"MAN FLIES"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21248, 30 July 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

"MAN FLIES"

AN EPIC OF THE AIR

BY MATANGA

There was a boy in Brazil about fifty years ago given to a strange obstinacy whenever the game of -"Pigeon Hies!" was played. The way of the game is easily found. Gathered round a table, the child-ren—grown-ups usually thought the game beneath them—had a leader who tried to lure them into debt for forfeits. " Pigeon flies!" he would cry, whereat each child, to avoid payment of a forfeit, had to lift a finger of their closed hand; and so with " Hen flies!" or " Crow flies!" or " Bee flies!" and the rest of statements obviously true. But sometimes the leader would cunningly introduce a catch —" Dog Hies!" or " Fox flies," or some other agreed impossibility ; and then, if anybody raised a finger, lie was due for a iorfeit. Occasionally the leader would say " Man Hies!" And then this obstinate young Brazilian would lift his finger very decidedly and very high, to the mocking winks and jibes of his playfellows. Yet lie never failed to assert his absolute conviction that he was right, and " refused with energy," as he put it in after years, to pay tho forfeit. Many years afterwards —in 1901, on a famous October day—this boy won tho Deutsch prize for a flight over Paris, with the Eiffel Tower as a turning point, and took particular pleasure in one out of the thousands of letters of congratulation. Here is part of it: Do you remember the lime, my dear Alberto, when we played together ' Pigeon flies."? It camo back to me suddenly the day when the news of your success reached Rio. ~ ... • li "Man flies!" old fellow! \ou were right to raise your finger, ani you have J ust proved it by flying round the Eiffel Tower. You were right not to pay.the forfeit; it is M. Dtutsch who has paid it invour stead. Bravo! You well deserve the 100,000 frarfc prize. Thev pi ay the. old game now more than ever at home, but the name has eell changed and the rules modified—since October 19, 1901. They call it now Man flies! and he who doeß not riftse his finger at the word pays his forfeit. , . , Your friend, Pedro. That was Alberto Santos Dumont, the news of whose death has just sent thought flyi n g_there is no better word—backacross the half-century of experiment so full of adventure and progress in aviation, essays in which he played a pioneer s part. His favourite author, when a youngster, was Jules Verne, and there came each year for him an exciting June 24, St. John's Day, when he inflated many a little Montgolfier balloon, to watch with ecstasy the ascent of a whole aerial fleet over the ceremonial bonfires. And there were later days, when with more thoughtful delight he made light aeroplanes with bits of straw, moved by screw propellers driven by strings of twisted rubber, as we'll as tiny silk-paper balloonsThe City of Light Even in those days his heart turned to Paris, the City of Light in his young desires, above which in 1783 the 'first Montgolfier had been sent up, and where the earliest of the world s aeronauts had made his first ascent. Thither he went as a mere youth, bent on trying his own skill in flight. There he had his first disappointment; to find the requisite 1200 francs for a jaunt in a balloon as a passenger plus the risk of having to pay for all damage to the equipment and the aeronaut and to the property of third parties, beside the cost of railway fares and transportation of the balloon and its basket back to Paris from the spot where they might come down —was beyond his means. So he went home to Brazil full of regrets but not wholly crestfallen. There was another journey to the City sof Light, and there he had his first real experience—for two hundred and fifty francs. When he asked M. Lachambre how much it would cost to have a short trip in one of his balloons the answer was so astounding that he got the aeronaut to repeat it. The fare was to include all expenses and return of the balloon by rail! " And the damages? " young SantosDumont. asked. M. Lachambre laughed. " We shall not do any damage," he said. And they didn't. Thenceforward Paris became Alberto s home, and there he made his own first effort, getting his little " Brazil " made against the advice of the and having marvellous escapes from disaster as well as thrilling success in solitary flights, until he tried bigger balloons with bigger baskets capable of holding a few companions in adventure. Still, he was not content; and the place that saw the first hvdrogen-filled, spherical balloon set loose aw hL> elongated structure, with petroleum engine and rudder, begin a new era in dirigibles. There tho amazed people got eventually used to seeing him " guiderope " close above the broad avenue of the Bois de Boulogne—be did not go under the Arc de Triomphe, because he did not deem himself worthy, and would skirt it on the right, as the law directed —and the sight of his little " run-about," anchored outside his upstairs room while he went in to breakfast, soon ceased to amuse. He had so far conquered, and was happy. Taking Risks All this, however, was attained only after years of eager experiment, and there were many narrow escapes from death on the way. He held on, discomfiting tho technical critics by device after device to ensure stability. Sometimes even lunchbaskets and cameras had to be thrown overboard in order to help his craft to leap obstacles, and more than once lie suffered disaster. Once the connecting ties of his gas-envelope were being cut by the propeller and there was no recourse but to descend on the roof of the Trocadero hotels!, where he had to wait until the Paris firemen rescued him arid then salvaged his airship. On one occasion there was a " back-fire " that entailed putting out a dangerous flame —with his Panama hat! On another, he had to make a perilous forced landing, surviving to be " sewn up " by the doctors. It was all experience—turned each time to good account. Long before the Deutsch Prize was won, against a time-limit, he had been over the taxing route with no thought but his own mastery of difficult conditions. Every reward was well earned, and it is to be added in appreciative memory of him that each was well used. Whatever monetary gains came were partly devoted, as was right, to further outlay on his quest of air-mastery. But he tried to make others happy. The money-prize of the Deutsch victory—additions raised it to 125,000 francs—he would not keep. He owed it to the perfect condition of his " Santos-Dumont, No. 6," he said, for the balloon lost not a singlo cubic unit of hydrogen on the flight, and the total cost to him was "only a few litres of petroleum." So he divided the prize, 75,000 francs being banded to the Prefect of Police in Paris to bo spent among the deserving poor and Iho balance going to the employees who had served him long and devotedly. Appreciation Paris mado much of him and so did all Europe, but across tho Atlantic his own Brazil honouringly remembered the boy that so obstinately believed." Man flies!" The Brazilian Government voted him 100 centos, equal to tho amount of the full Deutsch Prize, and sent with it a gold medal of great, beauty and value, -" in homage." He lived to help in many an advance in aeronautics, turning to heavier-than-nir machines in due time with the same zest that marked his earlier interest in dirigibles, for even in boyhood he had thought, "Does the bird fly? Yes. Nature has made the bird, and Nature never goes wrong." So he persevered in endeavours to perfect both means of flight, as all the world to-day gratefully recalls.