Our speed increased, I cannot tell how much, but the hum of the flying machine rose several semitones, and it felt as though the resistance to the pedals had completely ceased – which was absurd, seeing that my efforts were redoubled. Could it be that the amazing Jewey Jacobs had made even further progress?

Now I no longer saw the unvarying asphalt track beneath my feet, but – very far away – the top of the locomotive! The smoke from the coal and kerosene blinded us in our masks. The flying machine seemed to be creeping along.

“Vulture’s glide,” explained Corporal Gilbey curtly, between fits of coughing. “Watch out for the fall!”

It is known, as Arthur Gough could explain better than I, that a body in motion, moving at a high speed, rises in a glide, its speed overcoming its adherence to the ground. It will, of course, fall back again, if it is not provided with some organs designed to propel it through space.

Our five-man cycle, when it fell, vibrated like a tuning fork.

“All right,” said the corporal suddenly, with an odd gesture, his nose up against his front wheel. We were now again moving as before.

“Front tire blown,” said Bill in reassuring tones.

On our right there was no longer any trace of the cars. Enormous piles of wood and cans of gasoline were heaped on the tender. The cars had been detached and left behind; even if their momentum had allowed them to follow for a time, their vibration would have sufficed to hold them back. It was now possible to follow the movement of the wheels. The locomotive was still at the same level.

“Vulture’s glide again,” said Bill Gilbey. “Can’t fall now. Rear tire blown. All right.”

I was so astonished that I raised my head over the top of my horizontal mask and looked into the air. The flying machine had disappeared and had doubtless been left behind somewhere with the abandoned cars.

Everything was going well, however, as the corporal had said; the speedometer, trembling against his cheek, was still marking a regularly increasing top speed, which had long since been in excess of three hundred kilometers per hour.

The turning point could now be seen on the horizon.

It was a great tower, open to the sky, shaped like a truncated cone, two hundred yards in diameter at the base and a hundred yards high. Massive stone and iron buttresses supported it. The race track and the rails were swallowed up in it through a sort of gateway and, inside, for a fraction of a minute, we whirled lying over on our sides, and held by our momentum to the walls, which were not only vertical but overhanging, like the underside of a roof. We seemed like flies racing along on a ceiling.

The locomotive was suspended on its side beneath us, like a shelf on a wall. A thrumming sound filled the truncated cone.