my tank, I got twenty miles inland before I
found myself stranded in a field half a mile from the village of
Ashcombe. There I got three tins of petrol from a passing motor-car,
and at ten minutes past six that evening I alighted gently in my own
home meadow at Devizes, after such a journey as no mortal upon earth
has ever yet taken and lived to tell the tale. I have seen the beauty
and I have seen the horror of the heights--and greater beauty or
greater horror than that is not within the ken of man.

"And now it is my plan to go once again before I give my results to the
world. My reason for this is that I must surely have something to show
by way of proof before I lay such a tale before my fellow-men. It is
true that others will soon follow and will confirm what I have said,
and yet I should wish to carry conviction from the first. Those lovely
iridescent bubbles of the air should not be hard to capture. They
drift slowly upon their way, and the swift monoplane could intercept
their leisurely course. It is likely enough that they would dissolve
in the heavier layers of the atmosphere, and that some small heap of
amorphous jelly might be all that I should bring to earth with me. And
yet something there would surely be by which I could substantiate my
story. Yes, I will go, even if I run a risk by doing so. These purple
horrors would not seem to be numerous. It is probable that I shall not
see one. If I do I shall dive at once. At the worst there is always
the shot-gun and my knowledge of ..."

Here a page of the manuscript is unfortunately missing. On the next
page is written, in large, straggling writing:

"Forty-three thousand feet. I shall never see earth again. They are
beneath me, three of them. God help me; it is a dreadful death to die!"

Such in its entirety is the Joyce-Armstrong Statement. Of the man
nothing has since been seen. Pieces of his shattered monoplane have
been picked up in the preserves of Mr. Budd-Lushington upon the borders
of Kent and Sussex, within a few miles of the spot where the note-book
was discovered. If the unfortunate aviator's theory is correct that
this air-jungle, as he called it, existed only over the south-west of
England, then it would seem that he had fled from it at the full speed
of his monoplane, but had been overtaken and devoured by these horrible
creatures at some spot in the outer atmosphere above the place where
the grim relics were found. The