y of sails for
ships; but I put it to you, is that probable?"

"Obvious bosh," said Barton.

"And the meteorological mycologists, sir, _they_ maintain that Daedalus
is only the lightning flying in the breast of the storm!"

"There's nothing those fellows won't say," replied Barton.

"I'm glad you are with me, sir. In Daedalus _I_ see either a record of
a successful attempt at artificial flight, or at the very least, the
expression of an aspiration as old as culture. _You_ wouldn't make
Daedalus the evening clouds accompanying Minos, the sun, to his setting
in Sicily, in the west?" added Winter anxiously.

"I never heard of such nonsense," said Barton.

"Sir Frederick Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy, is with me,
sir, if I may judge by his picture of Daedalus."

"Every sensible man must be with you," answered Barton.

"Well, sir, I won't detain you with other famous flyers of antiquity,
such as Abaris, mounted on an arrow, as described by Herodotus.
Doubtless the arrow was a flying machine, a novelty to the ignorant
Scythians."

"It _must_ have been, indeed."

"Then there was the Greek who flew before Nero in the circus; but he,
I admit, had a bad fall, as Seutonius recounts. That character of
Lucian's, who employed an eagle's wing and a vulture's in his flight, I
take to be a mere figment of the satirist's imagination. But what do
you make of Simon Magus? He, I cannot doubt, had invented a machine
in which, like myself, he made use of steam or naphtha. This may be
gathered from Arnobius, our earliest authority. He mentions expressly
_currum Simonis Magi et quadrigas igneas_, the chariot of Simon Magus
and his _vehicles of flame_--clearly the naphtha is alluded to--which
vanished into air at the word of the Apostle Peter. The latter
circumstances being miraculous, I take leave to doubt; but certainly
Simon Magus had overcome the difficulties of aerial navigation. But,
though Petrus Crinitus rejects the tradition as fabulous, I am prepared
to believe that Simon Magus actually flew from the Capitol to the
Aventine!

"'The world knows nothing of its greatest men,'" quoted Barton.

"Simon Magus has been the victim, sir, of theological acrimony, his
character blackened, his flying machine impugned, or ascribed, as by the
credulous Arnobius, to diabolical arts. In the dark ages, naturally,
the science of Artificial Flight was either neglected or practised in
secret, through fear of persecution. Busbe