MY AIRSHIPS
criticised for choosing calm days for my experiments. Yet who, experimenting over Paris—as I had to do when trying for the Deutsch prize—would add to his natural risks and expenses the vexations of who knows what prosecution for knocking down the chimney-pots of a great capital on the heads of a population of pedestrians?
One by one I tried the assurance companies. None would make a rate for me against the damage I might do on a squally day. None would give me a rate on my own air-ship to insure it against destruction.
To me it was now clear that what I most needed was navigation practice pure and simple. I had been increasing the speed of my air-ships—that is to say, I had been constructing at the expense of my education as an air-ship captain.
The captain of a steamboat obtains his certificate only after years of study and experience of navigation in inferior capacities. Even the "chauffeur" on the public highway must pass his examination before the authorities will give him his papers.
In the air, where all is new, the routine navigation of a dirigible balloon, requiring for founda-
