or several seconds, and fell
headlong down. Graham saw him strike a projecting corner, fly out, head
over heels, head over heels, and vanish behind the red arm of the
building machine.

And then a shadow came between Graham and the sun. He looked up and the
sky was clear, but he knew the little monoplane had passed. Ostrog had
vanished. The man in yellow thrust before him, zealous and perspiring,
pointing and blatant.

"They are grounding!" cried the man in yellow. "They are grounding. Tell
the people to fire at him. Tell them to fire at him!"

Graham could not understand. He heard loud voices repeating these
enigmatical orders.

Suddenly he saw the prow of the monoplane come gliding over the edge of
the ruins and stop with a jerk. In a moment Graham understood that the
thing had grounded in order that Ostrog might escape by it. He saw a blue
haze climbing out of the gulf, perceived that the people below him were
now firing up at the projecting stem.

A man beside him cheered hoarsely, and he saw that the blue rebels had
gained the archway that had been contested by the men in black and
yellow a moment before, and were running in a continual stream along the
open passage.

And suddenly the monoplane slipped over the edge of the Council House and
fell like a diving swallow. It dropped, tilting at an angle of forty-five
degrees, so steeply that it seemed to Graham, it seemed perhaps to most
of those below, that it could not possibly rise again.

It fell so closely past him that he could see Ostrog clutching the guides
of the seat, with his grey hair streaming; see the white-faced aeronaut
wrenching over the lever that turned the machine upward. He heard the
apprehensive vague cry of innumerable men below.

Graham clutched the railing before him and gasped. The second seemed an
age. The lower vane of the monoplane passed within an ace of touching the
people, who yelled and screamed and trampled one another below.

And then it rose.

For a moment it looked as if it could not possibly clear the opposite
cliff, and then that it could not possibly clear the wind-wheel that
rotated beyond.

And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward,
upward into the wind-swept sky.

The suspense of the moment gave place to a fury of exasperation as the
swarming people realised that Ostrog had escaped them. With belated
activity they renewed their fire, until the rattling wove into a roar,
until the whol