Tales of Terror and Mystery
monoplane when real work is to be done. Beaumont found that out in very
early days. For one thing it doesn't mind damp, and the weather looks
as if we should be in the clouds all the time. It's a bonny little
model and answers my hand like a tender-mouthed horse. The engine is a
ten-cylinder rotary Robur working up to one hundred and seventy-five.
It has all the modern improvements--enclosed fuselage, high-curved
landing skids, brakes, gyroscopic steadiers, and three speeds, worked
by an alteration of the angle of the planes upon the Venetian-blind
principle. I took a shot-gun with me and a dozen cartridges filled
with buck-shot. You should have seen the face of Perkins, my old
mechanic, when I directed him to put them in. I was dressed like an
Arctic explorer, with two jerseys under my overalls, thick socks inside
my padded boots, a storm-cap with flaps, and my talc goggles. It was
stifling outside the hangars, but I was going for the summit of the
Himalayas, and had to dress for the part. Perkins knew there was
something on and implored me to take him with me. Perhaps I should if
I were using the biplane, but a monoplane is a one-man show--if you
want to get the last foot of life out of it. Of course, I took an
oxygen bag; the man who goes for 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-plain.
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, 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 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.