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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of With The Night Mail, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: With The Night Mail
+       A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the
+       comtemporary magazine in which it appeared)
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+Illustrator: Frank X. Leyendecker
+             H. Reuterdahl
+
+Release Date: June 16, 2009 [EBook #29135]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE NIGHT MAIL ***
+
+
+
+
+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)
+
+
+   BY
+   RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+   _Illustrated in Color_
+
+   BY FRANK X. LEYENDECKER
+   AND H. REUTERDAHL
+
+   [Decoration]
+
+   NEW YORK
+
+   Doubleday, Page & Company
+
+   1909
+
+
+
+
+   ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
+   INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
+
+   COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1909, 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 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
+aëronauts. 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 aëroplanes 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 Æolus 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 (_Société Anonyme des Transports Aëriens_) is diving
+and lifting half a mile below us in search of some break in the solid
+west wind. Lower still lies a disabled Dane: she is telling the liner
+all about it in International. Our General Communication dial has caught
+her talk and begins to eavesdrop. Captain Hodgson makes a motion to shut
+it off but checks himself. "Perhaps you'd like to listen," he says.
+
+"'Argol' of St. Thomas," the Dane whimpers. "Report owners three
+starboard shaft collar-bearings fused. Can make Flores as we are, but
+impossible further. Shall we buy spares at Fayal?"
+
+The liner acknowledges and recommends inverting the bearings. The
+"Argol" answers that she has already done so without effect, and begins
+to relieve her mind about cheap German enamels for collar-bearings. The
+Frenchman assents cordially, cries "_Courage, mon ami_," and switches
+off.
+
+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 £37 apiece. So far we have not arrived at their
+term of life. These bearings came from "No. 97," which took them over
+from the old "Dominion of Light," which had them out of the wreck of the
+"Perseus" aëroplane 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 Aërial 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 maté 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.
+
+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).
+
+EAST CAPE--Fog flash--single white with single bomb, 30 sec. intervals
+(new).
+
+MALAYAN ARCHIPELAGO lights unreliable owing eruptions. 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 Harmattan 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 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 OF PERU (racing plane), J. X. Peixoto owner, Rio de Janeiro
+(twice warned).
+
+                             _For the Board_:
+
+                                             LAZAREFF  }
+                                             MCKEOUGH  }  _Traffic._
+                                             GOLDBLATT }
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+
+
+Notes
+
+High-Level Sleet
+
+
+The Northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement. 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 consequence, 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, 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.
+
+
+
+
+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
+orgy--I can give it no other name--went on for at least two hours, and
+naturally produced violent electric derangements. My compasses, 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 literally drips off one's
+stanchions and screw blades, is unnecessary. When my friends had
+finished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequal
+pressure-layers, spirals, 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 paralysis 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. C., being responsible for the
+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 (overland) 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 decoverture 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!_
+
+ALDEBARAN--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 following gale, and there is always risk of a
+turn-over. (3) The formulæ for stun'sle brakes are uniformly unreliable,
+and will continue to be so as long as air is compressible.
+
+PEGAMOID--Personally we prefer glass or flux compounds 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 inhabited 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."
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS
+
+
+
+
+Reviews
+
+
+The Life of Xavier Lavalle
+
+(_Reviewed by Réné Talland. École Aëronautique, 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 discredited 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 Céllier 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 Céllier'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 investigations, have
+passed and re-passed a hundred times the worn leonine face, white as the
+snow beneath him, furrowed 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
+possess, 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 midnight, 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 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 conservatory 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 outrage 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 comprehending 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. I am only a dealer in
+cyclones!'
+
+"My faith, he raised one then! All Meudon attended in the streets, and
+my Xavier, after a long time comprehending 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 have 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 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 sustaining influence of ancestral faith upon character and
+will to the eleventh and nineteenth chapters, in which are contained 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 absolution, of confession--of relics great and small.
+Marvellous--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 Isoconical
+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_.)
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISING SECTION
+
+
+
+
+MISCELLANEOUS
+
+
+WANTS
+
+Required 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.
+
+   MOSSAMEDES TRANSPORT ASSOC.
+   84 Palestine Buildings, E. C.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Man wanted--Dig driver for Southern Alps with Saharan summer trips. High
+levels, high speed, high wages.
+
+   Apply M. SIDNEY
+   Hotel San Stefano. Monte Carlo
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Family dirigible. A competent, steady man wanted for slow speed, low
+level Tangye dirigible. No night work, no sea trips. Must be member of
+the Church of England, and make himself useful in the garden.
+
+   M. R.,
+   The Rectory, Gray's Barton, Wilts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Commercial dig, central and Southern Europe. A smart, active man for a
+L. M. T. Dig. Night work only. Headquarters London and Cairo. A linguist
+preferred.
+
+   BAGMAN
+   Charing Cross Hotel, W. C. (urgent.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For sale--A bargain--Single Plane, narrow-gauge vans, Pinke motor.
+Restayed this autumn. Hansen air-kit. 38 in. chest, 15-1/2 collar. Can
+be seen 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. C.
+
+THE WORLD. Complete 2 vols. Thin Oxford, limp back. 12s. 6d.
+
+BELT'S COASTAL ITINERARY. Shore Lights of the World. 7s. 6d.
+
+THE TRANSATLANTIC AND MEDITERRANEAN TRAFFIC LINES. (By authority of the
+A. B. C.) Paper, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 2s. 6d. Ready Jan. 15.
+
+ARCTIC AEROPLANING. Siemens and Galt. Cloth, bds. 3s. 6d.
+
+LAVALLE'S HEART OF THE CYCLONE, with supplementary charts. 4s. 6d.
+
+RIMINGTON'S PITFALLS IN THE AIR, and Table of Comparative Densities. 3s.
+6d.
+
+ANGELO'S DESERT IN A DIRIGIBLE. New edition, revised. 5s. 9d.
+
+VAUGHAN'S PLANE RACING IN CALM AND STORM. 2s. 6d.
+
+VAUGHAN'S HINTS TO THE AIR-MATEUR. 1s.
+
+HOFMAN'S LAWS OF LIFT AND VELOCITY. With diagrams, 3s. 6d.
+
+DE VITRE'S THEORY OF SHIFTING BALLAST IN DIRIGIBLES. 2s. 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 PULMONARY COMPLAINTS. 7s. 6d.
+
+MUTLOW'S HIGH LEVEL BACTERIOLOGY 7s. 6d.
+
+HALLIWELL'S ILLUMINATED STAR MAP, with clockwork attachment, giving
+apparent motion of heavens, boxed, complete with clamps for binnacle. 36
+inch size, only £2. 2. 0. (Invaluable for night work.) With A. B. C.
+certificate, £3. 10s. 0d.
+
+Zalinski's Standard Works.
+
+     PASSES OF THE HIMALAYAS. 5s.
+
+     PASSES OF THE SIERRAS. 5s.
+
+     PASSES OF THE ROCKIES. 5s.
+
+     PASSES OF THE URALS. 5s.
+
+     The four boxed, limp cloth, with charts, 15s.
+
+GRAY'S AIR CURRENTS IN MOUNTAIN GORGES. 7s. 6d.
+
+=A. C. BELT & SON, READING=
+
+
+
+
+SAFETY WEAR FOR AERONAUTS
+
+
+   Flickers!    Flickers!    Flickers!
+
+   =High Level Flickers=
+
+   "_He that is down need fear no fall_"
+   _Fear not! You will fall lightly as down!_
+
+Hansen's air-kits are down in all respects. Tremendous reductions in
+prices previous to winter stocking. 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. Graduated tap on left hip.
+
+   =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, expensive Dirigible over
+the light, swift Plane is mainly due to the former's 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 shutter, certain as a
+power hammer, safe as oxygen. Fitted to any make of plane.
+
+   COLLISON
+   186 Brompton Road
+   _Workshops_, _Chiswick_
+
+   LUNDIE & MATHERS
+   Sole Agts for East'n Hemisphere
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Starters and Guides
+
+Hotel, club, and private house plane-starters, slips and guides affixed
+by skilled workmen in accordance with local building laws.
+
+Rackstraw's forty-foot collapsible steel starters with automatic release
+at end of travel--prices per foot run, clamps and crampons included. The
+safest on the market.
+
+   _Weaver & Denison
+   Middleboro_
+
+
+
+
+AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLE GOODS
+
+
+_=Remember=_
+
+   =Planes are swift--so is Death=
+   =Planes are cheap--so is Life=
+
+_Why_ does the 'plane builder insist on the safety of his machines?
+
+Methinks the gentleman protests too much.
+
+The Standard Dig Construction Company do not build kites.
+
+They build, equip and guarantee dirigibles.
+
+=_Standard Dig Construction Co._=
+
+Millwall _and_ Buenos Ayres
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+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 down till you please.
+
+You can please yourself, but--you might as well choose a dirigible.
+
+=STANDARD DIRIGIBLE CONSTRUCTION CO.=
+
+Millwall _and_ Buenos Ayres
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HOVERS
+
+   POWELL'S
+   Wind Hovers
+
+for 'planes tying-to in heavy weather, save the motor and strain on the
+forebody. Will not send to leeward. "Albatross" wind-hovers,
+rigid-ribbed; according to h. p. and weight.
+
+     _We fit and test free to 40° east of Greenwich_
+
+   L. & W. POWELL
+   196 Victoria Street, W
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gayer & Hutt
+
+   Birmingham AND Birmingham
+      Eng.           Ala.
+
+   Towers, Landing Stages,
+   Slips and Lifts
+   public and private
+
+Contractors to the A. B. C., South-Western European Postal Construction
+Dept.
+
+Sole patentees and owners of the Collison anti-quake diagonal tower-tie.
+Only gold medal Kyoto Exhibition of Aerial Appliances, 1997.
+
+
+
+
+AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLES
+
+
+C. M. C.
+
+   Our Synthetical Mineral
+   BEARINGS
+
+are chemically and crystallogically identical with the minerals whose
+names they bear. Any size, any surface. Diamond, Rock-Crystal, Agate and
+Ruby Bearings--cups, caps and collars for the higher speeds.
