Pat paints. She also flies.
Pat and I landed at Jacksonville, Fla., late one night in Pat's Stearman
biplane. Pat was taking cross-country instruction from me. We gassed
hurriedly and took off again. We left the glare of the floodlights
behind us as we headed our ship along the line of flashing beacons
stretching southward toward Miami. The stars were brilliant in the
cloudless sky, but the night was very dark. There was no moon.
Soon we were flying down the coast. White breakers rolled in under us
from the Atlantic Ocean on our left and dimly marked the coast line.
Swamps stretched away to the inland on our right but were invisible in
the black night. Beacons flashed brilliantly out of the darkness in a
long line far behind us and far ahead. Blotches of lights slipped slowly
past under us when we flew over towns.
We saw clouds ahead. We nosed down under them. We had to fly
uncomfortably low to stay under the clouds. We nosed up to get above
them.
We flew into them. The lights beneath us dimmed and disappeared. We
climbed in opaque blackness, flying by instruments.
We emerged into an open space where the clouds were broken. The lights
reappeared. The stars became visible.
The clouds spread out under us to the horizon in all directions. They
were lit a dim silver by the stars. They softly undulated like a mystic,
limitless sea beneath us.
Now and then we saw a break in the clouds and caught the flash of a
beacon through it or saw the lights of a town. We caught glimpses of dim
breakers rolling in on the beach far down under the clouds.
Something I couldn't explain was happening. The sky in the east was
getting lighter. It was only about midnight. I looked at the western sky
and then looked back at the eastern sky. Yes, the sky was definitely
getting lighter in the east. Half an hour later the eastern sky was much
lighter than the western sky.