shouting distance of the crowds in West End Park and
on the slope of Gilmorehill. The thing flew quite steadily at a pace
of about three miles an hour, in a wide circle, making a deep hum that,
would have drowned his full, rich voice completely had he not provided
himself with a megaphone. He avoided churches, buildings, and mono-rail
cables with consummate ease as he conversed.

"Me name's Butteridge," he shouted; "B-U-T-T-E-R-I-D-G-E.--Got it? Me
mother was Scotch."

And having assured himself that he had been understood, he rose amidst
cheers and shouting and patriotic cries, and then flew up very swiftly
and easily into the south-eastern sky, rising and falling with long,
easy undulations in an extraordinarily wasp-like manner.

His return to London--he visited and hovered over Manchester and
Liverpool and Oxford on his way, and spelt his name out to each
place--was an occasion of unparalleled excitement. Every one was staring
heavenward. More people were run over in the streets upon that one day,
than in the previous three months, and a County Council steamboat, the
Isaac Walton, collided with a pier of Westminster Bridge, and narrowly
escaped disaster by running ashore--it was low water--on the mud on
the south side. He returned to the Crystal Palace grounds, that classic
starting-point of aeronautical adventure, about sunset, re-entered his
shed without disaster, and had the doors locked immediately upon the
photographers and journalists who been waiting his return.

"Look here, you chaps," he said, as his assistant did so, "I'm tired to
death, and saddle sore. I can't give you a word of talk. I'm too--done.
My name's Butteridge. B-U-T-T-E-R-I-D-G-E. Get that right. I'm an
Imperial Englishman. I'll talk to you all to-morrow."

Foggy snapshots still survive to record that incident. His assistant
struggles in a sea of aggressive young men carrying note-books or
upholding cameras and wearing bowler hats and enterprising ties. He
himself towers up in the doorway, a big figure with a mouth--an eloquent
cavity beneath a vast black moustache--distorted by his shout to these
relentless agents of publicity. He towers there, the most famous man in
the country.

Almost symbolically he holds and gesticulates with a megaphone in his
left hand.

6

Tom and Bert Smallways both saw that return. They watched from the crest
of Bun Hill, from which they had so often surveyed the pyrotechnics of
the Crystal Palace. Bert w