Lieutenant Pennington, a youthful Afrikander airman who was noted for his coolness and daring, was despatched from Kasvin on July 7th. He was to fly to Urumia carrying a written assurance of speedy British aid for the beleaguered garrison there. Pennington made a rapid non-stop flight to Mianeh, covering the distance from Kasvin in a little over two hours. He spent a day at Mianeh, where he carried out a series of useful demonstrations intended to impress the local Democrats. They had never seen an aeroplane before, and were rather vague as to its offensive potentialities. Moreover, they had been inclined to be scornful of our want of military strength so glaringly revealed at Mianeh. But now, at all events, the Democrats were duly impressed by Pennington and his machine. They argued that, if one aeroplane could come from Kasvin in a couple of hours, so could a whole flotilla, and armed with death-dealing bombs. Not altogether ignorant of the doctrine of consequences, the Democrats realized the value of oratorical discretion; so for a while they put a curb on their poisonously anti-British tongues. Meanwhile Pennington continued his aerial journey to Turkish-menaced Urumia, the city by the lake shore, where a Christian army was sheltering and wondering anxiously whether it was succour or the {167} sword that awaited it. Within two hours of leaving Mianeh, the intrepid airman was crossing over Lake Urumia heading for the western shore. He dropped low on approaching the city itself, and his unexpected appearance brought consternation to the inhabitants. Aeroplanes were unknown in those parts. They felt that this visitor from the clouds could hardly be a friend; therefore he was presumably a foe. Reasoning thus, the Jelus lost no time in blazing away a portion of their already slender stock of ammunition in the hope of bringing him down. The aviator had many narrow escapes, and so had his machine. He landed with a few bullet holes through his clothing, but his aeroplane, happily, had not been "hulled," or he would have been immobilized at Urumia.