The first trial was bound to be the
worst; it was an experiment I made with life, and the chance of death or
injury was, I supposed, about equal to the chance of success. I believed
that with a dawn-like lucidity. I had begun with a glider that I
imagined was on the lines of the Wright brothers' aeroplane, but I could
not be sure. It might turn over. I might upset it. It might burrow its
nose at the end and smash itself and me. The conditions of the flight
necessitated alert attention; it wasn't a thing to be done by jumping
off and shutting one's eyes or getting angry or drunk to do it. One
had to use one's weight to balance. And when at last I did it it was
horrible--for ten seconds. For ten seconds or so, as I swept down the
air flattened on my infernal framework and with the wind in my eyes, the
rush of the ground beneath me filled me with sick and helpless terror;
I felt as though some violent oscillatory current was throbbing in brain
and back bone, and I groaned aloud. I set my teeth and groaned. It was
a groan wrung out of me in spite of myself.
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