my nerves. I am never quite happy in a car now; I can't help keeping an
apprehensive eye ahead. But you fly with an exhilarating assurance that
you cannot possibly run over anything or run into anything--except the
land or the sea, and even those large essentials seem a beautifully safe
distance away.

I had heard a great deal of talk about the deafening uproar of the
engine. I counted a headache among my chances. There again reason
reinforced conjecture. When in the early morning Mr. Travers came from
Brighton in this Farman in which I flew I could hear the hum of the
great insect when it still seemed abreast of Beachy Head, and a good two
miles away. If one can hear a thing at two miles, how much the more will
one not hear it at a distance of two yards? But at the risk of seeming
too contented for anything I will assert I heard that noise no more than
one hears the drone of an electric ventilator upon one's table. It was
only when I came to speak to Mr. Grahame-White, or he to me, that I
discovered that our voices had become almost infinitesimally small.

And so it was I went up into the air at Eastbourne with the impression
that flying was still an uncomfortable experimental, and slightly heroic
thing to do, and came down to the cheerful gathering crowd upon the
sands again with the knowledge that it is a thing achieved for everyone.
It will get much cheaper, no doubt, and much swifter, and be improved in
a dozen ways--we _must_ get self-starting engines, for example, for both
our aeroplanes and motor-cars--but it is available to-day for anyone
who can reach it. An invalid lady of seventy could have enjoyed all that
I did if only one could have got her into the passenger's seat. Getting
there was a little difficult, it is true; the waterplane was out in the
surf, and I was carried to it on a boatman's back, and then had to
clamber carefully through the wires, but that is a matter of detail.