s legs, a sense of
security and exaltation was succeeding to the natural trepidation of Mr.
Lavender's mood. "I am now," he thought, "lifted above all petty plots
and passions on the wings of the morning. Soon will great thoughts begin
to jostle in my head, and I shall see the truth of all things made clear
at last."

But the thoughts did not jostle, a curious lethargy began stealing over
him instead, so that his head fell back, and his mouth fell open. This
might have endured until he returned to earth had not the airman stopped
the engines so that they drifted ruminantly in space below the clouds.
With the cessation of the noise Mr. Lavender's brain regained its
activity, and he was enchanted to hear the voice of his pilot saying:

"How are you getting on, sir?"

"As regards the sensation," Mr. Lavender replied, "it is marvellous, for
after the first minute or two, during which the unwonted motion causes
a certain inconvenience, one grasps at once the exhilaration and joy of
this great adventure. To be in motion towards the spheres, and see the
earth laid out like a chess-board below you; to feel the lithe creature
beneath your body responding so freely to every call of its gallant
young pilot; to be filled with the scream of the engines, as of an eagle
at sport; to know that at the least aberration of the intrepid airman
we should be dashed into a million pieces; all this is largely
to experience an experience so unforgettable that one will
never--er--er--forget it."

"Gosh!" said the young airman.

"Yes," pursued Mr. Lavender, who was now unconsciously reading himself
in his morning's paper, "one can only compare the emotion to that which
the disembodied spirit might feel passing straight from earth to heaven.
We saw at a great depth below us on a narrow white riband of road two
crawling black specks, and knew that they were human beings, the same
and no more than we had been before we left that great common place
called Earth."

"Gum!" said the young airman, as Lavender paused, "you're getting it
fine, sir! Where will it appear?"

"Those great fleecy beings the clouds," went on Mr. Lavender, without
taking on the interruption, "seemed to await our coming in the morning
glory of their piled-up snows; and we, with the rarefied air in our
lungs, felt that we must shout to them." And so carried away was Mr.
Lavender by his own style that he really did begin to address the
clouds: "Ghosts of the sky, who creep