October 28, 2025 • 16 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The last ascent by anonymous. The extraordinary rapidity with which
a successful airman may achieve fame was well shown in
the case of my friend Radcliffe Thorpe. One week, known
merely to a few friends as a clever young engineer,
the next his name was on the lips of the
(00:22):
civilized world. His first success was followed by a series
of remarkable feats, of which his flight above the Atlantic,
his race with the torpedo boat destroyers across the North Sea,
and his sensational display during the military maneuvers on Salisbury
Plain impressed his name and personality firmly upon the fickle
(00:44):
mind of the public, and explains the tremendous excitement caused
by his inexplicable disappearance during the Great Aviation Meeting at Attercliffe,
near London, towards the end of the summer. Few people,
i suppose, have forgotten the facts. For some time previously
(01:04):
he had been devoting himself, more especially to ascending to
as great a height as possible. He held all the
records for height, and it was known that at Attercliffe
he meant to endeavor to eclipse his own achievements. It
was a lovely day, not a breath of wind stirring,
(01:25):
not a cloud in the sky. We saw him start.
We saw him fly up and up in great sweeping spirals.
We saw him climb higher and ever higher into the
azure space. We watched him, those of us whose eyes
could bear the strain, as he dwindled to a dot
(01:46):
and a speck, till at last he passed beyond sight.
It was a stirring thing to see a man thus
storm as it were the walls of heaven and probe
the very mysteries of Spain. I remember I felt quite
annoyed with someone who was taking a cinematograph record. It
(02:07):
seemed such a sordid business like thing to be doing
at such a moment. Presently, the aeroplane came into sight
again and was greeted with a sudden roar of cheering.
He is doing a glide down, someone cried excitedly, And
though some one else declared that a glide from such
(02:28):
a height was unthinkable and impossible, yet it was soon
plain that the first speaker was right down through unimaginable
thousands of feet, straight and swift swept the machine, making
such a sweep as the eagle in its pride would
never have dared. People held their breath to watch, expecting
(02:50):
every moment some catastrophe. But the machine kept on an
even keel, and in a few moments I joined with
the others in a wild r rush to the field
at a little distance, where the machine, like a mighty bird,
had alighted easily and safely. But when we reached it,
we doubted our own eyes, our own sanity. There was
(03:14):
no sign anywhere of Radcliffe Thorpe. No one knew what
to say. We looked blankly at our neighbors, and one
man got down on his hands and knees and peered
under the body of the machine, as if he suspected
Radcliffe of hiding there. Then the chairman of the meeting,
(03:35):
Lord Fallowfield, made a curious discovery look. He said, in
a high shaken voice, the steering wheel is jammed. It
was true. The steering wheel had been carefully fastened in
one position, and the lever controlling the planes had also
(03:55):
been fixed so as to hold them at the right
angle for a downward glide. That was strange enough, but
in face of the mystery of Radcliffe's disappearance, little attention
was paid it. Where then was its pilot. That was
the question that was filling everybody's mind. He had vanished,
(04:16):
as utterly as vanish as the mist one seas rising
in the sunshine. It was supposed he must have fallen
from his seat, But as to how that had happened,
how it was that no fragment of his body or
his clothing was ever found. Above all, how it was
that his aeroplane had returned, the engine cut off, the
(04:38):
planes secured in correct position. No even moderately plausible explanation
was ever put forward. The loss to aeronautics was felt
to be severe. From childhood, Radcliffe had shown that, in
addition to this, he had a marked aptitude for drawing,
usually held at the service of his profession, but now
(05:00):
and again exercised in producing sketches of his friends. Among
those who knew him privately, he was fairly popular, though
not perhaps so much so as he deserved. Certainly, he
had a way of talking shop, which was a trifle
tiring to those who did not figure the world as
one vast engineering problem. While with women he was apt
(05:24):
to be brusque and short mannered. My surprise, then, can
be imagined, when calling one afternoon on him and having
to wait a little, I had noticed lying on his
desk a crayon sketch of a woman's face. It was
a very lovely face, the features almost perfect, and yet
(05:44):
there was about it something unearthly and spectral that was
curiously disturbing. Smitten at last, I asked, jestingly and yet
aware of a certain odd discomfort. When he saw what
I was looking at, he went very pale. Who is it?
