y 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 an