(_Together with extracts from the magazine in which it appeared_)
A nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood on the lower stages of
one of the G.P.O. outward mail towers. My purpose was a run to Quebec
in “Postal Packet 162 or such other as may be appointed”; and the
Postmaster-General himself countersigned the order. This talisman opened
all doors, even those in the despatching-caisson at the foot of the
tower, where they were delivering the sorted Continental mail. The bags
lay packed close as herrings in the long grey underbodies which our
G.P.O. still calls “coaches.” Five such coaches were filled as I
watched, and were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waiting
packets three hundred feet nearer the stars.
From the despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous and
wonderfully learned official Mr. L.L. Geary, Second Despatcher of
the Western Route--to the Captains' Room (this wakes an echo of old
romance), where the mail captains come on for their turn of duty. He
introduces me to the captain of “162”--Captain Purnall, and his relief,
Captain Hodgson. The one is small and dark; the other large and red;
but each has the brooding sheathed glance characteristic of eagles and
aeronauts. You can see it in the pictures of our racing professionals,
from L.V. Rautsch to little Ada Warrleigh--that fathomless abstraction
of eyes habitually turned through naked space.
On the notice-board in the Captains' Room, the pulsing arrows of some
twenty indicators register, degree by geographical degree, the progress
of as many homeward-bound packets. The word “Cape” rises across the face
of a dial; a gong strikes: the South African mid-weekly mail is in at
the Highgate Receiving Towers. That is all. It reminds one comically of
the traitorous little bell which in pigeon-fanciers', lofts notifies the
return of a homer.
“Time for us to be on the move,” says Captain Purnall, and we are shot
up by the passenger-lift to the top of the despatch-towers. “Our coach
will lock on when it is filled and the clerks are aboard.”
“No. 162” waits for us in Slip E of the topmost stage. The great curve
of her back shines frostily under the lights, and some minute alteration
of trim makes her rock a little in her holding-down slips.
Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, “162” comes to
rest as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn
bright as diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow,
and ice) to the inset of her three built out propeller-shafts is some
two hundred and forty feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward,
is thirty-seven. Contrast this with the nine hundred by ninety-five of
any crack liner, and you will realize the power that must drive a hull
through all weathers at more than the emergency speed of the Cyclonic!
The eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping
hair-crack of the bow-rudder--Magniac's rudder that assured us the
dominion of the unstable air and left its inventor penniless and
half-blind. It is calculated to Castelli's “gullwing” curve. Raise a few
feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch and she
will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she is under control again.
Give her full helm and she returns on her track like a whip-lash. Cant
the whole forward--a touch on the wheel will suffice--and she sweeps
at your good direction up or down. Open the complete circle and she
presents to the air a mushroom-head that will bring her up all standing
within a half mile.
“Yes,” says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought, “Castelli thought
he'd discovered the secret of controlling aeroplanes when he'd only
found out how to steer dirigible balloons. Magniac invented his rudder
to help war-boats ram each other; and war went out of fashion and
Magniac he went out of his mind because he said he couldn't serve his
country any more. I wonder if any of us ever know what we're really
doing.”
“If you want to see the coach locked you'd better go aboard. It's due
now,” says Mr. Geary. I enter through the door amidships. There is
nothing here for display. The inner skin of the gas-tanks comes down to
within a foot or two of my head and turns over just short of the turn of
the bilges. Liners and yachts disguise their tanks with decoration,
but the G.P.O. serves them raw under a lick of grey official paint. The
inner skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow and as much of the stern,
but the bow-bulkhead is recessed for the lift-shunting apparatus as
the stern is pierced for the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies almost
amidships. Forward of it, extending to the turn of the bow tanks, is an
aperture--a bottomless hatch at present--into which our coach will
be locked. One looks down over the coamings three hundred feet to
the despatching-caisson whence voices boom upward. The light below is
obscured to a sound of thunder, as our coach rises on its guides. It
enlarges rapidly from a postage-stamp to a playing-card; to a punt and
last a pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as it
comes into place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers and leap
into the docketed racks, while both captains and Mr. Geary satisfy them
selves that the coach is locked home. A clerk passes the way-bill over
the hatch coaming. Captain Purnall thumb-marks and passes it to Mr.