(06:05):
I asked, Oh, just some one, he answered. He took
the sketch from me, looked at it, frowned, and locked
it away. As he seemed unwilling to pursue the subject,
I went on to talk of the business I had
come about, and I congratulated him on his flight of
(06:25):
the day before, in which he had broken the record
for height. As I was going, he said, by the way,
that sketch, what did you think of it? Why that
you had better be careful, I answered, laughing, or you'll
be falling from your high estate of Bachelordom. He gave
(06:47):
so violent a start, his face expressed so much of
apprehension and dismay that I stared at him blankly. Recovering
himself with an effort, he stammered out, it's not I mean,
it's an imaginary portrait. Then I said, amazed, in my turn,
(07:10):
you've a Johnny sight, more imagination than anyone ever credited
you with. The incident remained in my mind, as a
matter of fact, practical Radcliffe Thorpe absorbed in questions of
strain and ease, his head full of cylinders and wheels
and ratchets. And the Lord knows what else would have
(07:31):
seemed to me, the last man on earth to create
that haunting, strange, unearthly face, human in form, but not
in expression. It was about this time that Radcliffe began
to give so much attention to the making of very
high flights. His favorite time was in the early morning,
(07:52):
as soon as it was light. Then in the chill dawn,
he would rise and soar and wing his flight high
and ever higher, up and up, till the eye could
no longer follow his ascent. I remember he made one
of these strange solitary flights when I was spending the
week end with him at his cottage near the Attercliffe
(08:15):
Aviation grounds. I had come down from town somewhat late
the night before, and I remember that just before we
went to bed, we went out for a few minutes
to enjoy the beauty of a perfect night. The moon
was shining in the clear sky. Not a sound or
a breath disturbed the sublime quietude. In the south, one
(08:39):
wondrous star gleamed low on the horizon. Neither of us spoke.
It was enough to drink in the beauty of such
rare perfection. And I noticed how Radcliffe kept his eyes
fixed upwards on the dark blue vault of space. Are
you longing to be up there? I asked him jestingly.
(09:02):
He started and flushed, and he then went very pale,
and to my surprise I saw that he was shivering.
You are getting cold, I said. We had better go in.
He nodded without answering, And as we turned to go in,
I heard, quite plainly and distinctly, a low, strange laugh,
(09:24):
a laugh full of a honeyed sweetness that yet thrilled
me with great fear. What's that, I said, stopping short.
What Radcliffe asked? Some one laughed, I said, and I
stared all round and then upwards. I thought it came
(09:44):
from up there, I said, in a bewildered way, pointing upwards.
He gave me an odd look. And without answering, went
into the cottage. He had said nothing of having planned
any flight for the next morning. But in the ear
early morning, the chill and gray dawn, I was roused
by the drumming of his engine. At once I jumped
(10:07):
up out of bed and ran to the window. The
machine was raising itself lightly and easily from the ground.
I watched him wing his godlike way up through the
still soft air till he was lost to view. Then
after a time I saw him emerge again from those
(10:28):
immensities of space. He came down in one long, majestic
sweep and alighted in a field a little way away
from the house, leaving the air aplane for his mechanics
to fetch up presently. Hello, I greeted him. Why didn't
you tell me you were going up? As I spoke,
(10:50):
I heard, plainly and distinctly, as plainly as ever I
heard anything in my life, that low, strange laugh that
I had heard before, so silvery sweet, and yet somehow
so horrible. What's that? I said, stopping short and staring
blankly upwards. For absurd though it seems that weird sound
(11:14):
seemed to come floating down from an infinite height above us.
Not high enough, he muttered, like a man in an ecstasy.
Not high enough yet he walked away from me then,
without another word. When I entered the cottage, he was
seated at the table sketching a woman's face, the same
(11:36):
face I had seen in that other sketch of his
spectral unreal and lovely. What on earth I began? Nothing
on earth, he answered in a strange voice. Then he
laughed and jumped up and tore his sketch across. He
(11:57):
seemed quite his old self again, and pleasant, and with
his old passion for talking shop, he launched into a
long explanation of some scheme he had in mind for
securing automatic balancing. I never told anyone about that strange,
mocking laugh. In fact, I had almost forgotten the incident altogether,
(12:20):
when something brought every detail back to my memory. I
had a letter from a person who signed himself George Barnes. Barnes,
it seemed, was the operator who had taken the pictures
of that last ascent, and as he understood I had
been mister Thorpe's greatest friend. He wanted to see me.
(12:42):
Certain expressions in the letter aroused my curiosity. I replied.
