Again the expectant world of aerial navigators was thrown into despondency by the happening of the long expected--expected, and yet not expected; for Lilienthal had made so many daring flights under so many trying conditions, always managing to alight safely, that a feeling of confidence had succeeded that of distrust. It was almost like a bolt from a clear sky, therefore, when the news was flashed around the world that Lilienthal was no more. But science has never yet been daunted by the fear of death. Like a well-formed battle-line in which the place of the fallen is always quickly filled, there is always a warrior-scientist ready to sacrifice anything for the cause. And so, although Lilienthal was gone, the work he had carried so far toward success was continued by others, Chanute and Hering, the American "soaring men," and later eclipsed by the Wright brothers, who were finally to solve the problem. THE FLYING MACHINES OF MAXIM AND LANGLEY At the same time that Lilienthal was making his initial experiments, another champion of the same school of aviators was achieving equally successful results along somewhat different, and yet on the whole, similar lines. Sir Hiram Maxim, the inventor of so many destructive types of guns, was devoting much time and energy to the construction of a flying-machine. His apparatus was of the aeroplane type, but unlike that of Lilienthal, Chanute, or Hering, was to be propelled by steam-driven screw-propellers. Nor was the apparatus he proposed to make a diminutive affair weighing a few pounds and capable of lifting only the weight of a man. His huge machine weighed in the neighborhood of four tons and carried a steam-engine that developed some three hundred and sixty horse-power in the screws. It was two hundred feet in width, and mounted on a car track, along which it was to be run to acquire the necessary initial velocity before mounting into the air. On July 31, 1894, this huge machine started on a trial spin, carrying a crew of three persons, besides fuel and water for the boilers. When a speed of thirty-six miles an hour on the track had been acquired, the apparatus lifted itself in the air, and sailed for some distance, a maximum flight of over three hundred feet finally being made. This experiment demonstrated several important things--in fact, solved "three out of five divisions of the problem of flight," as Lord Kelvin declared. It demonstrated that a flying-machine carrying its own propelling power could be made powerful and light enough to lift itself in the air; that an aeroplane will lift much more than a balloon of equal weight; and that a well-made screw-propeller will grip the air sufficiently to propel a machine at a high rate of speed.