Geary. Receipt has been given and taken. “Pleasant run,” says Mr. Geary,
and disappears through the door which a foot high pneumatic compressor
locks after him.
“A-ah!” sighs the compressor released. Our holding-down clips part with
a tang. We are clear.
Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid underbody porthole through which
I watch over-lighted London slide eastward as the gale gets hold of
us. The first of the low winter clouds cuts off the well-known view and
darkens Middlesex. On the south edge of it I can see a postal packet's
light ploughing through the white fleece. For an instant she gleams like
a star ere she drops toward the Highgate Receiving Towers. “The Bombay
Mail,” says Captain Hodgson, and looks at his watch. “She's forty
minutes late.”
“What's our level?” I ask.
“Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on the bridge?”
The bridge (let us ever praise the G.P.O. as a repository of ancientest
tradition!) is represented by a view of Captain Hodgson's legs where he
stands on the Control Platform that runs thwart-ships overhead. The bow
colloid is unshuttered and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel,
is feeling for a fair slant. The dial shows 4300 feet. “It's steep
to-night,” he mutters, as tier on tier of cloud drops under. “We
generally pick up an easterly draught below three thousand at this time
o' the year. I hate slathering through fluff.”
“So does Van Cutsem. Look at him huntin' for a slant!” says Captain
Hodgson. A foglight breaks cloud a hundred fathoms below. The Antwerp
Night Mail makes her signal and rises between two racing clouds far to
port, her flanks blood-red in the glare of Sheerness Double Light.
The gale will have us over the North Sea in half-an-hour, but Captain
Purnall lets her go composedly--nosing to every point of the compass as
she rises.
“Five thousand-six, six thousand eight hundred”--the dip-dial reads ere
we find the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of snow at the thousand
fathom level. Captain Purnall rings up the engines and keys down the
governor on the switch before him. There is no sense in urging machinery
when Eolus himself gives you good knots for nothing. We are away in
earnest now--our nose notched home on our chosen star. At this level the
lower clouds are laid out, all neatly combed by the dry fingers of the
East. Below that again is the strong westerly blow through which we
rose. Overhead, a film of southerly drifting mist draws a theatrical
gauze across the firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata to
silver without a stain except where our shadow underruns us. Bristol and
Cardiff Double Lights (those statelily inclined beams over Severnmouth)
are dead ahead of us; for we keep the Southern Winter Route. Coventry
Central, the pivot of the English system, stabs upward once in ten
seconds its spear of diamond light to the north; and a point or two off
our starboard bow The Leek, the great cloud-breaker of Saint David's
Head, swings its unmistakable green beam twenty-five degrees each way.
There must be half a mile of fluff over it in this weather, but it does
not affect The Leek.
“Our planet's over-lighted if anything,” says Captain Purnall at the
wheel, as Cardiff-Bristol slides under. “I remember the old days of
common white verticals that 'ud show two or three hundred feet up in a
mist, if you knew where to look for 'em. In really fluffy weather they
might as well have been under your hat. One could get lost coming home
then, an' have some fun. Now, it's like driving down Piccadilly.”
He points to the pillars of light where the cloud-breakers bore through
the cloud-floor. We see nothing of England's outlines: only a white
pavement pierced in all directions by these manholes of variously
coloured fire--Holy Island's white and red--St. Bee's interrupted white,
and so on as far as the eye can reach. Blessed be Sargent, Ahrens,
and the Dubois brothers, who invented the cloud-breakers of the world
whereby we travel in security!
