rings.

"I had hoped to reach an eternal stillness in these high altitudes, but
with every thousand feet of ascent the gale grew stronger. My machine
groaned and trembled in every joint and rivet as she faced it, and swept
away like a sheet of paper when I banked her on the turn, skimming down
wind at a greater pace, perhaps, than ever mortal man has moved. Yet I
had always to turn again and tack up in the wind's eye, for it was not
merely a height record that I was after. By all my calculations it was
above little Wiltshire that my air-jungle lay, and all my labour might be
lost if I struck the outer layers at some farther point.

"When I reached the nineteen-thousand-foot level, which was about midday,
the wind was so severe that I looked with some anxiety to the stays of my
wings, expecting momentarily to see them snap or slacken. I even cast
loose the parachute behind me, and fastened its hook into the ring of my
leathern belt, so as to be ready for the worst. Now was the time when a
bit of scamped work by the mechanic is paid for by the life of the
aeronaut. But she held together bravely. Every cord and strut was
humming and vibrating like so many harp-strings, but it was glorious to
see how, for all the beating and the buffeting, she was still the
conqueror of Nature and the mistress of the sky. There is surely
something divine in man himself that he should rise so superior to the
limitations which Creation seemed to impose--rise, too, by such
unselfish, heroic devotion as this air-conquest has shown. Talk of human
degeneration! When has such a story as this been written in the annals
of our race?

"These were the thoughts in my head as I climbed that monstrous inclined
plane with the wind sometimes beating in my face and sometimes whistling
behind my ears, while the cloud-land beneath me fell away to such a
distance that the folds and hummocks of silver had all smoothed out into
one flat, shining plain. But suddenly I had a horrible and unprecedented
experience. I have known before what it is to be in what our neighbours
have called a _tourbillon_, but never on such a scale as this. That
huge, sweeping river of wind of which I have spoken had, as it appears,
whirlpools within it which were as monstrous as itself. Without a
moment's warning I was dragged suddenly into the heart of one. I spun
round for a minute or two with such velocity that I almost lost my
senses, and then fell suddenly, left wi