by Max Hennessy
In their thick flying suits, there was surprisingly little room in the cockpit, and their elbows and shoulders constantly brushed against each other. Knowing how quickly the constant friction could become an irritation, Ira signed to Alix to relax.
‘Take a rest,’ he advised. ‘I can watch the chart.’
For the first time, the old imperiousness returned. ‘I’m OK,’ she said sharply. ‘I don’t need a rest.’
But she handed him the maps, nevertheless, and slid down in her seat, her eyes on the instruments and the notes she was making in the log. Below them the sea looked smooth as silk, with no indication of waves – empty, lonely and cold – and he saw her frown as she stared down at it, and knew that her mind was filled with the same niggling thoughts that kept forcing their way through the confidence they felt in their machine.
The Connecticut shore was blue with haze and Ira dropped the nose a little to lose height so as to pick up their landmarks more easily. It would give them their first indication of how the compass was working.
The blue, grey and lavender mottling of the land slid forward to meet them, passing under the nose. Beyond, they could see the trees in their spring green, a misty green that came from young, incompletely opened leaves. A few boats and a solitary ship driving along the coast, drawing its snail-trail of foam across the water behind it, showed them where New Haven lay on their left, tucked inside the inlet of the Quinnipiac.
‘Earth inductor’s reading a couple of degrees easterly,’ Ira commented. ‘Unless there’s a breeze from the north we don’t know about. We’ll have to watch that. We should pass Providence on our right. Let’s see how we hit them.’
As they passed over the coastline, the turbulence hit them again, but it didn’t seem as bad as on the coast of Long Island. Ahead, the layer of grey stratus was still very low and to avoid it they descended even further. With a compass that was a degree or two off-true, it was important to be able to follow the course they’d intended, and, watching the clouds, noticing how they clung to the high land and nestled against the hills, he prayed that there would not have to be any detours at this stage in the flight.
‘Fisher’s Island below on your right, Ira,’ Alix said, looking down. ‘We’re still heading slightly east of our course.’
Ahead of them through the mist lay Rhode Island and the scattered islets of Narragansett Bay, and Ira frowned, knowing they should have been further to the west at this stage. But the sky was much clearer now and the layer of grey stratus had changed to strato-cumulus, while further ahead they could see gaps between the patches of greyish cotton wool.
Adjusting the course, Ira saw that the cloud base was lifting rapidly now and a glance at the dials showed that there was nothing wrong with the engine. It was irritating to find a fault in the compass so early in the journey but it was nothing to grow alarmed about. If they had no worse to contend with they had no need to worry, and already they’d burned off around a hundred pounds of their excess weight.
Alix glanced at the dial readings and marked them off on the log, working out fuel consumption and the state of the tanks.
‘How’s she flying?’ she asked.
‘I’m not having to hold the nose down so much. Another hour or two and she’ll be nicely balanced.’
They could see the vast holiday houses of Newport now, and the railway line curving north to the smoke pall of Providence and beyond, then turning east again to the coast at Boston. Between Pawtucket and Taunton they flew over small fields between stone walls that were full of cows and sheep scattered like beads on grass that was the new livid green of spring.
‘So many villages here, it’s hard to pick ’em out,’ Ira said.
‘That’s Attleboro.’ Alix jerked a hand to her left. ‘Right ahead’s Norton. Easton just beyond.’
‘How’s the wind?’
She peered down at the rising columns hanging listlessly in the air. ‘None worth speaking of.’
‘I think the weather’s clearing, too,’ Ira said. ‘They said it would along the coast.’
They had been flying for two hours and a quarter now, and apart from the trivial problem of the compass, things were going better than they could have expected.
‘Come on to sixty-nine degrees,’ Alix said. ‘Hold it for an hour.’
