ery 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 m