fting and dropping, gusts
viciously colliding--a mad phantasmagoria of forces!

Wickedly it seizes and shakes the Aeroplane; then tries to turn it over
sideways; then instantly changes its mind and in a second drops it into
a hole a hundred feet deep; and if it were not for his safety belt the
Pilot might find his seat sinking away from beneath him.

Gusts strike the front of the craft like so many slaps in the face; and
others, with the motion of mountainous waves, sometimes lift it hundreds
of feet in a few seconds, hoping to see it plunge over the summit in a
death-dive--and so it goes on, but the Pilot, perfectly at one with his
mount and instantly alert to its slightest motion, is skilfully and
naturally making perhaps fifty movements a minute of hand and feet; the
former lightly grasping the "joy-stick" which controls the Elevator
hinged to the tail, and also the Ailerons or little wings hinged to the
wing-tips; and the latter moving the Rudder control-bar.

[Illustration: The Pilot's Cock-pit.]

A strain on the Pilot? Not a bit of it, for this is his Work which he
loves and excels in; and given a cool head, alert eye, and a sensitive
touch for the controls, what sport can compare with these ever-changing
battles of the air?

The Aeroplane has all this time been climbing in great wide circles, and
is now some three thousand feet above the Aerodrome which from such
height looks absurdly small. The buildings below now seem quite squat;
the hills appear to have sunk away into the ground, and the whole
country below, cut up into diminutive fields, has the appearance of
having been lately tidied and thoroughly spring-cleaned! A doll's
country it looks, with tiny horses and cows ornamenting the fields
and little model motor-cars and carts stuck on the roads, the latter
stretching away across country like ribbons accidentally dropped.

At three thousand feet altitude the Pilot is satisfied that he is
now sufficiently high to secure, in the event of engine failure,
a long enough glide to earth to enable him to choose and reach a good
landing-place; and, being furthermore content with the steady running of
the engine, he decides to climb no more but to follow the course he has
mapped out. Consulting the compass, he places the Aeroplane on the A--E
course and, using the Elevator, he gives his craft its minimum angle of
incidence at which it will just maintain horizontal flight and secure
its maximum speed.

Swiftly