Then came a night to Aphur very much like that before the first motur was finished—a night when a very few hours would see the first pair of airplanes done. And that night Croft remained at the hangars, examining, tuning, testing and testing again the motur he meant to demonstrate to Robur and the gaping workmen, with the dawn. Over and over he turned on the spark and sent the giant-voiced engine spinning with an ever-steadying hum. Under the flare of oil slushes burning about him, he looked into the face of the captain in charge of the hangar crew and found his bronzed skin pale.
"Thou wilt dare it, Mouthpiece of Zitu?" the fellow said in a tone of awed deference, meeting Croft's glance. "Thou wilt attempt in this device to mount the air? Brave men have there been in Tamarizia, aye and brave women, yet none like to thee before."
"Nonsense!" said Jason, and laughed with a catch in his breath. For indeed he was thrilling with a vast sense of accomplished purpose as the motur roared. "With the sun I shall be a thousand vestrons over your head," he declared, meaning thereby approximately three thousand feet. And he laughed again, more in sheer nervous tension than from any humor as the captain instinctively tipped back his head and stared at the hangar roof.
Satisfied at length that everything was ready, he threw himself on a pallet, from which he rose at dawn. To his rousing cry came the captain and his men. The doors of the hangar were opened, and the first airplane on which Sirius had ever shone was trundled out, rolling on wheels affixed to the bottoms of each pontoon.
And even as it appeared, a motur flashed from the blurring shadow of Himyra's red walls and dashed toward it along the road. It was Robur coming to witness his friend's latest venture, driving in a smother of dust and impatience. Leaning against a vane, Croft watched his progress, and so received a surprise. Robur was not alone.
At first Croft noted the fact with wonder, and then with a leaping heart. Naia was with him—Naia of Aphur. He was to make his first attempt to scale the air of Palos before her purple eyes. He caught a deep breath, and his own eyes flashed as the motur approached, and he went toward it, and Robur sprang out.
"Hail, Jason, Tamarizia's first man-bird!" he exclaimed, glancing from Croft to the huge machine. "Zitu, I can scarce believe that so large a thing can rise and take to wing."
"Bird-man, not man-bird, Rob," said Croft, giving Naia a hand to assist her from the motur, and becoming aware that she carried a package across her knees.
"Thy garment," she explained, extending it to him. "Go into the cote where you house your bird and put it on."