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“George!”

“Yes, aunt?”

“I think you are behaving in a most unreasonable and foolish manner!”

George Porson wriggled uncomfortably in his chair. Funny what a demoralising effect the lorgnettes of Aunt Elizabeth had on a fellow!

“But, aunt, you don’t understand!” he expostulated. “I know it’s most frightfully decent of Uncle Bartholomew to offer to get me into a bank, but I’d come an awful crash if I went in for banking. That sort of banking, I mean. Ha ha!” He laughed feebly.

“Good joke, that—what?” he ventured hopefully.

Aunt Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and lorgnettes.

“Joke?” she inquired frigidly.

“Yes, I—I meant I’d crash if I banked in a bank,” Porson exclaimed lamely. “But if I banked in my Farman biplane I don’t think I would crash, you know.”

“Well?”

Porson ran frenzied fingers through his tousled hair and glared appealingly round the living-room of the little cottage. Aunt Elizabeth surveyed him coldly through her lorgnettes.

Oil and an elusive smell of petrol seemed to be the predominant notes about George Porson at the moment. There was oil on his flannel bags, oil on his school blazer, and smudges of oil on his good-natured face.

“Well, that’s the joke, don’t you see,” he said wildly. “I’d be sure to crash banking in a bank, but banking in my biplane is the sort of banking I can—can bank on to do more or less without crashing, don’t you know.”

Not the flicker of a smile softened the firm line of Aunt Elizabeth’s compressed lips.

“I fail to follow you,” she remarked acidly. “It seems very involved.”

Porson gave up the unequal contest. Aunt Elizabeth, he reflected bitterly, had no sense of humour. She made a fellow feel as though he ought to see a mental specialist, with a view to being removed to a home.

“Kindly refrain from fidgeting,” went on his aunt. “It irritates me. As I have already told you, I have motored down here to-day to take you back to town with me. You will stay with your uncle and me until Grubbins & Grime have a vacancy to offer in one of their branch banks. By hard work and concentrated effort, you have no idea how far you might rise in the world.”

Porson sat bolt upright on his chair, the light of the enthusiast glowing in his eyes.

“But I have, aunt!” he exclaimed. “I’ve already risen to eight hundred feet. It was a little more than that, really, but my altimeter’s a bit groggy. Call it eight-fifty. Yes, eight hundred and fifty feet on that old Maurice Farman biplane. As you say, it took jolly hard work and concentrated effort, because she was built more for hedge-hopping than climbing, and——”

“You quite misunderstand me,” snapped Aunt Elizabeth. “When I said that you might rise in the world I was referring to the world of commerce, and not to this ridiculous and dangerous flying with which you are wasting your time.”

“Dangerous”—Porson almost snorted—“it’s not dangerous, aunt!”

“Both your uncle and myself are of the opinion that it is decidedly dangerous!” replied his aunt tartly. “Now that you have left school we are morally responsible for your welfare, until your father returns from his big-game hunting up the Congo. You ought to have consulted us before you purchased this Mr. Farman’s flying-machine. How much did he charge you for it?”

Porson grinned.

“I bought it from the Air Ministry for ten pounds,” he replied. “You see, it’s an old, obsolete type of machine, and it’s called a Maurice Farman because it was Maurice Farman who designed it years and years ago. This machine of mine was used for instructional purposes during the War, and the chappie who handed it over to me said that they used to fly it at exhibitions before the War. So it’s frightfully old, you see; but it’s good enough for me. Besides, I couldn’t afford anything better.”

“But what was your object in purchasing this machine?”

Porson leant forward in his chair.

“I bought it because I’m starting an Air Service,” he said enthusiastically. “Porson’s Passenger Service—By Air to Anywhere!’ Didn’t you see the notice on the board as you came in the garden gate?”

“I certainly did see a board daubed with some such absurd legend,” admitted Aunt Elizabeth. “I instructed Benson to remove it.”

“Oh, dash it, you shouldn’t have done that!” exclaimed Porson; then added hastily: “I—I beg your pardon. But you shouldn’t really. Who’s Benson, anyway?”

“My chauffeur.”

“And has he taken down my notice-board?”

“Certainly.”

“Officious ass!” mumbled Porson.

“The man merely obeyed my instructions!” snapped Aunt Elizabeth.

She glanced round the room, surveying with cold disapproval the crude furnishings.

“You have rented this cottage?” she demanded.

