I did, at any rate, whatever other
impressions there were, release the winding of the outer net and let the
balloon expand again, and that no doubt did something to break my fall.
I don't remember doing that. Indeed, all I do remember is the giddy
effect upon the landscape of falling swiftly upon it down a flat spiral,
the hurried rush of fields and trees and cottages on my left shoulder
and the overhung feeling as if the whole apparatus was pressing down
the top of my head. I didn't stop or attempt to stop the screw. That was
going on, swish, swish, swish all the time.
Cothope really knows more about the fall than I do. He describes the
easterly start, the tilt, and the appearance and bursting of a sort
of bladder aft. Then down I swooped, very swiftly, but not nearly so
steeply as I imagined I was doing. "Fifteen or twenty degrees," said
Cothope, "to be exact." From him it was that I learnt that I let the
nets loose again, and so arrested my fall. He thinks I was more in
control of myself than I remember.
But I do not see why I should have forgotten so excellent a resolution.
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