“Des ailes! des ailes! des ailes!
Comme dans le chant de Ruckert.”
--Théophile Gautier.
“So you think a flying machine impossible, sir, and me, I presume,
a fanatic? Well, well, you have Eusebius with you. ‘Such an one,’ he
says--meaning me, and inventors like me--‘is a little crazed with the
humors of melancholy.’”
The speaker was the man whom Barton had rescued from the cogs and wheels
and springs of an infuriated engine. Barton could not but be interested
in the courage and perseverance of this sufferer, whom he was visiting
in hospital. The young surgeon had gone to inspect the room in
Paterson’s Rants, and had found it, as he more or less expected, the
conventional den of the needy inventor. Our large towns are full of
such persons. They are the Treasure Hunters of cities and of
civilization--the modern seekers for the Philosopher’s Stone. At the end
of a vista of dreams they behold the great Discovery made perfect, and
themselves the winners of fame and of wealth incalculable.
For the present, most of these visionaries are occupied with
electricity. They intend to make the lightning a domestic slave in every
house, and to turn Ariel into a common carrier. But, from the aspect of
Winter’s den in Paterson’s Rents, it was easy to read that his heart was
set on a more ancient foible. The white deal book-shelves, home-made,
which lined every wall, were packed with tattered books on mechanics,
and especially on the art of flying. Here you saw the spoils of
the fourpenny box of cheap bookvendors mixed with volumes in better
condition, purchased at a larger cost. Here--among the litter of
tattered pamphlets and well-thumbed “Proceedings” of the Linnean and the
Aeronautic Society of Great Britain--here were Fredericus Hermannus’ “De
Arte Volandi,” and Cayley’s works, and Hatton Turner’s “Astra Castra,”
and the “Voyage to the Moon” of Cyrano de Bergerac, and Bishop Wilkins’s
“Dædalus,” and the same sanguine prelate’s “Mercury, The Secret
Messenger.” Here were Cardan and Raymond Lully, and a shabby set of the
classics, mostly in French translations, and a score of lucubrations
by French and other inventors--Ponton d’Amocourt, Borelli, Chabrier,
Girard, and Marey.
Even if his books had not shown the direction of the new patient’s
mind--(a man is known by his books at least as much as by his
companions, and companions Winter had none)--even if the shelves had
not spoken clearly, the models and odds-and-ends in the room would have
proclaimed him an inventor. As the walls were hidden by his library,
and as the floor, also, was littered with tomes and pamphlets and
periodicals, a quantity of miscellaneous gear was hung by hooks from the
ceiling.
Barton, who was more than commonly tall, found his head being buffeted
by big preserved wings of birds and other flying things--from the
sweeping pinions of the albatross to the leathery covering of the bat.
From the ceiling, too, hung models, cleverly constructed in various
materials; and here--a cork with quills stuck into it, and with a kind
of drill-bow--was the little flying model of Sir George Cayley. The
whole place, dusty and musty, with a faded smell of the oil in birds’
feathers, was almost more noisome than curious. When Barton left it, his
mind was made up as to the nature of Winter’s secret, or delusion; and
when he visited that queer patient in hospital, he was not surprised
either by his smattered learning or by his golden dreams.
“Yes, sir; Eusebius is against me, no doubt,” Winter went on with his
eager talk. “An acute man--rather _too_ acute, don’t you think, for a
Father of the Church? That habit he got into of smashing the arguments
of the heathen, gave him a kind of flippancy in talking of high
matters.”
“Such as flying?” put in Barton.
“Yes; such as our great aim--the aim of all the ages, I may call it.
What does Bishop Wilkins say, sir? Why, he says, (I doubt not but that
flying in the air may be easily effected by a diligent and ingenious
artificer.) ‘Diligent,’ I may say, I have been; as to ‘ingenious,’ I
leave the verdict to others.”
“Was that Peter Wilkins you were quoting?” asked Barton, to humor his
man.
“Why, no sir; the Bishop was not Peter. Peter Wilkins is the hero of
a mere romance, in which, it is true, we meet with women--_Goories_ he
calls them--endowed with the power of flight. But _they_ were born so.
We get no help from Peter Wilkins: a mere dreamer.”
“It doesn’t seem to be so easy as the Bishop fancies?” remarked Barton,
leading him on.
“No, sir,” cried Winter, all his aches and pains forgotten, and his pale
face flushed with the delight of finding a listener who did not laugh
at him. “No, sir; the Bishop, though ingenious, was not a practical man.