“Are you going to lift for The Shamrock?” asks Captain Hodgson. Cork
Light (green, fixed) enlarges as we rush to it. Captain Purnall
nods. There is heavy traffic hereabouts--the cloud-bank beneath us is
streaked with running fissures of flame where the Atlantic boats are
hurrying Londonward just clear of the fluff. Mail-packets are supposed,
under the Conference rules, to have the five-thousand-foot lanes to
themselves, but the foreigner in a hurry is apt to take liberties with
English air. “No. 162” lifts to a long-drawn wail of the breeze in the
fore-flange of the rudder and we make Valencia (white, green, white) at
a safe 7000 feet, dipping our beam to an incoming Washington packet.
There is no cloud on the Atlantic, and faint streaks of cream round
Dingle Bay show where the driven seas hammer the coast. A big S.A.T.A.
liner (Société Anonyme des Transports Aëriens) is diving and lifting
half a mile below us in search of some break in the solid west wind.
Lower still lies a disabled Dane she is telling the liner all about it
in International. Our General Communication dial has caught her talk and
begins to eavesdrop. Captain Hodgson makes a motion to shut it off but
checks himself. “Perhaps you'd like to listen,” he says.
“Argol of St. Thomas,” the Dane whimpers. “Report owners three starboard
shaft collar-bearings fused. Can make Flores as we are, but impossible
further. Shall we buy spares at Fayal?”
The liner acknowledges and recommends inverting the bearings. The Argol
answers that she has already done so without effect, and begins to
relieve her mind about cheap German enamels for collar-bearings. The
Frenchman assents cordially, cries “Courage, mon ami,” and switches off.
Then lights sink under the curve of the ocean.
“That's one of Lundt & Bleamers' boats,” says Captain Hodgson. “Serves
'em right for putting German compos in their thrust-blocks. She won't
be in Fayal to-night! By the way, wouldn't you like to look round the
engine-room?”
I have been waiting eagerly for this invitation and I follow Captain
Hodgson from the control-platform, stooping low to avoid the bulge
of the tanks. We know that Fleury's gas can lift anything, as the
world-famous trials of '89 showed, but its almost indefinite powers
of expansion necessitate vast tank room. Even in this thin air the
lift-shunts are busy taking out one-third of its normal lift, and still
“162” must be checked by an occasional downdraw of the rudder or our
flight would become a climb to the stars. Captain Purnall prefers an
overlifted to an underlifted ship; but no two captains trim ship alike.
“When I take the bridge,” says Captain Hodgson, “you'll see me shunt
forty per cent of the lift out of the gas and run her on the upper
rudder. With a swoop upward instead of a swoop downward, as you say.
Either way will do. It's only habit. Watch our dip-dial! Tim fetches her
down once every thirty knots as regularly as breathing.”
So is it shown on the dip-dial. For five or six minutes the arrow creeps
from 6700 to 7300. There is the faint “szgee” of the rudder, and back
slides the arrow to 6000 on a falling slant of ten or fifteen knots.
“In heavy weather you jockey her with the screws as well,” says Captain
Hodgson, and, unclipping the jointed bar which divides the engine-room
from the bare deck, he leads me on to the floor. Here we find Fleury's
Paradox of the Bulk-headed Vacuum--which we accept now without
thought--literally in full blast. The three engines are H.T.&T.
assisted-vacuo Fleury turbines running from 3000 to the Limit--that is
to say, up to the point when the blades make the air “bell”--cut out a
vacuum for themselves precisely as over-driven marine propellers used
to do. “162's” Limit is low on account of the small size of her nine
screws, which, though handier than the old colloid Thelussons, “bell”
sooner. The midships engine, generally used as a reinforce, is not
running; so the port and starboard turbine vacuum-chambers draw direct
into the return-mains.
