He steered the machine round without taking the way off her, and swooped down towards the city.

At the end of the swoop he was already over the suburbs, and he switched off the electric lamps.

He took the way off the machine by switching up the planes; and then, using only the propeller, circled round, seeking for the Eiffel Tower.

Presently he saw it looming through the first dim grey light of the dawn, steered over it, let fall a grapnel, and hooked it into the railings which ran round it; took a turn of the rope round the windlass, and wound the machine down to within twenty feet of the top.

Then he went to the financier, unroped him, and kicked him in the ribs ungently.
As he kicked, saying, "Get up! Get up!" an astonished voice below cried, "Qui vive ?" Looking over the side of the car Tinker saw dimly the figure of a gendarme, and said briskly, "Santos-Dumont!" "Vive Santos-Dumont!" cried the gendarme with enthusiasm.
Tinker went back to the financier, and kicked him again.
"Where am I?
Where am I ?" he murmured faintly.
"On the top of the Eiffel Tower," said Tinker.
"What?
Saved! Saved!" cried the financier, for all the world as though he had been in a melodrama; and he sat up.
"I should like the five thousand pounds, please," said Tinker, brought back by the touch of earth from his aerial dreams to cold reality.
"Five thousand pounds!" cried the financier, every faculty alert at the mention of money.