On Glorious Wings

by Stephen Coonts

  There was a second—opal-colored and fleecy—at a great height above my head: a white, unbroken ceiling above, and a dark, unbroken floor below, with the monoplane laboring upward upon a vast spiral between them. It is deadly lonely in these cloud spaces. Once a great flight of some small water bird went past me, flying very fast to the westward. The quick whir of their wings and their musical cry were cheery to my ear. I fancy that they were teal, but I am a wretched zoologist. Now that we humans have become birds we must really learn to know our brethren by sight.

  The wind down beneath me whirled and swayed the broad cloud-plain. Once a great eddy formed in it, a whirlpool of vapor, and through it, as down a funnel, I caught sight of the distant world. A large white biplane was passing at a vast depth beneath me. I fancy it was the morning-mail service between Bristol and London. Then the drift swirled inward again and the great solitude was unbroken.

  Just after ten I touched the lower edge of the upper-cloud stratum. It consisted of fine, diaphanous vapor drifting swiftly from the westward. The wind had been steadily rising all this time, and it was now blowing a sharp breeze—twenty-eight an hour by my gage. Already it was very cold, though my altimeter marked only nine thousand. The engines were working beautifully and we went droning steadily upward. The cloud bank was thicker than I had expected, but at last it thinned out into a golden mist before me, and then in an instant I had shot out from it, and there was an unclouded sky and a brilliant sun over my head—all blue and gold above, all shining silver below, one vast, glimmering plain as far as my eyes could reach.

  It was quarter-past ten o’clock, and the barograph needle pointed to twelve thousand eight hundred. Up I went and up, my ears concentrated upon the deep purring of my motor, my eyes busy always with the watch, the revolution indicator, the petrol lever, and the oil pump. No wonder aviators are said to be a fearless race. With so many things to think of there is no time to trouble about oneself. About this time I noted how unreliable is the compass when above a certain height from earth. At fifteen thousand feet mine was pointing east and a point south. The sun and the wind gave me my true bearings.

  I rose steadily, reflecting the sun like a great, smooth river across these empty solitudes of air. I had hoped to reach an eternal stillness in these high altitudes, but with every thousand feet of ascent the gale grew stronger. My machine groaned and trembled in every joint and rivet as she faced it, and swept away like a sheet of paper when I banked her on the turn, skimming down wind at a greater pace, perhaps, than ever mortal man has moved. Yet I had always to turn again and tack up in the wind’s eye, for it was not merely a height record that I was after. By all my calculations it was above Wiltshire that my air jungle lay, and all my labor might be lost if I struck the outer layers at some farther point.

  When I reached the nineteen-thousand-foot level, which was about midday, the wind was so severe that I looked with some anxiety to the stays of my wings, expecting momentarily to see them snap or slacken. I even cast loose the parachute behind me, and fastened its hook into the ring of my leathern belt so as to be ready for the worst. This is the time when a bit of skimped work by the mechanic is paid for by the life of the aeronaut. But she held together bravely. Every cord and strut was humming and vibrating like a harp string; but it was glorious to see how, for all the beating and the buffeting, she was still the mistress of the sky.

  There is surely something divine in man himself that he should rise so superior to the limitations which Creation seems to impose—rise, too, by such unselfish, heroic devotion as this air conquest has shown. Talk of human degeneration! When has such a story as this been written in the annals of our race!

  These were the thoughts in my head as I climbed that monstrous inclined plane, with the wind sometimes beating in my face and sometimes whistling behind my ears, while the cloudland beneath me fell away to such a distance that the folds and hummocks of silver had all smoothed out into one flat, shining plain.

  But suddenly I had a horrible and unprecedented experience. I have known before what it is to be in what our neighbors called a “tour-billon,” but never on such a scale as this. That huge, sweeping river of wind of which I have spoken had, as it appears, whirlpools within it which were as monstrous as itself. Without a moment’s warning I was dragged suddenly into the heart of one. I spun around for a minute or two with such velocity that I almost lost my senses, and then fell suddenly, left wing foremost, down the vacuum funnel in the center. I dropped like a stone, and lost nearly a thousand feet in about twenty seconds. It was only my belt that kept me in my seat, and the shock and breathlessness left me hanging half-sensible over the side of the fuselage.

