Detective and mystery stories, English; Horror tales, English
Here a page of the manuscript is unfortunately missing. On the next
page is written, in large, straggling writing:
"Forty-three thousand feet. I shall never see earth again. They are
beneath me, three of them. God help me; it is a dreadful death to die!"
Such in its entirety is the Joyce-Armstrong Statement. Of the man
nothing has since been seen. Pieces of his shattered monoplane have
been picked up in the preserves of Mr. Budd-Lushington upon the borders
of Kent and Sussex, within a few miles of the spot where the note-book
was discovered. If the unfortunate aviator's theory is correct that
this air-jungle, as he called it, existed only over the south-west of
England, then it would seem that he had fled from it at the full speed
of his monoplane, but had been overtaken and devoured by these horrible
creatures at some spot in the outer atmosphere above the place where
the grim relics were found. The picture of that monoplane skimming
down the sky, with the nameless terrors flying as swiftly beneath it
and cutting it off always from the earth while they gradually closed in
upon their victim, is one upon which a man who valued his sanity would
prefer not to dwell. There are many, as I am aware, who still jeer at
the facts which I have here set down, but even they must admit that
Joyce-Armstrong has disappeared, and I would commend to them his own
words: "This note-book may explain what I am trying to do, and how I
lost my life in doing it. But no drivel about accidents or mysteries,
if YOU please."
The Leather Funnel
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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