But look at what he says about the _weight_ of your flying machine!
Can anything be more sensible? Borne out, too, by the most recent
researches, and the authority of Professor Pettigrew Bell himself. You
remember the iron fly made by Begimontanus of Nuremberg?”
“The iron fly!” murmured Barton. “I can’t say I do.”
“You will find a history of it in Bamus. This fly would leap from the
hands of the great Begimontanus, flutter and buzz round the heads of his
guests assembled at supper, and then, as if wearied, return and repose
on the finger of its maker.”
“You don’t mean to say you believe _that_?” asked Barton.
“Why not, sir; why not? Did not Archytas of Tarenturn, one of Plato’s
acquaintances, construct a wooden dove, in no way less miraculous? And
the same Regimontanus, at Nuremberg, fashioned an eagle which, by way of
triumph, did fly out of the city to meet Charles V. But where was I? Oh,
at Bishop Wilkins. Cardan doubted of the iron fly of Regimontanus,
because the material was so heavy. But Bishop Wilkins argues, in
accordance with the best modern authorities, that the weight is no
hindrance whatever, if proportional to the motive power. A flying
machine, says Professor Bell, in the _Encyclopodia Britannica_--(you
will not question the authority of the _Encyclopodia Britannica_?)--a
flying machine should be ‘a compact, moderately heavy, and powerful
structure.’ There, you see, the Bishop was right.”
“Yours was deuced powerful,” remarked Barton. “I did not expect to see
two limbs of you left together.”
“It _is_ powerful, or rather it _was_,” answered Winter, with a heavy
sigh; “but it’s all to do over again--all to do over again! Yet it was
a noble specimen. ‘The passive surface was reduced to a minimum,’ as the
learned author in the _Encyclopodia_ recommends.”
“By Jove! the passive surface was jolly near reduced to a mummy. _You_
were the passive surface, as far as I could see.”
“Don’t laugh at me, please sir, after you’ve been so kind. All the rest
laugh at me. You can’t think what a pleasure it has been to talk to
a scholar,” and there was a new flush on the poor fellow’s cheek, and
something watery in his eyes.
“I beg your pardon, my dear sir,” cried Barton, greatly ashamed of
himself. “Pray go on. The subject is entirely new to me. I had not been
aware that there were any serious modern authorities in favor of the
success of this kind of experiment.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Winter, much encouraged, and taking Barton’s
hand in his own battered claw; “thank you. But why should we run only
to modern authorities? All great inventions, all great ideas, have been
present to men’s minds and hopes from the beginning of civilization.
Did not Empedocles forestall Mr. Darwin, and hit out, at a stroke, the
hypothesis of natural selection?”
“Well, he _did_ make a shot at it,” admitted Barton, who remembered as
much as that from “the old coaching days,” and college lectures at St.
Gatien’s.
“Well, what do we find? As soon as we get a whisper of civilization in
Greece, we find Dædalus successful in flying. The pragmatic interpreters
pretend that the fable does but point to the discovery of sails for
ships; but I put it to you, is that probable?”
“Obvious bosh,” said Barton.
“And the meteorological mycologists, sir, _they_ maintain that Dædalus
is only the lightning flying in the breast of the storm!”
“There’s nothing those fellows won’t say,” replied Barton.
“I’m glad you are with me, sir. In Dædalus _I_ see either a record of
a successful attempt at artificial flight, or at the very least, the
expression of an aspiration as old as culture. _You_ wouldn’t make
Dædalus the evening clouds accompanying Minos, the sun, to his setting
in Sicily, in the west?” added Winter anxiously.
“I never heard of such nonsense,” said Barton.
“Sir Frederick Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy, is with me,
sir, if I may judge by his picture of Dædalus.”
“Every sensible man must be with you,” answered Barton.
“Well, sir, I won’t detain you with other famous flyers of antiquity,
such as Abaris, mounted on an arrow, as described by Herodotus.
Doubtless the arrow was a flying machine, a novelty to the ignorant
Scythians.”
“It _must_ have been, indeed.”
