framework bearing a man and an engine with a screw that whizzed
round in front and a sort of canvas rudder behind. The framework
had an air of dragging the reluctant gas-cylinder after it like a
brisk little terrier towing a shy gas-distended elephant into
society. The combined monster certainly travelled and steered.
It went overhead perhaps a thousand feet up (Bert heard the
engine), sailed away southward, vanished over the hills,
reappeared a little blue outline far off in the east, going now
very fast before a gentle south-west gale, returned above the
Crystal Palace towers, circled round them, chose a position for
descent, and sank down out of sight.

Bert sighed deeply, and turned to his motor-bicycle again.

And that was only the beginning of a succession of strange
phenomena in the heavens--cylinders, cones, pear-shaped monsters,
even at last a thing of aluminium that glittered wonderfully, and
that Grubb, through some confusion of ideas about armour plates,
was inclined to consider a war machine.

There followed actual flight.

This, however, was not an affair that was visible from Bun Hill;
it was something that occurred in private grounds or other
enclosed places and, under favourable conditions, and it was
brought home to Grubb and Bert Smallways only by means of the
magazine page of the half-penny newspapers or by cinematograph
records. But it was brought home very insistently, and in those
days if, ever one heard a man saying in a public place in a
loud, reassuring, confident tone, "It's bound to come," the