THE MONOPLANE
The Flying Stages of London were collected together in an irregular
crescent on the southern side of the river. They formed three groups of
two each and retained the names of ancient suburban hills or villages.
They were named in order, Roehampton, Wimbledon Park, Streatham, Norwood,
Blackheath, and Shooter's Hill. They were uniform structures rising high
above the general roof surfaces. Each was about four thousand yards long
and a thousand broad, and constructed of the compound of aluminum and
iron that had replaced iron in architecture. Their higher tiers formed an
openwork of girders through which lifts and staircases ascended. The
upper surface was a uniform expanse, with portions--the starting
carriers--that could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly
inclined rails to the end of the fabric.
Graham went to the flying stages by the public ways. He was accompanied
by Asano, his Japanese attendant. Lincoln was called away by Ostrog, who
was busy with his administrative concerns. A strong guard of the
Wind-Vane police awaited the Master outside the Wind-Vane offices, and
they cleared a space for him on the upper moving platform. His passage to
the flying stages was unexpected, nevertheless a considerable crowd
gathered and followed him to his destination. As he went along, he could
hear the people shouting his name, and saw numberless men and women and
children in blue come swarming up the staircases in the central path,
gesticulating and shouting. He could not hear what they shouted. He was
struck again by the evident existence of a vulgar dialect among the poor
of the city. When at last he descended, his guards were immediately
surrounded by a dense excited crowd. Afterwards it occurred to him that
some had attempted to reach him with petitions. His guards cleared a
passage for him with difficulty.
He found a monoplane in charge of an aeronaut awaiting him on the
westward stage. Seen close this mechanism was no longer small. As it lay
on its launching carrier upon the wide expanse of the flying stage, its
aluminum body skeleton was as big as the hull of a twenty-ton yacht. Its
lateral supporting sails braced and stayed with metal nerves almost like
the nerves of a bee's wing, and made of some sort of glassy artificial
membrane, cast their shadow over many hundreds of square yards. The
chairs for the engineer and his passenger hung free to swing by a complex
tackle, within the protecting ribs of the frame and well abaft the
middle. The passenger's chair was protected by a wind-guard and guarded
about with metallic rods carrying air cushions. It could, if desired, be
completely closed in, but Graham was anxious for novel experiences, and
desired that it should be left open. The aeronaut sat behind a glass that
sheltered his face. The passenger could secure himself firmly in his
seat, and this was almost unavoidable on landing, or he could move along
by means of a little rail and rod to a locker at the stem of the machine,
where his personal luggage, his wraps and restoratives were placed, and
which also with the seats, served as a makeweight to the parts of the
central engine that projected to the propeller at the stern.
The flying stage about him was empty save for Asano and their suite of
attendants. Directed by the aeronaut he placed himself in his seat. Asano
stepped through the bars of the hull, and stood below on the stage waving
his hand. He seemed to slide along the stage to the right and vanish.
The engine was humming loudly, the propeller spinning, and for a second
the stage and the buildings beyond were gliding swiftly and horizontally
past Graham's eye; then these things seemed to tilt up abruptly. He
gripped the little rods on either side of him instinctively. He felt
himself moving upward, heard the air whistle over the top of the wind
screen. The propeller screw moved round with powerful rhythmic
impulses--one, two, three, pause; one, two, three--which the engineer
controlled very delicately. The machine began a quivering vibration that
continued throughout the flight, and the roof areas seemed running away
to starboard very quickly and growing rapidly smaller. He looked from
the face of the engineer through the ribs of the machine. Looking
sideways, there was nothing very startling in what he saw--a rapid
funicular railway might have given the same sensations. He recognised
the Council House and the Highgate Ridge. And then he looked straight
down between his feet.
For a moment physical terror possessed him, a passionate sense of
insecurity. He held tight. For a second or so he could not lift his eyes.
Some hundred feet or more sheer below him was one of the big wind-vanes
of south-west London, and beyond it the southernmost flying stage crowded
with little black dots. These things seemed to be falling away from him.
For a second he had an impulse to pursue the earth. He set his teeth, he
lifted his eyes by a muscular effort, and the moment of panic passed.
