he was rushing down at a headlong pace towards a
railway line and some factory buildings. They appeared to be tearing up
to him to devour him. He must have dropped all that height. For a moment
he had the ineffectual sensations of one whose bicycle bolts downhill.
The ground had almost taken him by surprise. "'Ere!" he cried; and then
with a violent effort of all his being he got the beating engine at work
again and set the wings flapping. He swooped down and up and resumed his
quivering and pulsating ascent of the air.

He went high again, until he had a wide view of the pleasant upland
country of western New York State, and then made a long coast down, and
so up again, and then a coast. Then as he came swooping a quarter of
a mile above a village he saw people running about, running
away--evidently in relation to his hawk-like passage. He got an idea
that he had been shot at.

"Up!" he said, and attacked that lever again. It came over with
remarkable docility, and suddenly the wings seemed to give way in the
middle. But the engine was still! It had stopped. He flung the lever
back rather by instinct than design. What to do?

Much happened in a few seconds, but also his mind was quick, he thought
very quickly. He couldn't get up again, he was gliding down the air; he
would have to hit something.

He was travelling at the rate of perhaps thirty miles an hour down,
down.

That plantation of larches looked the softest thing--mossy almost!

Could he get it? He gave himself to the steering. Round to the
right--left!

Swirroo! Crackle! He was gliding over the tops of the trees, ploughing
through them, tumbling into a cloud of green sharp leaves and black
twigs. There was a sudden snapping, and he fell off the saddle forward,
a thud and a crashing of branches. Some twigs hit him smartly in the
face....

He was between a tree-stem and the saddle, with his leg over the
steering lever and, so far as he could realise, not hurt. He tried to
alter his position and free his leg, and found himself slipping and
dropping through branches with everything giving way beneath him. He
clutched and found himself in the lower branches of a tree beneath the
flying-machine. The air was full of a pleasant resinous smell. He stared
for a moment motionless, and then very carefully clambered down branch
by branch to the soft needle-covered ground below.

"Good business," he said, looking up at the bent and tilted kite-wings
above.

"I