Page:The Fun of It.pdf/94

74 half an hour after we were actually in the air. This was my last message to New York.

Our Atlantic crossing was literally a voyage in the clouds. Incidentally the saying about their silver linings is pure fiction. The internals of most clouds are anything but silvery—they are clammy grey wetness as dismally forbidding as any one can imagine. However, some air travelers know that above them there is a different world from any en­countered elsewhere. If really on top of a solid cloud layer, the sun shines brightly over a fluffy sea with a brilliance more blinding than that of snow fields. Or as it sinks, the clouds may be colored as beautifully from a bird’s-eye view, as when we see them at sunset from the earth. Of course, from an altitude of several thousand feet, the sun can be seen longer before it drops below the hori­zon, And as evening falls, it is really brighter “upstairs” than on the ground.

I kept a log of the Friendship Flight and find I mention clouds more often than anything else.

Log book: “I do believe we are getting out of the fog. Marvellous shapes in white stand out, some trailing shimmering veils. The clouds look like icebergs in the distance. It seemed almost impossible that one couldn’t bounce forever on the packed fog we are leaving. The highest peaks of the fog mountains are tinted pink with the setting sun. The hollows are grey and shadowy.” Or again: “We are running between the clouds still, but they are coming together. How grey it is