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DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 The Glenn Negley Collection 
 of Utopian Literature 
 
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 Bar- 
 rack-Room Ballads 
 
 Five Nations, The 
 
 Jungle Book, The 
 
 Jungle Book, Second 
 
 Just So Song Book 
 
 Just So Stories 
 
 Kim 
 
 Kipling Birthday Book, 
 The 
 
 Life's Handicap ; Being 
 Stories of Mine Own 
 People 
 
 Light That Failed, The 
 Many Inventions 
 Naulahka, The (With 
 
 Wolcott Balestier) 
 Plain Tales from the 
 
 Hills 
 Puck of 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 'Rick- 
 shaw and Wee Willie 
 
 WiNKIE 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 in 2010 witii funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/witliniglitmailstoOOI<ipl 
 
**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 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Doubleday, Page & Company 
 
 1909 
 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF T2ANSLATION 
 INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES. INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 COPYRIGHT, IQOS, I900, BY RUDYARD KIPLING 
 PLT J ISHED, MARCH, I9O9 
 
 REPRINTED IN BOOK FORM BY PERMISSION OT 
 THE S. S. MCCLURE COMPANY 
 
K^7^ 
 
 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 
 
 A T NINE o'clock of a gusty winter night 
 I stood on the lower stages of one of 
 the G. P. O. outward mail towers. My 
 purpose was a run to Quebec in "Postal 
 Packet 162 or such other as may be 
 appointed": and the Postmaster-General 
 himself countersigned the order. This 
 talisman opened all doors, even those in 
 the despatching-caisson at the foot of the 
 tower, where they were delivering the sorted 
 Continental mail. The bags lay packed 
 close as herrings in the long gray under- 
 bodies which our G. P. O. still calls 
 "coaches." Five such coaches were filled 
 as I watched, and were shot up the 
 guides to be locked on to their waiting 
 [3] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 packets three hundred feet nearer the 
 stars. 
 
 From the despatching-caisson I was con- 
 ducted by a courteous and wonderfully 
 learned official — Mr. L. L. Geary, Second 
 Despatcher of the Western Route — to the 
 Captains' Room (this wakes an echo of old 
 romance), where the mail captains come 
 on for their turn of duty. He introduces 
 me to the Captain of "162" — Captain 
 Purnall, and his relief, Captain Hodgson. 
 The one is small and dark; the other large 
 and red ; but each has the brooding sheathed 
 glance characteristic of eagles and aero- 
 nauts. You can see it in the pictures of our 
 racing professionals, from L. V. Rautsch 
 to little Ada Warrleigh — that fathomless 
 abstraction of eyes habitually turned 
 through naked space. 
 
 On the notice-board in the Captains' 
 Room, the pulsing arrows of some twenty 
 
 [4] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 indicators register, degree by geographical 
 degree, the progress of as many homeward- 
 bound packets. The word "Cape" rises 
 across the face of a dial; a gong strikes: 
 the South African mid-weekly mail is in at 
 the Highgate Receiving Towers. That is 
 all. It reminds one comically of the 
 traitorous little bell which in pigeon- 
 fanciers' lofts notifies the return of a homer. 
 
 "Time for us to be on the move," says 
 Captain Purnall, and we are shot up by the 
 passenger-lift to the top of the despatch- 
 towers. "Our coach will lock on w^hen it 
 is filled and the clerks are aboard." . . . 
 
 "No. 162" waits for us in Slip E of the 
 topmost stage. The great curve of her 
 back shines frostily under the lights, and 
 some minute alteration of trim makes her 
 rock a little in her holding-down slips. 
 
 Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. 
 Hissing softly, "162" comes to rest as level 
 [5] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter 
 nose-cap (worn bright as diamond with 
 boring through uncounted leagues of hail, 
 snow, and ice) to the inset of her three 
 built-out propeller-shafts is some two hun- 
 dred and forty feet. Her extreme diameter, 
 carried well forward, is thirty-seven. Con- 
 trast this with the nine hundred by ninety- 
 five of any crack liner and you will realize 
 the power that must drive a hull through 
 all weathers at more than the emergency- 
 speed of the "Cyclonic"! 
 
 The eye detects no joint in her skin 
 plating save the sweeping hair-crack of 
 the bow-rudder — Magniac's rudder that 
 •assured us the dominion of the unstable air 
 and left its inventor penniless and half- 
 blind. It is calculated to Castelli's "gull- 
 wing" curve. Raise a few feet of that all 
 but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch 
 and she will yaw five miles to port or star- 
 [6] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 board ere she is under control again. Give 
 her full helm and she returns on her track 
 like a whip-lash. Cant the whole for- 
 ward — a touch on the wheel will suflBce 
 — and she sweeps at your good direction 
 up or down. Open the complete circle 
 and she presents to the air a mushroom- 
 head that will bring her up all standing 
 within a half mile. 
 
 "Yes," says Captain Hodgson, answer- 
 ing my thought, "Castelli thought he 'd dis- 
 covered the secret of controlling aeroplanes 
 when he 'd only found out how to steer 
 dirigible balloons. Magniac invented his 
 rudder to help war-boats ram each other; 
 and war went out of fashion and Magniac 
 he went out of his mind because he said 
 he could n't serve his country any more. 
 I wonder if any of us ever know what 
 we 're really doing." 
 
 **If you want to see the coach locked 
 [7] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 you 'd better go aboard. It 's due now," 
 says Mr. Geary. I enter through the door 
 amidships. There is nothing here for dis- 
 play. The inner skin of the gas-tanks 
 comes down to within a foot or two of my 
 head and turns over just short of the turn 
 of the bilges. Liners and yachts disguise 
 their tanks with decoration, but the G. P. O. 
 serves them raw under a lick of gray official 
 paint. The inner skin shuts off fifty feet 
 of the bow and as much of the stern, but 
 the bow-bulkhead is recessed for the lift- 
 shunting apparatus as the stern is pierced 
 for the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies 
 almost amidships. Forward of it, extend- 
 ing to th-e turn of the bow tanks, is an 
 aperture — a bottomless hatch at present 
 — into which our coach will be locked. 
 One looks down over the coamings three 
 hundred feet to the despatching-caisson 
 whence voices boom upward. The light 
 [8] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 below is obscured to a sound of thunder, 
 as our coach rises on its guides. It enlarges 
 rapidly from a postage-stamp to a playing- 
 card; to a punt and last a pontoon. The 
 two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as 
 it comes into place. The Quebec letters 
 fly under their fingers and leap into the 
 docketed racks, while both captains and 
 Mr. Geary satisfy themselves that the coach 
 is locked home. A clerk passes the way- 
 bill over the hatch-coaming. Captain 
 Purnall thumb-marks and passes it to Mr. 
 Geary. Receipt has been given and taken. 
 "Pleasant run," says Mr. Geary, and dis- 
 appears through the door which a foot- 
 high pneumatic compressor locks after 
 him. 
 
 *'A-ah!" sighs the compressor released. 
 Our holding-down clips part with a tang. 
 We are clear. 
 
 Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid 
 [9] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 underbody-porthole through which I watch 
 milUon-Hghted 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." 
 
 "Wliat's our level.?" I ask. 
 
 "Four thousand. Aren't you coming 
 up on the bridge ? " 
 
 The bridge (let us ever bless the G. P. O. 
 as a repository of ancientest tradition!) 
 is represented by a view of Captain 
 Hodgson's legs where he stands on the 
 control platform that runs thwartships 
 overhead. The bow colloid is unshuttered 
 [10] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 and Captain Purnall, one hand on the 
 wheel, is feeUng 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 
 
 [11] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of 
 snow at the thousand-fathom level. Cap- 
 tain Purnall rings up the engines and keys 
 down the governor on the switch before him. 
 There is no sense in urging machinery when 
 iEolus himself gives you good knots for 
 nothing. We are away in earnest now — 
 our nose notched home on our chosen star. 
 At this level the lower clouds are laid out 
 all neatly combed by the dry fingers of the 
 East. Below that again is the strong 
 westerly blow through which we rose. 
 Overhead, a film of southerly drifting mist 
 draws a theatrical gauze across the firma- 
 ment. The moonlight turns the lower 
 strata to silver without a stain except where 
 our shadow underruns us. Bristol and Car- 
 diff Double Lights (those statelily inclined 
 beams over Severnmouth) are dead ahead 
 of us; for we keep the Southern Winter 
 Route. Coventry Central, the pivot of the 
 [12] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 English system, stabs upward once in ten 
 seconds its spear of diamond light to the 
 north ; and a point or two off our starboard 
 bow The Leek, the great cloud-breaker of 
 Saint David's Head, swings its unmistak- 
 able green beam twenty-five degrees each 
 way. There must be half a mile of fluff 
 over it in this weather, but it does not affect 
 The Leek. 
 
