d like a swallow down wind for eight or ten miles
until I turned her nose up a little and she began to climb in a great
spiral for the cloud-bank above me. It's all-important to rise slowly
and adapt yourself to the pressure as you go.

"It was a close, warm day for an English September, and there was the
hush and heaviness of impending rain. Now and then there came sudden
puffs of wind from the south-west--one of them so gusty and unexpected
that it caught me napping and turned me half-round for an instant. I
remember the time when gusts and whirls and air-pockets used to be things
of danger--before we learned to put an overmastering power into our
engines. Just as I reached the cloud-banks, with the altimeter marking
three thousand, down came the rain. My word, how it poured! It drummed
upon my wings and lashed against my face, blurring my glasses so that I
could hardly see. I got down on to a low speed, for it was painful to
travel against it. As I got higher it became hail, and I had to turn
tail to it. One of my cylinders was out of action--a dirty plug, I
should imagine, but still I was rising steadily with plenty of power.
After a bit the trouble passed, whatever it was, and I heard the full,
deep-throated purr--the ten singing as one. That's where the beauty of
our modern silencers comes in. We can at last control our engines by
ear. How they squeal and squeak and sob when they are in trouble! All
those cries for help were wasted in the old days, when every sound was
swallowed up by the monstrous racket of the machine. If only the early
aviators could come back to see the beauty and perfection of the
mechanism which have been bought at the cost of their lives!

"About nine-thirty I was nearing the clouds. Down below me, all blurred
and shadowed with rain, lay the vast expanse of Salisbury Plain. Half-a-
dozen flying machines were doing hackwork at the thousand-foot level,
looking like little black swallows against the green background. I dare
say they were wondering what I was doing up in cloud-land. Suddenly a
grey curtain drew across beneath me and the wet folds of vapour were
swirling round my face. It was clammily cold and miserable. But I was
above the hail-storm, and that was something gained. The cloud was as
dark and thick as a London fog. In my anxiety to get clear, I cocked her
nose up until the automatic alarm-bell rang, and I actually began to
slide backwards. My sopped and dri