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 Bov, THE
CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS
COLLECTED VERSE
DAY'S WORK, THE
DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES
AND BALLADS AND BAR-
RACK-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 POOR'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 'RICK-
SHAW and WEE WILLIE
WINKIE
**A MAN WITH A GHASTLY SCARLET HEAD FOLLOWS,
SHOUTING THAT HE MUST GO BACK AND BUILD UP
HIS RAY."
With the Night
A STORY OF 2000 A.D
(TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE CONTEMPORARY
MAGAZINE IN WHICH IT APPEARED )
BY
RUDYARD KIPLING
Illustrated in Color
BY FRANK X. LEYENDECKER
AND H. REUTERDAHL
NEW YORK
Doubleday, Page & Company
1909
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OP TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1905, IQOg, BY RUDYARD KIPLING
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 PAGK
" 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 OP 3000 A.D.
With the Night Mail
A T 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
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
packets three hundred feet nearer the
stars.
From the despatching-caisson I was con-
ducted 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 aero-
nauts. 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
[4]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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
[5]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 hun-
dred and forty feet. Her extreme diameter,
carried well forward, is thirty-seven. Con-
trast 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 star-
[6]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
board ere she is under control again. Give
her full helm and she returns on her track
like a whip-lash. Cant the whole for-
ward — 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, answer-
ing my thought, "Castelli thought he 'd dis-
covered 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 could n'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
[7]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
you 'd better go aboard. It 's due now,"
says Mr. Geary. I enter through the door
amidships. There is nothing here for dis-
play. 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, extend-
ing 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
[8]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 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 dis-
appears 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
[9]
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
[10]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of
snow at the thousand-fathom level. Cap-
tain 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 firma-
ment. The moonlight turns the lower
strata to silver without a stain except where
our shadow underruns us. Bristol and Car-
diff 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
[12]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 unmistak-
able 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
[13]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
cloud-breakers bore through the cloud-
floor. We see nothing of England's out-
lines: 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 Sham-
rock?" 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
[it]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 (Socieie 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 Hodg-
son makes a motion to shut it off but checks
himself. " Perhaps you 'd like to listen/* he
says.
"'ArgoP of St. Thomas," the Dane
[15]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 with-
out 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 invi-
tation and I follow Captain Hodgson from
[16]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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
overlif ted to an underlif ted ship ; but no two
captains trim ship alike. "When I take
the bridge," says Captain Hodgson, "you '11
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."
[17]
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 di-
vides 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 pre-
cisely 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
[18]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
handier than the old colloid Thelussons,
' * bell*' sooner. The midships engine, gener-
ally 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
[ 19 ]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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
[20]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 Hodg-
son as the engineer shunts open the top of a
cap. Our shaft-bearings are C. M. C. (Com-
mercial 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 bear-
ings 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"
[21]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
facings, and the dangerous and unsatis-
factory 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 mo-
tion. 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
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 go-
ing astern; there is language from the
control-platform.
[23]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
" 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?"
[24]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 '11 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
[25]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 drop-
ping."
"Six thousand eight hundred. Can you
hold it?" Captain Purnall overlooks all in-
sults, 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
[26]
signal beam begins to swing through the
night, twizzling spokes of light across
infinity.
"That '11 fetch something," he says, while
CaptainHodgson watches the General Com-
municator. 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. Have n't
you any lift in you, fore or aft ?"
"Nothing but the midship tanks and
they 're none too tight. You see, my Ray
[27]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 her-
self 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 '11
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!"
[28]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
"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 ex-
citedly. A youth and a woman follow.
The liner cheers hollowly above us, and
[29]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
we see the passenger's 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 under-
body crashes home and she hurtles away
again. The dial shows less than 3,000 feet.
The Mark Boat signals we must at-
tend 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
[30]
SLIDES LIKE A LOST SOUL DOWN THAT PITILESS
LADDER OF LIGHT, AND THE ATLANTIC TAKES
HER "
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 '11 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
[31]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
that pitiless ladder of light, and the At-
lantic 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
[32]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
inflate at the air-pump taps. G. P. O. in-
flators 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 '11 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 un-
der Tim's left toe lies the port-engine Ac-
[33]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
celerator; 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 mid-
ships engine lever ready to be thrown into
gear at a moment's notice. He leans for-
ward 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 ac-
count 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
[34]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
lanes westward are pitting very badly,
"with frequent blow-outs, vortices, later-
als, 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 pil-
low) 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-
[35]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 — wreath-
ing 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
[36]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 per-
haps 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 pro-
pellers 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
[37]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
out for laterals, Tim, she '11 want some
holding."
"I've got her," is the answer. "Come
upy old woman."
She comes up nobly, but the laterals buf-
fet her left and right like the pinions of an-
gry 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 ?"
