After the eighteen-metre spirals we were given a few rides on the fifteen-metre machine--very small, fast and powerful, but a delicious thing to handle in the air; and after left and right vertical spirals on this type, we went to the class of formation-flying, where one is supposed to learn flying in squadron formation, like wild geese. This is extremely valuable, but most men take this chance for joy-riding, as they have petrol for three hours, and are responsible to no one. On my first day in this class I found no one at the rendezvous, so I rose to about four thousand feet, and headed at a hundred miles an hour for the coast. In thirty-five minutes I was over Biarritz, where my eyes fairly feasted on the salt water, sparkling blue, and foam-crested. I do not see how men can live long away from the sea and the mountains. My motor was running like a clock and as I was beginning to have perfect confidence in its performance, I came down in a long coast to the ground, and went rushing across country toward the mountains, skimming a yard up, across pastures, leaping vertically over high hedges of poplar trees, booming down the main streets of villages, and behaving like an idiot generally, from sheer intoxication of limitless speed and power. In a few moments I was at the entrance of one of the huge gorges that pierce the Pyrenees--the sort of place up which the hosts of Charlemagne were guided by the White Stag: deep and black and winding, with an icy stream rushing down its depths. Why not? I gave her full gas and whizzed up between black walls of rock that magnified enormously the motor's snarl, up and up until there was snow beneath me and ahead I could see the sun gleaming on the gorgeous ragged peaks. Up and up, nine, ten, eleven thousand feet, and I was skimming the highest ridges that separate France and Spain. Imagine rising from a field in Los Angeles, and twenty-five minutes later flying over the two-mile-high ridges of Baldy and Sheep Mountain, swooping down to graze the snow, or bounding into the air with more speed and ease than any bird. At last, as my time was nearly up, I headed back for Pau. A few minutes later, just as I sighted the pygmy groups of hangars, my motor gave forth a loud bang and a sheet of flame, and several chunks of metal tore whizzing through the aluminum hood. Automatically, I pulled at the lever which closes the gasoline flow and tilted the machine forward to keep my speed. Another bang, accompanied by black smoke. "Holy mackerel!" I thought; "this is the end of me! Let's see--in case of fire, shut off petrol, open throttle, and leave the spark on. Then go into a nose-dive."