"Then I'm sorry for you," observed the lad slowly, "for it was the most lovely thing I ever saw in my life. Four men and one girl were dashed to pieces, and they've had to stop the race meeting--for this is Worcester Races on the Pitchcroft--whilst they look for the remains of the poor victims who are supposed to have come all the way from the Crystal Palace with Mr Santos-Dumont, who, luckily, made his escape in the parachute before the thing fell." Neither Casteno nor I, however, troubled to enlighten the lad as to the true facts. For one thing, it amused us slightly to discover for ourselves how strangely the news of our arrival had travelled, and in what a small degree the good citizens of Worcester were wont to mix the naked truth with their carefully-compounded stories of breathless adventure. For another, we were desperately anxious to get away from the neighbourhood of that racecourse. Any second the hue-and-cry might spread to the point at which we were. Indeed, it seemed little short of madness to loiter, and we sprang into the punt immediately we could get the lad to cast her off, and almost before he quite understood how quickly we had acted we had got ourselves concealed and the boy hard at work punting us down the stream. Happily, the Severn covers but a few hundred yards in its passage from the racecourse to the city of Worcester itself, and so excited were the crowd over the fall and appearance of our air-ship that we contrived to slip away quite unobserved, to glide under the bridge that cut off Worcester from its suburbs, and to float past the cathedral, close to which stand the grey, old monastic ruins. Here we insisted on disembarking, because we found these remains were walled in and really furnished an ideal place of concealment, but we did not dismiss our guide. "Go, sonny, and buy us two suits of rough blue serge," I said, handing the lad four glittering sovereigns. "If they ask you any inconvenient questions say they are for your father, who is employed on a coal barge, and has had his duds stolen, a thing that often happens, I'm told. If there is any change remaining over, keep it, but whatever you do, hurry--hurry like mad." The boy, who had now quite entered into the humour of the adventure, and thought what a fine thing it was to be outwitting the police under their very noses as it were, tore off, leaving us in charge of the punt. And such good use did he make of his time, his opportunities, and the shopping facilities of the immediate district that, in less than half-an-hour, he returned with the things we had ordered. Very soon we bade him good-bye and gave him half-a-sovereign for his trouble; and, waiting until he had disappeared round a bend of the river, we scaled the wall that shut off the cathedral school ground from the ruins, and then plunged into an ancient recess in the wall where, in the half darkness, we threw off our uniforms and put on our serge suits.