I remember having the sure idea: "If that balloon cylinder doubles any more, the ropes by which I am suspended to it will work at different strengths and will begin to break one by one as I go down!"
For the moment I was sure that I was in the presence of death. Well, I will tell it frankly, my sentiment was almost entirely that of waiting and expectation.
"What is coming next?" I thought. "What am I going to see and know in a few minutes? Whom shall I see after I am dead?"
[Illustration: OVER THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE. BELOW THERE SEEMED TO BE AN OCEAN OF GREENERY, SOFT AND SAFE]
The thought that I should be meeting my father in a few minutes thrilled me. Indeed, I think that in such moments there is no room either for regret or terror. The mind is too full of looking forward. One is frightened only so long as one still has a chance.
I have been so often and so sincerely warned against what is taken for granted to be the patent danger of operating explosive engines under masses of inflammable gases that I may be pardoned for stopping a moment to disclaim undue or thoughtless rashness.
Very naturally, from the first, the question of physical danger to myself called for consideration. I was the interested party, and I tried to view the question from all points. Well, the outcome of these meditations was to make me fear fire very little, while doubting other possibilities against which no one ever dreamed of warning me.
[Illustration: THE QUESTION OF PHYSICAL DANGER]
I remember that while working on the first of all my air-ships in that little carpenter shop of the Rue du Colisée I used to wonder how the vibrations of the petroleum motor would affect the system when it got in the air.
In those days we did not have the noiseless automobiles, free from great vibration, of the present. Nowadays, even the colossal 80 and 90 horse-power motors of the latest racing types can be started and stopped as gently as those great steel hammers in iron foundries, whose engineers make a trick of cracking the top of an egg with them without breaking the rest of the shell.
My tandem motor of two cylinders, working the same connecting-rod and fed by a single carburator, realised 3-1/2 horse-power--at that time a considerable force for its weight--and I had no idea how it would act off terra firma. I had seen motors "jump" along the highway. What would mine do in its little basket, that weighed almost nothing, and suspended from a balloon that weighed less than nothing?