y side-whiskers, who regarded Bert with a peculiar
and disconcerting attention. The company sat after ceremonies Bert could
not understand. At the other end of the table was the bird-faced officer
Bert had dispossessed, still looking hostile and whispering about Bert
to his neighbour. Two soldiers waited. The dinner was a plain one--a
soup, some fresh mutton, and cheese--and there was very little talk.

A curious solemnity indeed brooded over every one. Partly this was
reaction after the intense toil and restrained excitement of starting;
partly it was the overwhelming sense of strange new experiences, of
portentous adventure. The Prince was lost in thought. He roused himself
to drink to the Emperor in champagne, and the company cried "Hoch!" like
men repeating responses in church.

No smoking was permitted, but some of the officers went down to the
little open gallery to chew tobacco. No lights whatever were safe
amidst that bundle of inflammable things. Bert suddenly fell yawning
and shivering. He was overwhelmed by a sense of his own insignificance
amidst these great rushing monsters of the air. He felt life was too big
for him--too much for him altogether.

He said something to Kurt about his head, went up the steep ladder from
the swaying little gallery into the airship again, and so, as if it were
a refuge, to bed.

5

Bert slept for a time, and then his sleep was broken by dreams. Mostly
he was fleeing from formless terrors down an interminable passage in
an airship--a passage paved at first with ravenous trap-doors, and then
with openwork canvas of the most careless description.

"Gaw!" said Bert, turning over after his seventh fall through infinite
space that night.

He sat up in the darkness and nursed his knees. The progress of the
airship was not nearly so smooth as a balloon; he could feel a regular
swaying up, up, up and then down, down, down, and the throbbing and
tremulous quiver of the engines.

His mind began to teem with memories--more memories and more.

Through them, like a struggling swimmer in broken water, came the
perplexing question, what am I to do to-morrow? To-morrow, Kurt had told
him, the Prince's secretary, the Graf Von Winterfeld, would come to him
and discuss his flying-machine, and then he would see the Prince. He
would have to stick it out now that he was Butteridge, and sell
his invention. And then, if they found him out! He had a vision of
infuriated Butteridges.... Suppo