 "Our planet's overlighted if anything," 
 says Captain Purnall at the wheel, as 
 Cardiff-Bristol slides under. '*I remember 
 the old days of common white verticals 
 that 'ud show two or three thousand feet 
 up in a mist, if you knew where to look for 
 'em. In really fluffy weather they might 
 as well have been under your hat. One 
 could get lost coming home then, an' have 
 some fun. Now, it 's like driving down 
 Piccadilly." 
 
 He points to the pillars of light where the 
 [13] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 cloud-breakers bore through the cloud- 
 floor. We see nothing of England's out- 
 lines: only a white pavement pierced in all 
 directions by these manholes of variously 
 coloured fire — Holy Island's white and 
 red — St. Bee's interrupted white, and so 
 on as far as the eye can reach. Blessed 
 be Sargent, Ahrens, and the Dubois 
 brothers, who invented the cloud-breakers 
 of the world whereby we travel in security! 
 "Are you going to lift for The Sham- 
 rock?" asks Captain Hodgson. Cork 
 Light (green, fixed) enlarges as we rush to 
 it. Captain Purnall nods. There is heavy 
 traffic hereabouts — the cloud-bank beneath 
 us is streaked with running fissures of flame 
 where the Atlantic boats are hurrying 
 Londonward just clear of the fluff. Mail- 
 packets are supposed, under the Conference 
 rules, to have the five-thousand-foot lanes 
 to themselves, but the foreigner in a hurry 
 [14] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 is apt to take liberties with English air. 
 "No. 162" hfts 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 Hodg- 
 son makes a motion to shut it off but checks 
 himself. "Perhaps you 'd like to listen," he 
 says. 
 
 "'Argol' of St. Thomas," the Dane 
 [15] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 whimpers. "Report owners three starboard 
 shaft collar-bearings fused. Can make 
 Flores as we are, but impossible further. 
 Shall we buy spares at Fayal.^" 
 
 The liner acknowledges and recommends 
 inverting the bearings. The "Argol" 
 answers that she has already done so with- 
 out effect, and begins to relieve her mind 
 about cheap German enamels for collar- 
 bearings. The Frenchman assents cordially, 
 cries " Courage, mon ami," and switches off. 
 
 Their lights sink under the curve of the 
 ocean. 
 
 "That's one of Lundt & Bleamers*s 
 boats," says Captain Hodgson. "Serves 
 'em right for putting German compos in 
 their thrust-blocks. She won't be in Fayal 
 to-night! By the way, wouldn't you like 
 to look round the engine-room?" 
 
 I have been waiting eagerly for this invi- 
 tation and I follow Captain Hodgson from 
 [16] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 the control-platform, stooping low to avoid 
 the bulge of the tanks. We know that 
 rieury'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 flio-ht would become a climb 
 to the stars. Captain Purnall prefers an 
 overlif ted to an underlif ted ship ; but no two 
 captains trim ship alike. "When I take 
 the bridge," says Captain Hodgson, "you '11 
 see me shunt forty per cent, of the lift out of 
 the gas and run her on the upper rudder. 
 With a swoop upwards instead of a swoop 
 downwards, as you say. Either way will do. 
 It 's only habit. Watch our dip-dial ! Tim 
 fetches her down once every thirty knots as 
 regularly as breathing." 
 [17] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 So is it shown on the dip-dial. For five 
 or six minutes the arrow creeps from 6,700 
 to 7,300. There is the faint "szgee" of the 
 rudder, and back slides the arrow to 6,500 on 
 a falling slant of ten or fifteen knots. 
 
 "In heavy weather you jockey her with 
 the screws as well," says Captain Hodgson, 
 and, unclipping the jointed bar which di- 
 vides the engine-room from the bare deck, 
 he leads me on to the floor. 
 
 Here we find Fleury's Paradox of the 
 Bulkheaded Vacuum — which we accept 
 now without thought — literally in full blast. 
 The three engines are H. T. &. T. assisted- 
 vacuo Fleury turbines running from 3,000 
 to the Limit — that is to say, up to the 
 point when the blades make the air "bell" 
 — cut out a vacuum for themselves pre- 
 cisely as over-driven marine propellers used 
 to do. " 162's" Limit is low on account of the 
 small size of her nine screws, which, though 
 [18] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 handier than the old colloid Thelussons, 
 ' ' bell" sooner. The midships engine, gener- 
 ally used as a reinforce, is not running; so 
 the port and starboard turbine vacuum- 
 chambers draw direct into the return-mains. 
 The turbines whistle reflectively. From 
 the low-arched expansion-tanks on either 
 side the valves descend pillarwise to the 
 turbine-chests, and thence the obedient gas 
 whirls through the spirals of blades with 
 a force that would whip the teeth out of a 
 power-saw. Behind, is its own pressure 
 held in leash or spurred on by the lift- 
 shunts; before it, the vacuum where Fleury's 
 Ray dances in violet-green bands and 
 whirled turbillions of flame. The jointed 
 U-tubes of the vacuum-chamber are 
 pressure-tempered colloid (no glass would 
 endure the strain for an instant) and a junior 
 engineer with tinted spectacles watches the 
 Ray intently. It is the very heart of the 
 [19] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 machine — a mystery to this day. Even 
 Fleury who begat it and, unlike Magniac, 
 died a multi-millionaire, could not explain 
 how the restless little imp shuddering in the 
 U-tube can, in the fractional fraction of a 
 second, strike the furious blast of gas 
 into a chill grayish-green liquid that drains 
 (you can hear it trickle) from the far end 
 of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes 
 and the mains back to the bilges. Here it 
 returns to its gaseous, one had almost 
 written sagacious, state and climbs to work 
 afresh. Bilge-tank, upper tank, dorsal- 
 tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main- 
 return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once 
 more is the ordained cycle. Fleury' s Ray 
 sees to that ; and the engineer with the tinted 
 spectacles sees to Fleury' s Ray. If a speck 
 of oil, if even the natural grease of the 
 human fino:er touch the hooded terminals 
 Fleury' s Ray will wink and disappear and 
 [20] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 must be laboriously built up again. This 
 means half a day's work for all hands and an 
 expense of one hundred and seventy-odd 
 pounds to the G. P. O. for radium-salts and 
 such trifles. 
 
 "Now look at our thrust-collars. You 
 won't find much German compo there. 
 Full-jewelled, you see," says Captain Hodg- 
 son as the engineer shunts open the top of a 
 cap. Our shaft-bearings are C. M. C. (Com- 
 mercial Minerals Company) stones, ground 
 with as much care as the lens of a telescope. 
 They cost .£37 apiece. So far we have not 
 arrived at their term of life. These bear- 
 ings came from "No. 97," which took them 
 over from the old "Dominion of Light," 
 which had them out of the wreck of the 
 "Perseus" aeroplane in the years when men 
 still flew linen kites over thorium engines! 
 
 They are a shining reproof to all low-grade 
 German "ruby" enamels, so-called "boort" 
 [21] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 facings, and the dangerous and unsatis- 
 factory alumina compounds which please 
 dividend-hunting owners and turn skippers 
 crazy. 
 
 The rudder-gear and the gas lift-shunt, 
 seated side by side under the engine-room 
 dials, are the only machines in visible mo- 
 tion. The former sighs from time to time 
 as the oil plunger rises and falls half an inch. 
 The latter, cased and guarded like the 
 U-tube aft, exhibits another Fleury Ray, 
 but inverted and more green than violet. 
 Its function is to shunt the lift out of the 
 gas, and this it will do without watching. 
 That is all! A tiny pump-rod wheezing 
 and whining to itself beside a sputtering 
 green lamp. A hundred and fifty feet aft 
 down the flat-topped tunnel of the tanks a 
 violet light, restless and irresolute. Between 
 the two, three white-painted turbine-trunks, 
 like eel-baskets laid on their side, accentuate 
 [22 ] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 the empty perspectives. You can hear the 
 trickle of the liquefied gas flowing from the 
 vacuum into the bilge-tanks and the soft 
 gluck-glock of gas-locks closing as Captain 
 Purnall brings "162" down by the head. 
 The hum of the turbines and the boom of 
 the air on our skin is no more than a cotton- 
 wool wrapping to the universal stillness. 
 And we are running an eighteen-second mile. 
 
 I peer from the fore end of the engine- 
 room over the hatch-coamings into the coach. 
 The mail-clerks are sorting the Winnipeg, 
 Calgary, and Medicine Hat bags: but there 
 is a pack of cards ready on the table. 
 
 Suddenly a bell thrills ; the engineers run 
 to the turbine-valves and stand by; but 
 the spectacled slave of the Ray in the 
 U-tube never lifts his head. He must watch 
 where he is. We are hard-braked and go- 
 ing astern; there is language from the 
 control-platform. 
 
 [23] 
 
 / 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 "Tim's sparking badly about something," 
 says the unruffled Captain Hodgson. ' ' Let' s 
 look." 
 
