. Outing. for their chief, whom they seemedto regard as a sort of demigod. Ah, mon Dieu! one said, he is, in the air, what we are on the ground,perfectly at home! He can do anythingwith his machine, go to any height heplease. He is a wizard! Which opin-ion, it must be admitted, was sharedpretty generally by countless others whosat for days entranced and fascinatedby the Frenchmans daring and skill. To see him mount skyward, with aninsouciance that nothing short of adouble-somersault downward wTith bro-ken planes could daunt is to compel onesadmiration. Once, after circling thefield and disappe
. Outing. for their chief, whom they seemedto regard as a sort of demigod. Ah, mon Dieu! one said, he is, in the air, what we are on the ground,perfectly at home! He can do anythingwith his machine, go to any height heplease. He is a wizard! Which opin-ion, it must be admitted, was sharedpretty generally by countless others whosat for days entranced and fascinatedby the Frenchmans daring and skill. To see him mount skyward, with aninsouciance that nothing short of adouble-somersault downward wTith bro-ken planes could daunt is to compel onesadmiration. Once, after circling thefield and disappearing, he suddenlyemerged to view from behind a blackcloud that had crept in from the was a startling and dramatic reap-pearance. It seemed as though the dar-ing fellow had come to earth inside thecloud and had just stepped out of theframework. Another time, just before sunset, whenthe western sky was dotted with fleecyspecks, Paulhans machine was silhouet-ted against a white cloud whose edges 760. 762 THE OUTING MAGAZINE were tipped with the rosy glow of thesetting sun. He seemed to ride in thecenter of the flaky mass and the effectwas almost uncanny. Of course, boththese spectacles were unintended by theFrenchman, although he was contin-ually on the alert for the surprising andthe dramatic. One afternoon Paulhan ascended infull view of the grand stand, circled thecourse once, rose to a higher plane, andsuddenly headed for the ocean. Hewas gone thirty minutes, no one knewwhither. It developed later that therestless Frenchman, seeing the shippingin the harbor from his lofty perch, hadtaken a notion to fly across to SanPedro, hover above the warship thatchanced to be in port, fly over the newfortification site recently acquired bythe Federal Government at Point Fir-min, acknowledge the salute of whistlesand bells from the factories and shipsalong the harbor by dipping his frontplanes, unconcernedly whirring back tohis starting point. It was a dramatic per-formance, the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade, booksubjectsports, booksubjecttravel
