cely remembered to stopper the acid-bottle. Away we went,
tooling through Peldon at about seventy miles an hour. He is
certainly a superb driver. Down our lane that big car of his
brushed the hedge both sides, but he never slackened at all, either
in his speed or his conversation. He had several wealthy people
interested, he said, and he was going to do something really big in
the flying line. We were nearly flying at the time. Of course,
there aren't many people about this part of Essex, but it really
was risky. He said this London-to-Paris and London-to-Manchester
business was all 'tosh,' he was going to beat that easily. We
crossed Mersea Island, turned in at a five-barred gate, and rushed
up a hundred-yard plank-road that he had put down.

"It is a curious place he has there. A big shed of creosote-boards
and felt roof, in the shape of a letter =L=, and at the side a small
lean-to affair where he lives. One leg of the =L= is a workshop with
an oil-engine to drive it; the other is for his plane, and opens at
the end on the plank-road. As we came up a tall chap in a yellow
leather suit all smeared with oil came out and I was introduced to
his friend D'Aubigne. Can you believe it, old girl--D'Aubigne and I
were in Paris together! He had a thing in the Salon the same year
as I did, but having money he chucked Art and went in for motoring.
We knew each other at once. It shows you what a small and sectional
thing fame is, for while he had never heard of _me_, I was equally
ignorant of his tremendous importance as an authority on aerial
statics. Never heard of aerial statics before, for that matter!
Carville seemed quite pleased I knew D'Aubigne, and showed no
hesitation in turning me over to him.

"Well, I went all over and it was really very interesting. The
position seems to be this. D'Aubigne has tons of ideas and patents
and can make no end of improvements in aeroplanes, but he has no
nerve. Several times, he told me, he had had narrow squeaks. Now
Carville, so D'Aubigne says, has a head like a gyroscope. He
doesn't know what fear is. Seeing what I had of him, I can quite
believe it. So having met some years ago in Venice (D'Aubigne
seemed frightfully amused at something that had happened in Venice)
when Carville suddenly found himself able to co