 Captain Purnall is not the suave man we 
 left half an hour since, but the embodied 
 authority of the G. P. O. Ahead of us floats 
 an ancient, aluminum-patched, twin-screw 
 tramp of the dingiest, with no more right to 
 the 5,000 foot lane than has a horse-cart to 
 a modern town. She carries an obsolete 
 "barbette" conning- tower — a six-foot affair 
 with railed platform forward — and our 
 warning beam plays on the top of it as a 
 policeman's lantern flashes on the area 
 sneak. Like a sneak-thief, too, emerges a 
 shock-headed navigator in his shirt-sleeves. 
 Captain Purnall wrenches open the colloid to 
 talk with him man to man. There are 
 times when Science does not satisfy. 
 
 "What under the stars are you doing 
 here, you sky-scraping chimney-sweep?" 
 [24] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 he shouts as we two drift side by side. "Do 
 you know this is a Mail-lane ? You call 
 yourself a sailor, sir? You ain't fit to 
 peddle toy balloons to an Esquimaux. Your 
 name and number! Report and get down, 
 and be !" 
 
 "I've been blown up once," the shock- 
 headed man cries, hoarsely, as a dog barking. 
 "I don't care two flips of a contact for 
 anything you can do, Postey." 
 
 "Don't you, sir? But I'll make you 
 care. I '11 have you towed stern first to 
 Disko and broke up. You can't recover 
 insurance if you 're broke for obstruction. 
 Do you understand that?" 
 
 Then the stranger bellows: "Look at my 
 propellers! There 's been a wuUi-wa down 
 under that has knocked us into umbrella- 
 frames! We 've been blown up about forty 
 thousand feet! We're all one conjuror's 
 watch inside! My mate's arm 's broke; my 
 [25] 
 
^VITH THE NIGHT IVIAIL 
 
 engineer's head's cut open; my Ray went 
 out when the engines smashed; and . 
 and . . . for pity's sake give me my 
 height, Captain ! We doubt we 're drop- 
 ping." 
 
 "Six thousand eight hundred. Can you 
 hold it?" Captain Purnall overlooks all in- 
 sults, and leans half out of the colloid, 
 staring and snuflSng. 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 
 [06] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 signal beam begins to swing through the 
 night, twizziing spokes of light across 
 infinity. 
 
 "That '11 fetch something," he says, while 
 CaptainHodgson watches the General Com- 
 municator. He has called up the North 
 Banks Mark Boat, a few hundred miles 
 west, and is reporting the case. 
 
 "I'll stand by you," Captain Purnall roars 
 to the lone figure on the conning-tower. 
 
 "Is it as bad as that ?" comes the answer. 
 "She isn't insured, she's mine." 
 
 " 'Might have guessed as much," mutters 
 Hodgson. "Owner's risk is the worst risk 
 of all!" 
 
 "Can't I fetch St. John's — not even 
 with this breeze.^" the voice quavers. 
 
 "Stand by to abandon ship. 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 
 [27] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 gave out and — "he coughs in the reek of 
 the escaping gas. 
 
 "You poor devil!" This does not reach 
 our friend. "What does the Mark Boat 
 say, George.^" 
 
 " 'Wants to know if there 's any danger to 
 trajffic. Says she 's in a bit of weather her- 
 self and can't quit station. I 've turned in a 
 General Call, so even if they don't see our 
 beam some one 's bound to help- -or else we 
 must. Shall I clear our slings. Hold on! 
 Here we are! A Planet liner, too! She '11 
 be up in a tick!" 
 
 "Tell her to have her slings ready," cries 
 his brother captain. "There won't be 
 much time to spare . . . Tie up your 
 mate," he roars to the tramp. 
 
 " My mate 's all right. It 's my engineer. 
 He's gone crazy." 
 
 "Shunt the lift out of him with a spanner. 
 Hurry!" 
 
 [28] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 '*But I can make St. John's if you'll 
 stand by." 
 
 "You'll make the deep, wet Atlantic 
 in twenty minutes. You 're less than fifty- 
 eight hundred now. Get your papers." 
 
 A Planet liner, east bound, heaves up 
 in a superb spiral and takes the air of us 
 humming. Her underbody colloid is open 
 and her transporter-slings hang down like 
 tentacles. We shut off our beam as she 
 adjusts herself — steering to a hair — over 
 the tramp's conning- tower. The mate 
 comes up, his arm strapped to his side, and 
 stumbles into the cradle. A man with a 
 ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that 
 he must go back and build up his Ray. 
 The mate assures him that he will find a nice 
 new Ray all ready in the liner's engine-room. 
 The bandaged head goes up wagging ex- 
 citedly. A youth and a woman follow. 
 The liner cheers hollowly above us, and 
 [29] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 we see the passenger's faces at the saloon 
 colloid. 
 
 "That's a good girl. What's the fool 
 waiting for now.?" says Captain Purnall. 
 
 The skipper comes up, still appealing to us 
 to stand by and see him fetch St. John's. 
 He dives below and returns — at which we 
 little human beings in the void cheer louder 
 than ever — with the ship's kitten. Up 
 fly the liner's hissing slings; her under- 
 body crashes home and she hurtles away 
 again. The dial shows less than 3,000 feet. 
 
 The Mark Boat signals we must at- 
 tend to the derelict, now whistling her death 
 song, as she falls beneath us in long sick 
 zigzags. 
 
 "Keep our beam on her and send out a 
 General Warning," says Captain Purnall, 
 following her down. 
 
 There is no need. Not a liner in air 
 but knows the meaning of that vertical 
 [30] 
 
SLIDES LIKE A LOST SOUL DOWN THAT PITILESS 
 LADDER OF LIGHT, AND THE ATLANTIC TAKES 
 HEH " 
 
^YITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 beam and gives us and our quarry a 
 wide berth. 
 
 "But she'll drown in the water, won't 
 
 she?" I ask. 
 
 "Not always," is his answer. "I've 
 known a derelict up-end and sift her 
 engines out of herself and flicker round 
 the Lower Lanes for three weeks on her 
 forward tanks only. AVe 'II run no risks. 
 Pith her, George, and look sharp. There 's 
 weather ahead." 
 
 Captain Hodgson opens the underbody 
 colloid, swings the heavy pithing-iron out 
 of its rack which in liners is generally 
 cased as a settee, and at two hundred 
 feet releases the catch. We hear the whir 
 of the crescent-shaped arms opening as 
 they descend. The derelict's forehead is 
 punched in, starred across, and rent 
 diagonally. She falls stern first, our beam 
 upon her; slides like a lost soul down 
 [31] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 that pitiless ladder of light, and the At- 
 lantic takes her. 
 
 "A filthy business," says Hodgson. "I 
 wonder what it must have been like in the 
 old days." 
 
 The thought had crossed my mind too. 
 AVhat if that wavering carcass had been 
 filled with International-speaking men of all 
 the Internationalities, each one of them 
 taught {that is the horror of it!) that after 
 death he would very possibly go forever to 
 unspeakable torment.^ 
 
 And not half a century since, we (one 
 knows now that we are only our fathers re- 
 enlarged upon the earth), we, I say, ripped 
 and rammed and pithed to admiration. 
 
 Here Tim, from the control-platform, 
 shouts that we are to get into our inflators 
 and to bring him his at once. 
 
 We hurry into the heavy rubber suits — 
 and the engineers are already dressed — and 
 [32] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 inflate at the air-pump taps. G. P. O. in- 
 flators are thrice as thick as a racing man's 
 "flickers," and chafe abominably under the 
 armpits. George takes the wheel until 
 Tim has blown himself up to the extreme 
 of rotundity. If you kicked him off the c. p. 
 to the deck he would bounce back. But it 
 is ''162" that will do the kicking. 
 
 "The Mark Boat's mad — stark ravin' 
 crazy," he snorts, returning to command. 
 "She says there 's a bad blow-out ahead and 
 wants me to pull over to Greenland. I '11 see 
 her pithed first! We wasted an hour and a 
 quarter over that dead duck down under, and 
 now I 'm expected to go rubbin' my back all 
 round the Pole. What does she think a 
 postal packet 's made of ? Gummed silk 't 
 Tell her we're coming on straight, George." 
 
 George buckles him into the Frame and 
 switches on the Direct Control. Now un- 
 der Tim's left toe lies the port-engine Ac- 
 [33] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 celerator; under his left heel the Reverse, 
 and so with the other foot. The lift-shunt 
 stops stand out on the rim of the steering- 
 wheel where the fingers of his left hand can 
 play on them. At his right hand is the mid- 
 ships engine lever ready to be thrown into 
 gear at a moment's notice. He leans for- 
 ward in his belt, eyes glued to the colloid, 
 and one ear cocked toward the General 
 Communicator. Henceforth he is the 
 strength and direction of "162," through 
 whatever may befall. 
 
