“Santos-Dumont No. 6,” the most successful of the series built by the determined Brazilian, looks as if it were altogether too frail to intrust with the carrying of a human being.  The 105-foot-long balloon, a light yellow in colour, sways and undulates with every passing breeze.  The steel piano wires by which the keel and apparatus are hung to the balloon skin are like spider-webs in lightness and delicacy, and the motor that has the strength of eighteen horses is hardly bigger than a barrel.  A little forward of the motor is suspended to the keel the cigar-shaped gasoline reservoir, and strung along the top rod are the batteries which furnish the current to make the sparks for the purpose of exploding the gas in the motor.

Santos-Dumont himself says that the world is still a long way from practical, everyday aerial navigation, but he points out the apparent fact that the dirigible balloon in the hands of determined men will practically put a stop to war.  Henri Rochefort has said:  “The day when it is established that a man can direct an air-ship in a given direction and cause it to maneuver as he wills—­there will remain little for the nations to do but to lay down their arms.”

The man who has done so much toward the abolishing of war can rest well content with his work.

HOW A FAST TRAIN IS RUN

The conductor stood at the end of the train, watch in hand, and at the moment when the hands indicated the appointed hour he leisurely climbed aboard and pulled the whistle cord.  A sharp, penetrating hiss of escaping air answered the pull, and the train moved out of the great train-shed in its race against time.  It was all so easy and comfortable that the passengers never thought of the work and study that had been spent to produce the result.  The train gathered speed and rushed on at an appalling rate, but the passengers did not realise how fast they were going unless they looked out of the windows and saw the houses and trees, telegraph poles, and signal towers flash by.

It is the purpose of this chapter to tell how high speed is attained without loss of comfort to the passengers—­in other words, to tell how a fast train is run.

When the conductor pulled the cord at the rear end of the long train a whistling signal was thus given in the engine-cab, and the engineer, after glancing down the tracks to see that the signals indicated a clear track, pulled out the long handle of the throttle, and the great machine obeyed his will as a docile horse answers a touch on the rein.  He opened the throttle-valve just a little, so that but little steam was admitted to the cylinders, and the pistons being pushed out slowly, the driving-wheels revolved slowly and the train started gradually.  When the end of the piston stroke was reached the used steam was expelled into the smokestack, creating a draught which in turn strengthened the heat of the fire.  With each revolution of the driving-wheels, each cylinder—­there is one on each side of every locomotive—­blew its steamy breath into the stack twice.  This kept the fire glowing and made the chou-chou sound that everybody knows and every baby imitates.