"That's a good girl. What's the fool waiting for now?" says _With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the comtemporary magazine in which it appeared)

Produced by Stephen Hope, Carla Foust, Joseph Cooper and

the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's note

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer

errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other

inconsistencies are as in the original.

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

A STORY OF 2000 A.D.

(TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE CONTEMPORARY

MAGAZINE IN WHICH IT APPEARED)

BOOKS BY RUDYARD KIPLING

BRUSHWOOD BOY, THE

CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS

COLLECTED VERSE

DAY'S WORK, THE

DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND BALLADS AND BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS

FIVE NATIONS, THE

JUNGLE BOOK, THE

JUNGLE BOOK, SECOND

JUST SO SONG BOOK

JUST SO STORIES

KIM

KIPLING BIRTHDAY BOOK, THE

LIFE'S HANDICAP; Being Stories of Mine Own People

LIGHT THAT FAILED, THE

MANY INVENTIONS

NAULAHKA, THE (With Wolcott Balestier)

PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS

PUCK OF POOK'S HILL

SEA TO SEA, FROM

SEVEN SEAS, THE

SOLDIER STORIES

SOLDIERS THREE, THE STORY OF THE GADSBYS, and IN BLACK AND WHITE

STALKY & CO.

THEY

TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES

UNDER THE DEODARS, THE PHANTOM RICKSHAW and WEE WILLIE WINKIE

[Illustration: "A MAN WITH A GHASTLY SCARLET HEAD FOLLOWS, SHOUTING THAT

HE MUST GO BACK AND BUILD UP HIS RAY."]

With the Night Mail

A STORY OF 2000 A.D.

(TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE CONTEMPORARY

MAGAZINE IN WHICH IT APPEARED)

RUDYARD KIPLING

_Illustrated in Color_

BY FRANK X. LEYENDECKER

AND H. REUTERDAHL

[Decoration]

NEW YORK

Doubleday, Page & Company

1909

INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

PUBLISHED, MARCH, 1909

REPRINTED IN BOOK FORM BY PERMISSION OF

THE S. S. McCLURE COMPANY

ILLUSTRATIONS

"A man with a ghastly scarlet head

follows, shouting that he must go

back and build up his Ray" _Frontispiece_

FOLLOWING PAGE

"Slides like a lost soul down that

pitiless ladder of light, and the

Atlantic takes her" 31

The Storm 39

"I've asked him to tea on Friday" 58

WITH THE NIGHT MAIL

A STORY OF 2000 A.D.

With the Night Mail

At 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 gray under-bodies 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 "gull-wing" 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 gray 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

themselves that the coach is locked home. A clerk passes the waybill

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 million-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 bless 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 thwartships overhead. The bow

colloid is unshuttered and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is

feeling for a fair slant. The dial shows 4,300 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 fog-light 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 AEolus 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 overlighted 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 thousand 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 7,000

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 (_Societe Anonyme des Transports Aeriens_) 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.

Their lights sink under the curve of the ocean.

"That's one of Lundt & Bleamers's 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 upwards instead of a swoop downwards, _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 6,700 to 7,300. There is the faint "szgee" of the rudder, and back

slides the arrow to 6,500 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 Bulkheaded Vacuum--which we accept

now without thought--literally in full blast. The three engines are

H. T. &. T. assisted-vacuo Fleury turbines running from 3,000 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 or spurred on by the lift-shunts; before it, the

vacuum where Fleury's Ray dances in violet-green bands and whirled

turbillions 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 grayish-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 L37 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

"Perseus" aeroplane in the years when men still flew linen kites over

thorium 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 gas-locks 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 5,000 foot lane than has a horse-cart to a modern town. 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 under 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 and 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 good 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 3,000 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

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.

[Illustration: "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 International-speaking men of all the

Internationalities, each one of them taught (_that_ is the horror of

it!) that after death he would very possibly go forever to unspeakable

torment?

And not half a century since, 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--and 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 an hour and a

quarter 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 backwash 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 the lower

levels--5,000, and 7,000, 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

bulletwise through the maelstrom till she cushions with a 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 in 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, aint it?"

[Illustration: THE STORM]

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 wulli-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, as 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 fingernail, 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 C. G. 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 lookout 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 airways 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-storm 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 round by Disko? 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-flurry--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.

I see. Wholly and entirely do I see!

There is some talk overhead of "coming round to tea on Friday," a brief

report of the derelict's fate, and Tim volunteers as he descends: "For

an A. B. C. man young Williams is less of a high-tension fool than

some.... Were you thinking of taking her on, George? Then I'll just have

a look round that port-thrust--seems to me it's a trifle warm--and we'll

jog along."