“Yes, aunt. There’s a perfectly topping field at the back, where I can take-off, and a jolly good barn which serves as a hangar.”

Aunt Elizabeth sniffed disdainfully.

“You had fifty pounds from your father when you left school at the end of the term,” she stated. “How much have you left?”

Porson hesitated.

“Oh, a little!” he hedged.

“How much?”

“Er—well, four shillings; and eightpence, to be exact. You see, aunt, there were heaps of things I had to get when I moved in. This place is my headquarters, you know. Head office of the Porson Passenger Service—what? When I start making money I’ll rent some old Army aerodrome and take over the hangars and everything. Just wait!” Porson’s voice rang thrillingly. “Some day I’ll have a whole fleet of air taxis taking passengers wherever they jolly well want to go. I’ll be the great Porson, President of the world-famous Porson Passenger Service, owning luxury air liners and airships, fitted with private suites for millionaires and——”

“And at the moment you have four shillings and eightpence!” cut in Aunt Elizabeth, bringing Porson to earth with a bump. “I received your letter this morning, informing your uncle and me that you had taken this cottage and bought an aeroplane. I have come down to investigate and to take you back to town with me. This scheme of yours is utter imbecility. You are a mere child——”

“Dash it, I’m seventeen, aunt!” interposed Porson, with some display of heat.

“A mere child to attempt such a ridiculous thing as the establishment of an air passenger service,” went on Aunt Elizabeth, unheeding the interruption. “You had better pack at once!”

“Pack?” echoed Porson.

“Yes. You will return to town with me, and your uncle will find you a safe and comfortable position with Grubbins & Grime.”

Porson shook his head.

“No!” he gulped.

The lorgnette glittered at him wrathfully.

“George! Are you defying me?”

“No, aunt,” replied Porson doggedly. “But I’m not cut out for a bank. Honest Injun, I’m not! I’d be most frightfully miserable. I—I’m going through with this idea of mine!”

“I forbid you to think of such a thing for another moment!” snapped his aunt. “What would your dear father say if he knew I had allowed you to continue with this idiocy?”

Porson brightened visibly.

“Oh, he’d be no end bucked!” he replied heartily. “He always said to me: ‘I don’t care what you are as long as you are a man.’ Well, this is a man’s job, and I’m jolly well going through with it!”

“I forbid——”

“Aunt,” cut in Porson, with heroic determination, “I hate appearing ungrateful for uncle’s offer to get me into a bank, but I’ve made up my mind. I love flying, and I’m going to carry on with this scheme of mine!”

Aunt Elizabeth breathed heavily. She was not used to defiance such as this. But she had a final shot in her locker.

“You will not get a halfpenny from either your uncle or myself when you fail!” she said acidly.

“I shall not fail!” replied Porson, with sublime confidence.

Aunt Elizabeth rose from her chair. Haughtily she drew herself erect.

“Indeed?” she said witheringly. “I trust you are correct!”

She swept to the door. Simmering, she was conducted down the garden-path to the gate by the victorious but silent Porson. An obsequious Benson ushered her into the luxuriously upholstered limousine which stood waiting on the dusty roadway.

“Good-bye, aunt!”

No answer save the slam of the door, the whirr of the self-starter. The car shot forward and in a cloud of dust disappeared round a bend in the road. No general ever vanished more quickly from a stricken field.

With a sigh Porson turned away to retrieve the notice-board which the officious Benson had deposited on the other side of the hedge.

Having re-erected his notice-board, Porson hurried up the garden-path and round the cottage to where a wicket-gate at the rear led into a large field. Inside the field, backing against the nearest hedge, was a large barn, in front of which stood Porson’s £10 aeroplane.

Remember, it had been built in the dark ages of flying, but by a great pioneer. It was a cumbersome-looking machine, yet its bamboo framework body gave to it a certain air of frailty. It was practically a glider, fitted with a 35 horse-power Green engine driving a pusher propeller.

The long flat wings, almost void of camber and dope, were patched in a score of places. Many of the multitudinous flying wires and bracing wires seemed to have become either elongated through long wear or to have slipped their moorings. Others, once broken, had been spliced. There were still others which were tied together by stout pieces of string.

The machine had a pilot’s cockpit of sorts. In a canvas box-like arrangement on the lower plane were two low wooden seats. In front of each was a weird-looking dashboard, a control-stick, a throttle-handle, and a rudder-bar. Having been used for instructional purposes, this ancient relic was fitted with dual control.

