My Airships Part 11

I did not yet know my exact time.

I cried: "Have I won?"

And the crowd of spectators cried back to me: "Yes!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROUND EIFFEL TOWER]

* * * * *

For a while there were those who argued that my time ought to be calculated up to the moment of my second return to the aerodrome instead of to the moment when I first pa.s.sed over it, returning from the Eiffel Tower. For a while, indeed, it seemed that it might be more difficult to have the prize awarded to me than it had been to win it. In the end, however, common-sense prevailed. The money of the prize, amounting in all to 125,000 francs, I did not desire to keep. I, therefore, divided it into unequal parts. The greater sum, of 75,000 francs, I handed over to the Prefect of Police of Paris to be used for the deserving poor. The balance I distributed among my employees, who had been so long with me and to whose devotion I was glad to pay this tribute.

At this same time I received another grand prize, as gratifying as it was unexpected. This was a sum of 100 contos (125,000 francs), voted to me by the Government of my own country, and accompanied by a gold medal of large size and great beauty, designed, engraved, and struck off in Brazil. Its obverse shows my humble self led by Victory and crowned with laurel by a flying figure of Renown. Above a rising sun there is engraved the line of Camoens, altered by one word, as I adopted it to float on the long streamer of my air-ship: "Por _ceos_ nunca d'antes navegados!"[B] The reverse bears these words: "Being President of the Republic of the United States of Brazil, the Doctor Manoel Ferraz de Campos Salles has given order to engrave and strike this medal in homage to Alberto Santos-Dumont. 19th October 1901."

[B] "Through _heavens_ hereto unsailed," instead of

"_Por mares nunca d'antes navegados_"-- "O'er _seas_ hereto unsailed."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROUNDING EIFFEL TOWER]

CHAPTER XVI

A GLANCE BACKWARD AND FORWARD

Just as I had not gone into air-ship constructing for the sake of winning the Deutsch prize, so now I had no reason to stop experimenting after I had won it. When I built and navigated my first air-ships neither Aero Club nor Deutsch prize were yet in existence. The two, by their rapid rise and deserved prominence, had brought the problem of aerial navigation suddenly before the public--so suddenly, indeed, that I was really not prepared to enter into such a race with a time limit.

Naturally anxious to have the honour of winning such a compet.i.tion, I had been forced on rapidly in new constructions at both danger and expense. Now I would take time to perfect myself systematically as an aerial navigator.

Suppose you buy a new bicycle or automobile. You will have a perfect machine to your hand without having had any of the labour, the deceptions, the false starts and recommencements, of the inventor and constructor. Yet with all these advantages you will soon find that possession of the perfected machine does not necessarily mean that you shall go spinning over the highways with it. You may be so unpractised that you will fall off the bicycle or blow up the automobile. The machine is all right, but you must learn to run it.

To bring the modern bicycle to its perfection thousands of amateurs, inventors, engineers, and constructors laboured during more than twenty-five years, trying endless innovations, one by one rejecting the great ma.s.s of them, and, after endless failures by the way of half successes, slowly nearing to the perfect organism.

So it is to-day with the automobile. Imagine the united labours and financial sacrifices of the engineers and manufacturers that led, step by step, up to the road-racing automobiles of the Paris-Berlin compet.i.tion in 1901--the year in which the only working dirigible balloon then in existence won the Deutsch prize against a time limit that was thought by many a complete bar to success. Yet of the 170 perfected automobiles registered for entry to the Paris-Berlin compet.i.tion only 109 completed the first day's run, and of these only 26 finally reached Berlin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RETURNING TO AeRO CLUB GROUNDS ABOVE AQUEDUCT]

Out of 170 automobiles entered for the race only 26 reached the goal.

And of these 26 arriving at Berlin how many do you imagine made the trip without serious accident? Perhaps none.

It is perfectly natural that this should be so. People think nothing of it. Such is the natural development of a great invention. But if I break down while in the air I cannot stop for repairs: I must go on, and the whole world knows it.

Looking back, therefore, on my progress since the time I doubled up above the Bagatelle grounds in 1898 I was surprised at the rapid pace at which I had allowed the notice of the world and my own ardour to push me on in what was in reality an arbitrary task. At the risk of my neck and the needless sacrifice of a great deal of money I had won the Deutsch prize. I might have arrived at the same point of progress by less forced and more reasonable stages. Throughout I had been inventor, patron, manufacturer, amateur, mechanician, and air-ship captain all united!

Yet any one of these qualities is thought to bring sufficient work and credit to the individual in the world of automobiles.

With all these cares I often found myself criticised for choosing calm days for my experiments. Yet who, experimenting over Paris--as I had to do when trying for the Deutsch prize--would add to his natural risks and expenses the vexations of who knows what prosecution for knocking down the chimney-pots of a great capital on the heads of a population of pedestrians?

