Thousands of eyes unconsciously looked upward, although all knew that it was impossible to see to the great height the aeroplane had attained. But all realized that something serious was happening miles above. What had happened? Would the aeroplane come flying down from above and land a shattered wreck?
Minutes passed and no voice was heard through the horn. The suspense became unbearable. Several more minutes passed and at last came—
“Hello, below,—we thought we were gone that time. We ran into a whirling draft of air of cyclone speed. Our machine was caught in it and we were pitched over and over like a feather, whirling, tossing, and tumbling. We were flung up—up—and up. We don’t know how far up we are now, because we were carried upward for many minutes at many miles a minute. Our instrument only registers sixty thousand feet and the hand reached that mark long before we were pitched out of the whirling mass and into still air. The current seems to come up and then turn east and we were flung to the top side. We must be fifteen or twenty miles high—way above any height we dreamed a person could fly. Our motor does not run as smoothly as it did below, but it is doing fairly well. We still have to use our own supply of oxygen. The movements of the machine are rather slow and sluggish. It might be that we are flying in air hurled up in that mighty up-rushing funnel of air from below. We can not understand it. We are circling about, getting our nerve back to make a dive for the earth. If we get through the high eastward current of air and miss the upward whirlwind, we will be O. K. If we hit the upward whirlwind, we will be flung back like a leaf. We can feel the intense cold through all our furs. It must be fifty degrees below zero. Nothing but space, space, space, as far as you can see and in every direction. You feel like loosening, your belt, stepping on the edge of the machine and stepping off into—nothing—you feel as though there were no world—no God—No——”
The voice broke off and then continued with a note of excitement in it.
“We have made a discovery; there are clouds up here—Dex just pointed several out to me and we are headed for them. They seem very dense as we get nearer.”
For several minutes the voice stopped and those below talked in suppressed excitement. They were past the cheering stage now. What had happened miles above the earth had made them curious and started them thinking. Then the voice came, quivering with a tone of excitement.
“People, below! I am going to make a statement to you that will seem unbelievable, a statement that will upset all past theories of the upper air. If I were not sure of bringing down proofs of my statements, I would not make it and I don’t even ask you to believe it, until we come back.
“People, below—there is vegetable and animal life here. We are now flying above a floating island of vegetable substance while around us and above are hundreds of other floating islands of the same substance. I have managed to catch a small handful of the substance as it floated in the air between the larger bodies of the same thing.
“It is nearly transparent, but has a pale greenish color. It is spongy and tough, being made up of a rubber-like material full of thousands of small gas pockets. It must be this gas that keeps it afloat at this great height. It grows on long rope-like branches like sea-kelp or some kind of moss. What we took for clouds were great masses of this plant matted together and floating about. I believe we could walk on these islands, but it would be impossible to land our aeroplane for it would sink too deep to get it out again.