Page:My Airships.djvu/315

 an air-ship captain if he gives his mind to it. The occasion was the children's fête at Bagatelle 26th June 1903. Descending among them in the "No. 9," I asked:

"Does any little boy want to go up?"

Such were the confidence and courage of young France and America that instantly I had to choose among a dozen volunteers. I took the nearest to me.

"Are you not afraid?" I asked Clarkson Potter as the air-ship rose.

"Not a bit," he answered. The cruise of the "No. 9" on this occasion was, naturally, a short one; but the other, in which the first woman to mount, accompanied or unaccompanied, in any air-ship, actually mounted alone and drove the "No. 9" free from all human contact with its guide rope for a distance of considerably over a kilometre (half-mile), is worthy of preservation in the annals of aerial navigation.

The heroine, a very beautiful young Cuban lady, well known in New York society, having visited my station with her friends on several occasions, confessed an extraordinary desire to navigate the air-ship.

"Would you have the courage to be taken up