p of
a chestnut tree on the estate of M. Edmond Rothschild. Philosophical
as ever the aeronaut clung to his craft, dispatched an excellent
lunch which the Princess Isabel, Comtesse d'Eu, daughter of Dom
Pedro, the deposed Emperor of Brazil, sent to his eyrie in the
branches, and finally extricated himself and his balloon--neither
much the worse for the accident. He had failed but his determination
to win was only whetted.

The second trial for the Deutsch prize like the first ended in
failure, but that failure was so much more dramatic even than the
success which attended the third effort that it is worth telling and
can best be told in M. Santos-Dumont's own words. The quotation is
from his memoir, _My Airships_:

And now I come to a terrible day--8th of August, 1901. At 6:30
A.M. in presence of the Scientific Commission of the Aero Club, I
started again for the Eiffel Tower.

I turned the tower at the end of nine minutes and took my way
back to St. Cloud; but my balloon was losing hydrogen through one
of its two automatic gas valves whose spring had been
accidentally weakened.

I had perceived the beginning of this loss of gas even before
reaching the Eiffel Tower, and ordinarily, in such an event, I
should have come at once to earth to examine the lesion. But here
I was competing for a prize of great honour and my speed had been
good. Therefore I risked going on.

The balloon now shrunk visibly. By the time I had got back to the
fortifications of Paris, near La Muette, it caused the suspension
wires to sag so much that those nearest to the screw-propeller
caught in it as it revolved.

I saw the propeller cutting and tearing at the wires. I stopped
the motor instantly. Then, as a consequence, the airship was at
once driven back toward the tower by the wind which was strong.

[Illustration: Photo by International Film Service Co.

_A Kite Balloon Rising from the Hold of a Ship._]

At the same time I was falling. The balloon had lost much gas. I
might have thrown out ballast and greatly diminished the fall,
but then the wind would have time to blow me back on the Eiffel
Tower. I therefore preferred to let the airship go down as it was
going. It may have seemed a terrific fall to those who watched it
from the ground but to me the worst detail was the airship's lack
of equilibrium.