Uncanny Tales by Various

Author:Various,
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Short Story Collection, Horror, Fiction
Publisher: manybooks.net

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VII

THE LAST ASCENT

The extraordinary rapidity with which a successful airman may achieve fame was well shown in the case of my friend, Radcliffe Thorpe. One week known merely to a few friends as a clever young engineer, the next his name was on the lips of the civilised world. His first success was followed by a series of remarkable feats, of which his flight above the Atlantic, his race with the torpedo-boat-destroyers across the North Sea, and his sensational display during the military man[oe]uvres on Salisbury Plain, impressed his name and personality firmly upon the fickle mind of the public, and explains the tremendous excitement caused by his inexplicable disappearance during the great aviation meeting at Attercliffe, near London, towards the end of the summer.

Few people, I suppose, have forgotten the facts. For some time previously he had been devoting himself more especially to ascending to as great a height as possible. He held all the records for height, and it was known that at Attercliffe he meant to endeavour to eclipse his own achievements.

It was a lovely day, not a breath of wind stirring, not a cloud in the sky. We saw him start. We saw him fly up and up in great sweeping spirals. We saw him climb higher and ever higher into the azure space. We watched him, those of us whose eyes could bear the strain, as he dwindled to a dot and a speck, till at last he passed beyond sight.

It was a stirring thing to see a man thus storm, as it were, the walls of Heaven and probe the very mysteries of space. I remember I felt quite annoyed with someone who was taking a cinematograph record. It seemed such a sordid, business-like thing to be doing at such a moment.

Presently the aeroplane came into sight again and was greeted with a sudden roar of cheering.

"He is doing a glide down," someone cried excitedly, and though someone else declared that a glide from such a height was unthinkable and impossible, yet it was soon plain that the first speaker was right.

Down through unimaginable thousands of feet, straight and swift swept the machine, making such a sweep as the eagle in its pride would never have dared. People held their breath to watch, expecting every moment some catastrophe. But the machine kept on an even keel, and in a few moments I joined with the others in a wild rush to the field at a little distance where the machine, like a mighty bird, had alighted easily and safely.

But when we reached it we doubted our own eyes, our own sanity. There was no sign anywhere of Radcliffe Thorpe!

No one knew what to say; we looked blankly at our neighbours, and one man got down on his hands and knees and peered under the body of the machine as if he suspected Radcliffe of hiding there. Then the chairman of the meeting, Lord Fallowfield, made a curious discovery.

"Look," he said in a high, shaken voice, "the steering wheel is jammed!"

It was true.

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