hin a few feet of the water. To his surprise, he saw that part
of the wreckage was floating, and a man, apparently only half
conscious, was clinging to one of the stays. But for the engine having
providentially become disconnected in the fall, the whole machine with
its passengers must have sunk to the bottom.

Smith saw that it was impossible for him to rescue the man while he
himself remained in his aeroplane, for the slightest touch upon the
other would inevitably have submerged it. There was only one thing to
do. Leaving the aeroplane to the charge of his friend, he dived into
the sea, and rising beside the man, seized him at the moment when his
hold was relaxing, and contrived to hold him up until a fast motor
launch, which had witnessed the accident, came up and rescued them
both.

The man proved to be the chauffeur of the aeroplane; his employer was
drowned. Smith lost the race, but he gained what was infinitely more
valuable to him, the gratitude and devotion of Laurent Rodier. Finding
that the Frenchman was an expert mechanician, Smith took him into his
employment. Rodier turned out to be of a singularly inventive turn of
mind, and the two, putting their heads together, evolved after long
experiment a type of engine that enabled them to double the speed of
the aeroplane. These aerial vessels had already attained a maximum of
a hundred miles an hour, for progress had been rapid since Paulhan's
epoch-making flight from London to Manchester. To the younger
generation the aeroplane was becoming what the motor-car had been to
their elders. It was now a handier, more compact, and more easily
managed machine than the earlier types, and the risk of breakdown was
no greater than in the motor-car of the roads. The engine seldom
failed, as it was wont to do in the first years of aviation. The
principal danger that airmen had to fear was disaster from strong
squalls, or from vertical or spiral currents of air due to some
peculiarity in the confirmation of the land beneath them.

Smith's engine was a compound turbine, reciprocating engines having
proved extravagant in fuel. There were both a high and a low pressure
turbine on the same shaft, which also drove the dynamo for the
searchlight and the lamp illuminating the compass, and for igniting
the explosive mixture. By means of an eccentric, moreover, the shaft
worked a pump for compressing the mixture of hot air and petrol before
ignition, the air being heated by passin