+
+For tractor bearings and spindles--Imperative.
+
+For rear propellers--Indispensable.
+
+For all working parts--Advisable.
+
+   Commercial Minerals Co.
+   107 Minories
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Resurgam!
+
+IF YOU HAVE NOT CLOTHED YOURSELF IN A
+
+   Normandie
+   Resurgam
+
+YOU WILL PROBABLY NOT BE INTERESTED IN OUR NEXT WEEK'S LIST OF AIR-KIT.
+
+Resurgam Air-Kit Emporium
+
+HYMANS & GRAHAM
+
+   1198
+   Lower Broadway, New York
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Remember!
+
+¶ It is now nearly a century since the Plane was to supersede the
+Dirigible for all purposes.
+
+¶ TO-DAY _none_ of the Planet's freight is carried _en plane_.
+
+¶ Less than two per cent. of the Planet's passengers are carried _en
+plane_.
+
+_We design, equip and guarantee Dirigibles for all purposes._
+
+Standard Dig Construction Company
+
+MILLWALL and BUENOS AYRES
+
+
+
+
+BAT-BOATS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Flint & Mantel
+
+Southampton
+
+FOR SALE
+
+at the end of Season the following Bat-Boats:
+
+=GRISELDA=, 65 knt., 42 ft., 430 (nom.) Maginnis Motor, under-rake rudder.
+
+=MABELLE=, 50 knt., 40 ft., 310 Hargreaves Motor, Douglas' lock-steering
+gear.
+
+=IVEMONA=, 50 knt., 35 ft., 300 Hargreaves (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 flags) 137
+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 reinforced forefoot and
+entry. Talfourd rockered keel. Triple set of Hofman vans, giving maximum
+lifting surface of 5327 sq. ft.
+
+_Tarpon_ has 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 all
+
+Absolutely Safe
+
+_Hinks & 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 SPEED, THUS SECURING A SAFE AND GRACEFUL FLIGHT
+WITHOUT PITCHING.
+
+Remember our motto, "_Upward and Outward_," and do not trust yourself to
+so-called "rigid" guide bars
+
+J. D. ARDAGH, BELFAST AND TURIN
+
+
+
+
+ACCESSORIES AND SPARES
+
+
+CHRISTIAN WRIGHT & OLDIS
+
+ESTABLISHED 1924
+
+Accessories and Spares
+
+
+Hooded Binnacles with dip-dials automatically recording change of level
+(illuminated face).
+
+   All heights from 50 to 15,000 feet                        £2 10 0
+
+   With Aerial Board of Control certificate                  £3 11 0
+
+   Foot and Hand Foghorns; Sirens toned to any club note;
+   with air-chest belt-driven from motor                     £6  8 0
+
+   Wireless installations syntonised to A. B. C.
+   requirements, in neat mahogany case, hundred mile range   £3  3 0
+
+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 detaching-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 colours and tones of the principal clubs
+(boxed).
+
+   A selection of twenty                                     £2 17 6
+
+   International night-signals (boxed)                       £1 11 6
+
+Spare generators guaranteed to lifting power marked on cover (prices
+according to power).
+
+Wind-noses for dirigibles--Pegamoid, cane-stiffened, lacquered cane or
+aluminum and flux for winter work.
+
+Smoke-ring cannon for hail storms, swivel mounted, bow or stern.
+
+Propeller blades: metal, tungsten backed; papier-maché; 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 grooving).
+
+Wove steel beltings for outboard motors (non-magnetic).
+
+Radium batteries, all powers to 150 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 platform only, loaded silk or
+fibre, wind-tight.
+
+_Catalogues free throughout the Planet_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's note
+
+
+The following changes have been made to the text:
+
+Page 30: "passenger's faces" changed to "passengers' faces".
+
+Page 41: "Instead of shuting" changed to "Instead of shutting".
+
+Page 68: "orgie" changed to "orgy".
+
+Page 71: "earth,and water" changed to "earth, and water".
+
+Page 82: "Milwall and Buenos Ayres" changed to "Millwall and Buenos
+Ayres".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of With The Night Mail, by Rudyard Kipling
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of With the Night Mail, by Rudyard Kipling.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of With The Night Mail, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: With The Night Mail
+       A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the
+              comtemporary magazine in which it appeared)
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+Illustrator: Frank X. Leyendecker
+             H. Reuterdahl
+
+Release Date: June 16, 2009 [EBook #29135]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE NIGHT MAIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stephen Hope, Carla Foust, Joseph Cooper and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<h3>Transcriber's note</h3>
+<p>Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer
+errors have been changed, and they are indicated with
+a <a class="correction" title="like this" href="#tnotes">mouse-hover</a>
+and listed at the
+<a href="#tnotes">end of this book</a>. All other
+inconsistencies are as in the original.</p>
+
+<p>
+For the "Illustrations" listing the page numbers reflect the position of the
+illustration in the original text but links link to current position of illustrations.
+</p>
+
+<p>A Table of Contents has been generated for this version.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p class="center">
+<a href="#ILLUSTRATIONS"><b>ILLUSTRATIONS</b></a><br />
+<a href="#WITH_THE_NIGHT_MAIL"><b>WITH THE NIGHT MAIL</b></a><br />
+<a href="#AERIAL_BOARD_OF_CONTROL_BULLETIN"><b>AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL BULLETIN</b></a><br />
+<a href="#NOTES"><b>NOTES</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CORRESPONDENCE"><b>CORRESPONDENCE</b></a><br />
+<a href="#REVIEWS"><b>REVIEWS</b></a><br />
+<a href="#ADVERTISING_SECTION"><b>ADVERTISING SECTION</b></a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 326px;">
+<img src="images/ill-cover.jpg" width="326" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="fm2">WITH THE NIGHT MAIL</p>
+
+<p class="fm3">A STORY OF 2000 A.D.</p>
+
+<p class="fm4">(TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE CONTEMPORARY<br />
+MAGAZINE IN WHICH IT APPEARED)
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="fm3">BOOKS BY RUDYARD KIPLING</p>
+
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">Brushwood Boy, The</span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2186">Captains Courageous</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">Collected Verse</span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2569">Day's Work, The</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7846">Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">Five Nations, The</span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/236">Jungle Book, The</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">Jungle Book, Second</span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">Just So Song Book</span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2781">Just So Stories</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2226">Kim</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">Kipling Birthday Book, The</span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5777"><span class="smcap">Life's Handicap</span>; Being Stories of Mine Own People</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2876">Light That Failed, The</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">Many Inventions</span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">Naulahka, The</span> (With Wolcott Balestier)</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1858">Plain Tales from the Hills</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/26027">Puck of Pook's Hill</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">Sea to Sea, From</span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/27870">Seven Seas, The</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/28537">Soldier Stories</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6120">Soldiers Three</a>, <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2821">The Story of the Gadsbys</a></span>, and <span class="smcap">In Black and White</span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3006">Stalky &amp; Co.</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap">They</span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9790">Traffics and Discoveries</a></span></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2828">Under the Deodars</a></span>, <span class="smcap"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2806">The Phantom Rickshaw</a></span> and <span class="smcap">Wee Willie Winkie</span></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i"> </a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 293px;">
+<img src="images/ill-004.jpg" width="293" height="400" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;A MAN WITH A GHASTLY SCARLET HEAD FOLLOWS, SHOUTING THAT
+HE MUST GO BACK AND BUILD UP HIS RAY.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1>With the Night Mail
+<br />
+A STORY OF 2000 A.D.</h1>
+
+<p class="fm4">(TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE CONTEMPORARY<br />
+MAGAZINE IN WHICH IT APPEARED)</p>
+
+<p class="fm3">BY</p>
+<p class="fm2">RUDYARD KIPLING</p>
+
+<p class="fm4"><i>Illustrated in Color</i></p>
+
+<p class="fm3">BY FRANK X. LEYENDECKER<br />
+AND H. REUTERDAHL</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 55px;">
+<img src="images/ill-005.png" width="55" height="100" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="fm2">NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p class="fm3">Doubleday, Page &amp; Company<br />
+1909
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="fm4">
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION<br />
+INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN<br />
+<br />
+COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1909, BY RUDYARD KIPLING<br />
+PUBLISHED, MARCH, 1909<br />
+<br />
+REPRINTED IN BOOK FORM BY PERMISSION OF<br />
+THE S. S. McCLURE COMPANY
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table summary="ILLUSTRATIONS">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">"A man with a ghastly scarlet head
+follows, shouting that he must go
+back and build up his Ray"</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_i"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="author5"><span class="smallfont">FOLLOWING PAGE</span></p>
+
+<table summary="ILLUSTRATIONS">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">"Slides like a lost soul down that
+pitiless ladder of light, and the
+Atlantic takes her"</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">31</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Storm</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_38">39</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">"I've asked him to tea on Friday"</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="fm2"><a name="WITH_THE_NIGHT_MAIL" id="WITH_THE_NIGHT_MAIL"></a>WITH THE NIGHT MAIL</p>
+
+<p class="fm3">A STORY OF 2000 A.D.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+<h2>With the Night Mail</h2>
+
+
+<p>At nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood on the lower stages of
+one of the G.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;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.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> packets
+three hundred feet nearer the stars.</p>
+
+<p>From the despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous and
+wonderfully learned official&mdash;Mr. L.&nbsp;L. Geary, Second Despatcher of the
+Western Route&mdash;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"&mdash;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
+a&euml;ronauts. You can see it in the pictures of our racing professionals,
+from L.&nbsp;V.&nbsp;Rautsch to little Ada Warrleigh&mdash;that fathomless abstraction
+of eyes habitually turned through naked space.</p>
+
+<p>On the notice-board in the Captains' Room, the pulsing arrows of some
+twenty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."...</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, "162" comes to
+rest as level<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> 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"!</p>
+
+<p>The eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping
+hair-crack of the bow-rudder&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>board ere she is under control
+again. Give her full helm and she returns on her track like a whip-lash.