  But I am always capable of a supreme effort—it is my one great merit as an aviator. I was conscious that the descent was slower. The whirlpool was a cone rather than a funnel, and I had come to the apex. With a terrific wrench, throwing my weight all to one side, I leveled my planes and brought her head away from the wind. In an instant I had shot out of the eddies and was skimming down the sky.

  Then, shaken but victorious, I turned her nose up and began once more my steady grind on the upward spiral. I took a large sweep to avoid the danger spot of the whirlpool, and soon I was safely above it. Just after one o’clock I was 21,000 feet above the sea level. To my great joy I had topped the gale, and with every hundred feet of ascent the air grew stiller. On the other hand, it was very cold, and I was conscious of that peculiar nausea which goes with rarefication of the air. For the first time I unscrewed the mouth of my oxygen bag and took an occasional whiff of the glorious gas. I could feel it running like a cordial through my veins, and I was exhilarated almost to the point of drunkenness. I shouted and sang as I soared upward into the cold, still outer world.

  It was very clear to me that the insensibility which came upon Glaisher, and in a lesser degree upon Coxwell, when in 1862 they ascended in a balloon to the height of 30,000 feet, was due to the extreme speed with which a perpendicular ascent is made. Doing it at an easy gradient and accustoming oneself to the lessened barometric pressure by slow degrees, there are no such dreadful symptoms. At the same great height I found that even without my oxygen inhaler I could breathe without undue distress.

  It was bitterly cold, however, and my thermometer was at zero Fahrenheit. At 1:30, I was nearly seven miles above the surface of the earth, and still ascending steadily. I found, however, that the rarefied air was giving markedly less support to my planes, and that my angle of ascent had to be considerably lowered in consequence. It was already clear that even with my light weight and strong engine power there was a point in front of me where I should be held. To make matters worse, one of my sparking plugs was in trouble again and there was intermittent misfiring in the engine. My heart was heavy with the fear of failure.

  It was about that time that I had a most extraordinary experience. Something whizzed past me in a trail of smoke and exploded with a loud hissing sound, sending forth a cloud of steam. For the instant I could not imagine what had happened. Then I remembered that the earth is forever being bombarded with meteor stones and would be hardly inhabitable were they not in nearly every case turned to vapor in the outer layers of the atmosphere. Here is a new danger for the high-altitude man, for two others passed me when I was nearing the forty-thousand-foot mark. I can not doubt that at the edge of the earth’s envelope the risk would be a very real one.

  My barograph needle marked 41,300 when I became aware that I could go no further. Physically, the strain was not as yet greater than I could bear, but my machine had reached its limit. The attenuated air gave no firm support to the wings, and the least tilt developed into side-slip, while she seemed sluggish on her controls. Possibly, had the engine been at its best, another thousand feet might have been within our capacity; but it was still misfiring, and two out of the ten cylinders appeared to be out of action. If I had not already reached the zone for which I was searching, then I should never see it upon this journey.

  But wa
s it not possible that I had attained it? Soaring in circles like a monstrous hawk upon the forty-thousand-foot level, I let the monoplane guide herself, and with my Mannheim glass I made a careful observation of my surroundings. The heavens were perfectly clear; there was no indication of those dangers which I had imagined.

  I have said that I was soaring in circles. It struck me suddenly that I should do well to take a wider sweep and open up a new air tract. If the hunter entered an earth jungle he would drive through it if he wished to find his game. My reasoning had led me to believe that the air jungle lay somewhere over Wiltshire. This should be to the south and west of me. I took my bearings from the sun, for the compass was hopeless and no trace of earth was to be seen—nothing but the distant silver cloud plain. However, I got my direction as best I might and kept her head straight to the mark. I reckoned that my petrol supply would not last for more than an hour or so, but I could afford to use it to the last drop, since a single magnificent volplane would at any time take me to the earth.

