Benny laughed, and sitting up in bed, he drank his coffee willingly.
"What time is it, Abbé?"
"It is half-past six o'clock; you have two hours yet. Your brother is already dressed; you will find him in the shed."
Benny put on his engineer's overalls and went down. He felt a little excited; perhaps he was actually nervous, but no one would have guessed as much. Whistling a few bars of an ancient waltz almost in as many keys as there were notes, he went out to the shed and set to work to help his brother. It was still black dark, and the great arc lamp shone out weirdly at such an hour of the morning.
Jack Benson carried an electric torch in one hand and an oil-can in the other. He said that all was well. He had been over the "ship" from stem to stern—there was not a nut which a spanner could tighten a hair's-breadth, not a wire that was not taut. The machine itself seemed to bear witness to the truth of this. Benny himself admitted that she was a picture, while a stranger would have likened her to a great steel bird, with the head of a snout-faced whale and the fins of a ravening shark. Another image would have made of her a shining torpedo, with great wings thrust out on either side and a monster propeller large enough to have moved a steamship at her stern. It seemed ridiculous that those slight stays, those ridiculous bicycle wheels supported her as she stood. Yet that was the truth, for she was light to the point of miracle.
"Shall we run the engine now, Jack?"
Jack thought that they might.
"I'm not too sure of that union we made yesterday, Benny. You'd look handsome if the petrol gave out. Let's run her, and see if it's leaking. You've a good hour yet before you need go up. There's breakfast, too—you'll have to let the Abbé fill you up, for he's cook this morning. Are you ready, old boy? Then let her rip."
He switched off the magnet, gave a few sharp turns to the propeller, and the engine started. Had not the machine been anchored, she would have glided off at once, but, being anchored, she heaved and tossed as a ship at sea. Jack was satisfied with the union, and declared that it was not leaking, upon which Benny announced his intention to take a short flight as a final precaution.
They ran the machine out of the shed, and he climbed into his seat, to which a light steel door in the side of the torpedo-like body admitted him. Once again Jack started the engine. Benny glided swiftly over the snow for some thirty yards, then rose swiftly and circled the Park Hotel. There was no wind and it was bitter cold. Of all the visitors, he did not espy a single one upon the slopes beneath him. An intense silence prevailed—a silence that was almost ominous.