The turbines whistle reflectively. From the low-arched expansion-tanks
on either side the valves descend pillarwise to the turbine-chests,
and thence the obedient gas whirls through the spirals of blades with a
force that would whip the teeth out of a power saw. Behind, is its own
pressure held in leash of spurred on by the lift-shunts; before it,
the vacuum where Fleury's Ray dances in violet-green bands and whirled
turbillons of flame. The jointed U-tubes of the vacuum-chamber are
pressure-tempered colloid (no glass would endure the strain for an
instant) and a junior engineer with tinted spectacles watches the Ray
intently. It is the very heart of the machine--a mystery to this day.
Even Fleury who begat it and, unlike Magniac, died a multi-millionaire,
could not explain how the restless little imp shuddering in the U-tube
can, in the fractional fraction of a second, strike the furious blast
of gas into a chill greyish-green liquid that drains (you can hear it
trickle) from the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and
the mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous, one had
almost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh. Bilge-tank,
upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main-return (as a
liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the ordained cycle. Fleury's
Ray sees to that; and the engineer with the tinted spectacles sees to
Fleury's Ray. If a speck of oil, if even the natural grease of the human
finger touch the hooded terminals, Fleury's Ray will wink and disappear
and must be laboriously built up again. This means half a day's work for
all hands and an expense of, one hundred and seventy-odd pounds to the
G.P.O. for radium-salts and such trifles.
“Now look at our thrust-collars. You won't find much German compo there.
Full-jewelled, you see,” says Captain Hodgson as the engineer shunts
open the top of a cap. Our shaft-bearings are C.M.C. (Commercial
Minerals Company) stones, ground with as much care as the lens of a
telescope. They cost £37 apiece. So far we have not arrived at their
term of life. These bearings came from “No. 97,” which took them over
from the old Dominion of Light which had them out of the wreck of the
Persew aeroplane in the years when men still flew wooden kites over oil
engines!
They are a shining reproof to all low-grade German “ruby” enamels,
so-called “boort” facings, and the dangerous and unsatisfactory alumina
compounds which please dividend-hunting owners and turn skippers crazy.
The rudder-gear and the gas lift-shunt, seated side by side under the
engine-room dials, are the only machines in visible motion. The former
sighs from time to time as the oil plunger rises and falls half an inch.
The latter, cased and guarded like the U-tube aft, exhibits another
Fleury Ray, but inverted and more green than violet. Its function is
to shunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do without watching.
That is all! A tiny pump-rod wheezing and whining to itself beside a
sputtering green lamp. A hundred and fifty feet aft down the flat-topped
tunnel of the tanks a violet light, restless and irresolute. Between the
two, three white-painted turbine-trunks, like eel-baskets laid on their
side, accentuate the empty perspectives. You can hear the trickle of the
liquefied gas flowing from the vacuum into the bilge-tanks and the soft
gluck-glock of gaslocks closing as Captain Purnall brings “162” down by
the head. The hum of the turbines and the boom of the air on our skin is
no more than a cotton-wool wrapping to the universal stillness. And we
are running an eighteen-second mile.
I peer from the fore end of the engine-room over the hatch-coamings
into the coach. The mail-clerks are sorting the Winnipeg, Calgary, and
Medicine Hat bags; but there is a pack of cards ready on the table.
Suddenly a bell thrills; the engineers run to the turbine-valves and
stand by; but the spectacled slave of the Ray in the U-tube never
lifts his head. He must watch where he is. We are hard-braked and going
astern; there is language from the Control Platform.
“Tim's sparking badly about something,” says the unruffled Captain
Hodgson. “Let's look.”
Captain Purnall is not the suave man we left half an hour since, but
the embodied authority of the G.P.O. Ahead of us floats an ancient,
aluminum-patched, twin-screw tramp of the dingiest, with no more right
to the 5000-foot lane than has a horse-cart to a modern road. She
carries an obsolete “barbette” conning tower--a six-foot affair with
railed platform forward--and our warning beam plays on the top of it
as a policeman's lantern flashes on the area sneak. Like a sneak-thief,
too, emerges a shock-headed navigator in his shirt-sleeves. Captain
Purnall wrenches open the colloid to talk with him man to man. There are
times when Science does not satisfy.