The Mark Boat hums off joyously and hangs herself up in her appointed

eyrie. Here she will stay, a shutterless observatory; a life-boat

station; a salvage tug; a court of ultimate appeal-cum-meteorological

bureau for three hundred miles in all directions, till Wednesday next

when her relief slides across the stars to take her buffeted place. Her

black hull, double conning-tower, and ever-ready slings represent all

that remains to the planet of that odd old word authority. She is

responsible only to the Aerial Board of Control--the A. B. C. of which

Tim speaks so flippantly. But that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of

a few score persons of both sexes, controls this planet. "Transportation

is Civilization," our motto runs. Theoretically, we do what we please so

long as we do not interfere with the traffic _and all it implies_.

Practically, the A. B. C. confirms or annuls all international

arrangements and, to judge from its last report, finds our tolerant,

humorous, lazy little planet only too ready to shift the whole burden

of private administration on its shoulders.

I discuss this with Tim, sipping mate on the c. p. while George fans her

along over the white blur of the Banks in beautiful upward curves of

fifty miles each. The dip-dial translates them on the tape in flowing

freehand.

Tim gathers up a skein of it and surveys the last few feet, which record

"162's" path through the volt-flurry.

"I haven't had a fever-chart like this to show up in five years," he

says ruefully.

A postal packet's dip-dial records every yard of every run. The tapes

then go to the A. B. C., which collates and makes composite photographs

of them for the instruction of captains. Tim studies his irrevocable

past, shaking his head.

"Hello! Here's a fifteen-hundred-foot drop at eighty-five degrees! We

must have been standing on our heads then, George."

"You don't say so," George answers. "I fancied I noticed it at the

time."

George may not have Captain Purnall's catlike swiftness, but he is all

an artist to the tips of the broad fingers that play on the shunt-stops.

The delicious flight-curves come away on the tape with never a waver.

The Mark Boat's vertical spindle of light lies down to eastward, setting

in the face of the following stars. Westward, where no planet should

rise, the triple verticals of Trinity Bay (we keep still to the Southern

route) make a low-lifting haze. We seem the only thing at rest under all

the heavens; floating at ease till the earth's revolution shall turn up

our landing-towers.

And minute by minute our silent clock gives us a sixteen-second mile.

"Some fine night," says Tim. "We'll be even with that clock's Master."

"He's coming now," says George, over his shoulder. "I'm chasing the

night west."

The stars ahead dim no more than if a film of mist had been drawn under

unobserved, but the deep air-boom on our skin changes to a joyful shout.

"The dawn-gust," says Tim. "It'll go on to meet the Sun. Look! Look!

There's the dark being crammed back over our bow! Come to the

after-colloid. I'll show you something."

The engine-room is hot and stuffy; the clerks in the coach are asleep,

and the Slave of the Ray is near to follow them. Tim slides open the aft

colloid and reveals the curve of the world--the ocean's deepest

purple--edged with fuming and intolerable gold. Then the Sun rises and

through the colloid strikes out our lamps. Tim scowls in his face.

"Squirrels in a cage," he mutters. "That's all we are. Squirrels in a

cage! He's going twice as fast as us. Just you wait a few years, my

shining friend and we'll take steps that will amaze you. _We'll_ Joshua

you!"

Yes, that is our dream: to turn all earth into the Vale of Ajalon at our

pleasure. So far, we can drag out the dawn to twice its normal length in

these latitudes. But some day--even on the Equator--we shall hold the

Sun level in his full stride.

Now we look down on a sea thronged with heavy traffic. A big submersible

breaks water suddenly. Another and another follow with a swash and a

suck and a savage bubbling of relieved pressures. The deep-sea

freighters are rising to lung up after the long night, and the

leisurely ocean is all patterned with peacock's eyes of foam.

"We'll lung up, too," says Tim, and when we return to the c. p. George

shuts off, the colloids are opened, and the fresh air sweeps her out.

There is no hurry. The old contracts (they will be revised at the end of

the year) allow twelve hours for a run which any packet can put behind

her in ten. So we breakfast in the arms of an easterly slant which

pushes us along at a languid twenty.

To enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on a sunny morning half a mile or

so above the dappled Atlantic cloud-belts and after a volt-flurry which

has cleared and tempered your nerves. While we discussed the thickening

traffic with the superiority that comes of having a high level reserved

to ourselves, we heard (and I for the first time) the morning hymn on a

Hospital boat.

