Up in the air again—oh! it was _great_! He felt as though he ought to come down and ask the Lieutenant’s permission before really taking a trip, but—this was so good! The cracking motor sounded sweeter to him than any music he had ever heard. He whooped as he faced the fresh breeze from the Pacific—and then he settled calmly down to reaching Santa Benicia Academy as soon as he could. It was forty miles away, and he was flying at eighty miles an hour. The slender, fishy body cut through air like a shark churning foam. He had to make a curve around San Francisco, but nevertheless he sighted the towers of the academy in thirty-five minutes after he had left Tanforan—and it seemed like five minutes. He was careful. (“Sure I’m careful!” he apologized to himself.) He had to watch out for the differences in control between the monoplane and the tetrahedral—the elevating planes were at the opposite end, and worked oppositely, for instance. But careful or not, he was so excited over speeding again that he had to yell “Wow, WOW!” about every three minutes, to relieve his nerves. He’d never lose his love for the _Hustle_. No other machine could load enough gasoline to speed across the country, and carry a large enough motor to make two hundred an hour. But this—this was like riding on a bow of a torpedo-boat going at forty knots, while driving the _Hustle_ was like strolling along the decks of a big liner, easier but not half so exciting. So Hike whooped and sang, in the cockpit, close to the wings, and hurled the Paulhan-Tatin at Santa Benicia. He circled all about the campus twice, then darted down in the Yard, landing at sixty miles an hour—like a bullet striking a steel plate and glancing off. He shot across the long grass plot, with the body of the machine bumping and leaping up into the air, as it bounced on the tires of its wheels. The tail flapped as though the whole machine was going to turn over. It looked as if the nose would smash into the archway, at the end of the Yard. It stopped only a few feet away. Hike looked slightly scared, as he crawled out of the cockpit. “Gee! That’s different from landing in the _Hustle_!” he admitted. “I didn’t think even a monoplane would come down quite that fast!” The whole academy came rushing up. “Old Grouch,” the Greek master, who was holding a recitation in Anabasis, actually dismissed the class, and came running out, with a piece of chalk still in one hand. The football-team had just been starting for the athletic-field, in twos and threes. Though the coach yelled at them, they deserted the field and came tearing into the Yard. “Hey, you footballers—come on and have a ride!” shouted Hike, and climbed back into the cockpit of the monoplane. From this elevation, he saw Taffy Bingham on the edge of the crowd. “Come on, Taffy,” he added, but Taffy shook his head, rather scornfully, and strolled away.