Tales of Terror Mystery | Page 6

the altitude record without one
will either be frozen or smothered--or both.
"I had a good look at the planes, the rudder-bar, and the elevating lever
before I got in. Everything was in order so far as I could see. Then I
switched on my engine and found that she was running sweetly. When
they let her go she rose almost at once upon the lowest speed. I circled
my home field once or twice just to warm her up, and then with a wave
to Perkins and the others, I flattened out my planes and put her on her
highest. She skimmed like a swallow down wind for eight or ten miles
until I turned her nose up a little and she began to climb in a great spiral
for the cloud-bank above me. It's all-important to rise slowly and adapt
yourself to the pressure as you go.
"It was a close, warm day for an English September, and there was the
hush and heaviness of impending rain. Now and then there came
sudden puffs of wind from the south-west--one of them so gusty and
unexpected that it caught me napping and turned me half-round for an

instant. I remember the time when gusts and whirls and air- pockets
used to be things of danger--before we learned to put an overmastering
power into our engines. Just as I reached the cloud-banks, with the
altimeter marking three thousand, down came the rain. My word, how
it poured! It drummed upon my wings and lashed against my face,
blurring my glasses so that I could hardly see. I got down on to a low
speed, for it was painful to travel against it. As I got higher it became
hail, and I had to turn tail to it. One of my cylinders was out of
action--a dirty plug, I should imagine, but still I was rising steadily with
plenty of power. After a bit the trouble passed, whatever it was, and I
heard the full, deep-throated purr--the ten singing as one. That's where
the beauty of our modern silencers comes in. We can at last control our
engines by ear. How they squeal and squeak and sob when they are in
trouble! All those cries for help were wasted in the old days, when
every sound was swallowed up by the monstrous racket of the machine.
If only the early aviators could come back to see the beauty and
perfection of the mechanism which have been bought at the cost of
their lives!
"About nine-thirty I was nearing the clouds. Down below me, all
blurred and shadowed with rain, lay the vast expanse of Salisbury Plain.
Half a dozen flying machines were doing hackwork at the
thousand-foot level, looking like little black swallows against the green
background. I dare say they were wondering what I was doing up in
cloud-land. Suddenly a grey curtain drew across beneath me and the
wet folds of vapours were swirling round my face. It was clammily
cold and miserable. But I was above the hail-storm, and that was
something gained. The cloud was as dark and thick as a London fog. In
my anxiety to get clear, I cocked her nose up until the automatic
alarm-bell rang, and I actually began to slide backwards. My sopped
and dripping wings had made me heavier than I thought, but presently I
was in lighter cloud, and soon had cleared the first layer. There was a
second--opal- coloured and fleecy--at a great height above my head, a
white, unbroken ceiling above, and a dark, unbroken floor below, with
the monoplane labouring upwards upon a vast spiral between them. It is
deadly lonely in these cloud-spaces. Once a great flight of some small
water-birds went past me, flying very fast to the westwards. The quick

whir of their wings and their musical cry were cheery to my ear. I fancy
that they were teal, but I am a wretched zoologist. Now that we humans
have become birds we must really learn to know our brethren by sight.
"The wind down beneath me whirled and swayed the broad cloud- pain.
Once a great eddy formed in it, a whirlpool of vapour, and through it,
as down a funnel, I caught sight of the distant world. A large white
biplane was passing at a vast depth beneath me. I fancy it was the
morning mail service betwixt Bristol and London. Then the drift
swirled inwards again and the great solitude was unbroken.
"Just after ten I touched the lower edge of the upper cloud- stratum. It
consisted of fine diaphanous vapour drifting swiftly from the
westwards. The wind had been steadily rising all this time and it was
now blowing a sharp breeze--twenty-eight an hour by my gauge.
Already it was very cold,