the engine athwart the aeronautic park. Down below it
stretched, dimly geometrical in the darkness, picked out at regular
intervals by glow-worm spangles of light. One black gap in the long
line of grey, round-backed airships marked the position from which the
Vaterland had come. Beside it a second monster now rose softly, released
from its bonds and cables into the air. Then, taking a beautifully exact
distance, a third ascended, and then a fourth.

"Too late, Mr. Butteridge!" the young man remarked. "We're off! I
daresay it is a bit of a shock to you, but there you are! The Prince
said you'd have to come."

"Look 'ere," said Bert. "I really am dazed. What's this thing? Where are
we going?"

"This, Mr. Butteridge," said the young man, taking pains to be explicit,
"is an airship. It's the flagship of Prince Karl Albert. This is the
German air-fleet, and it is going over to America, to give that spirited
people 'what for.' The only thing we were at all uneasy about was your
invention. And here you are!"

"But!--you a German?" asked Bert.

"Lieutenant Kurt. Luft-lieutenant Kurt, at your service."

"But you speak English!"

"Mother was English--went to school in England. Afterwards, Rhodes
scholar. German none the less for that. Detailed for the present, Mr.
Butteridge, to look after you. You're shaken by your fall. It's all
right, really. They're going to buy your machine and everything. You
sit down, and take it quite calmly. You'll soon get the hang of the
position."

4

Bert sat down on the locker, collecting his mind, and the young man
talked to him about the airship.

He was really a very tactful young man indeed, in a natural sort of way.
"Daresay all this is new to you," he said; "not your sort of machine.
These cabins aren't half bad."

He got up and walked round the little apartment, showing its points.

"Here is the bed," he said, whipping down a couch from the wall and
throwing it back again with a click. "Here are toilet things," and he
opened a neatly arranged cupboard. "Not much washing. No water we've
got; no water at all except for drinking. No baths or anything until
we get to America and land. Rub over with loofah. One pint of hot for
shaving. That's all. In the locker below you are rugs and blankets; you
will need them presently. They say it gets cold. I don't know. Never
been up before. Except a little work with gliders--which is mostly
going down. Three-quarters of the chaps in the fle