He asked for an appointment at a time that was
not very convenient, and finally I arranged to call at
his house one evening. It was one of those smart
little six room villas of which so many had been
(13:03):
put up in the London suburbs of late Barnes was
buying it on the installment system, and I quite won
his heart by complimenting him on it. But for that
I doubt if anything would have come of my visit,
for he was plainly nervous and ill at ease, and
very repentant of ever having said anything. But after my
(13:25):
compliment to the house, we got on better. It's on
my mind, he said. I sha'n't be easy till some
one else knows. We were in the front room, where
a good fire was burning in my honor, I guessed,
for the apartment had not the air of being much used.
(13:46):
On the table were some photographs. Barnes showed them me.
They were enlargements from those he had taken of poor
Radcliffe's last ascent. They'd been shown all over the world,
he said, millions of people have seen them. Well, I said,
(14:08):
but there's one no one has seen, no one except me.
He produced another print and gave it to me. I
glanced at it. It seemed much like the others, having
been apparently one of the last of the series, taken
when the aeroplane was at a great height. The only
(14:29):
thing in which it differed from the others was that
it seemed the trifle blurred, a poor one. I said,
it's misty. Look at the mist he said. I did so, slowly,
very slowly. I began to see that that misty appearance
(14:50):
had a shape, a form. Even as I looked, I
saw the features of a human countenance, and yet not
human either. So spectral was it, so unreal and strange.
I felt the blood run cold in my veins, and
the hair bristle on the scalp of my head. For
(15:11):
I recognized, beyond all doubt that this face on the
photograph was the same as that Radcliffe had sketched. The
resemblance was absolute. No one who had seen the one
could mistake the other. You see it, Barnes muttered, and
his face was almost as pale as mine. There's a woman,
(15:34):
I stammered, A woman floating in the air by his side.
Her arms are held out to him. Yes, Barnes said,
who was she The print slipped from my hands and
fluttered to the ground. Barnes picked it up and put
it in the fire. Was it fancy? Or as it
(15:59):
flared up and burnt and was consumed, did I really
hear a faint laugh floating downwards from the upper air.
I destroyed the negative, Barnes said, and I told my
boss something had gone wrong with it. No one has
seen that photograph but you and me, and now no
(16:20):
one ever will. End of the Last Ascent
The last ascent by anonymous. The extraordinary rapidity with which
a successful airman may achieve fame was well shown in
the case of my friend Radcliffe Thorpe. One week, known
merely to a few friends as a clever young engineer,
the next his name was on the lips of the
(00:22):
civilized world. His first success was followed by a series
of remarkable feats, of which his flight above the Atlantic,
his race with the torpedo boat destroyers across the North Sea,
and his sensational display during the military maneuvers on Salisbury
Plain impressed his name and personality firmly upon the fickle
(00:44):
mind of the public, and explains the tremendous excitement caused
by his inexplicable disappearance during the Great Aviation Meeting at Attercliffe,
near London, towards the end of the summer. Few people,
i suppose, have forgotten the facts. For some time previously
(01:04):
he had been devoting himself, more especially to ascending to
as great a height as possible. He held all the
records for height, and it was known that at Attercliffe
he meant to endeavor to eclipse his own achievements. It
was a lovely day, not a breath of wind stirring,
(01:25):
not a cloud in the sky. We saw him start.
We saw him fly up and up in great sweeping spirals.
We saw him climb higher and ever higher into the
azure space. We watched him, those of us whose eyes
could bear the strain, as he dwindled to a dot
(01:46):
and a speck, till at last he passed beyond sight.
It was a stirring thing to see a man thus
storm as it were the walls of heaven and probe
the very mysteries of Spain. I remember I felt quite
annoyed with someone who was taking a cinematograph record. It
(02:07):
seemed such a sordid business like thing to be doing
at such a moment. Presently, the aeroplane came into sight
again and was greeted with a sudden roar of cheering.
