without Rodier he would have been nowhere. Their acquaintance and comradeship had begun in the most accidental way. Two years before, Smith was taking part in an aeroplane race from Paris to London. On reaching the Channel, he found himself far ahead of all his competitors, except a Frenchman, who, to his chagrin, managed to keep a lead of almost a mile. Each carried a passenger. Not long after leaving the French coast, a cloud of smoke suddenly appeared in the wake of the Frenchman's aeroplane, and to Smith's alarm the machine in a few seconds dropped into the sea. Instantly he steered for the spot, and brought his own aeroplane to within a few feet of the water. To his surprise, he saw that part of the wreckage was floating, and a man, apparently only half conscious, was clinging to one of the stays. But for the engine having providentially become disconnected in the fall, the whole machine with its passengers must have sunk to the bottom.

Smith saw that it was impossible for him to rescue the man while he himself remained in his aeroplane, for the slightest touch upon the other would inevitably have submerged it. There was only one thing to do. Leaving the aeroplane to the charge of his friend, he dived into the sea, and rising beside the man, seized him at the moment when his hold was relaxing, and contrived to hold him up until a fast motor launch, which had witnessed the accident, came up and rescued them both.

The man proved to be the chauffeur of the aeroplane; his employer was drowned. Smith lost the race, but he gained what was infinitely more valuable to him, the gratitude and devotion of Laurent Rodier. Finding that the Frenchman was an expert mechanician, Smith took him into his employment. Rodier turned out to be of a singularly inventive turn of mind, and the two, putting their heads together, evolved after long experiment a type of engine that enabled them to double the speed of the aeroplane. These aerial vessels had already attained a maximum of a hundred miles an hour, for progress had been rapid since Paulhan's epoch-making flight from London to Manchester. To the younger generation the aeroplane was becoming what the motor-car had been to their elders. It was now a handier, more compact, and more easily managed machine than the earlier types, and the risk of breakdown was no greater than in the motor-car of the roads. The engine seldom failed, as it was wont to do in the first years of aviation. The principal danger that airmen had to fear was disaster from strong squalls, or from vertical or spiral currents of air due to some peculiarity in the confirmation of the land beneath them.

Smith's engine was a compound turbine, reciprocating engines having proved extravagant in fuel. There were both a high and a low pressure turbine on the same shaft, which also drove the dynamo for the searchlight and the lamp illuminating the compass, and for igniting the explosive mixture. By means of an eccentric, moreover, the shaft worked a pump for compressing the mixture of hot air and petrol before ignition, the air being heated by passing through jackets round the high-pressure turbines. The framework of the planes consisted of hollow rods made of an aluminum alloy of high tensile strength, and the canvas stretched over the frames was laced with wire of the same material. To stiffen the planes, a bracket was clamped at the axis, and thin wire stays were strung top and bottom, as the masts of a yacht are supported. The airman was in some degree protected from the wind by a strong talc screen, also wire-laced; by means of this, and a light radiator worked by a number of accumulators, he was enabled to resist the cold, which had been so great a drawback to the pioneers of airmanship.

In this aeroplane Smith and Rodier had made many a long expedition. They had found that the machine was capable of supporting a total weight of nearly 1,200 lbs., and since Smith turned the scale at eleven stone eight, and Rodier at ten stone, in their clothes, the total additional load they could carry was about 900 lbs. Eighty gallons of petrol weighed about 600 lbs. with the cans, and twenty gallons of lubricating oil about 160 lbs., so that there was a margin of nearly 150 lbs. for food, rifles, and anything else there might be occasion for carrying at any stage of the journey.

Smith was in charge of the aeroplane attached to his ship, the Admiralty having adopted the machine for scouting purposes. It was only recently that he had brought his own aeroplane to its present perfection, after laborious experiments in the workshops he established in the corner of his father's park, where he toiled incessantly whenever he could obtain leave, and where Rodier was constantly employed. His machine had just completed its trials, and he expected to realize a considerable sum by his improvements. Of this he had agreed to give Rodier one half, and the Frenchman had further stipulated that the improvements should be offered also to the French Government. This being a matter of patriotism, Smith readily consented, remarking with a laugh that he would not be the first to break the entente cordiale.

Just as a voyage round the world was a dream until Drake accomplished it, so a flight round the world was the acme of every airman's ambition. It was the accident of his father's plight that crystallized in Smith's mind the desires held in suspension there. The act was sudden: the idea had been long cherished.

He had decided on his course after a careful examination of the globe borrowed from Mr. Dawkins, the village school-master. The most direct route from London to the Solomon Islands ran across Norway and Sweden, the White Sea, Northern Siberia, Manchuria, Korea and Japan, and thence to New Guinea. But since it traversed some of the most desolate regions of the earth, where the indispensable supplies of petrol and machine oil could not be secured, he had chosen a route through fairly large centres of population, along which at the necessary intervals he could ensure, by aid of the telegraph, that the fuel would be in readiness.

And now he was fairly off. Constantinople was to be the first place of call. He knew the orographical map of Europe as well as he knew his manual of navigation. It was advisable to avoid mountainous country as far as possible, for the necessity of rising to great heights, in order to cross even the lower spurs of the Alps, would involve loss of time, to say nothing of the cold, and the risk of accident in the darkness. Coming to the coast, in the neighbourhood of Dover, about half-an-hour after leaving Epsom, he steered for a point on the opposite shore of the Channel somewhere near the Franco-Belgian frontier. As an experienced airman he had long ceased to find the interest of novelty in the scenes below him. The lights of the Calais boat, and of vessels passing up and down the Channel, were almost unnoticed. On leaving the sea, he flew over a flat country until, on his right, he saw in the moonlight a dark mass which from dead reckoning he thought must be the Ardennes. The broad river he had just crossed, which gleamed like silver in the moonlight, was without doubt the Meuse, and that which he came to in about an hour must be the Moselle. At this point Rodier, who had been dozing, sat up and began to take an interest in things; afterwards he told Smith that they must have passed over the little village in which he was born, and he felt a sentimental regret that the flight was not by day, when he might have seen the red roof beneath which his mother still lived.

After another half-hour Smith began to feel the strain of remaining in one position, with all his faculties concentrated. The air was so calm, and the wind-screen so effective, that he suffered none of the numbing effects which the great speed might otherwise have induced; but it was no light task to keep his attention fixed at once on the engine, the map outspread before him, the compass, and the country below; and by the time he reached a still broader river, which could only be the Rhine, he was tired. As yet