My sensations of terror
swooped to a climax. And then, you know, they ended!
Suddenly my terror was over and done with. I was soaring through the air
right way up, steadily, and no mischance had happened. I felt intensely
alive and my nerves were strung like a bow. I shifted a limb, swerved
and shouted between fear and triumph as I recovered from the swerve and
heeled the other way and steadied myself.
I thought I was going to hit a rook that was flying athwart me,--it
was queer with what projectile silence that jumped upon me out of
nothingness, and I yelled helplessly, "Get out of the way!" The bird
doubled itself up like a partly inverted V, flapped, went up to the
right abruptly and vanished from my circle of interest. Then I saw
the shadow of my aeroplane keeping a fixed distance before me and very
steady, and the turf as it seemed streaming out behind it. The turf!--it
wasn't after all streaming so impossibly fast.
When I came gliding down to the safe spread of level green I had chosen,
I was as cool and ready as a city clerk who drops off an omnibus in
motion, and I had learnt much more than soaring.
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