I heard the wireless operator cursing the way his receiver was acting.

Higher and higher Norton went in one spiral after another, those spirals which his gyroscope had already made famous.

The man with the megaphone in front of the judge’s stand announced in hollow tones that Mr. Norton had given notice that he would try for the Brooks Prize for stationary equilibrium.

Kennedy and I stood speechless, helpless, appalled.

Slower and slower went the aeroplane.  It seemed to hover just like the big mechanical bird that it was.

Kennedy was anxiously watching the judges with one eye and Norton with the other.  A few in the crowd could no longer restrain their applause.  I remember that the wireless back of us was spluttering and crackling like mad.

All of a sudden a groan swept over the crowd.  Something was wrong with Norton.  His aeroplane was swooping downward at a terrific rate.  Would he be able to control it?  I held my breath and gripped Kennedy by the arm.  Down, down came Norton, frantically fighting by main strength, it seemed to me, to warp the planes so that their surface might catch the air and check his descent.

“He’s trying to detach the gyroscope,” whispered Craig hoarsely.

The football helmet which Norton wore blew off and fell more rapidly than the plane.  I shut my eyes.  But Kennedy’s next exclamation caused me quickly to open them again.

“He’ll make it, after all!”

Somehow Norton had regained partial control of his machine, but it was still swooping down at a tremendous pace toward the level centre of the field.

There was a crash as it struck the ground in a cloud of dust.

With a leap Kennedy had cleared the fence and was running toward Norton.  Two men from the judge’s stand were ahead of us, but except for them we were the first to reach him.  The men were tearing frantically at the tangled framework, trying to lift it off Norton, who lay pale and motionless, pinned under it.  The machine was not so badly damaged, after all, but that together we could lift it bodily off him.

A doctor ran out from the crowd and hastily put his ear to Norton’s chest.  No one spoke, but we all scanned the doctor’s face anxiously.

“Just stunned—­he’ll be all right in a moment.  Get some water,” he said.

Kennedy pulled my arm.  “Look at the gyroscope dynamo,” he whispered.

I looked.  Like the other two which we had seen, it also was a wreck.  The insulation was burned off the wires, the wires were fused together, and the storage-battery looked as if it had been burned out.

A flicker of the eyelid and Norton seemed to regain some degree of consciousness.  He was living over again the ages that had passed during the seconds of his terrible fall.

“Will they never stop?  Oh, those sparks, those sparks!  I can’t disconnect it.  Sparks, more sparks—­will they never—­” So he rambled on.  It was fearsome to hear him.