He is less than just to the good element
[38]
THE STORM
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
If one intrudes on the Heavens when they
are balancing their volt-accounts ; if one dis-
turbs the High Gods' market-rates by hurl-
ing steel hulls at ninety knots across tremb-
lingly 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 eye-
brows, and it was then that George, watch-
ing 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
[39]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 thou-
[40]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
sand 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 shut-
ing off she went astern and, naturally, re-
bounded 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
[41]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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?"
"Play in' kiss in the ring," was Tim's un-
moved 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 ?"
"ARimouski drogher on the lookout for
a tow."
[42]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
"Very kind of the Rimouski drogher.
This postal packet is n'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 shoot-
ing-star to northward filled the sky with
the green blink of a meteorite dissipating
itself in our atmosphere.
[43]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
Said George: "That may iron out all the
tensions." Even as he spoke, the conflict-
ing 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-storm within and the volt-tingle with-
out 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
[44]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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. Was n'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 con-
sumptives' Sanatorium boat. I was squint-
ing 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 revo-
[45]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
lutions 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 '11 just
have a look round that port-thrust —
seems to me it 's a trifle warm — and we '11
jog along."
The Mark Boat hums off joyously and
hangs herself up in her appointed eyrie.
Here she will stay, a shutterless obser-
[46]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
vatory; a life-boat station; a salvage tug;
a court of ultimate appeal-cum-meteor-
ologicai bureau for three hundred miles in
all directions, till Wednesday next when her
relief sKdes across the stars to take her buf-
feted place. Her black hull, double con-
ning-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 re-
port, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy
little planet only too ready to shift the whole
[47]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 flow-
ing freehand.
Tim gathers up a skein of it and surveys
the last few feet, which record " 162 V path
through the volt-flurry.
"I have n'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
[48]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 South-
ern 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.
[49]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
" Some fine night," says Tim. " We '11 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 unob-
served, 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
[50]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 '11 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
[51]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
ocean is all patterned with peacock's eyes
of foam.
" We '11 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 con-
tracts (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 thick-
ening 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
[52]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 plat-
forms 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 would n't have snow-
[53]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 mi-
crobes 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
[54]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 Kee-
watin 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
[55]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 Hali-
fax 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 astonish-
ing how the old water-ways still pull us
children of the air), and followed his broad
[56]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
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 In-
termediate 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 leav-
ing 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 floorl
And you can watch my Ray,
For I must go away
And dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinorel
[57]
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
Then, while they sweated home the cover-
ing-plates :
Nor-Nor-Nor-Nor-
West from Sourabaya to the Baltic —
Ninety knot an hour to the Skawl
Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic
And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinorel
The clips parted with a gesture of indig-
nant 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 passion-
ate 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
[58]
"I'VE ASKKD HIM TO TEA ON FRIDAY3
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
turbines, and Tim, prouder of this than all,
introduced me to the maiden of the photo-
graph 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. '
[59]
c>
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.
INVERCARGIL (N. Z.) — From 1st prox. : extreme southerly
light (double red) will exhibit white beam inclined
45 degrees on approach of Southerly Buster. Traffic
flies high off this coast between April and October.
TABLE BAY — Devil's Peak Glare removed to Simonsberg.
Traffic making Table Mountain coastwise keep all
lights from Three Anchor Bay at least five shipping
hundred feet under, and do not round to till beyond
E. shoulder Devil's Peak.
SANDHEADS LIGHT — Green triple vertical marks new
private landing-stage for Bay and Burma traffic only.
SNAEFELL JOKUL — White occulting light withdrawn
for winter.
PATAGONIA — No summer light south C. Pilar. This
includes Staten Island and Port Stanley.
C. NAVARIN — Quadruple fog flash (white), one minute
intervals (new).
[61]
AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL
EAST CAPE — Fog flash — single white with single bomb.
30 sec. intervals (new).
MALAYAN ARCHIPELAGO lights unreliable owing erup-
tions. Lay from Somerset to Singapore direct,
keeping highest levels.
For the Board:
CATTERTHUN }
ST. JUST >• Lights.
VAN HEDDER )
Casualties
Week ending Dec. 18th.
SABLE ISLAND LANDING TOWERS — Green freighter,
number indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-tank
pierced after collision, passed 300-ft. level 2 P.M.
Dec. 15th. Watched to water and pithed by Mark
Boat.
N. F. BANKS — Postal Packet 162 reports Halma freighter
(Fowey — St. John's) abandoned, leaking after
weather, 46° 15" N. 50° 15' W. Crew rescued by
Planet liner Asteroid. Watched to water and pithed
by postal packet, Dec. 14th.
KERGUELEN MARK BOAT reports last call from Cymena
freighter (Gayer Tong-Huk & Co.) taking water
and sinking in snow-storm. South McDonald Islands.
No wreckage recovered. Addresses, etc., of crew at
all A. B. C. offices.
FEZZAN — T. A. D. freighter Ulema taken ground during
Hannattan on Akakus Range. Under plates strained.
