The river, with a string of battleships, was far away to
the west of us, and the endless grey-blue flats of the Thames to the
north. The sun was low behind a bank of cloud. I was watching a
motor-car, which seemed to be crawling slowly enough, though, no
doubt, it was making a respectable pace, between two hedges down
below. It is extraordinary how slowly everything seems to be going
when one sees it from such an height.
"Then the left wing of the monoplane came up like a door that slams,
some wires whistled past my head, and one whipped off my helmet, and
then, with the seat slipping away from me, down we went. I snatched
unavailingly for the helmet, and then gripped the sides. It was
like dropping in a boat suddenly into the trough of a wave--and
going on dropping. We were both strapped, and I got my feet against
the side and clung to the locked second wheel.
"The sensation was as though something like an intermittent electric
current was pouring through me. It's a ridiculous image to use, I
can't justify it, but it was as if I was having cold blue light
squirted through every pore of my being.
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