Tales of Terror Mystery | Page 7

though my altimeter only marked nine
thousand. The engines were working beautifully, and we went droning
steadily upwards. The cloud-bank was thicker than I had expected, but
at last it thinned out into a golden mist before me, and then in an instant
I had shot out from it, and there was an unclouded sky and a brilliant
sun above my head--all blue and gold above, all shining silver below,
one vast, glimmering plain as far as my eyes could reach. It was a
quarter past ten o'clock, and the barograph needle pointed to twelve
thousand eight hundred. Up I went and up, my ears concentrated upon
the deep purring of my motor, my eyes busy always with the watch, the
revolution indicator, the petrol lever, and the oil pump. No wonder
aviators are said to be a fearless race. With so many things to think of
there is no time to trouble about oneself. About this time I noted how
unreliable is the compass when above a certain height from earth. At
fifteen thousand feet mine was pointing east and a point south. The sun
and the wind gave me my true bearings.
"I had hoped to reach an eternal stillness in these high altitudes, but
with every thousand feet of ascent the gale grew stronger. My machine
groaned and trembled in every joint and rivet as she faced it, and swept
away like a sheet of paper when I banked her on the turn, skimming
down wind at a greater pace, perhaps, than ever mortal man has moved.

Yet I had always to turn again and tack up in the wind's eye, for it was
not merely a height record that I was after. By all my calculations it
was above little Wiltshire that my air-jungle lay, and all my labour
might be lost if I struck the outer layers at some farther point.
"When I reached the nineteen-thousand-foot level, which was about
midday, the wind was so severe that I looked with some anxiety to the
stays of my wings, expecting momentarily to see them snap or slacken.
I even cast loose the parachute behind me, and fastened its hook into
the ring of my leathern belt, so as to be ready for the worst. Now was
the time when a bit of scamped work by the mechanic is paid for by the
life of the aeronaut. But she held together bravely. Every cord and strut
was humming and vibrating like so many harp-strings, but it was
glorious to see how, for all the beating and the buffeting, she was still
the conqueror of Nature and the mistress of the sky. There is surely
something divine in man himself that he should rise so superior to the
limitations which Creation seemed to impose--rise, too, by such
unselfish, heroic devotion as this air-conquest has shown. Talk of
human degeneration! When has such a story as this been written in the
annals of our race?
"These were the thoughts in my head as I climbed that monstrous,
inclined plane with the wind sometimes beating in my face and
sometimes whistling behind my ears, while the cloud-land beneath me
fell away to such a distance that the folds and hummocks of silver had
all smoothed out into one flat, shining plain. But suddenly I had a
horrible and unprecedented experience. I have known before what it is
to be in what our neighbours have called a tourbillon, but never on such
a scale as this. That huge, sweeping river of wind of which I have
spoken had, as it appears, whirlpools within it which were as monstrous
as itself. Without a moment's warning I was dragged suddenly into the
heart of one. I spun round for a minute or two with such velocity that I
almost lost my senses, and then fell suddenly, left wing foremost, down
the vacuum funnel in the centre. I dropped like a stone, and lost nearly
a thousand feet. It was only my belt that kept me in my seat, and the
shock and breathlessness left me hanging half- insensible over the side
of the fuselage. But I am always capable of a supreme effort--it is my

one great merit as an aviator. I was conscious that the descent was
slower. The whirlpool was a cone rather than a funnel, and I had come
to the apex. With a terrific wrench, throwing my weight all to one side,
I levelled my planes and brought her head away from the wind. In an
instant I had shot out of the eddies and was skimming down the sky.
Then, shaken but victorious, I turned her nose up and began once more
my steady grind on the upward spiral. I took a large sweep to avoid the
danger-spot of the