+Cant the whole forward&mdash;a touch on the wheel will suffice&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought, "Castelli thought
+he'd discovered the secret of controlling a&euml;roplanes 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."</p>
+
+<p>"If you want to see the coach locked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> 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.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;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&mdash;a bottomless hatch at present&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"A-ah!" sighs the compressor released. Our holding-down clips part with
+a tang. We are clear.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"What's our level?" I ask.</p>
+
+<p>"Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on the bridge?"</p>
+
+<p>The bridge (let us ever bless the G.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is
+feeling for a fair slant. The dial shows 4,300 feet.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;nosing to every point of the compass as
+she rises.</p>
+
+<p>"Five thousand&mdash;six, six thousand eight hundred"&mdash;the dip-dial reads ere
+we find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> 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 &AElig;olus himself gives you good knots for nothing. We are
+away in earnest now&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He points to the pillars of light where the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> 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&mdash;Holy Island's white and red&mdash;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!</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.&nbsp;A.&nbsp;T.&nbsp;A. liner (<i>Soci&eacute;t&eacute; Anonyme des Transports A&euml;riens</i>) 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Argol' of St. Thomas," the Dane<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> whimpers. "Report owners three
+starboard shaft collar-bearings fused. Can make Flores as we are, but
+impossible further. Shall we buy spares at Fayal?"</p>
+
+<p>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 "<i>Courage, mon ami</i>," and switches
+off.</p>
+
+<p>Their lights sink under the curve of the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>"That's one of Lundt &amp; Bleamers's boats," says Captain Hodgson. "Serves
+'em right for putting German compos in their thrust-blocks. <i>She</i> won't
+be in Fayal to-night! By the way, wouldn't you like to look round the
+engine-room?"</p>
+
+<p>I have been waiting eagerly for this invitation and I follow Captain
+Hodgson from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> 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>I</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, <i>as</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Here we find Fleury's Paradox of the Bulkheaded Vacuum&mdash;which we accept
+now without thought&mdash;literally in full blast. The three engines are
+H.&nbsp;T.&nbsp;&amp;.&nbsp;T. assisted-vacuo Fleury turbines running from 3,000 to the
+Limit&mdash;that is to say, up to the point when the blades make the air
+"bell"&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> machine&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> 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.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;O. for radium-salts and such trifles.</p>
+
+<p>"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.&nbsp;M.&nbsp;C. (Commercial
+Minerals Company) stones, ground with as much care as the lens of a
+telescope. They cost &pound;37 apiece. So far we have not arrived at their
+term of life. These bearings came from "No. 97," which took them over
+from the old "Dominion of Light," which had them out of the wreck of the
+"Perseus" a&euml;roplane in the years when men still flew linen kites over
+thorium engines!</p>
+
+<p>They are a shining reproof to all low-grade German "ruby" enamels,
+so-called "boort"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> facings, and the dangerous and unsatisfactory alumina
+compounds which please dividend-hunting owners and turn skippers crazy.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> the empty perspectives. You can hear the trickle of
+the liquefied gas flowing from the vacuum into the bilge-tanks and the
+soft <i>gluck-glock</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>"Tim's sparking badly about something," says the unruffled Captain
+Hodgson. "Let's look."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Purnall is not the suave man we left half an hour since, but the
+embodied authority of the G.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;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&mdash;a six-foot affair with
+railed platform forward&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"What under the stars are you doing here, you sky-scraping
+chimney-sweep?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> 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&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>you</i> can
+do, Postey."</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>that</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Purnall presses a switch and our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> signal beam begins to swing
+through the night, twizzling spokes of light across infinity.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll stand by you," Captain Purnall roars to the lone figure on the
+conning-tower.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it as bad as that?" comes the answer. "She isn't insured, she's
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Might have guessed as much," mutters Hodgson. "Owner's risk is the
+worst risk of all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't I fetch St. John's&mdash;not even with this breeze?" the voice
+quavers.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand by to abandon ship. Haven't you <i>any</i> lift in you, fore or aft?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing but the midship tanks and they're none too tight. You see, my
+Ray<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> gave out and&mdash;" he coughs in the reek of the escaping gas.</p>
+
+<p>"You poor devil!" This does not reach our friend. "What does the Mark
+Boat say, George?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"My mate's all right. It's my engineer. He's gone crazy."</p>
+
+<p>"Shunt the lift out of him with a spanner. Hurry!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>"But I can make St. John's if you'll stand by."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll make the deep, wet Atlantic in twenty minutes. You're less than
+fifty-eight hundred now. Get your papers."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;steering to a hair&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> we
+see the
+<a name="corr1" id="corr1"></a><a class="correction" href="#cn1" title="changed from passenger's">passengers'</a>
+faces at the saloon
+colloid.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a good girl. What's the fool waiting for now?" says Captain
+Purnall.</p>
+
+<p>The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand by and see him
+fetch St. John's. He dives below and returns&mdash;at which we little human
+beings in the void cheer louder than ever&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>The Mark Boat signals we must attend to the derelict, now whistling her
+death song, as she falls beneath us in long sick zigzags.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep our beam on her and send out a General Warning," says Captain
+Purnall, following her down.</p>
+
+<p>There is no need. Not a liner in air but knows the meaning of that
+vertical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> beam and gives us and our quarry a wide berth.</p>
+
+<p>"But she'll drown in the water, won't she?" I ask.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> that
+pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 306px;">
+<img src="images/ill-037.jpg" width="306" height="390" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;SLIDES LIKE A LOST SOUL DOWN THAT PITILESS LADDER OF
+LIGHT, AND THE ATLANTIC TAKES HER&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"A filthy business," says Hodgson. "I wonder what it must have been like
+in the old days."</p>
+
+<p>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 (<i>that</i> is the horror of
+it!) that after death he would very possibly go forever to unspeakable
+torment?</p>
+
+<p>And not half a century since, we (one knows now that we are only our
+fathers re-enlarged upon the earth), <i>we</i>, I say, ripped and rammed and
+pithed to admiration.</p>
+
+<p>Here Tim, from the control-platform, shouts that we are to get into our
+inflators and to bring him his at once.</p>
+
+<p>We hurry into the heavy rubber suits&mdash;and the engineers are already
+dressed&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> inflate at the air-pump taps. G.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;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.&nbsp;p. to the deck he
+would bounce back. But it is "162" that will do the kicking.</p>
+
+<p>"The Mark Boat's mad&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>George buckles him into the Frame and switches on the Direct Control.
+Now under Tim's left toe lies the port-engine Ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>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 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.</p>
+
+<p>The Banks Mark Boat is reeling out pages of A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> lanes westward are pitting very badly,
+"with frequent blow-outs, vortices, laterals, etc."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>We have made eight thousand feet since we pithed the tramp and our
+turbines are giving us an honest two hundred and ten knots.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;bewildered planets about an unstable sun&mdash;helpless shipping
+hanging on to her light for company's sake. No wonder she could not quit
+station.</p>
+
+<p>She warns us to look out for the back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>wash of the bad vortex in which
+(her beam shows it) she is even now reeling.</p>
+
+<p>The pits of gloom about us begin to fill with very faintly luminous
+films&mdash;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&mdash;sinks and recovers to lurch and
+stumble again beneath the next blow-out. Tim's fingers on the lift-shunt
+strike chords of numbers&mdash;1:4:7:&mdash;2:4:6:&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> vapours, which our skin friction may
+excite to unholy manifestations. Between the upper and the lower
+levels&mdash;5,000, and 7,000, hints the Mark Boat&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Now</i> we've done it," says George in my ear. "Our skin-friction that
+last slide, has played Old Harry with the tensions! Look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> out for
+laterals, Tim, she'll want some holding."</p>
+
+<p>"I've got her," is the answer. "Come <i>up</i>, old woman."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;hail that will never fall on any sea. Slow we must or we may break
+our back, pitch-poling.</p>
+
+<p>"Air's a perfectly elastic fluid," roars George above the tumult. "About
+as elastic as a head sea off the Fastnet, aint it?"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 290px;">
+<img src="images/ill-046.jpg" width="290" height="395" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE STORM</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He is less than just to the good element.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got to hitch to windward of that Mark Boat somehow," George
+cried.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no windward," I protested feebly, where I swung shackled to a
+stanchion. "How can there be?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed&mdash;as we pitched into a thou<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>sand foot blow-out&mdash;that red man
+laughed beneath his inflated hood!</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" he said. "We must clear those refugees with a high lift."</p>
+
+<p>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
+<a name="corr2" id="corr2"></a><a class="correction" href="#cn2" title="changed from 'shuting'">shutting</a>
+off she went
+astern and, naturally, rebounded as from a wall almost into the Mark
+Boat, whose language (our G.&nbsp;C. took it in) was humanly simple.</p>
+
+<p>"If they'd only ride it out quietly it 'ud be better," said George in a
+calm, as we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> climbed like a bat above them all. "But some skippers
+<i>will</i> navigate without enough lift. What does that Tad-boat think she
+is doing, Tim?"</p>
+
+<p>"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.&nbsp;A.&nbsp;D. was flipped out
+like a pea from off a fingernail, braking madly as she fled down and all
+but over-ending.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I hope she's satisfied," said Tim. "I'm glad I'm not a Mark
+Boat.... Do I want help?" The C.&nbsp;G. dial had caught his ear. "George,
+you may tell that gentleman with my love&mdash;love, remember, George&mdash;that I
+do not want help. Who <i>is</i> the officious sardine-tin?"</p>
+
+<p>"A Rimouski drogher on the lookout for a tow."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>"Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. This postal packet isn't being towed
+at present."</p>
+
+<p>"Those droghers will go anywhere on a chance of salvage," George
+explained. "We call 'em kittiwakes."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What's happened?" I gasped. The nerve-storm within and the volt-tingle
+without had passed: my inflators weighed like lead.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> opened the colloid in that heavenly stillness and mopped
+his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Williams!" he cried. "A degree or two out o' station, ain't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"May be," was the answer from the Mark Boat. "I've had some company this
+evening."</p>
+
+<p>"So I noticed. Wasn't that quite a little draught?"</p>
+
+<p>"I warned you. Why didn't you pull out round by Disko? The east-bound
+packets have."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd be the last man to deny it," the captain of the Mark Boat replies
+softly. "The way you handled her just now&mdash;I'm a pretty fair judge of
+traffic in a volt-flurry&mdash;it was a thousand revo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>lutions beyond anything
+even <i>I</i>'ve ever seen."</p>
+
+<p>Tim's back supples visibly to this oiling. Captain George on the c.&nbsp;p.
