They curved over the Big Peak, and a gust of wind—a real flaw—swooped up at them from the cold valley beyond. Then they struck a “hole in the air,” and the _Hustle_ dropped two hundred feet. But she did not go down like a shot—she took the drop easily. Again Hike shouted, and settled back in his seat, looking out to the blue sunny stretch of the Pacific Ocean, longing to soar over it in the _Hustle_. He laughed down at the arroyos and hills beneath them, over which they were passing so easily. They looked like small folds in a heap of green velvet. In twenty minutes, they were in sight of Monterey. As they passed the Carmel valley, there was a crackling from the engine; it missed a stroke, and then suddenly stopped. Hike was much interested to find that he wasn’t scared, after all. Here they were, two thousand feet up, balanced on nothing but air, with the ground _very_ far below, and with the engine stopped. But Martin Priest merely turned back to him, with a grin that made his prophet face look very good-natured. Then—Martin Priest took his hands entirely off the levers, stood up, and began to sing a hymn! Gone crazy, Hike first thought—just now, when all his skill was needed, to keep them safe on the long glide to earth! Hike’s backbone seemed frozen. Then he looked at Martin Priest’s face again, and down to earth. The _Hustle_ was sinking as easily as a feather, with a little creaking of her many planes. Only a tetrahedral could flutter down like that. Lieutenant Adeler stood up, made ready to grapple with Martin Priest. “Let ’im alone,” shrieked Hike. “We’re going all right. Part of the test.” “Good boy,” Martin Priest stopped singing to say. “It is. The tetrahedral can’t be wrecked.” Then he stepped back to the engine, and tried her spark. When they had softly, easily, settled down to about a hundred feet from the earth, so that the branches of trees below seemed rushing up at them, Priest yelled to the Lieutenant, “Push that right lever forward.” As the lever slid forward, Martin Priest started the engine. After the silence, it was deafening; like the crackling of a hundred machine-guns at once. Hike could scarcely hear himself, but he shouted again and again, while they darted up, then soared aloft to five thousand feet. As they flew over Monterey, the people rushed from the streets and gardens up to the tops of their Spanish adobe houses. They were used to ordinary Jolls biplanes, but this great bird was different. On the fashionable drives and tennis-courts of the Del Monte hotel, rich Eastern tourists gazed up till their necks ached. Hike yelled in Martin Priest’s ear, “Let me try her!” “Sure,” roared back Priest, though Lieutenant Adeler, guessing what was up, shook his head. “See this lever. It raises and deflects elevating planes, for’ard there. Makes her go up and down. This one, on the left, controls her rudder—back there, like a ship’s rudder. Say, I can’t yell against this. Even fifty horse-power’s too much.”