Biplanes and monoplanes came driving through the air from Hendon, and airmen of world-wide fame, such as Sopwith, Hamel, Verrier, and Hucks, had gathered together as disciples of the great life-saving missionary.Stern critics these! Men who would ruthlessly expose any "faked" performance if need were!
And where is the little airman while all this crowd is gathering? Is he very excited? He has never before been in England.We wonder if his amazing coolness and admirable control over his nerves will desert him among strange surroundings.
Probably Pegoud was the coolest man in all that vast crowd.He seemed to want to hide himself from public gaze.Most of his time, was taken up in signing post-cards for people who had been fortunate enough to discover him in a little restaurant near which his shed was situated.
At last his Bleriot monoplane was wheeled out, and he was strapped, or harnessed, into his seat."Was the machine a 'freak' monoplane?" we wondered.
We were soon assured that such was not the case.Indeed, as Pegoud himself says: "I have used a standard type of monoplane on purpose.Almost every aeroplane, if it is properly balanced, has just as good a chance as mine, and I lay particular stress on the fact that there is nothing extraordinary about my machine, so that no one can say my achievements are in any way faked."During the preliminary operations his patron, M.Bleriot, stood beside the machine, and chatted affably with the aviator.At last the signal was given for his ascent, and in a few moments Pegoud was climbing with the nose of his machine tilted high in the air.For about a quarter of an hour he flew round in ever-widening circles, rising very quietly and steadily until he had reached an altitude of about 4000 feet.A deep silence seemed to have settled on the vast crowd nearly a mile below, and the musical droning of his engine could be plainly heard.
Then his movements began to be eccentric.First, he gave a wonderful exhibition of banking at right angles.Then, after about ten minutes, he shut off his engine, pitched downwards and gracefully righted himself again.
At last the amazing feat began.His left wing was raised, his right wing dipped, and the nose of the machine dived steeply, and turned right round with the airman hanging head downwards, and the wheels of the monoplane uppermost.In this way he travelled for about a hundred yards, and then slowly righted the machine, until it assumed its normal position, with the engine again running.Twice more the performance was repeated, so that he travelled from one side of the aerodrome to the other--a distance of about a mile and a half.
Next he descended from 4000 feet to about 1200 feet in four giganticloops, and, as one writer said: "He was doing exactly what the clown in the pantomime does when he climbs to the top of a staircase and rolls deliberately over and over until he reaches the ground.But this funny man stopped before he reached the ground, and took his last flight as gracefully as a Columbine with outspread skirts."Time after time Pegoud made a series of S-shaped dives, somersaults, and spiral descents, until, after an exhibition which thrilled quite 50,000 people, he planed gently to Earth.
Hitherto Pegoud's somersaults have been made by turning over from front to back, but the daring aviator, and others who followed him, afterwards turned over from right to left or from left to right.Pegoud claimed to have demonstrated that the aeroplane is uncapsizeable, and that if a parachute be attached to the fuselage, which is the equivalent of a life boat on board a ship, then every pilot should feel as safe in a heavier-than- air machine as in a motor-car.