Crew at Ghat where repairing Dec. 13th.
BISCAY, MARK BOAT reports Carducci (Valandingham
line) slightly spiked in western gorge Point de
[62]
AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL
Benasque. Passengers transferred Andorra (same
line). Barcelona Mark Boat salving cargo Dec. 12th.
ASCENSION, MARK BOAT — Wreck of unknown racing-
plane, Parden rudder, wire-stiffened xylonite vans, and
Harliss engine-seating, sighted and salved 7° 20' S.
18° 41' W. Dec. 15th. Photos at all A. B. C. offices.
Missing
No answer to General Call having been received during
the last week from following overdues, they are posted
as missing.
Atlantis, W. 17630 Canton- Valparaiso
Audhumla, W. 809 Stockholm-Odessa
Berenice, W. 2206 Riga-Vladivostock
Draco, E. 446 Coventry-Puntas Arenas
Tontine, E. 3068 C. Wrath-Ungava
Wu-Sung, E. 41776 Hankow-Lobito Bay
General Call (all Mark Boats) out for:
Jane Eyre, W. 6990 .... Port Rupert-City of Mexico
Santander, W. 5514 .... Gobi-desert-Manila
V. Edmundsun, E. 9690 . . . Kandahar-Fiume
Broke for Obstruction, and Quitting Levels
VALKYRIE (racing plane), A. J. Hartley owner, New York
(twice warned).
GEISHA (racing plane), S. van Cott owner, Philadelphia
(twice warned).
MARVEL OP PERU (racing plane), J. X. Peixoto owner,
Rio de Janeiro (twice warned).
For the Board:
LAZAREFF ^
McKEOUGH >• Traffic.
GOLDBLATT )
[63]
NOTES
Notes
High-Level Sleet
The Northern weather so far shows no sign of im-
provement. From all quarters come complaints of the
unusual prevalence of sleet at the higher levels. Racing-
planes and digs alike have suffered severely — the former
from unequal deposits of half-frozen slush on their vans
(and only those who have "held up" a badly balanced plane
in a cross wind know what that means), and the latter
from loaded bows and snow-cased bodies. As a con-
sequence, the Northern and Northwestern upper levels
have been practically abandoned, and the high fliers
have returned to the ignoble security of the Three,
Five, and Six hundred foot levels. But there remain a
few undaunted sun-hunters who, in spite of frozen stays
and ice-jammed connecting-rods, still haunt the blue
empyrean.
Bat-Boat Racing
The scandals of the past few years have at last moved
the yachting world to concerted action in regard to " bat"
boat racing.
We have been treated to the spectacle of what are
practically keeled racing-planes driven a clear five foot or
more above the water, and only eased down to touch
their so-called "native element" as they near the line.
Judges and starters have been conveniently blind to this
absurdity, but the public demonstration off St. Catherine's
Light at the Autumn Regattas has borne ample, if tardy,
[65]
NOTES
fruit. In future the " bat " is to be a boat, and the long-
unheeded demand of the true sportsman for "no daylight
under mid-keel in smooth water" is in a fair way to be
conceded. The new rule severely restricts plane area
and lift alike. The gas compartments are permitted both
fore and aft, as in the old type, but the water-ballast central
tank is rendered obligatory. These things work, if not
for perfection, at least for the evolution of a sane and
wholesome waterborne cruiser. The type of rudder is
unaffected by the new rules, so we may expect to see the
Long-Davidson make (the patent on which has just
expired) come largely into use henceforward, though the
strain on the sternpost in turning at speeds over forty
miles an hour is admittedly very severe. But bat-boat
racing has a great future before it.
[66]
CORRESPONDENCE
Correspondence
Skylarking on the Equator
To THE EDITOR — Only last week, while crossing the
Equator (W. 26.15), I became aware of a furious and
irregular cannonading some fifteen or twenty knots
S. 4 E. Descending to the 500 ft. level, I found a party
of Transylvanian tourists engaged in exploding scores of
the largest pattern atmospheric bombs (A. B. C. standard)
and, in the intervals of their pleasing labours, firing bow
and stern smoke-ring swivels. This orgie — I can give it
no other name — went on for at least two hours, and natur-
ally produced violent electric derangements. My com-
passes, of course, were thrown out, my bow was struck
twice, and I received two brisk shocks from the lower
platform-rail. On remonstrating, I was told that these
" professors " were engaged in scientific experiments.