With hands plunged in the pockets of his grey flannels, Porson stood surveying it with an air of proud proprietorship. It was his—his very own! The first bus of the great Porson Air Service! Whipping off his blazer, he struggled into a pair of greasy and dilapidated dungarees which he took from the barn. Swinging himself up to the engine, he proceeded to clean plugs and oil-feed and generally disembowel the engine with skilful and loving hands.

He was so engaged when an ancient gentleman, clad in a long, white smock and with a cheery, weather-beaten face, fringed with carefully trimmed whiskers, came pottering through the wicket-gate into the field with a small, black-and-white mongrel trotting sedately at his heels.

At sight of Porson the little dog hurled himself forward with a yelp of delight. Dropping to the ground, Porson gathered the little fellow up in his arms.

“Had a good time, Bill, old man?” he crooned, fondling him just behind the ears.

Bill’s stumpy tail and little body quivered ecstatically; pink tongue came out in frantic efforts to lick the oil-bedaubed face of his mighty lord and master, Porson.

“Ay, a fine time he’s had, sir!” quoth the ancient gentleman, hobbling up. “He’s bin rattin’, and a real sharp ’un he is!”

“It was jolly decent of you to take him for a run, Gaffer!” said Porson gratefully. “Aunt Elizabeth hates the sight of him!”

“Be the fine lady gone, then, sir?”

“Yes, she’s gone, Gaffer!” Porson frowned. Then his brow cleared, and he added: “But I’ve told you to stop calling me ‘sir.’ It sounds so dashed idiotic! My name’s George.”

“Ay, so you be allus tellin’ me!” piped Gaffer. “And be ye busy with the flyin’-machine now, Garge?”

“Yes,” replied Porson. “I’m getting her ready for to-morrow, Gaffer. The flying club at Tuttleberry-cum-Hacklehurst are holding a meeting to-morrow—races and stunting, and all that, you know.”

“And be you goin’ to race, Garge?”

Porson shook his head ruefully.

“Not with this old bus, Gaffer,” he replied. “I believe they’re a frightfully posh sort of crowd at Tuttleberry-cum-Hacklehurst. They’ve got Avro Avians and Moths and Blackburn Bluebirds, and my bus’ll stand about as much chance as a Ford car against Segrave’s Sunbeam. But there’s a certain event which I’m going to have a shot at. The prize for it is a silver medal and ten pounds. It doesn’t matter very much about the medal, but I can jolly well do with the ten pounds!”

Gaffer glanced at the boy with shrewd and kindly eyes.

“Be you hard pressed for cash, lad?” he asked quietly.

“I will be soon unless I get a passenger or win a prize to-morrow,” admitted Porson frankly.

Gaffer gazed steadily at a cow munching stolidly in an adjacent field.

“I’m meanin’ no offence, lad,” he said; “but I’ve a pound or two put by, and if so be you’re pressed—why, you’re welcome to it! You—you’re allus so kind to me, d’ye see, lad?”

Porson slipped his arm round the old man’s shoulders.

“Thanks, Gaffer!” he said softly. “You’re one of the best! It’s decent—so jolly decent of you! But I’m seeing this thing through alone, and”—his jaw jutted out grimly—“I’ll pull through all right!”

Gaffer nodded.

“Yes, you’ll pull through, Garge!” he assented gravely. “You be the right sort!”

Porson laughed happily.

“Come on! We’ll have tea now,” he said, “and after tea I’ll finish off overhauling the old bus.”

Tea over, Gaffer took his departure and went hobbling up the dusty road to his cottage in the village of Sudcombe, a quarter of a mile away. Porson washed up the tea-things, for funds would not allow of his employing any domestic help, and he and Bill looked after themselves.

He then returned to his machine, with Bill gambolling idiotically and joyously at his heels.

“I’d like to have a flip, Bill,” he remarked, “but we’ve just got about enough petrol left to get us to this blessed Tuttleberry-cum-Hacklehurst to-morrow. It’s a thumping good job that petrol is supplied free to competitors, or we wouldn’t be jolly well able to compete!”

He laboured till dusk, overhauling bracing and flying wires and tightening up the rudder-bar, which had a deplorable habit of moving a full three inches to either port or starboard without having any noticeable effect on the rudder.

