The flying-machine rose slowly with very little creaking for all the greatness of the planes; the last of the rope ran out, and the lights of the town sank like stones in water beneath them.
"Right away!" cried Tinker joyfully, and the financier gasped.
When the lights of the town were a mere blur beneath them, Tinker switched on the electric lamps, and the millionaire saw him sitting on a wicker seat in the stern of the boat-shaped car, surrounded by levers, instruments, and dials. Tinker bade him grip the steel rails on either side of the car, and get ready for a swoop. Then he set the motor going, and steered round the flying-machine on to her course. She rose and rose, moving steadily forward at the same time, far above the sound of the waves of the Channel.
Now Herr Schlugst did not rely so much on his propeller for speed as on his skilful adaptation of the principle on which the bird swoops. When the aneroid told Tinker that the car had reached the height of 3000 feet, he opened a valve, and let the gas escape slowly from the balloon. The instant she began to sink he switched to a slight downward angle the great planes, some seventy feet long, which were fixed parallel to the car. The machine began to glide downwards on them, gathering momentum from the weight of the car, at a quickly increasing speed, until she was tearing through the air at the rate of forty miles an hour, and sinking a hundred feet in the mile. The financier sat hunched up, gasping and shivering as the air whizzed past his ears and shrilled among the ropes. Tinker, with an air of cheerful excitement, kept the machine on her course, and watched the aneroid: his face of a seraph was peculiarly appropriate to these high altitudes, though the millionaire was too busy with his fears to observe the fact.
In half an hour the machine had rushed down to five hundred feet above the sea: Tinker switched the planes to the same angle upwards: and the momentum drove her up the incline of the air with little diminished speed. Then he turned a tap and let the stored gas, compressed in an aluminum cylinder, flow into the balloon, and restored the whole machine to its former buoyancy. Moving more and more slowly the higher it rose, the flying-machine once more gained the height of 3000 feet, and once more swooped down from it. At the beginning of the upward sweep, Tinker said, "Another swoop like that will bring us to Paris."
The financier, who had spent the time qualifying for a place among the invertebrates, only groaned. Tinker was disgusted; but he said, "Cheer up! You're the first man who has ever crossed the Channel in a flying-machine. You'll be in the History books!"
The car rose and rose: Tinker had just resolved to swoop from 3500 feet this time, when of a sudden she rose out of the windless area into a stiff breeze, icily chill. They learnt what had happened by the balloon bumping down on their heads with apparent intent to smother them, and in a breath the car was spinning round, and jerking furiously to and fro. The millionaire screamed and bumped about the car, and bumped and screamed. Tinker set his teeth, jammed the flying-machine into the teeth of the wind, switched down the planes, and tried to drive her down. It was no use; she was whirled along like a piece of thistledown. Then he opened the valve and let her sink. In three minutes she had fallen below the wind, and was shooting swiftly on the downward swoop. The financier was staring at him with a frenzied eye. Tinker closed the valve, and said with a joyous brightness, "She was quite out of control for a good five minutes!"
