After staying indoors all day, I felt the need of fresh air; and resolved to walk across the Park to Cumberland Terrace to see whether Wotherspoon had quite recovered from the shock. I had not much doubt in my mind upon the point; for the traces of his journalistic activity were plain enough; and showed that he was certainly not incapacitated. However, as I wanted a stroll and as I might as well have an object before me, I decided to go and see him. Twilight was coming on as I crossed the suspension bridge. Even after the thunder-storm on the previous night there had been no rainfall; and although the temperature had fallen until the air was almost chilly, there was as yet no dew on the ground. I stopped on the bridge to watch the tints of the western sky; for these London after-glow effects always pleased me. As I leaned on the rail, I heard the low drone of aerial engines; and in a few seconds the broad wings of the Australian Express swept between me and the sky. Even in those days I could never see one of these vast argosies passing overhead without a throb in my veins. The great air-services had just come to their own; and aeroplanes started from London four and five times daily for America, Asia, Africa, and Australia. In the windows of the air-offices the flight of these vessels could be followed hour by hour on the huge world-maps over which moved tiny models showing the exact positions of the various aeroplanes on the globe. Watching the dots moving across the surface of the charts, one could call up, with very little imagination, the landscapes which were sweeping into the view of travellers on board the real machines as they glided through these far-distant spaces of the air. This one, two days out from London, would be sighting the pagoda roofs of Pekin as the night was coming on; that one, on the Pacific route, had just finished filling up its tanks at Singapore and was starting on the long course to Australia; the passengers on this other would be watching the sun standing high over Victoria Nyanza; while, on the Atlantic, the Western Ocean Express and the South American Mail were racing the daylight into a fourth continent.