The morning chosen for the trial was warm and still. No danger from gusts of wind was to be anticipated. Mounting the glider on two wheels from the old tricycle, patched up for the occasion, they wheeled it up to the field and managed with some difficulty to hoist it over the gate, after having cleared a way through the obstructing brushwood. At the far end a few cattle were peacefully grazing. The well-cropped hill was a smooth inclined plane of springy turf.
They carried the machine to the top.
"I bag first go," said Eves.
"No, I can't agree to that," said Templeton. "You see, though I'm pretty sure it will work all right, there's bound to be a certain risk, and as it's my idea I ought to test it."
"That's no reason at all. Cooks never eat their own cake. Besides, if there is an accident, much better it should happen to me than you. I'm not an inventor."
"I still maintain——"
"Oh, don't let's waste time. Let's toss for it. Heads me, tails you. A use for my half-penny at last. Here goes."
He spun the coin.
"Heads! There you are. Now fasten the straps on my shoulders, and give me a gentle shove off."
The glider was not fastened to the wheels, Templeton's theory being that, having been started on them at the top of the hill, it would almost at once gain "lift" from the air. So it proved. After a few yards it rose slightly; a little farther on it was quite clear of the ground, and Eves, with legs bent and arms stretched out on the wings, enjoyed for a few brief seconds the exhilaration of aerial flight. Then, however, it began to tilt. Mindful of Templeton's careful instructions and the preliminary test in the farmyard, Eves tugged at the appointed rope, which should have thrown out an extension of the wing, and, according to Templeton's theory, have restored the balance. Unhappily the mechanism that had worked so smoothly before now proved treacherous. The machine swerved to the left, and crashed into a bramble-bush in the hedge at the foot of the hill.