It was one day in the summer, though I do not now recall without reference to my experimental memoranda whether it was in July or August. I was working with a new and more bird-like aeroplane with wing curvatures studied from Lilienthal, Pilcher and Phillips, that I thought would give a different rhythm for the pitching oscillations than anything I’d had before. I was soaring my long course from the framework on the old barrow by my sheds down to Tinker’s Corner. It is a clear stretch of downland, except for two or three thickets of box and thorn to the right of my course; one transverse trough, in which there is bush and a small rabbit warren, comes in from the east. I had started, and was very intent on the peculiar long swoop with which any new arrangement flew. Then, without any sort of notice, right ahead of me appeared Beatrice, riding towards Tinker’s Corner to waylay and talk to me. She looked round over her shoulder, saw me coming, touched her horse to a gallop, and then the brute bolted right into the path of my machine.
There was a queer moment of doubt whether we shouldn’t all smash together. I had to make up my mind very quickly whether I would pitch-up and drop backward at once and take my chance of falling undamaged—a poor chance it would have been—in order to avoid any risk to her, or whether I would lift against the wind and soar right over her. This latter I did. She had already got her horse in hand when I came up to her. Her woman’s body lay along his neck, and she glanced up as I, with wings aspread, and every nerve in a state of tension, swept over her.
Then I had landed, and was going back to where her horse stood still and trembling.
We exchanged no greetings. She slid from her saddle into my arms, and for one instant I held her.
“Those great wings,” she said, and that was all.
She lay in my arms, and I thought for a moment she had fainted.
“Very near a nasty accident,” said Cothope, coming up and regarding our grouping with disfavour. He took her horse by the bridle. “Very dangerous thing coming across us like that.”
Beatrice disengaged herself from me, stood for a moment trembling, and then sat down on the turf “I’ll just sit down for a moment,” she said.
“Oh!” she said.
She covered her face with her hands, while Cothope looked at her with an expression between suspicion and impatience.