Robur the Conqueror by Jules Verne
page 30 of 217 (13%)
page 30 of 217 (13%)
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appearance of the fire balloon, "It is but a child, but it will
grow!" It was but a child, and it has grown. "No, Mr. President, it has not grown! It has got fatter--and this is not the same thing!" This was a direct attack on the Weldon Institute, which had decreed, helped, and paid for the making of a monster balloon. And so propositions of the following kind began to fly about the room: 'turn him out!" 'throw him off the platform!" "Prove that he is heavier than the air!" But these were only words, not means to an end. Robur remained impassible, and continued: "There is no progress for your aerostats, my citizen balloonists; progress is for flying machines. The bird flies, and he is not a balloon, he is a piece of mechanism!" "Yes, he flies!" exclaimed the fiery Bat T. Fynn; "but he flies against all the laws of mechanics." "Indeed!" said Robur, shrugging his shoulders, and resuming, "Since we have begun the study of the flight of large and small birds one simple idea has prevailed--to imitate nature, which never makes mistakes. Between the albatross, which gives hardly ten beats of the wing per minute, between the pelican, which gives seventy --" "Seventy-one," said the voice of a scoffer. |
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