ally of
the traitorous little bell which in pigeon-fanciers' lofts notifies the
return of a homer.

"Time for us to be on the move," says Captain Purnall, and we are shot
up by the passenger-lift to the top of the despatch-towers. "Our coach
will lock on when it is filled and the clerks are aboard."...

"No. 162" waits for us in Slip E of the topmost stage. The great curve
of her back shines frostily under the lights, and some minute alteration
of trim makes her rock a little in her holding-down slips.

Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, "162" comes to
rest as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn
bright as diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow,
and ice) to the inset of her three built-out propeller-shafts is some
two hundred and forty feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward,
is thirty-seven. Contrast this with the nine hundred by ninety-five of
any crack liner and you will realize the power that must drive a hull
through all weathers at more than the emergency-speed of the "Cyclonic"!

The eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping
hair-crack of the bow-rudder--Magniac's rudder that assured us the
dominion of the unstable air and left its inventor penniless and
half-blind. It is calculated to Castelli's "gull-wing" curve. Raise a
few feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch and
she will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she is under control
again. Give her full helm and she returns on her track like a whip-lash.
Cant the whole forward--a touch on the wheel will suffice--and she
sweeps at your good direction up or down. Open the complete circle and
she presents to the air a mushroom-head that will bring her up all
standing within a half mile.

"Yes," says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought, "Castelli thought
he'd discovered the secret of controlling aeroplanes when he'd only
found out how to steer dirigible balloons. Magniac invented his rudder
to help war-boats ram each other; and war went out of fashion and
Magniac he went out of his mind because he said he couldn't serve his
country any more. I wonder if any of us ever know what we're really
doing."

"If you want to see the coach locked you'd better go aboard. It's due
now," says Mr. Geary. I enter through the door amidships. There is
nothing here for display. The inner skin of the gas-tanks comes down to
within a foot or two of my head a