EARLY AIRSHIP MAKERS 



A delightful old gentleman with perfect manners, 

 named M. Roze, who would have graced any Cabinet 

 in France. He had an enormous installation in 

 another part of Paris. There was a completeness of 

 detail, a perfect engineering shop, and a well-built 

 garage for his ship which made one talk to him 

 with bated breath. There was a something about him 

 which precluded me from ever raising a doubt. He 

 had one bar to success, which was that he could not 

 understand that a pound of aluminium weighed just 

 the same as a pound of feathers. By the time I first 

 met him his ship, which was quite a hundred feet long, 

 had cost many thousands of pounds. They had just 

 raised another fifteen hundred pounds on second 

 debentures, or something or other, and in three months, 

 he had reckoned, all would be well. The cabin was 

 beautifully fitted up, and on the top was a hurricane 

 deck. We ascended the companion-way from the 

 saloon and went up. For ventilating purposes a huge 

 panel was open to the roof. Looking upward I could 

 realise what it would be like when we were really above 

 the earth. He mapped out our first itinerary. He 

 reckoned with favourable breezes — right aft or on the 

 quarter — we could go seventy miles an hour, and even 

 with a breeze abaft the beam we could beat the Orient 

 express to Vienna by hours. 



A cabin was assigned to me, and my place at the 

 dinner-table. The slight nautical knowledge I pos- 

 sessed appealed to him, and he had told me I could 

 be his honorary first officer. There would be no bar 

 to smoking, I was glad to hear, as the gas bags were 

 enclosed in aluminium cylinders. He was delightfully 

 picturesque in appearance, and it was inevitable to 

 conjure up recollections of the creations of Jules 

 Verne. Here at last was the man whom the writer of 



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