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Updated: July 11, 2025
The light cord net enclosing the great gas-bag looked, aloft, where it towered above the roof, little more substantial than a film of lace; and to ascend in that balloon appeared about as safe a proposition as to enmesh a lion in a cobweb. Already my four mates for the voyage were assembled about the basket, and Donaldson himself was busy with the last details of the equipment.
There was not room enough to make a flying start, and ascend by means of the planes and propellers, so the gas-bag method was used. The generating machine was put in operation, and soon the big red bag that hovered over the craft began to fill. Tom was glad to see that none of the several compartments leaked. The bag had been well repaired. Suddenly the RED CLOUD shot up in the air.
By this time the gas-bag had swollen to a goodly rotundity and was jerking strongly upon its lashings. "Midsummer madness!" snorted Summerlee. Lord John was delighted with the whole idea. "Clever old dear, ain't he?" he whispered to me, and then louder to Challenger. "What about a car?" "The car will be my next care. I have already planned how it is to be made and attached.
He realised that many things must be learned before he could handle successfully the much more delicate and sensitive elongated gas-bag. In general, Santos-Dumont worked on the theory of the dirigible balloon that is, one that might be controlled and made to go in any direction desired, by means of a motor and propeller carried by a buoyant gas-bag.
But Stanley's curt treatment rankled in his heart. So, placing his feet wide apart and his hands in his waistcoat pockets, he respectfully drew attention to the opprobrious epithet "gas-bag" which had been employed in requesting him to retire from this Chamber of Horrors, and asked that the offensive remark might be withdrawn. Stanley scorned communication with an impertinent junior.
It is a supremely silly business; it is the most conclusive demonstration of the intellectual inferiority of the German to the Western European that is should ever have happened. There was the clearest a priori case against the gas-bag. Nevertheless the German, with that dull faith of his in mere "Will," persisted along his line.
Gas-bag, netting, concentrating-ring, basket, valve, anchor, drag-rope and exploding cord, what has the century of ballooning added to its essentials? how can coming centuries improve this perfection of simplicity? Aërial navigation is altogether another thing.
He spared her his swart intensity; he shyly quoted Tennyson, and bounced with cynicisms about "Sherbert Souse" and "the Gas-bag." He brought happiness to her, instead of the agitation of his kisses.
"If you'd heard half the stories I had of the things we have given away quite innocently " "That's all right," the young man interrupted, "only you mustn't think I'm a gas-bag just because I said a word or two here before Gerry and Olive and you, old fellow." "Must you go, Hugh?" Geraldine asked. "I am so sorry," he replied, "but I must.
The nervousness and chaffing before the start; the thrill and wonder of the upward rush; the strange exhilaration coming with relivening confidence; the unspeakable loveliness and grandeur of the prospect; the thousand varied incidents of the too-brief journey; the short, sharp excitement of the landing; the awe and curiosity of the impromptu crowd invariably on the ground before the balloon, and reluctantly leaving it only when the last whiff of gas is rolled out of it and the last rope thrown into the wagon; the moonlight ride to the station with the gas-bag for a pillow and the brain too busy with the strangeness of the day for much talk, all this and more, in endless diversity of circumstance and treatment, these gentlemen have embalmed for the curious millions who cannot or will not go "up in a balloon."
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