Lavender's mood."I am now," he thought, "lifted above all petty plots and passions on the wings of the morning.Soon will great thoughts begin to jostle in my head, and I shall see the truth of all things made clear at last."But the thoughts did not jostle, a curious lethargy began stealing over him instead, so that his head fell back, and his mouth fell open.This might have endured until he returned to earth had not the airman stopped the engines so that they drifted ruminantly in space below the clouds.
With the cessation of the noise Mr.Lavender's brain regained its activity, and he was enchanted to hear the voice of his pilot saying:
"How are you getting on, sir?"
"As regards the sensation," Mr.Lavender replied, "it is marvellous, for after the first minute or two, during which the unwonted motion causes a certain inconvenience, one grasps at once the exhilaration and joy of this great adventure.To be in motion towards the spheres, and see the earth laid out like a chess-board below you; to feel the lithe creature beneath your body responding so freely to every call of its gallant young pilot; to be filled with the scream of the engines, as of an eagle at sport; to know that at the least aberration of the intrepid airman we should be dashed into a million pieces; all this is largely to experience an experience so unforgettable that one will never--er--er--forget it.""Gosh!" said the young airman.
"Yes," pursued Mr.Lavender, who was now unconsciously reading himself in his morning's paper, "one can only compare the emotion to that which the disembodied spirit might feel passing straight from earth to heaven.We saw at a great depth below us on a narrow white riband of road two crawling black specks, and knew that they were human beings, the same and no more than we had been before we left that great common place called Earth.""Gum!" said the young airman, as Lavender paused, "you're getting it fine, sir! Where will it appear?""Those great fleecy beings the clouds," went on Mr.Lavender, without taking on the interruption, "seemed to await our coming in the morning glory of their piled-up snows; and we, with the rarefied air in our lungs, felt that we must shout to them." And so carried away was Mr.