To take my mind from the strangeness of it all, I turned to the small food-cupboard at the back of the cockpit. Twice during the night we drank and ate in snatches, Alcock keeping a hand on the joystick while using his other to take the sandwiches, chocolate and thermos flask, which I passed to him one at a time. Outside the cockpit was bitter cold, but inside was well-sheltered warmth, due to the protective windscreen, the nearness of the radiator, and our thick clothing. Almost our only physical discomfort resulted from the impossibility of any but cramped movements. It was a relief even to turn from one motor to the other, when examining them by the light of my electric torch. After several hours in the confined quarters, I wanted to kick out, to walk, to stretch myself. For Alcock, who never removed his feet from the rudder-bars, the feeling of restiveness must have been painfully uncomfortable. It was extraordinary that during the sixteen hours of the flight neither Alcock nor I felt the least desire for sleep. During the war, pilots and observers of night-bombing craft, their job completed, often suffered intensely on the homeward journey, from the effort of will necessary to fight the drowsiness induced by relaxed tension and the monotonous, never-varying hum of the motor--and this after only four to six hours of continuous flying. Probably, however, such tiredness was mostly reaction and mental slackening after the object of their journeys--the bombing of a target--had been achieved. Our own object would not be achieved until we saw Ireland beneath us; and it could not be achieved unless we kept our every faculty concentrated on it all the time. There was therefore no mental reaction during our long period of wakeful flying over the ocean. We began to think about sunrise and the new day. We had been flying for over ten hours; and the next ten would bring success or failure. We had more than enough petrol to complete the long journey, for Alcock had treated the engines very gently, never running them all out, but varying the power from half to three-quarter throttle. Our course seemed satisfactory, and the idea of failure was concerned only with the chance of engine mishap, such as had befallen Hawker and Grieve, or of something entirely unforeseen. Something entirely unforeseen did happen. At about sunrise--3:10 A. M. to be exact--when we were between thirty-five hundred and four thousand feet, we ran into a thick bank that projected above the lower layer of cloud. All around was dense, drifting vapor, which cut off from our range of vision even the machine's wing tips and the fore end of the fuselages. This was entirely unexpected; and, separated suddenly from external guidance, we lost our instinct of balance. The machine, left to its own devices, swung, flew amok, and began to perform circus tricks.