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pitch and Biggles never would forget his first sight of a perfect three-point landing.
    â€˜I don’t know why, but I felt something turn over within me. I’d read about aeroplanes of course, but I’d never thought about them seriously till that moment. For some reason, when I clapped my eyes on that confounded Bleriot I knew that I was hooked. Don’t ask me why, but I knew for certain that that was where my future lay.’
    The pilot was an old Maltonian, a boy called Morris whose father was a rich tobacco merchant. Biggles had known him as a senior boy a few terms earlier, and Morris was obviously enjoying showing off to his erstwhile schoolmates. Even Colonel Chase appeared impressed. Morris stayed for a hero’s tea in the pavilion, then donned his goggles and his flying helmet and flew off. He was killed in a flying accident not long after, but this did nothing to deter Biggles from the great ambition of his life. If Morris could fly then so could he. As for crashes — ‘at that time of life one never really thinks about them,’ he said. Biggles had fallen unreservedly in love with the idea of flying. It was his dream, his secret hope, the answer to that restlessness which had pursued him since his mother left. But, since it meant so much to him, he kept it strictly to himself, knowing quite well that if he talked about it openly he would be mocked by the other boys and branded as an eccentric by the Head, who thought that all careers except the army were ridiculous.
    So it was that Biggles grew up with the idea of flying as an exciting yet forbidden dream. The only person he confided in was the old General, when he was back with him one summerholiday, and the General, as Biggles had expected, was distinctly sympathetic.
    â€˜Thinking of buying one of these flying machines myself. Dashed exciting, I’d have thought. Use it to fly up to London. Quicker than the train,’
    Alas, upon inquiry General Bigglesworth was advised that whilst a one-armed man could manage a de Dion — just — it was impossible to pilot a new flying machine one-handed. Biggles was even more upset than his uncle at the news — for several weeks he had been picturing himself slipping back to Norfolk during holidays and somehow teaching himself to fly in secret — but the General did his best to comfort him. ‘Before long you’ll be piloting a plane yourself,’ he said prophetically; and in the meantime, to console his nephew, he took him off to see one of the earliest displays of aircraft at the tiny flying field near Hendon where all the latest aircraft — Bleriots and Farman biplanes and a brand new Sopwith interceptor — were on show. The star of that particular afternoon was the celebrated B. C. Hucks, the first man in the world to loop the loop, a feat which at that time was rare enough to bring a murmur of excitement from the crowd.
    Apart from his dreams of flying and the friendship of his extraordinary old uncle, Biggles had few consoling features in his life. He always had admired his brother, Charles, but they had never been particularly close, and on the few occasions when they saw each other now, Biggles was painfully aware of the gulf between them. This was partly due to age and partly temperament. Charles was very like their father, and the army had brought out the keen, conformist side of his heredity. As a promising young subaltern in a famous regiment, he was also rather on his dignity towards his undersized young brother, and disapproved of Biggles’ lack of enthusiasm for the army and for Malton Hall. (Biggles suspected Colonel Chase of passing the word along that Biggles Minor just ‘wasn’t up to scratch’.) Charles was also on much closer terms than Biggles with John Henry Bigglesworth. Since he had arrived at Malton Hall, Biggles’ letters to his father had soon trickled down to one or two a term, but Charles wrote regularly, and