She rose and rose, moving steadily forward at the same time, far above
the sound of the waves of the Channel.
Now Herr Schlugst did not rely so much on his propeller for speed as on
his skilful adaptation of the principle on which the bird swoops. When
the aneroid told Tinker that the car had reached the height of 3000
feet, he opened a valve, and let the gas escape slowly from the
balloon. The instant she began to sink he switched to a slight
downward angle the great planes, some seventy feet long, which were
fixed parallel to the car. The machine began to glide downwards on
them, gathering momentum from the weight of the car, at a quickly
increasing speed, until she was tearing through the air at the rate of
forty miles an hour, and sinking a hundred feet in the mile. The
financier sat hunched up, gasping and shivering as the air whizzed past
his ears and shrilled among the ropes. Tinker, with an air of cheerful
excitement, kept the machine on her course, and watched the aneroid:
his face of a seraph was peculiarly appropriate to these high
altitudes, though the millionaire was too busy with his fears to
observe the fact.
In half an hour the machine had rushed down to five hundred feet above
the sea: Tinker switched the planes to the same angle upwards: and the
momentum drove her up the incline of the air with little diminished
speed.
Pages:
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95