stipulated that the improvements should be offered also to the French
Government. This being a matter of patriotism, Smith readily
consented, remarking with a laugh that he would not be the first to
break the _entente cordiale_.

Just as a voyage round the world was a dream until Drake accomplished
it, so a flight round the world was the acme of every airman's
ambition. It was the accident of his father's plight that crystallized
in Smith's mind the desires held in suspension there. The act was
sudden: the idea had been long cherished.

He had decided on his course after a careful examination of the globe
borrowed from Mr. Dawkins, the village school-master. The most direct
route from London to the Solomon Islands ran across Norway and Sweden,
the White Sea, Northern Siberia, Manchuria, Korea and Japan, and
thence to New Guinea. But since it traversed some of the most desolate
regions of the earth, where the indispensable supplies of petrol and
machine oil could not be secured, he had chosen a route through fairly
large centres of population, along which at the necessary intervals he
could ensure, by aid of the telegraph, that the fuel would be in
readiness.

And now he was fairly off. Constantinople was to be the first place of
call. He knew the orographical map of Europe as well as he knew his
manual of navigation. It was advisable to avoid mountainous country as
far as possible, for the necessity of rising to great heights, in
order to cross even the lower spurs of the Alps, would involve loss of
time, to say nothing of the cold, and the risk of accident in the
darkness. Coming to the coast, in the neighbourhood of Dover, about
half-an-hour after leaving Epsom, he steered for a point on the