The Horror of the Heights by Arthur Conan Doyle. The idea that the extraordinary
narrative, which has been called the Joyce Armstrong Fragment, is an elaborate,
practical joe evolved by some unknown person cursed by a perverted and sinister sense of
humor, has now been abandoned by all who have examined the matter. The
most macabb and imaginative of plotters would hesitate before linking his morbid fantasies with the
unquestioned and tragic facts which reinforce the statement. Though the assertions contained in it
are amazing and even monstrous, it is nonetheless forcing itself upon the general intelligence
that they are true, and that we must readjust our ideas to the new
situation. This world of ours appears to be separated by a slight and precarious
margin of safety from a most singular and unexpected danger. I will endeavor,
in this narrative, which reproduces the original document and its necessarily somewhat fragmentary form,
to lay before the reader the whole of the facts up to date.
Prefacing my statement by saying that if there be any who doubt the narrative of
Joyce Armstrong. There can be no question at all as to the facts concerning
Lieutenant Myrtle r N and mister hay Connor, who undoubtedly met their end in
the manner described. The Joyce Armstrong fragment was found in the field which is
called Lower Haycock, lying one mile to the westward of the village of Withium
upon the Kent and Sussex border. It was on the fifteenth September last that
an agricultural laborer, James Flynn, in the employment of Matthew Dodd, farmer
of the Chauntry farm with him, perceived a brier pipe lying near the footpath
which skirts the hedge in Lower Haycock. A few paces farther on he picked
up a pair of broken binocular glasses. Finally, among some nettles in the
ditch, he caught sight of a flat, an vespacked book which proved to
be a notebook with detachable leaves, some of which had come loose and were
fluttering along the base of the hedge. These he collected, but some in
including the first, were never recovered and leave a deplorable hiatus. In this
all important statement, the notebook was taken by the laborer to his master,
who in turn showed it to doctor J. H Atherton of Hartfield. This
gentleman at once recognized the need for an expert examination, and the manuscript is
forwarded to the Aero Club in London, where it now lies. The first
two pages of the manuscript are missing. There is also one torn away at
the end of the narrative, though none of these affect the general coherence of
the story. It is conjectured that the missing opening is concerned with the record
of mister Joyce Armstrong's qualifications as an aeronaut, which can be gathered from other
sources, and are admitted to be unsurpassed among the air pilots of England.
For many years he has been looked upon as among the most daring and most
intellectual of flying men, a combination which has enabled them to both invent and
test several new devices, including the common gyroscopic attachment, which is known by
his name. The main body of the manuscript is written neatly in ink,
but the last few lines are in pencil and are so ragged as to be
hardly legible, exactly in fact as they might be expected to appear if they
will scribbled out hurriedly from the seed of a moving aeroplane. There are,
it may be added, several stains, both on the last page and on
the outside cover, which have been pronounced by the Home Office experts to be
blood, probably human and certainly mammalian. The fact that something closely resembling the
organism of malaria was discovered in this blood, and the Joyce Armstrong is known
to have suffered from intermittent fever, is a remarkable example of the new weapons
which modern science is placed in the hands of our detectives. And now a
word as to the personality of the author of this epoch making statement. Joyce
Armstrong, according to the few friends who really knew something of the man,
was a poet and a dreamer, as well as a mechanic and an inventor.
He was a man of considerable wealth, much of which he had spent
in the pursuit of his aeronautical hobby. He had four private aeroplanes in his
hangars near Devizes, and is said to have made no fewer than one hundred
and seventy a cents in the course of last year. He was a retiring
man with dark moods in which he would avoid the society of his fellows.
