HOW I BECAME AN AËRONAUT
meters (26,500 cubic feet). It was lying flat and formless on the grass. At a signal from M. Lachambre, the workmen turned on the gas, and soon the formless mass rounded up into a great sphere, swelled, and rose into the air.
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At eleven o’clock all was ready. The basket rocked prettily beneath the balloon, mild fresh breeze was caressing. I was impatient to be off and stood in a corner of the narrow wicker basket with a bag of ballast in my hand, ready to throw it out when necessary. In the other corner M. Machuron gave the word: ‘‘Let go all!’’
Of a sudden the wind ceased, the air seemed motionless around us. We were off, going with the speed of the air-current which bore us, and we no longer felt the wind. Indeed, for us there was no more wind. Infinitely gentle is the movement that carries us forward and upward. The illusion is complete: it is not the balloon that moves, but the earth that sinks down.
M. SANTOS-DUMONT'S WORKSHOP
‘‘There I could have my plans executed under my own eyes and apply my own hands to the work’’
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At the bottom of the abyss, which already opened 1,500 meters (almost one mile) below us, the earth, instead of being round like a ball, showed concave like a bowl, by a peculiar phenomenon of refraction the effect of which is to lift constantly to the level of the aëronaut’s eye the circle of the horizon. Villages and woods, meadows and châteaux pass across the moving scene, out of which the whistling of locomotives throws sharp notes. This strident rocked prettily beneath the balloon, which a sound, with the barking of dogs, is the only