Then, leaving the machine picketed down—for the night gave promise of being fine—he removed the plugs from the engine and returned to the cottage. He turned in after supper, and scarcely had his head touched the pillow than he was sound asleep, with Bill dreaming doggy dreams on the floor at the foot of the bed.

He was up early, and, after an exhilarating plunge in the waters of the River Brent, he breakfasted on somewhat charred bacon and eggs. Not yet had Porson mastered the intricacies of cooking, but, with splendid optimism, he told himself that he was improving.

“Now, Bill,” he said, when washing-up was again over, “we’d better be pushing off to this flying meeting. It’s a frightfully swell sort of affair, and they’ll probably think my old bus a perfect scream. Well, let ’em! That’s all I can say—let ’em!”

He took down his flying kit from its peg behind the door, and five minutes later was casting off the picket-ropes of his machine. Switching on, he swung the heavy four-bladed propeller. There came a mournful sort of gasp from the old Green engine. Again he swung the propeller, and, as though realising the hopelessness of further protest, the engine picked up with a clattering, banging sort of roar.

At first Bill had been scared of that noise, but he was quite used to it by now, and at a gesture from Porson he scrambled up into the rear seat. Porson drew on his flying-gloves and mounted to the forward seat. During past holidays he had done nearly one hundred hours’ flying, and had passed out as a fully qualified pilot.

“Hope we’ve got enough petrol to get us to Tuttleberry!” he remarked. “It’s about twenty-five miles as the crow—I mean aeroplane—flies, and it’ll be sickening to have a forced landing!”

Bumping, jolting, swaying, the machine taxied close to the hedge, then swung into wind as Porson pressed on the rudder-bar. Porson had the whole stretch of field in front of him for the take-off. He needed it.

He gave the bus full throttle, and gallantly the old Maurice Farman lumbered towards the farthest hedge. Its speed rose to forty-five miles an hour, the engine banging and spluttering for all it was worth. Porson pulled on the control-stick. The machine rose a few feet, then bumped—heavily. Again Porson pulled on the control-stick, and executed a hop of full twenty feet. For the third time he pulled on the stick and knew that if he didn’t get into the air this time and keep there, he’d finish in the hedge towards which he was heading.

The old Farman lumbered into the air in a heavy, sluggish upward glide. The propeller, thrashing at full revolutions, kept it there, lifting it onwards and upwards. Porson heard the top of the hedge whipping against the patched wheels of the under-carriage.

But that didn’t worry Porson. He was in the air and that was all that mattered. At fifty feet he flattened out and went banging and clattering his way across country, hoping to cast up at Tuttleberry-cum-Hacklehurst without mishap!

·····

Eustace Lowther-Lowther was remarkable only for the loudness of his plus four suits and the size of his income. He was a smallish sort of fellow, with a pink-and-white complexion, an anæmic moustache, and a shrill, penetrating voice.

He was the founder of the Tuttleberry-cum-Hacklehurst Flying Club, and had talked himself into the presidency of it. He was the proud possessor of a tiptop Moth machine, fitted with an A.D.C. Cirrus engine. He was also a first-class snob. His life held two great passions. One was to be on speaking terms with everybody who mattered in the county, from the lord lieutenant downwards. The other was a detestation for his cousin, Thomas Cresswell, triple blue at Oxford and English Rugby International.

Thomas Cresswell, honest, blunt, outspoken, had a habit of kicking Eustace on sight—if not literally, at least metaphorically. Consequently, it isn’t difficult to understand why Eustace didn’t like him.

Eustace was in his element on this particular morning of the flying meeting, which was open to all machines within a radius of thirty miles. He strutted about with a programme of events in one hand, and a gold pencil in the other. The meeting was being held on Tuttleberry Downs, and the roped-off enclosures were crowded with spectators. In front of the hangars stood an array of Snipes, Moths, Bluebirds, and Avros, their fuselages glittering splendidly in the morning sun.

“Come on now, get ready for the first event!” babbled Eustace, strutting up to a group of leather-clad pilots. “There are ten entries for this event—a thirty miles race across country at a height of four thousand feet!”

“Fathead!” growled Thomas Cresswell, one of the pilots. “Isn’t the aerial golf the first event?”

“Oh, yes, so it is!” admitted Eustace, consulting his programme. “He, he, he! I was looking at the wrong page. Well, now, there are six entries for the aerial golf—Johnson, Henderson, Jennings, Fraser, Cumberleigh, and Porson. Who the dickens is Porson? I’ve never heard of him. He’s entered from Sudcombe. Is he here? Has anybody seen him? Dash it, where is he? Where is this Porson?”

