between the Falls."

"Goat Island?"

"I don' know what it was called. But any'ow I found a flying-machine and
made a sort of fly with it and got here."

Two men stood up with incredulous eyes on him. "Where's the
flying-machine?" they asked; "outside?"

"It's back in the woods here--'bout arf a mile away."

"Is it good?" said a thick-lipped man with a scar.

"I come down rather a smash--."

Everybody got up and stood about him and talked confusingly. They wanted
him to take them to the flying-machine at once.

"Look 'ere," said Bert, "I'll show you--only I 'aven't 'ad anything to
eat since yestiday--except mineral water."

A gaunt soldierly-looking young man with long lean legs in riding
gaiters and a bandolier, who had hitherto not spoken, intervened now on
his behalf in a note of confident authority. "That's aw right," he said.
"Give him a feed, Mr. Logan--from me. I want to hear more of that story
of his. We'll see his machine afterwards. If you ask me, I should say
it's a remarkably interesting accident had dropped this gentleman here.
I guess we requisition that flying-machine--if we find it--for local
defence."

3

So Bert fell on his feet again, and sat eating cold meat and good bread
and mustard and drinking very good beer, and telling in the roughest
outline and with the omissions and inaccuracies of statement natural to
his type of mind, the simple story of his adventures. He told how he and
a "gentleman friend" had been visiting the seaside for their health, how
a "chep" came along in a balloon and fell out as he fell in, how he had
drifted to Franconia, how the Germans had seemed to mistake him for some
one and had "took him prisoner" and brought him to New York, how he
had been to Labrador and back, how he had got to Goat Island and
found himself there alone. He omitted the matter of the Prince and the
Butteridge aspect of the affair, not out of any deep deceitfulness,
but because he felt the inadequacy of his narrative powers. He wanted
everything to seem easy and natural and correct, to present himself as a
trustworthy and understandable Englishman in a sound mediocre position,
to whom refreshment and accommodation might be given with freedom and
confidence. When his fragmentary story came to New York and the battle
of Niagara, they suddenly produced newspapers which had been lying about
on the table, and began to check him and question him by these vehement
accounts. It became evident to hi