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Page 14
"Mammalia?" exclaimed one of the members.
"Yes! Mammalia! The bat, which flies, if I am not mistaken! Is the
gentleman unaware that this flyer is a mammal? Did he ever see an
omelette made of bat's eggs?"
The interrupter reserved himself for future interruption, and Robur
resumed: "But does that mean that man is to give up the conquest of
the air, and the transformation of the domestic and political manners
of the old world, by the use of this admirable means of locomotion?
By no means. As he has become master of the seas with the ship, by
the oar, the sail, the wheel and the screw, so shall he become master
of atmospherical space by apparatus heavier than the air--for it
must be heavier to be stronger than the air!"
And then the assembly exploded. What a broadside of yells escaped
from all these mouths, aimed at Robur like the muzzles of so many
guns! Was not this hurling a declaration of war into the very camp of
the balloonists? Was not this a stirring up of strife between 'the
lighter' and 'the heavier' than air?
Robur did not even frown. With folded arms he waited bravely till
silence was obtained.
By a gesture Uncle Prudent ordered the firing to cease.
"Yes," continued Robur, "the future is for the flying machine. The
air affords a solid fulcrum. If you will give a column of air an
ascensional movement of forty-five meters a second, a man can support
himself on the top of it if the soles of his boots have a superficies
of only the eighth of a square meter. And if the speed be increased
to ninety meters, he can walk on it with naked feet. Or if, by means
of a screw, you drive a mass of air at this speed, you get the same
result."
What Robur said had been said before by all the partisans of
aviation, whose work slowly but surely is leading on to the solution
of the problem. To Ponton d'Am�court, La Landelle, Nadar, De Luzy, De
Louvri�, Liais, Beleguir, Moreau, the brothers Richard, Babinet,
Jobert, Du Temple, Salives, Penaud, De Villeneuve, Gauchot and Tatin,
Michael Loup, Edison, Planavergne, and so many others, belongs the
honor of having brought forward ideas of such simplicity. Abandoned
and resumed times without number, they are sure, some day to triumph.
To the enemies of aviation, who urge that the bird only sustains
himself by warming the air he strikes, their answer is ready. Have
they not proved that an eagle weighing five kilograms would have to
fill fifty cubic meters with his warm fluid merely to sustain himself
in space?
This is what Robur demonstrated with undeniable logic amid the
uproar that arose on all sides. And in conclusion these are the words
he hurled in the faces of the balloonists: "With your aerostats you
can do nothing--you will arrive at nothing--you dare do nothing!
The boldest of your aeronauts, John Wise, although he has made an
aerial voyage of twelve hundred miles above the American continent,
has had to give up his project of crossing the Atlantic! And you have
not advanced one step--not one step--towards your end."
"Sir," said the president, who in vain endeavored to keep himself
cool, "you forget what was said by our immortal Franklin at the first
appearance of the fire balloon, 'It is but a child, but it will
grow!' It was but a child, and it has grown."
"No, Mr. President, it has not grown! It has got fatter--and this is
not the same thing!"
This was a direct attack on the Weldon Institute, which had decreed,
helped, and paid for the making of a monster balloon. And so
propositions of the following kind began to fly about the room: "turn
him out!" "throw him off the platform!" "Prove that he is heavier
than the air!"
But these were only words, not means to an end.
Robur remained impassible, and continued: "There is no progress for
your aerostats, my citizen balloonists; progress is for flying
machines. The bird flies, and he is not a balloon, he is a piece of
mechanism!"
"Yes, he flies!" exclaimed the fiery Bat T. Fynn; "but he flies
against all the laws of mechanics."
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