I turned on Mr. Bonflon and looked him squarely in the face. He was a modest man and blushed slightly, but did not shrink. There could be no dishonesty there. His countenance bore the unmistakable stamp of integrity, as well as intelligence; and his whole appearance and bearing were those of a true man.
Had he brought me the newspaper he promised, not yet eight days old, from San Francisco?
No. He had been detained down-town all day in the whirl of our New York
Babel, and had not yet been home. He would hand it in to-morrow.
Mr. Bonflon had been introduced to me that morning by a friend on whose acuteness and judgment I felt I had many good reasons to rely. Without pretending any precise knowledge of the man, or, indeed, any knowledge at all, beyond what had been gathered from the individual himself in a very brief acquaintance of Mr. Bonflon's own seeking, he expressed a warm interest in him personally, as also in the startling discovery he professed to have made.
In that interview, Mr. Bonflon had informed us in brief, that, after ten years of patient and toilsome experiment, of disappointment, of perishing and reviving hope, he had at length achieved the grand object of his life. He had solved the problem of the navigation of the air. He had proved by actual results, that the great ocean of atmosphere above us could be ploughed as successfully and safely as the waters beneath, and with much greater facility and pleasure. He stated that the first trial-trip, after the completion of the ship, had been made in the night from an obscure point in the State of Maryland, and extended north and northeast, along the Atlantic coast, to New York,—whose glow of light from a great height, like a phosphorescent mist, was plainly distinguishable,—and thence to the neighborhood of Boston, and back to the place of starting; and that a second, with equally favorable results, had been made from the same point by a more inland route, northwest to Buffalo and the Canada line; and he named several well-known persons who were on board at one or the other of these times, and related some little anecdotes illustrative of their states of mind and apprehensions while drifting above the earth on the occasion of these novel voyages.
He said, further, that the President and heads of departments at Washington were fully cognizant of the matter; and that a third grand trial-trip, in the interest of government, had been secretly made, with important dispatches to California, relating to the security of our rights in the Pacific. Four days had been consumed in the passage out, including a stoppage of a couple of hours on a fine plateau, near the head waters of the Missouri, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains; and the same in the return. They had landed in the night in a deep valley a few miles out of San Francisco, and remained two days in that city; which gave a period of ten days to the entire voyage, out and back. Forty selected individuals, all bound to secresy, had participated in the risks and excitements of the extraordinary occasion. Mr. Bonflon was not of the number. An heroic daughter of his was. His partner, Mons. De Aëry, a French gentleman of great mechanical skill, had managed the affair; and the craft, in the same hands, was now absent on her second expedition across the American continent.
Such was the sum of Mr. Bonflon's revelations of the morning. What a discovery! How the announcement would astonish the world! How the practical fact would overturn the world, upset commerce, and transform the habits and relations of mankind! America, the pioneer in many valuable discoveries and reforms, was still ahead,—still destined to lead the van in the development of the powers and resources of Nature, and the onward march of nations.
Hurriedly recalling all these points to mind, I requested to know of Mr. Bonflon how it had been possible, with so many confidants and the prying propensities of the press, whose agents, like an invisible police, are everywhere, to keep the matter from becoming public,—at least, to cover the affair so completely that no hint of the existence of his machine should have been given in any quarter, or of the vast changes which its introduction as a power in the world could not fail to effect.
To this he replied, that the press had behaved very handsomely; that the principal papers of the country had attachés aboard on the first trip to the Pacific; but that all parties—the government, the editors, together with De Aëry and himself—were agreed that the matter should be kept strictly private, until its practicality and value should be established beyond the possibility of question.
I now remembered, that, several years ago, a good deal of noise had been made about a flying-machine which had been constructed in some of the suburbs of the city,—and that a day had been advertised when it was to make an ascent, but, it failed. I mentioned the circumstance to Mr. Bonflon.