’Don’t tell me the English can’t think as quick as the next man when it’s up to them!  They lifted ’em out o’ Flora’s Temple—­reverent, but not wastin’ time—­whilst I found out what had brought her down.  One cylinder was misfirin’.  I didn’t stop to fix it.  My Renzalaer will hold up on six.  We’ve proved that.  If her crew had relied on my guarantees, they’d have been half-way home by then, instead of takin’ their seats with hangin’ heads like they was ashamed.  They ought to have been ashamed too, playin’ gun-men in a British peer’s park!  I took big chances startin’ her without controls, but ‘twas a dead still night an’ a clear run—­you saw it—­across the Theatre into the park, and I prayed she’d rise before she hit high timber.  I set her all I dared for a quick lift.  I told Mankeltow that if I gave her too much nose she’d be liable to up-end and flop.  He didn’t want another inquest on his estate.  No, sir!  So I had to fix her up in the dark.  Ya-as!

’I took big chances, too, while those other three held on to her and I worked her up to full power.  My Renzalaer’s no ventilation-fan to pull against.  But I climbed out just in time.  I’d hitched the signallin’ lamp to her tail so’s we could track her.  Otherwise, with my Rush Silencer, we might’s well have shooed an owl out of a barn.  She left just that way when we let her go.  No sound except the propellers—­Whoo-oo-oo!  Whoo-oo-oo! There was a dip in the ground ahead.  It hid her lamp for a second—­but there’s no such thing as time in real life.  Then that lamp travelled up the far slope slow—­too slow.  Then it kinder lifted, we judged.  Then it sure was liftin’.  Then it lifted good.  D’you know why?  Our four naked perspirin’ souls was out there underneath her, hikin’ her heavens high.  Yes, sir. We did it!...  And that lamp kept liftin’ and liftin’.  Then she side-slipped!  My God, she side-slipped twice, which was what I’d been afraid of all along!  Then she straightened up, and went away climbin’ to glory, for that blessed star of our hope got smaller and smaller till we couldn’t track it any more.  Then we breathed.  We hadn’t breathed any since their arrival, but we didn’t know it till we breathed that time—­all together.  Then we dug our finger-nails out of our palms an’ came alive again—­in instalments.

’Lundie spoke first.  “We therefore commit their bodies to the air,” he says, an’ puts his cap on.

’"The deep—­the deep,” says Walen.  “It’s just twenty-three miles to the Channel.”

’"Poor chaps!  Poor chaps!” says Mankeltow.  “We’d have had ’em to dinner if they hadn’t lost their heads.  I can’t tell you how this distresses me, Laughton.”

’"Well, look at here, Arthur,” I says.  “It’s only God’s Own Mercy you an’ me ain’t lyin’ in Flora’s Temple now, and if that fat man had known enough to fetch his gun around while he was runnin’, Lord Lundie and Walen would have been alongside us.”

’"I see that,” he says.  “But we’re alive and they’re dead, don’t ye know.”