 The Banks Mark Boat is reeling out pages 
 of A. B. C. Directions to the traflSc at 
 large. We are to secure all " loose objects" ; 
 hood up our Fleury Rays; and "on no ac- 
 count to attempt to clear snow from our 
 conning-towers till the weather abates." 
 Under-powered craft, we are told, can ascend 
 to the limit of their lift, mail-packets to 
 look out for them accordingly; the lower 
 [34] 
 
 X 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 lanes westward are pitting very badly, 
 "with frequent blow-outs, vortices, later- 
 als, etc." 
 
 Still the clear dark holds up unblemished. 
 The only warning is the electric skin-tension 
 (I feel as though I were a lace-maker's pil- 
 low) and an irritability which the gibbering 
 of the General Communicator increases 
 almost to hysteria. 
 
 We have made eight thousand feet since 
 we pithed the tramp and our turbines are 
 giving us an honest two hundred and ten 
 knots. 
 
 Very far to the west an elongated blur 
 of red, low down, shows us the North Banks 
 Mark Boat. There are specks of fire round 
 her rising and falling — bewildered planets 
 about an unstable sun — helpless shipping 
 hanging on to her light for company's sake. 
 No wonder she could not quit station. 
 
 She warns us to look out for the back- 
 [35] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 wash of the bad vortex in which (her beam 
 shows it) she is even now reeling. 
 
 The pits of gloom about us begin to fill 
 with very faintly luminous films — wreath- 
 ing and uneasy shapes. One forms itself 
 into a globe of pale flame that waits shivering 
 with eagerness till we sweep by. It leaps 
 monstrously across the blackness, alights on 
 the precise tip of our nose, pirouettes there 
 an instant, and swings off. Our roaring 
 bow sinks as though that light were lead — 
 sinks and recovers to lurch and stumble 
 again beneath the next blow-out. Tim's 
 fingers on the lift-shunt strike chords of 
 numbers — 1:4:7: — 2:4:6: — 7:5:3, and 
 so on; for he is running by his tanks only, 
 lifting or lowering her against the uneasy 
 air. All three engines are at work, for the 
 sooner we have skated over this thin ice the 
 better. Higher we dare not go. The whole 
 upper vault is charged with pale krypton 
 [86] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 vapours, which our skin friction may exci'e 
 to unholy manifestations. Between the 
 upper and the lower levels — 5,000, and 
 7,000, hints the Mark Boat — we may per- 
 haps bolt through if . . . Our bow 
 clothes itself in blue flame and falls like 
 a sword. No human skill can keep pace 
 with the changing tensions. A vortex has 
 us by the beak and we dive down a two- 
 thousand-foot slant at an angle (the dip-dial 
 and my bouncing body record it) of thirty- 
 five. Our turbines scream shrilly; the pro- 
 pellers cannot bite on the thin air; Tim 
 shunts the lift out of five tanks at once and 
 by sheer weight drives her bulletwise 
 through the maelstrom till she cushions 
 with a jar on an up-gust, three thousand 
 feet below. 
 
 ** Now we 've done it," says George in my 
 ear. "Our skin-friction that last slide, has 
 played Old Harry with the tensions ! Look 
 [37] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 out for laterals, Tim, she '11 want some 
 holding." 
 
 "I've got her," is the answer. "Come 
 up, old woman." 
 
 She comes up nobly, but the laterals buf- 
 fet her left and right like the pinions of an- 
 gry angels. She is jolted off her course 
 in four ways at once, and cuffed into 
 place again, only to be swung aside and 
 dropped into a new chaos. We are 
 never without a corposant grinning on 
 our bows or rolling head over heels from 
 nose to midships, and to the crackle of 
 electricity around and within us is added 
 once or twice the rattle of hail — hail that 
 will never fall on any sea. Slow we must 
 or we may break our back, pitch-poling. 
 
 "Air's a perfectly elastic fluid," roars 
 George above the tumult. " About as elastic 
 as a head sea off the Fastnet, aint it.^" 
 
 He is less than just to the good element. 
 [38] 
 
THE STORM 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 If one intrudes on the Heavens when they 
 are balancing their volt-accounts ; if one dis- 
 turbs the High Gods' market-rates by hurl- 
 ing steel hulls at ninety knots across tremb- 
 lingly adjusted electric tensions, one must not 
 complain of any rudeness in the reception. 
 Tim met it with an unmoved countenance, 
 one corner of his under lip caught up on a 
 tooth, his eyes fleeting into the blackness 
 twenty miles ahead, and the fierce sparks 
 flying from his knuckles at every turn of the 
 hand. Now and again he shook his head 
 to clear the sweat trickling from his eye- 
 brows, and it was then that George, watch- 
 ing his chance, would slide down the life- 
 rail and swab his face quickly with a big 
 red handkerchief. I never imagined that 
 a human being could so continuously labour 
 and so collectedly think as did Tim through 
 that Hell's half hour when the flurry was at 
 its worst. We were dragged hither and 
 [39] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 yon by warm or frozen suctions, belched up 
 on the tops of wulli-was, spun down by 
 vortices and clubbed aside by laterals under 
 a dizzying rush of stars in the company of a 
 drunken moon. I heard the rushing click 
 of the midship-engine-lever sliding in and 
 out, the low growl of the lift-shunts, and, 
 louder than the yelling winds without, the 
 scream of the bow-rudder gouging into any 
 lull that promised hold for an instant. At 
 last we began to claw up on a cant, bow- 
 rudder and port-propeller together; only 
 the nicest balancing of tanks saved us 
 from spinning like the rifle-bullet of the 
 old days. 
 
 "We 've got to hitch to windward of that 
 Mark Boat somehow," George cried. 
 
 "There 's no windward," I protested 
 feebly, where I swung shackled to a 
 stanchion. "How can there be.^" 
 
 He laughed — as we pitched into a thou- 
 [40] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 sand foot blow-out — that red man laughed 
 beneath his inflated hood! 
 
 " Look!" he said. " We must clear those 
 refugees with a high lift." 
 
 The Mark Boat was below and a little to 
 the sou' west of us, fluctuating in the centre 
 of her distraught galaxy. The air was thick 
 with moving lights at every level. I take 
 it most of them were trying to lie head to wind 
 but, not being hydras, they failed. An under- 
 tanked Moghrabi boat had risen to the limit 
 of her lift and, finding no improvement, had 
 dropped a couple of thousand. There she 
 met a superb wuUi-wa and was blown up 
 spinning like a dead leaf. Instead of shut- 
 ing off she w^ent astern and, naturally, re- 
 bounded as from a wall almost into the Mark 
 Boat, whose language (our G. C. took it in) 
 was humanly simple. 
 
 "If they 'd only ride it out quietly it 'ud 
 be better," said George in a calm, as we 
 [41] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 climbed like a bat above them all. "But 
 some skippers will navigate without enough 
 lift. What does that Tad-boat think she is 
 doing, Tim?" 
 
 "Play in' kiss in the ring," was Tim's un- 
 moved reply. A Trans-Asiatic Direct liner 
 had found a smooth and butted into it full 
 power. But there was a vortex at the tail 
 of that smooth, so the T. A. D. was flipped 
 out like a pea from off a fingernail, braking 
 madly as she fled down and all but over- 
 ending. 
 
 "Now I hope she 's satisfied," said Tim. 
 "I 'm glad I 'm not a Mark Boat . . . 
 Do I want help?" The C. G. dial had 
 caught his ear. "George, you may tell that 
 gentleman with my love — love, remember, 
 George — that I do not want help. Who 
 is the oflScious sardine-tin?" 
 
 "ARimouski drogher on the lookout for 
 a tow." 
 
 [42] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT :\TAIL 
 
 "Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. 
 This postal packet is n't being towed at 
 present." 
 
 "Those droghers will go anywhere on a 
 chance of salvage, ' George explained. " We 
 call 'em kitti wakes." 
 
 A long-beaked, bright steel ninety-footer 
 floated at ease for one instant within hail of 
 us, her slings coiled ready for rescues, and a 
 single hand in her open tower. He was 
 smoking. Surrendered to the insurrection 
 of the airs through which we tore our way, 
 he lay in absolute peace. I saw the smoke of 
 his pipe ascend untroubled ere his boat 
 dropped, it seemed, like a stone in a well. 
 
 We had just cleared the Mark Boat and 
 her disorderly neighbours when the storm 
 ended as suddenly as it had begun. A shoot- 
 ing-star to northward filled the sky with 
 the green blink of a meteorite dissipating 
 itself in our atmosphere. 
 [43] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 Said George: "That may iron out all the 
 tensions." Even as he spoke, the conflict- 
 ing winds came to rest; the levels filled; the 
 laterals died out in long easy swells ; the air- 
 ways were smoothed before us. In less than 
 three minutes the covey round the Mark 
 Boat had shipped their power-lights and 
 whirred away upon their businesses. 
 
 "^^^lat's happened?" I gasped. The 
 nerve-storm within and the volt-tingle with- 
 out had passed: my inflators weighed like 
 lead. 
 
 "God, He knows!" said Captain George, 
 soberly. "That old shooting-star's skin- 
 friction has discharged the different levels. 
 I 've seen it happen before. Phew! What 
 a relief!" 
 
