“You below! We are going to have trouble in just a minute. Saw several balloons above us snatched and rushed east at a speed that makes us look like a snail. It’s one of those terrific wind currents that different persons have discovered two or three miles up. We will be O. K. when we get in it, but going from slow to fast air is going to give us some rough riding. We are starting; I can feel our old machine beginning to pitch. Here we go!— God, we are pitching and spinning like a leaf. We are on our tail—now we are upside down. Over we go sideways—now we are level—whew, we just made a complete flip-flop. It’s a wonder we hold together—we are rocking and pitching like a row boat on a stormy ocean.
“We are getting up in the main current and don’t pitch so much. It is all I can do to hold my dinner down. I’m sea-sick—we are heading west, but I think we are losing several miles a minute as this terrific air current drifts us east.”
A deadly hush fell on the crowd below as they pictured the aeroplane being tossed and pitched about in one of the mighty air currents that are found miles above the earth. They could see the two men fighting to keep their machine right side up, as they fought through the eddies and whirls at the edge of the current and into the steady but fast moving air of the center. When Kidwell announced that they had made it, a mighty cheer went up. Several minutes passed and no sound came from the men miles above—then——
“Hurrah for the Liberty Motor—we just had another fight to get out of the big current and are now in still air above it. We were pitched and flung about, upside down and every which way, just as when we entered it. Our Motor did not miss a lick. Old “Dex” got sick. I saw him gulping and raise his helmet and lean over, but nothing happened. Now we are riding smoothly. We are heading straight west instead of circling so as to gain the distance we were carried backwards in the big air current. It is getting cold. We are using oxygen from our tanks as the air is mighty thin here—Dex has just called my attention to our instrument—what do you reckon she reads?—whoop—she has touched it. She’s reached thirty thousand feet. We’ll make it. We’ll break that old world’s altitude record.”
A roar that shook the Grand Stand went up from the listening crowd below. For ten minutes they cheered and flung things in the air in their excitement. A few more minutes and the world’s highest altitude record would belong to America once more. The cheering died down and then broke out afresh.
“What is the world’s record?” Pemberton leaned over and shouted above the din into the president’s ear.
“A little less than thirty-five thousand feet,” the President answered in one of the partly quiet spells of the crowd.
“Thirty-one thousand” came from the horns,—only those right against them could hear, but they began to relay the news. “Thirty-one thousand.” Another deafening cheer rang out. The crowd became silent as the President raised his hand for silence and pointed to the horns.
“Thirty-two thousand and Old Dex grinning like a frog.”
This time only a laugh from the crowd greeted the announcement. They would hold their cheers for the last as they wanted to hear all now.