and
forests to the west, soaring and swooping, twisting and turning at
incredible speeds, in fact, doing everything that any bird that ever
flew could do.

When they got back to the house, just as dawn was breaking, and Mr
Parmenter had shaken hands with Hiram Roker, a long, lean, slab-sided
Yankee, who was Hingeston's head engineer and general manager, and had
fought the grim fight through failure to success at his side for twenty
years, he said to his friend:

"Newson, you've won, and I guess I'll take that bond up, and I'd like to
do a bit more than that. You know what's happening over the other side.
There's got to be an Aerial Navigation Trust formed right away,
consisting of you, myself and Hiram there, and Max Henchell, my partner,
and that syndicate has to have twenty of these craft of yours, bigger if
possible, afloat inside three months. The syndicate will commence at
once with a capital of fifty millions, and there'll be fifty more behind
that if wanted."

"It's a great scheme," Hingeston replied slowly, "but I'm afraid the
time's too short."

"Time!" exclaimed Mr Parmenter. "Who in thunder thinks about time when
dollars begin to talk? You just let me have all your plans and sections,
drawings and the rest of your fixings in time to catch the ten o'clock
train to Pittsburg. I'll run up and talk the matter over with Henchell.
We'll have fifty workshops turning out the different parts in a week,
and you shall have a staff of trustworthy men that we own, body and
soul, down here to assemble them, and we'll make the best of those chaps
into the crews of the ships when we get them afloat.

"Now, don't talk back, Newson, that's fixed. I'm sleepy, and that trip
has jerked my nerves up a bit. Give me a drink, and let's go to bed for
two or three hours. You'll have a cheque for five millions before I
start, and we shall then consider the _Columbia_ our private yacht.
We'll fly her around at night, and just raise Cain in the way of
mysteries for the newspapers, but we won't give ourselves away
altogether until the fleet's ready."

As they say on the other side of the Atlantic, what Ratliffe Parmenter
said, went. He wielded the irresistible power of almost illimitable
wealth, and during the twenty-five years that Hingeston had been working
at his ideal, he and Maximilian Henchell, who was a descendant of one
of the oldest Dutch families in America, and one of its shrewdest
business men to boot, had built up an i