He is doing a glide down, someone cried excitedly, And
though some one else declared that a glide from such
(02:28):
a height was unthinkable and impossible, yet it was soon
plain that the first speaker was right down through unimaginable
thousands of feet, straight and swift swept the machine, making
such a sweep as the eagle in its pride would
never have dared. People held their breath to watch, expecting
(02:50):
every moment some catastrophe. But the machine kept on an
even keel, and in a few moments I joined with
the others in a wild r rush to the field
at a little distance, where the machine, like a mighty bird,
had alighted easily and safely. But when we reached it,
we doubted our own eyes, our own sanity. There was
(03:14):
no sign anywhere of Radcliffe Thorpe. No one knew what
to say. We looked blankly at our neighbors, and one
man got down on his hands and knees and peered
under the body of the machine, as if he suspected
Radcliffe of hiding there. Then the chairman of the meeting,
(03:35):
Lord Fallowfield, made a curious discovery look. He said, in
a high shaken voice, the steering wheel is jammed. It
was true. The steering wheel had been carefully fastened in
one position, and the lever controlling the planes had also
(03:55):
been fixed so as to hold them at the right
angle for a downward glide. That was strange enough, but
in face of the mystery of Radcliffe's disappearance, little attention
was paid it. Where then was its pilot. That was
the question that was filling everybody's mind. He had vanished,
(04:16):
as utterly as vanish as the mist one seas rising
in the sunshine. It was supposed he must have fallen
from his seat, But as to how that had happened,
how it was that no fragment of his body or
his clothing was ever found. Above all, how it was
that his aeroplane had returned, the engine cut off, the
(04:38):
planes secured in correct position. No even moderately plausible explanation
was ever put forward. The loss to aeronautics was felt
to be severe. From childhood, Radcliffe had shown that, in
addition to this, he had a marked aptitude for drawing,
usually held at the service of his profession, but now
(05:00):
and again exercised in producing sketches of his friends. Among
those who knew him privately, he was fairly popular, though
not perhaps so much so as he deserved. Certainly, he
had a way of talking shop, which was a trifle
tiring to those who did not figure the world as
one vast engineering problem. While with women he was apt
(05:24):
to be brusque and short mannered. My surprise, then, can
be imagined, when calling one afternoon on him and having
to wait a little, I had noticed lying on his
desk a crayon sketch of a woman's face. It was
a very lovely face, the features almost perfect, and yet
(05:44):
there was about it something unearthly and spectral that was
curiously disturbing. Smitten at last, I asked, jestingly and yet
aware of a certain odd discomfort. When he saw what
I was looking at, he went very pale. Who is it?
(06:05):
I asked, Oh, just some one, he answered. He took
the sketch from me, looked at it, frowned, and locked
it away. As he seemed unwilling to pursue the subject,
I went on to talk of the business I had
come about, and I congratulated him on his flight of
(06:25):
the day before, in which he had broken the record
for height. As I was going, he said, by the way,
that sketch, what did you think of it? Why that
you had better be careful, I answered, laughing, or you'll
be falling from your high estate of Bachelordom. He gave
(06:47):
so violent a start, his face expressed so much of
apprehension and dismay that I stared at him blankly. Recovering
himself with an effort, he stammered out, it's not I mean,
it's an imaginary portrait. Then I said, amazed, in my turn,
(07:10):
you've a Johnny sight, more imagination than anyone ever credited
you with. The incident remained in my mind, as a
matter of fact, practical Radcliffe Thorpe absorbed in questions of
strain and ease, his head full of cylinders and wheels
and ratchets. And the Lord knows what else would have
(07:31):
seemed to me, the last man on earth to create
that haunting, strange, unearthly face, human in form, but not
in expression. It was about this time that Radcliffe began
to give so much attention to the making of very
high flights. His favorite time was in the early morning,
(07:52):
as soon as it was light. Then in the chill dawn,
he would rise and soar and wing his flight high
and ever higher, up and up, till the eye could
no longer follow his ascent. I remember he made one
of these strange solitary flights when I was spending the
week end with him at his cottage near the Attercliffe
(08:15):
Aviation grounds. I had come down from town somewhat late
the night before, and I remember that just before we
went to bed, we went out for a few minutes
to enjoy the beauty of a perfect night. The moon
was shining in the clear sky. Not a sound or
a breath disturbed the sublime quietude. In the south, one
(08:39):
wondrous star gleamed low on the horizon. Neither of us spoke.
It was enough to drink in the beauty of such
rare perfection. And I noticed how Radcliffe kept his eyes
fixed upwards on the dark blue vault of space. Are
you longing to be up there? I asked him jestingly.
(09:02):
He started and flushed, and he then went very pale,
and to my surprise I saw that he was shivering.
You are getting cold, I said. We had better go in.
He nodded without answering, And as we turned to go in,
I heard, quite plainly and distinctly, a low, strange laugh,
(09:24):
a laugh full of a honeyed sweetness that yet thrilled
me with great fear. What's that, I said, stopping short.