“Perhaps this is him coming now!” remarked Cresswell thoughtfully.

Eustace wheeled round, scanning the skyline with the monocle which he wore more for effect than utility.

“Not up there, ass!” grunted one of the pilots. “Over yonder on the ground!”

“Oh, rooty-toot!” gasped Eustace—an imbecile expression with which he was wont to register astonishment. “ ’Pon my word! I—I——”

Words appeared to fail him, and he stood gaping towards where a great splay-footed, sad-looking carthorse was towing Porson’s Farman across the Downs towards the hangars.

“Is—is this a bally joke?” he demanded, wheeling on the pilots. “Is this Porson a blessed comedian?”

“Hope not!” grunted Cresswell. “We’ve got one here already, so we don’t want another!”

Eustace swallowed the insult, and turned again to glare at the melancholy equipage moving slowly towards the hangars.

“What kind of—of machine is it?” he stuttered.

“Looks like a Maurice Farman!” replied a pilot.

“He, he, he!” cackled Eustace. “Fancy bringing an old crate like that here! I say, though, what a ghastly cheek! Absolute blessed nerve, I call it!”

Amidst a good-natured cheer from the spectators, the carthorse came to a halt in front of the hangars. Porson descended magnificently from the cockpit.

“Conked out?” inquired Cresswell sympathetically.

“No; ran out of petrol two miles away!” replied Porson. “The farmer on whose ground I landed made me do two hours’ haymaking before he’d lend me a horse to tow me here!”

“Two—two hours’ haymaking?” stuttered Eustace. “What the dickens for?”

“Because I hadn’t any money to pay him for the hire of the horse!” Porson replied bluntly. “That’s what for!”

“Oh, I see!” tittered Eustace. “He, he, he! A bally flying pauper! Are you Porson, the fellow who’s entered for the aerial golf?”

“Yes,” replied Porson. “And you keep a civil tongue in your fat head.”

“Don’t threaten me!” blustered Eustace. “Don’t you dare threaten me! You don’t know who you’re talking to. I’m president of this club, and you can’t jolly well fly that outsize in kites here. I won’t allow it. It’s dangerous!”

“You can’t stop me!” retorted Porson. “You accepted my entry—George Porson, flying a Maurice Farman—and I’m jolly well going to fly it!”

“Yes!” cut in Cresswell. “You accepted his entry and you can’t stop him, so shut up and get on with the business!”

“But he hasn’t got an earthly chance of winning!” yelped Eustace. “He’ll kill himself, that’s what he’ll do. He’ll crash, and there’ll be a rotten inquest, and——”

“There’ll be an inquest on you, if you don’t shut up!” snapped Cresswell. “The spectators are getting impatient, so get the machines lined up. The boy can fly if he wants to. I’m on the committee, and so is Henderson and Cumberleigh, and we say he can compete.”

“All right, then!” snapped the baffled Eustace. “But I’ll eat my hat if he stays in the air twenty minutes with that—that flying crate.”

“He might win the aerial golf stunt with that bus!” remarked Cresswell thoughtfully, surveying the Maurice Farman. “And if you’d the brains of a bat you’d realise that!”

“Win?” sneered Eustace. “Win, did you say? Dash it, if he wins with that thing I—I’ll act as his mechanic for a week!”

“Thanks very much!” remarked Porson.

Eustace glared at him, than consulted his programme.

“Come on, then!” he babbled wrathfully. “Get your machines ready for the take-off. You know the rules; they’re frightfully simple. That’s the target over there—that white patch on the ground. Each competitor carries six small sandbags. The nearest bag to the target, dropped from five hundred feet, wins. Go on, Henderson; you’re first. Six shots at the target from five hundred feet!”

Porson got his tank filled with petrol, and watched, maybe, a little enviously, whilst Henderson’s streamlined Snipe came hurtling over the target at ninety miles an hour. Six times Henderson thundered over the small white patch on the ground below, and each time a sandbag dropped from his cockpit, to fall with a thud near the target.

His best shot was twenty-eight feet from the target. Jennings, Fraser, and Johnson failed to beat it, as one after another they took the air in their Avro Avians and skimmed over the target at a speed which must have made Porson’s poor old Green engine feel sick.

