Night Flight (9 page)

The picture of Rivière alone there in his private office rose in Robineau's mind; “old chap,” Rivière had said. Never had there been a man so utterly unfriended as he, and Robineau felt an infinite compassion for him. He turned over in his mind vague sentences that hinted sympathy and consolation and the impulse prompting him struck Robineau as eminently laudable. He knocked gently at the door. There was no answer. Not daring in such a silence to knock louder, he turned the handle. Rivière was there. For the first time Robineau entered Rivière's room almost on an equal footing, almost as a friend; he likened himself to the N.C.O. who joins his wounded general under fire follows him in defeat and in exile plays a brother's part “Whatever happens I am with you”—that was Robineau's unspoken message.

Rivière said nothing; his head was bowed and he was staring at his hands. Robineau's courage ebbed and he dared not speak; the old lion daunted him, even in defeat. Phrases of loyalty, of ever-growing fervor, rose to his lips; but every time he raised his eyes they encountered that bent head, gray hair, and lips tight-set upon their bitter secret. At last he summoned up his courage.

“Sir!”

Rivière raised his head and looked at him. So deep, so far away had been his dream that till now he might well have been unconscious of Robineau's presence there. And what he felt, what was that dream, and what his heart's bereavement, none would ever know.... For a long while Rivière looked at Robineau as at the living witness
of some dark event. Robineau felt ill at ease. An enigmatic irony seemed to shape itself on his chief's lips as he watched Robineau. And the longer his chief watched him, the more deeply Robineau blushed and the more it grew on Rivière that this fellow had come, for all his touching and unhappily sincere good will, to act as spokesman for the folly of the herd.

Robineau by now had quite lost his bearings. The N.C.O., the general, the bullets—all faded into mist. Something inexplicable was in the air. Rivière's eyes were still intent on him. Reluctantly he shifted his position, withdrew his hand from his pocket. Rivière's eyes were on him still. At last, hardly knowing what he said, he stammered a few words.

“I've come for orders, sir.”

Composedly Rivière pulled out his watch. “It is two. The Asuncion mail will land at two ten. See that the Europe mail takes off at two fifteen.”

Robineau bruited abroad the astounding news; the night flight would continue. He accosted the office superintendent.

“Bring me that file of yours to check.”

The superintendent brought the papers.

“Wait!”

And the superintendent waited.

The Asuncion mail signaled that it was about to land. Even at the darkest hour, Rivière had followed, telegram by telegram, its well-ordered
progress. In the turmoil of this night he hailed it as the avenger of his faith, an all-conclusive witness. Each message telling of this auspicious flight augured a thousand more such flights to come. “And, after all,” thought Rivière, “we don't get a cyclone every night! Once the trail is blazed, it must be followed up.”

Coming down, flight by flight, from Paraguay, as from an enchanted garden set with flowers, low houses, and slow waters, the pilot had just skirted the edge of a cyclone which never masked from him a single star. Nine passengers, huddled in their traveling-rugs, had pressed their foreheads on the window, as if it were a shop front glittering with gems. For now the little towns of Argentina were stringing through the night their golden beads, beneath the paler gold of the star cities. And at his prow the pilot held within his hands his freight of lives, eyes wide open, full of moonlight, like a shepherd. Already Buenos Aires was dyeing the horizon with pink fires, soon to flaunt its diadem of jewels like some fairy hoard The wireless operator strummed with nimble fingers the final telegrams, last notes of a sonata he had played
allegro
in the sky—a melody familiar to Rivière's ears. Then he pulled up the aerial and stretched his limbs, yawning and smiling; another journey done.

The pilot who had just made land greeted the pilot of the Europe mail, who was lolling, his hands in his pockets, against the plane.

“Your turn to carry on?”

“Yes.”

“Has the Patagonia come in?”

“We don't expect it; lost. How's the weather? Fine?”

“Very fine. Is Fabien lost then?”

They spoke few words of him, for that deep fraternity of theirs dispensed with phrases.

The transit mailbags from Asuncion were loaded into the Europe mail while the pilot, his head bent back and shoulders pressed against the cockpit, stood motionless, watching the stars. He felt a vast power stirring in him and a potent joy.

“Loaded?” some one asked. “Then, contact!”

The pilot did not move. His engine was started. Now he would feel in his shoulders that pressed upon it the airplane come to life. At last, after all those false alarms—to start or not to start—his mind was easy His lips were parted and in the moon his keen white teeth glittered like a jungle cub's.

“Watch out! The night, you know...!”

He did not hear his comrade's warning. His hands thrust in his pockets and head bent back, he stared toward the clouds, mountains and seas and rivers, and laughed silently. Soft laughter that rustled through him like a breeze across a tree, and all his body thrilled with it. Soft laughter, yet stronger, stronger far, than all those clouds and mountains, seas and rivers.

“What's the joke?”

“It's that damned fool Rivière, who said . . who thinks I've got the wind up!”

In a minute he would be leaving Buenos Aires and Rivière, on active service once again, wanted to hear him go. To hear his thunder rise and swell and die into the distance like the tramp of armies marching in the stars.

With folded arms Rivière passed among the clerks and halted at a window to muse and listen. If he had held up even one departure, that would be an end of night flights. But, by launching this other mail into the darkness, Rivière had forestalled the weaklings who tomorrow would disclaim him.

Victory, defeat—the words were meaningless. Life lies behind these symbols and life is ever bringing new symbols into being. One nation is weakened by a victory, another finds new forces in defeat. Tonight's defeat conveyed perhaps a lesson which would speed the coming of final victory. The work in progress was all that mattered.

Within five minutes the radio stations would broadcast the news along the line, and across a thousand miles the vibrant force of life would give pause to every problem.

Already a deep organ note was booming; the plane.

Rivière went back to his work and, as he passed, the clerks quailed under his stern eyes; Rivière the Great, Rivière the Conqueror, bearing his heavy load of victory.

A
NTOINE
DE
S
AINT-
E
XUPÉRY,
the “Winged Poet,” was born in Lyon, France, in 1900. A pilot at twenty-six, he was a pioneer of commercial aviation and flew in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. His writings include
The Little Prince, Wind, Sand and Stars, Night Flight, Southern Mail,
and
Airman's Odyssey.
In 1944, while flying a reconnaissance mission for his French air squadron, he disappeared over the Mediterranean.