This machine, which is seen above with Mr. Grahame-White at the steering wheel, holds a world’s record for weight-lifting, having flown for 19 minutes at Hendon, carrying nine passengers. The craft has a wing-span of 60 feet, and is driven by a motor of 100 horse-power.] A flight of 40 miles now lies before you. The motor throbs rhythmically, the altitude is 3000 feet, and your craft sways a little sometimes, ever so slightly, as it encounters a gust of wind. Below lies Surrey, with its commons, parks, and woods; and the effect of your height is now peculiar. You have a fixed delusion that the aeroplane is standing still, and that you are moving neither forward nor sideways; and yet your speed, as a matter of fact, is more than 50 miles an hour, and the sea-coast creeps nearer mile by mile. This illusion, this strong belief that you are motionless, is due to your height above the ground. Looking down upon the earth, from an altitude of several thousand feet, you have no near object by which you can gauge your speed. It is the same when one glances from the window of an express, and catches sight of some distant hill. Even in a train running at sixty miles an hour, if you watch a landmark that is remote, it will seem that your pace is slow; and yet if you note the telegraph poles close beside the track, you see that they are flying past your carriage window. Soon, after peering steadily ahead, your pilot turns towards you with a call: “Look--the sea!” Your eyes follow the direction of his outstretched arm, and there, faint upon the sky-line but quite distinct, and reflecting the glint of the sun, lie the waters of the Channel. The land at its brink is only dimly visible at first: there is a slight sea-mist; but soon, as your craft speeds closer, the wide sweep of the coast is open to your view. Westward lies Selsey Bill, at the extremity of a stretch of shore which juts boldly to the sea; and then from west to east, as you turn your head, you follow the line of the coast until Beachy Head, standing clear-cut and distinct, caps to the eastward this fine-drawn curve. You call an inquiry, and your pilot points ahead: almost in the centre of the bay, at a point where a glint of water, seen a little way inland, reveals the location of Shoreham Harbour, lies the aerodrome that is your goal. [Illustration: FIG. 98.--Hendon to Shoreham, 55 miles.]