A wire string snored in the sky. Stretched across heaven, above the mudflats of the airdrome at Norfolk, the string of some invisible instrument threw down its drone to the ground. A seaplane tipped out of a cloud. The singing stretched before and behind it like a wire. In the plane Major Mario de Bernardi of Italy moved through a last kilometre of air. He had won the Schneider Cup race. His speed, unprecedented, was 246.496 miles an hour.
The snore of the planes gave the spectators a sensation of excitement. A...
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