And suddenly the monoplane slipped over the edge of the Council House and
fell like a diving swallow. It dropped, tilting at an angle of forty-five
degrees, so steeply that it seemed to Graham, it seemed perhaps to most
of those below, that it could not possibly rise again.
It fell so closely past him that he could see Ostrog clutching the guides
of the seat, with his grey hair streaming; see the white-faced aeronaut
wrenching over the lever that turned the machine upward. He heard the
apprehensive vague cry of innumerable men below.
Graham clutched the railing before him and gasped. The second seemed an
age. The lower vane of the monoplane passed within an ace of touching the
people, who yelled and screamed and trampled one another below.
And then it rose.
For a moment it looked as if it could not possibly clear the opposite
cliff, and then that it could not possibly clear the wind-wheel that
rotated beyond.
And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward,
upward into the wind-swept sky.
The suspense of the moment gave place to a fury of exasperation as the
swarming people realised that Ostrog had escaped them. With belated
activity they renewed their fire, until the rattling wove into a roar,
until the whole area became dim and blue and the air pungent with the
thin smoke of their weapons.
Too late! The flying machine dwindled smaller and smaller, and curved
about and swept gracefully downward to the flying stage from which it had
so lately risen.
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