Suddenly something shifted on the instrument board and something hit me in the face. I sickeningly remembered that dazing smack on the head of six years before, and the old electric startle shock convulsed me as I remembered the resounding crack of those wings tearing off. I involuntarily took a fear-glazed glance at my wings and instinctively tightened up on the stick and began to ease out of the dive. Through the half-daze pull-out and the dawning ice-cold clearness always aftermathing fright I dimly checked the trouble while I leveled out. When I had got level and got things quieted down and my head had cleared I saw that I was right. Only the glass cover had vibrated off the manifold-pressure instrument, and the needle had popped off the dial. I was thoroughly shaken. And I was mad because I had allowed so little a thing to upset me so much.
I checked my altimeter. It read five thousand feet. I figured I had dived eleven thousand and taken two for recovery.
My ears had a lot of pressure on them. I held both nostrils and blew. The pressure inside popped my ears out easily. They were going to stand the diving all right.
I brought the ship down to be inspected that night and decided to celebrate the successful conclusion of the long dive. Cirrus clouds were forming high up in the blue sky, so I figured maybe I could do it safely. I went up to the weather bureau on the field to check on it.
“How is the weather for tomorrow?” I asked. “Terrible, I hope.”
“I think it will be,” the weather man said. He consulted his charts further. “Yes, it will be,” he assured me.
He looked his charts over again. “Yes,” he reassured me, “definitely. You won’t be able to fly tomorrow.”
“Swell!” I exclaimed to the mildly startled man. He didn’t quite get it.
It was lousy the next morning, all right. You couldn’t see across the field. Even the birds were walking. The engineers were dismayed. They wanted to get on with the demonstrations. I was overjoyed. I had a head. I had celebrated a little too much.
Along about the middle of the morning it began to lift. The engineers began to cheer up. I watched with gathering apprehension while it lifted still further and began to break. In an incredibly short time there were only a few clouds in the sky. I was practically sick about it, but the engineers, with beaming faces, were having the ship pushed out.