So terrific was the roar of my new engine that I could only communicate with Roseye by signs.
I pointed at the moving train and, understanding my gesture, she nodded.
As we rose higher and yet higher into the calm starlit sky, the earth beneath us became increasingly mysterious and misty. Here and there dim lights showed, single lights of scattered cottages unseen by rural constables, or improperly obscured lights from the larger houses.
Soon some red and green lights showed away on our left, and I knew that in the valley there ran the main railway line to London.
By day, at an altitude of 2,500 feet, the whole surface of the earth appears perfectly flat, hills and valleys seeming to be on the same level. Therein lies one of the dangers of aerial navigation. The contour of the earth is quite indistinguishable when one is half a mile high, therefore the altimeter is not of very great use—and more especially so at night. The instrument only records the number of feet above sea-level, and not above the earth. Thus, a pilot flying by night can very easily pass over a valley and suddenly find himself encountering a range of high hills with a fatal belt of trees or row of houses.
Such is exactly what happened to us on that memorable night. We crossed the valley, and as I steered straight by compass in the direction of Stockhurst at about thirty miles an hour, I had dipped and of a sudden I found myself nearing a dark, high hill. Just in time I shot up and cleared, I believe only by inches, the roof of a house.
Roseye was quick to notice our sudden ascent and how we skimmed over the house and the trees of somebody’s park as we kept our rather zigzag course.
A clever writer upon aeroplanes has, with much truth, pointed out that the natural course of a machine is never a direct one, and if a line could be drawn between two given points it would be found that first it veered slightly to the left of this line, then gradually worked back to the true direction, afterwards heading off to the right and again returning. Thus the true course is in the form of a continuous series of left and right-hand semicircles.
These eccentric semicircles we were making with the engine running like clockwork. There were few clouds and, therefore, the chance of a nasty “nose-dive” was not to be apprehended. Once a machine gets into clouds it behaves like a ship in a stormy sea, and clouds can easily be met with after height of three thousand feet.
After passing over the hill I dropped again to 2,000 feet, that being the best height to fly on a crosscountry journey. There now opened out to our view a quantity of lights, among which were the red glare of a furnace, and a long row of small lights which evidently marked the main street of some little town in defiance of the “order.”