VOL. XIII

NO. 6

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III, sailing at 3:30 P. M. for Mannheim." The airship's orders were more like a fancy of Jules Verne than reality to the writers in the

summer of 1909, at Frankfort-on-theMain. It was the year of Count Zeppelin's final tests before beginning regular air-traffic this summer. A throng of placid Germans scanned the bulletin board as they would a railway or steamship time table. "What about the weather?" A startled Teuton glanced with surprise at the skeptic, saw he was from America, and replied, "If you are going, be here; Zeppelin sails weather or no weather." That had the convincing sound of near air-navigation.

At 2:30, a gale swept over the "airharbor," a long, massive building like a steamship pier, that held 450 feet of airship. The morning had been rainy, and heavy gusts stiffened the flags. As sailing time drew near, it brought a strong windstorm. Balloons on the grounds were rocking from side to side; spectators held on to their hats. Fashion arrived in touring cars. Those who were "booked" for the air-voyage seemed to be familiar with sea-travel. The men wore yachting caps, the women long storm coats and hats battened down by veils. Marine binoculars and small cameras were slung from the shoulder.

This nautical atmosphere deepened inside the air-harbor where a large corps of "air-men" made ready for the voyage. One immediately lost all idea that the aluminum skeleton of this mammoth hull encased in cloth, was simply stowed with great gas-chambers and floated like a balloon. A chain of anchors hung from the bows. Coils of rope lay along the decks of the fore and aft motor cars, resembling steam launches in size and appearance. These were of solid aluminum, with gunwales having sideports and gangways for going aboard. Narrow footways of the same material passed between both cars and the cabin space amidships. Twenty-seven noisy passengers and friends who were seeing them off, clambered along a slender rail toward staring mica ports of a semicircular door set in a bow-shaped companionway, which cuts the winds so it does not impede the ship's flight, and prevents drafts from sweeping the long cabin which is provided with leather divans along the sides. Though this enclosed space is only ten feet wide, its 250 feet between cars was like walking the long passageways from salon to smoking room, on a steamer. The impression was intensified by side ports, in sponsons, converting the cabin, amidships, into an open promenade deck, in fair weather. Even more convincing

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were the excited passengers' voices from remote parts of the craft.

The purser, a newly created official, was the guide on a rapid inspection. To port and starboard the space running the length of the gangway has become twenty snug staterooms and a salon that Prince Henry, president of the Zeppelin Polar Expedition, recently found as well appointed as any cabin de luxe. One's outstretched fingers brushed the ceiling formed by the bottom of the big hull. The front motor car, or captain's "bridge," has a forward half-deck, used as a chart desk; among its navigation maps was a wellthumbed chart of

a perfect course by two steering wheels. that control the vertical rudders, swinging astern on both sides, between the big stability fins-those "feathers" that direct the craft's arrow flight. Another helmsman, to the starboard, attends two wheels working fore and aft sets of "stepped" aeroplane rudders, which resemble Venetian blinds. These send the airship up and down, if the motors are driving it forward; and instantly check the ship from rising or sinking, as the gas fluctuates. For aerostatic navigation, a switch-board controls the various gas-valves and water-ballast tanks, and

holds the chronometer, an automatic statoscope that indicates the ship's height, and a barograph that constantly forecasts the weather. A