Cross looked over the side. “They’re all right,” he reported. He turned backward again. “Lyle has left. Maybe she’s in a car that’s heading for Tennant’s field at quite a clip.” King Horn nodded. He was enjoying himself. After the obsolete wrecks he had been coaxing and hurling through the air, it was like sitting on a comet to ride this new ship. He had power--terrific power--at his fingertips, and the ship rode the infrequent puffs like a sentient thing. He found the stabilizer adjustment and moved the crank a trifle, until she roared along with no pressure needed on the wheel. The city, an unconvincing array of tiny red buildings and black roofs, with here and there an eruption of newer white towers and spires to break the monotony, floated into sight below them. Even at the comparatively low elevation of two thousand feet it didn’t look at all like the mighty metropolis or man-crushing monster that may be read of in books. In fact, when King Horn looked at it, it reminded him of warts. He swung northwest, hopping over the East River near College Point, crossed the broad and unimpressive Bronx and swept up the Hudson a few miles to give his passengers a look at the Palisades. Then, clinging to the smoother air above the river, he came southward again. These birds, he knew, would like a close view of the financial section, so that they could bore their friends about it next day. “It don’t do to let ’em see that Wall Street’s no bigger than a flyspeck,” King shouted to Cross. “I’ll have to come down to where these buildings size up a bit.” The aviation editor nodded. King Horn throttled down and put the ship into an easy glide. One of his automatic glances around the sky suddenly encountered something more than vacancy--a ship coming from Long Island. Its wings were knifelike, for it was headed straight toward them. Absorbed in his maneuvers about the lower end of Manhattan, King Horn gave the other ship only cursory attention. Suddenly, as they circled above the Woolworth tower, Cross touched him on the arm. The other ship was almost above them and circling with them. It was a black-and-white biplane--King recognized it instantly as one of Tennant’s circus; then, with narrowed eyes, he noted that it was the ship that Syd Scoggins, Tennant’s lieutenant, usually flew. He stared hard at the figure in the forward cockpit. Undoubtedly that girl was Lyle Tennant. Syd Scoggins was waving vigorously and closing in on them. Frowning, King Horn waved back. Syd Scoggins was not one to go in for hand waving without cause. In answer to King’s upraised hand Lyle, in the front cockpit, lowered something over the side of the biplane--a bulky thing that seemed to tax her strength. It was a five-gallon gasoline can, and by the way it hung in the wind at the end of the rope, it was a full can.