do-boat-destroyers across the North
Sea, and his sensational display during the military man[oe]uvres on
Salisbury Plain, impressed his name and personality firmly upon the
fickle mind of the public, and explains the tremendous excitement caused
by his inexplicable disappearance during the great aviation meeting at
Attercliffe, near London, towards the end of the summer.

Few people, I suppose, have forgotten the facts. For some time
previously he had been devoting himself more especially to ascending to
as great a height as possible. He held all the records for height, and
it was known that at Attercliffe he meant to endeavour to eclipse his
own achievements.

It was a lovely day, not a breath of wind stirring, not a cloud in the
sky. We saw him start. We saw him fly up and up in great sweeping
spirals. We saw him climb higher and ever higher into the azure space.
We watched him, those of us whose eyes could bear the strain, as he
dwindled to a dot and a speck, till at last he passed beyond sight.

It was a stirring thing to see a man thus storm, as it were, the walls
of Heaven and probe the very mysteries of space. I remember I felt quite
annoyed with someone who was taking a cinematograph record. It seemed
such a sordid, business-like thing to be doing at such a moment.

Presently the aeroplane came into sight again and was greeted with a
sudden roar of cheering.

"He is doing a glide down," someone cried excitedly, and though someone
else declared that a glide from such a height was unthinkable and
impossible, yet it was soon plain that the first speaker was right.

Down through unimaginable thousands of feet, straight and swift swept
the machine, making such a sweep as the eagle in its pride would never
have dared. People held their breath to watch, expecting every moment
some catastrophe. But the machine kept on an even keel, and in a few
moments I joined with the others in a wild rush to the field at a little
distance where the machine, like a mighty bird, had alighted easily and
safely.

But when we reached it we doubted our own eyes, our own sanity. There
was no sign anywhere of Radcliffe Thorpe!

No one knew what to say; we looked blankly at our neighbours, and one
man got down on his hands and knees and peered under the body of the
machine as if he suspected Radcliffe of hiding there. Then the chairman
of the meeting, Lord Fallowfield, made a curious discovery.

"Look," he said in a high, shaken voi