"Nope. I'm gettin' sore now, Dick.... Hey you, mechanic: hurt that wing when she tipped?... All right. Start her. Quick. While it's calm." The engine whirred. The assistants let go the tail. The machine labored forward, but once it left the ground it shot up quickly. The head-wind came in a terrific gust. The machine hung poised in air for a moment, driven back by the gale nearly as fast as it was urged forward by its frantically revolving propeller. Carl was as yet too doubtful of his skill to try to climb above the worst of the wind. If he could only keep a level course---- He fought his way up one side of the race-track. He crouched in his seat, meeting the sandy blast with bent head. The parted lips which permitted him to catch his breath were stubborn and hard about his teeth. His hands played swiftly, incessantly, over the control as he brought her back to even keel. He warped the wings so quickly that he balanced like an acrobat sitting rockingly on a tight-wire. He was too busy to be afraid or to remember that there was a throng of people below him. But he was conscious that the grand stand, at the side of the track, half-way down, was creeping toward him. More every instant did he hate the clamor of the gale and the stream of minute drops of oil, blown back from the engine, that spattered his face. His ears strained for misfire of the engine, if it stopped he would be hurled to earth. And one cylinder was not working. He forgot that; kept the cloche moving; fought the wind with his will as with his body. Now, he was aware of the grand stand below him. Now, of the people at the end of the track. He flew beyond the track, and turned. The whole force of the gale was thrown behind him, and he shot back along the other side of the race-track at eighty or ninety miles an hour. Instantly he was at the end; then a quarter of a mile beyond the track, over plowed fields, where upward currents of warm air increased the pitching of the machine as he struggled to turn her again and face the wind. The following breeze was suddenly retarded and he dropped forty feet, tail down. He was only forty feet from the ground, falling straight, when he got back to even keel and shot ahead. How safe the nest of the nacelle where he sat seemed then! Almost gaily he swung her in a great wavering circle--and the wind was again in his face, hating him, pounding him, trying to get under the wings and turn the machine turtle. Twice more he worked his way about the track. The conscience of the beginner made him perform a diffident Dutch roll before the grand stand, but he was growling, "And that's all they're going to get. See?"