se to the earth like a frightened hen, and a
Bleriot, high overhead, making slow and graceful turns like a huge bird.

Kennedy and I stopped before the little wireless telegraph station of
the signal corps in front of the grand stand and watched the operator
working over his instruments.

"There it is again," muttered the operator angrily.

"What's the matter?" asked Kennedy. "Amateurs interfering with you?"

The man nodded a reply, shaking his head with the telephone-like
receiver, viciously. He continued to adjust his apparatus.

"Confound it!" he exclaimed. "Yes, that fellow has been jamming me for
the past two days off and on, every time I get ready to send or receive
a message. Williams is going up with a Wright machine equipped with
wireless apparatus in a minute, and this fellow won't get out of the
way. By Jove, though, those are powerful impulses of his. Hear that
crackling? I've never been interfered with so in my experience. Touch
that screen door with your knife."

Kennedy did so, and elicited large sparks with quite a tingle of a
shock.

"Yesterday and the day before it was so bad we had to give up attempting
to communicate with Williams," continued the operator. "It was worse
than trying to work in a thunder-shower. That's the time we get our
troubles, when the air is overcharged with electricity, as it is now."

"That's interesting," remarked Kennedy.

"Interesting?" flashed back the operator, angrily noting the condition
in his "log book."

"Maybe it is, but I call it darned mean. It's almost like trying to work
in a power station."

"Indeed?" queried Kennedy. "I beg your pardon--I was only looking at it
from the purely scientific point of view. Who is it, do you suppose?"

"How do I know? Some amateur, I guess. No professional would butt in
this way."

Kennedy took a leaf out of his note-book and wrote a short message which
he gave to a boy to deliver to Norton.

"Detach your gyroscope and dynamo," it read. "Leave them in the hangar.
Fly without them this afternoon, and see what happens. No use to try for
the prize to-day. Kennedy."

We sauntered out on the open part of the field, back of the fence and to
the side of the stands, and watched the fliers for a few moments. Three
were in the air now, and I could see Norton and his men getting ready.

The boy with the message was going rapidly across the field. Kennedy was
impatiently watching him. It was too far off to see just what they