The great curving arm of Cape Cod was almost behind them now, and they could see the smoke haze of Boston mingling with the clouds. They were heading over Massachusetts Bay into the Gulf of Maine and aiming for Nova Scotia where Nungesser and Coli were first believed to have been lost. The land was behind them now and the grey sweep of the Atlantic lay ahead, vast, mysterious, endless, wet and cold. Ira had always somehow regarded it as dark, but there it was below them, bright with the day’s light. From now on, for two hours, there would be no landmarks to set against their charts, no means of checking their compass, only the rolling grey waters of the North Atlantic. They were depending now entirely on the number of times to the minute the cylinders would fire, and the number of times the propeller would revolve, depending on the fragile wings that kept them aloft and the sluggish compass needle that was to hold them on course.
Considering what they proposed to do, regarding it unemotionally in the cold light of day, Ira found his worries rested entirely on the Hughesden petrol pump. It had already been said that success would prove little because so much depended on luck – and certainly with engines and aeroplanes developed almost to the point of certainty, luck was the only really doubtful element about the flight. And to Ira luck meant one small spindle supporting the cam by which the Hughesden pump operated. As far as the actual flying was concerned he was remarkably at ease. Although he’d never attempted such a flight before, he’d often found his way above cloud by compass, and tracked across the empty lands of Russia, Africa and China. He’d never been obliged to follow railway lines (‘Flying by Bradshaw’, they’d called it in the Flying Corps) and had never had to descend to read the names on railway stations, which was how some pilots made their way around. He’d decided early in his career that with the range and power of aeroplanes constantly developing, it was no good navigating by that sixth sense that experienced men were supposed to possess. He’d never believed much in it because it invariably turned out to be sheer luck, and inspired hunches often turned out to be guesswork that would have been thoughtless impulse if they’d been wrong.
Ahead of them now were 250 miles of water, and, while a seat-of-the-pants flier might conceivably make his landfall in Nova Scotia, it would require more than luck and a sixth sense to carry him accurately over the 2,000 miles from Newfoundland to his next landfall in Ireland. The smallest error, the slightest fault that showed in the short leg to Nova Scotia would be multiplied ten times by the time they reached Ireland.
He glanced down at the sea. An indication of the lack of wind was the absence of white caps on the waves or the shot-silk marks across the surface where it brushed the water. From above it looked like a steely sheet, and descending to seek the denser air below, they flew for some time over a restless surface that looked cold and a cheerless grey-green in colour, neither warm with friendliness nor brooding with animosity – just existing.
‘She’s riding better,’ Ira observed, adjusting the stabiliser again.
There were a few fishing vessels below them now, scattered across the surface of the sea, and sunshine sparkled on the water ahead of them so that he became aware of the warmth of it on his hands through the glass of the windscreen. The gaps between the clouds were increasing now, vast areas of brilliant blue surrounded by ivory towers of cumulus, rising one on another, tower on tower, keep on keep, then, beyond them, the vast plain of the open sky.
Alix was sitting silently alongside him, and he glanced at her, wondering what was going through her mind as she busied herself with charts, courses and fuel consumption. Throttling back a little further, he adjusted the mixture so that the speed dropped a fraction, because it was less of a strain now to keep the t
ail up with almost 350 pounds of fuel from the tank behind them already used.
He glanced down at the sea again and noticed from the movement of the waves that a breeze had sprung up, blowing them south and slightly east. It wasn’t what they wanted, because it only accentuated the fault they’d found in the compass, and they discussed the drift for a while and decided to adjust the earth inductor to it, in the hope of being better able to work out the error.
The rising sun on the windows at the side of the cockpit was making it uncomfortably hot now and Ira noticed that Alix had unfastened her flying suit. She passed him a cold sausage without speaking, and as he munched it he gestured at the controls. The look she flashed at him showed gratitude for having something to do, and for the trust he placed in her.
‘Stick close to the course,’ he advised. ‘Then we can work out what the compass’s doing when we strike Nova Scotia.’