The extent of their " scientific " knowledge may be
judged by the fact that they expected to produce (I give
their own words) " a little blue sky " if " they went on
long enough." This in the heart of the Doldrums at
450 feet ! I have no objection to any amount of blue
sky in its proper place (it can be found at the 2,000 level
for practically twelve months out of the year), but I
submit, with all deference to the educational needs of
Transylvania, that "sky-larking" in the centre of a main-
travelled road where, at the best of times, electricity liter-
ally drips off one's stanchions and screw blades, is unnec-
essary. When ray friends had finished, the road was seared,
and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure-layers, spirals,
[68]
CORRESPONDENCE
vortices, and readjustments for at least an hour. I
pitched badly twice in an upward rush — solely due to
these diabolical throw-downs — that came near to wrecking
my propeller. Equatorial work at low levels is trying
enough in all conscience without the added terrors of
scientific hooliganism in the Doldrums.
Rhyl. J.VINCENT MATHEWS.
[We entirely sympathize with Professor Mathews's views,
but unluckily till the Board sees fit to further regulate
the Southern areas in which scientific experiments may
be conducted, we shall always be exposed to the risk
which our correspondent describes. Unfortunately, a
chimera bombinating in a vacuum is, nowadays, only
too capable of producing secondary causes. — Editor.]
Answers to Correspondents
VIGILANS — The Laws of Auroral Derangements are
still imperfectly understood. Any overheated motor
may of course "seize" without warning; but so many
complaints have reached us of accidents similar to yours
while shooting the Aurora that we are inclined to believe
with Lavalle that the upper strata of the Aurora Borealis
are practically one big electric "leak," and that the paral-
ysis of your engines was due to complete magnetization
of all metallic parts. Low-flying planes often "glue up"
when near the Magnetic Pole, and there is no reason in
science why the same disability should not be experienced
at higher levels when the Auroras are "delivering" strongly.
INDIGNANT — On your own showing, you were not
under control. That you could not hoist the necessary
N. U. C. lights on approaching a traffic-lane because your
electrics had short-circuited is a misfortune which might
befall any one. The A. B. CM being responsible for the
[69]
CORRESPONDENCE
planet's traffic, cannot, however, make allowance for this
kind of misfortune. A reference to the Code will show
that you were fined on the lower scale.
PLANISTON — (1) The Five Thousand Kilometre (over-
land) was won last year by L. V. Rautsch, R. M. Rautsch,
his brother, in the same week pulling off the Ten Thousand
(oversea). R. M.'s average worked out at a fraction over
500 kilometres per hour, thus constituting a record. (2)
Theoretically, there is no limit to the lift of a dirigible.
For commercial and practical purposes 15,000 tons is
accepted as the most manageable.
PATERFAMILIAS — None whatever. He is liable for
direct damage both to your chimneys and any collateral
damage caused by fall of bricks into garden, etc., etc.
Bodily inconvenience and mental anguish may be included,
but the average jury are not, as a rule, men of sentiment.
If you can prove that his grapnel removed any portion
of your roof, you had better rest your case on decover-
ture of domicile (See Parkins v. Duboulay). We entirely
sympathize with your position, but the night of the 14th
was stormy and confused, and — you may have to anchor
on a stranger's chimney yourself some night. Verbum sap!
ALDEBABAN — War, as a paying concern, ceased in
1967. (2) The Convention of London expressly reserves
to every nation the right of waging war so long as it does
not interfere with the world's traffic. (3) The A. B. C.
was constituted in 1949.
L. M. D. — Keep her dead head-on at half -power, taking
advantage of the lulls to speed up and creep into it. She
will strain much less this way than in quartering across a
gale. (2) Nothing is to be gained by reversing into a fol-
lowing gale, and there is always risk of a turn-over. (3)
The formulae for stun'sle brakes are uniformly unreliable,
and will continue to be so as long as air is compressible.
[70]
CORRESPONDENCE
PEGAMOID — Personally we prefer glass or flux com-
pounds to any other material for winter work nose-caps
as being absolutely non-hygroscopic. (2) We cannot
recommend any particular make.
PULMONAR — For the symptoms you describe, try the
Gobi Desert Sanitaria. The low levels of the Saharan
Sanitaria are against them except at the outset of the
disease. (2) We do not recommend boarding-houses or
hotels in this column.
BEGINNER — On still days the air above a large inhab-
ited city being slightly warmer — i. e., thinner — than the
atmosphere of the surrounding country, a plane drops a
little on entering the rarefied area, precisely as a ship
sinks a little in fresh water. Hence the phenomena of
"jolt" and your "inexplicable collisions" with factory
chimneys. In air, as on earth, it is safest to fly high.
EMERGENCY — There is only one rule of the road in air,
earth,and water. Do you want the firmament to yourself ?
PICCIOLA — Both Poles have been overdone in Art
and Literature. Leave them to Science for the next
twenty years. You did not send a stamp with your verses.
NORTH NIGERIA — The Mark Boat was within her right
in warning you up on the Reserve. The shadow of a
low-flying dirigible scares the game. You can buy all
the photos you need at Sokoto.
NEW ERA — It is not etiquette to overcross an A. B. C.
official's boat without asking permission. He is one of
the body responsible for the planet's traffic, and for that
reason must not be interfered with. You, presumably,
are out on your own business or pleasure, and should
leave him alone. For humanity's sake don't try to be
"democratic."
