The War in the Air | Page 9

come along who does anything striking in this
line, and, you bet, he vanishes. Just goes off quietly out of sight. After a bit, you don't
hear anything more of 'em at all. See? They disappear. Gone--no address. First--oh! it's an
old story now--there was those Wright Brothers out in America. They glided--they glided
miles and miles. Finally they glided off stage. Why, it must be nineteen hundred and four,

or five, THEY vanished! Then there was those people in Ireland--no, I forget their names.
Everybody said they could fly. THEY went. They ain't dead that I've heard tell; but you
can't say they're alive. Not a feather of 'em can you see. Then that chap who flew round
Paris and upset in the Seine. De Booley, was it? I forget. That was a grand fly, in spite of
the accident; but where's he got to? The accident didn't hurt him. Eh? _'E_'s gone to
cover."
The soldier prepared to light his pipe.
"Looks like a secret society got hold of them," said Bert.
"Secret society! NAW!"
The soldier lit his match, and drew. "Secret society," he repeated, with his pipe between
his teeth and the match flaring, in response to his words. "War Departments; that's more
like it." He threw his match aside, and walked to his machine. "I tell you, sir," he said,
"there isn't a big Power in Europe, OR Asia, OR America, OR Africa, that hasn't got at
least one or two flying machines hidden up its sleeve at the present time. Not one. Real,
workable, flying machines. And the spying! The spying and manoeuvring to find out
what the others have got. I tell you, sir, a foreigner, or, for the matter of that, an
unaccredited native, can't get within four miles of Lydd nowadays --not to mention our
little circus at Aldershot, and the experimental camp in Galway. No!"
"Well," said Bert, "I'd like to see one of them, anyhow. Jest to help believing. I'll believe
when I see, that I'll promise you."
"You'll see 'em, fast enough," said the soldier, and led his machine out into the road.
He left Bert on his wall, grave and pensive, with his cap on the back of his head, and a
cigarette smouldering in the corner of his mouth.
"If what he says is true," said Bert, "me and Grubb, we been wasting our blessed old time.
Besides incurring expense with thet green-'ouse."
5
It was while this mysterious talk with the soldier still stirred in Bert Smallways'
imagination that the most astounding incident in the whole of that dramatic chapter of
human history, the coming of flying, occurred. People talk glibly enough of
epoch-making events; this was an epoch-making event. It was the unanticipated and
entirely successful flight of Mr. Alfred Butteridge from the Crystal Palace to Glasgow
and back in a small businesslike-looking machine heavier than air--an entirely
manageable and controllable machine that could fly as well as a pigeon.
It wasn't, one felt, a fresh step forward in the matter so much as a giant stride, a leap. Mr.
Butteridge remained in the air altogether for about nine hours, and during that time he
flew with the ease and assurance of a bird. His machine was, however neither bird-like
nor butterfly-like, nor had it the wide, lateral expansion of the ordinary aeroplane. The

effect upon the observer was rather something in the nature of a bee or wasp. Parts of the
apparatus were spinning very rapidly, and gave one a hazy effect of transparent wings;
but parts, including two peculiarly curved "wing-cases"--if one may borrow a figure from
the flying beetles--remained expanded stiffly. In the middle was a long rounded body like
the body of a moth, and on this Mr. Butteridge could be seen sitting astride, much as a
man bestrides a horse. The wasp-like resemblance was increased by the fact that the
apparatus flew with a deep booming hum, exactly the sound made by a wasp at a
windowpane.
Mr. Butteridge took the world by surprise. He was one of those gentlemen from nowhere
Fate still succeeds in producing for the stimulation of mankind. He came, it was variously
said, from Australia and America and the South of France. He was also described quite
incorrectly as the son of a man who had amassed a comfortable fortune in the
manufacture of gold nibs and the Butteridge fountain pens. But this was an entirely
different strain of Butteridges. For some years, in spite of a loud voice, a large presence,
an aggressive swagger, and an implacable manner, he had been an undistinguished
member of most of the existing aeronautical associations. Then one day he wrote to all
the London papers to announce that he had made arrangements for an ascent from the
Crystal Palace