The queerest thing, though, was that the feeling of fear had left me completely. I felt exhilarated and happy, and immensely proud of myself. I began to sing and shout at the top of my lungs, while the engine thundered above me and the vibrating wires whistled and whined.
But with every passing minute my arms and legs were growing more tired from the task of keeping a stationary position on the axle. I remember thinking that soon I would be too tired to hold on any longer, and then I would go tumbling head over heels down through a few thousand feet of empty space. However, it seemed too fantastic for me to be frightened. Falling off the roof of our barn would be every bit as scary, I thought.
Suddenly the plane started back toward earth in a crazy, sickening rush, and with a speed that all but tore me loose from my precarious perch. It was surely all over with me, I decided, and shut my eyes, lost in a horrible swirling nausea. But instinctively, I hugged the strut in a regular death-grip. I dropped into bottomless abysses and suffered such terrifically violent changes of direction that up-and-down and sideways were all scrambled together into one hodgepodge of tipsy motion. When I opened my eyes, I found that the earth and the sky had changed places in an extraordinary sort of waltz they were dancing with each other, and once it looked as if we were falling straight into the sun. After that I kept my eyes tightly closed.
The pilots were testing out the ship, putting it through every stunt it was capable of. Maneuvers which had looked so graceful and easy from the ground left me feeling much as though I had been a handball swiftly batted through the air by a company of playful giants. And when the plane looped, I felt I was being whirled about at the end of a long string, and that the string was slowly slipping out of my grasp. In fact, my grasp on the axle was weakening. Terror-stricken, I screamed again and again, but the wind wiped out my voice, and the men only four feet above me might have been that many miles away for any chance they had of hearing me.
After what seemed long and intolerable hours to me, the pilots throttled the engine down for an instant, and in the comparative quiet they must have heard my shouts. I opened my eyes again to see the top of a leather helmet leaning far out of the cockpit to peer under the wing. Immediately the plane slanted back toward the ground, keeping as even a keel as possible. One of the pilots leaned over once more to wave an encouraging hand at me, and in a few moments we landed safely in the middle of the field....
It was none too soon. My arms and legs were quivering from fright and exhaustion, and before the plane could come to a stop, they abruptly gave way and I rolled off on the ground. The tail skid handed me a vicious bump in passing, and I lay there desperately sick, while everything continued to whirl madly around and my ears rang like a set of chimes.
The major in command of the field came driving up to me with his car, and I will never forget the mixture of relief and anger on his face when he picked me up. He took me home, where Father was trying to calm Mother and Frank, both of whom were nearly hysterical. They were so glad to see me alive and all in one piece that I escaped a scolding that day. But my father and the major agreed that if we boys were ever caught on the field again, we were to be marched home, there to receive a sound walloping.
Needless to say, these orders were strictly obeyed for a time, although the flyers patted me on the back and told me I was a “nervy little brat” whenever they saw me around home. However, I had lost all desire to steal any more airplane rides, or even to go aloft as an authorized passenger. In fact, since that day the farthest I have been off the ground was to take the elevator to the top of the Woolworth Tower in order to please some friends of mine who were showing me the sights of New York.