 We dropped from ten to six thousand 
 
 and got rid of our clammy suits. Tim shut 
 
 off and stepped out of the Frame. The 
 
 Mark Boat was coming up behind us. He 
 
 [44] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 opened the colloid in that heavenly stillness 
 and mopped his face. 
 
 "Hello, Williams!" he cried. "A degree 
 or two out o' station, ain't you ?" 
 
 "May be," was the answer from the 
 Mark Boat. "I've had some company 
 this evening." 
 
 " So I noticed. Was n't that quite a little 
 draught .J^" 
 
 "I warned you. \Miy didn't you pull 
 out round by Disko ? The east-bound 
 packets have." 
 
 " Me ? Not till I 'm running a Polar con- 
 sumptives' Sanatorium boat. I was squint- 
 ing through a colloid before you were out of 
 your cradle, my son." 
 
 "I'd be the last man to deny it," the 
 captain of the Mark Boat replies softly. 
 "The way you handled her just now — 
 I 'm a pretty fair judge of traffic in 
 a volt-flurry — it was a thousand revo- 
 [45] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 lutions beyond anything even / '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. WTiolly 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 '11 
 jog along." 
 
 The Mark Boat hums off joyously and 
 hangs herself up in her appointed eyrie. 
 Here she will stay, a shutterless obser- 
 [46] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 vatory; a life-boat station; a salvage tug; 
 a court of ultimate appeal-cum-meteor- 
 ological bureau for three hundred miles in 
 all directions, till Wednesday next when her 
 relief slides across the stars to take her buf- 
 feted place. Her black hull, double con- 
 ning-tower, and ever-ready slings represent 
 all that remains to the planet of that odd old 
 word authority. She is responsible only to 
 the Aerial Board of Control — the A. B. C. 
 of which Tim speaks so flippantly. But 
 that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of a 
 few score persons of both sexes, controls this 
 planet. '* Transportation is Civilization," 
 our motto runs. Theoretically, we do what 
 we please so long as we do not interfere with 
 the traffic and all it implies. Practically, the 
 A. B. C. confirms or annuls all international 
 arrangements and, to judge from its last re- 
 port, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy 
 little planet only too ready to shift the whole 
 [47] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 burden of private administration on its 
 shoulders. 
 
 I discuss this with Tim, sipping mate on 
 the c. p. while George fans her along over 
 the white blur of the Banks in beautiful 
 upward curves of fifty miles each. The 
 dip-dial translates them on the tape in flow- 
 ing freehand. 
 
 Tim gathers up a skein of it and surveys 
 the last few feet, which record " 162's" path 
 through the volt-flurry. 
 
 "I have n't had a fever-chart like this to 
 show up in five years," he says ruefully. 
 
 A postal packet's dip-dial records every 
 yard of every run. The tapes then go to 
 the A. B. C, which collates and makes 
 composite photographs of them for the 
 instruction of captains. Tim studies his 
 irrevocable past, shaking his head. 
 
 "Hello! Here's a fifteen-hundred-foot 
 drop at eighty-five degrees! We must 
 [48] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 have been standing on our heads then, 
 George." 
 
 " You don't say so," George answers. " I 
 fancied I noticed it at the time." 
 
 George may not have Captain Purnall's 
 catlike swiftness, but he is all an artist to the 
 tips of the broad fingers that play on the 
 shunt-stops. The delicious flight-curves 
 come away en the tape with never a waver. 
 The Mark Boat's vertical spindle of light 
 lies down to eastward, setting in the face of 
 the following stars. Westward, where no 
 planet should rise, the triple verticals of 
 Trinity Bay (we keep still to the South- 
 ern route) make a low-lifting haze. We 
 seem the only thing at rest under all the 
 heavens; floating at ease till the earth's 
 revolution shall turn up our landing- 
 towers. 
 
 And minute by minute our silent clock 
 gives us a sixteen-second mile. 
 [49] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 ' ' Some fine night, ' ' says Tim. ' ' We ' 11 be 
 even with that clock's Master.'' 
 
 "He's coming now," says George, over 
 his shoulder. "I'm chasing the night 
 west." 
 
 The stars ahead dim no more than if a 
 film of mist had been drawn under unob- 
 served, but the deep air-boom on our skin 
 changes to a joyful shout. 
 
 "The dawn-gust," says Tim. "It'll 
 go on to meet the Sun. Look! Look! 
 There's the dark being crammed back over 
 our bo w^! Come to the after-colloid. I'll 
 show you something. 
 
 The engine-room is hot and stuffy; the 
 clerks in the coach are asleep, and the Slave 
 of the Ray is near to follow them. Tim 
 slides open the aft colloid and reveals the 
 curve of the world — the ocean's deepest 
 purple — edged with fuming and intolerable 
 gold. Then the Sun rises and through the 
 [50] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 colloid strikes out our lamps. Tim scowls 
 in his face. 
 
 "Squirrels in a cage," he mutters. 
 "That's all we are. Squirrels in a cage! 
 He 's going twice as fast as us. Just you 
 wait a few years, my shining friend and 
 we 'II 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 traflfic. A big submersible breaks 
 water suddenly. Another and another 
 follow with a swash and a suck and a 
 savage bubbling of relieved pressures. 
 The deep-sea freighters are rising to lung 
 up after the long night, and the leisurely 
 [51] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 ocean is all patterned with peacock's eyes 
 of foam. 
 
 " We '11 lung up, too," says Tim, and when 
 we return to the c. p. George shuts off, the 
 colloids are opened, and the fresh air sweeps 
 her out. There is no hurry. The old con- 
 tracts (they will be revised at the end of the 
 year) allow twelve hours for a run which any 
 packet can put behind her in ten. So we 
 breakfast in the arms of an easterly slant 
 which pushes us along at a languid twenty. 
 
 To enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on 
 a sunny morning half a mile or so above the 
 dappled Atlantic cloud-belts and after a 
 volt-flurry which has cleared and tempered 
 your nerves. AMiile we discussed the thick- 
 ening traffic with the superiority that comes 
 of having a high level reserved to ourselves, 
 we heard (and I for the first time) the 
 morning hymn on a Hospital boat. 
 
 She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff 
 [52] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 beneath us and we caught the chant before 
 she rose into the sunlight. ''Oh, ye Wind^ 
 oj God," sang the unseen voices: ''bless ye 
 the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him 
 forever!" 
 
 We sHd off our caps and joined in. When 
 our shadow fell across her great open plat- 
 forms they looked up and stretched out their 
 hands neighbourly while they sang. We 
 could see the doctors and the nurses and the 
 white-button-like faces of the cot-patients. 
 She passed slowly beneath us, heading 
 northward, her hull, wet with the dews of 
 the night, all ablaze in the sunshine. So 
 took she the shadow of a cloud and vanished, 
 her song continuing. Oh, ye holy and 
 humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord! 
 Praise Him and magnify Him forever. 
 
 **She 's a public lunger or she would n't 
 have been singing the Benedicite; and she *s 
 a Greenlander or she would n't have snow- 
 [53] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 blinds over her colloids," said George at 
 last. "She'll be bound for Frederikshavn 
 or one of the Glacier sanatoriums for a 
 month. If she was an accident ward she 'd 
 be hung up at the eight-thousand-foot level. 
 Yes — consumptives." 
 
 "Funny how the new things are the old 
 things. I 've read in books," Tim answered, 
 "that savages used to haul their sick and 
 wounded up to the tops of hills because mi- 
 crobes were fewer there. We hoist 'em into 
 sterilized air for a while. Same idea. How 
 much do the doctors say we 've added to 
 the average life of a man ?" 
 
 "Thirty years," says George with a 
 twinkle in his eye. "Are we going to spend 
 'em all up here, Tim?" 
 
 "Flap along, then. Flap along. Who's 
 hindering.''" the senior captain laughed, as 
 we went in. 
 
 We held a good lift to clear the coastwise 
 [54] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 and Continental shipping; and we had need 
 of it. Though our route is in no sense a 
 populated one, there is a steady trickle of 
 traffic this way along. We met Hudson 
 Bay furriers out of the Great Preserve, 
 hurrying to make their departure from 
 Bonavista with sable and black fox for the 
 insatiable markets. We over-crossed Kee- 
 watin liners, small and cramped; but their 
 captains, who see no land between Trepassy 
 and Blanco, know what gold they bring 
 back from West Africa. Trans- Asiatic 
 Directs, we met, soberly ringing the world 
 round the Fiftieth Meridian at an honest 
 seventy knots; and white-painted Ackroyd 
 & Hunt fruiters out of the south fled 
 beneath us, their ventilated hulls whistling 
 like Chinese kites. Their market is in the 
 North among the northern sanatoria where 
 you can smell their grapefruit and bananas 
 across the cold snows. Argentine beef 
 [55] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 boats we sighted too, of enormous capacity 
 and unlovely outline. They, too, feed the 
 northern health stations in ice-bound ports 
 where submersibles dare not rise. 
 
