MY FIRST AIRSHIP CRUISES (1898)
knife, the tension of the cords became unequal, and the balloon envelope was on the point of being torn by them. At that moment I thought that all was over, the more so as the descent, which had begun, could no longer be checked by any of the usual means on board, where nothing worked.
The descent became a fall. Luckily, I was falling in the neighbourhood of the grassy turf of Bagatelle, where some big boys were flying kites. A sudden idea struck me. I cried to them to grasp the end of my guide rope, which had already touched the ground, and to run as fast as they could with it against the wind.
They were bright young fellows, and they grasped the idea and the rope at the same lucky instant. The effect of this help in extremis was immediate, and such as I had hoped. By the manœuvre we lessened the velocity of the fall, and so avoided what would have otherwise have been a bad shaking-up, to say the least.
I was saved for the first time. Thanking the brave boys, who continued aiding me to pack everything into the air-ship's basket, I finally secured a cab and took the relics back to Paris.
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