What Radcliffe asked? Some one laughed, I said, and I
stared all round and then upwards. I thought it came
(09:44):
from up there, I said, in a bewildered way, pointing upwards.
He gave me an odd look. And without answering, went
into the cottage. He had said nothing of having planned
any flight for the next morning. But in the ear
early morning, the chill and gray dawn, I was roused
by the drumming of his engine. At once I jumped
(10:07):
up out of bed and ran to the window. The
machine was raising itself lightly and easily from the ground.
I watched him wing his godlike way up through the
still soft air till he was lost to view. Then
after a time I saw him emerge again from those
(10:28):
immensities of space. He came down in one long, majestic
sweep and alighted in a field a little way away
from the house, leaving the air aplane for his mechanics
to fetch up presently. Hello, I greeted him. Why didn't
you tell me you were going up? As I spoke,
(10:50):
I heard, plainly and distinctly, as plainly as ever I
heard anything in my life, that low, strange laugh that
I had heard before, so silvery sweet, and yet somehow
so horrible. What's that? I said, stopping short and staring
blankly upwards. For absurd though it seems that weird sound
(11:14):
seemed to come floating down from an infinite height above us.
Not high enough, he muttered, like a man in an ecstasy.
Not high enough yet he walked away from me then,
without another word. When I entered the cottage, he was
seated at the table sketching a woman's face, the same
(11:36):
face I had seen in that other sketch of his
spectral unreal and lovely. What on earth I began? Nothing
on earth, he answered in a strange voice. Then he
laughed and jumped up and tore his sketch across. He
(11:57):
seemed quite his old self again, and pleasant, and with
his old passion for talking shop, he launched into a
long explanation of some scheme he had in mind for
securing automatic balancing. I never told anyone about that strange,
mocking laugh. In fact, I had almost forgotten the incident altogether,
(12:20):
when something brought every detail back to my memory. I
had a letter from a person who signed himself George Barnes. Barnes,
it seemed, was the operator who had taken the pictures
of that last ascent, and as he understood I had
been mister Thorpe's greatest friend. He wanted to see me.
(12:42):
Certain expressions in the letter aroused my curiosity. I replied.
He asked for an appointment at a time that was
not very convenient, and finally I arranged to call at
his house one evening. It was one of those smart
little six room villas of which so many had been
(13:03):
put up in the London suburbs of late Barnes was
buying it on the installment system, and I quite won
his heart by complimenting him on it. But for that
I doubt if anything would have come of my visit,
for he was plainly nervous and ill at ease, and
very repentant of ever having said anything. But after my
(13:25):
compliment to the house, we got on better. It's on
my mind, he said. I sha'n't be easy till some
one else knows. We were in the front room, where
a good fire was burning in my honor, I guessed,
for the apartment had not the air of being much used.
(13:46):
On the table were some photographs. Barnes showed them me.
They were enlargements from those he had taken of poor
Radcliffe's last ascent. They'd been shown all over the world,
he said, millions of people have seen them. Well, I said,
(14:08):
but there's one no one has seen, no one except me.
He produced another print and gave it to me. I
glanced at it. It seemed much like the others, having
been apparently one of the last of the series, taken
when the aeroplane was at a great height. The only
(14:29):
thing in which it differed from the others was that
it seemed the trifle blurred, a poor one. I said,
it's misty. Look at the mist he said. I did so, slowly,
very slowly. I began to see that that misty appearance
(14:50):
had a shape, a form. Even as I looked, I
saw the features of a human countenance, and yet not
human either. So spectral was it, so unreal and strange.
I felt the blood run cold in my veins, and
the hair bristle on the scalp of my head. For
(15:11):
I recognized, beyond all doubt that this face on the
photograph was the same as that Radcliffe had sketched. The
resemblance was absolute. No one who had seen the one
could mistake the other. You see it, Barnes muttered, and
his face was almost as pale as mine. There's a woman,
(15:34):
I stammered, A woman floating in the air by his side.
Her arms are held out to him. Yes, Barnes said,
who was she The print slipped from my hands and
fluttered to the ground. Barnes picked it up and put
it in the fire. Was it fancy? Or as it
(15:59):
flared up and burnt and was consumed, did I really
hear a faint laugh floating downwards from the upper air.
I destroyed the negative, Barnes said, and I told my
boss something had gone wrong with it. No one has
seen that photograph but you and me, and now no
(16:20):
one ever will. End of the Last Ascent
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