Tales of Terror Mystery | Page 8

whirlpool, and soon I was safely above it. Just after
one o'clock I was twenty-one thousand feet above the sea-level. To my
great joy I had topped the gale, and with every hundred feet of ascent
the air grew stiller. On the other hand, it was very cold, and I was
conscious of that peculiar nausea which goes with rarefaction of the air.
For the first time I unscrewed the mouth of my oxygen bag and took an
occasional whiff of the glorious gas. I could feel it running like a
cordial through my veins, and I was exhilarated almost to the point of
drunkenness. I shouted and sang as I soared upwards into the cold, still
outer world.
"It is very clear to me that the insensibility which came upon Glaisher,
and in a lesser degree upon Coxwell, when, in 1862, they ascended in a
balloon to the height of thirty thousand feet, was due to the extreme
speed with which a perpendicular ascent is made. Doing it at an easy
gradient and accustoming oneself to the lessened barometric pressure
by slow degrees, there are no such dreadful symptoms. At the same
great height I found that even without my oxygen inhaler I could
breathe without undue distress. It was bitterly cold, however, and my
thermometer was at zero, Fahrenheit. At one-thirty I was nearly seven
miles above the surface of the earth, and still ascending steadily. I
found, however, that the rarefied air was giving markedly less support
to my planes, and that my angle of ascent had to be considerably
lowered in consequence. It was already clear that even with my light
weight and strong engine-power there was a point in front of me where
I should be held. To make matters worse, one of my sparking-plugs
was in trouble again and there was intermittent misfiring in the engine.
My heart was heavy with the fear of failure.
"It was about that time that I had a most extraordinary experience.

Something whizzed past me in a trail of smoke and exploded with a
loud, hissing sound, sending forth a cloud of steam. For the instant I
could not imagine what had happened. Then I remembered that the
earth is for ever being bombarded by meteor stones, and would be
hardly inhabitable were they not in nearly every case turned to vapour
in the outer layers of the atmosphere. Here is a new danger for the
high-altitude man, for two others passed me when I was nearing the
forty-thousand-foot mark. I cannot doubt that at the edge of the earth's
envelope the risk would be a very real one.
"My barograph needle marked forty-one thousand three hundred when
I became aware that I could go no farther. Physically, the strain was not
as yet greater than I could bear but my machine had reached its limit.
The attenuated air gave no firm support to the wings, and the least tilt
developed into side-slip, while she seemed sluggish on her controls.
Possibly, had the engine been at its best, another thousand feet might
have been within our capacity, but it was still misfiring, and two out of
the ten cylinders appeared to be out of action. If I had not already
reached the zone for which I was searching then I should never see it
upon this journey. But was it not possible that I had attained it? Soaring
in circles like a monstrous hawk upon the forty- thousand-foot level I
let the monoplane guide herself, and with my Mannheim glass I made a
careful observation of my surroundings. The heavens were perfectly
clear; there was no indication of those dangers which I had imagined.
"I have said that I was soaring in circles. It struck me suddenly that I
would do well to take a wider sweep and open up a new airtract. If the
hunter entered an earth-jungle he would drive through it if he wished to
find his game. My reasoning had led me to believe that the air-jungle
which I had imagined lay somewhere over Wiltshire. This should be to
the south and west of me. I took my bearings from the sun, for the
compass was hopeless and no trace of earth was to be seen--nothing but
the distant, silver cloud-plain. However, I got my direction as best I
might and kept her head straight to the mark. I reckoned that my petrol
supply would not last for more than another hour or so, but I could
afford to use it to the last drop, since a single magnificent vol-plane
could at any time take me to the earth.

"Suddenly I was aware of something new. The air in front of me had
lost its crystal clearness. It was full of long, ragged wisps of something