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Tales of Terror and Mystery
Tales of Terror and Mystery By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Contents
Tales of Terror
The Horror of the Heights The Leather Funnel The New Catacomb The Case
of Lady Sannox The Terror of Blue John Gap The Brazilian Cat
Tales of Mystery
The Lost Special The Beetle-Hunter The Man with the Watches The
Japanned Box The Black Doctor The Jew's Breastplate
Tales of Terror
The Horror of the Heights
The idea that the extraordinary narrative which has been called the
Joyce-Armstrong Fragment is an elaborate practical joke evolved by
some unknown person, cursed by a perverted and sinister sense of
humour, has now been abandoned by all who have examined the matter.
The most macabre and imaginative of plotters would hesitate before
linking his morbid fancies with the unquestioned and tragic facts
which reinforce the statement. Though the assertions contained in it
are amazing and even monstrous, it is none the less forcing itself
upon the general intelligence that they are true, and that we must
readjust our ideas to the new situation. This world of ours appears
to be separated by a slight and precarious margin of safety from a
most singular and unexpected danger. I will endeavour in this
narrative, which reproduces the original document in its necessarily
somewhat fragmentary form, to lay before the reader the whole of the
facts up to date, prefacing my statement by saying that, if there be
any who doubt the narrative of Joyce-Armstrong, there can be no
question at all as to the facts concerning Lieutenant Myrtle, R. N.,
and Mr. Hay Connor, who undoubtedly met their end in the manner
described.
The Joyce-Armstrong Fragment was found in the field which is called
Lower Haycock, lying one mile to the westward of the village of
Withyham, upon the Kent and Sussex border. It was on the 15th
September last that an agricultural labourer, James Flynn, in the
employment of Mathew Dodd, farmer, of the Chauntry Farm, Withyham,
perceived a briar pipe lying near the footpath which skirts the hedge
in Lower Haycock. A few paces farther on he picked up a pair of
broken binocular glasses. Finally, among some nettles in the ditch,
he caught sight of a flat, canvas-backed book, which proved to be a
note-book with detachable leaves, some of which had come loose and
were fluttering along the base of the hedge. These he collected, but
some, including the first, were never recovered, and leave a
deplorable hiatus in this all-important statement. The note-book was
taken by the labourer to his master, who in turn showed it to Dr. J.
H. Atherton, of Hartfield. This gentleman at once recognized the need
for an expert examination, and the manuscript was forwarded to the
Aero Club in London, where it now lies.
The first two pages of the manuscript are missing. There is also one
torn away at the end of the narrative, though none of these affect the
general coherence of the story. It is conjectured that the missing
opening is concerned with the record of Mr. Joyce- Armstrong's
qualifications as an aeronaut, which can be gathered from other
sources and are admitted to be unsurpassed among the air-pilots of
England. For many years he has been looked upon as among the most
daring and the most intellectual of flying men, a combination which
has enabled him to both invent and test several new devices, including
the common gyroscopic attachment which is known by his name. The main
body of the manuscript is written neatly in ink, but the last few
lines are in pencil and are so ragged as to be hardly
legible--exactly, in fact, as they might be expected to appear if they
were scribbled off hurriedly from the seat of a moving aeroplane.
There are, it may be added, several stains, both on the last page and
on the outside cover which have been pronounced by the Home Office
experts to be blood--probably human and certainly mammalian. The fact
that something closely resembling the organism of malaria was
discovered in this blood, and that Joyce-Armstrong is known to have
suffered from intermittent fever, is a remarkable example of the new
weapons which modern science has placed in the hands of our
detectives.
And now a word as to the personality of the author of this
epoch-making statement. Joyce-Armstrong, according to the few friends
who really knew something of the man, was a poet and a dreamer, as
well as a mechanic and an inventor. He was a man of considerable
wealth, much of which he had spent in the pursuit of his aeronautical
hobby. He had four private aeroplanes in his hangars near Devizes,
and is said to have made no fewer than one hundred and seventy ascents
in the course of last year. He was a retiring man with dark moods, in
which he would avoid the society of his fellows. Captain Dangerfield,
who knew him better than anyone, says that there were times when his
eccentricity threatened to develop into something more serious. His
habit of carrying a shot-gun with him in his aeroplane was one
manifestation of it.
