"Better you than me," remarked the Captain with a laugh. "But I was unaware that the Sultan was a devotee of the art of flying." "He is, and he isn’t," replied Jenkins. "He owns a good many air crafts of various types, and I and several others, mostly Frenchmen, by the by, give exhibition flights while he sits in his state chair and watches us. But how goes it? You look jolly fit, and don’t appear as if you were hard up for a dollar?" "No, I cannot complain on that score," said Captain Restronguet quietly. "Well, come and have a look at my little air-fleet. Really they don’t make a bad show. And your friend, of course." "Sorry," replied Captain Restronguet. "But we’re in a regular hurry. I am trying to get a boat to put me off." "Where to?" asked Jenkins. "One of the liners in the Roads?" "No, further out; quite five miles off." "Guess you won’t get a Zanzibari to take on the job. There’s a brute of a swell tumbling in. Look here, I’ll tell you what: I’ll give you a lift in one of our aero-hydroplanes, if you like." "Is it safe?" asked Captain Restronguet earnestly, whereat Hythe wondered, for his companion had never before shown signs of timidity, even when in tight corners in the depths of the sea. "Safe as a house," replied Jenkins reassuringly. "Jenkins, my friend, you misunderstand me, although I quite admit the question was ambiguous. Is it safe--or shall we say discreet?--to take us for a ’joy-ride’ in one of the Sultan’s air-craft?" "If anything His Highness would be pleased to see me making a flight in gusty weather with two passengers; so say the word and I’ll trot out the contraption. It’s the only way." "Carry on, then," assented Captain Restronguet. Within the spacious outer courtyard of the palace stood a number of lofty sheds with sliding doors. At a wave and a gesture from the chief aviator a number of natives opened the doors and dragged a huge aero-hydroplane of an obsolete pattern into the sunlight. The machine was a biplane. Underneath the two long floats were four wheels, so that it could be adapted either for alighting and rising from the sea or land. Jenkins critically examined various nuts and tension wires, started the engine, till the machine was all a-quiver with the vibration from the revolving cylinders. "All correct," he bawled, for the rapid explosion of the motor practically deadened every other sound. "Get aboard." Captain Restronguet occupied a seat immediately behind and slightly higher than the pilot, while Hythe sat behind the biplane. Jenkins vaulted agilely into his place, motioned to the attendants to stand clear and thrust home the clutch of the propeller shaft. The aero-hydro-craft leapt over the ground for about twenty yards with a jerk that nearly capsized the two passengers; then soaring upwards it cleared the courtyard wall by barely six feet, passed over the upturned faces of a crowd of natives in the roadway, and shot rapidly across the harbour.