 Yellow-bellied ore-flats and Ungava 
 petrol-tanks punted down leisurely out of 
 the north like strings of unfrightened wild 
 duck. It does not pay to "fly" minerals 
 and oil a mile farther than is necessary; but 
 the risks of transhipping to submersibles in 
 the ice-pack off Nain or Hebron are so great 
 that these heavy freighters fly down to Hali- 
 fax direct, and scent the air as they go. 
 They are the biggest tramps aloft except 
 the Athabasca grain-tubs. But these last, 
 now that the wheat is moved, are busy, 
 over the world's shoulder, timber-lifting in 
 Siberia. 
 
 We held to the St. Lawrence (it is astonish- 
 ing how the old water-ways still pull us 
 children of the air), and followed his broad 
 [56] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 line of black between its drifting ice blocks, 
 all down the Park that the wisdom of 
 our fathers — but every one knows the 
 Quebec run. 
 
 We dropped to the Heights Receiving 
 Towers twenty minutes ahead of time and 
 there hung at ease till the Yokohama In- 
 termediate Packet could pull out and give 
 us our proper slip. It was curious to watch 
 the action of the holding-down clips all along 
 the frosty river front as the boats cleared or 
 came to rest. A big Hamburger was leav- 
 ing Pont Levis and her crew, unshipping the 
 platform railings, began to sing "Elsinore" 
 — the oldest of our chanteys. You know 
 it of course: 
 
 Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic — 
 Forty couple waltzing on the floorl 
 
 And you can watch my Ray, 
 
 For I must go away 
 
 And dance with Ella Sweyn at EUinorel 
 
 [57] 
 
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL 
 
 Then, while they sweated home the cover- 
 ing-plates : 
 
 Nar-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 indig- 
 nant dismissal, as though Quebec, glittering 
 under her snows, were casting out these light 
 and unworthy lovers. Our signal came 
 from the Heights. Tim turned and floated 
 up, but surely then it was with passion- 
 ate appeal that the great tower arms flung 
 open — or did I think so because on the 
 upper staging a little hooded figure also 
 opened her arms wide towards her father ? 
 
 In ten seconds the coach with its clerks 
 clashed down to the receiving-caisson; the 
 hostlers displaced the engineers at the idle 
 [68] 
 
"I'VK ASKKU HIM TO TKA OX FRIDAT' 
 
WITH THE NIGHT IVIAIL 
 
 turbines, and Tim, prouder of this than all, 
 introduced me to the maiden of the photo- 
 graph on the shelf. "And by the way/* 
 said he to her, stepping forth in sunshine 
 under the hat of civil life, "I saw young 
 Williams in the Mark Boat. I 've asked 
 him to tea on Friday. " 
 
 [59] 
 
AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL 
 BULLETIN 
 
AerifiJ 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 
 4.T 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). 
 
AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL 
 
 East Cape — Fog flash — single white with single bomb, 
 
 30 sec. intervals (new). 
 Malayan Archipelago lights unreliable owing erup- 
 tions. Lay from Somerset to Singapore direct, 
 keeping highest levels. 
 
 For the Board: 
 
 Catterthun ^ 
 
 St. Just > Lights. 
 
 Van Hedder ) 
 
 Casualties 
 
 Week ending Dec. 18th. 
 
 Sable Island Landing Towers — Green freighter, 
 
 number indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-tank 
 
 pierced after collision, passed 300-ft. level 2 p.m. 
 
 Dec. 15th. Watched to water and pithed by Mark 
 
 Boat. 
 N. F. Banks — Postal Packet 162 reports Halma freighter 
 
 (Fowey — St. John's) abandoned, leaking after 
 
 weather, 46° 15' N. 50° 15' W. Crew rescued by 
 
 Planet liner Asteroid. Watched to water and pithed 
 
 by postal packet, Dec. 14th. 
 Kerguelen Mark Boat reports last call from Cymena 
 
 freighter (Gayer Tong-Huk & Co.) taking water 
 
 and sinking in snow-storm South McDonald Islands. 
 
 No wreckage recovered. Addresses, etc., of crew at 
 
 all A. B. C. offices. 
 Fezz.vn — T. A. D. freighter Ulema taken ground during 
 
 Harmattan on Akakus Range. Under plates strained. 
 
 Crew at Ghat where repairing Dec. 13th. 
 Biscay, Mark Bo.\t reports Cardncci (Valandingham 
 
 line) slightly spiked in western gorge Point de 
 
 [62] 
 
AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL 
 
 Benasque. Passengers transferred Andorra (same 
 line). Barcelona Mark Boat salving cargo De(>. 12th. 
 Ascension, Mark Boat — Wreck of unknown racing- 
 plane, Parden rudder, wire-sliffened 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 
 
 Atidliumla, \V. 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 Ei/re, 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 
 
 Valkykie (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 ) 
 
 [63] 
 
NOTES 
 
High-Level Sleet 
 
 The Northern weather so far shows no sign of im- 
 provement. From all quarters come complaints of the 
 unusual prevalence of sleet at the higher levels. Racing- 
 planes and digs alike have suffered severely — the former 
 from unequal deposits of half-frozen slush on their vans 
 (and only those who have "held up" a badly balanced plane 
 in a cross wind know what that means), and the latter 
 from loaded bows and snow-cased bodies. As a con- 
 sequence, the Northern and Northwestern upper levels 
 have been practically abandoned, and the high fliers 
 have returned to the ignoble security of the Three, 
 Five, and Six hundred foot levels. But there remain a 
 few undaunted sun-hunters who, in spite of frozen stays 
 and ice-jammed connecting-rods, still haunt the blue 
 empjTean. 
 
 Bat-Boat Racing 
 
 The scandals of the past few years have at last moved 
 the yachting world to concerted action in regard to "bat" 
 boat racing. 
 
 We have been treated to the spectacle of what are 
 practically keeled racing-planes driven a clear five foot or 
 more above the water, and only eased down to touch 
 their so-called "native element" as they near the line. 
 Judges and starters have been conveniently blind to this 
 absurdity, but the public demonstration off St. Catherine's 
 Light at the Autumn Regattas has borne ample, if tardy, 
 
 [65] 
 
NOTES 
 
 fruit. In future the "bat" is to be a boat, and the long- 
 unheeded demand of the true sportsman for "no dayh'ght 
 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 waterhorne cruiser. The type of rudder is 
 unaffected by the new rules, so we may expect to see the 
 Long-Davidson make (the patent on which has just 
 expired) come largely into use henceforward, though the 
 strain on the sternpost in turning at speeds over forty 
 miles an hour is admittedly very severe. But bat-boat 
 racing has a great future before it. 
 
 {66] 
 
CORRESPONDENCE 
 
Correspondence 
 
 Skylarking on the Equator 
 
 To THE Editor — Only last week, while crossing the 
 Equator (W. 26.15), I became aware of a furious and 
 irregular cannonading some fifteen or twenty knots 
 S. 4 E. Descending to the 500 ft. level, I found a party 
 of Transylvanian tourists engaged in exploding scores of 
 the largest pattern atmospheric bombs (A. B. C. standard) 
 and, in the intervals of their pleasing labours, firing bow 
 and stern smoke-ring swivels. This orgie — I can give it 
 no other name — went on for at least two hours, and natur- 
 ally produced violent electric derangements. My com- 
 passes, of course, were thrown out, my bow was struck 
 twice, and I received two brisk shocks from the lower 
 platform-rail. On remonstrating, I was told that these 
 " professors " were engaged in scientific experiments. 
 The extent of their " scientific " knowledge may be 
 judged by the fact that they expected to produce (I give 
 their own words) " a little blue sky " if " they went on 
 long enough." This in the heart of the Doldrums at 
 450 feet! I have no objection to any amount of blue 
 sky in its proper place (it can be found at the 2,000 level 
 for practically twelve months out of the year), but I 
 submit, with all deference to the educational needs of 
 Transylvania, that "sky-larking" in the centre of a main- 
 travelled road where, at the best of times, electricity liter- 
 ally drips off one's stanchions and screw blades, is unnec- 
 essary. WTien ray friends had finished, the road was seared, 
 and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure-lavers, spirals, 
 
 [68] 
 
CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 vortices, and readjustments for at least an hour. I 
 pitched badly twice in an upward rush — solely due to 
 these diabolical throw-downs — that came near to wrecking 
 my propeller. Equatorial work at low levels is trying 
 enough in all conscience without the added terrors of 
 scientific hooliganism in the Doldrums. 
 
 Rhyl. J.Vincent Mathews. 
 
 [We entirely sympathize with Professor Mathews's views, 
 but unluckily till the Board sees fit to further regulate 
 the Southern areas in which scientific experiments may 
 be conducted, we shall always be exposed to the risk 
 which our correspondent describes. Unfortunately, a 
 chimera bombinating in a vacuum is, nowadays, only 
 too capable of producing secondary causes. — Editor.] 
 
