Feeling the earth beneath his feet, he took a step or two away from the machine, reeling and stumbling like a drunken man, then turned back.
"Come, my friend!" he urged Lanyard in a voice of strangely normal intonation—"look alive—if you're able—and lend me a hand with mademoiselle. I'm afraid she has fainted."
The girl was reclining inertly in the bands of webbing, her eyes closed, her lips ajar, her limbs slackened.
"Small blame to her!" Lanyard commented, fumbling clumsily with the chest-band. "That dive was enough to drive a body mad!"
"But I had to do it!" the aviator protested earnestly. "I dared not remain longer up there. I have never before been afraid in the air, but after that I was terribly afraid. I could feel myself going—taking leave of my senses—and I knew I must act if we were not to follow that other … God! what a death!"
He paused, shuddered, and drew the back of his hand across his eyes before continuing: "So I cut off the ignition and volplaned. Here—my hand. So-o! All right, eh?"
"Oh, I'm all right," Lanyard insisted confidently.
But his confidence was belied by a look of daze; for the earth was billowing and reeling round him as though bewitched; and before he knew what had happened he sat down hard and stared foolishly up at the aviator.
"Here!" said the latter courteously, his wind-mask hiding a smile—"my hand again, monsieur. You've endured more than you know. And now for mademoiselle."
But when they approached the girl, she surprised both
