If it
hadn't been for a sort of anchoring trolley device of Cothope's, a sort
of slip anchor running on a rail, we should never have got clear at all.
V
The incidents of our flight in Lord Roberts B do not arrange themselves
in any consecutive order. To think of that adventure is like dipping
haphazard into an album of views. One is reminded first of this and then
of that. We were both lying down on a horizontal plate of basketwork;
for Lord Roberts B had none of the elegant accommodation of a balloon. I
lay forward, and my uncle behind me in such a position that he could
see hardly anything of our flight. We were protected from rolling over
simply by netting between the steel stays. It was impossible for us to
stand up at all; we had either to lie or crawl on all fours over
the basket work. Amidships were lockers made of Watson's Aulite
material,--and between these it was that I had put my uncle, wrapped in
rugs. I wore sealskin motoring boots and gloves, and a motoring fur coat
over my tweeds, and I controlled the engine by Bowden wires and levers
forward.
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