e of black
oxen stampeded before a couple of mounted men. Swiftly these swept
behind, and dwindled and lost colour, and became scarce moving specks
that were swallowed up in haze.

And when these had vanished in the distance Graham heard a peewit
wailing close at hand. He perceived he was now above the South Downs,
and staring over his shoulder saw the battlements of Portsmouth Landing
Stage towering over the ridge of Portsdown Hill. In another moment there
came into sight a spread of shipping like floating cities, the little
white cliffs of the Needles dwarfed and sunlit, and the grey and
glittering waters of the narrow sea. They seemed to leap the Solent in
a moment, and in a few seconds the Isle of Wight was running past, and
then beneath him spread a wider and wide extent of sea, here purple with
the shadow of a cloud, here grey, here a burnished mirror, and here
a spread of cloudy greenish blue. The Isle of Wight grew smaller and
smaller. In a few more minutes a strip of grey haze detached itself from
other strips that were clouds, descended out of the sky and became a
coastline--sunlit and pleasant--the coast of northern France. It rose,
it took colour, became definite and detailed, and the counterpart of the
Downland of England was speeding by below.

In a little time, as it seemed, Paris came above the horizon, and hung
there for a space, and sank out of sight again as the aeropile circled
about to the north again. But he perceived the Eiffel Tower still
standing, and beside it a huge dome surmounted by a pinpoint Colossus.
And he perceived, too, though he did not understand it at the time, a
slanting drift of smoke. The aeronaut said something about "trouble in
the underways," that Graham did not heed at the time. But he marked the
minarets and towers and slender masses that streamed skyward above the
city windvanes, and knew that in the matter of grace at least Paris
still kept in front of her larger rival. And even as he looked a pale
blue shape ascended very swiftly from the city like a dead leaf driving
up before a gale. It curved round and soared towards them growing
rapidly larger and larger. The aeronaut was saying something. "What?"
said Graham, loath to take his eyes from this. "Aeroplane, Sire," bawled
the aeronaut pointing.

They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it came
and nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb--beat, of the
aeropile's flight, that had seemed