Page:My Airships.djvu/284

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MY AIRSHIPS

the Bagatelle Gate to the Bois de Boulogne, beside the training ground of the same name. To go and come in my air-ships from this side is, however, inconvenient because of the walls of the various properties, the trees that line the Bois so thickly, and the great park gates. To the right and left of my little property are other buildings. Behind me, across the Boulevard de la Seine, is the river itself, with the Ile de Puteaux in it. It is from this side that I must go and come in my air-ships. Mounting diagonally in the air from my own open grounds I pass over my wall, the Boulevard de la Seine, and turn when well above the river. Regularly I turn to the left and make my way, in a great arc, to the Bois by way of the training ground, itself a fairly open space.

There it stands in its grounds, the first of the air-ship stations of the future, capable of housing seven air-ships all inflated and prepared to navigate at an instant's notice! But in spite of all the needs that I attempted to provide for in it what a small and hampered place it is compared with the great, highly-organised stations which the future must produce for itself, with their high-placed and spacious landing-stages, to which air-

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