ng foremost, down the vacuum
funnel in the centre. I dropped like a stone, and lost nearly a thousand
feet. It was only my belt that kept me in my seat, and the shock and
breathlessness left me hanging half-insensible over the side of the
fuselage. But I am always capable of a supreme effort--it is my one
great merit as an aviator. I was conscious that the descent was slower.
The whirlpool was a cone rather than a funnel, and I had come to the
apex. With a terrific wrench, throwing my weight all to one side, I
levelled my planes and brought her head away from the wind. In an
instant I had shot out of the eddies and was skimming down the sky. Then,
shaken but victorious, I turned her nose up and began once more my steady
grind on the upward spiral. I took a large sweep to avoid the danger-
spot of the whirlpool, and soon I was safely above it. Just after one
o'clock I was twenty-one thousand feet above the sea-level. To my great
joy I had topped the gale, and with every hundred feet of ascent the air
grew stiller. On the other hand, it was very cold, and I was conscious
of that peculiar nausea which goes with rarefaction of the air. For the
first time I unscrewed the mouth of my oxygen bag and took an occasional
whiff of the glorious gas. I could feel it running like a cordial
through my veins, and I was exhilarated almost to the point of
drunkenness. I shouted and sang as I soared upwards into the cold, still
outer world.

"It is very clear to me that the insensibility which came upon Glaisher,
and in a lesser degree upon Coxwell, when, in 1862, they ascended in a
balloon to the height of thirty thousand feet, was due to the extreme
speed with which a perpendicular ascent is made. Doing it at an easy
gradient and accustoming oneself to the lessened barometric pressure by
slow degrees, there are no such dreadful symptoms. At the same great
height I found that even without my oxygen inhaler I could breathe
without undue distress. It was bitterly cold, however, and my
thermometer was at zero Fahrenheit. At one-thirty I was nearly seven
miles above the surface of the earth, and still ascending steadily. I
found, however, that the rarefied air was giving markedly less support to
my planes, and that my angle of ascent had to be considerably lowered in
consequence. It was already clear that even with my light weight and
strong engine-power there was a point in front of me where I should be
held. To make ma