handle of the stick between the fingers of his right hand.
I’m going to pass out, he thought. Any moment now I’m going to pass out.
He looked at his altimeter. Twenty-one thousand. To test himself he tried to read the hundreds as
well as the thousands.
Twenty-one thousand and what? As he looked the dial became blurred, and he could not even
see the needle. He knew then
that he must bail out; that there was not a second to lose, otherwise he would become
unconscious. Quickly, frantically, he tried
to slide back the hood with his left hand, but he had not the strength. For a second he took his
right hand off the stick, and with
both hands he managed to push the hood back. The rush of cold air on his face seemed to help.
He had a moment of great
clearness, and his actions became orderly and precise. That is what happens with a good pilot.
He took some quick deep
breaths from his oxygen mask, and as he did so, he looked out over the side of the cockpit. Down
below there was only a vast
white sea of cloud, and he realized that he did not know where he was.
It’ll be the Channel, he thought. I’m sure to fall in the drink.
He throttled back, pulled off his helmet, undid his straps, and pushed the stick hard over to the
left. The Spitfire dripped its port
wing, and turned smoothly over onto its back. The pilot fell out.
As he fell he opened his eyes, because he knew that he must not pass out before he had pulled
the cord. On one side he saw
the sun; on the other he saw the whiteness of the clouds, and as he fell, as he somersaulted in the
air, the white clouds chased
the sun and the sun chased the clouds. They chased each other in a small circle; they ran faster
and faster, and there was the sun
and the clouds and the clouds and the sun, and the clouds came nearer until suddenly there was
no longer any sun, but only a
BEWARE OF THE DOG
4
great whiteness. The whole world was white, and there was nothing in it. It was so white that
sometimes it looked black, and
after a time it was either white or black, but mostly it was white. He watched it as it turned from
white to black, and then back
to white again, and the white stayed for a long time, but the black lasted only for a few seconds.
He got into the habit of going
to sleep during the white periods, and of waking up just in time to see the world when it was
black. But the black was very
quick. Sometimes it was only a flash, like someone switching off the light, and switching it on
again at once, and so whenever it
was white, he dozed off.
One day, when it was white, he put out a hand and he touched something. He took it between his
fingers and crumpled it. For a
time he~lay there, idly letting the tips of his fingers play with the thing which they had touched.
Then slowly he opened his eyes,
looked down at his hand, and saw that he was holding something which was white. It was the
edge of a sheet. He knew it was
a sheet because he could see the texture of the material and the stitchings on the hem. He
screwed up his eyes, and opened
them again quickly. This time he saw the room. He saw the bed in which he was lying; he saw
the grey walls and the door and
the green curtains over the window. There were some roses on the table by his bed.
Then he saw the basin on the table near the roses. It was a white enamel basin, and beside it there
was a small medicine glass.
This is a hospital, he thought. I am in a hospital. But he could remember nothing. He lay back on
his pillow, looking at the ceiling
and wondering what had happened. He was gazing at the smooth greyness of the ceiling which