He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into
the sky. Throb, throb, throb--beat, went the engine; throb, throb,
throb--beat. He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and
saw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return--perhaps a
little artificially. "A little strange at first," he shouted before he
recalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some time. He
stared over the aeronaut's head to where a rim of vague blue horizon
crept up the sky. For a little while he could not banish the thought of
possible accidents from his mind. Throb, throb, throb--beat; suppose some
trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose--! He made a
grim effort to dismiss all such suppositions. After a while they did at
least abandon the foreground of his thoughts. And up he went steadily,
higher and higher into the clear air.
Once the mental shock of moving unsupported through the air was over,
his sensations ceased to be unpleasant, became very speedily
pleasurable. He had been warned of air sickness. But he found the
pulsating movement of the monoplane as it drove up the faint south-west
breeze was very little in excess of the pitching of a boat head on to
broad rollers in a moderate gale, and he was constitutionally a good
sailor. And the keenness of the more rarefied air into which they
ascended produced a sense of lightness and exhilaration. He looked up
and saw the blue sky above fretted with cirrus clouds. His eye came
cautiously down through the ribs and bars to a shining flight of white
birds that hung in the lower sky. For a space he watched these. Then
going lower and less apprehensively, he saw the slender figure of the
Wind-Vane keeper's crow's nest shining golden in the sunlight and
growing smaller every moment. As his eye fell with more confidence now,
there came a blue line of hills, and then London, already to leeward, an
intricate space of roofing. Its near edge came sharp and clear, and
banished his last apprehensions in a shock of surprise. For the boundary
of London was like a wall, like a cliff, a steep fall of three or four
hundred feet, a frontage broken only by terraces here and there, a
complex decorative façade.
That gradual passage of town into country through an extensive sponge of
suburbs, which was so characteristic a feature of the great cities of the
nineteenth century, existed no longer. Nothing remained of it here but a
waste of ruins, variegated and dense with thickets of the heterogeneous
growths that had once adorned the gardens of the belt, interspersed among
levelled brown patches of sown ground, and verdant stretches of winter
greens. The latter even spread among the vestiges of houses. But for the
most part the reefs and skerries of ruins, the wreckage of suburban
villas, stood among their streets and roads, queer islands amidst the
levelled expanses of green and brown, abandoned indeed by the inhabitants
years since, but too substantial, it seemed, to be cleared out of the way
of the wholesale horticultural mechanisms of the time.
The vegetation of this waste undulated and frothed amidst the countless
cells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wall
in a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses. Here
and there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remains of
Victorian times, and cable ways slanted to them from the city. That
winter day they seemed deserted. Deserted, too, were the artificial
gardens among the ruins. The city limits were indeed as sharply defined
as in the ancient days when the gates were shut at nightfall and the
robber foeman prowled to the very walls. A huge semi-circular throat
poured out a vigorous traffic upon the Eadhamite Bath Road. So the first
prospect of the world beyond the city flashed on Graham, and dwindled.
And when at last he could look vertically downward again, he saw below
him the vegetable fields of the Thames valley--innumerable minute oblongs
of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.
His exhilaration increased rapidly, became a sort of intoxication. He
found himself drawing deep breaths of air, laughing aloud, desiring to
shout. After a time that desire became too strong for him, and he
shouted. They curved about towards the south. They drove with a slight
list to leeward, and with a slow alternation of movement, first a short,
sharp ascent and then a long downward glide that was very swift and
pleasing. During these downward glides the propeller was inactive
altogether. These ascents gave Graham a glorious sense of successful
effort; the descents through the rarefied air were beyond all experience.
He wanted never to leave the upper air again.
For a time he was intent upon the landscape that ran swiftly northward
beneath him. Its minute, clear detail pleased him exceedingly. He was
impressed by the ruin of the houses that had once dotted the country, by
the vast treeless expanse of country from which all farms and villages
had gone, save for crumbling ruins. He had known the thing was so, but
seeing it so was an altogether different matter. He tried to make out
familiar places within the hollow basin of the world below, but at first
he could distinguish no data now that the Thames valley was left behind.
Soon, however, they were driving over a sharp chalk hill that he
recognised as the Guildford Hog's Back, because of the familiar outline
of the gorge at its eastward end, and because of the ruins of the town
that rose steeply on either lip of this gorge. And from that he made out
other points, Leith Hill, the sandy wastes of Aldershot, and so forth.
