rrowed from Mr. Dawkins, the village school-master. The most direct
route from London to the Solomon Islands ran across Norway and Sweden,
the White Sea, Northern Siberia, Manchuria, Korea and Japan, and
thence to New Guinea. But since it traversed some of the most desolate
regions of the earth, where the indispensable supplies of petrol and
machine oil could not be secured, he had chosen a route through fairly
large centres of population, along which at the necessary intervals he
could ensure, by aid of the telegraph, that the fuel would be in
readiness.

And now he was fairly off. Constantinople was to be the first place of
call. He knew the orographical map of Europe as well as he knew his
manual of navigation. It was advisable to avoid mountainous country as
far as possible, for the necessity of rising to great heights, in
order to cross even the lower spurs of the Alps, would involve loss of
time, to say nothing of the cold, and the risk of accident in the
darkness. Coming to the coast, in the neighbourhood of Dover, about
half-an-hour after leaving Epsom, he steered for a point on the
opposite shore of the Channel somewhere near the Franco-Belgian
frontier. As an experienced airman he had long ceased to find the
interest of novelty in the scenes below him. The lights of the Calais
boat, and of vessels passing up and down the Channel, were almost
unnoticed. On leaving the sea, he flew over a flat country until, on
his right, he saw in the moonlight a dark mass which from dead
reckoning he thought must be the Ardennes. The broad river he had just
crossed, which gleamed like silver in the moonlight, was without doubt
the Meuse, and that which he came to in about an hour must be the
Moselle. At this point Rodier, who had been dozing, sat up and began
to take an interest in things; afterwards he told Smith that they must
have passed over the little village in which he was born, and he felt
a sentimental regret that the flight was not by day, when he might
have seen the red roof beneath which his mother still lived.

After another half-hour Smith began to feel the strain of remaining in
one position, with all his faculties concentrated. The air was so
calm, and the wind-screen so effective, that he suffered none of the
numbing effects which the great speed might otherwise have induced;
but it was no light task to keep his attention fixed at once on the
engine, the map outspread before him, the compass, and the country