"Don't you believe it!" cried McGlory. "He don't intend to take a tumble. That pard of mine has his head with him, at every stage of the game."
At the watchers judged, the June Bug passed over the post some two hundred feet in the air. The contortions of the machine were alarming. First one side would tilt, and then the other. Half a dozen times it looked as though the June Bug must surely go over on its back, and come down a wreck with her intrepid young driver mangled in the machinery.
But Motor Matt, calm and clear brained, was working to "get the knack." Every second he was studying. Not once did thoughts of a mishap flash through his brain.
At the end of ten minutes he returned from the lake, glided downward, and brought the bicycle wheels to a rest in the road within a hundred feet of the place from which he had started.
His face was flushed, and his gray eyes shining as he stepped from the machine to receive the congratulations of everybody, even of the bluff post trader.
"I'll try it again this afternoon," said Matt. "That's enough for this morning. I want to think over my experience, and see if I can improve my work in any particular point."
"You wabble a good deal," said Cameron.
"I won't—when I get the knack."
So that afternoon, and day after day thereafter, Motor Matt went up and practiced to acquire the "knack." Little by little it came to him, every flight teaching him something that it was necessary for him to know.
He went up in still air, in light winds, and in breezes that made his friends tremble for his safety; but not once did he get a spill, not once did anything go wrong with the machinery, and not once did he fail to bring the June Bug back to earth as gently and easily as he had done on the morning of his first flight.