[71]
REVIEWS
Reviews
The Life of Xavier Lavalle
(Reviewed by Rene Talland. Ecole Aeronautique, Paris)
TEN years ago Lavalle, "that imperturbable dreamer of
the heavens, " as Lazareff hailed him, gathered together
the fruits of a lifetime's labour, and gave it, with well-
justified contempt, to a world bound hand and foot to
Barald's Theory of Vertices and "compensating electric
nodes." "They shall see," he wrote — in that immortal
postscript to "The Heart of the Cyclone" — "the Laws
whose existence they derided written in fire beneath them."
"But even here," he continues, "there is no finality.
Better a thousand times my conclusions should be dis-
credited than that my dead name should lie across the
threshold of the temple of Science — a bar to further
inquiry."
So died Lavalle — a prince of the Powers of the Air,
and even at his funeral Cellier jested at "him who had
gone to discover the secrets of the Aurora Borealis."
If I choose thus to be banal, it is only to remind you that
Cellier's theories are to-day as exploded as the ludicrous
deductions of the Spanish school. In the place of their
fugitive and warring dreams we have, definitely, Lavalle's
Law of the Cyclone which he surprised in darkness and
cold at the foot of the overarching throne of the Aurora
Borealis. It is there that I, intent on my own investiga-
tions, have passed and re-passed a hundred times the
worn leonine face, white as the snow beneath him, furrowed
[73]
REVIEWS
with wrinkles like the seams and gashes upon the North
Cape; the nervous hand, integrally a part of the mechanism
of his flighter; and above all, the wonderful lambent eyes
turned to the zenith.
"Master," I would cry as I moved respectfully beneath
him, "what is it you seek to-day ?" and always the answer,
clear and without doubt, from above: "The old secret,
my son!"
The immense egotism of youth forced me on my own
path, but (cry of the human always !) had I known — if I
had known — I would many times have bartered my poor
laurels for the privilege, such as Tinsley and Herrera pos-
sess, of having aided him in his monumental researches.
It is to the filial piety of Victor Lavalle that we owe the
two volumes consecrated to the ground-life of his father,
so full of the holy intimacies of the domestic hearth.
Once returned from the abysms of the utter North to that
little house upon the outskirts of Meudon, it was not the
philosopher, the daring observer, the man of iron energy
that imposed himself on his family, but a fat and even
plaintive jester, a farceur incarnate and kindly, the co-equal
of his children, and, it must be written, not seldom the
comic despair of Madame Lavalle, who, as she writes five
years after the marriage, to her venerable mother, found
"in this unequalled intellect whose name I bear the
abandon of a large and very untidy boy." Here is her
letter:
"Xavier returned from I do not know where at mid-
night, absorbed in calculations on the eternal question of
his Aurora — la belle Aurore, whom I begin to hate.
Instead of anchoring — I had set out the guide-light above
our roof, so he had but to descend and fasten the plane —
he wandered, profoundly distracted, above the town with
[74]
REVIEWS
his anchor down! Figure to yourself, dear mother, it
is the roof of the mayor's house that the grapnel first
engages! That I do not regret, for the mayor's wife and
I are not sympathetic; but when Xavier uproots my pet
araucaria and bears it across the garden into the con-
servatory I protest at the top of my voice. Little Victor
in his night-clothes runs to the window, enormously amused
at the parabolic flight without reason, for it is too dark to
see the grapnel, of my prized tree. The Mayor of Meudon
thunders at our door in the name of the Law, demanding,
I suppose, my husband's head. Here is the conversation
through the megaphone — Xavier is two hundred feet
above us.
"'Mons. Lavalle, descend and make reparation for out-
rage of domicile. Descend, Mons. Lavalle!'
"No one answers.
"'Xavier Lavalle, in the name of the Law, descend and
submit to process for outrage of domicile.'
"Xavier, roused from his calculations, only compre-
hending the last words : ' Outrage of domicile ? My dear
mayor, who is the man that has corrupted thy Julie ? '
"The mayor, furious, 'Xavier Lavalle '
"Xavier, interrupting: 'I have not that felicity. lam
only a dealer in cyclones!'
"My faith, he raised one then! All Meudon attended
in the streets, and my Xavier, after a long time compre-
hending what he had done, excused himself in a thousand
apologies. At last the reconciliation was effected in our
house over a supper at two in the morning — Julie in a
wonderful costume of compromises, and I hare her and
the mayor pacified in beds in the blue room."
