int, my altimetre registered three hundred and fifty metres.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw all the beautiful countryside spread
out beneath me, but I was too busily occupied to take in the prospect.
I was watching my wings, nervously, in order to anticipate and
counteract the slightest pitch of the machine. But nothing happened,
and I soon realized that this first grand tour was not going to be
nearly so bad as we had been led to believe. I began to enjoy it. I
even looked down over the side of the _fuselage_, although it was a
very hasty glance.

All the time I was thinking of the rapidly approaching moment when I
should have to come down. I knew well enough how the descent was to be
made. It was very simple. I had only to shut off my motor, push
forward with my "broom-stick,"--the control connected with the
elevating planes,--and then wait and redress gradually, beginning at
from six to eight metres from the ground. The descent would be
exciting, a little more rapid than Shooting the Chutes. Only one could
not safely hold on to the sides of the car and await the splash. That
sort of thing had sometimes been done in aeroplanes, by over-excited
pilots. The results were disastrous, without exception.

The moment for the decision came. I was above the fort, otherwise I
should not have known when to dive. At first the sensation was, I
imagine, exactly that of falling, feet foremost; but after pulling
back slightly on the controls, I felt the machine answer to them, and
the uncomfortable feeling passed. I brought up on the ground in the
usual bumpy manner of the beginner. Nothing gave way, however, so this
did not spoil the fine rapture of a rare moment. It was shared--at
least it was pleasant to think so--by my old Annamite friend of the
Penguin experience, who stood by his flag nodding his head at me. He
said, "Beaucoup bon," showing his polished black teeth in an
approving grin. I forgot for the moment that "beaucoup bon" was his
enigmatical comment upon all occasions, and that he would have grinned
just as broadly had he been dragging me out from a mass of wreckage.

Drew came in a few moments later, making an almost perfect landing. In
the evening we walked to a neighboring village, where we had a
wonderful dinner to celebrate the end of our apprenticeship. It was a
curious feast. We had little to say to one another, or, better, we
were both afraid to talk. We were under an enchantment which words
would have bro