Mr. Eddy has had some remarkable experiences with escaping kites. One
day at Bayonne, in July, 1894, while he was flying a tandem of eight
kites in a northwest wind blowing eighteen miles an hour, the main
line broke with a loud snap, and the kites sailed away towards Staten
Island with the speed of an escaped balloon. One can scarcely conceive
the rapidity with which a line of kites like this travels over the
first four or five hundred feet after its release. An ice-boat goes no
faster, and one might as well pursue the shadow of a flying cloud
as chase that string. At the time of the escape the top kite, a
four-footer, was up nearly a mile, and the other seven were flying
at a good elevation. The consequence was that although, as invariably
happens in such cases, they began to drop, the lowest kite did not
strike the ground until it had been carried about a quarter of a mile,
to the New Jersey shore of the Kill von Kull, which is half a mile
wide at this point. Here kite number eight, a six-footer, caught in
a tree and held the line for a few seconds until its own cord broke,
under the strain, and set the other kites free. This check had lifted
the other kites, and they now flew right bravely across the water,
not one of the seven wetting its heels before the farther shore was
reached. Then the lowest of them came to the ground, in its turn
putting a brief check on the others. But its cord soon broke under the
strain, and the six still flying went sailing over the trees of Staten
Island, hundreds of people watching them as they flew--six tailless
kites driving along towards New York Bay, the main line trailing
behind over lawns and house-tops.
Then a queer thing happened. As the loose end of the main line trailed
along, it whipped against a line of telegraph wires with such
violence as to wind itself around the wires again and again, just as
a whip-lash winds round a hitching-post when whipped against one. The
result was that the runaway kites were finally anchored by the main
line, and held fast until their owner, coming in quick pursuit on
ferryboat and train, could secure them.
On another occasion, two of Mr. Eddy's kites flying in tandem broke
away, and started out to sea, the dangling line passing over a moored
coal barge on which a man was working. Feeling something tickle his
neck, the man put up his hand quickly and touched the kite-cord.
Greatly surprised, he seized the cord and made it fast; and he was not
at all disposed to give up the kites when Mr. Eddy claimed them. There
is no property, indeed, so hard to prove and recover as a runaway
kite. For one thing, there is absolutely no telling how far a runaway
kite will sail before landing. Mr. Eddy estimates that when the main
line breaks, a kite well up in a twenty-five mile breeze will travel,
before alighting, a distance equal to twelve times its height from the
ground. This means that a kite straight over the Battery, in New York
City, and a mile in the air, driven by a stiff south wind, might
land in Yonkers if the cord broke. There is, by the way, an old-time
ordinance on the statute book, prohibiting the flying of kites in any
part of New York City below Fourteenth Street. This, however, did not
prevent Mr. Eddy from taking recently a series of unique photographs
(some of them are reproduced in this article), by means of a tandem of
kites sent up from a high building near the City Hall Park. The only
complication that resulted was a fierce contention among a crowd of
idlers and gamins over the possession of one of the kites, which came
down accidentally and lodged in one of the Park trees.
[Illustration: NEW YORK, EAST RIVER, BROOKLYN, AND NEW YORK BAY, FROM
A KITE.