ations I will now give the narrative exactly as it stands,
beginning at page three of the blood-soaked note-book:--
"Nevertheless, when I dined at Rheims with Coselli and Gustav Raymond I
found that neither of them was aware of any particular danger in the
higher layers of the atmosphere. I did not actually say what was in my
thoughts, but I got so near to it that if they had any corresponding idea
they could not have failed to express it. But then they are two empty,
vainglorious fellows with no thought beyond seeing their silly names in
the newspaper. It is interesting to note that neither of them had ever
been much beyond the twenty-thousand-foot level. Of course, men have
been higher than this both in balloons and in the ascent of mountains. It
must be well above that point that the aeroplane enters the danger
zone--always presuming that my premonitions are correct.
"Aeroplaning has been with us now for more than twenty years, and one
might well ask: Why should this peril be only revealing itself in our
day? The answer is obvious. In the old days of weak engines, when a
hundred horse-power Gnome or Green was considered ample for every need,
the flights were very restricted. Now that three hundred horse-power is
the rule rather than the exception, visits to the upper layers have
become easier and more common. Some of us can remember how, in our
youth, Garros made a world-wide reputation by attaining nineteen thousand
feet, and it was considered a remarkable achievement to fly over the
Alps. Our standard now has been immeasurably raised, and there are
twenty high flights for one in former years. Many of them have been
undertaken with impunity. The thirty-thousand-foot level has been
reached time after time with no discomfort beyond cold and asthma. What
does this prove? A visitor might descend upon this planet a thousand
times and never see a tiger. Yet tigers exist, and if he chanced to come
down into a jungle he might be devoured. There are jungles of the upper
air, and there are worse things than tigers which inhabit them. I
believe in time they will map these jungles accurately out. Even at the
present moment I could name two of them. One of them lies over the Pau-
Biarritz district of France. Another is just over my head as I write
here in my house in Wiltshire. I rather think there is a third in the
Homburg-Wiesbaden district.
"It was the disappearance of the airmen that first set me thi
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