aking it impossible to reach him except from
behind. With all my legs I ran round to the tail, calling upon the
mechanicians to aid me.

Too late! The exhaust ripped out as he whipped his motor into her full
horse power, and he leaped into the teeth of the wind with a swerve
that almost tore off his lower plane against the ground.

"Imbecile!" I roared, but he no longer heard me. To save myself from
a violent collision with his tail planes I was compelled to cling
desperately to the frail wood and wire girder of the fuselage, and
it was in this position that I was carried the length of the flying
ground. The gale tore at my hair and distended my cheeks, the turf
slipped away beneath me as smooth as green water in the speed of his
mad attempt to force the machine into the air.

Slowly and with extreme care I edged my way inch by inch along the
fuselage toward the main planes and the pilot's seat. Casting back a
glance I saw the hangars, a mere white bar across the plain. A few
spectators who had pursued us in a desultory, ineffectual manner stood
now at long intervals in our wake, and gesticulated spasmodically.

The next moment we ran into a hollow, and they were lost to view
behind the grassy slope.

It was then that the young American looked behind him for the first
time, and realized that he had a passenger. Promptly he throttled down
his engine into a slow splutter, and turned in his seat as the machine
came to a standstill.

"I suppose you've had an uncomfortable minute or two," he grinned.
"But it really wasn't your affair. I am perfectly entitled to fly
whenever I feel like it."

Pleading that the roar of the motor had deafened me, I climbed up onto
the passenger seat.

"It is beyond doubt, monsieur, that you are sane," I said. "But it is
equally certain that you propose the act of a madman. Fortunately I
have accompanied you, and it is impossible to rise from the ground
with my weight on the tail, and my grip upon the elevator wires."

"Meaning that you refuse to let me ascend?"

"Most categorically!"

"But why?" he demanded. "Do you want Miss Warren to think that I was
only bluffing, after all? I promised to show her something startling,
and I'm going ahead with it."

"To begin with, it would be suicide," I rejoined. "In addition, you
would be inflicting gratuitous distress upon mademoiselle."

At this he rose from his seat with the first sign of emotion I had
seen in his manner.

"And what i