And on the next day, while the mayor rebuilds his roof,
her Xavier departs anew for the Aurora Borealis, there
[75]
to commence his life's work. M. Victor Lavalle tells us
of that historic collision {en plane) on the flank of Hecla
between Herrera, then a pillar of the Spanish school, and
the man destined to confute his theories and lead him
intellectually captive. Even through the years, the
immense laugh of Lavalle as he sustains the Spaniard's
wrecked plane, and cries: "Courage! I shall not fall
till I have found Truth, and I hold you fast!" rings like the
call of trumpets. This is that Lavalle whom the world,
immersed in speculations of immediate gain, did not know
nor suspect — the Lavalle whom they adjudged to the last a
pedant and a theorist.
The human, as apart from the scientific, side (developed
in his own volumes) of his epoch-making discoveries is
marked with a simplicity, clarity, and good sense beyond
praise. I would specially refer such as doubt the sustain-
ing influence of ancestral faith upon character and will
to the eleventh and nineteenth chapters, in which are con-
tained the opening and consummation of the Tellurionical
Records extending over nine years. Of their tremendous
significance be sure that the modest house at Meudon
knew as little as that the Records would one day be the
world's standard in all official meteorology. It was enough
for them that their Xavier — this son, this father,
this husband — ascended periodically to commune with
powers, it might be angelic, beyond their comprehension,
and that they united daily in prayers for his safety.
"Pray for me," he says upon the eve of each of his
excursions, and returning, with an equal simplicity, he
renders thanks "after supper in the little room where he
kept his barometers."
To the last Lavalle was a Catholic of the old school,
accepting — he who had looked into the very heart of the
lightnings — the dogmas of papal infallibility, of absolu-
[76]
REVIEWS
tion, of confession — of relics great and small. Mar-
vellous— enviable contradiction!
The completion of the Tellurionical Records closed what
Lavalle himself was pleased to call the theoretical side of
his labours — labours from which the youngest and least
impressionable planeur might well have shrunk. He had
traced through cold and heat, across the deeps of the
oceans, with instruments of his own invention, over the
inhospitable heart of the polar ice and the sterile visage
of the deserts, league by league, patiently, unweariedly,
remorselessly, from their ever-shifting cradle under the
magnetic pole to their exalted death-bed in the utmost
ether of the upper atmosphere — each one of the Isocon-
ical Tellurions — Lavalle's Curves, as we call them to-day.
He had disentangled the nodes of their intersections,
assigning to each its regulated period of flux and reflux.
Thus equipped, he summons Herrera and Tinsley, his
pupils, to the final demonstration as calmly as though he
were ordering his flighter for some midday journey to
Marseilles.
"I have proved my thesis," he writes. "It remains now
only that you should witness the proof. We go to Manila
to-morrow. A cyclone will form off the Pescadores S.
17 E. in four days, and will reach its maximum intensity
in twenty-seven hours after inception. It is there I will
show you the Truth."
A letter heretofore unpublished from Herrera to
Madame Lavalle tells us how the Master's prophecy was
verified.
(To be continued.)
[77]
ADVERTISING SECTION
MISCELLANEOUS
WANTS
r> EQUIRED IMMEDIATELY. FOR
East Africa, a thoroughly competent
Plane and Dirigible Driver, acquainted
with Petrol Radium and Helium motors
and generators. Low-level work only,
but must understand heavy-weight digs
MO&SAMEDES TRANSPORT Assoc.
84 Palestine Buildings. E C
VI AN WANTED— DIG DRIVER
for Southern Alps with Saharan sum-
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Apply M. SIDNEY
Hotel San Stefano. Monte Carlo
PAMILY DIRIGIBLE. A COMPE-
tent. steady man wanted for slow
speed, low level Tangye dirigible. No
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himself useful in the garden
M R.,
The Rectory, Gray's Barton. Wilts.
/•VDMMERCUL DIG. CENTRAL
and Southern Europe. A smart.
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work only. Headquarters London and
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BACIIAN
Charing Cross Hotel. W. C. (urgent.)
OCR SALE — A BARGAIN — S1N-
gle Plane, narrow-gauge vans, Pinke
motor. Restayed this autumn. Hansrn
air-kit. 38 in. chest, 15} collar. Can be
teen by appointment.
N. 2650. This office.
The Bee -Line Bookshop
BELT'S WAY-BOOKS, giving town lights
for all towns over 4.000 pop. as laid
down by A. B. O.
THE WORLD. Complete Z vols. Thin
Oxford, limp back. 13s. 6d.
BELT'S COASTAL ITINERARY. Shore
Lights of the World. 7s. 6d.
THE TRANSATLANTIC AND MEDI-
TERRANEAN TRAFFIC LINES.
(By authority of the A.B.O.) Paper,
Is. 6d. ; cloth, 2s. 6d. Ready Jan. IS.
ARCTIC AEROPLANING. Siemens and
Oalt. Cloth, bds. 3s. 6d
LAVALLE'S HEART OF THE
CYCLONE, with supplementary
chans. 4s. 6d.
RIMINGTON'S PITFALLS IN THE
AIR, and Table of Comparative Den-
sities. 3s. 6d.
