[CHAPTER VI]
Morning
Sunrise made itself known to us merely as a gradual lightening that showed nothing but clouds, above and below. The sun itself was nowhere visible.
We seemed to be flying in and out of dense patches of cloud; for every now and then we would pass through a white mountain, emerge into a small area of clear atmosphere, and then be confronted with another enormous barrier of nebulousness.
The indefiniteness of dawn disappointed my hopes of taking observations. Already at three o'clock I had scribbled a note to the pilot: "Immediately you see sun rising, point machine straight towards it, and we'll get compass bearings." I had already worked out a table of hours, angles and azimuths of the sun at its rising, to serve as a check upon our position; but, as things happened, I was obliged to resume navigation by means of "dead reckoning."
A remark written in my log at twenty minutes past four was that the Vickers-Vimy had climbed to six thousand five hundred feet, and was above the lower range of clouds. For the rest, the three hours that followed sunrise I remember chiefly as a period of envelopment by clouds, and ever more clouds. Soon, as we continued to climb, the machine was traveling through a mist of uniform thickness that completely shut off from our range of vision everything outside a radius of a few yards from the wing-tips.
And then came a spell of bad weather, beginning with heavy rain, and continuing with snow. The downpour seemed to meet us almost horizontally, owing to the high speed of the machine, as compared with the rate of only a few feet per second at which the rain and snow fell.
The snow gave place to hail, mingled with sleet. The sheltered position of the cockpit, and the stream-lining of the machine, kept us free from the downfall so long as we remained seated; but if we exposed a hand or a face above the windscreen's protection, it would meet scores of tingling stabs from the hailstones.
When we had reached a height of eight thousand eight hundred feet, I discovered that the glass face of the gasoline overflow gauge, which showed whether or not the supply of fuel for the motors was correct, had become obscured by clotted snow. To guard against carburetor trouble, it was essential that the pilot should be able to read the gauge at any moment. It was up to me, therefore, to clear away the snow from the glass.