Flying had become so commonplace an experience that this simple journey warrants perhaps no more space than a train-ride. Being my own first departure from the solid earth, however, it took on a personal interest that was enhanced by the ruthlessness with which my layman impressions were shattered. I had always supposed, for instance, that passengers of the air were tucked snugly into upholstered seats and secured from individual mishap by some species of leather harness. Not at all! When my knapsack had been tossed into the cockpit—where there was room for a steamer-trunk or two—the pathfinder motioned to me to climb in after it. I did so, and gazed about me in amazement. Upholstered seats indeed! Two loose boards, a foot wide and rudely gnawed off on the ends by some species of _Ersatz_ saw, teetered insecurely on the two frail strips of wood that half concealed the steering-wires. Now and then, during the journey, they slipped off at one end or the other, giving the ride an annoying resemblance to a jolting over country roads in a farm wagon. One might at least have been furnished a cushion, at two hundred and twenty-five marks an hour! The pathfinder took his seat on one of the boards and I on the other. Behind me was a stout strap, attached to the framework of the machine. “I suppose I am to put this around me?” I remarked, as casually as possible, picking up the dangling strip of leather. “Oh no, you won’t need that,” replied my companion of the cockpit, absently. “We are not going high; not over a thousand meters or so.” He spoke as if a little drop of that much would do no one any harm. The silly notion flashed through my head that perhaps these wicked Huns were planning to flip me out somewhere along the way, an absurdity which a second glance at the pathfinder’s seat, as insecure as my own, smothered in ridicule. There was no mail and no other passenger than myself that morning. _Regular_ service means just that, with the German, and the flight would have started promptly at nine even had I not been there to offset the cost of gasolene at two dollars a quart. We roared deafeningly, crawled a few yards, sped faster and faster across a long field, the tall grass bowing prostrate as we passed, rose imperceptibly into the air and, circling completely around, sailed majestically over a tiny toy house that had been a huge hangar a moment before, and were away into the north.