Page:Sim century-illustrated-monthly-magazine 1901-11 63 1.pdf/79



this down to the poor work of a motor which had, nevertheless, worked well the day before—petroleum motors are like the ladies, capricious, and nobody knows what to do with them. But look at the Paris-Berlin automobile race,” he continued with animation; and here M. Santos-Dumont gave what is almost a complete general answer to all the criticisms made concerning his experiments. “Of the one hundred and seventy automobiles registered for it, only one hundred and nine completed the first day’s run, and of these only twenty-six got to Berlin. The others broke down or stopped on the way. And of the twenty-six arriving, how many do you imagine made the trip without a serious accident? It is perfectly natural, and people think nothing of it. But if I break down while up in the air, I cannot stop for repairs—I must go on.”

“Many people will ask why you select favorable days when you have an air-ship capable of making way against any wind less than forty kilometers an hour.”

“I am waiting until practice shall make me a better navigator. Do you think I want to break the air-ship often?” he inquired—“never mind what it has cost me, or the value of the Deutsch Prize, or my labors, my disappointments and hopes, and the pleasure the balloon gives me every time I take it into the air? Suppose I am obliged to land in Paris; how many of those great chimney-pots might I not bring down on people’s heads before I came to ground, say, in a public square? I cannot get a company to insure me against the damage I might do on a squally day. Then there is danger in bringing the inflated balloon out of its shed on a windy day. The