+winks and points to the portrait of a singularly attractive maiden
+pinned up on Tim's telescope-bracket above the steering-wheel.</p>
+
+<p>I see. Wholly and entirely do I see!</p>
+
+<p>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.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;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&mdash;seems to me it's a trifle warm&mdash;and we'll
+jog along."</p>
+
+<p>The Mark Boat hums off joyously and hangs herself up in her appointed
+eyrie. Here she will stay, a shutterless obser<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>vatory; 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 A&euml;rial Board of Control&mdash;the A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;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 <i>and all it implies</i>.
+Practically, the A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> burden
+of private administration on its shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>I discuss this with Tim, sipping mat&eacute; on the c.&nbsp;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.</p>
+
+<p>Tim gathers up a skein of it and surveys the last few feet, which record
+"162's" path through the volt-flurry.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't had a fever-chart like this to show up in five years," he
+says ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>A postal packet's dip-dial records every yard of every run. The tapes
+then go to the A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C., which collates and makes composite photographs
+of them for the instruction of captains. Tim studies his irrevocable
+past, shaking his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello! Here's a fifteen-hundred-foot drop at eighty-five degrees! We
+must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> have been standing on our heads then, George."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so," George answers. "I fancied I noticed it at the
+time."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And minute by minute our silent clock gives us a sixteen-second mile.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>"Some fine night," says Tim. "We'll be even with that clock's Master."</p>
+
+<p>"He's coming now," says George, over his shoulder. "I'm chasing the
+night west."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the ocean's deepest
+purple&mdash;edged with fuming and intolerable gold. Then the Sun rises and
+through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> colloid strikes out our lamps. Tim scowls in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"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. <i>We'll</i> Joshua
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;even on the Equator&mdash;we shall hold the
+Sun level in his full stride.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> ocean is all patterned with peacock's eyes of foam.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll lung up, too," says Tim, and when we return to the c.&nbsp;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> beneath us and we caught
+the chant before she rose into the sunlight. "<i>Oh, ye Winds of God</i>,"
+sang the unseen voices: "<i>bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him
+forever!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>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. <i>Oh, ye holy and humble men of heart,
+bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him forever.</i></p>
+
+<p>"She's a public lunger or she wouldn't have been singing the
+<i>Benedicite</i>; and she's a Greenlander or she wouldn't have snow-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>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&mdash;consumptives."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thirty years," says George with a twinkle in his eye. "Are we going to
+spend 'em all up here, Tim?"</p>
+
+<p>"Flap along, then. Flap along. Who's hindering?" the senior captain
+laughed, as we went in.</p>
+
+<p>We held a good lift to clear the coastwise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> 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 &amp; 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> line of
+black between its drifting ice blocks, all down the Park that the wisdom
+of our fathers&mdash;but every one knows the Quebec run.</p>
+
+<p>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"&mdash;the
+oldest of our chanteys. You know it of course:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic</i>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i1"><i>Forty couple waltzing on the floor!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And you can watch my Ray,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>For I must go away</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i1"><i>And dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!</i><br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Then, while they sweated home the covering-plates:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1"><i>Nor-Nor-Nor-Nor-</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>West from Sourabaya to the Baltic&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i1"><i>Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i1"><i>And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or did I think so because on the upper staging a
+little hooded figure also opened her arms wide towards her father?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 266px;">
+<img src="images/ill-067.jpg" width="266" height="380" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;I&#39;VE ASKED HIM TO TEA ON FRIDAY&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down to the
+receiving-caisson; the hostlers displaced the engineers at the idle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="AERIAL_BOARD_OF_CONTROL_BULLETIN" id="AERIAL_BOARD_OF_CONTROL_BULLETIN"></a>AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL BULLETIN</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p>
+<p class="fm2">Aerial Board of Control</p>
+
+
+<h3>Lights</h3>
+
+
+<p>No changes in English Inland lights for week ending Dec. 18.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Planetary Coastal Lights.</span> Week ending Dec. 18. Verde inclined
+guide-light changes from 1st proximo to triple flash&mdash;green white
+green&mdash;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.&nbsp;E. by E. Main Routes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Invercargil</span> (N.&nbsp;Z.)&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Table Bay</span>&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sandheads Light</span>&mdash;Green triple vertical marks new private landing-stage
+for Bay and Burma traffic only.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Snaefell Jokul</span>&mdash;White occulting light withdrawn for winter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Patagonia</span>&mdash;No summer light south C.&nbsp;Pilar. This includes Staten Island
+and Port Stanley.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">C.&nbsp;Navarin</span>&mdash;Quadruple fog flash (white), one minute intervals (new).</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span><span class="smcap">East Cape</span>&mdash;Fog flash&mdash;single white with single bomb, 30 sec. intervals
+(new).</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Malayan Archipelago</span> lights unreliable owing eruptions. Lay from Somerset
+to Singapore direct, keeping highest levels.</p>
+
+<p class="author2">
+<i>For the Board</i>:</p>
+
+<table summary="LIGHTS" style="white-space: nowrap;">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrm"><span class="smcap">Catterthun</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">St. Just</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Van Hedder</span></td>
+<td class="tdlm2" style="white-space: nowrap; font-size: 60pt">}</td>
+<td class="tdlm2"><i>Lights.</i></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<h3>Casualties</h3>
+
+<p>Week ending Dec. 18th.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sable Island Landing Towers</span>&mdash;Green freighter, number indistinguishable,
+up-ended, and fore-tank pierced after collision, passed 300-ft. level 2
+<span class="smcap">p.m.</span> Dec. 15th. Watched to water and pithed by Mark Boat.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">N.&nbsp;F. Banks</span>&mdash;Postal Packet 162 reports <i>Halma</i> freighter (Fowey&mdash;St.
+John's) abandoned, leaking after weather, 46&deg; 15' N.&nbsp;50&deg; 15' W. Crew
+rescued by Planet liner <i>Asteroid</i>. Watched to water and pithed by
+postal packet, Dec. 14th.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Kerguelen Mark Boat</span> reports last call from <i>Cymena</i> freighter (Gayer
+Tong-Huk &amp; Co.) taking water and sinking in snow-storm South McDonald
+Islands. No wreckage recovered. Addresses, etc., of crew at all A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C.
+offices.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fezzan</span>&mdash;T.&nbsp;A.&nbsp;D. freighter <i>Ulema</i> taken ground during Harmattan on
+Akakus Range. Under plates strained. Crew at Ghat where repairing Dec.
+13th.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Biscay, Mark Boat</span> reports <i>Carducci</i> (Valandingham line) slightly spiked
+in western gorge Point de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> Benasque. Passengers transferred <i>Andorra</i>
+(same line). Barcelona Mark Boat salving cargo Dec. 12th.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ascension, Mark Boat</span>&mdash;Wreck of unknown racing-plane, Parden rudder,
+wire-stiffened xylonite vans, and Harliss engine-seating, sighted and
+salved 7&deg; 20' S.&nbsp;18&deg; 41' W. Dec. 15th. Photos at all A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C. offices.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Missing</h3>
+
+<p>No answer to General Call having been received during the last week from
+following overdues, they are posted as missing.</p>
+
+<table summary="MISSING">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Atlantis</i>, W. 17630</td>
+<td class="tdl">Canton&mdash;Valparaiso</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Audhumla</i>, W. 809</td>
+<td class="tdl">Stockholm&mdash;Odessa</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Berenice</i>, W. 2206</td>
+<td class="tdl">Riga&mdash;Vladivostock</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Draco</i>, E. 446</td>
+<td class="tdl">Coventry&mdash;Puntas Arenas</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Tontine</i>, E. 3068</td>
+<td class="tdl">C.&nbsp;Wrath&mdash;Ungava</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Wu-Sung</i>, E. 41776</td>
+<td class="tdl"> Hankow&mdash;Lobito Bay</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="blockquot">General Call (all Mark Boats) out for:</p>
+
+<table summary="MISSING">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Jane Eyre</i>, W. 6990</td>
+<td class="tdl">Port Rupert&mdash;City of Mexico</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Santander</i>, W. 5514</td>
+<td class="tdl">Gobi-desert&mdash;Manila</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>V.&nbsp;Edmundsun</i>, E. 9690</td>
+<td class="tdl">Kandahar&mdash;Fiume</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<h3>Broke for Obstruction, and Quitting Levels</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Valkyrie</span> (racing plane), A.&nbsp;J. Hartley owner, New York (twice warned).</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Geisha</span> (racing plane), S.&nbsp;van Cott owner, Philadelphia (twice warned).</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marvel of Peru</span> (racing plane), J. X.&nbsp;Peixoto owner, Rio de Janeiro
+(twice warned).</p>
+
+<p class="author2"><i>For the Board</i>:</p>
+
+<table summary="LIGHTS" style="white-space: nowrap;">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrm"><span class="smcap">Lazareff</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">McKeough</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Goldblatt</span></td>
+<td class="tdlm2" style="white-space: nowrap; font-size: 60pt">}</td>
+<td class="tdlm2"><i>Traffic.</i></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="NOTES" id="NOTES"></a>NOTES</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+<p class="fm2">Notes</p>
+
+<h3>High-Level Sleet</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement. From all
+quarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet at the
+higher levels. Racing-planes and digs alike have suffered severely&mdash;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 consequence, 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.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Bat-Boat Racing</h3>
+
+<p>The scandals of the past few years have at last moved the yachting world
+to concerted action in regard to "bat" boat racing.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> 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 <i>waterborne</i> 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.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CORRESPONDENCE" id="CORRESPONDENCE"></a>CORRESPONDENCE</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>
+<p class="fm2">Correspondence</p>
+
+
+<h3>Skylarking on the Equator</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">To the Editor</span>&mdash;Only last week, while crossing the Equator (W.&nbsp;26.15), I
+became aware of a furious and irregular cannonading some fifteen or
+twenty knots S.&nbsp;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.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C. standard) and, in the intervals of
+their pleasing labours, firing bow and stern smoke-ring swivels. This
+<a name="corr3" id="corr3"></a><a class="correction" href="#cn3" title="changed from 'orgie'">orgy</a>&mdash;I
+can give it no other name&mdash;went on for at least two hours, and
+naturally produced violent electric derangements. My compasses, 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 literally drips off one's
+stanchions and screw blades, is unnecessary. When my friends had
+finished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequal
+pressure-layers, spirals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> vortices, and readjustments for at least an
+hour. I pitched badly twice in an upward rush&mdash;solely due to these
+diabolical throw-downs&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<table summary="CORRESPONDENCE">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Rhyl.</td>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="smcap">J. Vincent Mathews.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>[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.&mdash;<i>Editor</i>.]</p>
+
+
+<h3>Answers to Correspondents</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Vigilans</span>&mdash;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 paralysis 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Indignant</span>&mdash;On your own showing, you were not under control. That you
+could not hoist the necessary N.&nbsp;U.&nbsp;C. lights on approaching a
+traffic-lane because your electrics had short-circuited is a misfortune
+which might befall any one. The A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C., being responsible for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Planiston</span>&mdash;(1) The Five Thousand Kilometre (overland) was won last year
+by L.&nbsp;V.&nbsp;Rautsch, R.&nbsp;M.&nbsp;Rautsch, his brother, in the same week pulling
+off the Ten Thousand (oversea). R.&nbsp;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Paterfamilias</span>&mdash;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 <i>any</i> portion of your roof, you
+had better rest your case on decoverture of domicile (See Parkins <i>v</i>.
