king at right angles. Then, after about ten minutes,
he shut off his engine, pitched downwards and gracefully righted himself
again.

At last the amazing feat began. His left wing was raised, his right
wing dipped, and the nose of the machine dived steeply, and turned right
round with the airman hanging head downwards, and the wheels of the
monoplane uppermost. In this way he travelled for about a hundred
yards, and then slowly righted the machine, until it assumed its normal
position, with the engine again running. Twice more the performance was
repeated, so that he travelled from one side of the aerodrome to the
other--a distance of about a mile and a half.

Next he descended from 4000 feet to about 1200 feet in four gigantic
loops, and, as one writer said: "He was doing exactly what the clown in
the pantomime does when he climbs to the top of a staircase and rolls
deliberately over and over until he reaches the ground. But this funny
man stopped before he reached the ground, and took his last flight as
gracefully as a Columbine with outspread skirts."

Time after time Pegoud made a series of S-shaped dives, somersaults, and
spiral descents, until, after an exhibition which thrilled quite 50,000
people, he planed gently to Earth.

Hitherto Pegoud's somersaults have been made by turning over from front
to back, but the daring aviator, and others who followed him, afterwards
turned over from right to left or from left to right. Pegoud claimed
to have demonstrated that the aeroplane is uncapsizeable, and that if a
parachute be attached to the fuselage, which is the equivalent of a
life boat on board a ship, then every pilot should feel as safe in a
heavier-than-air machine as in a motor-car.

CHAPTER XLIV. The First Englishman to Fly Upside Down

After M. Pegoud's exhibition of upside-down flying in this country it
was only to be expected that British aviators would emulate his daring
feat. Indeed, on the same day that the little Frenchman was turning
somersaults in the air at Brooklands Mr. Hamel was asking M. Bleriot for
a machine similar to that used by Pegoud, so that he might demonstrate
to airmen the stability of the aeroplane in almost all conceivable
positions.

However, it was not the daring and skilful Hamel who had the honour of
first following in Pegoud's footsteps, but another celebrated pilot, Mr.
Hucks.

Mr. Hucks was an interested spectator at Brooklands when Pegoud flew
there in September,