AN ACCIDENT AND ITS LESSONS
It was at the time the prince attempted to grasp my guide rope and was knocked into the bottom of his steam chaloupe. I had entered the bay after flying homeward up the coast, and they were towing me toward the aerodrome. The air-ship had descended very close to the surface of the water, and they were pulling it still lower by means of the guide rope, until it was not many feet above the smoke-stack of the steam chaloupe—and that smoke-stack was belching red-hot sparks.
Any one of those red-hot sparks might have, ascending, burned a hole in my balloon, set fire to the hydrogen, and blown balloon and myself to atoms.
263