Captain Dangerfield, who knew him better than anyone, says that there were times
when his eccentricity threatened to develop into something more serious. His habit of carrying
a shotgun with him in his aeroplane was one manifestation of it. Another was
the morbid effect which the fall of Lieutenant Myrtle had upon his mind. Myrtle,
who was attempting the height record, fell from an altitude of something over
thirty thousand feet horror will to narrate his head was entirely obliterated. Those body
and limbs preserved their configuration. At every gathering of airman Joyce Armstrong, according
to Dangerfield, would ask, with an enigmatic smile, and where pray is
Myrtle's head? On another occasion, after dinner at the mess of the Flying
School on Salisbury Plane, he started a debate as to what will be the
most permanent danger which airman will have to encounter. Having listened to successive opinions
as to air pockets fall, to construction and over banking, he ended by
shrugging his shoulders and refusing to put forward his own views, though he gave
the impression that they differed from any advanced by his companions. It is worth
remarking that after his own complete disappearance, it was found that his private affairs
were arranged with a precision, which may show that he had a strong premonition
of disaster. With these essential explanations, I will now give the narrative exactly
as it stands, beginning at page three of the Blood Soaked note Book.
Nevertheless, when I dined at Reems with Kasselli and Gustav Raymond, I found
that neither of them was aware of any particular danger in the higher layers of
the atmosphere. I did not actually say what was in my thoughts, but
I got so near to it that if they had any corresponding idea, they
could not have failed to express it. But then they are two empty,
vinglorious fellows, with no thought beyond seeing their silly names in the newspaper.
It is interesting to note that neither of them had ever been much beyond the
twenty thousand foot level. Of course, men have been higher than this,
both in balloons and in the ascent of mountains. It must be well above
that point that the aeroplane enters the danger zone, always presuming that my premonitions
are correct. Aeroplaning has been with us now for more than twenty years,
and one might well ask why should this peril be only revealing itself an our
day. The answer is obvious. In the old days of weak engines,
when a hundred horsepower Gnome or Green was considered ample for every need, the
flights were very restricted. Now that three hundred horsepower is the rule rather than
the exception, visits to the upper layers have become easier and more common.
Some of us can remember how in our youth garrows made a worldwide reputation by
attaining nineteen thousand feet and it was considered a remarkable achievement to fly over the
Alps. Our standard now has been immeasurably raised, and there are twenty high
flights for one. Informer years, many of them have been undertaken with impunity.
The thirty thousand foot level has been reached time after time with no discomfort
beyond coal and asthma. What does this prove? A visitor might descend upon
this planet a thousand times and never see a tiger, Yet tigers exist,
and if he chanced to come down into a jungle, he might be devoured
there are jungles of the upper and there are worse things than tigers which inhabit
them. I believe in time they will map these jungles accurately out. Even
at the present moment I could name two of them. One of them lies
over the Powell Barrett's district of France. Another is just over my head as
I write here in my house in Wiltshire. I rather think there is a
third in the Hamburg vs. Botten district. It was the disappearance of the
airmen that first set me thinking. Of course, everyone said that they had
fallen into the sea, but that did not satisfy me at all. First
there was very air in France. His machine was found near by own,
but they never got his body. There was the case of Baxter, also
who vanished, though his engine and some of the iron fixings were found in
a wood in Leicestershire. In that case, doctor Middleton of Amesbury, who
was watching the flight with a telescope, declares that just before the clouds obscured
the view, he saw the machine, which was at an enormous height,
suddenly rised perpendicularly upwards in a succession of jerks, in a manner that he
would have thought to be impossible. That was the last scene of Baxter.
There was a correspondence in the papers, but it never led to anything.
There were several other similar cases, and then there was the death of hay
Connor. What a cackle there was about an unsolved mystery of the air and
what columns in the halfpenny papers, and yet how little was ever done to
get to the bottom of the business. He came down on a tremendous vall
plane from an unknown height. He never got off his machine and died in
his pilot's seat. Died of what heart disease? Said the doctors rubbish.
Hay Connor's heart was as sound as mine is. What did Venibles say?
Venibles was the only man who was at his side when he died. He
said that he was shivering and looked like a man who had been badly scared.
Died of fright said, but could not imagine what he was frightened about.
Only said one word of Venables, which sounded like monstrous. They could
make nothing of that at the inquest, but I could make something of it.
