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Updated: June 12, 2025
Far below him, looking like two-legged hats, so foreshortened they were from the aeronaut's point of view, were the people of Paris, while in front loomed the tall steel spire of the Eiffel Tower. To sail round that tower even as the birds float about had been the dream of the young aeronaut since his first ascension.
But he dared not look down again for some time. He stared over the aeronaut's head to where a rim of vague blue horizon crept up the sky. For a little while he could' not banish the thought of possible accidents from his mind. Throb, throb, throb beat; suppose some trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose ! He made a grim effort to dismiss all such suppositions.
The origin of the parachute is more remote than is generally supposed, as there was a figure of one which appeared among a collection of machines at Venice, in 1617. Another species of parachute, less perfect, to be sure; than that of Garnerin, but still a practical machine, was described 189 years before the great aeronaut's feat at Paris.
To the horizontal shaft of his motor he attached a propeller made of silk stretched tightly over a light wooden framework. The motor was secured to the aeronaut's basket behind, and the reservoir of gasoline hung to the basket in front.
Many trials had blocked his way. Was he now about to reap the reward of his labors? Did the hidden city of Cibola lie somewhere below him? Or were the Palace of the Pueblos and the Turquoise Temple but empty myths? The young aeronaut's present plans were simple enough. The Cibola had now been afloat twelve hours and nearly half her gasoline was exhausted.
But the Boy did not, apparently, feel the least magnetic attraction towards Paolo's throat, or any other vulnerable part of the aëronaut's person. Nor did he stamp on the ground, crying upon earth to open and swallow the master of the air. I, too, kept an unmoved front; but then, being English, that might have been pardoned to my national sang-froid. There was, however, no such excuse for the mercurial young American, and flat disappointment struck out the spark in Gaet
He thought over his costume and threw his collar and the tell-tale aeronaut's white cap into the water far below. He turned his coat collar up to hide any gleam of his dirty shirt. The tools and nuts in his pockets were disposed to clank, but he rearranged them and wrapped some letters and his pocket-handkerchief about them.
It is probable that the diversion of his interest from dirigibles to airplanes had most to do with his failure to carry his development further than he did. "No. VI." was 108 feet long, and 20 feet in diameter with an eighteen-horse-power gasoline engine which could drive it at about nineteen miles an hour. Naturally the aeronaut's first thought in his new construction was of the valves.
The night of the very day which witnessed his fearful fall and the destruction of No. 5 he ordered a new balloon for "Santos-Dumont No. 6." It showed the pluck and determination of the man as nothing else could. Twenty-two days after the aeronaut's narrow escape his new air-ship was finished and ready for a flight.
Once a red Asiatic flying-machine came fluttering after them, so low they could distinguish the aeronaut's head. He followed them for a mile. Now they came to regions of panic, now to regions of destruction; here people were fighting for food, here they seemed hardly stirred from the countryside routine. They spent a day in a deserted and damaged Albany.
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