could carry out the whole test as well!

"Ready?" she asked, flinging back the word over her shoulder to Lieutenant
Bradbury.

"All ready!" came in a hearty voice from behind her.

Peggy, with a quick movement, threw in the clutch that started the
propeller to whirring.

With a drone like that of a huge night-beetle, or prehistoric
thunder-lizard, the machine leaped forward as a race-horse jumps under the
raised barrier.

In a blur of blue smoke it skimmed through the gap in the palings. Out
upon the smooth meadowland it shot, roaring and smoking terrifically. And
then, all at once, the jolting motion of the start ceased. It seemed as if
the occupants of the chassis were riding luxuriously over a road paved
with the softest of eiderdown. The sensation was delightful, exhilarating.

Peggy shut off the exhaust, turning the explosions of the cylinder into a
muffler. In almost complete silence they winged upward. Up, up, toward the
fleecy clouds she had been lazily watching, but a short time before, from
the hammock.

The _Golden Butterfly_ had never done better.

"You're a darling!" breathed Peggy confidentially to the motor that with
steady pulse drove them upward and onward.