Some one shook him by the arm. He was sitting in the cockpit of the machine, his hands dangling limp over the sides. A corn-field was about him; his dazed eyes made out the low, green month-old stalks all about. Several men were standing beside him, and others, a great crowd it seemed, were hurrying toward him.
“Asleep! By the great horn spoon, he was asleep!” said a man at his right hand. “Came down too fast, youngster. How high’d you get, anyway?”
Slowly he made out the features of one of the officials of the aviation-field, one of the men who had verified his barograph before he started out for altitude. The man raised himself up by the little iron step on the side of the car, leaned over to look at the barograph, and began to bellow wildly at the crowd. “Twenty thousand! It must be wrong. But even if it’s a few hundred out, even if it’s a few thousand—whoop-la! He’s done it! The kid’s done it! A record!”
“But where—where—” stammered Reese, stupidly. He sat and stared before him like a man just awakened from a dream.
The aluminium hood came close up against the steering-yoke; there was no forward seat, not even room enough for a cat: it was the one-place machine.
GLORY SHALL FOLLOW GLORY
BY CHARLES HANSON TOWNE
I
KEATS died—who knows?—in the wild bloom of youth,