“What under the stars are you doing here, you sky-scraping
chimney-sweep?” he shouts as we two drift side by side. “Do you know
this is a Mail-lane? You call yourself a sailor, sir? You ain't fit to
peddle toy balloons to an Esquimaux. Your name and number! Report and
get down, and be--!”
“I've been blown up once,” the shock-headed man cries, hoarsely, as a
dog barking. “I don't care two flips of a contact for anything you can
do, Postey.”
“Don't you, sir? But I'll make you care. I'll have you towed stern first
to Disko and broke up. You can't recover insurance if you're broke for
obstruction. Do you understand that?”
Then the stranger bellows: “Look at my propellers! There's been a
wulli-wa down below that has knocked us into umbrella-frames! We've
been blown up about forty thousand feet! We're all one conjuror's watch
inside! My mate's arm's broke; my engineer's head's cut open; my Ray
went out when the engines smashed; and... and... for pity's sake give
me my height, Captain! We doubt we're dropping.”
“Six thousand eight hundred. Can you hold it?” Captain Purnall overlooks
all insults, and leans half out of the colloid, staring and snuffing.
The stranger leaks pungently.
“We ought to blow into St. John's with luck. We're trying to plug the
fore-tank now, but she's simply whistling it away,” her captain wails.
“She's sinking like a log,” says Captain Purnall in an undertone. “Call
up the Banks Mark Boat, George.” Our dip-dial shows that we, keeping
abreast the tramp, have dropped five hundred feet the last few minutes.
Captain Purnall presses a switch and our signal beam begins to swing
through the night, twizzling spokes of light across infinity.
“That'll fetch something,” he says, while Captain Hodgson watches the
General Communicator. He has called up the North Banks Mark Boat, a few
hundred miles west, and is reporting the case.
“I'll stand by you,” Captain Purnall roars to the lone figure on the
conning-tower.
“Is it as bad as that?” comes the answer. “She isn't insured. She's
mine.”
“Might have guessed as much,” mutters Hodgson. “Owner's risk is the
worst risk of all!”
“Can't I fetch St. John's--not even with this breeze?” the voice
quavers.
“Stand by to abandon ship. Haven't you any lift in you, fore or aft?”
“Nothing but the midship tanks, and they're none too tight. You see, my
Ray gave out and--” he coughs in the reek of the escaping gas.
“You poor devil!” This does not reach our friend. “What does the Mark
Boat say, George?”
“Wants to know if there's any danger to traffic. Says she's in a bit of
weather herself, and can't quit station. I've turned in a General Call,
so even if they don't see our beam some one's bound to help--or else we
must. Shall I clear our slings? Hold on! Here we are! A Planet liner,
too! She'll be up in a tick!”
“Tell her to have her slings ready,” cries his brother captain. “There
won't be much time to spare... Tie up your mate,” he roars to the
tramp.
“My mate's all right. It's my engineer. He's gone crazy.”
“Shunt the lift out of him with a spanner. Hurry!”
“But I can make St. John's if you'll stand by.”
“You'll make the deep, wet Atlantic in twenty minutes. You're less than
fifty-eight hundred now. Get your papers.”
A Planet liner, east bound, heaves up in a superb spiral and takes
the air of us humming. Her underbody colloid is open land her
transporter-slings hang down like tentacles. We shut off our beam as she
adjusts herself--steering to a hair--over the tramp's conning-tower.
The mate comes up, his arm strapped to his side, and stumbles into the
cradle. A man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he must
go back and build up his Ray. The mate assures him that he will find
a nice new Ray all ready in the liner's engine-room. The bandaged head
goes up wagging excitedly. A youth and a woman follow. The liner cheers
hollowly above us, and we see the passengers' faces at the saloon
colloid.
