A great exhilaration is often the precursor of disaster, and mine was to have a sudden downfall.  It was getting on for noon and we were well into England—­I guessed from the rivers we had passed that we were somewhere in the north of Yorkshire—­when the machine began to make odd sounds, and we bumped in perfectly calm patches of air.  We dived and then climbed, but the confounded thing kept sputtering.  Archie passed back a slip of paper on which he had scribbled:  ’Engine conked.  Must land at Micklegill.  Very sorry.’  So we dropped to a lower elevation where we could see clearly the houses and roads and the long swelling ridges of a moorland country.  I could never have found my way about, but Archie’s practised eye knew every landmark.  We were trundling along very slowly now, and even I was soon able to pick up the hangars of a big aerodrome.

We made Micklegill, but only by the skin of our teeth.  We were so low that the smoky chimneys of the city of Bradfield seven miles to the east were half hidden by a ridge of down.  Archie achieved a clever descent in the lee of a belt of firs, and got out full of imprecations against the Gladas engine.  ‘I’ll go up to the camp and report,’ he said, ’and send mechanics down to tinker this darned gramophone.  You’d better go for a walk, sir.  I don’t want to answer questions about you till we’re ready to start.  I reckon it’ll be an hour’s job.’

The cheerfulness I had acquired in the upper air still filled me.  I sat down in a ditch, as merry as a sand-boy, and lit a pipe.  I was possessed by a boyish spirit of casual adventure, and waited on the next turn of fortune’s wheel with only a pleasant amusement.

That turn was not long in coming.  Archie appeared very breathless.

’Look here, sir, there’s the deuce of a row up there.  They’ve been wirin’ about you all over the country, and they know you’re with me.  They’ve got the police, and they’ll have you in five minutes if you don’t leg it.  I lied like billy-o and said I had never heard of you, but they’re comin’ to see for themselves.  For God’s sake get off . . .  You’d better keep in cover down that hollow and round the back of these trees.  I’ll stay here and try to brazen it out.  I’ll get strafed to blazes anyhow . . .  I hope you’ll get me out of the scrape, sir.’

‘Don’t you worry, my lad,’ I said.  ’I’ll make it all square when I get back to town.  I’ll make for Bradfield, for this place is a bit conspicuous.  Goodbye, Archie.  You’re a good chap and I’ll see you don’t suffer.’

I started off down the hollow of the moor, trying to make speed atone for lack of strategy, for it was hard to know how much my pursuers commanded from that higher ground.  They must have seen me, for I heard whistles blown and men’s cries.  I struck a road, crossed it, and passed a ridge from which I had a view of Bradfield six miles off.  And as I ran I began to reflect that this kind of chase could not last long.  They were bound to round me up in the next half-hour unless I could puzzle them.  But in that bare green place there was no cover, and it looked as if my chances were pretty much those of a hare coursed by a good greyhound on a naked moor.