 Answers to Correspondents 
 
 ViGiLANS — The Laws of Auroral Derangements are 
 still imperfectly understood. Any overheated motor 
 may of course "seize" without warning; but so many 
 complaints have reached us of accidents similar to yours 
 while shooting the Aurora that we are inclined to believe 
 with Lavalle that the upper strata of the Aurora Borealis 
 are practically one big electric "leak," and that the paral- 
 ysis of your engines was due to complete magnetization 
 of all metallic parts. Low-flying planes often "glue up" 
 when near the Magnetic Pole, and there is no reason in 
 science why the same disability should not be experienced 
 at higher levels when the Auroras are "delivering" strongly. 
 
 Indignant — On your own showing, you were not 
 under control. That you could not hoist the necessary 
 N. U. C. lights on approaching a trafiic-lane because your 
 electrics had short-circuited is a misfortune which might 
 befall any one. The A. B. C, being responsible for the 
 
 [oy] 
 
CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 planet's traffic, cannot, however, make allowance for this 
 kind of misfortune. A reference to the Code will show 
 that you were fined on the lower scale. 
 
 Planiston — (1) The Five Thousand Kilometre (over- 
 land) was won last year by L. V. Rautsch, R. M. Rautsch, 
 his brother, in the same week pulling off the Ten Thousand 
 (oversea). R. M.'s average worked out at a fraction over 
 500 kilometres per hour, thus constituting a record. (2) 
 Theoretically, there is no limit to the lift of a dirigible. 
 For commercial and practical purposes 15,000 tons is 
 accepted as the most manageable. 
 
 Paterfamilias — None whatever. He is liable for 
 direct damage both to your chimneys and any collateral 
 damage caused by fall of bricks into garden, etc., etc. 
 Bodily inconvenience and mental anguish may be included, 
 but the average jury are not, as a rule, men of sentiment. 
 If you can prove that his grapnel removed any portion 
 of your roof, you had better rest your case on decover- 
 ture of domicile (See Parkins v. Duboulay). We entirely 
 sympathize with your position, but the night of the 14th 
 was stormy and confused, and — you may have to anchor 
 on a stranger's chimney yourself some night. Verbumsap! 
 
 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 fol- 
 lowing gale, and there is always risk of a turn-over. (3) 
 The formulae for stun'sle brakes are uniformly unreliable, 
 and will continue to be so as long as air is compressible. 
 
 [70] 
 
CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 Pegamoid — Personally we prefer glass or flux com- 
 pounds to any other material for winter work nose-caps 
 as being absolutely non-hygroscopic. (2) We cannot 
 recommend any particular make. 
 
 PuLMONAR — For the symptoms you describe, try the 
 Gobi Desert Sanitaria. The low levels of the Saharan 
 Sanitaria are against them except at the outset of the 
 disease. (2) We do not recommend boarding-houses or 
 hotels in this column. 
 
 Begixxer — On still days the air above a large inhab- 
 ited city being slightly warmer — i. e., thinner — than the 
 atmosphere of the surrounding country, a plane drops a 
 little on entering the rarefied area, precisely as a ship 
 sinks a little in fresh water. Hence the phenomena of 
 "jolt" and your "inexplicable collisions" with factory 
 chimneys. In air, as on earth, it is safest to fly high. 
 
 Emergency — There is only one rule of the road in air, 
 earth, and water. Do you want the firmament to yourself ? 
 
 PicciOLA — Both Poles have been overdone in Art 
 and Literature. L^ave 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. 
 oflacial's boat without asking permission. He is one of 
 the body responsible for the planet's trafiic, and for that 
 reason must not be interfered with. You, presumably, 
 are out on your own business or pleasure, and should 
 leave him alone. For humanity's sake don't try to be 
 "democratic." 
 
 [71] 
 
REVIEWS 
 
Reviews 
 
 The Life of Xavier Lavalle 
 
 {Reviewed by Rene Talland. Ecole Aeronautique, Paris) 
 
 Ten years ago Lavalle, "that imperturbable dreamer of 
 the heavens," as Lazareff hailed him, gathered together 
 the fruits of a lifetime's labour, and gave it, with well- 
 justified contempt, to a world bound hand and foot to 
 Barald's Theory of Vertices and "compensating electric 
 nodes." "They shall see," he wrote — in that immortal 
 postscript to "The Heart of the Cyclone" — "the Laws 
 whose existence they derided written in fire beneath them." 
 
 "But even here," he continues, "there is no finality. 
 Better a thousand times my conclusions should be dis- 
 credited than that my dead name should lie across the 
 threshold of the temple of Science — a bar to further 
 inquiry." 
 
 So died Lavalle — a prince of the Powers of the Air, 
 and even at his funeral Cellier jested at "him who had 
 gone to discover the secrets of the Aurora Borealis." 
 
 If I choose thus to be banal, it is only to remind you that 
 Cellier's theories are to-day as exploded as the ludicrous 
 deductions of the Spanish school. In the place of their 
 fugitive and warring dreams we have, definitely, Lavalle's 
 Law of the Cyclone which he surprised in darkness and 
 cold at the foot of the overarching throne of the Aurora 
 Borealis. It is there that I, intent on my own investiga- 
 tions, have passed and re-passed a hundred times the 
 worn leonine face, white as the snow beneath him, furrowed 
 
 [73] 
 
REVIEWS 
 
 with wrinkles like the seams and gashes upon the North 
 Cape; the nervous hand, integrally a part of the mechanism 
 of his flighter; and above all, the wonderful lambent eyes 
 turned to the zenith. 
 
 "Master," I w^ould 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 1 known — if I 
 had known — I would many times have bartered my poor 
 laurels for the privilege, such as Tinsley and Herrera pos- 
 sess, of having aided him in his monumental researches. 
 
 It is to the filial piety of Victor Lavalle that we owe the 
 two volumes consecrated to the ground-life of his father, 
 so full of the holy intimacies of the domestic hearth. 
 Once returned from the abysms of the utter North to that 
 little house upon the outskirts of Meudon, it was not the 
 philosopher, the daring observer, the man of iron energy 
 that imposed himself on his family, but a fat and even 
 plaintive jester, a farceur incarnate and kindly, the co-equal 
 of his children, and, it must be written, not seldom the 
 comic despair of Madame Lavalle, who, as she writes five 
 years after the marriage, to her venerable mother, foimd 
 "in this unequalled intellect whose name I bear the 
 abandon of a large and very untidy boy." Here is her 
 letter: 
 
 "Xavier returned from I do not know where at mid- 
 night, absorbed in calculations on the eternal question of 
 his Aurora — la belle Aurore, whom I begin to hate. 
 Instead of anchoring — I had set out the guide-light above 
 our roof, so he had but to descend and fasten the plane — 
 he wandered, profoundly distracted, above the town with 
 
 '[74] 
 
REVIEWS 
 
 his anchor down! Figure to yourself, dear mother, it 
 is the roof of the mayor's house that the grapnel first 
 engages! That I do not regret, for the mayor's wife and 
 I are not s^Tnpathetic; but when Xavier uproots my pet 
 araucaria and bears it across the garden into the con- 
 servatory I protest at the top of my voice. Little Victor 
 in his night-clothes runs to the window, enormously amused 
 at the parabolic flight without reason, for it is too dark to 
 see the grapnel, of my prized tree. The Mayor of Meudon 
 thunders at our door in the name of the Law, demanding, 
 I suppose, my husband's head. Here is the conversation 
 through tlie megaphone — Xavier is two hundred feet 
 above us. 
 
 '"Mons. Lavalle, descend and make reparation for out- 
 rage of domicile. Descend, Mons. Lavalle!' 
 
 "No one answers. 
 
 "'Xavier Lavalle, in the name of the Law, descend and 
 submit to process for outrage of domicile.' 
 
 "Xavier, roused from his calculations, only compre- 
 hending the last words : ' Outrage of domicile ? My dear 
 mayor, who is the man that has corrupted thy Julie?' 
 
 "The mayor, furious, 'Xavier Lavalle ' 
 
 "Xavier, interrupting: 'I have not that felicity. lam 
 only a dealer in cyclones!' 
 
 "My faith, he raised one then! All Meudon attended 
 in the streets, and my Xavier, after a long time compre- 
 hending what he had done, excused himself in a thousand 
 apologies. At last the reconciliation was effected in our 
 house over a supper at two in the morning — Julie in a 
 wonderful costume of compromises, and I 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 
 
 [T5] 
 
REVIEWS 
 
 to commence his life's work. M. Victor liavalle 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 I^avalle whom the world, 
 immersed in speculations of immediate gain, did not know 
 nor suspect — the Lavalle whom they adjudged to the last a 
 pedant and a theorist. 
 