Another was the morbid effect which the fall of Lieutenant Myrtle had
upon his mind. Myrtle, who was attempting the height record, fell
from an altitude of something over thirty thousand feet. Horrible to
narrate, his head was entirely obliterated, though his body and limbs
preserved their configuration. At every gathering of airmen,
Joyce-Armstrong, according to Dangerfield, would ask, with an
enigmatic smile: "And where, pray, is Myrtle's head?"
On another occasion after dinner, at the mess of the Flying School on
Salisbury Plain, he started a debate as to what will be the most
permanent danger which airmen will have to encounter. Having listened
to successive opinions as to air-pockets, faulty construction, and
over-banking, he ended by shrugging his shoulders and refusing to put
forward his own views, though he gave the impression that they
differed from any advanced by his companions.
It is worth remarking that after his own complete disappearance it was
found that his private affairs were arranged with a precision which
may show that he had a strong premonition of disaster. With these
essential explanations I will now give the narrative exactly as it
stands, beginning at page three of the blood-soaked note-book:
"Nevertheless, when I dined at Rheims with Coselli and Gustav Raymond
I found that neither of them was aware of any particular danger in the
higher layers of the atmosphere. I did not actually say what was in
my thoughts, but I got so near to it that if they had any
corresponding idea they could not have failed to express it. But then
they are two empty, vainglorious fellows with no thought beyond seeing
their silly names in the newspaper. It is interesting to note that
neither of them had ever been much beyond the twenty-thousand-foot
level. Of course, men have been higher than this both in balloons and
in the ascent of mountains. It must be well above that point that the
aeroplane enters the danger zone--always presuming that my
premonitions are correct.
"Aeroplaning has been with us now for more than twenty years, and one
might well ask: Why should this peril be only revealing itself in our
day? The answer is obvious. In the old days of weak engines, when a
hundred horse-power Gnome or Green was considered ample for every
need, the flights were very restricted. Now that three hundred
horse-power is the rule rather than the exception, visits to the upper
layers have become easier and more common. Some of us can remember
how, in our youth, Garros made a world-wide reputation by attaining
nineteen thousand feet, and it was considered a remarkable achievement
to fly over the Alps. Our standard now has been immeasurably raised,
and there are twenty high flights for one in former years. Many of
them have been undertaken with impunity. The thirty-thousand-foot
level has been reached time after time with no discomfort beyond cold
and asthma. What does this prove? A visitor might descend upon this
planet a thousand times and never see a tiger. Yet tigers exist, and
if he chanced to come down into a jungle he might be devoured. There
are jungles of the upper air, and there are worse things than tigers
which inhabit them. I believe in time they will map these jungles
accurately out. Even at the present moment I could name two of them.
One of them lies over the Pau-Biarritz district of France. Another is
just over my head as I write here in my house in Wiltshire. I rather
think there is a third in the Homburg- Wiesbaden district.
"It was the disappearance of the airmen that first set me thinking.
Of course, everyone said that they had fallen into the sea, but that
did not satisfy me at all. First, there was Verrier in France; his
machine was found near Bayonne, but they never got his body. There
was the case of Baxter also, who vanished, though his engine and some
of the iron fixings were found in a wood in Leicestershire. In that
case, Dr. Middleton, of Amesbury, who was watching the flight with a
telescope, declares that just before the clouds obscured the view he
saw the machine, which was at an enormous height, suddenly rise
perpendicularly upwards in a succession of jerks in a manner that he
would have thought to be impossible. That was the last seen of
Baxter. There was a correspondence in the papers, but it never led to
anything. There were several other similar cases, and then there was
the death of Hay Connor. What a cackle there was about an unsolved
mystery of the air, and what columns in the halfpenny papers, and yet
how little was ever done to get to the bottom of the business! He
came down in a tremendous vol-plane from an unknown height. He never
got off his machine and died in his pilot's seat. Died of what?
`Heart disease,' said the doctors. Rubbish! Hay Connor's heart was
as sound as mine is. What did Venables say? Venables was the only
man who was at his side when he died. He said that he was shivering
and looked like a man who had been badly scared. `Died of fright,'
said Venables, but could not imagine what he was frightened about.
Only said one word to Venables, which sounded like `Monstrous.' They
could make nothing of that at the inquest. But I could make something
of it. Monsters! That was the last word of poor Harry Hay Connor.
And he DID die of fright, just as Venables thought.
