I'm going to faint, he thought. He looked at the controls. Seven thousand metres. To test himself he tried to read the hundreds as well as the thousands. Seven thousand and what? As he looked, he had difficulty reading the dial and he could not even see the needle. He knew then that he must get out; that there was not a second to lose, otherwise he would become unconscious. Quickly he tried to slide back the top, but he didn't have the strength. For a second he took his right hand off the stick and with both hands managed to push the top back. The cold air on his face seemed to help. He had a moment of great clearness. His actions became automatic. That is what happens with a good pilot. He took some deep breaths from his oxygen mask, and as he did so, he looked out over the side. 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 English Channel, he thought. I'm sure to fall in the water.

He slowed down, pulled off his mask, undid his safety equipment and pushed the stick hard over to the left. The plane turned smoothly over on to its back and the pilot fell out.

As he fell, he opened his eyes, because he knew that he must not become unconscious before he had opened his parachute. On one side he saw the sun; on the other he saw the whiteness of the clouds, and as he fell, as he turned in the air, the white clouds chased the sun and the sun chased the clouds. Suddenly there was no longer any sun but only a great whiteness. It was so white that sometimes it looked black, and after a while 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 a few seconds. He seemed to go to sleep during the white periods and to wake up just in time to see the world when it was black.

It was white when he put out a hand and touched something.