the slow
grace of a great bird, while the little man in the basket steered right
or left, up or down, as he willed. He turned his rudder for the lateral
movements, and changed his shifting bags of ballast hanging fore and
aft, pulling in the after bag when he wished to point her nose down, and
doing likewise with the forward ballast when he wished to ascend--the
propeller pushing up or down as she was pointed. For the first time a
man had actual control of an air-ship that carried him. He commanded it
as a captain governs his ship, and it obeyed as a vessel answers its
helm.

A quarter of a mile above the heads of the pygmy crowd who watched him
the little South American maneuvered his air-ship, turning circles and
figure eights with and against the breeze, too busy with his rudder,
his vibrating little engine, his shifting bags of ballast, and the great
palpitating bag of yellow silk above him, to think of his triumph,
though he could still hear faintly the shouts of his friends on earth.
For a time all went well and he felt the exhilaration that no
earth-travelling can ever give, as he experienced somewhat of the
freedom that the birds must know when they soar through the air
unfettered. As he descended to a lower, denser atmosphere he felt rather
than saw that something was wrong--that there was a lack of buoyancy to
his craft. The engine kept on with its rapid "phut, phut, phut"
steadily, but the air-ship was sinking much more rapidly than it should.
Looking up, the aeronaut saw that his long gas-bag was beginning to
crease in the middle and was getting flabby, the cords from the ends of
the long balloon were beginning to sag, and threatened to catch in the
propeller. The earth seemed to be leaping up toward him and destruction
stared him in the face. A hand air-pump was provided to fill an air
balloon inside the larger one and so make up for the compression of the
hydrogen gas caused by the denser, lower atmosphere. He started this
pump, but it proved too small, and as the gas was compressed more and
more, and the flabbiness of the balloon increased, the whole thing
became unmanageable. The great ship dropped and dropped through the air,
while the aeronaut, no longer in control of his ship, but controlled by
it, worked at the pump and threw out ballast in a vain endeavour to
escape the inevitable. He was descending directly over the greensward in
the centre of the Longchamps race-course, when he caught sight of som