At 9.45 a. m., the wings having been dried, No. 5 was again tried. The float was moved back to its normal position at the base of the bowsprit, and the guys, by which the outer ends of the tail had been depressed in the previous trial, were so adjusted that the tail was flat. The machine was, therefore, in the condition of theoretical equilibrium for rapid motion with a plane wing. All the other conditions were precisely as in the previous trial, except that the round-end 100-centimetre propellers were substituted for the 95-centimetre ones which had been broken, and a new paper-covered tail was used. The mechanic in charge was directed to let the steam reach its highest pressure consistent with a flight of one-half a minute, before launching the machine, but he seemed to have lost all sense of the length of time the fuel and water would last, as he let the engines run until almost the whole charge was exhausted before launching it. The aerodrome went off almost horizontally, then turned up into the wind and rose to an angle of about twenty degrees; then (while moving forward) slowly sank as though the engine power had given out, as in fact it doubtless had. The actual distance travelled was 123 feet and the length of time 7.2 seconds. While the exhaustion of the fuel and water prior to launching the machine had prevented what apparently would otherwise have been an [p104] exceedingly good flight, yet the fact that the aerodrome rose immediately after being launched, and continued to do so until the power gave out, was in itself very encouraging. At 1.40 p. m. No. 5 was again ready for trial (the third one for the day), and this time Mr. Langley and Dr. Bell witnessed it from a greater distance in hopes of being able more clearly to study its behavior when actually in the air. The previous trial having missed success through the fuel and water having been consumed before the machine was launched, special instructions were given to avoid the recurrence of this mistake. But the machine was held for probably two minutes after the burners were lighted, with very much the same result as before. The conditions of the aerodrome were the same as in the previous trial, except that the tail was a little flatter, so as to tend to make the head slightly lower in flight. It was launched at an angle of about thirty degrees with the very gentle wind that was blowing, and, apparently under the direction of the rudder, turned into the wind, the midrod rising to an angle of about twenty degrees and (as noted in Mr. Langley’s record book) “The whole machine absolutely rising during five or six seconds--a fine spectacle! Then the power visibly gave out, the propellers revolving slower. It settled forward and lost nearly all of its forward motion at the end of about seven seconds, but did not finally touch the water until ten and a quarter seconds.”