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