Page:My Airships.djvu/106

 that the miracle is similar. Indeed, I cannot describe the delight, the wonder, and intoxication of this free diagonal movement onward and upward or onward and downward, combined at will with brusque changes of direction horizontally when the air - ship answers to a touch of the rudder! The birds have this sensation when they spread their great wings and go tobogganning in curves and spirals through the sky!

The line of our great poet echoed in my memory from childhood. After this first of all my cruises I had it put on my flag. It is true that spherical ballooning had prepared me for the mere sensation of height; but that is a very different matter. It is, therefore, curious that, prepared on this head as I was, the mere thought of height should have given me my only unpleasant experience. What I mean is this: The wonderful new combinations of vertical and horizontal movements, utterly out of previous human experience, caused me neither surprise nor trouble. I would find myself ploughing diagonally upward through the air with a kind of instinctive