framed copy of the International Air Commission's
latest condensed rules.

Signs of recent occupancy were not wanting. An extinct cigar lay on
the carpet, where it had fallen from the mouth of some airman swiftly
overtaken by sleep. The table bore an open cigar-box, several packs
of cigarettes with loose "fags" scattered round, and a number of
champagne bottles.

Two of these were opened; one had been emptied. The other had lost
part of its contents. Several champagne glasses stood on the table,
and one lay on its side, where perhaps a falling hand had overset it.
In one of the glasses, a few last, vagrant little bubbles were still
rising from the tall, hollow stem.

"Hm!" grunted the Master contemptuously. "Fools! Well--there'll be no
alcohol aboard this craft!" He loosened the buckles of his rucksack,
and cast the burden on one of the sofa-lockers. The others did as
much.

"Shall we stow the gear in our cabins?" asked Bohannan, gesturing at
the doors that led off the saloon.

"Not yet," answered the Master, glancing at the chronometer that hung
beside the air-rules. "Time enough to get settled, later. Every second
counts, now. We're due to start in seven minutes, you know. Rrisa will
attend to all this. We three have got to be getting forward to the
pilot-house."

Bohannan nodded.

"Let's have some air in here, anyhow," said he, turning toward one of
the windows. "This place is damned hot!"

"We'll need all the heat, soon," the Master commented. "At a few
thousand feet, the engine-exhaust through those radiators won't be any
too much. Forward!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE EAGLE OF THE SKY

He slid open another door. The three men passed through the captain's
cabin and pilot-house. This place measured twelve feet on its longer
axis and nine on its shorter, being of approximately diamond shape
with one point forward in the very nose of the machine, one ending in
a door that gave access to the main, longitudinal corridor, and the
right and left points joining the walls of the backward-sloping prow.
It contained two sofa-lockers with gas-inflated, leather cushions, a
chart-rack, pilot's seat, controls, and instrument-board.

The whole front was a magnificent stretch of double plate-glass, with
warm air between the sheets to keep snow, frost, or dew from obscuring
the vision. Bright light flooded it.

Though one window had been slid partly open--the window on the sill of
which the sleeping aviator had la