ANGELO'S DESERT IN A DHUGI-
BLE. New edition, revised. 5s. 9d.
VAUGHAN'S PLANE RACING IN
CALM AND STORM. 2s. 6d.
VAUGHAN'S HINTS TO THE AIR-
MATEUR. Is.
HOFMAN'S LAWS OF LIFT AND
VELOCITY. With diagrams. 8s. 6d.
DE VITRE'S THEORY OF SHIFTING
BALLAST IN DIRIGIBLES. 8s. 6d.
SANGER'S WEATHERS OF THE
WORLD. 4s.
SANGER'S TEMPERATURES AT
HIGH ALTITUDES. 4s.
HAWKIN'S FOG AND HOW TO
AVOID IT. 3s.
VAN ZUYLAN'S SECONDARY
EFFECTS OF THUNDERSTORMS.
4s. 6d.
DAHLGREN'S AIR CURRENTS AND
EPIDEMIC DISEASES. 5s. 6d.
REDMAYNE'S DISEASE AND THE
BAROMETER. 7s. 6d.
WALTON'S HEALTH RESORTS OF
THE GOBI AND SHAMO. 3s. 6d.
WALTON'S THE POLE AND PUL-
MONARY COMPLAINTS. 7s. 6d.
MUTLOW'S HIGH LEVEL BACTERI-
OLOGY 7s. 6d.
HALLIWELL'S ILLUMINATED STAR
MAP. with clockwork attachment,
giving apparent motion of heavens,
boxed, complete with clamps for bin-
nacle. 36 inch size, only £2. 2. 0. ( In-
valuable for night work.) WithA.B.C.
certificate. £3. 10s. Od.
Zalinski's Standard Works .
PASSES OF THE HIMALAYAS, 5s.
PASSES OF THE SIERRAS. 5s.
PASSES OF THE ROOKIES. Ss.
PASSES OF THE URALS. Ss.
The four boxed, limp cloth, with
charts, 15s.
GRAY'S AIR CURRENTS IN MOUN-
TAIN GORGES. 7s. &i.
A. C BELT & SON. READING
SAFE T.Y- WEAR FOR AERONAUTS
Flickers! Flickers! Flickers!
High Level Flickers
"He that a down need fear no fall"
Fear not I You will fall lightly as down!
CHansen's air-kits are down in all
respects. Tremendous reductions
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Pure para kit with cellulose seat and
shoulder-pads, weighted to balance.
Unequalled for all drop- work.
Our trebly resilient heavy kit is the ne
plus ultra of comfort and safety.
Gas-buoyed, waterproof, hail-proof, non-
conducting Flickers with pipe and nozzle
fitting all types of generator. Gradu-
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Hansen's Flickers Lead the Aerial Flight
197 Oxford Street
The new weighted Flicker with tweed or
cheviot surface cannot be distinguished
from the ordinary suit till inflated.
Flickers! Flickers! Flickers!
APPLIANCES FOR AIR PLANES
What
"SKID"
was to our forefathers
on the ground,
"PITCH"
is to their sons in the air.
The popularity of the
large, unwieldy, slow, ex-
pensive Dirigible over the
light, swift, Plane is main-
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immunity from pitch.
Collison's forward-
socketed Air Van renders
it impossible for any plane
to pitch. The C. F. S. is
automatic, simple as a shut-
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Fitted to any make of
plane.
COLLISON
186 Brompton Road
Worktop*, Cfihwlck
LUNDIE & MATHERS
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Starters
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Guides
Hotel, club, and
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Rackstraw's forty-
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starters with automatic
release at end of travel
— prices per foot run,
clamps and crampons
included. The safest
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Wvrotr & Denison
JXCiddleboro
AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLE GOODS
^Remember
Plants are Mrift — »o is Death
Piano are cheap — so il Life
Why does the 'plane builder
insist on the safety of his
machines?
Methinks the gentleman pro-
tests too much.
The Standard Dig Construc-
tion Company do not build
kites.
They build, equip and guar-
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Standar
Construction Co.
Millwcll and Buenos Avres
HOVERS
POWELL'S
Wind Hovers
for 'planes !ying-to in heavy
weather, save the motor and
strain on the forebody. Will not
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wind-hovers, rigid-ribbed; ac-
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We ft and test free to
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L. &W POWELL
196 Victoria Street, W
Remember
We shall always be
pleased to see you.
We build and test and
guarantee our dirigibles
for all purposes. They
go up when you please
and they do not come
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You can please yourself,
but— you might as well
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STANDARD DIRIGIBLE
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MilwaH and Buenos Ayres
Gayer & Hutt
Birmingham AN1) Birmingham
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Towers, Landing Stages,
S'ips and Lifts
public and private
Contractors to the A. B. C,
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Postal Construction Dept.