Monsters. That was the last word of poor Harry hay Connor. And
he did die of fright, just as Venables thought. And then there was
Myrtle's head. Do you really believe does anybody really believe that a man's head
could be driven clean into his body by the force of a fall. Well,
perhaps it may be possible, but I, for one have never believed
that it was so with myrtle, and the grease upon his clothes, all
slimy with grease, said somebody at the inquest queer that nobody got thinking after
that? I did, But then I had been thinking for a good long
time. I've made three a cents. How Dangerfield used to chaff me about
my shotgun, but I've never been high enough. Now, with this new
light Paul Verona machine, and it's one hundred and seventy five rober, I
should easily touch the thirty thousand. Tomorrow I'll have a shot at the record.
Maybe I shall have a shot at something else as well. Of course,
it's dangerous. If a fellow wants to avoid danger, you'd best keep
out of flying altogether and subside finally into flannel slippers in a dressing gown.
But I'll visit the air jungle tomorrow, and if there's anything there, I
shall know it. If I return, I'll find myself a bit of a
celebrity. If I don't. This notebook may explain what I am trying to
do and how I lost my life in doing it, but now drivel about
accidents or mysteries. If you please, I chose my Paul Veroner monoplane for
the job. There is nothing like a monoplane when real work is to be
done. Beaumont found that out in very early days. For one thing,
it doesn't mind damp, and the weather looks as if we should be in
the clouds all the time. It's a body little model and answers my hand
like a tender mouth torse. The engine is a ten cylinder rotary Robert,
working up to one hundred and seventy five. It is all the modern improvements,
enclosed houselage, high curved landing skids, brakes, gyroscopic steadiers, and
three speeds, worked by an alteration of the angle of the planes upon the
Venetian blind principle. I took a shotgun with me and a dozen cartridges filled
with buckshot. You should have seen the face of Perkins, my old mechanic,
when I directed him to put them in. I was dressed like an
Arctic explorer with two jerseys under my overalls, thick socks inside, my padded
boots, a storm cap with flaps, and my talc goggles. It was
stifling outside the hangars, but I was going for the summit of the Himalayas
ned to dress for the part. Perkins knew there was something on and implored
me to take him with me. Perhaps I should if I were using the
biplane. But a monoplane is a one man show if you want to get
the last foot of life out of it. Of course, so I took
an oxygen bag. The man who goes for the altitude record without one will
either be frozen or smothered, or both. I had a good look at
the planes, the rudder bar, and the elevating lever before I got in.
Everything was in order so far as I could see. Then I switched
on my engine and found that she was running sweetly. When they let her
go, she rose almost at once upon the lowest speed. I circled my
home field once or twice just to warm her up, and then with a
wave to Perkins in the others, I flattened out my planes and put her
on her highest She skimmed 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
impending rain. Now and then there came sudden puffs of wind from the southwest,
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
an 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 is one. That's where the beauty of our
modern silencers come 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 whenever a sound was swallowed up by
the monstrous racket of the machine. If only the early aviators could come back
and 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 hack work 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 cloudland. Suddenly a gray curtain drew
across beneath me, and what folds of vapors were swirling round my face.
It was clamily, 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, and 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 dripping wings had made me heavier than I thought, But presently
I was in lighter cloud, and soon had cleared the first layer. There
was a second, opal, colored and fleecy, had a great height above
my head, a white unbroken ceiling above, and a dark unbroken floor below,
with the monoplane laboring upwards upon a vast spiral between them. It is
deadly lonely in these cloud spaces. Once a great flight of some small water
birds when past me, flying very fast to the westwards. The quick whirr
of their wings and their musical cry were cheery to my ear. I fancy
that they were teal, but I am a wretched zoologist. Now that we
humans have become birds, we must really learn to know our brethren by sight.
The wind down beneath me whirled and swayed. The broad cloud plane.
