,
which varied constantly as he passed over different sorts of terrain.
Once the breeze dropped him sidewise. He shot down to gain momentum,
brought her to even keel, and, as he set her nose up again, laughed
boisterously.

Never again would he be so splendidly young, never again so splendidly
sure of himself and of his medium of expression. He was to gain
wisdom, but never to have more joy of the race.

He was sure now that he was destined to pass Tad Warren.

The sun was ever brighter; the horizon ever wider, rimming the
saucer-shaped earth. When he flew near the Sound he saw that the fog
had almost passed. The water was gentle and colored like pearl,
lapping the sands, smoking toward the radiant sky. He passed over
summer cottages, vacant and asleep, with fantastic holiday roofs of
red and green. Gulls soared like flying sickles of silver over the
opal sea. Even for the racer there was peace.

He made out a mass of rock covered with autumn-hued trees to the left,
then a like rock to the right. "West and East Rock--New Haven!" he
cried.

The city mapped itself before him like square building-blocks on a
dark carpet, with railroad and trolley tracks like flashing
spider-webs under the October noon.

So he had arrived, then--and he had not caught Tad Warren. He was
furious.

He circled the city, looking for the Green, where (in this day before
the Aero Club of America battled against over-city flying) he was to
land. He saw the Yale campus, lazy beneath its elms, its towers and
turrets dreaming of Oxford. His anger left him.

He plunged down toward the Green--and his heart nearly stopped. The
spectators were scattered everywhere. How could he land without
crushing some one? With trees to each side and a church in front, he
was too far down to rise again. His back pressed against the back of
the little seat, and seemed automatically to be trying to restrain him
from this tragic landing.

The people were fleeing. In front there was a tiny space. But there
was no room to sail horizontally and come down lightly. He shut off
his motor and turned the monoplane's nose directly at the earth. She
struck hard, bounced a second. Her tail rose, and she started, with
dreadful deliberateness, to turn turtle. With a vault Carl was out of
the cockpit and clear of the machine as she turned over.

Oblivious of the clamorous crowd which was pressing in about him,
cutting off the light, replacing the clean smell of gasoline a