CHAPTER I
OVER A 'GASPER'
'To-morrow? To-morrow, my dear Claude! Why, there may not be a to-morrow for you—or for me, when it comes to that—eh?'
'Yes. You're quite right, old son,' was my cheerful reply. 'I'm quite aware that these experiments are confoundedly dangerous—and, besides, there are nasty wind-pockets about just now. I got into a deadly one yesterday afternoon, just across the line at Mill Hill.'
'I saw you,' replied my friend Teddy Ashton, a fellow-aviator and chum at Hendon. 'It gave me a nasty moment. You had engine-trouble at the same time.'
'Yes,' I replied. 'I was up over eight thousand feet when, without a second's warning, I found myself in a pocket spinning over. Phew! If ever I nearly came to grief, it was at that moment!'
'I was on the lawn, having tea with Betty, and we were watching you. I quite expected to see you come plumb down,' Teddy said. 'You righted your old bus splendidly.'
'She'll have to have a new dope, I think,' was my
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