I never achieved the success of the poodle. I was
very much interested at first in the attempt to ply the wings which the
youngest of the Vril-ya use as nimbly and easily as ours do their legs
and arms; but my efforts were attended with contusions serious enough to
make me abandon them in despair.

These wings, as I before said, are very large, reaching to the knee,
and in repose thrown back so as to form a very graceful mantle. They are
composed from the feathers of a gigantic bird that abounds in the rocky
heights of the country--the colour mostly white, but sometimes with
reddish streaks. They are fastened round the shoulders with light but
strong springs of steel; and, when expanded, the arms slide through
loops for that purpose, forming, as it were, a stout central membrane.
As the arms are raised, a tubular lining beneath the vest or tunic
becomes, by mechanical contrivance inflated with air, increased or
diminished at will by the movement of the arms, and serving to buoy the
whole form as on bladders. The wings and the balloon-like apparatus are
highly charged with vril; and when the body is thus wafted upward, it
seems to become singularly lightened of its weight. I found it easy
enough to soar from the ground; indeed, when the wings were spread it
was scarcely possible not to soar, but then came the difficulty and the
danger. I utterly failed in the power to use and direct the pinions,
though I am considered among my own race unusually alert and ready in
bodily exercises, and am a very practiced swimmer. I could only make the
most confused and blundering efforts at flight. I was the servant of the
wings; the wings were not my servants--they were beyond my control;
and when by a violent strain of muscle, and, I must fairly own, in that
abnormal strength which is given by excessive fright, I curbed their
gyrations and brought them near to the body, it seemed as if I lost the
sustaining power stored in them and the connecting bladders, as when the
air is let out of a balloon, and found myself precipitated again to the
earth; saved, indeed, by some spasmodic flutterings, from being dashed
to pieces, but not saved from the bruises and the stun of a heavy fall.
I would, however, have persevered in my attempts, but for the advice or
the commands of the scientific Zee, who had benevolently accompanied my
flutterings, and, indeed, on the last occasion, flying just under me,
received my form as it fell on her own expande