The wind instead of subsiding had been increasing. Here and there around the horizon I could see the bent white sails of yachts driven before it. The situation was new to me, so I made an abrupt turn and started back on the home stretch.
Now again the wind was with me, stronger than it had been on the preceding flight down the coast. Yet it was easy steering, and I remarked with pleasure that going thus with the wind the pitching or tangage of the air-ship was much less. Though going fast with my propeller, and aided by the wind behind me, I felt no more motion, indeed even less, than before.
For the rest, how different were my sensations from those of the spherical balloonist! It is true that he sees the earth flying backward beneath him at tremendous speed. But he knows that he is powerless. The great sphere of gas above him is the plaything of the air current, and he cannot change his direction by a hair's-breadth. In my air-ship I could see myself flying over the sea, but I had my hands on a helm that made me master of my direction in this splendid course. Once or twice, merely to give myself an account of it, I shoved the helm around a short arc. Obedient, the air-ship's stem swung to the other side, and I found myself speeding in a new diagonal course. But these manœuvres only occupied a few instants each, and each time I swung myself back on a straight line to the entrance to the bay of Monaco, for I was flying homeward like an eagle, and must keep my course.
To those watching my return, from the terraces of Monte Carlo and Monaco town, as they told me afterwards, the air-ship increased in size at every instant, like a veritable eagle bearing down upon them. As the wind was coming toward them they could hear the low, crackling rumble of my motor a long distance off. Faintly, now, their own shouts of encouragement came to me. Almost instantly the shouts grew loud. Around the bay a thousand handkerchiefs were fluttering. I gave a sharp turn to the helm, and the air-ship leaped into the bay amid the cheering and the waving just as great raindrops were beginning to fall.[C]
I had first slowed and then stopped the motor. As the air-ship now gently approached the landing-stage, borne on by its dying momentum, I gave the usual signal for those in the boats to seize my guide rope. The steam chaloupe of the prince, which had turned back midway between Monte Carlo and Cap Martin after I had overtaken and passed it on my out trip, had by this time reached the bay. The prince, who was still on board, desired to catch the guide rope; and those with him, having no experience of its weight and the force with which the air-ship drags it through the water, did not seek to dissuade him. Instead of catching the heavy floating cordage as the darting chaloupe passed it His Highness managed to get struck by it on the right arm, an accident which knocked him fairly to the bottom of the little vessel and produced severe contusions.
A second attempt to catch the guide rope was more successful, and the air-ship was easily drawn to the sea wall, over it, and into its house. Like everything in this new navigation, the particular manœuvre was new. I was still going faster than I appeared to be, and such attempts to catch and stop an air-ship even on its dying momentum are apt to upset someone. The only way not to get too abrupt a shock is to run with the machine and slow it down gently.
[CHAPTER XIX]
SPEED
What speed my "No. 6" made on those Mediterranean flights was not published at the time because I had not sought to calculate it closely. Fresh from the troubling time limit of the Deutsch prize competition I amused myself frankly with my air-ship, making observations of great value to myself, but not seeking to prove anything to anyone.