One by one I tried the a.s.surance companies. None would make a rate for me against the damage I might do on a squally day. None would give me a rate on my own air-ship to insure it against destruction.

To me it was now clear that what I most needed was navigation practice pure and simple. I had been increasing the speed of my air-ships--that is to say, I had been constructing at the expense of my education as an air-ship captain.

The captain of a steamboat obtains his certificate only after years of study and experience of navigation in inferior capacities. Even the "chauffeur" on the public highway must pa.s.s his examination before the authorities will give him his papers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEDAL AWARDED BY THE BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT]

In the air, where all is new, the routine navigation of a dirigible balloon, requiring for foundation the united experiences of the spherical balloonist and the automobile "chauffeur," makes demands upon the lone captain's coolness, ingenuity, quick reasoning, and a kind of instinct that comes with long habit.

Urged on by these considerations, my great object in the autumn of 1901 was to find a favourable place for practice in aerial navigation.

My swiftest and best air-ship--"The Santos-Dumont No. 6"--was in perfect condition. The day after winning the Deutsch prize in it my chief mechanician asked me if he should tighten it up with hydrogen. I told him yes. Then, seeking to let some more hydrogen into it, he discovered something curious. The balloon would not take any more! It had not lost a single cubic unit of hydrogen!

The actual winning of the Deutsch prize had cost only a few litres of petroleum!

Just as the Paris winter of biting winds, cold rains, and lowering skies was approaching I received an intimation that the Prince of Monaco, himself a man of science celebrated for his personal investigations, would be pleased to build a balloon house directly on the beach of La Condamine, from which I might dart out on the Mediterranean, and so continue my aerial practice through the winter.

The situation promised to be ideal. The little bay of Monaco, sheltered from behind against the wind and cold by mountains, and from the wind and sea on either side by the heights of Monte Carlo and Monaco town, would make a well-protected manoeuvre ground.

The air-ship would be always ready, filled with hydrogen gas. It could slip out of the balloon house to profit by good weather, and back again for shelter at the approach of squalls. The balloon house would be erected on the edge of the sh.o.r.e, and the whole Mediterranean would lie before me for guide-roping.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "No. 9." SHOWING CAPTAIN LEAVING BASKET FOR MOTOR]

CHAPTER XVII

MONACO AND THE MARITIME GUIDE ROPE

When I arrived at Monte Carlo, in the latter part of January 1902, the balloon house of the Prince of Monaco was already practically completed from suggestions I had given.

The new aerodrome rose on the Boulevard de la Condamine, just across the electric tramcar tracks from the sea wall. It was an immense empty sh.e.l.l of wood and canvas over a stout iron skeleton 55 metres (180 feet) long, 10 metres (33 feet) wide, and 15 metres (50 feet) high. It had to be solidly constructed, not to risk the fate of the all-wood aerodrome of the French Maritime Ballooning Station at Toulon, twice wrecked, and once all but carried away, like a veritable wooden balloon, by tempests.

In spite of the aerodrome's risky form and curious construction its sensational features were its doors. Tourists told each other (quite correctly) that doors so great as these had never been before in ancient times or modern. They had been made to slide open and shut, above on wheels hanging from an iron construction that extended from the facade on each side, and below on wheels that rolled over a rail. Each door was 15 metres (50 feet) high by 5 metres (16-1/2 feet) wide, and each weighed 4400 kilogrammes (9680 lbs.). Yet their equilibrium was so well calculated that on the day of the inauguration of the aerodrome these giant doors were rolled apart by two little boys of eight and ten years respectively, the young Princes Ruspoli, grandsons of the Duc de Dino, my host at Monte Carlo.

While the new situation attracted me by its promise of convenient and protected winter practice the prospect of doing some oversea navigation with my air-ship was even more alluring. Even to the spherical balloonist the oversea problem has great temptations, concerning which an expert of the French Navy has said:

"The balloon can render the navy immense services, _on condition that its direction can be a.s.sured_.

"Floating over the sea, it can be at once scout and offensive auxiliary of so delicate a character that the general service of the navy has not yet allowed itself to p.r.o.nounce on the matter. We can no longer conceal it from ourselves, however, that the hour approaches when balloons, now become military engines, will acquire, from the point of view of battle results, a great and, perhaps, decisive influence in war."

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE BAY OF MONACO]

As for myself, I have never made it any secret that, to my mind, the first practical use of the air-ship will be found in war, and the far-seeing Henri Rochefort, who was in the habit of coming to the aerodrome from his hotel at La Turbie, wrote a most significant editorial in this sense after I had laid before him the speed calculations of my "No. 7," then in course of building.

"The day when it shall be established that a man can make his air-ship travel in a given direction and manoeuvre it at will during the four hours which the young Santos demands to go from Monaco to Calvi," wrote Henri Rochefort, "there will remain little more for the nations to do than to throw down their arms....