ed the palisade, and saw the great bulk
of the balloon looming through the starlight, the panting financier's
spirits sank: his teeth chattered, and his knees knocked together.

"Oh, buck up! Buck up!" said Tinker impatiently. "You're all right!
You're all right!"

It was a matter of a few seconds for him to climb the door of the
palisades, drop lightly on the other side, and open it. He steered the
financier gingerly round the planes, past the propelling and steering
fans, and got him into the car. He set him well forward in the bows of
it, and began to let the rope unwind from the windlass which moored the
flying-machine. All the while he heard the steady snores of Herr
Schlugst, sleeping in his iron hut.

The flying-machine rose slowly with very little creaking for all the
greatness of the planes; the last of the rope ran out, and the lights
of the town sank like stones in water beneath them.

"Right away!" cried Tinker joyfully, and the financier gasped.

When the lights of the town were a mere blur beneath them, Tinker
switched on the electric lamps, and the millionaire saw him sitting on
a wicker seat in the stern of the boat-shaped car, surrounded by
levers, instruments, and dials. Tinker bade him grip the steel rails
on either side of the car, and get ready for a swoop. Then he set the
motor going, and steered round the flying-machine on to her course.
She rose and rose, moving steadily forward at the same time, far above
the sound of the waves of the Channel.

Now Herr Schlugst did not rely so much on his propeller for speed as on
his skilful adaptation of the principle on which the bird swoops. When
the aneroid told Tinker that the car had reached the height of 3000
feet, he opened a valve, and let the gas escape slowly from the
balloon. The instant she began to sink he switched to a slight
downward angle the great planes, some seventy feet long, which were
fixed parallel to the car. The machine began to glide downwards on
them, gathering momentum from the weight of the car, at a quickly
increasing speed, until she was tearing through the air at the rate of
forty miles an hour, and sinking a hundred feet in the mile. The
financier sat hunched up, gasping and shivering as the air whizzed past
his ears and shrilled among the ropes. Tinker, with an air of cheerful
excitement, kept the machine on her course, and watched the aneroid:
his face of a seraph was peculiarly appropriate to these high
a