Once a great eddy formed in it a whirlpool of vapor, and threw it
as down a funnel. I caught sight of the distant world. A large
white by plane was passing at a vast depth beneath me. I fancy it
was the morning mail service betwixt Bristol and London. Then the drift swirled inwards
again, and the great solitude was unbroken. Just after ten I touched the
lower edge of the upper cloud stratum. It consisted of fine diaphanous vapor drifting
swiftly from the westwards. The wind had been steadily rising all this time,
and it was now blowing a sharp breeze twenty eight an hour by my gage.
Already it was very cold, though my altimeter only marked nine thousand.
The engines were working beautifully, and we went droning steadily upwards. The cloud
bank was thicker than I had expected, but at last it thinned out into
a golden mist before me, And then in an instant I had shot out
from it, and there was an unclouded sky and a brilliant sun above my
head, all blue and gold above, all shining silver below one vast glimmering
plain as far as my eyes could reach. It was a quarter past ten
o'clock, and the barograph needle pointed to twelve thousand, eight hundred. Up
I went and up, my ears concentrated upon the deep purring of my motor,
my eyes busy always with the watch, the revolution indicator, the petrel
level, and the oil pump. No wonder. Aviators are said to be
a fearless race. With so many things to think of, there is no
time to trouble about one's self. About this time I noted how unreliable is
the compass went above a certain height from Earth. At fifteen thousand feet,
mine was pointing east, and to point south. The sun and the wind
gave me my true bearings. 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 Wilchair that my air jungle
lay, and all my labors 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 onto
the ring of my leathern belt, so as to be ready for the worst.
Now was the time when a bit of a 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 mist 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 is 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 winds 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 plane. But
suddenly I had a horrible and unprecedented experience. I have known before what it
is to be in what our neighbors have called Outurbillon, but never on such
a scale as this. That huge sweeping river of wind which I have spoken
had as it appear, here's 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 wing foremost down the vacuum
funnel in the center. 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 leveled 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 victory worrious, I turned her nose up and began once more
my steady grind on the upward spiral. I took a large sweep to avoid
the dangerous 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 rarefication
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 out a world. It is very clear to me that
the insensibility which came upon Glacier, and in a lesser degree upon Cockswell,
when in eighteen sixty two 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 in an easy gradient, and accustoming oneself to the lessened
barametric 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 matters worse,
one of my sparking plugs was in trouble again, and there was an
intermittent misfiring in the engine. My heart was heavy with the fear of failure.
It was about that time that I had a most extraordinary experience. Something
was past me in a trail of smoke, and exploded with a loud,
hissing sound, sending forth a cloud of steam. For the instant I could
not imagine what had happened. Then I remembered that the Earth is forever being
bombarded by meteor stones, and would be hardly inhabitable were they not. Nearly
every case turned a vapor in the outer layers of the atmosphere. Here is
a new danger for the high altitude man. For two others past me when
I was nearing the forty thousand footmark. I cannot doubt that at the edge
of Earth's envelope, the risk would be a very real one. My barograph
needle marked forty one thousand, three hundred when I became aware that I could
go no farther. Physically, the strain was not as yet greater than I
could bear, but my machine had reached its limit. The attenuated air gave
no firm support to the wings, and the least tilt developed into a side
slip, while she seemed sluggish on her controls, possibly hid the engine been
at its best, another thousand feet might have been within our capacity, but
it was still misfiring, and two out of the ten cylinders appeared to be
out of action. If I had not already reached the zone for which I
was searching, then I should never see it upon this journey. But was
it not possible that I had attained it? Soaring in circles like a monstrous
hawk. Upon the forty thousand foot level, I let the monoplane guide herself,
and with my Mannheim glass, I made a careful observation by surroundings.
The heavens were perfectly clear. There was no indication of those dangers which I
had imagined. I have said that I was soaring in circles. It struck
me suddenly that I would do well to take a wider sweep and open up
a new air tract. If the hunter entered an earth jungle, he would
drive through it if he wished to find his game. My reasoning had led
me to believe that the air jungle which I had imagined lay somewhere over Wiltcher.
