ten minutes past six
`` Once out of danger I throttled my engine , for nothing tears a machine to pieces quicker than running on full power from a height . It was a glorious spiral vol-plane from nearly eight miles of altitude -- first , to the level of the silver cloud-bank , then to that of the storm-cloud beneath it , and finally , in beating rain , to the surface of the earth . I saw the Bristol Channel beneath me as I broke from the clouds , but , having still some petrol in my tank , I got twenty miles inland before I found myself stranded in a field half a mile from the village of Ashcombe . There I got three tins of petrol from a passing motor-car , and at ten minutes past six that evening I alighted gently in my own home meadow at Devizes , after such a journey as no mortal upon earth has ever yet taken and lived to tell the tale . I have seen the beauty and I have seen the horror of the heights -- and greater beauty or greater horror than that is not within the ken of man . `` And now it is my plan to go once again before I give my results to the world . My reason for this is that I must surely have something to show by way of proof before I lay such a tale before my fellow-men .