When the airmen were in their places, Schwab limped up.

“Permit me to shake hands viz ze first circumnavigator of ze sky,” he said with effusion, “and to remind you zat my firma Schlagintwert vill be most happy to supply you viz anyzink vatefer zat you need, and in vatefer region of ze globe you may be, on receipt of postcard, telegram, cable, or Marconigram.  Hoch!”

His cheer was taken up by the crowd.  The machine moved forward.  Herr Schwankmacher, stepping back, fell into the arms of a grinning stoker, and a little native boy, shrieking with fright, ran head-first into the corpulent frame of a merchant who was more stable in his copra business than in his legs.  The aeroplane flew up; the crowd watched its ascension like adoring worshippers of some sky deity; and in three minutes it was a mere speck in the cloudless blue.

CHAPTER XVI

A STOP-PRESS MESSAGE

Mr. John McMurtrie, editor of the Toronto Sphere, a capable journalist and a man of many friends, strolled into his office about three o’clock one Wednesday afternoon.  His first extra edition was due at four, and it may seem that he had allowed himself a very short time for dealing with fresh items of news that had come to hand since noon; but he had an excellent assistant, who took a real interest in his work, so that there was no need for the editor to hurry his luncheon or the ensuing cigar.

“Well, Daniels,” he said genially, as he entered his assistant’s room.  He sat across a corner of the table, exhibiting a well-developed calf neatly covered with golfing hose.  “Is there anything fresh and frothy on the tape?”

“Not much.  A wire from ’Frisco about those flying men.”

“You don’t say so?”

“Here it is.”

He handed the slip to his chief, who ran his eye over the message.  The words employed were few, but a journalist of McMurtrie’s experience instinctively covered the bare bones with a respectable integument, and clothed this with a quite picturesque raiment by force of the more ornamental parts of speech.

The substance of what he read was as follows:  A cable message had reached San Francisco from Honolulu in the afternoon of the previous day, announcing that an aeroplane had alighted there about three o’clock that morning, the owner, a Lieutenant Thistleton (so it was corrupted) Smith declaring that he had come from Samoa in sixteen hours, and was proceeding to San Francisco.  He had left three hours later, having waited only to take in a stock of petrol.  On receipt of this message the editor of every newspaper in the city had arranged for a relay of reporters to be up all night and watch for the arrival of this extraordinary machine.  Shortly after midnight the hum of the propellers was heard over Golden Gate, and a light in the sky indicating the course of the aeroplane, a dozen journalists, in motor-cars, rushed