He should not have been amused just then. He was too low. Directly before him was a hillside crowned with trees. He shot above the trees, cold in the stomach, muttering, "Gee! that was careless!"
He sped forward. The race-fever again. Could he pass Tad Warren as he had passed Titherington? He whirled over the towns, shivering but happy in the mellow, cool October air, far enough from the water to be out of what fog the brightening sun had left. The fields rolled beneath him, so far down that they were turned into continuous and wonderful masses of brown and gold. He sang to himself. He liked Titherington; he was glad that the Englishman had not been injured; but it was good to be second in the race; to have a chance to win a contest which the whole country was watching; to be dashing into a rosy dawn of fame. But while he sang he was keeping a tense lookout for Tad Warren. He had to pass him!
With the caution of the Scotchlike Norwegian, he had the cloche constantly on the jiggle, with ceaseless adjustments to the wind, which varied constantly as he passed over different sorts of terrain. Once the breeze dropped him sidewise. He shot down to gain momentum, brought her to even keel, and, as he set her nose up again, laughed boisterously.
Never again would he be so splendidly young, never again so splendidly sure of himself and of his medium of expression. He was to gain wisdom, but never to have more joy of the race.
He was sure now that he was destined to pass Tad Warren.
The sun was ever brighter; the horizon ever wider, rimming the saucer-shaped earth. When he flew near the Sound he saw that the fog had almost passed. The water was gentle and colored like pearl, lapping the sands, smoking toward the radiant sky. He passed over summer cottages, vacant and asleep, with fantastic holiday roofs of red and green. Gulls soared like flying sickles of silver over the opal sea. Even for the racer there was peace.
He made out a mass of rock covered with autumn-hued trees to the left, then a like rock to the right. "West and East Rock—New Haven!" he cried.
The city mapped itself before him like square building-blocks on a dark carpet, with railroad and trolley tracks like flashing spider-webs under the October noon.
So he had arrived, then—and he had not caught Tad Warren. He was furious.
He circled the city, looking for the Green, where (in this day before the Aero Club of America battled against over-city flying) he was to land. He saw the Yale campus, lazy beneath its elms, its towers and turrets dreaming of Oxford. His anger left him.