The people who were on the Eiffel Tower that breezy afternoon saw a sight that never a man saw before.  Out of the haze a yellow shape loomed larger each minute until its outlines could be distinctly seen.  It was a big cigar-shaped balloon, and under it, swung by what seemed gossamer threads, was a basket in which was a man.  The air-ship was going against the wind, and the man in the basket evidently had full control, for the amazed people on the tower saw the air-ship turn right and left as her navigator pulled the rudder-cords, and she rose and fell as her master regulated his shifting ballast.  For twenty minutes Santos-Dumont maneuvered around the tower as a sailboat tacks around a buoy.  While the people on that tall spire were still watching, the aeronaut turned his ship around and sailed off for the Longchamps race-course, the green oval of which could be just distinguished in the distance.

On the exact spot where, a little more than a year before, the same man almost lost his life and wrecked his first air-ship, No. 3 landed as softly and neatly as a bird.

Though he made many other successful flights, he discovered so many improvements that with the first small mishap he abandoned No. 3 and began on No. 4.

The balloon “Santos-Dumont No. 4” was long and slim, and had an inner air-bag to compensate for the contraction of the hydrogen gas.  This air-ship had one feature that was entirely new; the aeronaut had arranged for himself, not a secure basket to stand in, but a frail, unprotected bicycle seat attached to an ordinary bicycle frame.  The cranks were connected with the starting-gear of the motor.

Seated on his unguarded bicycle seat, and holding on to the handle-bars, to which were attached the rudder-cords, Santos-Dumont made voyages in the air with all the assurance of the sailor on the sea.

But No. 4 was soon too imperfect for the exacting Brazilian, and in April, 1901, he had finished No. 5.  This air-cruiser was the longest of all (105 feet), and was fitted with a sixteen horse-power motor.  Instead of the bicycle frame, he built a triangular keel of pine strips and strengthened it with tightly strung piano wires, the whole frame, though sixty feet long, weighing but 110 pounds.  Hung between the rods, being suspended by piano wires as in a spider-web, was the motor, basket, and propeller-shaft.

The last-named air-ship was built, if not expressly at least with the intention of trying for the Deutsch Prize of 100,000 francs.  This was a big undertaking, and many people thought it would never be accomplished; the successful aeronaut had to travel more than three miles in one direction, round the Eiffel Tower as a racing yacht rounds a stake-boat, and return to the starting point, all within thirty minutes—­i.e., almost seven miles in two directions in half an hour.