Dumbfounded, he stared stupidly at the officer, and feebly protesting, stood back from the machine. Meanwhile Kenneth had taken a tin of petrol from a cupboard in the corner of the shed, and was filling up the tank. When this was done, he ran his eye rapidly over the monoplane, tested the stays, and finding all in good order, said in English: "We’ll lock this fellow in the cupboard. Then you throw the door open, come back quickly, and get into the seat beside me. The engine is running well, and it will only take a few seconds to get off." At the first words of English the mechanic shouted with alarm; but his cry was drowned by the whirring of the propeller, and before he could repeat it he was locked into the cupboard. Then the Englishman carried out Kenneth’s instructions. As soon as he was in his place, Kenneth threw the engine into gear, and the machine glided forward out of the shed into the dimly lit open space beyond. In a few yards it began to rise. There were shouts of surprise from the few men about the grounds and the mechanics in the beershop outside, scarcely heard by the airmen. The monoplane soared up and up, unnoticed by the noisy multitudes in the crowded streets below. It was soon out of sight. Suddenly a beam of blinding light flashed upon it from some point high above the ground. "The searchlight on the cathedral steeple," shouted Kenneth to his companion. "But there’s no danger; they’ll recognise it as a Taube." The searchlight followed its course for a few minutes; then was shut off. "The second trick is to us!" cried the passenger. But Kenneth did not hear him. His whole attention was given to the machine. CHAPTER IV--IN NEUTRAL TERRITORY The sky was clear; there was very little wind; and Kenneth realised that the conditions could hardly have been more propitious. For some minutes he was too closely occupied with the mechanism to consider direction. The monoplane was strange to him. His experience of flying had been almost wholly gained in the machines of his friend Remi Pariset, son of the manager of the Antwerp branch of Amory & Finkelstein. Pariset was a lieutenant in the Belgian flying corps, and Kenneth had frequently accompanied him in flights, at first as passenger only, afterwards being allowed to try his hand in the pilot’s seat. It had long been his aim to gain the pilot’s certificate in England, and, as he had told Frieda Finkelstein, he hoped on the outbreak of war to get a commission in the Royal Flying Corps. Though he had never before managed a monoplane of the type of that which he had appropriated, he had often watched the German airmen, and after a little uncertainty in his manipulation of the controls, he "felt" the machine, and recognised that it would give him no trouble. Then he had leisure to determine his course.