Page:The Fun of It.pdf/96

76 If the Friendship had come down on the water and had not floated, we should have been in a sorry plight for to save weight we had left life-savers be­hind and also the rubber boat which we originally planned to take. That little boat I now use in summer for sport at the beach at Rye. It can be blown up in a few moments and won’t capsize; while its capacity load has never been determined.

The sun, as I have said, went to bed late and got up early. The 11,000 feet the plane was forced to, as morning came, was not high enough to climb over the clouds piled in front of her like fantastic gobs of mashed potatoes. Bill Stultz checked his gasoline and concluded we should waste too much if he went higher in an effort to surmount them.

By that time we were nearing our last few hours of fuel. So the nose of the Friendship burrowed down into the white clouds and we descended quickly through the grey wetness to about 2500 feet.

Log book: “We are going down. Probably Bill is going through. Fog is lower here too. Haven’t hit it yet, but soon will so far as I can see from the back window. Everything shut out.

“Instrument flying. Slow descent first. Going down fast. It takes a lot to make my ears hurt. 5000 now. Awfully wet. Water dripping in win­dow.”

The reference to my ears hurting simply records a rather swift descent. When a plane comes down, it necessarily enters air which grows more dense