eriot guessed--as was actually the case--that he
would outdistance this vessel in his flight, and soon be lost to the
view of those upon it. And he did not deceive himself as to what might
happen, if his engine stopped and he fell into the water. His
monoplane, as it lay on the surface of the water, would, he knew,
prove a very difficult object to locate by any vessel searching for it;
while it was so frail that it would not withstand for long the
buffeting of the waves. He carried an air-bag fixed inside the
fusilage, it is true; but, in spite of this precaution, Bleriot knew
he ran a very grave peril of being drowned. There was, on the morning
of his flight, another disturbing factor to be reckoned with. The wind,
calm enough when he first determined to start, began very quickly to
rise; and by the time he had motored from Calais to the spot where his
aeroplane lay, and the machine itself was ready for flight, the wind
out to sea was so strong that the waves had become white-capped. But
Bleriot, aware of the value at such moments of decision, had made up
his mind. He knew that, if his engine only served him, his flight
would be quickly made. And so he reckoned that, even though the wind
was rising, he would be able to complete his journey before it had
become high enough seriously to inconvenience him; and in this
calculation, as events proved, he was right. His motor did its work;
and, though the wind tossed his machine dangerously when he came near
the cliffs of the English coast, he succeeded in making a landing and
in winning the L1000 prize.

M. Hubert Latham, Bleriot's competitor in the cross-Channel flight,
had that peculiar outlook on life, with its blend of positive and
negative--puzzling often to its owner as well as to the onlooker--that
is called, for the sake of calling it something, the artistic
temperament. He was impulsive, yet impassive often to a disconcerting
extent: extremely sensitive and reserved as a rule, yet on occasion
almost boyishly frank and communicative. He lacked entirely ordinary
shrewdness, or everyday commonsense. He was a man of a deeply romantic
temperament, and this inclined him towards aviation and the conquest
of the air; while in actual piloting he had such a quickness and
delicacy of touch, and such a sure and instinctive judgment of
distance and of speed, that he was undoubtedly a born aviator--one of,
if not the, finest the world has seen. That he did not attain greater
suc