The Log of the Flying Fish | Page 2

up and remarked to the colonel:
"I see that some Frenchmen have been making experiments in the navigation of balloons."
"Ah, indeed!" responded the colonel, with his head thrown critically on one side, and his eyes still fixed on the reflection of the picture. "And with what result?"
"Oh, failure, of course."
"And failure it always will be. The thing is simply an impossibility," remarked the colonel.
"No, bardon me, colonel, id is not an imbossibilidy by any means."
This from the professor.
"Indeed? Then how do you account for it, professor, that all attempts to navigate a balloon have hitherto failed?" asked the colonel.
"Begause, my dear zir, the aeronauts have never yed realised all the requiremends of zuccess," replied the professor, laying down his magazine as though quite prepared to go thoroughly into the question.
The colonel accepted the challenge, and, rousing himself from his semi- recumbent posture, said:
"That is quite possible; but what are the requirements of success?"
The professor knocked the ashes out of his meerschaum, refilled it with the utmost deliberation, carefully lighted it, gave a few vigorous puffs, and replied:
"The requiremends of zuccess in balloon navigation are very zimilar to those which enable a man to draverse the ocean. If a man wants to make a voyage agross the ocean he embargs in a ship, not on a life-buoy. Now a balloon is nothing more than a life-buoy; id zusdains a man, but that is all. Id drifts aboud with the currends of air jusd as a life-buoy drifts aboud with the currends of ocean, and the only advandage which the aeronaud has over the man with the life-buoy is thad the former can ascend or descend in search of a favourable air currend, whereas the ladder is obliged do dake the ocean currends as they come."
"Very true," remarked the colonel; "and what do you deduce from that, professor?"
"I deduse from thad thad the man who wands to navigade the air musd do as his brother the sailor does, he musd have a ship."
"Well, is not a balloon a sort of air ship?"
"You may gall it zo iv you like, colonel, I do nod; I call it merely a buoy," returned the professor. "A ship is a zomething gabable of moving in the elemend which zustains it; a balloon is ingabable of any indebendend movement in the air; it drifts aboud at the mercy of every idle wind that blows. Id is like a ship on a breathless sea; withoud any means of brobulsion the ship lies motionless, or drifts at the mercy of the currends. Bud give the ship a means of brobulsion, and navigation ad once begomes bossible. And zo will it be with balloons."
"Well, that has already been tried," remarked the colonel; "but the buoyancy of a balloon is too slight to permit of its being fitted with engines and a boiler."
"My vriendt," said the professor impressively, "whad would you think of the man who tried to pud the engines and boilers of an Atlantic liner in a leedle boad?"
"I should think him an unmitigated ass," retorted the colonel.
"Jusd so. Yed thad is whad the aeronauds have been doing; they have been drying to make the leedle boad-balloon garry the brobelling bower of the aerial ship. In other words, they have not made their balloons large enough."
"Then you think they have not yet reached the practical limit to the size of a balloon?" asked the colonel.
"They have--very nearly--if balloons are do be made only of silk," was the reply. "Bud if navigable balloons are to be gonsdrugded, aeronauds musd durn do other maderials and adobd another form. As I said before, they musd build a shib, and she musd be of sufficiend size to float in the air and to garry all her eguipments."
"But such an aerial ship would be a veritable monster" protested the colonel.
"Zo are the Adlandic liners of the presend day," quietly answered the professor.
"Phew!" whistled the colonel. The baronet rose from the divan, flung away the stump of his cigar, and settled himself to listen, and perhaps take part in the singular conversation.
"And of what would you build your aerial ship, professor?" asked the colonel when he had in some measure recovered from his astonishment.
"Of the lighdesd and, ad the zame dime, sdrongesd maderial I gould find," answered the professor. "Once get the aeronaud to realise thad greadly ingreased bulk and a differend form are necessary, and id will nod be long before he will find a suitable building maderial. Iv I were an aeronaud I should dry medal."
"Metal!" exclaimed the colonel. "Oh, come, professor; now you are romancing, you know. A ship of metal would never float in the atmosphere."
"A zimilar remarg was made nod zo very many years ago when id was suggesded that ocean shibs could be buildt of medal," retorted the professor. "Yed