Benny placed the town at once, working up from the southward, past the islands of the Borromeos to Locarno and the mountains. He thought that he could have dropped a stone upon the very shanty—and laughed at himself for the boast. There was a great acetylene lamp at the prow of his ship, and it burned brightly enough as he began to sweep down toward the lake. Long afterwards the simple folk were to tell how a star had fallen from the north and shone gloriously above the Virgin’s Church at Ascona. Others would have it that a fireball, monstrous beyond any of the fables, had come down and settled a while upon the slope of the mountain opposite Magadino. The whole country round about was golden with the flame of it, they said, while the sounds attending it were unlike anything earthly. But one old fellow, and he a fisherman of Losone, actually saw the machine descend; he believed that the veritable dragon, which the saint slew, had come to life again, and he ran headlong. Benny landed about a third of a mile from the chalet. He chose a gentle slope of the hill, and came down without much damage—but he could not help the reflection that the flight might cost him a good deal of money before he had done with it, and that it would be no light undertaking to get the machine across the pass again. This, however, was the thought of an instant, and when he had seen to his engine, turned off the petrol, and done what he could to make things ship-shape, he went on to the shanty without further delay, and was at its garden gate in less than twenty minutes from the time of his descent. It was a pretty little house, gabled and covered in summer with the great flowers of the begonia. Possessing a good frontage to the lake, there was also a boathouse and landing-stage—the former having a smoking-room built right out over the water. On the other side there ran the high road to Losone on the one hand, and to Ronco on the other. In summer this road was alive with the motor cars of the Americans doing Europe in five-and-twenty minutes; but a night of winter found it deserted enough, and not a soul was to be discerned, either in the little village above the shanty or upon the highway itself. Benny had hoped to meet some friend or neighbour among the villagers who would have helped him to guard the airship; but finding none, he determined to telephone to Ascone directly it was safe to do so—and with that in his head he opened the garden gate and went in.