It wasn't by any means a windless day; there
was a brisk, fluctuating breeze blowing out of the north over the downs.
It seemed hardly to affect our flight at all.
And as for the giddiness of looking down, one does not feel it at all.
It is difficult to explain why this should be so, but it is so. I
suppose in such matters I am neither exceptionally steady-headed nor is
my head exceptionally given to swimming. I can stand on the edge of
cliffs of a thousand feet or so and look down, but I can never bring
myself right up to the edge nor crane over to look to the very bottom. I
should want to lie down to do that. And the other day I was on that
Belvedere place at the top of the Rotterdam sky-scraper, a rather high
wind was blowing, and one looks down through the chinks between the
boards one stands on upon the heads of the people in the streets below;
I didn't like it. But this morning I looked directly down on a little
fleet of fishing boats over which we passed, and on the crowds
assembling on the beach, and on the bathers who stared up at us from the
breaking surf, with an entirely agreeable exaltation. And Eastbourne, in
the early morning sunshine, had all the brightly detailed littleness of
a town viewed from high up on the side of a great mountain.
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