confusedly upon how he might explain himself, and whether he
should pretend to be Butteridge or not. "O Lord!" he groaned, in
an agony of indecision. Then his eye caught his sandals, and he
felt a spasm of self-disgust. "They'll think I'm a bloomin'
idiot," he said, and then it was he rose up desperately and threw
over the sand-bag and provoked the second and third shots.

It flashed into his head, as he cowered in the bottom of the car,
that he might avoid all sorts of disagreeable and complicated
explanations by pretending to be mad.

That was his last idea before the airships seemed to rush up
about him as if to look at him, and his car hit the ground and
bounded and pitched him out on his head....

He awoke to find himself famous, and to hear a voice crying,
"Booteraidge! Ja! Jai Herr Booteraidge! Selbst!"

He was lying on a little patch of grass beside one of the main
avenues of the aeronautic park. The airships receded down a
great vista, an immense perspective, and the blunt prow of each
was adorned with a black eagle of a hundred feet or so spread.
Down the other side of the avenue ran a series of gas generators,
and big hose-pipes trailed everywhere across the intervening
space. Close at hand was his now nearly deflated balloon and the
car on its side looking minutely small, a mere broken toy, a
shrivelled bubble, in contrast with the gigantic bulk of the
nearer airship. This he saw almost end-on, rising like a cliff
and sloping forward towards its fellow on the other side so as to
overshadow the alley between them. There was a crowd of excited