+Duboulay). We entirely sympathize with your position, but the night of
+the 14th was stormy and confused, and&mdash;you may have to anchor on a
+stranger's chimney yourself some night. <i>Verbum sap!</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aldebaran</span>&mdash;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.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C.
+was constituted in 1949.</p>
+
+<p>L.&nbsp;M.&nbsp;D.&mdash;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 following gale, and there is always risk of a
+turn-over. (3) The formul&aelig; for stun'sle brakes are uniformly unreliable,
+and will continue to be so as long as air is compressible.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span><span class="smcap">Pegamoid</span>&mdash;Personally we prefer glass or flux compounds to any other
+material for winter work nose-caps as being absolutely non-hygroscopic.
+(2) We cannot recommend any particular make.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pulmonar</span>&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Beginner</span>&mdash;On still days the air above a large inhabited city being
+slightly warmer&mdash;i. e., thinner&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Emergency</span>&mdash;There is only one rule of the road in air,
+<a name="corr4" id="corr4"></a><a class="correction" href="#cn4" title="changed from 'earth,and'">earth,
+and</a> water.
+Do you want the firmament to yourself?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Picciola</span>&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">North Nigeria</span>&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">New Era</span>&mdash;It is not etiquette to overcross an A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;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."</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="REVIEWS" id="REVIEWS"></a>REVIEWS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>
+<p class="fm2">Reviews</p>
+
+
+<h3>The Life of Xavier Lavalle</h3>
+
+<p class="fm3">(<i>Reviewed by R&eacute;n&eacute;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Talland. &Eacute;cole A&euml;ronautique, Paris</i>)</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;in that immortal postscript to "The
+Heart of the Cyclone"&mdash;"the Laws whose existence they derided written in
+fire <i>beneath</i> them."</p>
+
+<p>"But even here," he continues, "there is no finality. Better a thousand
+times my conclusions should be discredited than that my dead name should
+lie across the threshold of the temple of Science&mdash;a bar to further
+inquiry."</p>
+
+<p>So died Lavalle&mdash;a prince of the Powers of the Air, and even at his
+funeral C&eacute;llier jested at "him who had gone to discover the secrets of
+the Aurora Borealis."</p>
+
+<p>If I choose thus to be banal, it is only to remind you that C&eacute;llier'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 investigations, have
+passed and re-passed a hundred times the worn leonine face, white as the
+snow beneath him, furrowed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>The immense egotism of youth forced me on my own path, but (cry of the
+human always!) had I known&mdash;if I had known&mdash;I would many times have
+bartered my poor laurels for the privilege, such as Tinsley and Herrera
+possess, of having aided him in his monumental researches.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Xavier returned from I do not know where at midnight, absorbed in
+calculations on the eternal question of his Aurora&mdash;<i>la belle Aurore</i>,
+whom I begin to hate. Instead of anchoring&mdash;I had set out the
+guide-light above our roof, so he had but to descend and fasten the
+plane&mdash;he wandered, profoundly distracted, above the town with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> 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 conservatory 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&mdash;Xavier is two hundred feet above us.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mons. Lavalle, descend and make reparation for outrage of domicile.
+Descend, Mons. Lavalle!'</p>
+
+<p>"No one answers.</p>
+
+<p>"'Xavier Lavalle, in the name of the Law, descend and submit to process
+for outrage of domicile.'</p>
+
+<p>"Xavier, roused from his calculations, only comprehending the last
+words: 'Outrage of domicile? My dear mayor, who is the man that has
+corrupted thy Julie?'</p>
+
+<p>"The mayor, furious, 'Xavier Lavalle&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"Xavier, interrupting: 'I have not that felicity. I am only a dealer in
+cyclones!'</p>
+
+<p>"My faith, he raised one then! All Meudon attended in the streets, and
+my Xavier, after a long time comprehending 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&mdash;Julie in a wonderful
+costume of compromises, and I have her and the mayor pacified in beds in
+the blue room."</p>
+
+<p>And on the next day, while the mayor rebuilds his roof, her Xavier
+departs anew for the Aurora Borealis, there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> to commence his life's
+work. M.&nbsp;Victor Lavalle tells us of that historic collision (<i>en plane</i>)
+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>I</i> shall not fall till I have found Truth, and I hold <i>you</i>
+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&mdash;the Lavalle whom they adjudged to the last a pedant and a
+theorist.</p>
+
+<p>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 sustaining influence of ancestral faith upon character and
+will to the eleventh and nineteenth chapters, in which are contained 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&mdash;this son, this father, this husband&mdash;ascended
+periodically to commune with powers, it might be angelic, beyond their
+comprehension, and that they united daily in prayers for his safety.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>To the last Lavalle was a Catholic of the old school, accepting&mdash;he who
+had looked into the very heart of the lightnings&mdash;the dogmas of papal
+infallibility, of absolu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>tion, of confession&mdash;of relics great and small.
+Marvellous&mdash;enviable contradiction!</p>
+
+<p>The completion of the Tellurionical Records closed what Lavalle himself
+was pleased to call the theoretical side of his labours&mdash;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&mdash;each one of the Isoconical
+Tellurions&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.&nbsp;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."</p>
+
+<p>A letter heretofore unpublished from Herrera to Madame Lavalle tells us
+how the Master's prophecy was verified.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">(<i>To be continued</i>.)</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ADVERTISING_SECTION" id="ADVERTISING_SECTION"></a>ADVERTISING SECTION</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="bbox1"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm2"><a name="MISCELLANEOUS" id="MISCELLANEOUS"></a>MISCELLANEOUS</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<div class="bbox3"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm3">WANTS</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Required 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.</p>
+
+<p class="author4">
+<span class="smcap">Mossamedes Transport Assoc.</span></p>
+<p class="author3">84 Palestine Buildings, E.&nbsp;C.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Man wanted&mdash;Dig driver for Southern Alps with Saharan summer trips. High
+levels, high speed, high wages.</p>
+
+<p class="author4">Apply M. <span class="smcap">Sidney</span></p>
+<p class="author3">Hotel San Stefano. Monte Carlo</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Family dirigible. A competent, steady man wanted for slow speed, low
+level Tangye dirigible. No night work, no sea trips. Must be member of
+the Church of England, and make himself useful in the garden.</p>
+
+<p class="author4">M.&nbsp;R.,</p>
+<p class="author3">The Rectory, Gray's Barton, Wilts.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Commercial dig, central and Southern Europe. A smart, active man for a
+L.&nbsp;M.&nbsp;T. Dig. Night work only. Headquarters London and Cairo. A linguist
+preferred.</p>
+
+<p class="author4">
+<span class="smcap">Bagman</span></p>
+<p class="author3">Charing Cross Hotel, W.&nbsp;C. (urgent.)</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>For sale&mdash;A bargain&mdash;Single Plane, narrow-gauge vans, Pinke motor.
+Restayed this autumn. Hansen air-kit. 38 in. chest, 15&frac12; collar. Can
+be seen by appointment.</p>
+
+<p class="author">N. 2650. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This office.
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<p class="fm3"><b>The Bee-Line Bookshop</b></p>
+
+<p>BELT'S WAY-BOOKS, giving town lights for all towns over 4,000 pop. as
+laid down by A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C.</p>
+
+<p>THE WORLD. Complete 2 vols. Thin Oxford, limp back. 12s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>BELT'S COASTAL ITINERARY. Shore Lights of the World. 7s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>THE TRANSATLANTIC AND MEDITERRANEAN TRAFFIC LINES. (By authority of the
+A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C.) Paper, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 2s. 6d. Ready Jan. 15.</p>
+
+<p>ARCTIC AEROPLANING. Siemens and Galt. Cloth, bds. 3s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>LAVALLE'S HEART OF THE CYCLONE, with supplementary charts. 4s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>RIMINGTON'S PITFALLS IN THE AIR, and Table of Comparative Densities. 3s.
