rol. On receipt of
this message the editor of every newspaper in the city had arranged
for a relay of reporters to be up all night and watch for the arrival
of this extraordinary machine. Shortly after midnight the hum of the
propellers was heard over Golden Gate, and a light in the sky
indicating the course of the aeroplane, a dozen journalists, in
motor-cars, rushed after it, but were hopelessly out-distanced. They
discovered it on the outskirts of the city. The airmen had already
landed. The reporter who was first in the race seized upon Lieutenant
Smith, and learning that he had only alighted to obtain more petrol,
rushed him back to the city in his car. His comrades and competitors,
on arriving, sought to interview the second man, whose name they had
not been able to ascertain; but he was very uncommunicative, being
occupied in cleaning the engine. Lieutenant Smith was back with petrol
in twenty minutes; in half-an-hour he was again on his way. This
extreme haste caused great disappointment to the airmen and civic
dignitaries of the city, they having risen from their beds on hearing
of his arrival to honour Lieutenant Smith with a reception. When they
reached the spot where he had descended, he had been gone some ten
minutes. In the race to meet him, one of the motor-cars collided with
an electric-light standard and was overturned, its occupant, Mr.
Aeneas T. Muckleridge, being carried to hospital in a critical
condition. Several San Francisco newspapers had published interviews
with Lieutenant Smith, one of them ten columns long.

Mr. McMurtrie chuckled as he read this dispatch in the shorthand of
the news agency.

"Bedad, 'tis worth a special editorial, Daniels. But why didn't we get
it before, man? It ought to have been in time for the morning
papers."

"You remember, sir, there's been something wrong with the line to-day
through the storm."

"So there has, indeed. Well, take out that stuff about the new British
tariff, and send Davis in to me."

He went into his room, sat back in his chair, pushed up his golfing
cap, and smiled as he meditated the periods of his editorial. In a few
moments a thin, ragged-headed youth entered with an air of haste and
terror. He carried a paper-block, which he set on his knee, looking
anxiously at the editor. Mr. McMurtrie began to dictate, the
stenographer's pencil flying over the paper as he sought to overtake
the rapid utterance of his chief. The article, as it appeared