She nodded, still not speaking, and for an hour he sat comfortably alongside her, marking down instrument readings, his eyes drifting over the dials. It was pleasant to relax a little, moving his legs as much as he could to get rid of the cramp, and his mind drifted back to the powered box-kites in which he’d first taken to the air – his father’s biplanes, Cody’s towering two-decker, the early Henri Farmans where he’d sat out in front at the mercy of the weather, judging his angle by the elevator set like a tea-tray before him and working out his speed by the noise of the wind in the birdcage of wires about him.
What he was sitting in now was a man-made comet by comparison. Able to fly for hours at a mile and a half a minute, sleek and streamlined, its drag elements reduced only to a couple of struts and an undercarriage, and able to cross the vast width of the Atlantic in only thirty-six hours, it was years ahead of its time.
‘Land, Ira.’
Alix’s voice jerked him back to the present and he sat up and stared ahead. A vast purple-grey shadow stretched into the distance on their left and he could see hills piercing the horizon.
‘Nova Scotia.’
Alix nodded calmly. ‘We’re still edging to starboard all the time. I think that’s Wedgeport on your left.’
Ahead of them the vast land mass that made up the easternmost tip of Canada stretched, patched with green and barren, between the areas of pine, and he realised they were moving up the eastern coast when he’d expected to strike it seventy-five miles to the west so as to fly the length of the Bay of Fundy and over the easternmost point of Prince Edward Island into Cabot Strait and the mouth of the St Lawrence.
If they continued to follow the course the Hughesden earth inductor suggested, they’d miss St John’s on the tip of Newfoundland by as much as forty or fifty miles.
Chapter 8
‘Five degrees,’ Ira said. ‘I reckon it’s five degrees off true.’
‘Not much,’ Alix commented.
No, Ira thought. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. They had around thirty changes of course between their present position and Paris, and the error was sufficient to throw them a long way out at the end of a 2,000-mile leg. With the wind from the north, it could have them trying to identify the tip of Ireland somewhere well down in the Bay of Biscay with their petrol low.
‘Let’s forget the earth inductor,’ he suggested, ‘and use the liquid compass. Let’s allow for the error and see how we strike Newfoundland.’
The ground beneath them now was dotted with trees, ugly boulders and small still patches of water. There seemed to be remarkably little land cultivation and few settlements, as though the bare sparse countryside had defied all efforts to make anything of it.
Alix was studying the water and the shadows of the clouds. ‘There’s a wind here,’ she pointed out. ‘Thirty miles an hour, I guess.’
The bare hills on their left rose into a range of peaked mountains, and Ira indicated that she should climb.
‘Watch the tail-heaviness,’ he advised above the roar of the engine. ‘The weight’s not burned off yet.’
She opened the throttle and the Dixie’s nose lifted and for a while Ira watched for the signs that their overload had unbalanced the plane in its new attitude. She carefully adjusted the stabiliser, however, and there was only a little turbulence now that didn’t seem to worry her.
‘Halifax,’ she said, and looking down he saw the fortified eminence and the long harbour, with its double entrances on either side of McNab’s Island, and the narrow channel to Bedford Basin. Railway lines curved into a terminus from the west and down to the docks between low wooden houses.
Alix gestured towards the harbour. ‘Six hours to Halifax is OK,’ she said.
In spite of their northerly position, it was warm in the cabin now, and Ira opened the ventilator. The cold current of air seemed to wake them both up, and he glanced at the dials, noticing that the oil pressure had risen slightly.
Halifax was behind them now and they were flying along the broken coastline, a mass of small bays and inlets and small settlements of wooden houses, but the land itself looked rugged and rocky, and uninvitingly hard to work.
Over the land, as though the air were matching its mood to the harsh soil below, clouds were building up, great squadrons of cumulus, the first outriders quite close to them like the vedettes for a mighty army that was bearing down on them, dark and ugly and blotting out the whole of the northern horizon with its regiments. Below them the land was blurred by the angled shapes of squalls.
‘Rain,’ Alix commented.
‘Let’s hope that’s all it is.’