+6d.</p>
+
+<p>ANGELO'S DESERT IN A DIRIGIBLE. New edition, revised. 5s. 9d.</p>
+
+<p>VAUGHAN'S PLANE RACING IN CALM AND STORM. 2s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>VAUGHAN'S HINTS TO THE AIR-MATEUR. 1s.</p>
+
+<p>HOFMAN'S LAWS OF LIFT AND VELOCITY. With diagrams, 3s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>DE VITRE'S THEORY OF SHIFTING BALLAST IN DIRIGIBLES. 2s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>SANGER'S WEATHERS OF THE WORLD. 4s.</p>
+
+<p>SANGER'S TEMPERATURES AT HIGH ALTITUDES. 4s.</p>
+
+<p>HAWKIN'S FOG AND HOW TO AVOID IT. 3s.</p>
+
+<p>VAN ZUYLAN'S SECONDARY EFFECTS OF THUNDERSTORMS. 4s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>DAHLGREN'S AIR CURRENTS AND EPIDEMIC DISEASES. 5s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>REDMAYNE'S DISEASE AND THE BAROMETER. 7s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>WALTON'S HEALTH RESORTS OF THE GOBI AND SHAMO. 3s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>WALTON'S THE POLE AND PULMONARY COMPLAINTS. 7s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>MUTLOW'S HIGH LEVEL BACTERIOLOGY 7s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>HALLIWELL'S ILLUMINATED STAR MAP, with clockwork attachment, giving
+apparent motion of heavens, boxed, complete with clamps for binnacle. 36
+inch size, only &pound;2. 2. 0. (Invaluable for night work.) With A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C.
+certificate, &pound;3. 10s. 0d.</p>
+
+<p>Zalinski's Standard Works.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>PASSES OF THE HIMALAYAS. 5s.</p>
+
+<p>PASSES OF THE SIERRAS. 5s.</p>
+
+<p>PASSES OF THE ROCKIES. 5s.</p>
+
+<p>PASSES OF THE URALS. 5s.</p>
+
+<p>The four boxed, limp cloth, with charts, 15s.</p></div>
+
+<p>GRAY'S AIR CURRENTS IN MOUNTAIN GORGES. 7s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>A.&nbsp;C. BELT &amp; SON, READING</b></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="bbox1"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm2"><a name="SAFETY_WEAR_FOR_AERONAUTS" id="SAFETY_WEAR_FOR_AERONAUTS"></a>SAFETY WEAR FOR AERONAUTS</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<table summary="ADS">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"><b>Flickers!</b></td>
+<td class="tdc"><b>Flickers!</b></td>
+<td class="tdc"><b>Flickers!</b></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="fm2">
+<b>High Level Flickers</b><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"<i>He that is down need fear no fall</i>"<br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>Fear not! You will fall lightly as down!</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="blockquot3">Hansen's air-kits are down in all respects. Tremendous reductions in
+prices previous to winter stocking. Pure para kit with cellulose seat
+and shoulder-pads, weighted to balance. Unequalled for all drop-work.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">Our trebly resilient heavy kit is the <i>ne plus ultra</i> of comfort and
+safety.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot3">Gas-buoyed, waterproof, hail-proof, non-conducting Flickers with pipe
+and nozzle fitting all types of generator. Graduated tap on left hip.</p>
+
+<p class="fm3"><b>Hansen's Flickers Lead the Aerial Flight</b></p>
+<p class="fm4"><b>197 Oxford Street</b>
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p>The new weighted Flicker with tweed or cheviot surface cannot be
+distinguished from the ordinary suit till inflated.</p></div>
+
+<table summary="ADS">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"><b>Flickers!</b></td>
+<td class="tdc"><b>Flickers!</b></td>
+<td class="tdc"><b>Flickers!</b></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="bbox1"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm2"><a name="APPLIANCES_FOR_AIR_PLANES" id="APPLIANCES_FOR_AIR_PLANES"></a>APPLIANCES FOR AIR PLANES</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<table summary="ADS">
+<colgroup span="2" width="200px"></colgroup>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+<div class="bbox4">
+<p class="fm3">What</p>
+
+<p class="fm1">"SKID"</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>was to our forefathers on the ground,</p></div>
+
+<p class="fm2">"PITCH"</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>is to their sons in the air.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot3"><p>The popularity of the large,<br />
+unwieldy, slow, expensive<br />
+Dirigible over the light, swift<br />
+Plane is mainly due to the<br />
+former's immunity from
+pitch.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot3"><p>Collison's forward-socketed<br />
+Air Van renders it impossible<br />
+for any plane
+to pitch. The<br />
+C.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;S. is automatic, simple as<br />
+a shutter, certain as a
+power<br />
+hammer, safe as oxygen. Fitted to any make of plane.</p></div>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="fm2">
+COLLISON</p>
+
+<p class="fm3">186 Brompton Road</p>
+
+<p class="fm4"><i>Workshops</i>, &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chiswick</i><br /></p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="fm3">
+LUNDIE &amp; MATHERS</p>
+<p class="fm4">Sole Agts for East'n Hemisphere<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+</td>
+
+<td class="tdl">
+<div class="bbox"><div class="bbox2">
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<p class="fm2">Starters and Guides</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+<p class="blockquot">Hotel, club, and private<br />
+house plane-starters, slips<br />
+and guides affixed by<br />
+skilled workmen in<br />
+accordance with local<br />
+building laws.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">Rackstraw's forty-foot<br />
+collapsible steel starters<br />
+with automatic release at<br />
+end of travel&mdash;prices per<br />
+foot run,
+clamps and<br />
+crampons included. The<br />
+safest on the market.</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
+<p class="fm3">
+<i>Weaver &amp; Denison<br />
+Middleboro</i>
+</p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+</div></div>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="bbox1"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm2"><a name="AIR_PLANES_AND_DIRIGIBLE_GOODS" id="AIR_PLANES_AND_DIRIGIBLE_GOODS"></a>AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLE GOODS</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<table summary="ADS">
+<colgroup span="2" width="6000px"></colgroup>
+<tr valign="top">
+<td class="tdl">
+<div class="bbox4">
+<p class="fm2"><i>Remember</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot3">
+<p>
+<b>Planes are swift&mdash;so is<br />
+Death</b><br /><br />
+<b>Planes are cheap&mdash;so is<br />
+Life</b><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Why</i> does the 'plane builder<br />
+insist on the safety of his<br />
+machines?</p>
+
+<p>Methinks the gentleman<br />
+protests too much.</p>
+
+<p>The Standard Dig<br />
+Construction Company do<br />
+not build kites.</p>
+
+<p>They build, equip and<br />
+guarantee dirigibles.<br /><br /></p></div>
+
+<p class="fm3"><i>Standard Dig<br />
+Construction Co.</i></p>
+
+<p class="fm3">Millwall <i>and</i> Buenos Ayres</p>
+</div>
+</td>
+
+<td class="tdl">
+<div class="bbox4">
+<p><br /></p>
+<p class="fm2">HOVERS</p>
+
+<p class="fm3">POWELL'S<br />
+Wind Hovers<br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>for 'planes tying-to in heavy<br />
+weather, save the
+motor and<br />
+strain on the
+forebody. Will not<br />
+send to leeward. "Albatross"<br />
+wind-hovers, rigid-ribbed;<br />
+according to h. p. and
+weight.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p><i>We fit and test free to 40&deg; east of Greenwich</i><br /></p></div>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+<p class="fm2">L.&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;W.&nbsp;POWELL</p>
+<p class="fm3">196 Victoria Street, W</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+</div>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr valign="top">
+<td class="tdl">
+<div class="bbox4"><div class="bbox2">
+
+<p class="fm2">Remember</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot3"><p>We shall always be pleased<br />
+to see you.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>We build and test and<br />
+guarantee our dirigibles<br />
+for all purposes. They go<br />
+up when you please and<br />
+they do not come down<br />
+till you please.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot3"><p>You can please yourself,<br />
+but&mdash;you might as well<br />
+choose a dirigible.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<p class="fm3">STANDARD DIRIGIBLE CONSTRUCTION CO.<br /><br />
+<a name="corr5" id="corr5"></a><a class="correction" href="#cn5" title="changed from 'Milwall'">Millwall</a>
+<i>and</i> Buenos Ayres</p>
+</div></div>
+</td>
+
+<td class="tdl">
+<div class="bbox4">
+
+<p class="fm2">Gayer &amp; Hutt<br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<p class="fm3">
+Birmingham <span class="smcap">and</span> Birmingham<br />
+Eng.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Ala.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<p class="fm3">Towers, Landing Stages,<br />
+Slips and Lifts</p>
+
+<p class="fm4">public and private</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot3"><p>Contractors to the A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C.,<br />
+South-Western European Postal Construction
+Dept.</p>
+
+<p>Sole patentees and owners of<br />
+the Collison anti-quake diagonal<br />
+tower-tie. Only gold medal<br />
+Kyoto Exhibition of Aerial<br />
+Appliances, 1997.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="bbox1"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm2"><a name="AIR_PLANES_AND_DIRIGIBLES" id="AIR_PLANES_AND_DIRIGIBLES"></a>AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLES</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<table summary="ADS">
+<colgroup span="2"></colgroup>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+<p class="fm1">C.&nbsp;M.&nbsp;C.</p>
+
+<p class="fm3">Our Synthetical Mineral</p>
+<p class="fm1">BEARINGS</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot3">
+<p>are chemically and<br />
+crystallogically identical with<br />
+the minerals whose names<br />
+they bear. Any size, any<br />
+surface. Diamond,<br />
+Rock-Crystal, Agate and<br />
+Ruby Bearings&mdash;cups, caps<br />
+and collars for the higher<br />
+speeds.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot3">
+<p>For tractor bearings and<br />
+spindles&mdash;Imperative.</p>
+
+<p>For rear propellers&mdash;<br />
+Indispensable.</p>
+
+<p>For all working parts&mdash;Advisable.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="fm3">Commercial Minerals Co.</p>
+
+<p class="fm4">107 Minories</p>
+
+</td>
+
+<td class="tdl">
+<div class="bbox4"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm2ul">Resurgam!</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>IF YOU HAVE
+NOT<br /> CLOTHED
+YOURSELF IN A</p></div>
+
+<p class="fm2">Normandie<br />
+Resurgam</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot3">
+<p>YOU WILL PROBABLY NOT<br />
+BE INTERESTED IN OUR<br />
+NEXT WEEK'S LIST OF<br />
+AIR-KIT.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="fm2">Resurgam Air-Kit<br />
+Emporium</p>
+
+<p class="fm2"><span class="smcap">Hymans &amp; Graham</span><br />
+1198</p>
+
+<p class="fm3">Lower Broadway, New York</p>
+</div></div>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<p class="fm1">Remember!</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&para; It is now nearly a century since the Plane was to supersede the
+Dirigible for all purposes.</p>
+
+<p>&para; TO-DAY <i>none</i> of the Planet's freight is carried <i>en plane</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&para; Less than two per cent. of the Planet's passengers are carried <i>en
+plane</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<table summary="ADS">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+<p><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We design, equip and<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;guarantee Dirigibles for<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;all purposes.</i></p>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+<p><b>Standard Dig Construction
