e might speak of a fine-spirited horse.

While the mechanicians were grooming this one, and replenishing the
fuel-tanks, Drew and I examined it line by line, talking in low tones
which seemed fitting in so splendid a presence. We climbed the step
and looked down into the compact little car, where the pilot sat in a
luxuriously upholstered seat. There were his compass, his _altimetre_,
his revolution-counter, his map in its roller case, with a course
pricked out on it in a red line. Attached to the machine gun, there
was an ingenious contrivance by means of which he fired it while still
keeping a steady hand on his controls. The gun itself was fired
directly through the propeller by means of a device which timed the
shots. The necessity for accuracy in this timing device is clear, when
one remembers that the propeller turns over at a normal rate of
between fifteen hundred and nineteen hundred revolutions per minute.

It was with a chastened spirit that I looked from this splendid
fighting 'plane, back to my little three-cylinder Penguin, with its
absurd clipped wings and its impudent tail. A moment ago it had seemed
a thing of speed, and the mastery of it a glorious achievement. I told
Drew what my feeling was as I came racing back to the starting-point,
and how brief my moment of triumph had been. He answered me at first
in grunts and nods, so that I knew he was not listening. Presently he
began to talk about romance again, the "romance of high adventure," as
he called it. "All this"--moving his arm in a wide gesture--was but an
evidence of man's unconquerable craving for romance. War itself was a
manifestation of it, gave it scope, relieved the pent-up longings for
it which could not find sufficient outlet in times of peace. Romance
would always be one of the minor, and sometimes one of the major
causes for war, indirectly of course, but none the less really; for
the craving for it was one reason why millions of men so readily
accepted war at the hands of the little groups of diplomats who ruled
their destinies.

Half an hour later, as we stood watching the little biplane again
climbing into the evening sky, I understood, in a way, what he was
driving at, and with what keen anticipation he was looking forward to
the time when we too would know all that there was to know of the joy
of flight. Higher and higher it mounted, now and then catching the sun
on its silver wings in a flash of light, growing smaller and smalle