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 che