Save where the broad Eadhamite Portsmouth Road, thickly dotted with
rushing shapes, followed the course of the old railway, the gorge of the
wey was choked with thickets.
The whole expanse of the Downs escarpment, so far as the grey haze
permitted him to see, was set with wind-wheels to which the largest of
the city was but a younger brother. They stirred with a stately motion
before the south-west wind. And here and there were patches dotted with
the sheep of the British Food Trust, and here and there a mounted
shepherd made a spot of black. Then rushing under the stern of the
monoplane came the Wealden Heights, the line of Hindhead, Pitch Hill, and
Leith Hill, with a second row of wind-wheels that seemed striving to rob
the downland whirlers of their share of breeze. The purple heather was
speckled with yellow gorse, and on the further side a drove of black oxen
stampeded before a couple of mounted men. Swiftly these swept behind, and
dwindled and lost colour, and became scarce moving specks that were
swallowed up in haze.
And when these had vanished in the distance Graham heard a peewit
wailing close at hand. He perceived he was now above the South Downs, and
staring over his shoulder saw the battlements of Portsmouth Landing Stage
towering over the ridge of Portsdown Hill. In another moment there came
into sight a spread of shipping like floating cities, the little white
cliffs of the Needles dwarfed and sunlit, and the grey and glittering
waters of the narrow sea. They seemed to leap the Solent in a moment, and
in a few seconds the Isle of Wight was running past, and then beneath him
spread a wider and wider extent of sea, here purple with the shadow of a
cloud, here grey, here a burnished mirror, and here a spread of cloudy
greenish blue. The Isle of Wight grew smaller and smaller. In a few more
minutes a strip of grey haze detached itself from other strips that were
clouds, descended out of the sky and became a coast-line--sunlit and
pleasant--the coast of northern France. It rose, it took colour, became
definite and detailed, and the counterpart of the Downland of England was
speeding by below.
In a little time, as it seemed, Paris came above the horizon, and hung
there for a space, and sank out of sight again as the monoplane circled
about to the north. But he perceived the Eiffel Tower still standing, and
beside it a huge dome surmounted by a pin-point Colossus. And he
perceived, too, though he did not understand it at the time, a slanting
drift of smoke. The aeronaut said something about "trouble in the
under-ways," that Graham did not heed. But he marked the minarets and
towers and slender masses that streamed skyward above the city
wind-vanes, and knew that in the matter of grace at least Paris still
kept in front of her larger rival. And even as he looked a pale blue
shape ascended very swiftly from the city like a dead leaf driving up
before a gale. It curved round and soared towards them, growing rapidly
larger and larger. The aeronaut was saying something. "What?" said
Graham, loth to take his eyes from this. "London aeroplane, Sire," bawled
the aeronaut, pointing.
They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it came
and nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb--beat, of the
monoplane's flight, that had seemed so potent, and so swift, suddenly
appeared slow by comparison with this tremendous rush. How great the
monster seemed, how swift and steady! It passed quite closely beneath
them, driving along silently, a vast spread of wire-netted translucent
wings, a thing alive. Graham had a momentary glimpse of the rows and rows
of wrapped-up passengers, slung in their little cradles behind
wind-screens, of a white-clothed engineer crawling against the gale along
a ladder way, of spouting engines beating together, of the whirling wind
screw, and of a wide waste of wing. He exulted in the sight. And in an
instant the thing had passed.
It rose slightly and their own little wings swayed in the rush of its
flight. It fell and grew smaller. Scarcely had they moved, as it seemed,
before it was again only a flat blue thing that dwindled in the sky. This
was the aeroplane that went to and fro between London and Paris. In fair
weather and in peaceful times it came and went four times a day.
They beat across the Channel, slowly as it seemed now to Graham's
enlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them.
"Land," called the aeronaut, his voice small against the whistling of
the air over the wind-screen.
"Not yet," bawled Graham, laughing. "Not land yet. I want to learn more
of this machine."
"I meant--" said the aeronaut.
"I want to learn more of this machine," repeated Graham.