 The human, as apart from the scientific, side (developed 
 in his own volumes) of his epoch-making discoveries is 
 marked with a simplicity, clarity, and good sense beyond 
 praise. I would specially refer such as doubt the sustain- 
 ing influence of ancestral faith upon character and will 
 to the eleventh and nineteenth chapters, in which are con- 
 tained the opening and consummation of the Tellurionical 
 Records extending over nine years. Of their tremendous 
 significance be sure that the modest house at Meudon 
 knew as little as that the Records would one day be the 
 world's standard in all official meteorology. It was enough 
 for them that their Xavier — this son, this father, 
 this husband — ascended periodically to commune with 
 powers, it might be angelic, beyond their comprehension, 
 and that they united daily in prayers for his safety. 
 
 "Pray for me," he says upon the eve of each of his 
 excursions, and returning, with an equal simplicity, he 
 renders thanks "after supper in the little room where he 
 kept his barometers." 
 
 To the last Lavalle was a Catholic of the old school, 
 accepting — he who had looked into the very heart of the 
 lightnings — the dogmas of papal infallibility, of absolu- 
 
 [ 7(,' ] 
 
REVIEWS 
 
 tion, of confession — of relics great and small. Mar- 
 vellous — enviable contradiction ! 
 
 The completion of the Tellurionical Records closed what 
 Lavalle himself was pleased to call the theoretical side of 
 his labours — labours from which the youngest and least 
 impressionable planeur might well have shrunk. He had 
 traced through cold and heat, across the deeps of the 
 oceans, with instruments of his own invention, over the 
 inhospitable heart of the polar ice and the sterile visage 
 of the deserts, league by league, patiently, unweariedly, 
 remorselessly, from their ever-shifting cradle under the 
 magnetic pole to their exalted death-bed in the utmost 
 ether of the upper atmosphere — each one of the Isocon- 
 ical Tellurions — Lavalle's Curves, as we call them to-day. 
 He had disentangled the nodes of their intersections, 
 assigning to each its regulated period of flux and reflux. 
 Thus equipped, he summons Herrera and Tinsley, his 
 pupils, to the final demonstration as calmly as though he 
 were ordering his flighter for some midday journey to 
 Marseilles. 
 
 "I have proved my thesis," he writes. "It remains now 
 only that you should witness the proof. We go to Manila 
 to-morrow. A cyclone will form off the Pescadores S. 
 17 E. in four days, and will reach its maximum intensity 
 in twenty-seven hours after inception. It is there I will 
 show you the Truth." 
 
 A letter heretofore unpublished from Herrera to 
 Madame Lavalle tells us how the Master's prophecy was 
 verified. 
 
 (To be continued.) 
 
 [77] 
 
ADVERTISING SECTION 
 
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 pOR SALE — A BARGAIN — SIN- 
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 air-kit. 38 in. chest, 15} collar. Can be 
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 N. UM. Thi» office. 
 
 The Bee -Line Bookshop 
 
 BELT'S WAY-BOOKS, giving town lights 
 for all towns over •1.000 pop. as laid 
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 THE WORLD. Complete 2 vols. Thin 
 
 Oxford, limp back. 12s. 6d. 
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 THE TRANSATLANTIC AND MEDI- 
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 LAVALLES HEART OF THE 
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 RIMINGTONS PITFALLS IN THE 
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 VA U G H A N • S PLANE RACING IN 
 
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 HOFMAN'S LAWS OF LIFT AND 
 
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 DE VITRE'S THEORY OF SHIFTING 
 
 BALLAST IN DIRIGIBLES. 25. 6d. 
 
 SANGER'S WEATHERS OF THE 
 
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 SANGER'S TEMPERATURES AT 
 
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 HAWKIN'S FOG AND HOW TO 
 
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 VAN ZUYLAN'S SECONDARY 
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 DAHLGRENS AIR CURRENTS AND 
 
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 HALLIWELL'S ILLUMINATED STAR 
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 PASSES OF THE HIMALAYAS. 5a. 
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 A. C BELT & SON, READING 
 
SAFETY WEAR FOR AERONAUTS 
 
 Flickers 1 Flickers! Flickers I 
 
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 Hansen's Flickers Lead the Aerial Flight 
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 The new weighted Flicker with tweed or 
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 Flickers I Flickers I Flickers I 
 
APPLIANCES FOR AIR PLANES 
 
 What 
 
 99 
 
 "SKID 
 
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 "PITCH" 
 
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 The popularity of the 
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 Collison's forward- 
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 Rackslraw's forty- 
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AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLE GOODS 
 
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 Why does the 'plane builder 
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 Methinks the gentleman pro- 
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 The Standard Dig Construc- 
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 They build, equip and guEU'- 
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 logically 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 spin- 
 dles—Imperative. 
 For rear propellers— Indispen- 
 sable. 
 For all working parts — Advis- 
 able. 
 
 Commercial Minerals Co. 
 107 Mloorles 
 
 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! 
 
 Q 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 car- 
 ried tn plant. 
 
 f\ Less than two per cent, of the Planet's passen- 
 gers are carried tn plant. 
 
 Wt dttlfn, equip ontf 
 foaranltt DMglUu Jot 
 tU purpottt. 
 
 Standard Dig Construction 
 Company 
 
 MILLVALL (Od BUENOS AYgCS 
 
BAT-BOATS 
 
 Flint & Mantel 
 
 Southampton 
 
 FOR SALE 
 
 at the end of Season the following Bat-Boats: 
 
 GRISELDA.65 knt.. 42 ft.. 430 {nora.) Maginnis Motor. 
 
 under-rake rudder. 
 MABELLE, 50 knt., 40 ft.. 310 Hargreaves Motor, 
 
 Douglas' lock-steering gear. 
 rVEMONA, 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) 13/ knt, 60 ft.; Long- 
 Davidson double under-rake rudder, new this 
 season and unstrained. 850 nom. Maginnis 
 motor. Radium relays and Pond generator. 
 Bronze breakwater forward, and treble rein- 
 forced forefoot and entry. Talfourd rockered 
 keel. Triple set of Hofman vans, giving maxi- 
 mum lifting surface of 5327 sq. ft. 
 
 Ti/r/x^w nas been lifted and held seven feet 
 for two miles between touch and touch. 
 
 Our Autumn List of racing and family Bats 
 nady on the 9th January. 
 
AIRPLANES AND STARTERS 
 
 Hinks's Moderator 
 
 n 
 
 Monorail overhead starter 
 for family and private planes 
 up to twenty-five foot over all 
 
 Absolutely 
 Safe 
 
 Hinf^s iSr 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, p-^ r— , . . , . 
 
 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 1 
 
 Christian Wr 
 
 ESTABLIS 
 
 Accessories 
 
 Hooded Binnacles with dip-dials automatically 
 recording chainge of level (illuminated face). 
 
 All heights from 50 to 1 5.000 feet £2 10 
 
 With Aerial Board of Control certificate £3110 
 
 Foot and Hand Foghorns ; Sirens toned to 
 any club note; with air-chest belt-driven 
 from motor £6 8 
 
 Wireless installations syntonised to A. B.C. 
 requirements, in neat mahogany case, 
 hundred mile range .£330 
 
 Grapnels,* mushroom anchors, pithing - irons, 
 ranches, hawsers, snaps, shackles and mooring ropes, 
 for lav^rn, city, and public installations. 
 
 Detachable under-cars, aluminum orstcimped steel. 
 
 Keeled under-cars for planes : single-adtion detach- 
 ing-gear, turning car into boat with one motion or 
 the wri^. Invaluable for sea trips. 
 
 Head, side, and riding lights ( by size) Nos. 00 to 
 20 A.B.C. Standard. Rockets and fog-bombs in 
 colour? and tones of the principal clubs (boxed). 
 
 A seledtion of twenty £2176 
 
 International night-signals ( boxed ) £ I I I 6 
 
 C dialogue J ^«e thr 
 
ACCESSORIES AND SPARES 
 
 IGHT & OlDIS 
 
 HED 1924 
 
 and Spares 
 
 Spare generators guaranteed to lifting power 
 marked on cover ( prices according to power ). 
 
 Wind-noses for dirigibles — Pegamoid, cane-^iff- 
 ened, lacquered cane or aluminum and flux for 
 winter work. 
 
 Smoke-ring Cfinnon for hail ^orms.swivel mounted, 
 bow or ^em. 
 
 Propeller blades : metal, tungsten backed; papier- 
 mache ; wire stiffened ; ribbed Xylonite ( Nickson's 
 patent ) ; all razor-edged ( price by pitch and 
 diameter ). 
 
 Compressed ^eel 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 — (LavcJle's patent groov- 
 ing). 
 
 Wove steel beltings for outboeird* motors (non- 
 magnetic ). 
 
 Radium batteries, all powers to I 50 h.p. (in pairs). 
 
 Helium batteries, all powers to 300 h. p. (teuidem). 
 
 Stun'sle brakes worked from upp>er or lower 
 platform. 
 
 Direct plunge-brakes worked from lower plat- 
 form only, loaded silk or fibre, wind-tight. 
 
 oughotxi the Vlanei 
 
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