Then came Cumberleigh, in his swift little Tiger Moth. His first bag dropped within twenty feet of the target. He was hopelessly wide with his second and third, but his last three were painfully close, and the marksman announced through his megaphone:

“Mr. Cumberleigh leads with a shot eleven feet six inches from the target!”

“Great shooting!” grunted Porson, and clambered up into the forward seat of the old Maurice Farman.

Cresswell swung his propeller for him, and, with Bill in the rear seat, he taxied out into the wind. Giving the bus full throttle, he went bumping and jolting across the short, crisp turf.

“He’s away home!” remarked Eustace hopefully, as the Farman showed no signs of taking the air. “Let’s get on with the next event!”

“Oh, dry up!” grunted Henderson; and there came a thunderous cheer from the crowd as, after a few clumsy hops, the Maurice Farman lumbered up into the air.

The spectators wanted Porson to win. For one thing he was just a kid. For another, they admired his pluck in ranging his flying relic against the splendid little machines at the meeting. But no one wanted Porson to win more fervently than did Porson himself. He was broke to the wide, and the ten-pound prize for this event would keep him going, perhaps, until his first passenger came along.

Pressing on the rudder-bar, he banked towards the target and came lurching in over it at five hundred feet.

Thud! His first bag dropped—almost braining Eustace, who was standing thirty yards or more from the target with the marksmen.

The Farman had hit an air-pocket, and Porson’s first shot had gone hopelessly wide. Banking carefully, Porson came spluttering and banging his way over the target again at his fastest flying speed—a modest forty-five miles per hour. Thud!

“That’s inside Mr. Henderson’s!” exclaimed the marksman excitedly. “He’s got a fine chance, that lad, with that slow flying-machine, sir!”

Three more sandbags hurtled downwards from the Maurice Farman. Each was within a radius of thirty feet, but Cumberleigh still led with eleven feet six inches from the target.

Porson, in the pilot’s seat of the Farman, was leaning forward, his eyes fixed grimly on the target slowly creeping towards him. He had one last chance to win that tenner, for he knew none of his previous shots had been inside that of Cumberleigh. Suddenly he tensed. Thud!

“He’s done it!” howled the marksman, and there came a roar of cheering from the crowd, for Porson’s last shot had burst within a yard of the target!

It was late afternoon when the meeting concluded and the spectators dispersed. But Porson lingered, and with him Cresswell. In Porson’s pocket was a silver medal and ten pounds. To him came a bustling Eustace, demanding shrilly:

“Well, what are you waiting for? Why don’t you clear off?”

“I’m waiting for you!” replied Porson grimly.

“What the dickens do you mean—waiting for me?”

“You said that if I won you’d act as my mechanic for a week!” stated Porson slowly and deliberately.

“Don’t be a silly fool!” screeched Eustace. “I didn’t mean it!”

“You said it!” cut in Cresswell grimly. “And I’m going to see that you go through with it. If you don’t, then I’ll thrash you every day till the week is up. What’s more, I’ll have you black-balled in every club in London as a fellow who makes wagers and won’t pay up when he loses!”

“But it’s ridiculous!” howled Eustace.

“I’m waiting!” said Porson coldly.

“So’m I!” added Cresswell, more coldly.

Eustace looked round, as though contemplating a bolt. Cresswell’s hand closed on his coat collar.

“I shall start now with the first thrashing,” he remarked, “and to-night I shall write to the secretaries of your clubs!”

“Don’t!” bleated Eustace. “Don’t do that, confound you! I—I’ll be ruined socially if you do that. Leave go of my collar, dash you!”

Cresswell released his grip. Eustace glared at Porson.

“Well, what d’you want me to do?” he spluttered.

“You can swing the prop first, and then squeeze in beside Bill in the back seat!” replied Porson.

“I won’t!” gulped Eustace.

He saw Cresswell taking a step towards him. Abruptly he changed his mind.

“Yes, I will!” he yelped.

“You’ll write and let me know how he gets on, Porson?” said Cresswell.

“Yes, I’ll write and let you know!” promised Porson. “Jump to it, Eustace, and mind the propeller doesn’t knock your brains out!”

“It can’t!” remarked Cresswell laconically. “He hasn’t any!”

Gloweringly, Eustace swung the propeller, and leapt back just in time to escape being brained as the engine picked up with a roar.

“Just wait!” he said savagely, as he clambered up beside Bill. “You’ll be blessed sorry for this before I’m finished with you—both of you!”