his State had made him, and the reader must not imagine because
he was a little Cockney cad, that he was absolutely incapable of
grasping the idea of the Butteridge flying-machine. But he found
it stiff and perplexing. His motor-bicycle and Grubb's
experiments and the "mechanical drawing" he had done in standard
seven all helped him out; and, moreover, the maker of these
drawings, whoever he was, had been anxious to make his intentions
plain. Bert copied sketches, he made notes, he made a quite
tolerable and intelligent copy of the essential drawings and
sketches of the others. Then he fell into a meditation upon
them.

At last he rose with a sigh, folded up the originals that had
formerly been in his chest-protector and put them into the
breast-pocket of his jacket, and then very carefully deposited
the copies he had made in the place of the originals. He had no
very clear plan in his mind in doing this, except that he hated
the idea of altogether parting with the secret. For a long time
he meditated profoundly--nodding. Then he turned out his light
and went to bed again and schemed himself to sleep.

6

The hochgeboren Graf von Winterfeld was also a light sleeper that
night, but then he was one of these people who sleep little and
play chess problems in their heads to while away the time--and
that night he had a particularly difficult problem to solve.

He came in upon Bert while he was still in bed in the glow of the
sunlight reflected from the North Sea below, consumng the rolls