On another occasion after dinner, at the mess of the Flying School on
Salisbury Plain, he started a debate as to what will be the most
permanent danger which airmen will have to encounter. Having listened to
successive opinions as to air-pockets, faulty construction, and
over-banking, he ended by shrugging his shoulders and refusing to put
forward his own views, though he gave the impression that they differed
from any advanced by his companions.
It is worth remarking that after his own complete disappearance it was
found that his private affairs were arranged with a precision which may
show that he had a strong premonition of disaster. With these essential
explanations I will now give the narrative exactly as it stands,
beginning at page three of the blood-soaked note-book:--
"Nevertheless, when I dined at Rheims with Coselli and Gustav Raymond I
found that neither of them was aware of any particular danger in the
higher layers of the atmosphere. I did not actually say what was in my
thoughts, but I got so near to it that if they had any corresponding idea
they could not have failed to express it. But then they are two empty,
vainglorious fellows with no thought beyond seeing their silly names in
the newspaper. It is interesting to note that neither of them had ever
been much beyond the twenty-thousand-foot level. Of course, men have
been higher than this both in balloons and in the ascent of mountains. It
must be well above that point that the aeroplane enters the danger
zone--always presuming that my premonitions are correct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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