at could I do wiv 'im? You can't blow
a chap's brains out when 'e's down. And I don' see 'ow else I can 'elp
'im."

Then the kitten bothered his highly developed sense of social
responsibility. "If I leave 'er, she'll starve.... Ought to catch mice
for 'erself.... ARE there mice?... Birds?... She's too young.... She's
like me; she's a bit too civilised."

Finally he stuck her in his side pocket and she became greatly
interested in the memories of corned beef she found there. With her in
his pocket, he seated himself in the saddle of the flying-machine. Big,
clumsy thing it was--and not a bit like a bicycle. Still the working of
it was fairly plain. You set the engine going--SO; kicked yourself
up until the wheel was vertical, SO; engaged the gyroscope, SO, and
then--then--you just pulled up this lever.

Rather stiff it was, but suddenly it came over--

The big curved wings on either side flapped disconcertingly, flapped
again' click, clock, click, clock, clitter-clock!

Stop! The thing was heading for the water; its wheel was in the water.
Bert groaned from his heart and struggled to restore the lever to its
first position. Click, clock, clitter-clock, he was rising! The machine
was lifting its dripping wheel out of the eddies, and he was going up!
There was no stopping now, no good in stopping now. In another moment
Bert, clutching and convulsive and rigid, with staring eyes and a face
pale as death, was flapping up above the Rapids, jerking to every jerk
of the wings, and rising, rising.

There was no comparison in dignity and comfort between a flying-machine
and a balloon. Except in its moments of descent, the balloon was a
vehicle of faultless urbanity; this was a buck-jumping mule, a mule that
jumped up and never came down again. Click, clock, click, clock; with
each beat of the strangely shaped wings it jumped Bert upward and
caught him neatly again half a second later on the saddle. And while in
ballooning there is no wind, since the balloon is a part of the wind,
flying is a wild perpetual creation of and plunging into wind. It was
a wind that above all things sought to blind him, to force him to close
his eyes. It occurred to him presently to twist his knees and legs
inward and grip with them, or surely he would have been bumped into two
clumsy halves. And he was going up, a hundred yards high, two hundred,
three hundred, over the streaming, frothing wilderness of water
below--up, up, up. That was all ri