bird,
and the rush of a strong, clean wind was in his face. The roar of the
motor was a great, throbbing harmony in his ears. For a little while
the world would hold nothing else.

They were climbing, climbing, writing an invisible spiral in the air.
Bland half turned his head, and Johnny caught his meaning with
telepathic keenness. They were going to loop, and Bland wanted him to
yield the control and to watch closely how the thing was done.

They swooped like a hawk that has seen a meadow mouse amongst the
grass. They climbed steeply, swung clean over, so that the earth was
oddly slipping past far above their heads; swung down, flattened out
and flew straight. It was glorious.

A second time Bland looped, and yet again. It was exactly as Johnny
had known it would be. He who had flown so long in his day-dreaming,
who had performed wonderful acrobatics in his imagination, felt the
sensation old, accustomed, milder even than in his dreams.

Once more, and he did the loop himself, hardly conscious of Bland's
presence. Bland turned his head, signalling, and did a flop, righted,
and was flying straight in the opposite direction. Again, and flew
southeast by the sun. They practised that manoeuver again and again
before Johnny felt fairly sure of himself, but once he did it he was
one proud young man!

All this while the familiar landmarks were slipping behind them.
Tucson was out of sight, had they thought to look for it. And all this
while the sturdy motor was humming its song of force triumphant.
Subsequently it stuttered faintly in expressing itself. Triumph was
there, but it was not so joyously sure of itself. Bland glided,
cocking an anxious ear to listen while he slowed the motor. It was
there, the stutter--more pronounced than before; and once that pulsing
power begins to flag a little and grow uncertain, there is but one
thing to do.

They glided another ten miles or so before Bland picked a spot that
looked safe for landing. They had one ill-chosen landing still vivid
in their memory, and Johnny carried a long, white scar along the side
of his head and a tenderness of the scalp to assist him in remembering.

Wherefore they came down circumspectly in a flat little field beside a
flat little stream, with a huddle of flat dwellings drawn back shyly
behind a thin group of willows. They came down gently, bouncing toward
the willows as though they meant to drive up to the very doorway of the
neare