"And then there was Myrtle's head. Do you really believe--does
anybody really believe--that a man's head could be driven clean into
his body by the force of a fall? Well, perhaps it may be possible,
but I, for one, have never believed that it was so with Myrtle. And
the grease upon his clothes--`all slimy with grease,' said somebody at
the inquest. Queer that nobody got thinking after that! I did--but,
then, I had been thinking for a good long time. I've made three
ascents--how Dangerfield used to chaff me about my shot-gun--but I've
never been high enough. Now, with this new, light Paul Veroner
machine and its one hundred and seventy-five Robur, I should easily
touch the thirty thousand tomorrow. I'll have a shot at the record.
Maybe I shall have a shot at something else as well. Of course, it's
dangerous. If a fellow wants to avoid danger he had best keep out of
flying altogether and subside finally into flannel slippers and a
dressing-gown. But I'll visit the air-jungle tomorrow--and if there's
anything there I shall know it. If I return, I'll find myself a bit
of a celebrity. If I don't this note-book may explain what I am
trying to do, and how I lost my life in doing it. But no drivel about
accidents or mysteries, if YOU please.
"I chose my Paul Veroner monoplane for the job. There's nothing like
a monoplane when real work is to be done. Beaumont found that out in
very early days. For one thing it doesn't mind damp, and the weather
looks as if we should be in the clouds all the time. It's a bonny
little model and answers my hand like a tender-mouthed horse. The
engine is a ten-cylinder rotary Robur working up to one hundred and
seventy-five. It has all the modern improvements--enclosed fuselage,
high-curved landing skids, brakes, gyroscopic steadiers, and three
speeds, worked by an alteration of the angle of the planes upon the
Venetian-blind principle. I took a shot-gun with me and a dozen
cartridges filled with buck-shot. You should have seen the face of
Perkins, my old mechanic, when I directed him to put them in. I was
dressed like an Arctic explorer, with two jerseys under my overalls,
thick socks inside my padded boots, a storm-cap with flaps, and my
talc goggles. It was stifling outside the hangars, but I was going
for the summit of the Himalayas, and had to dress for the part.
Perkins knew there was something on and implored me to take him with
me. Perhaps I should if I were using the biplane, but a monoplane is
a one-man show--if you want to get the last foot of life out of it.
Of course, I took an oxygen bag; the man who goes for the altitude
record without one will either be frozen or smothered--or both.
"I had a good look at the planes, the rudder-bar, and the elevating
lever before I got in. Everything was in order so far as I could see.
Then I switched on my engine and found that she was running sweetly.
When they let her go she rose almost at once upon the lowest speed. I
circled my home field once or twice just to warm her up, and then with
a wave to Perkins and the others, I flattened out my planes and put
her on her highest. She skimmed like a swallow down wind for eight or
ten miles until I turned her nose up a little and she began to climb
in a great spiral for the cloud-bank above me. It's all-important to
rise slowly and adapt yourself to the pressure as you go.
"It was a close, warm day for an English September, and there was the
hush and heaviness of impending rain. Now and then there came sudden
puffs of wind from the south-west--one of them so gusty and unexpected
that it caught me napping and turned me half-round for an instant. I
remember the time when gusts and whirls and air- pockets used to be
things of danger--before we learned to put an overmastering power into
our engines. Just as I reached the cloud-banks, with the altimeter
marking three thousand, down came the rain. My word, how it poured!
It drummed upon my wings and lashed against my face, blurring my
glasses so that I could hardly see. I got down on to a low speed, for
it was painful to travel against it. As I got higher it became hail,
and I had to turn tail to it. One of my cylinders was out of
action--a dirty plug, I should imagine, but still I was rising
steadily with plenty of power. After a bit the trouble passed,
whatever it was, and I heard the full, deep-throated purr--the ten
singing as one. That's where the beauty of our modern silencers comes
in. We can at last control our engines by ear. How they squeal and
squeak and sob when they are in trouble! All those cries for help
were wasted in the old days, when every sound was swallowed up by the
monstrous racket of the machine. If only the early aviators could
come back to see the beauty and perfection of the mechanism which have
been bought at the cost of their lives!
"About nine-thirty I was nearing the clouds. Down below me, all
blurred and shadowed with rain, lay the vast expanse of Salisbury
Plain. Half a dozen flying machines were doing hackwork at the
thousand-foot level, looking like little black swallows against the
green background. I dare say they were wondering what I was doing up
in cloud-land. Suddenly a grey curtain drew across beneath me and the
wet folds of vapours were swirling round my face. It was clammily
cold and miserable. But I was above the hail-storm, and that was
something gained. The cloud was as dark and thick as a London fog.
