et haven't. Here's a
folding-chair and table behind the door. Compact, eh?"

He took the chair and balanced it on his little finger. "Pretty light,
eh? Aluminium and magnesium alloy and a vacuum inside. All these
cushions stuffed with hydrogen. Foxy! The whole ship's like that. And
not a man in the fleet, except the Prince and one or two others, over
eleven stone. Couldn't sweat the Prince, you know. We'll go all over the
thing to-morrow. I'm frightfully keen on it."

He beamed at Bert. "You DO look young," he remarked. "I always thought
you'd be an old man with a beard--a sort of philosopher. I don't know
why one should expect clever people always to be old. I do."

Bert parried that compliment a little awkwardly, and then the lieutenant
was struck with the riddle why Herr Butteridge had not come in his own
flying machine.

"It's a long story," said Bert. "Look here!" he said abruptly, "I wish
you'd lend me a pair of slippers, or something. I'm regular sick of
these sandals. They're rotten things. I've been trying them for a
friend."

"Right O!"

The ex-Rhodes scholar whisked out of the room and reappeared with a
considerable choice of footwear--pumps, cloth bath-slippers, and a
purple pair adorned with golden sun-flowers.

But these he repented of at the last moment.

"I don't even wear them myself," he said. "Only brought 'em in the zeal
of the moment." He laughed confidentially. "Had 'em worked for me--in
Oxford. By a friend. Take 'em everywhere."

So Bert chose the pumps.

The lieutenant broke into a cheerful snigger. "Here we are trying on
slippers," he said, "and the world going by like a panorama below.
Rather a lark, eh? Look!"

Bert peeped with him out of the window, looking from the bright
pettiness of the red-and-silver cabin into a dark immensity. The land
below, except for a lake, was black and featureless, and the other
airships were hidden. "See more outside," said the lieutenant. "Let's
go! There's a sort of little gallery."

He led the way into the long passage, which was lit by one small
electric light, past some notices in German, to an open balcony and a
light ladder and gallery of metal lattice overhanging, empty space. Bert
followed his leader down to the gallery slowly and cautiously. From
it he was able to watch the wonderful spectacle of the first air-fleet
flying through the night. They flew in a wedge-shaped formation, the
Vaterland highest and leading, the tail receding into