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It was too late that day to begin any trials, so I and a friend who was with me arranged with M. Bleriot's mechanics that we would be at Issy-les-Moulineaux early next morning, and there put the craft through its preliminary tests. I can remember we went to bed early, but sleep was impossible; we were both too excited at the prospect that lay before us.
On April 12th, of 1911, Paprier, instructor at the Bleriot school at Hendon, made the first non-stop flight between London and Paris. He left the aerodrome at 1.37 p.m., and arrived at Issy-les-Moulineaux at 5.33 p.m., thus travelling 250 miles in a little under 4 hours.
"Thank you, Monsieur le Préfet." And he left the house. An inconceivable thing had happened. Don Luis was free. Half an hour's conversation had given him the power of acting and of fighting the decisive battle. He went off at a run. At the Trocadéro he jumped into a taxi. "Go to Issy-les-Moulineaux!" he cried. "Full speed! Forty francs!"
The aeroplane engine of to-day is, of course, an infinitely more reliable piece of apparatus than it was in those early days when Henry Farman, working with extraordinary patience at Issy-les-Moulineaux, was endeavouring and for a long time without success to make the motor in his Voisin biplane run for five consecutive minutes without breakdown.
"Les Ponts-de-Drive," agreed Davanne, who was quietly listening. "Very well. Suppose, on the other hand, that an aeroplane were to start from Issy-les-Moulineaux at eight o'clock in the morning and travel at the rate of sixty miles an hour, without stopping in four hours' time that is to say, at twelve o'clock it would reach Les Ponts-de-Drive at the exact same moment as the motor. Am I right?"
The cab flew through Passy, crossed the Seine and reached the Issy-les-Moulineaux aviation ground in ten minutes. None of the aeroplanes was out, for there was a stiff breeze blowing. Don Luis ran to the sheds. The owners' names were written over the doors. "Davanne," he muttered. "That's the man I want." The door of the shed was open.
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