“That's a pretty girl. What's the fool waiting for now?” says Captain
Purnall.
The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand by and see him
fetch St. John's. He dives below and returns--at which we little human
beings in the void cheer louder than ever--with the ship's kitten.
Up fly the liner's hissing slings; her underbody crashes home and she
hurtles away again. The dial shows less than 3000 feet. The Mark Boat
signals we must attend to the derelict, now whistling her death-song, as
she falls beneath us in long sick zigzags.
“Keep our beam on her and send out a General Warning,” says Captain
Purnall, following her down. There is no need. Not a liner in air but
knows the meaning of that vertical beam and gives us and our quarry a
wide berth.
“But she'll drown in the water, won't she?” I ask. “Not always,” is
his answer. “I've known a derelict up-end and sift her engines out of
herself and flicker round the Lower Lanes for three weeks on her forward
tanks only. We'll run no risks. Pith her, George, and look sharp.
There's weather ahead.”
Captain Hodgson opens the underbody colloid, swings the heavy
pithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally cased as a
smoking-room settee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch. We
hear the whir of the crescent-shaped arms opening as they descend. The
derelict's forehead is punched in, starred across, and rent diagonally.
She falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down
that pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her.
“A filthy business,” says Hodgson. “I wonder what it must have been like
in the old days?”
The thought had crossed my mind, too. What if that wavering carcass had
been filled with the men of the old days, each one of them taught (that
is the horror of it!) that, after death he would very possibly go for
ever to unspeakable torment?
And scarcely a generation ago, we (one knows now that we are only our
fathers re-enlarged upon the earth), we, I say, ripped and rammed and
pithed to admiration.
Here Tim, from the Control Platform, shouts that we are to get into our
inflators and to bring him his at once.
We hurry into the heavy rubber suits--the engineers are already
dressed--and inflate at the air-pump taps. G.P.O. inflators are thrice
as thick as a racing man's “flickers,” and chafe abominably under the
armpits. George takes the wheel until Tim has blown himself up to the
extreme of rotundity. If you kicked him off the c. p. to the deck he
would bounce back. But it is “162” that will do the kicking.
“The Mark Boat's mad--stark ravin' crazy,” he snorts, returning to
command. “She says there's a bad blow-out ahead and wants me to pull
over to Greenland. I'll see her pithed first! We wasted half an hour
fussing over that dead duck down under, and now I'm expected to go
rubbin' my back all round the Pole. What does she think a Postal
packet's made of? Gummed silk? Tell her we're coming on straight,
George.”
George buckles him into the Frame and switches on the Direct Control.
Now under Tim's left toe lies the port-engine Accelerator; under his
left heel the Reverse, and so with the other foot. The lift-shunt stops
stand out on the rim of the steering-wheel where the fingers of his left
hand can play on them. At his right hand is the midships engine lever
ready to be thrown into gear at a moment's notice. He leans forward
in his belt, eyes glued to the colloid, and one ear cocked toward the
General Communicator. Henceforth he is the strength and direction of
“162,” through whatever may befall.
The Banks Mark Boat is reeling out pages of A. B..C. Directions to
the traffic at large. We are to secure all “loose objects”; hood up
our Fleury Rays; and “on no account to attempt to clear snow from our
conning-towers till the weather abates.” Under-powered craft, we are
told, can ascend to the limit of their lift, mail-packets to look out
for them accordingly; the lower lanes westward are pitting very badly,
“with frequent blow-outs, vortices, laterals, etc.”
Still the clear dark holds up unblemished. The only warning is the
electric skin-tension (I feel as though I were a lace-maker's pillow)
and an irritability which the gibbering of the General Communicator
increases almost to hysteria.
We have made eight thousand feet since we pithed the tramp and our
turbines are giving us an honest two hundred and ten knots.
