FLIGHT—­1917

To begin at the end, I will say that the “landing” surprised me by a slight and very characteristically “dead” sort of shock.

I may fairly call myself an amphibious creature.  A good half of my active existence has been passed in familiar contact with salt water, and I was aware, theoretically, that water is not an elastic body:  but it was only then that I acquired the absolute conviction of the fact.  I remember distinctly the thought flashing through my head:  “By Jove! it isn’t elastic!” Such is the illuminating force of a particular experience.

This landing (on the water of the North Sea) was effected in a Short biplane after one hour and twenty minutes in the air.  I reckon every minute like a miser counting his hoard, for, if what I’ve got is mine, I am not likely now to increase the tale.  That feeling is the effect of age.  It strikes me as I write that, when next time I leave the surface of this globe, it won’t be to soar bodily above it in the air.  Quite the contrary.  And I am not thinking of a submarine either. . . .

But let us drop this dismal strain and go back logically to the beginning.  I must confess that I started on that flight in a state—­I won’t say of fury, but of a most intense irritation.  I don’t remember ever feeling so annoyed in my life.

It came about in this way.  Two or three days before, I had been invited to lunch at an R.N.A.S. station, and was made to feel very much at home by the nicest lot of quietly interesting young men it had ever been my good fortune to meet.  Then I was taken into the sheds.  I walked respectfully round and round a lot of machines of all kinds, and the more I looked at them the more I felt somehow that for all the effect they produced on me they might have been so many land-vehicles of an eccentric design.  So I said to Commander O., who very kindly was conducting me:  “This is all very fine, but to realise what one is looking at, one must have been up.”

He said at once:  “I’ll give you a flight to-morrow if you like.”

I postulated that it should be none of those “ten minutes in the air” affairs.  I wanted a real business flight.  Commander O. assured me that I would get “awfully bored,” but I declared that I was willing to take that risk.  “Very well,” he said.  “Eleven o’clock to-morrow.  Don’t be late.”

I am sorry to say I was about two minutes late, which was enough, however, for Commander O. to greet me with a shout from a great distance:  “Oh!  You are coming, then!”

“Of course I am coming,” I yelled indignantly.

He hurried up to me.  “All right.  There’s your machine, and here’s your pilot.  Come along.”