ALBERTO SANTOS-DUMONT
amass of cuts and bruises, my clothes torn from my back, in pain and strain, fearing the worst and able to do so little to save myself. Just as I had given myself up for lost, the guide-rope wound itself round a tree and held. I was precipitated from the basket and fell to the ground unconscious. When I came to, some peasants were standing there looking at me. They helped me back to Nice, where I went to bed and had the doctors sew me up.
When I fell to the roofs of the Trocadero Hotels, the danger was as real, but I had none of these emotions. Seeing that I must fall, I had chosen my spot—the Gardens of the Trocadero—and I was busily engaged in my attempt to fall as gently as possible upon it.
On the very evening of the catastrophe I gave the order for a ‘‘Santos-Dumont No. 6,’’ and in twenty-two days it was finished
