Page:My Airships.djvu/341

 DURING these years Luis and Pedro, the ingenious country boys whom we found reasoning of mechanical inventions in the Introductory Fable of this book, have spent some time in Paris. They were present at the winning of the Deutsch prize of aerial navigation; they spent the winter of 1901-2 at Monte Carlo; had good places at the review of the 14th July 1903; and have broadened their education by the sedulous reading of scientific weeklies and the daily newspapers. Now they are preparing to return to Brazil. The other day, seated on a café terrace of the Bois de Boulogne, they chatted of the problem of aerial navigation. "These tentatives with dirigible balloons, so called, can bring us no nearer to its solution," said Pedro. "Look you, they are filled with a substance—hydrogen—fourteen times lighter than the medium in which it floats—the atmosphere.