"I'm coming to you," he said, and had flung himself free of his chair and
taken a step along the guarded rail between them. He stopped for a
moment, and his colour changed and his hands tightened. Another step and
he was clinging close to the aeronaut. He felt a weight on his shoulder,
the pressure of the air. His hat was a whirling speck behind. The wind
came in gusts over his wind-screen and blew his hair in streamers past
his cheek. The aeronaut made some hasty adjustments for the shifting of
the centres of gravity and pressure.
"I want to have these things explained," said Graham. "What do you do
when you move that engine forward?"
The aeronaut hesitated. Then he answered, "They are complex, Sire."
"I don't mind," shouted Graham. "I don't mind."
There was a moment's pause. "Aeronautics is the secret--the privilege--"
"I know. But I'm the Master, and I mean to know." He laughed, full of
this novel realisation of power that was his gift from the upper air.
The monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham's
face and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to the
west. The two men looked into each other's eyes.
"Sire, there are rules--"
"Not where I am concerned," said Graham, "You seem to forget."
The aeronaut scrutinised his face "No," he said. "I do not forget, Sire.
But in all the earth--no man who is not a sworn aeronaut--has ever a
chance. They come as passengers--"
"I have heard something of the sort. But I'm not going to argue these
points. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? To fly!"
"Sire," said the aeronaut, "the rules--if I break the rules--"
Graham waved the penalties aside.
"Then if you will watch me--"
"No," said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine lifted its
nose again for an ascent. "That's not my game. I want to do it myself.
Do it myself if I smash for it! No! I will. See I am going to clamber by
this--to come and share your seat. Steady! I mean to fly of my own
accord if I smash at the end of it. I will have something to pay for my
sleep. Of all other things--. In my past it was my dream to fly.
Now--keep your balance."
"A dozen spies are watching me, Sire!"
Graham's temper was at end. Perhaps he chose it should be. He swore.
He swung himself round the intervening mass of levers and the
monoplane swayed.
"Am I Master of the earth?" he said. "Or is your Society? Now. Take your
hands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes--so. And now, how do we
turn her nose down to the glide?"
"Sire," said the aeronaut.
"What is it?"
"You will protect me?"
"Lord! Yes! If I have to burn London. Now!"
And with that promise Graham bought his first lesson in aerial
navigation. "It's clearly to your advantage, this journey," he said with
a loud laugh--for the air was like strong wine--"to teach me quickly and
well. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!"
"Back, Sire! Back!"
"Back--right. One--two--three--good God! Ah! Up she goes! But this
is living!"
And now the machine began to dance the strangest figures in the air. Now
it would sweep round a spiral of scarcely a hundred yards diameter, now
rush up into the air and swoop down again, steeply, swiftly, falling like
a hawk, to recover in a rushing loop that swept it high again. In one of
these descents it seemed driving straight at the drifting park of
balloons in the southeast, and only curved about and cleared them by a
sudden recovery of dexterity. The extraordinary swiftness and smoothness
of the motion, the extraordinary effect of the rarefied air upon his
constitution, threw Graham into a careless fury.
But at last a queer incident came to sober him, to send him flying down
once more to the crowded life below with all its dark insoluble riddles.
As he swooped, came a tap and something flying past, and a drop like a
drop of rain. Then as he went on down he saw something like a white rag
whirling down in his wake. "What was that?" he asked. "I did not see."
The aeronaut glanced, and then clutched at the lever to recover, for they
were sweeping down. When the monoplane was rising again he drew a deep
breath and replied, "That," and he indicated the white thing still
fluttering down, "was a swan."
"I never saw it," said Graham.
The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon his
forehead.
They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger's
place out of the lash of the wind. And then came a swift rush down, with
the wind-screw whirling to check their fall, and the flying stage growing
broad and dark before them. The sun, sinking over the chalk hills in the
west, fell with them, and left the sky a blaze of gold.
Soon men could be seen as little specks. He heard a noise coming up to
meet him, a noise like the sound of waves upon a pebbly beach, and saw
that the roofs about the flying stage were dense with his people
rejoicing over his safe return. A black mass was crushed together under
the stage, a darkness stippled with innumerable faces, and quivering with
the minute oscillation of waved white handkerchiefs and waving hands.