The Aeroplane Speaks. Fifth Edition

Round buzzes the Propeller, and the Pilot, giving the official signal, the Aeroplane is released and rolls swiftly over the ground in the teeth of the gusty wind. In less than fifty yards it takes to the air and begins to climb rapidly upwards, but how different are the conditions to the calm morning of yesterday! If the air were visible it would be seen to be acting in the most extraordinary manner; crazily swirling, lifting and dropping, gusts viciously colliding--a mad phantasmagoria of forces! Wickedly it seizes and shakes the Aeroplane; then tries to turn it over sideways; then instantly changes its mind and in a second drops it into a hole a hundred feet deep; and if it were not for his safety belt the Pilot might find his seat sinking away from beneath him. Gusts strike the front of the craft like so many slaps in the face; and others, with the motion of mountainous waves, sometimes lift it hundreds of feet in a few seconds, hoping to see it plunge over the summit in a death-dive--and so it goes on, but the Pilot, perfectly at one with his mount and instantly alert to its slightest motion, is skilfully and naturally making perhaps fifty movements a minute of hand and feet; the former lightly grasping the "joy-stick" which controls the Elevator hinged to the tail, and also the Ailerons or little wings hinged to the wing-tips; and the latter moving the Rudder control-bar. A strain on the Pilot? Not a bit of it, for this is his Work which he loves and excels in; and given a cool head, alert eye, and a sensitive touch for the controls, what sport can compare with these ever-changing battles of the air?