatic valves, whose reacting on each other is a very delicate affair. Or it may have been the interior air-balloon that refused to fill out properly. Yesterday Lachambre’s man came to me for the plans of the air-balloon for my No. 6. From something he said I gathered that the air-balloon of No. 5, not having been given time for its varnish to dry before being adjusted, might have stuck together or to the side of the outer balloon. Next time we shall be more careful, although with so many things to think of, and all new, it is scarcely human not to overlook something.”
“In what will No. 6 differ from its predecessors?” I asked.
“It will be longer, thicker, and consequently of considerably greater gas-capacity than No. 5, and more closely ellipsoidal in form. In it I shall try to take advantage of all past experience, even the most unpleasant—which is not always the least valuable.”
“So far you have done everything alone,” I said. “Shall you be prepared to take up a passenger in No. 6?”
“I want more weight-carrying power in order to take up more petroleum and a passenger—that is to say, an aid. There is a great deal of work, really too much for one man, and up in the air, whatever must be
- ↑ “The balloon made a curve and began to come back to the Parc. It was the prettiest sight imaginable to see the steadiness with which it followed its course ... until it was exactly overhead when, M. Santos-Dumont stopped the propeller and began his preparations for descending. Something, however, had gone wrong. This was evident, for at a certain moment the fearless aëronaut was seen to clamber out of the little car on to the framework supporting the motor. A shudder ran through the crowd of onlookers at the sight; and it was with a sentiment of relief that he was seen to climb into the car again and start the propeller once more.”—Paris edition of the New York "Herald," August 5, 1901.
