The flying stage about him was empty save for Asano and their suite of attendants.  Directed by the aeronaut he placed himself in his seat.  Asano stepped through the bars of the hull, and stood below on the stage waving his hand.  He seemed to slide along the stage to the right and vanish.

The engine was humming loudly, the propeller spinning, and for a second the stage and the buildings beyond were gliding swiftly and horizontally past Graham’s eye; then these things seemed to tilt up abruptly.  He gripped the little rods on either side of him instinctively.  He felt himself moving upward, heard the air whistle over the top of the wind screen.  The propeller screw moved round with powerful rhythmic impulses—­one, two, three, pause; one, two, three—­which the engineer controlled very delicately.  The machine began a quivering vibration that continued throughout the flight, and the roof areas seemed running away to starboard very quickly and growing rapidly smaller.  He looked from the face of the engineer through the ribs of the machine.  Looking sideways, there was nothing very startling in what he saw—­a rapid funicular railway might have given the same sensations.  He recognised the Council House and the Highgate Ridge.  And then he looked straight down between his feet.

For a moment physical terror possessed him, a passionate sense of insecurity.  He held tight.  For a second or so he could not lift his eyes.  Some hundred feet or more sheer below him was one of the big wind-vanes of south-west London, and beyond it the southernmost flying stage crowded with little black dots.  These things seemed to be falling away from him.  For a second he had an impulse to pursue the earth.  He set his teeth, he lifted his eyes by a muscular effort, and the moment of panic passed.

He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into the sky.  Throb, throb, throb—­beat, went the engine; throb, throb, throb—­beat.  He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and saw a smile upon his sun-tanned face.  He smiled in return—­perhaps a little artificially.  “A little strange at first,” he shouted before he recalled his dignity.  But he dared not look down again for some time.  He stared over the aeronaut’s head to where a rim of vague blue horizon crept up the sky.  For a little while he could not banish the thought of possible accidents from his mind.  Throb, throb, throb—­beat; suppose some trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine!  Suppose—!  He made a grim effort to dismiss all such suppositions.  After a while they did at least abandon the foreground of his thoughts.  And up he went steadily, higher and higher into the clear air.