This should be to the south and west of me. I took my
bearings from the sun, for the compass was hopeless, and no trace of
Earth was to be seen, nothing but the distant silver cloud plane. However,
I got my direction as best I might, and kept her head straight
to the mark. I reckoned that my petrol supply would not last for more
than another hour or so, but I could afford to use it to the
last drop, since a single magnificent vallplank could at any time take me to
the Earth. Suddenly I was aware of something new. The air in front
of me had lost its crystal clearness. It was full of long, ragged
wisps of something which I could only compare to very fine cigarette smoke. It
hung about in wreaths and coils, turning and twisting slowly in the sunlight.
As the monoplane shot through it. I was aware of a faint taste of
oil upon my lips, and there was a greasy scum upon the would work
of the machine. Some infinitely fine organic matter appeared to be suspended in the
atmosphere. There was no life there. It was in kohaitent diffuse, extending
for many square acres and then fringing off into the void. No, it
was not life. But might it not be the remains of life? Above
all, might it not be the food of life, of monstrous life,
even as the humble grease of the ocean is the food for the mighty whale.
The thought was in my mind when my eyes looked upwards and I saw
the most wonderful vision that ever man has seen. Can I hope to convey
it to you, even as I sought myself last Thursday, conceive a jellyfish
such as sails in our summer, seas bell shaped and of enormous size,
far larger, I should judge than the dome was Saint Paul's. It was
of a light pink color vein with a delicate green, but the whole huge
fabric so tenuous that it was but a fairy outline against the dark blue sky.
It pulsated with a delicate and regular rhythm. From it, there depended
too long own drooping green tentacles, which swayed slowly backwards and forwards. This
gorgeous vision passed gently, with noiseless dignity, over my head, as light
and fragile as a soap bubble, and drifted upon its stately way. I'd
have turned my monoplane that I might look after this beautiful creature, when in
a moment I found myself amidst a perfect fleet of them, of all sizes,
but none so large as the first. Some were quite small, but
the majority about as big as an average balloon, and with much the same
curvature at the top. There was in them a delicacy of texture and coloring
which reminded me of the finest Venetian glass. Pale shades of pink and green
were the prevailing tints, but all had a lovely iridescence where the sun shimmered
through their dainty forms. Some hundreds of them drifted past me, a wonderful
fairy squadron of strange, unknown argosies of the sky, creatures whose forms and
substance were so attuned to these pure heights that one could not conceive anything so
delicate within actual sight or sound of Earth. But soon my attention was drawn
to a new phenomenon, the serpents of the outer air. These were long,
thin, fantastic coils of vapor like material which turned and twisted with great
speed, flying round and round at such a pace that the eyes could hardly
follow them. Some of these ghost like creatures were twenty or thirty feet long,
but it was difficult to tell their girth, for their outline was so
hazy that it seemed to fade away into the air around them. These air
snakes were a very light, grayer smoke color, with some darker lines within,
which gave the impression of a definite organism. One of them was past
my very face, and I was conscious of a cold clammy contact, But
the composition was so unsubstantial that I could not connect them with any thought of
physical danger any more than the beautiful bell like creatures which had preceded them.
There was no more solidity in their frames than in the floating spume from a
broken wave. But a more terrible experience was in store for me. Floating
downwards from a great height. There came a purplish patch of vapor, small
as I saw at first, but rapidly enlarging as it approached me, until
it appeared to be hundreds of square feet in size. Though fashioned in some
transparent jelly like substance, it was nonetheless of much more definite outline and solid
consistence than anything which I had seen before. There were more traces, too,
of a physical organization, especially two vast, shadowy circular plates upon either
side which may have been eyes, and a perfectly solid white projection between them,
which was as curved and cruel as the beak of a vulture. The
whole aspect of this monster was formidable and threatening, and it kept changing its
color from a very light mauve to a dark, angry purple, so thick
that it cast a shadow as it drifted between my monoplane and the sun.
