one
o'clock
In an instant I had shot out of the eddies and was skimming down the sky . Then , shaken but victorious , I turned her nose up and began once more my steady grind on the upward spiral . I took a large sweep to avoid the danger - spot of the whirlpool , and soon I was safely above it . Just after one o'clock I was twenty-one thousand feet above the sea-level . To my great joy I had topped the gale , and with every hundred feet of ascent the air grew stiller . On the other hand , it was very cold , and I was conscious of that peculiar nausea which goes with rarefaction of the air . For the first time I unscrewed the mouth of my oxygen bag and took an occasional whiff of the glorious gas .