The machine was already lurching a little in the turbulent air, and the lakes below, which earlier had been still, were now ruffled and they could see the feathers of movement across the water where the gusting wind struck them. The calmer waters along the shore were delusive because they were in the lee of the craggy land mass, but further out they could see white horses, as though the wind were strong and fierce.
With the wind on their port side, they knew that the worsening weather was directly ahead of them and, crabbing into the squalls at a broad angle to compensate for drift, they could now see the solid mass of the storm athwart their route.
‘Are we turning south away from it, Ira?’ Alix broke the silence that had settled on them as their thoughts became occupied with the weather and the increasing gustiness.
Ira shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep to the course if we can. It can only blow us away from the coast a little, and it might not be much.’
The turbulence was increasing steadily by this time, tossing the machine about violently with the uncomfortable lurching motion, jarring the wings’ roots as the spars shuddered and shook in the buffeting. They fastened their safety belts again, aware that in spite of the amount of fuel they’d used, they were still heavily overloaded for such a small plane. Taking over the controls again, Ira moved the throttle back and let the speed drop. It was like driving a ship into the teeth of a storm. As the buffeting increased, they had to reduce forward way to reduce the shaking.
Below them the hills and lakes were blurred by the rain now, and the clouds about them were increasing, crowding in on them, purple-grey and ugly, the rain hammering at the glass in front of their faces as though the avenging army behind the vedettes were hurrying to protect the silences of these northern skies from the interlopers from the south.
The wind had increased tremendously by this time and, try as he might, Ira could not keep from his mind the question: Had they misjudged the weather? Would it become worse and should they have waited a day longer? They were crabbing across a wind that was gusting up to fifty miles an hour now, zigzagging a little to dodge the columns of rain that smashed deafeningly against the windscreen, blinding them as effectively as if it had drawn a blind in front of them. The cabin was lit up by the glare of lightning and Ira moved the stick to turn them away from the storm. Visibility returned as the squall died abruptly, though flurries of rain still struck the windscreen, jerked, shuddered, moved against all the laws of gravity
upwards as the wind drove them before it. Writhing lines of water shivered over the engine cowling and back to the windscreen, trickling along the surfaces, cowering and recovering behind the cylinder heads where there was some protection from the propeller’s blast. Alix began to knock it off her flying suit as it forced its way through the door.
‘Up periscope,’ Ira said laconically. ‘Down to ten fathoms.’
Below them the roads and rocks and roofs were reflecting the lurid light that streamed down from the sky, and the few ribbons of smoke from the scattered huddles of buildings were shredded by the storm. They had descended again to avoid the clouds and, pouring the machine down the contours of the ground, as they swept up and through a narrow saddle between the hills they could see the trees on either side of them bending under the press of the wind.
As they reached the jagged edge of the cold front, the waves across the little lakes below leapt under the buffeting of the wind, whose direction veered rapidly, and swung back again each time they hit a fresh squall.
Then gradually, as they pressed further along the coast, the wind steadied and began to blow from the north and west, still carrying them south, but helping them along their route.
As the last of the rain blew from the engine cowling, Alix peered at the instruments.
‘We can do with less of that,’ she observed.
Ira nodded, letting her have the controls again now that the buffeting had ceased. Patches of clear sky had begun to reappear, and there was no point in not taking rest. Before they’d finished, they’d both be fighting fatigue.
They were flying now over deep forests, black shadows on the grey-green of the earth, and patches of swamp and trees that were full of life. From time to time, they saw huge clouds of water birds over the lakes, their wings beating against the wind, and Ira remembered how he’d once seen them rising from the calm backwaters of the Yangtze in China. From below they would look like vast islands of reeds at first, then there would be a fluttering and a stirring along the edges, a restlessness as though the reeds were disturbed from beneath, until they finally burst into the air with a clatter of wings and the slapping of webbed feet on the water, to circle in a black cloud, filling the heavens with the throbbing sound of their cries as they darkened the sky with their numbers.