+Company</b></p>
+
+<p><b>MILLWALL and BUENOS AYRES</b></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="bbox1"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm2"><a name="BAT-BOATS" id="BAT-BOATS"></a>BAT-BOATS</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/ill-093.png" width="300" height="161" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="fm1">Flint &amp; Mantel</p>
+
+<p class="fm2">Southampton</p>
+
+<p class="fm1">FOR SALE</p>
+
+<p class="center">at the end of Season the following Bat-Boats:</p>
+
+<p><b>GRISELDA</b>, 65 knt., 42 ft., 430 (nom.) Maginnis Motor, under-rake rudder.</p>
+
+<p><b>MABELLE</b>, 50 knt., 40 ft., 310 Hargreaves Motor, Douglas' lock-steering
+gear.</p>
+
+<p><b>IVEMONA</b>, 50 knt., 35 ft., 300 Hargreaves (Radium accelerator), Miller
+keel and rudder.</p>
+
+<p>The above are well known on the South Coast as sound, wholesome
+knockabout boats, with ample cruising accommodation. <i>Griselda</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Also, by private treaty, racing B.&nbsp;B. <i>Tarpon</i> (76 winning flags) 137
+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 reinforced forefoot and
+entry. Talfourd rockered keel. Triple set of Hofman vans, giving maximum
+lifting surface of 5327 sq. ft.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tarpon</i> has been lifted <i>and held</i> seven feet for two miles between
+touch and touch.</p>
+
+<p><i>Our Autumn List of racing and family Bats ready on the 9th January.</i></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="bbox1"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm2"><a name="AIR_PLANES_AND_STARTERS" id="AIR_PLANES_AND_STARTERS"></a>AIR PLANES AND STARTERS</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<div class="bbox"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm1">Hinks's Moderator</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>&para; Monorail overhead starter for family and private planes up to
+twenty-five foot over all</p>
+
+
+<p>Absolutely<br />
+Safe</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="author"><i>Hinks &amp; Co., Birmingham</i></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<div class="bbox1"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm1">J. D. ARDAGH</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>I AM NOT CONCERNED WITH YOUR 'PLANE AFTER IT LEAVES MY GUIDES, BUT <i>TILL
+THEN</i> I HOLD MYSELF PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR LIFE, SAFETY, AND
+COMFORT. MY HYDRAULIC BUFFER-STOP <i>CANNOT</i> RELEASE TILL THE MOTORS ARE
+WORKING UP TO BEARING SPEED, THUS SECURING A SAFE AND GRACEFUL FLIGHT
+WITHOUT PITCHING.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot2">
+<p>Remember our motto, "<i>Upward and Outward</i>," and do not trust yourself to
+so-called "rigid" guide bars</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="fm2">J. D. ARDAGH, &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;BELFAST <span class="smcap">and</span> TURIN</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="bbox1"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm2"><a name="ACCESSORIES_AND_SPARES" id="ACCESSORIES_AND_SPARES"></a>ACCESSORIES AND SPARES</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<div class="bbox"><div class="bbox2">
+<p class="fm1"><span class="smcap">Christian Wright &amp; Oldis</span></p>
+
+<p class="fm3">ESTABLISHED 1924</p>
+
+<p class="fm2">Accessories and Spares</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Hooded Binnacles with dip-dials automatically recording change of level
+(illuminated face).</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">All heights from 50 to 15,000 feet&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &pound;2 10 0</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">With Aerial Board of Control certificate&nbsp;
+&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &pound;3 11 0</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Foot and Hand Foghorns; Sirens toned to any club note;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">with air-chest belt-driven from motor&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  &pound;6&nbsp;&nbsp; 8 0</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Wireless installations syntonised to A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">requirements, in neat mahogany case, hundred mile range&nbsp;  &pound;3&nbsp; &nbsp;3 0</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<p>Grapnels, mushroom anchors, pithing-irons, winches, hawsers, snaps,
+shackles and mooring ropes, for lawn, city, and public installations.</p>
+
+<p>Detachable under-cars, aluminum or stamped steel.</p>
+
+<p>Keeled under-cars for planes: single-action detaching-gear, turning car
+into boat with one motion of the wrist. Invaluable for sea trips.</p>
+
+<p>Head, side, and riding lights (by size) Nos. 00 to 20 A.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;C. Standard.
+Rockets and fog-bombs in colours and tones of the principal clubs
+(boxed).</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A selection of twenty
+&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &pound;2 17 6</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">International night-signals (boxed)
+&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &pound;1 11 6</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<p>Spare generators guaranteed to lifting power marked on cover (prices
+according to power).</p>
+
+<p>Wind-noses for dirigibles&mdash;Pegamoid, cane-stiffened, lacquered cane or
+aluminum and flux for winter work.</p>
+
+<p>Smoke-ring cannon for hail storms, swivel mounted, bow or stern.</p>
+
+<p>Propeller blades: metal, tungsten backed; papier-mach&eacute;; wire stiffened;
+ribbed Xylonite (Nickson's patent); all razor-edged (price by pitch and
+diameter).</p>
+
+<p>Compressed steel bow-screws for winter work.</p>
+
+<p>Fused Ruby or Commercial Mineral Co. bearings and collars. Agate-mounted
+thrust-blocks up to 4 inch.</p>
+
+<p>Magniac's bow-rudders&mdash;(Lavalle's patent grooving).</p>
+
+<p>Wove steel beltings for outboard motors (non-magnetic).</p>
+
+<p>Radium batteries, all powers to 150 h. p. (in pairs).</p>
+
+<p>Helium batteries, all powers to 300 h. p. (tandem).</p>
+
+<p>Stun'sle brakes worked from upper or lower platform.</p>
+
+<p>Direct plunge-brakes worked from lower platform only, loaded silk or
+fibre, wind-tight.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="fm3"><i>Catalogues free throughout the Planet</i></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="transnote">
+<h3>Transcriber's note<a name="tnotes" id="tnotes"></a></h3>
+
+<p>
+The following changes have been made to the text:</p>
+
+<p>Page 30: "passenger's faces" changed to
+"<a name="cn1" id="cn1"></a><a href="#corr1">passengers'</a> faces".</p>
+
+<p>Page 41: "Instead of shuting" changed to "Instead of
+<a name="cn2" id="cn2"></a><a href="#corr2">shutting</a>".</p>
+
+<p>Page 68: "orgie" changed to
+"<a name="cn3" id="cn3"></a><a href="#corr3">orgy</a>".</p>
+
+<p>Page 71: "earth,and water" changed to
+"<a name="cn4" id="cn4"></a><a href="#corr4">earth, </a>and water".</p>
+
+<p>Page 82: "Milwall and Buenos Ayres" changed to
+"<a name="cn5" id="cn5"></a><a href="#corr5">Millwall</a> and Buenos
+Ayres".</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of With The Night Mail, by Rudyard Kipling
+
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,2396 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of With The Night Mail, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: With The Night Mail
+       A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the
+       comtemporary magazine in which it appeared)
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+Illustrator: Frank X. Leyendecker
+             H. Reuterdahl
+
+Release Date: June 16, 2009 [EBook #29135]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE NIGHT MAIL ***
+
+
+
+
+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)
+
+
+   BY
+   RUDYARD KIPLING
+
+   _Illustrated in Color_
+
+   BY FRANK X. LEYENDECKER
+   AND H. REUTERDAHL
+
+   [Decoration]
+
+   NEW YORK
+
+   Doubleday, Page & Company
+
+   1909
+
+
+
+
+   ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
+   INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
+
+   COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1909, 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 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.
+
+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).
+
+EAST CAPE--Fog flash--single white with single bomb, 30 sec. intervals
+(new).
+
+MALAYAN ARCHIPELAGO lights unreliable owing eruptions. 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 deg. 15' N. 50 deg. 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 Harmattan 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 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 deg. 20' S. 18 deg. 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 OF PERU (racing plane), J. X. Peixoto owner, Rio de Janeiro
+(twice warned).
+
+                             _For the Board_:
+
+                                             LAZAREFF  }
+                                             MCKEOUGH  }  _Traffic._
+                                             GOLDBLATT }
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+
+
+Notes
+
+High-Level Sleet
+
+
+The Northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement. 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 consequence, 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, 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.
+
+
+
+
+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
+orgy--I can give it no other name--went on for at least two hours, and
+naturally produced violent electric derangements. My compasses, 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 literally drips off one's
+stanchions and screw blades, is unnecessary. When my friends had
+finished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequal
+pressure-layers, spirals, 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 paralysis 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. C., being responsible for the
+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 (overland) 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 decoverture 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!_
+
+ALDEBARAN--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 following 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.
+
+PEGAMOID--Personally we prefer glass or flux compounds 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 inhabited 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."
+
+
+
+
+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 discredited 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 investigations, have
+passed and re-passed a hundred times the worn leonine face, white as the
+snow beneath him, furrowed 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
+possess, 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 midnight, 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 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 conservatory 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 outrage 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 comprehending 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. I am only a dealer in
+cyclones!'
+
+"My faith, he raised one then! All Meudon attended in the streets, and
+my Xavier, after a long time comprehending 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 have 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 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 sustaining influence of ancestral faith upon character and
+will to the eleventh and nineteenth chapters, in which are contained 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 absolution, of confession--of relics great and small.
+Marvellous--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 Isoconical
+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_.)
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISING SECTION
+
+
+
+
+MISCELLANEOUS
+
+
+WANTS
+
+Required 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.