She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath us and we caught

the chant before she rose into the sunlight. "_Oh, ye Winds of God_,"

sang the unseen voices: "_bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him

forever!_"

We slid off our caps and joined in. When our shadow fell across her

great open platforms they looked up and stretched out their hands

neighbourly while they sang. We could see the doctors and the nurses and

the white-button-like faces of the cot-patients. She passed slowly

beneath us, heading northward, her hull, wet with the dews of the night,

all ablaze in the sunshine. So took she the shadow of a cloud and

vanished, her song continuing. _Oh, ye holy and humble men of heart,

bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him forever._

"She's a public lunger or she wouldn't have been singing the

_Benedicite_; and she's a Greenlander or she wouldn't have snow-blinds

over her colloids," said George at last. "She'll be bound for

Frederikshavn or one of the Glacier sanatoriums for a month. If she was

an accident ward she'd be hung up at the eight-thousand-foot level.

Yes--consumptives."

"Funny how the new things are the old things. I've read in books," Tim

answered, "that savages used to haul their sick and wounded up to the

tops of hills because microbes were fewer there. We hoist 'em into

sterilized air for a while. Same idea. How much do the doctors say we've

added to the average life of a man?"

"Thirty years," says George with a twinkle in his eye. "Are we going to

spend 'em all up here, Tim?"

"Flap along, then. Flap along. Who's hindering?" the senior captain

laughed, as we went in.

We held a good lift to clear the coastwise and Continental shipping;

and we had need of it. Though our route is in no sense a populated one,

there is a steady trickle of traffic this way along. We met Hudson Bay

furriers out of the Great Preserve, hurrying to make their departure

from Bonavista with sable and black fox for the insatiable markets. We

over-crossed Keewatin liners, small and cramped; but their captains, who

see no land between Trepassy and Blanco, know what gold they bring back

from West Africa. Trans-Asiatic Directs, we met, soberly ringing the

world round the Fiftieth Meridian at an honest seventy knots; and

white-painted Ackroyd & Hunt fruiters out of the south fled beneath us,

their ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites. Their market is in

the North among the northern sanatoria where you can smell their

grapefruit and bananas across the cold snows. Argentine beef boats we

sighted too, of enormous capacity and unlovely outline. They, too, feed

the northern health stations in ice-bound ports where submersibles dare

not rise.

Yellow-bellied ore-flats and Ungava petrol-tanks punted down leisurely

out of the north like strings of unfrightened wild duck. It does not pay

to "fly" minerals and oil a mile farther than is necessary; but the

risks of transhipping to submersibles in the ice-pack off Nain or Hebron

are so great that these heavy freighters fly down to Halifax direct, and

scent the air as they go. They are the biggest tramps aloft except the

Athabasca grain-tubs. But these last, now that the wheat is moved, are

busy, over the world's shoulder, timber-lifting in Siberia.

We held to the St. Lawrence (it is astonishing how the old water-ways

still pull us children of the air), and followed his broad line of

black between its drifting ice blocks, all down the Park that the wisdom

of our fathers--but every one knows the Quebec run.

We dropped to the Heights Receiving Towers twenty minutes ahead of time

and there hung at ease till the Yokohama Intermediate Packet could pull

out and give us our proper slip. It was curious to watch the action of

the holding-down clips all along the frosty river front as the boats

cleared or came to rest. A big Hamburger was leaving Pont Levis and her

crew, unshipping the platform railings, began to sing "Elsinore"--the

oldest of our chanteys. You know it of course:

_Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic_--

_Forty couple waltzing on the floor!_

_And you can watch my Ray,_

_For I must go away_

_And dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!_

Then, while they sweated home the covering-plates:

_Nor-Nor-Nor-Nor-_

_West from Sourabaya to the Baltic--_

_Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw!_

_Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic_

_And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!_

The clips parted with a gesture of indignant dismissal, as though

Quebec, glittering under her snows, were casting out these light and

unworthy lovers. Our signal came from the Heights. Tim turned and

floated up, but surely then it was with passionate appeal that the great

tower arms flung open--or did I think so because on the upper staging a

little hooded figure also opened her arms wide towards her father?

* * * * *

In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down to the

receiving-caisson; the hostlers displaced the engineers at the idle

turbines, and Tim, prouder of this than all, introduced me to the maiden

of the photograph on the shelf. "And by the way," said he to her,

stepping forth in sunshine under the hat of civil life, "I saw young

Williams in the Mark Boat. I've asked him to tea on Friday."

[Illustration: "I'VE ASKED HIM TO TEA ON FRIDAY"]

AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL BULLETIN

Aerial Board of Control

Lights

No changes in English Inland lights for week ending Dec. 18.

PLANETARY COASTAL LIGHTS. Week ending Dec. 18. Verde inclined

guide-light changes from 1st proximo to triple flash--green white

green--in place of occulting red as heretofore. The warning light for

Harmattan winds will be continuous vertical glare (white) on all oases

of trans-Saharan N. E. by E. Main Routes.

With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) · 第 1 / 3 段