Very far to the west an elongated blur of red, low down, shows us the
North Banks Mark Boat. There are specks of fire round her rising and
falling--bewildered planets about an unstable sun--helpless shipping
hanging on to her light for company's sake. No wonder she could not quit
station.
She warns us to look out for the back-wash of the bad vortex in which
(her beam shows it) she is even now reeling.
The pits of gloom about us begin to fill with very faintly luminous
films--wreathing and uneasy shapes. One forms itself into a globe of
pale flame that waits shivering with eagerness till we sweep by. It
leaps monstrously across the blackness, alights on the precise tip of
our nose, pirouettes there an instant, and swings off. Our roaring bow
sinks as though that light were lead--sinks and recovers to lurch and
stumble again beneath the next blow-out. Tim's fingers on the lift-shunt
strike chords of numbers--1:4:7:--2:4:6:--7:5:3, and so on; for he is
running by his tanks only, lifting or lowering her against the uneasy
air. All three engines are at work, for the sooner we have skated over
this thin ice the better. Higher we dare not go. The whole upper vault
is charged with pale krypton vapours, which our skin friction may excite
to unholy manifestations. Between the upper and lower levels--5000 and
7000, hints the Mark Boat--we may perhaps bolt through if... Our bow
clothes itself in blue flame and falls like a sword. No human skill can
keep pace with the changing tensions. A vortex has us by the beak and
we dive down a two-thousand foot slant at an angle (the dip-dial and my
bouncing body record it) of thirty-five. Our turbines scream shrilly;
the propellers cannot bite on the thin air; Tim shunts the lift out of
five tanks at once and by sheer weight drives her bullet wise through
the maelstrom till she cushions with jar on an up-gust, three thousand
feet below.
“Now we've done it,” says George in my ear: “Our skin-friction, that
last slide, has played Old Harry with the tensions! Look out for
laterals, Tim; she'll want some holding.”
“I've got her,” is the answer. “Come up, old woman.”
She comes up nobly, but the laterals buffet her left and right like the
pinions of angry angels. She is jolted off her course four ways at once,
and cuffed into place again, only to be swung aside and dropped into
a new chaos. We are never without a corposant grinning on our bows or
rolling head over heels from nose to midships, and to the crackle of
electricity around and within us is added once or twice the rattle of
hail--hail that will never fall on any sea. Slow we must or we may break
our back, pitch-poling.
“Air's a perfectly elastic fluid,” roars George above the tumult. “About
as elastic as a head sea off the Fastnet, ain't it?”
He is less than just to the good element. If one intrudes on the Heavens
when they are balancing their volt-accounts; if one disturbs the
High Gods' market-rates by hurling steel hulls at ninety knots across
tremblingly adjusted electric tensions, one must not complain of any
rudeness in the reception. Tim met it with an unmoved countenance, one
corner of his under lip caught up on a tooth, his eyes fleeting into
the blackness twenty miles ahead, and the fierce sparks flying from his
knuckles at every turn of the hand. Now and again he shook his head
to clear the sweat trickling from his eyebrows, and it was then that
George, watching his chance, would slide down the life-rail and swab his
face quickly with a big red handkerchief. I never imagined that a human
being could so continuously labour and so collectedly think as did Tim
through that Hell's half-hour when the flurry was at its worst. We were
dragged hither and yon by warm or frozen suctions, belched up on the
tops of wulii-was, spun down by vortices and clubbed aside by laterals
under a dizzying rush of stars in the company of a drunken moon.
I heard the rushing click of the midship-engine-lever sliding in and
out, the low growl of the lift-shunts, and, louder than the yelling
winds without, the scream of the bow-rudder gouging into any lull that
promised hold for an instant. At last we began to claw up on a cant,
bow-rudder and port-propeller together; only the nicest balancing of
tanks saved us from spinning like the rifle-bullet of the old days.
“We've got to hitch to windward of that Mark Boat somehow,” George
cried.
“There's no windward,” I protested feebly, where I swung shackled to a
stanchion. “How can there be?”
