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 The balloon now shrunk visibly. By the time I had got back to the fortifications of Paris, near La Muette, it caused the suspension wires to sag so much that those nearest to the screw propeller caught in it as it revolved. I saw the propeller cutting and tearing at the wires. I stopped the motor instantly. Then, as a consequence, the air-ship was at once driven back toward the Tower by the wind, which was strong. At the same time I was falling. The balloon had lost much gas. I might have thrown out ballast and greatly diminished the fall, but then the wind would have time to blow me back on the Eiffel Tower. I, therefore, preferred to let the air-ship go down as it was going. It may have seemed a terrific fall to those who watched it from the ground, but to me the worst detail was the air-ship's lack of equilibrium. The half-empty balloon, fluttering its empty end as an elephant waves his trunk, caused the air-ship's stem to point upward at an alarming angle. What I most feared, therefore, was that the unequal strain on the suspension wires would break them one by one and so precipitate me to the ground. Why was the balloon fluttering an empty end