On the upper curve of its huge body, there were three great projections which
I can only describe as enormous bubbles, and I was convinced as I looked
at them, that they were charged with some extremely light gas which served to
buoy up them, mis shaping and semi solid mass in the rarefied air,
the creature moved swiftly along, keeping pace easily with the monoplane, and for
twenty miles or more it formed my horrible escort, hovering over me like a
bird of prey which is waiting to pounce. Its method of progression, done
so swiftly that it was not easy to follow, was to throw out a
long, glutinous streamer in front of it, which in turn seemed to draw
forward the rest of the writhing body. So alastica gelatinous was it that never,
for two successive minutes the same shape, and yet each change made it
more threatening and loathsome than the last. I knew that it meant mischief.
Every purple flush of its hideous body told me so. The vague, goggling
eyes which were turned always upon me, were cold and merciless in their viscid
hatred. I dipped the nose of my monoplane downwards to escape it. As
I did so, as quick as a flash, there was shot out a
long tentacle from this mass of floating blubber, and it felt as light and
sinuous as a whiplash across the front of my machine. There was a loud
hiss as it lay for a moment across the hot engine, and it whisked
itself into the air again, while the huge flat body drew itself together as
if in sudden pain. I dipped to a vall peak, but again a
tentacle fell over the monoplane, and it was shorn off by the propeller as
easily as it might have cut through a smoke wreath. A long, gliding,
sticky, serpent like coil came from behind and caught me round the waist,
dragging me out of the fuselage. I tore at it, my fingers
sinking into the smooth, glue like surface. For an instant. I disengaged
myself, but only to be caught round the boot by another coil, which
gave me a jerk that tilted me almost down to my back. As I
fell over, I blazed off both barrels of my gun, though indeed it
was like attacking an elephant with a pea shooter to imagine that any human weapon
could cripple that mighty bulk. And yet I aimed better than I knew,
for with a loud report, one of the great blisters upon the creature's back
exploded with the puncture of the buckshot. It was very clear that my conjecture
was right, that these vast clear bladders were distended with some lifting gas.
For in an instant the huge cloudlike body turned sideways, writhing desperately to find
its balance, while the white beak snapped and gaped in horrible fury. But
ready I had shot away on the steepest glide that I dared to attempt,
my engine still full on the flying propeller, and the force of gravity shooting
me downwards like an arrow light. Bright behind me, I saw a dull,
purplish smudge growing swiftly smaller and merging into the blue sky behind it.
I was safe out of the deadly jungle of the outer air. Once out
of danger, I throttled my engine. For nothing tears a machine to pieces
quicker than running on a full power from a height. It was a glorious
spiral vall plane from nearly eight miles of altitude, first to the level of
the silver cloud bank, then to that of the storm cloud beneath it,
and finally, in beating rain, to the surface of the Earth. I
saw the Bristol channel beneath me. As I broke from the clouds, but
having still some petrol in my tank. I got twenty miles in one 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. At
ten minutes past six that evening, I alighted gently in my own home meadow
at Divisas, after such a journey as no mortal upon Earth has ever yet
taken, and live 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 kin 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 lovelierritescent
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 was always the shotgun,
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 joyous, armstrong statement of the man Nothing has since
been seen. Pieces of a shattered monoplane have been picked up in the preserves
of mister bud Lushington, upon the borders of Kent and Sussex, within a
few miles of the spot where the notebook was discovered. If the unfortunate aviator's
theory is correct, that this air jungle, as he called it, existed
only over the southwest 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 groom relics were found. The picture of that monoplane skimming down the
sky, with the nameless terrors flying as swiftly beneath it, and cutting it
off always from the earth, while they gradually closed in upon their victim,
is one upon which a man who valued his sanity would prefer not to dwell.
There are many, as I am aware, who still jeer at the
facts which I have here set down. But even they must admit that Joyce
Armstrong has disappeared, and I would commend to them his own words. This
notebook may explain what I am trying to do, and how I lost my
life in doing it. But no drivel about accidents or mysteries, if you
please, And of the horror of the heights