And what a flight it was! Instead of the steady race of the carrier pigeon, or of the rooks homeward bound at evening, it was the see-saw motion of the wren's swinging journey across the lawn; only heavier, faster, and with more terrific impetus. Up and down, each time with a rise and fall of twenty feet, he careered, whistling through the summer night; at the drop of each curve, so low that the scents of dewy grass rose into his face; at the crest of it, so high that the trees and hedges often became mere blots upon the dark surface of the earth. The fields rushed by beneath him; the white roads flashed past like streaks of snow. Sometimes he shot across sheets of water and felt the cooler air strike his cheeks; sometimes over sheltered meadows, where the sunshine had slept all day and the air was still soft and warm; on and on, as easily as rain dropping from the sky, or wind rushing earthwards from between the clouds. Everything flew past him at an astonishing rate--everything but the bright stars that gazed calmly down overhead; and when he looked up and saw their steadfastness it helped to keep within bounds the fine alarm of this first excursion into the great vault of the sky. "Gently, child!" gasped Miss Lake behind him. "We shall never keep it up at this rate." "Oh! but it's so wonderful," he cried, drawing in the air loudly between his teeth, and shaking his wings rapidly like a hawk before it drops. The pace slackened a little and the girl drew up alongside. For some time they flew forward together in silence. They had been skirting the edge of a wood, when suddenly the trees fell away and Jimbo gave a scream and rose fifty feet into the air with a single bound. Straight in front of him loomed an immense, glaring disc that seemed to swim suddenly up into the sky above the trees. It hung there before his eyes and dazzled him. "It's only the moon," cried Miss Lake from below. Jimbo dropped through the air to her side again with a gasp. "I thought it was a big hole in the sky with fire rushing through," he explained breathlessly. The boy stared, full of wonder and delight, at the huge flaming circle that seemed to fill half the heavens in front of him. "Look out!" cried the governess, seizing his hand. Whish! whew! whirr! A large bird whipped past them like some winged imp of darkness, vanishing among the trees far below. There would certainly have been a collision but for the girl's energetic interference. "You must be on the look-out for these night-birds," she said. "They fly so unexpectedly, and, of course, they don't see us properly. Telegraph wires and church steeples are bad too, but then we shan't fly over cities much. Keep a good height, it's safer." They altered their course a little, flying at a different angle, so that the moon no longer dazzled them. Steering came quite easily by turning the body, and Jimbo still led the way, the governess following heavily and with a mighty business of wings and flapping.