582 CIRCLING EIFFEL TOWER IN AIR SHIP. 



bird's right, clean-cut unci unswerving. He gained and rounded the 

 tower in nine minutes, a gain of four minutes over his first trial, or 

 less than one-third of the time limit, lie had, therefore, twenty-one 

 minutes in which to make the same trip hack, it would he stubborn 

 hard luck that could keep him from the prize. Hut that is what 

 happened. 



The towel 1 was no sooner rounded than difficulties seemed to begin. 

 Without apparent cause the air ship suddenly pointed upward, and 

 mounted loo yards higher in air. Then it began to sink toward the 

 roofs, bereft of buoyant force or vitality. \t was beyond control, and 

 its navigator was being tossed in midair, more helpless than a sailor 

 clinging to a plank. He started the ventilators, to innate the ballonet 

 with air and make the balloon rigid, but as a climax to despair the 

 ventilators would not work. The balloon became flabby, and even its 

 ends doubled on itself like a pocketknife. This brought the wires that 

 suspend the framework into trouble with the turning screw, and in a 

 moment several of them snapped. Just in time to save himself from 

 being cut away from the balloon entirely and dashed to the ground, 

 Santos stopped the screw, and then the unwieldy air ship dragged 

 lower to the earth, and was soon skimming over some high hotels 

 that had been built for the exposition. Once he was jolted against 

 a cornice, and once again he was so low that his guide rope coiled 

 along the ground. A carpenter seized the end and wrapped it around 

 the iron bars of a window. But the breeze carried the balloon on, and 

 with a jerk the guide rope tore out the iron bars. On the edge of the 

 next hotel roof the balloon was stranded and wrecked. The frame- 

 work, though, holding the heavy motor and the man, dangled from its 

 wiring over the wall of the building. A moment it hung suspended, 

 then its lower end settled on the roof of a two-story restaurant next 

 door, and its upper end against the wall of the hotel. There was a 

 space between the two buildings, and the framework spanned this 

 space almost perpendicularly. The delicate wooden beams strained 

 and cracked, ready to break and bring its load to the ground. 



A company of firemen were on hand almost at once, and from the 

 top of the hotel they threw a rope to Santos-Dumont, who tied it 

 around his waist and allowed himself to be drawn up. He had not 

 suffered a scratch, but he suffered much more than that when the tire- 

 men began to extract his beloved air ship. With each cracking of 

 wood he shuddered as though it were a bone; yet despite his anxiety 

 and the care of the firemen, the framework broke into halves, and was 

 soon found to be irreparable, and the same fate met the balloon. The 

 only consolation was the motor, which seemed to be unhurt. 



''Now what are you going to do?" one of his friends demanded. 



"Why. begin again, of course. One has to have patience." 



And that same day he gave orders for another balloon, which will 

 be the balloon of the air ship Santos-Dumont VI. The new air ship 