+
+   MOSSAMEDES TRANSPORT ASSOC.
+   84 Palestine Buildings, E. C.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Man wanted--Dig driver for Southern Alps with Saharan summer trips. High
+levels, high speed, high wages.
+
+   Apply M. SIDNEY
+   Hotel San Stefano. Monte Carlo
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Family dirigible. A competent, steady man wanted for slow speed, low
+level Tangye dirigible. No night work, no sea trips. Must be member of
+the Church of England, and make himself useful in the garden.
+
+   M. R.,
+   The Rectory, Gray's Barton, Wilts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Commercial dig, central and Southern Europe. A smart, active man for a
+L. M. T. Dig. Night work only. Headquarters London and Cairo. A linguist
+preferred.
+
+   BAGMAN
+   Charing Cross Hotel, W. C. (urgent.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For sale--A bargain--Single Plane, narrow-gauge vans, Pinke motor.
+Restayed this autumn. Hansen air-kit. 38 in. chest, 15-1/2 collar. Can
+be seen 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. C.
+
+THE WORLD. Complete 2 vols. Thin Oxford, limp back. 12s. 6d.
+
+BELT'S COASTAL ITINERARY. Shore Lights of the World. 7s. 6d.
+
+THE TRANSATLANTIC AND MEDITERRANEAN TRAFFIC LINES. (By authority of the
+A. B. C.) Paper, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 2s. 6d. Ready Jan. 15.
+
+ARCTIC AEROPLANING. Siemens and Galt. Cloth, bds. 3s. 6d.
+
+LAVALLE'S HEART OF THE CYCLONE, with supplementary charts. 4s. 6d.
+
+RIMINGTON'S PITFALLS IN THE AIR, and Table of Comparative Densities. 3s.
+6d.
+
+ANGELO'S DESERT IN A DIRIGIBLE. New edition, revised. 5s. 9d.
+
+VAUGHAN'S PLANE RACING IN CALM AND STORM. 2s. 6d.
+
+VAUGHAN'S HINTS TO THE AIR-MATEUR. 1s.
+
+HOFMAN'S LAWS OF LIFT AND VELOCITY. With diagrams, 3s. 6d.
+
+DE VITRE'S THEORY OF SHIFTING BALLAST IN DIRIGIBLES. 2s. 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 PULMONARY COMPLAINTS. 7s. 6d.
+
+MUTLOW'S HIGH LEVEL BACTERIOLOGY 7s. 6d.
+
+HALLIWELL'S ILLUMINATED STAR MAP, with clockwork attachment, giving
+apparent motion of heavens, boxed, complete with clamps for binnacle. 36
+inch size, only L2. 2. 0. (Invaluable for night work.) With A. B. C.
+certificate, L3. 10s. 0d.
+
+Zalinski's Standard Works.
+
+     PASSES OF THE HIMALAYAS. 5s.
+
+     PASSES OF THE SIERRAS. 5s.
+
+     PASSES OF THE ROCKIES. 5s.
+
+     PASSES OF THE URALS. 5s.
+
+     The four boxed, limp cloth, with charts, 15s.
+
+GRAY'S AIR CURRENTS IN MOUNTAIN GORGES. 7s. 6d.
+
+=A. C. BELT & SON, READING=
+
+
+
+
+SAFETY WEAR FOR AERONAUTS
+
+
+   Flickers!    Flickers!    Flickers!
+
+   =High Level Flickers=
+
+   "_He that is down need fear no fall_"
+   _Fear not! You will fall lightly as down!_
+
+Hansen's air-kits are down in all respects. Tremendous reductions in
+prices previous to winter stocking. 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. Graduated tap on left hip.
+
+   =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, expensive Dirigible over
+the light, swift Plane is mainly due to the former's 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 shutter, certain as a
+power hammer, safe as oxygen. Fitted to any make of plane.
+
+   COLLISON
+   186 Brompton Road
+   _Workshops_, _Chiswick_
+
+   LUNDIE & MATHERS
+   Sole Agts for East'n Hemisphere
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Starters and Guides
+
+Hotel, club, and private house plane-starters, slips and guides affixed
+by skilled workmen in accordance with local building laws.
+
+Rackstraw's forty-foot collapsible steel starters with automatic release
+at end of travel--prices per foot run, clamps and crampons included. The
+safest on the market.
+
+   _Weaver & Denison
+   Middleboro_
+
+
+
+
+AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLE GOODS
+
+
+_=Remember=_
+
+   =Planes are swift--so is Death=
+   =Planes are cheap--so is Life=
+
+_Why_ does the 'plane builder insist on the safety of his machines?
+
+Methinks the gentleman protests too much.
+
+The Standard Dig Construction Company do not build kites.
+
+They build, equip and guarantee dirigibles.
+
+=_Standard Dig Construction Co._=
+
+Millwall _and_ Buenos Ayres
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+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 down till you please.
+
+You can please yourself, but--you might as well choose a dirigible.
+
+=STANDARD DIRIGIBLE CONSTRUCTION CO.=
+
+Millwall _and_ Buenos Ayres
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HOVERS
+
+   POWELL'S
+   Wind Hovers
+
+for 'planes tying-to in heavy weather, save the motor and strain on the
+forebody. Will not send to leeward. "Albatross" wind-hovers,
+rigid-ribbed; according to h. p. and weight.
+
+     _We fit and test free to 40 deg. east of Greenwich_
+
+   L. & W. POWELL
+   196 Victoria Street, W
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gayer & Hutt
+
+   Birmingham AND Birmingham
+      Eng.           Ala.
+
+   Towers, Landing Stages,
+   Slips and Lifts
+   public and private
+
+Contractors to the A. B. C., South-Western European Postal Construction
+Dept.
+
+Sole patentees and owners of the Collison anti-quake diagonal tower-tie.
+Only gold medal Kyoto Exhibition of Aerial Appliances, 1997.
+
+
+
+
+AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLES
+
+
+C. M. C.
+
+   Our Synthetical Mineral
+   BEARINGS
+
+are chemically and crystallogically identical with the minerals whose
+names they bear. Any size, any surface. Diamond, Rock-Crystal, Agate and
+Ruby Bearings--cups, caps and collars for the higher speeds.
+
+For tractor bearings and spindles--Imperative.
+
+For rear propellers--Indispensable.
+
+For all working parts--Advisable.
+
+   Commercial Minerals Co.
+   107 Minories
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Resurgam!
+
+IF YOU HAVE NOT CLOTHED YOURSELF IN A
+
+   Normandie
+   Resurgam
+
+YOU WILL PROBABLY NOT BE INTERESTED IN OUR NEXT WEEK'S LIST OF AIR-KIT.
+
+Resurgam Air-Kit Emporium
+
+HYMANS & GRAHAM
+
+   1198
+   Lower Broadway, New York
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Remember!
+
+¶ It is now nearly a century since the Plane was to supersede the
+Dirigible for all purposes.
+
+¶ TO-DAY _none_ of the Planet's freight is carried _en plane_.
+
+¶ Less than two per cent. of the Planet's passengers are carried _en
+plane_.
+
+_We design, equip and guarantee Dirigibles for all purposes._
+
+Standard Dig Construction Company
+
+MILLWALL and BUENOS AYRES
+
+
+
+
+BAT-BOATS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Flint & Mantel
+
+Southampton
+
+FOR SALE
+
+at the end of Season the following Bat-Boats:
+
+=GRISELDA=, 65 knt., 42 ft., 430 (nom.) Maginnis Motor, under-rake rudder.
+
+=MABELLE=, 50 knt., 40 ft., 310 Hargreaves Motor, Douglas' lock-steering
+gear.
+
+=IVEMONA=, 50 knt., 35 ft., 300 Hargreaves (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 flags) 137
+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 reinforced forefoot and
+entry. Talfourd rockered keel. Triple set of Hofman vans, giving maximum
+lifting surface of 5327 sq. ft.
+
+_Tarpon_ has 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 all
+
+Absolutely Safe
+
+_Hinks & 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 SPEED, THUS SECURING A SAFE AND GRACEFUL FLIGHT
+WITHOUT PITCHING.
+
+Remember our motto, "_Upward and Outward_," and do not trust yourself to
+so-called "rigid" guide bars
+
+J. D. ARDAGH, BELFAST AND TURIN
+
+
+
+
+ACCESSORIES AND SPARES
+
+
+CHRISTIAN WRIGHT & OLDIS
+
+ESTABLISHED 1924
+
+Accessories and Spares
+
+
+Hooded Binnacles with dip-dials automatically recording change of level
+(illuminated face).
+
+   All heights from 50 to 15,000 feet                        L2 10 0
+
+   With Aerial Board of Control certificate                  L3 11 0
+
+   Foot and Hand Foghorns; Sirens toned to any club note;
+   with air-chest belt-driven from motor                     L6  8 0
+
+   Wireless installations syntonised to A. B. C.
+   requirements, in neat mahogany case, hundred mile range   L3  3 0
+
+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 detaching-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 colours and tones of the principal clubs
+(boxed).
+
+   A selection of twenty                                     L2 17 6
+
+   International night-signals (boxed)                       L1 11 6
+
+Spare generators guaranteed to lifting power marked on cover (prices
+according to power).
+
+Wind-noses for dirigibles--Pegamoid, cane-stiffened, lacquered cane or
+aluminum and flux for winter work.
+
+Smoke-ring cannon for hail storms, swivel mounted, bow or stern.
+
+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 grooving).
+
+Wove steel beltings for outboard motors (non-magnetic).
+
+Radium batteries, all powers to 150 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 platform only, loaded silk or
+fibre, wind-tight.
+
+_Catalogues free throughout the Planet_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's note
+
+
+The following changes have been made to the text:
+
+Page 30: "passenger's faces" changed to "passengers' faces".
+
+Page 41: "Instead of shuting" changed to "Instead of shutting".
+
+Page 68: "orgie" changed to "orgy".
+
+Page 71: "earth,and water" changed to "earth, and water".
+
+Page 82: "Milwall and Buenos Ayres" changed to "Millwall and Buenos
+Ayres".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of With The Night Mail, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE NIGHT MAIL ***
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