Such is exactly what happened to us on that memorable night. We crossed the valley, and as I steered straight by compass in the direction of Stockhurst at about thirty miles an hour, I had dipped and of a sudden I found myself nearing a dark, high hill. Just in time I shot up and cleared, I believe only by inches, the roof of a house. Roseye was quick to notice our sudden ascent and how we skimmed over the house and the trees of somebody's park as we kept our rather zigzag course. A clever writer upon aeroplanes has, with much truth, pointed out that the natural course of a machine is never a direct one, and if a line could be drawn between two given points it would be found that first it veered slightly to the left of this line, then gradually worked back to the true direction, afterwards heading off to the right and again returning. Thus the true course is in the form of a continuous series of left and right-hand semicircles. These eccentric semicircles we were making with the engine running like clockwork. There were few clouds and, therefore, the chance of a nasty "nose-dive" was not to be apprehended. Once a machine gets into clouds it behaves like a ship in a stormy sea, and clouds can easily be met with after height of three thousand feet. After passing over the hill I dropped again to 2,000 feet, that being the best height to fly on a crosscountry journey. There now opened out to our view a quantity of lights, among which were the red glare of a furnace, and a long row of small lights which evidently marked the main street of some little town in defiance of the "order." I planed down till I could clearly see the obscured lights of a railway station, and by my map, over which my little four-volt lamp was shining, I decided it to be Uckfield. I therefore realised that I was bearing too far south and, further, just at that moment I had a "bump"--as we call it--or rather I ran into a patch of rarefied air which caused the machine to plunge heavily and tilt. Righting her, I rose again rapidly to 3,000 feet to get out of the danger-zone and, turning east, discerned in the darkness below me yet another cluster of lights which I approached rapidly, having decided that it must be Buxted. Still steering south-east I could see, away on my left in the far distance, a number of scattered lights in a long line, denoting where Hastings and St Leonards lay. Beyond those lights, away upon the dark sea, showed the long beam of a ship's searchlight moving slowly in an are in the Channel. Roseye, seated beside me, touched my arm and pointed to it. Again I nodded in response.