Seize the Reckless Wind. John Davis Gordon
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CHAPTER 32
PARIS 1897
It was a beautiful morning. The Eiffel Tower rose up into a cloudless sky. Crowds thronged the Champs-Elysées and the cafés, bonnets and parasols and top hats everywhere, and carriages were busy. A parade marched towards the Arc de Triomphe, the people cheering and flags waving. Then there was a new sound above the applause, and a blob came looming over the treetops, spluttering. It was a man flying a tricycle.
His name was Alberto Santos-Dumont. It was one of those newly-invented De Deon motor-tricycles; but the steering was connected to a canvas frame behind, like a ship’s rudder, and the engine turned a wooden propeller. Above this contraption floated a big egg-shaped silk balloon of hydrogen, from which the tricycle with the incumbent Alberto were suspended.
Alberto sailed low over the crowds, and all faces were upturned, delighted and waving. The air-cycle went buzzing and backfiring round the Arc de Triomphe, then it headed over the rooftops towards the Eiffel Tower. It rose higher and higher, then sailed ponderously round the mighty tower to roars of applause.
Whereupon Alberto wanted a drink. He came looming down towards the boulevards, spluttering between the treetops, making horses shy. Ahead was his favourite café. Alberto brought his flying machine down lower, and steered it towards a lamppost. He threw down a coil of rope, and his friends grabbed it and tied it to the lamppost. Alberto’s engine backfired, and died. The balloon-cycle was moored, hitched above the cobblestones like an elephant.
Alberto jumped down, and walked jauntily into the café, smiling and shaking hands.
ENGLAND 1929
Those were the days of glory and empires, when the statesmen of Europe carved up the world, planted their flags and brought law and order, and Christianity, to the heathen. Everything was well ordered, and if you looked at an atlas much of it was coloured red, for Great Britain, not red for communist as