Thus the
direction B 4, or N 2, is a very specific one in directing the fire of
a battery.
"Did you accomplish much to-day?" I inquired.
"Not as much as usual. There is a ground haze," replied Colonel M----,
who had been the observer in that day's flight. "Down here it is not
so noticeable, but from above it obscures everything."
He explained the difficulties of the airship builder, the expense and
tendency to "pinholes" of gold-beaters' skin, the curious fact that
chemists had so far failed to discover a gasproof varnish.
"But of course," he said, "those things will come. The airship is the
machine of the future. Its stability, its power to carry great
weights, point to that. The difference between an airship and an
aeroplane is the difference between a battleship and a submarine. Each
has its own field of usefulness."
All round lay great cylinders of pure hydrogen, used for inflating the
balloon. Smoking in the hangar was forbidden. The incessant wind
rattled the great canvas curtains and whistled round the rusting
crane. From the shop next door came the hammering of machines, for the
French Government has put the mill to work again.
We left the hangar and walked past the machine shop. Halfway along one
of its sides a tall lieutenant pointed to a small hole in the land,
leading under the building.
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