He laughed--as we pitched into a thousand foot blow-out--that red man
laughed beneath his inflated hood!
“Look!” he said. “We must clear those refugees with a high lift.”
The Mark Boat was below and a little to the sou'west of us, fluctuating
in the centre of her distraught galaxy. The air was thick with moving
lights at every level. I take it most of them were trying to lie head to
wind, but, not being hydras, they failed. An under-tanked Moghrabi boat
had risen to the limit of her lift, and, finding no improvement, had
dropped a couple of thousand. There she met a superb wulli-wa, and was
blown up spinning like a dead leaf. Instead of shutting off she went
astern and, naturally, rebounded as from a wall almost into the Mark
Boat, whose language (our G. C. took it in) was humanly simple.
“If they'd only ride it out quietly it 'ud be better,” said George in
a calm, while we climbed like a bat above them all. “But some
skippers--will navigate without enough lift. What does that Tad-boat
think she is doing, Tim?”
“Playin' kiss in the ring,” was Tim's unmoved reply. A Trans-Asiatic
Direct liner had found a smooth and butted into it full power. But there
was a vortex at the tail of that smooth, so the T. A. D. was flipped out
like a pea from off a finger-nail, braking madly as she fled down and
all but over-ending.
“Now I hope she's satisfied,” said Tim. “I'm glad I'm not a
Mark Boat... Do I want help?” The General Communicator dial had caught
his ear. “George, you may tell that gentleman with my love--love,
remember, George--that I do not want help. Who is the officious
sardine-tin?”
“A Rimouski drogher on the look-out for a tow.”
“Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. This postal packet isn't being towed
at present.”
“Those droghers will go anywhere on a chance of salvage,” George
explained. “We call' em kittiwakes.”
A long-beaked, bright steel ninety-footer floated at ease for one
instant within hail of us, her slings coiled ready for rescues, and
a single hand in her open tower. He was smoking. Surrendered to the
insurrection of the airs through which we tore our way, he lay in
absolute peace. I saw the smoke of his pipe ascend untroubled ere his
boat dropped, it seemed, like a stone in a well.
We had just cleared the Mark Boat and her disorderly neighbours when the
storm ended as suddenly as it had begun. A shooting-star to northward
filled the sky with the green blink of a meteorite dissipating itself in
our atmosphere.
Said George: “That may iron out all the tensions.” Even as he spoke, the
conflicting winds came to rest; the levels filled; the laterals died out
in long, easy swells; the air-ways were smoothed before us. In less
than three minutes the covey round the Mark Boat had shipped their
power-lights and whirred away upon their businesses.
“What's happened?” I gasped. The nerve-store within and the volt-tingle
without had passed: my inflators weighed like lead.
“God, He knows!” said Captain George soberly “That old shooting-star's
skin-friction has discharged the different levels. I've seen it happen
before. Phew: What a relief!”
We dropped from ten to six thousand and got rid of our clammy suits.
Tim shut off and stepped out of the Frame. The Mark Boat was coming up
behind us. He opened the colloid in that heavenly stillness and mopped
his face.
“Hello, Williams!” he cried. “A degree or two out o' station, ain't
you?”
“May be,” was the answer from the Mark Boat. “I've had some company this
evening.”
“So I noticed. Wasn't that quite a little draught?”
“I warned you. Why didn't you pull out north? The east-bound packets
have.”
“Me? Not till I'm running a Polar consumptives' sanatorium boat. I was
squinting through a colloid before you were out of your cradle, my son.”
“I'd be the last man to deny it,” the captain of the Mark Boat replies
softly. “The way you handled her just now--I'm a pretty fair judge of
traffic in a volt-hurry--it was a thousand revolutions beyond anything
even I've ever seen.”
Tim's back supples visibly to this oiling. Captain George on the c.
p. winks and points to the portrait of a singularly attractive maiden
pinned up on Tim's telescope bracket above the steering-wheel.