anyhow, London's a big
place. Why, look there now! Talking about clouds, there's the very thing
you want. Oceans of it! Can't you run her up a bit and drop through it
when the thing's just between us and the enemy?"

As he spoke, Lennard saw what seemed to him like an illimitable sea of
huge spumy billows and tumbling masses of foam, which seemed to roll and
break over each other without sound. The silent cloud-ocean was flowing
up from the sou'west. Mr Hingeston took his bearings by compass, slowed
down to fifty miles an hour, and then Lennard saw the masses of cloud
rise up and envelop them.

For a few minutes the earth and the heavens disappeared, and he felt
that sense of utter loneliness and isolation which is only known to
those who travel through the air. He saw Mr Hingeston pull a lever with
his right hand and turn the steering-wheel with his left. He felt the
blood running up to his head, and then came a moment of giddiness. When
he opened his eyes the _Auriole_ was dropping as gently as a bird on the
wing towards the trees of the garden behind Buckingham Palace.

"I reckon you did that quite well, Newson," said Mr Parmenter, looking
at his watch. "One hour and twenty-five minutes as you said. And now I'm
going to shake hands with a real king for the first time."

CHAPTER XXXV

THE "AURIOLE" HOISTS THE WHITE ENSIGN

Rather to Mr Parmenter's surprise his first interview "with a real king"
was rather like other business interviews that he had had; in fact, as
he said afterwards, of all the business men he had ever met in his
somewhat varied career, this quiet-spoken, grey-haired English gentleman
was about the best and 'cutest that it had ever been his good fortune to
strike.

The negotiations in hand were, of course, the hiring of the Syndicate's
fleet of airships to the British Empire during the course of the war.
His Majesty had summoned a Privy Council at the Palace, and again Mr
Parmenter was somewhat surprised at the cold grip and clear sight which
these British aristocrats had in dealing with matters which he thought
ought to have been quite outside their experience. Like many Americans,
he had expected to meet a sort of glorified country squire, fox-hunter,
grouse-killer, trout and salmon-catcher, and so on; but, as he admitted
to Lennard later on, from His Majesty downwards they were about the
hardest crowd to do business with that he had ever struck.

The terms he offered were half a m