On Glorious Wings Page 5

  Such thoughts as these, which had been dim and vague until then, or but slightly regarded when they came up, returned upon their excited fancies with intense force at this parting moment. Dr. Ferguson, still cold and impassible, talked of this, that, and the other; but he strove in vain to overcome this infectious gloominess. He utterly failed.

  As some demonstration against the personal safety of the doctor and his companions was feared, all three slept that night on board the Resolute. At six o’clock in the morning they left their cabin, and landed on the island of Koumbeni.

  The balloon was swaying gently to and fro in the morning breeze; the sand-bags that had held it down were now replaced by some twenty strong-armed sailors, and Captain Bennet and his officers were present to witness the solemn departure of their friends.

  At this moment Kennedy went right up to the doctor, grasped his hand, and said:

  “Samuel, have you absolutely determined to go?”

  “Solemnly determined, my dear Dick.”

  “I have done every thing that I could to prevent this expedition, have I not?”

  “Every thing!”

  “Well, then, my conscience is clear on that score, and I will go with you.”

  “I was sure you would!” said the doctor, betraying in his features swift traces of emotion.

  At last the moment of final leave-taking arrived. The captain and his officers embraced their dauntless friends with great feeling, not excepting even Joe, who, worthy fellow, was as proud and happy as a prince. Every one in the party insisted upon having a final shake of the doctor’s hand.

  At nine o’clock the three travellers got into their car. The doctor lit the combustible in his cylinder and turned the flame so as to produce a rapid heat, and the balloon, which had rested on the ground in perfect equipoise, began to rise in a few minutes, so that the seamen had to slacken the ropes they held it by. The car then rose about twenty feet above their heads.

  “My friends!” exclaimed the doctor, standing up between his two companions, and taking off his hat, “let us give our aërial ship a name that will bring her good luck! let us christen her Victoria!”

  This speech was answered with stentorian cheers of “Huzza for the Queen! Huzza for Old England!”

  At this moment the ascensional force of the balloon increased prodigiously, and Ferguson, Kennedy, and Joe, waved a last good-by to their friends.

  “Let go all!” shouted the doctor, and at the word the Victoria shot rapidly up into the sky, while the four carronades on board the Resolute thundered forth a parting salute in her honor.

  THE HORROR

  OF THE

  HEIGHTS

  by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  The dawn of the age of flight was an event that shook the world. The established writers of the day were as stirred as their audiences, and many cranked out stories for their loyal fans.

  You will enjoy this short story by the creator of Sherlock Holmes, despite its obvious technical shortcomings. In fact, the nonsense of the tale is its charm—rain lashing the pilot’s face, turning tail to hail, a mechanical wind-speed gauge, an unreliable compass above a certain height, breathing without oxygen at 30,000 feet, meteors zipping past, and so on. . . . But in those innocent days the reading public knew no more than the author. Oh, if only that were still true!

  The idea that the extraordinary narrative which has been called the Joyce-Armstrong Fragment is an elaborate practical joke, evolved by some unknown person cursed by a perverted and sinister sense of humor, has now been abandoned by all who have examined the facts. The most macabre and imaginative of plotters would hesitate before linking his morbid fancies with the unquestioned and tragic facts which reinforce the statement. Though the assertions contained in it are amazing and even monstrous, it is none the less 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 in 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 Mr. 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 Withyham, upon the Kent and Sussex border. It was on the fifteenth of September last that an agricultural laborer, James Flynn, in the employment of Matthew Dodd, farmer of the Chauntry Farm, Withyham, perceived a briar 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 nettle in the ditch, he caught sight of a flat canvas-backed 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, 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 Dr. J. H. Atherton of Hartfield. This gentleman at once recognized the need for an expert examination, and the manuscript was forwarded to the Obro 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 affects the general coherence of the story. It is conjectured that the missing opening is concerned with the record of Mr. 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 the most intellectual of flying men, a combination which has enabled him both to invent and to 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 were scribbled off hurriedly from the seat 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 that Joyce-Armstrong is known to have suffered from intermittent fever, is a remarkable example of the new weapons which modern science has 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 less than one hundred and seventy ascents 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 else, 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. Horrible to narrate, his head was entirely obliterated, though his body and limbs preserved their configuration. At every gathering of airmen, Joyce-Armstrong, according to Dangerfield, would ask with an enigmatic smile: “And where, pray, is Myrtle’s head?” This dreadful question and the strange
fashion in which it was asked froze the blood of men who were callous to the dangers of their perilous calling.

  On another occasion, after dinner at the mess of the Flying School on Salisbury Plain, he started a debate as to what will be the most permanent danger which airmen will have to encounter. Having listened to successive opinions as to air pockets, faulty engines 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 3 of the blood-soaked notebook.

  Nevertheless, when I dined at Rheims with Coselli 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 had any corresponding idea they could not have failed to express it. But then they are two empty, vainglorious 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 in our day? The answer is obvious. In the old days of weak engines, when a hundred-horsepower Gnome 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 Garros made a world-wide reputation by attaining 19,000 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 in former years. Many of them have been undertaken with impunity. The thirty-thousand-foot level has been reached time after time with no discomfort beyond cold 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 air, and there are worse things than tigers which inhabit them. I believe in time these jungles will be accurately mapped out. Even at the present moment I could name two of them. One of them lies over the Pau-Biarritz district of France. Another is just over my head as I write here in my house at Wiltshire. I rather think there is a third in the Homburg-Wiesbaden 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 Verrier in France; his machine was found near Bayonne, 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, Dr. 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 rise perpendicularly upward in a succession of jerks, in a manner which he would have thought to be impossible. That was the last seen 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 at the bottom of the business! He came down in a tremendous volplane 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 Venables say? Venables 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 Venables, but could not imagine what he was frightened about. Only said one word to 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 anyone 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 ascents—how Dangerfield used to chaff me about my shotgun!—but I’ve never been high enough! Now, with this new, light Paul Veroner machine and its 175 Robur, I should easily touch the 30,000 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 he had best keep out of flying altogether and subside finally into flannel slippers and 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 no drivel about accidents or mysteries, if you please.

  I chose my Paul Veroner monoplane for the job. There’s 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 bonny little model, and answers my hand like a tender-mouthed horse. The engine is a ten-cylinder rotary Robur, working up to 175. It has all the modern improvements, enclosed fuselage, 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, with a dozen cartridges filled with buckshot. You should have seen the face of Perkins, my new 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, and had to dress for the part.

  Of course, 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 the others I flattened out my planes and put her on her highest. She skimmed like a swallow downwind 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 of 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 over-mastering power into our engines. Just as I reached the cloud banks, with the altimeter marking 3,000, 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 as one. That’s where the beauty of our modern silencers comes 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 when every sound was swallowed up by the monstrous racket of the machine. If only the early aviators could come back to see the beauty and perfection of the mechanism which has been bought at the cost of their lives!

  About 9:30 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 the wet folds of vapor were swirling round my face. It was clammily 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. In my anxiety to get clear, I cocked her nose up until the automatic alarm bell rang and I actually began to slide backward. 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.