Page:My Airships.djvu/83

 spitting rumble that are intelligible only to the long-experienced ear. Should the time come in some future flight of mine when the motor of my air-ship threatens danger I am convinced that my ear will hear, and I shall heed, the warning. This almost instinctive faculty I owe only to experience. Having broken up the tricycle for the sake of its motor I purchased at about this time an up-to-date 6 horse-power Panhard, with which I went from Paris to Nice in 54 hours—night and day, without stop—and had I not taken up dirigible ballooning I must have become a road-racing automobile enthusiast, continually exchanging one type for another, continually in search of greater speed, keeping pace with the progress of the industry, as so many others do, to the glory of French mechanics and the new Parisian sporting spirit. But my air-ships stopped me. While experimenting I was tied down to Paris. I could take no long trips, and the petroleum automobile, with its wonderful facility for finding fuel in every hamlet, lost its greatest use in my eyes. In 1898 I happened to see what was to me an unknown make of light American electric buggy. It appealed alike to my eye, my needs, and my reason,