when of course it gradually slows down and stops dead in the air, sticks there a moment, and then falls so: [Illustration] and plunges on until it regains sufficient speed to bring it under control again and level. The feeling after the machine has stuck at the top, and then falls down, is the “left your stummick up above--tube-lift feeling”--only more so. * * * * * E. and I have been on a cross-country flight. The exhaust pipe blew off, and as the hot exhaust then became directed on the petrol tank, we decided to land, and came down in a nice little field, pulling up six inches from a ploughed field, and conveniently near a hospital. However, we didn’t need the hospital, and soon got the machine to rights, but are stuck here owing to rain. We are, however, near a town, and are going to a “flicker show” to-night to see Charlie Chaplin. We have “fallen” among friends here, for there was an officers’ mess within a hundred yards of where we landed, and we are being splendidly treated. Altogether an ideal place for a forced landing. * * * * * My adventures of the past two days remind me of the great motor-cycle ride R. and I had from Devon to London. Let me see--it was the day before yesterday, I think, that I last wrote you, and told you about our forced landing. Well, E. and I and two others went to the cinema and saw “Charlie” in the evening, and stopped the night in an hotel. The next day we made a few purchases, and when the rain stopped I went up alone from the field to dry the machine and examine the weather. I had hardly left the ground before I went slap into the clouds at 50 feet. I turned quickly and crawled back just above the ground, missing a factory chimney by a few yards, and plunged down again into a bigger field close by the other, pulling up a couple of yards from a hole in the ground. Later in the day when it cleared up we started again, and we were only a few miles away when the blessed exhaust pipe popped off. The petrol tank started getting hot again, so we had to come down, and it took us an awful time to find a decent field. They were all humps and bunkers and hazards, where, if we had landed, we should have gone head over heels. At last I found a good place, and perched, pulling up with the wing tip touching a bundle of hay. We stopped a car, and E. went on it to the aerodrome for help. However, I got a spare bolt from the car, and while they were gone repaired the damage myself, got two farm labourers to hold the machine while I swung the propeller, and started the engine myself. Then I clambered into the machine and went off alone, getting to the aerodrome just as my helpers were leaving. * * * * *