“Oh, glorious magic!” cried Marta.

“A dozen good shots could readily bring it down,” remarked Westerling critically.  “It makes a steady target at that angle of approach.  He’s going to turn—­but take care, there!”

“Oh!” groaned Marta and Mrs. Galland together.

In an agony of suspense they saw the fragile creation of cloth and bamboo and metal, which had seemed as secure as an albatross riding on the lap of a steady wind, dip far over, careen back in the other direction, and then the whirring noise that had grown with its flight ceased.  It was no longer a thing of winged life, defying the law of gravity, but a thing dead, falling under the burden of a living weight.

“The engine has stopped!” exclaimed Westerling, any trace of emotion in his observant imperturbability that of satisfaction that the machine was the enemy’s.  He was thinking of the exhibition, not of the man in the machine.

Marta was thinking of the man who was about to die, a silhouette against the soft blue holding its own balance resolutely in the face of peril.  She could not watch any longer; she could not wait on the catastrophe.  She was living the part of the aviator more vividly than he, with his hand and mind occupied.  She rushed down the terrace steps wildly, as if her going and her agonized prayer could avert the inevitable.  The plane, descending, skimmed the garden wall and passed out of sight.  She heard a thud, a crackling of braces, a ripping of cloth, but no cry.

Westerling had started after her, exclaiming, “This is a case for first aid!” while Mrs. Galland, taking the steps as fast as she could, brought up the rear.  Through the gateway in the garden wall could be seen the shoulders of a young officer, a streak of red coursing down his cheek, rising from the wreck.  An inarticulate sob of relief broke from Marta’s throat, followed by quick gasps of breath.  Captain Arthur Lanstron was looking into the startled eyes of a young girl that seemed to reflect his own emotions of the moment after having shared those he had in the air.

“I flew!  I flew clear over the range, at any rate!” he said.  “And I’m alive.  I managed to hold her so she missed the wall and made an easy bump.”

Marta smiled in the reaction from terror at his idea of an easy bump, while he was examining the damage to his person.  He got one foot free of the wreck and that leg was all right.  She shared his elation.  Then he found that the other was uninjured, just as she cried in distress: 

“But your hand—­oh, your hand!”

His left hand hung limp from the wrist, cut, mashed, and bleeding.  Its nerves numbed, he had not as yet felt any pain from the injury.  Now he regarded it in a kind of awakening stare of realization of a deformity to come.

“Wool-gathering again!” he muttered to himself crossly.

Then, seeing that she had turned white, he thrust the disgusting thing behind his back and twinged with the movement.  The pain was arriving.