out what the others have got. I tell you,
sir, a foreigner, or, for the matter of that, an unaccredited native,
can't get within four miles of Lydd nowadays--not to mention our little
circus at Aldershot, and the experimental camp in Galway. No!"

"Well," said Bert, "I'd like to see one of them, anyhow. Jest to help
believing. I'll believe when I see, that I'll promise you."

"You'll see 'em, fast enough," said the soldier, and led his machine out
into the road.

He left Bert on his wall, grave and pensive, with his cap on the back of
his head, and a cigarette smouldering in the corner of his mouth.

"If what he says is true," said Bert, "me and Grubb, we been wasting our
blessed old time. Besides incurring expense with that green-'ouse."

5

It was while this mysterious talk with the soldier still stirred in Bert
Smallways' imagination that the most astounding incident in the whole of
that dramatic chapter of human history, the coming of flying,
occurred. People talk glibly enough of epoch-making events; this was
an epoch-making event. It was the unanticipated and entirely successful
flight of Mr. Alfred Butteridge from the Crystal Palace to Glasgow
and back in a small businesslike-looking machine heavier than air--an
entirely manageable and controllable machine that could fly as well as a
pigeon.

It wasn't, one felt, a fresh step forward in the matter so much as a
giant stride, a leap. Mr. Butteridge remained in the air altogether
for about nine hours, and during that time he flew with the ease and
assurance of a bird. His machine was, however neither bird-like nor
butterfly-like, nor had it the wide, lateral expansion of the ordinary
aeroplane. The effect upon the observer was rather something in the
nature of a bee or wasp. Parts of the apparatus were spinning very
rapidly, and gave one a hazy effect of transparent wings; but parts,
including two peculiarly curved "wing-cases"--if one may borrow a figure
from the flying beetles--remained expanded stiffly. In the middle was
a long rounded body like the body of a moth, and on this Mr. Butteridge
could be seen sitting astride, much as a man bestrides a horse. The
wasp-like resemblance was increased by the fact that the apparatus
flew with a deep booming hum, exactly the sound made by a wasp at a
windowpane.

Mr. Butteridge took the world by surprise. He was one of those gentlemen
from nowhere Fate still succeeds in producing for the stimulation of
mankind. H