Page:My Airships.djvu/249

 and I had been within a few hundred metres (yards) of Cap Martin.

Here was an obvious trip, first against and then with a stiff wind, and the curious may render themselves an account of the fact by glancing at the two photographs marked "Wind A" and "Wind B." As they happened to be taken by a Monte Carlo professional intent simply on getting good photographs they are impartial.

"Wind A" shows me leaving the bay of Monaco against a wind that is blowing back the smoke of the two steamers seen on the horizon.

"Wind B" was taken up the coast just before I met the two little sailing yachts which are obviously scudding toward me.

The loneliness in which I found myself in the middle of this first extended flight up the Mediterranean shore was not part of the programme. During the manufacture of the hydrogen gas and the filling of the balloon I had received the visits of a great many prominent people, several of whom signified their ability and readiness to lend valuable aid to these experiments. From Beaulieu, where his steam-yacht, Lysistrata, was at anchor, came Mr James