A glance at the itinerary of the alleged world tourists, coupled with a comparison of dates, will show how impossible it is for them to have covered the stages of their tour in the time claimed. Indeed, it is almost an insult to our readers' intelligence even to suggest this comparison. The record put up by Blakeney in his New York-Chicago flight was 102 miles per hour for six consecutive hours. If the flying men who are now asserted to have touched at San Francisco are the same as were reported by the Constantinople correspondent of the London Times on Friday last, a simple calculation will show that they must have flown for many days at a time at twice Blakeney's speed, with the briefest intervals for food and rest. It is not yet claimed that the alleged Smith and his anonymous companion have discovered a means of dispensing with sleep, or that they are content, like the fabulous chameleon, to live on air. Our children may live to witness such developments in the science of aviation as may render possible an aerial journey of this length and celerity; but so sudden an augmentation of the speed and endurance of the aeroplane, to say nothing of the more delicate mechanism of the human frame, demands a more authentic confirmation of the midnight impressions of the San Francisco journalists than has yet come to hand. In short, we do not believe a word of it, and our speculation at the moment is, what brand of soap or tinned meat, what new machine oil, or panacea for human ills, these ingeniously arranged manifestations are intended to boom.
"What do you think of that, Davis?" asked Mr. McMurtrie at the end of six minutes' rapid dictation. It was his pardonable weakness to claim the admiration of his subordinates.
"Bully, sir," replied the shorthand-writer timidly. As a matter of fact, he thought nothing at all, his whole attention having been so completely absorbed by his task of making dots and curves and dashes as to leave no portion of his brain available for receiving mental impressions. But the editor was satisfied. Telling the youth to transcribe his notes and send the flimsies page by page as completed to the printer, he took up his golf sticks, passed through the outer office, instructing his assistant to read the proof, and departed to his recreation.
There is an excellent golf course on the Scarborough Bluffs, the rugged, seamed, and fissured cliffs that form the northern shore of Lake Ontario, near Toronto. Boarding a trolley-car, Mr. McMurtrie soon reached the club-house, where he found his friend Harry Cleave already awaiting him.
"Hullo, Mac. Day's work done?" was Mr. Cleave's salutation.
"Indeed it is. The best day's work I have done for a good while."
"Then you are pitching into somebody or something, that's certain. What is it this time?"
"Bubbles, my boy. Those flying-men are after spinning again. Some of the 'Frisco men will have a pain within side of 'em when they read how I have touched 'em up. Now then, Cleave, we've got the course to ourselves. I'm sure I can give you half a stroke and a beating. 'Tis your honour."
The consciousness of having touched up the 'Frisco men seemed to have a salutary influence on Mr. McMurtrie's play. He was in the top of form, won the first two holes, and was in the act of lifting his club to drive off from the tee of number three, when a faint buzzing sound from the direction of the lake caused him to suspend the stroke and glance over the placid blue water. Far away in the sky he saw a dark speck about the size of a swallow, which, however, grew with extraordinary rapidity, and in a few moments declared itself to be an aeroplane containing two men.
"Be jabers!" quoth Mr. McMurtrie, resting his club on the ground and watching the flying machine with eyes in which might have been discerned a shade of misgiving.