  Suddenly I was aware of something new. The air in front of me had lost its crystal clearness. It was full of long, ragged wisps of something which I can only compare to very fine cigarette smoke. It hung about in wreaths and coils, turning and twisting slowly in the sunlight. As the monoplane shot through it, I was aware of a faint taste of oil upon my lips, and there was a greasy scum upon the woodwork of the machine. Some infinitely fine organic matter appeared to be suspended in the atmosphere.

  There was no life there. It was inchoate and diffuse, extending for many square acres and then fringing off into the void. No, it was not life. But might it not be the remains of life? Above all, might it not be the food of life, of monstrous life, even as the humble grease of the ocean is the food for the mighty whale? The thought was in my mind when my eyes looked upward and I saw the most wonderful vision that ever man has seen. Can I hope to convey it to you, even as I saw it myself last Thursday!

  Conceive a jellyfish such as sails in our summer seas, bell-shaped and of enormous size—far larger, I should judge, than the dome of Saint Paul’s. It was of a light pink color veined with a delicate green, but the whole huge fabric so tenuous that it was but a fairy outline against the dark blue sky. It pulsated with a delicate and regular rhythm. From it there depended two long, drooping green tentacles which swayed slowly backward and forward. This gorgeous vision passed gently with noiseless dignity over my head, as light and fragile as a soap bubble, and drifted upon its stately way.

  I had half-turned my monoplane that I might look after this beautiful creature, when in a moment I found myself amidst a perfect fleet of them, of all sizes, but none so large as the first. Some were quite small, but the majority about as big as an average balloon, and with much the same curvature at the top. There was in them a delicacy of texture and coloring which reminded me of the finest Venetian glass. Pale shades of pink and green were the prevailing tints, but all had a lovely iridescence where the sun shimmered through their dainty forms. Some hundreds of them drifted past me, a wonderful fairy squadron of strange, unknown argosies of the sky—creatures whose forms and substance were so attuned to these pure heights that one could not conceive anything so delicate within actual sight or sound of earth.

  But soon my attention was drawn to a new phenomenon—the serpents of the outer air. These were long, thin, fantastic coils of vapor-like material, which turned and twisted with great speed, flying round and round so fast that the eyes could hardly follow them. Some of these ghost-like creatures were twenty or thirty feet long; but it was difficult to tell their girth, for their outline was so hazy that it seemed to fade away into the air around them. These air snakes were of a very light gray or smoke color, with some darker lines within which gave the impression of a definite organism. One of them whisked past my very face, and I was conscious of a cold, clammy contact; but their composition was so unsubstantial that I could not connect them with any thought of physical danger, any more than the beautiful bell-like creatures which had preceded them. There was no more solidity in their frames than in the floating spume from a broken wave.

  But a more terrible experience was in store for me. Floating downward from a great height, there came a purplish patch of vapor, small as I first saw it, but rapidly enlarging as it approached me, until it appeared to be hundreds of square feet in size. Though fashioned of some transparent jelly-like substance, it was none the less of much more definite outline and solid consistence than anything which I had seen before.

  There were more traces, too, of a physical organization, especially two vast, shadowy, circular plates upon either side, which may have been eyes, and a perfectly solid white projection between them which was as curved and cruel as the beak of a vulture. The whole aspect of this monster was formidable and threatening, and it kept changing its color from a very light mauve to a dark, angry purple so thick that it cast a shadow as it drifted between my monoplane and the sun. On the upper curve of its huge body there were three great projections which I can only describe as enormous bubbles, and I was convinced as I looked at them that they were charged with some extremely light gas which served to buoy up the misshapen and semi-solid mass in the rarefied air.

