Page:Edgar Wallace--Tam o the Scoots.djvu/80

 that fellow on the Morane? Oh, yes, that's Parker-Smith. H'm!"

"What's wrong?"

"Where's Tam—I hope those beggars didn't catch him— There he is, the devil!"

Tam was doing stunts. He was side-slipping, nose-diving and looping—he was, in fine, setting up all those stresses which a machine under extraordinary circumstances might have to endure.

"He always does that with a new machine, sir," said Captain Blackie's companion. "I've never understood why, because if he found a weak place, he'd be too dead for the information to be of any service to him."

Later, when Tam condescended to bring himself to earth, Blackie asked him.

"Why do you do fool stunts, Tam? The place to test the machine is on the ground?"

"Ye're wrong, sir-r," said Tam quietly; "the groond's a fine place to test a wee perambulator or a motor-car or a pair of buits—but it's no' the place to test an aeroplane.