carried on in a straight
direction towards the sea, which was but a short distance ahead. The
anchor being lost I gave up all hope. I sat down resigned in the car,
and prepared for the end. All at once I discovered that a side current
was drifting me towards the mountain; the car struck the ground, and was
dashing along at a fearful rate, knocking down stone fences and breaking
everything it came in contact with in its wild career. By-and-by the
knocks became less frequent. We were passing over a cultivated country,
and the car was, as it were skimming the surface and grazing the top of
the hedges. I saw a thick hawthorn hedge at some distance before me,
and the balloon rapidly sweeping towards it. That was my only chance. I
rushed to the edge of the car and flung myself down upon the hedge."

CHAPTER XXI. THE COMING OF THE FLYING MACHINE.

In the early nineties the air ship was engaging the attention of many
inventors, and was making important strides in the hands of Mr. Maxim.
This unrivalled mechanician, in stating the case, premises that a motive
power has to be discovered which can develop at least as much power in
proportion to its weight as a bird is able to develop. He asserts that a
heavy bird, with relatively small wings--such as a goose--carries
about 150 lb. to the horse power, while the albatross or the vulture,
possessed of proportionately greater winged surface, can carry about 250
lbs. per horse power.

Professor Langley, of Washington, working contemporaneously, but
independently of Mr. Maxim, had tried exhaustive experiments on
a rotating arm (characteristically designated by Mr. Maxim a
"merry-go-round"), thirty feet long, applying screw propellers. He used,
for the most part, small planes, carrying loads of only two or three
pounds, and, under these circumstances, the weight carried was at the
rate of 250 lbs. per horse power. His important statements with regard
to these trials are that one-horse power will transport a larger weight
at twenty miles an hour than at ten, and a still larger at forty miles
than at twenty, and so on; that "the sustaining pressure of the air on
a plane moving at a small angle of inclination to a horizontal path is
many times greater than would result from the formula implicitly given
by Newton, while, whereas in land or marine transport increased speed
is maintained only by a disproportionate expenditure of power within the
limits of experiment, in aerial horizont