  The creature moved swiftly along, keeping pace easily with the monoplane, and for twenty miles or more it formed my horrible escort, hovering over me like a bird of prey which is waiting to pounce. Its method of progression—done so swiftly that it was not easy to follow—was to throw out a long, glutinous streamer in front of it, which in turn seemed to draw forward the rest of its writhing body. So elastic and gelatinous was it that never for two successive minutes was it the same shape, and yet each change made it more threatening and loathsome than the last.

  I knew that it meant mischief. Every purple flush of its hideous body told me so. The vague, goggling eyes, which were turned always upon me, were cold and merciless in their viscid hatred. I dipped the nose of my monoplane downward to escape it. As I did so, as quick as a flash, there shot out a long tentacle from this mass of floating blubber, and it fell as light and sinuous as a whiplash across the front of my machine. There was a loud hiss as it lay for a moment against the hot engine, and it whisked itself into the air again while the huge, flat body drew itself together as if in sudden pain.

  I dipped to a vol-pique, but again a tentacle fell over the monoplane, and was shorn off by the propeller as easily as it might have cut through a smoke wreath. A long, gliding, sticky, serpent-like coil came from behind and caught me round the waist, dragging me out of the fuselage. I tore at it, my fingers sinking into the smooth, glue-like surface, and for an instant I disengaged myself, but only to be caught round the boot by another coil, which gave me a jerk that tilted me almost on to my back.

  As I fell over I blazed off both barrels of my gun, though indeed it was like attacking an elephant with a peashooter to imagine that any human weapon could cripple that mighty bulk. And yet I aimed better than I knew, for with a loud report one of the great blisters upon the creature’s back exploded with the puncture of the buckshot. It was very clear that my conjecture was right, and that these vast, clear bladders were distended with some lifting-gas, for in an instant the huge, cloud-like body turned sideways, writhing desperately to find its balance, while the white beak snapped and gaped in horrible fury.

  But already I had shot away on the steepest glide that I dared to attempt, my engine still full on, the flying propeller and the force of gravity shooting me downward like an aerolite. Far behind me I saw a dull purplish smudge growing swiftly smaller and merging into the blue sky behind it.

  I was safe out of the deadly jungle of the outer air.

  Once out of danger I throttled my engine, for nothing tears a machine to pieces quicker than running on full power from a height. It was a glorious spiral volplane from nearly eight miles of altitude, first to the level of the silver cloud bank, then to that of the storm cloud beneath it, and finally in beating rain to the surface of the earth. I saw the Bristol C
hannel beneath me as I broke from the clouds; but having still some petrol in my tank I got twenty miles inland before I found myself stranded in a field near the village of Ashcombe.

  There I got three tins of petrol from a passing motorcar, and at ten minutes past six that evening I alighted gently in my own home meadow at Devizes after such a journey as no mortal upon earth has ever yet taken and lived to tell the tale. I have seen the beauty and I have seen the horror of the heights—and greater beauty or horror than that is not within the ken of man.

  And now it is my plan to go once again into the outer air before I give my results to the world.

  My reason for this is that I must surely have something to show by way of proof before I lay such a tale before my fellow men. It is true that others will soon follow and will confirm what I have said, and yet I should wish to carry conviction from the first. Those lovely iridescent bubbles of the air should not be hard to capture. They drift slowly upon their way, and the swift monoplane could intercept their leisurely course. It is likely enough that they would dissolve in the heavier layers of the atmosphere, and that some small heap of amorphous jelly might be all that I should bring to earth with me. And yet something there would surely be, by which I could substantiate my story.

  Yes, I will go, even if I run a risk by doing so. These purple horrors would not seem to be numerous. It is probable that I shall not see one. If I do I shall dive at once. At the worst there is always the shotgun and my knowledge of . . .

  [Here a page of the manuscript is unfortunately missing. On the next page is written in large, straggling writing]:

  Forty-three thousand feet. I shall never see earth again. They are beneath me, three of them. God help me, it is a dreadful death to die!

  Such in its entirety is the Joyce-Armstrong Statement.