A quarter of a mile above the heads of the pygmy crowd who watched him the little South American maneuvered his air-ship, turning circles and figure eights with and against the breeze, too busy with his rudder, his vibrating little engine, his shifting bags of ballast, and the great palpitating bag of yellow silk above him, to think of his triumph, though he could still hear faintly the shouts of his friends on earth.  For a time all went well and he felt the exhilaration that no earth-travelling can ever give, as he experienced somewhat of the freedom that the birds must know when they soar through the air unfettered.  As he descended to a lower, denser atmosphere he felt rather than saw that something was wrong—­that there was a lack of buoyancy to his craft.  The engine kept on with its rapid “phut, phut, phut” steadily, but the air-ship was sinking much more rapidly than it should.  Looking up, the aeronaut saw that his long gas-bag was beginning to crease in the middle and was getting flabby, the cords from the ends of the long balloon were beginning to sag, and threatened to catch in the propeller.  The earth seemed to be leaping up toward him and destruction stared him in the face.  A hand air-pump was provided to fill an air balloon inside the larger one and so make up for the compression of the hydrogen gas caused by the denser, lower atmosphere.  He started this pump, but it proved too small, and as the gas was compressed more and more, and the flabbiness of the balloon increased, the whole thing became unmanageable.  The great ship dropped and dropped through the air, while the aeronaut, no longer in control of his ship, but controlled by it, worked at the pump and threw out ballast in a vain endeavour to escape the inevitable.  He was descending directly over the greensward in the centre of the Longchamps race-course, when he caught sight of some boys flying kites in the open space.  He shouted to them to take hold of his trailing guide-rope and run with it against the wind.  They understood at once and as instantly obeyed.  The wind had the same effect on the air-ship as it has on a kite when one runs with it, and the speed of the fall was checked.  Man and air-ship landed with a thud that smashed almost everything but the man.  The smart boys that had saved Santos-Dumont’s life helped him pack what was left of “Santos-Dumont No. 1” into its basket, and a cab took inventor and invention back to Paris.

In spite of the narrow escape and the discouraging ending of his first flight, Santos-Dumont launched his second air-ship the following May.  Number 2 was slightly larger than the first, and the fault that was dangerous in it was corrected, its inventor thought, by a ventilator connecting the inner bag with the outer air, which was designed to compensate for the contraction of the gas and keep the skin of the balloon taut.  But No. 2 doubled up as had No. 1, while she was still held captive by a line; falling into a tree hurt the balloon, but the aeronaut