Sole patentees and owners
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AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLES
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Emporium
HYMANS & GRAHAM
1198
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^ It it now nearly a century since the Plane wa*
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4] TO-DAY nont of the Planet's freight is car-
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4 Less than two per cent, of the Planet's passen-
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Wt Jalgn, tin* **
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•*•!
I BAT-BOATS
Flint & Mantel
Southampton
FOR SALE
at the end of Season the following Bat-Boats :
GRISELD A, 65 knt., 42 ft., 430 (nora.) Maginnis Motor,
under-rake rudder.
MABELLE, 50 knt., 40 ft., 310 Hargreaves Motor,
Douglas' lock-steering gear.
IVEMONA, 50 knt., 35 ft., 300 Hargrcaves (Radium
accelerator), Miller keel and rudder.
The above are well known on the South
Coast as sound, wholesome knockabout boats,
with ample cruising accommodation. Griselda
carries spare set of Hofman racing vans and
can be lifted three foot clear in smooth water
with ballast-tank swung aft. The others do
not lift clear of water, and are recommended
for beginners. >
Also, by private treaty, racing B. B. Tarpon
( 76 .winning fltfgs) 13/ knt, 60 ft; Long-
Davidson double under-rake rudder, new this
season and unstrained. 850 nom. Maginnis
motor, Radium relays and Pond generator.
Bronze breakwater forward, and treble rein-
forced forefoot and entry. Talfourd Cockered
keel. Triple set of Hofman vans, giving maxi-
mum lifting surface of 5327 sq. ft.
Tarpon nas been lifted and held seven feet
for two miles between touch and touch.
Our Autumn List of racing and family Bats
ready on the 9th January.
AIR PLANES AND STARTERS
Hinks's Moderator
Monorail overhead starter
for family and private planes
up to twenty-five foot over ail
Absolutely
Safe
Hinfo <& Co.. Birmingham
J. D. ARDAGH
I AM NOT CONCERNED WITH YOUR 'PLANE
AFTER IT LEAVES MY GUIDES. BUT TILL
THEN I HOLD MYSELF PERSONALLY
RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR LIFE. SAFETY. AND
COMFORT. MY HYDRAULIC BUFFER -STOP
CANNOT RELEASE TILL THE MOTORS ARE
WORKING UP TO BEARING SPEtD. THUS
SECURING A SAFE AND GRACEFUL FLIGHT
WITHOUT PITCHING, p— . , • . . . •
Remember our motto. "Upward and Outward, " and
do not trust yourself to to -called "rigid" guide bars
J. D. ARDAGH, BELFAST AND TURIN
ACCESSORIES AND SPARES
CHRISTIAN WR
ESTABLIS
Accessories
Hooded Binnacles with dip-dials automatically
recording change of level (illuminated face).
All heights from 50 to 1 5.000 feet £2100
With Aerial Board of Control certificate £3110
Foot and Hand Foghorns; Sirens toned to
any club note; with air-chest belt-driven
from motor . . . . .£680
Wireless installations syntonised to A.B.C.
requirements, in neat mahogany case,
hundred mile range . . .£330
Grapnels,' mushroom anchors, pithing -irons,
winches, hawsers, snaps, shackles and mooring ropes,
for lawn, city, and public installations.
Detachable under-cars, aluminum or stamped steel.
Keeled under-cars for planes: single-action detach-
ing-gear, turning car into boat with one motion of
the wrist. Invaluable for sea trips.
Head, side, and riding lights (by size) Nos. 00 to
20 A.B.C. Standard. Rockets and fog-bombs in
colour? and tones of the principal clubs (boxed).
A selection of twenty £2176
International night-signals (boxed) £1 116
free 1hr
ACCESSORIES AND SPARES
IGHT & OLDIS
HED 1924
and Spares
Spare generators guaranteed to lifting power
marked on cover ( prices according to power ).
Wind-noses for dirigibles — Pegamoid, cane-stiff-
ened, lacquered cane or aluminum and flux for
winter work.
Smoke-ring cannon for hail s"lorms,swivel mounted,
bow or stem.
Propeller blades : metal, tungsten backed; papier-
mache; wire stiffened; ribbed Xylonite ( Nickson's
patent ) ; all razor-edged ( price by pitch and
diameter ).
Compressed steel bow-screws for winter work.
Fused Ruby or Commercial Mineral Co. bearings
and collars. Agate-mounted thrust-blocks up to 4 inch.
Magniac's bow-rudders— (Lavalle's patent groov-
ing).
Wove steel beltings for outboard* motors (non-
magnetic ).
Radium batteries, all powers to 1 50 h.p. (in pairs).
Helium batteries, all powers to 300 h. p. (tandem).
Stun'sle brakes worked from upper or lower
platform.
Direct plunge-brakes worked from lower plat-
form only, loaded silk or fibre, wind-tight.
the Tlanel
JjJJIDING SECT CIO 16 1981
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
IR Kipling, Rudyard
l±Q5k With the night mail
¥79
1909