south-west, and flying very high. When at last she landed and I handed her out of the pilot's seat, she put up her big goggles and, flushed with satisfaction, cried:
'I've had such a splendid wind behind me! The weather is quite perfect. How good it feels to be out once again, Claude!'
'Yes, dear,' I answered, as we strolled together over towards the hangars, whence one of the school-buses had just begun to flap. 'I should like to go up but, as you know, they are busy putting in my second engine for night-flying, and to drive the dynamo. I fear it won't be ready for quite another fortnight yet.'
'What speed do you really expect to develop?' she asked, much interested.
'In order to overtake a Zeppelin I must, at least, be able to fly eighty miles an hour,' was my reply. 'And I must also be able to fly as slowly as thirty-five in order to economize fuel and to render the aim accurate as well as to make night-landing possible.'
'Are you certain that you will be able to do it?' she asked, a little dubiously I thought. She knew that, as far as our apparatus for the direction of the intense electric current was concerned, it was practically perfect. Yet she had, more than once, expressed her doubt as to whether my monoplane, with its improvements of my own design, would be able to perform what I so confidently expected of it.
'Of course one can be certain of nothing in this world, dear,' was my reply. 'But by all the laws of aerodynamics it should, when complete, be able to do what I require. I must be able to carry fuel
