Laying a course to pass directly over the man, Matt leaned forward and flung the riata downward. The sinuous coils straightened out as the rope descended, the lower end swishing through the water.
"Catch the rope and hold fast!" cried Motor Matt, as the aëroplane skimmed over the surface of the river.
There would be a jolt when the Comet took up the slack in the riata, providing the man were successful in laying hold of the line. Would the jolt disengage the man's hands, or have any serious effect on the Comet?
By that time the aëroplane was so far beyond the man that Matt could not see what he was doing. Holding his breath, the king of the motor boys braced himself and waited.
In perhaps a second the Comet reeled and shivered as though under a blow. Quickly Matt turned full speed into the propeller, and the machine steadied itself and began to tug at the weight underneath and behind.
Then, slowly, the aëroplane mounted upward. At a height of fifty feet, Matt could look down and see a dripping form, swaying and gyrating at the end of the riata.
"Can you hang on?" called Matt.
"Yes," was the response from below, "if you don't want me to hang on too long."
"No more than a minute. By that time I'll have you ashore."
The heavy weight, swinging under the machine like a pendulum, made the aëroplane exceedingly difficult to manage. In the early stages of aëroplane flying, equilibrium had only been kept by swinging weights, and it had remained for the Wrights to discover that bending the wing tips upward or downward kept an aëroplane's poise much better than any shifting weight could do; and to Harry Traquair had fallen the honor of inventing sliding extensions, whereby either wing area could be increased or contracted in the space of a breadth.