In my anxiety to get clear, I cocked her nose up until the automatic
alarm-bell rang, and I actually began to slide backwards. My sopped
and dripping wings had made me heavier than I thought, but presently I
was in lighter cloud, and soon had cleared the first layer. There was
a second--opal- coloured and fleecy--at a great height above my head,
a white, unbroken ceiling above, and a dark, unbroken floor below,
with the monoplane labouring upwards upon a vast spiral between them.
It is deadly lonely in these cloud-spaces. Once a great flight of
some small water-birds went past me, flying very fast to the
westwards. 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 vapour, 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 betwixt Bristol and London. Then the drift
swirled inwards 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 vapour drifting swiftly from the
westwards. The wind had been steadily rising all this time and it was
now blowing a sharp breeze--twenty-eight an hour by my gauge. Already
it was very cold, though my altimeter only marked nine thousand. The
engines were working beautifully, and we went droning steadily
upwards. 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 above my head--all blue and gold above, all shining silver below,
one vast, glimmering plain as far as my eyes could reach. It was a
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 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 little Wiltshire that my air-jungle lay,
and all my labour 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. Now
was the time when a bit of scamped 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 so many harp-strings, but it
was glorious to see how, for all the beating and the buffeting, she
was still the conqueror of Nature and the mistress of the sky. There
is surely something divine in man himself that he should rise so
superior to the limitations which Creation seemed 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 cloud-land 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 neighbours have called a tourbillon, 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 round 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 centre. I dropped
like a stone, and lost nearly a thousand feet. It was only my belt
that kept me in my seat, and the shock and breathlessness left me
hanging half- insensible 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 levelled 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 twenty-one thousand 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 rarefaction 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 upwards
into the cold, still outer world.
"It is 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 thirty thousand 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
one-thirty 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 for ever being bombarded by meteor stones, and would be
hardly inhabitable were they not in nearly every case turned to vapour
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 cannot doubt that at the edge of the
earth's envelope the risk would be a very real one.
"My barograph needle marked forty-one thousand three hundred when I
became aware that I could go no farther. 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 was 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 would do well to take a wider sweep and open up a new airtract.
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 which I had imagined 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 another
hour or so, but I could afford to use it to the last drop, since a
single magnificent vol-plane could 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
upwards 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 jelly-fish such as sails in our summer seas, bell- shaped
and of enormous size--far larger, I should judge, than the dome of St.
Paul's. It was of a light pink colour 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 backwards and forwards. 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 colouring 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 vapour-like
material, which turned and twisted with great speed, flying round and
round at such a pace 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 grey or smoke colour, 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
downwards from a great height there came a purplish patch of vapour,
small as I saw it first, 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 colour 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 the 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 downwards 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 whip-lash across the
front of my machine. There was a loud hiss as it lay for a moment
across 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 pea-shooter 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 buck-shot.
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 downwards 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 vol-plane 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 Channel 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 half a mile from the village of
Ashcombe. There I got three tins of petrol from a passing motor-car,
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
greater horror than that is not within the ken of man.
"And now it is my plan to go once again 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 shot-gun 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. Of the man
nothing has since been seen. Pieces of his shattered monoplane have
been picked up in the preserves of Mr. Budd-Lushington upon the
borders of Kent and Sussex, within a few miles of the spot where the
note-book was discovered. If the unfortunate aviator's theory is
correct that this air-jungle, as he called it, existed only over the
south-west of England, then it would seem that he had fled from it at
the full speed of his monoplane, but had been overtaken and devoured
by these horrible creatures at some spot in the outer atmosphere above
the place where the grim relics were found. The picture of that
monoplane skimming down the sky, with the nameless terrors flying as
swiftly beneath it and cutting it off always from the earth while they
gradually closed in upon their victim, is one upon which a man who
valued his sanity would prefer not to dwell. There are many, as I am
aware, who still jeer at the facts which I have here set down, but
even they must admit that Joyce-Armstrong has disappeared, and I would
commend to them his own words: "This note-book may explain what I am
trying to do, and how I lost my life in doing it. But no drivel about
accidents or mysteries, if YOU please."