“Then there was the Greek who flew before Nero in the circus; but he,
I admit, had a bad fall, as Seutonius recounts. That character of
Lucian’s, who employed an eagle’s wing and a vulture’s in his flight, I
take to be a mere figment of the satirist’s imagination. But what do
you make of Simon Magus? He, I cannot doubt, had invented a machine
in which, like myself, he made use of steam or naphtha. This may be
gathered from Arnobius, our earliest authority. He mentions expressly
_currum Simonis Magi et quadrigas igneas_, the chariot of Simon Magus
and his _vehicles of flame_--clearly the naphtha is alluded to--which
vanished into air at the word of the Apostle Peter. The latter
circumstances being miraculous, I take leave to doubt; but certainly
Simon Magus had overcome the difficulties of aerial navigation. But,
though Petrus Crinitus rejects the tradition as fabulous, I am prepared
to believe that Simon Magus actually flew from the Capitol to the
Aventine!
“‘The world knows nothing of its greatest men,’” quoted Barton.
“Simon Magus has been the victim, sir, of theological acrimony, his
character blackened, his flying machine impugned, or ascribed, as by the
credulous Arnobius, to diabolical arts. In the dark ages, naturally,
the science of Artificial Flight was either neglected or practised in
secret, through fear of persecution. Busbequius speaks of a Turk at
Constantinople who attempted something in this way; but he (the Turk, I
mean), was untrammelled by ecclesiastical prejudice. But why should we
tarry in the past? Have we not Mr. Proctor with us, both in _Knowledge_
and the _Cornhill_? Does not the preeminent authority, Professor
Pettigrew Bell, himself declare, with the weight, too, of the
_Encyclopodia Britannica_, that ‘the number of successful flying models
is considerable. It is not too much to expect,’ he goes on, ‘that the
problem of artificial flight will be actually solved, or at least much
simplified.’ What less can we expect, as he observes, in the land of
Watt and Stephenson, when the construction of flying machines has been
‘taken up in earnest by practical men?’”
“We may indeed,” said Barton, “hope for the best when persons of your
learning and ingenuity devote their efforts to the cause.”
“As to my learning, you flatter me,” said Winter. “I am no scholar; but
an enthusiast will study the history of his subject Did I remark that
the great Dr. Johnson, in these matters so sceptical, admits (in a
romance, it is true) the possibility of artificial flight? The artisan
of the Happy Valley expected to solve the problem in one year’s time.
‘If all men were equally virtuous,’ said this artist, ‘I should with
equal alacrity teach them all to fly.’”
“And you will keep your secret, like Dr. Johnson’s artist?”
“To _you_ I do not mind revealing this much. The vans or wings of my
machine describe elliptic figures of eight.”
“I’ve seen them do _that_, said Barton.
“Like the wings of birds; and have the same forward and downward stroke,
by a direct piston action. The impetus is given, after a descent in
air--which I effected by starting from a height of six feet only--by
a combination of heated naphtha and of india rubber under torsion. By
steam alone, in 1842, Philips made a model of a flying-machine soar
across two fields. Penaud’s machine, relying only on india rubber under
torsion, flies for some fifty yards. What a model can do, as
Bishop Wilkins well observes, a properly weighted and proportioned
flying-machine, capable of carrying a man, can do also.”
“But yours, when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, was not
carrying you at all.”
“Something had gone wrong with the mechanism,” answered Winter, sighing.
“It is always so. An inventor has many things to contend against.
Remember Ark-wright, and how he was puzzled hopelessly by that trifling
error in the thickness of the valves in his spinning machine. He had
to give half his profits to Strutt, the local blacksmith, before Strutt
would tell him that he had only to chalk his valves! The thickness of a
coating of chalk made all the difference. Some trifle like that, depend
on it, interfered with my machine. You see, I am obliged to make my
experiments at night, and in the dark, for fear of being discovered
and anticipated. I have been on the verge--nay, _over_ the verge--of
success. ‘No imaginable invention,’ Bishop Wilkins says, ‘could prove
of greater benefit to the world, or greater glory to the author.’ A few
weeks ago that glory was mine!”
“Why a few weeks ago?” asked Barton. “Was your machine more advanced
then than when I met you?”
“I cannot explain what had happened to check its motion,” said Winter,
wearily; “but a few weeks ago my _machine acted_, and I may say that I
knew the sensations of a bird on the wing.”
“Do you mean that you actually _flew_?”
“For a very short distance, I did indeed, sir!”
Barton looked at him curiously: two currents of thought--one wild and
credulous, the other practical and professional--surged and met in his
brain. The professional current proved the stronger for the moment.
“Good-night,” he said. “You are tiring and over-exciting yourself. I
will call again soon.”
He _did_ call again, and Winter told him a tale which will be repeated
in its proper place.