Survivor: The Autobiography (65 page)

The ocean is as desolate as ever. Yet a complete change has taken place. I feel that I’ve safely recrossed the bridge to life – broken the strands which have been tugging me towards the universe beyond. Why do I find such joy, such encouragement in the sight of a porpoise? What possible bond can I have with a porpoise hundreds of miles at sea, with a strange creature I’ve never seen before and will never see again? What is there in that flashing glimpse of hide that means so much to me, that even makes it seem a different ocean? Is it simply that I’ve been looking so long, and seeing nothing? Is it an omen of land ahead? Or is there some common tie between living things that surmounts even the barrier of species?

Can it be that the porpoise was imaginary too, a part of this strange, living dream, like the fuselage’s phantoms and the islands which faded into mist? Yet I know there’s a difference, a dividing line that still exists between reality and apparition. The porpoise
was
real, like the water itself, like the substance of the cockpit around me, like my face which I can feel when I run my hand across it.

It’s twenty-six and a half hours since I took off. That’s almost twice as long as the flight between San Diego and St Louis; and that was much the longest flight I ever made. It’s asking a lot of an engine to run twenty-six hours without attention. Back on the mail, we check our Liberties at the end of every trip. Are the rocker-arms on my Whirlwind still getting grease? And how long will it keep on going if one of them should freeze?

I shift arms on the stick. My left hand – being free, and apparently disconnected from my mind’s control – begins aimlessly exploring the pockets of the chart bag. It pulls the maps of Europe halfway out to reassure my eyes they’re there, tucks my helmet and goggles in more neatly, and fingers the shiny little first-aid kit and the dark glasses given me by that doctor on Long Island. Why have I let my eyes burn through the morning? Why have I been squinting for hours and not thought of these glasses before? I hook the wires over my ears and look out on a shaded ocean. It’s as though the sky were overcast again. I don’t dare use them. They’re too comfortable, too pleasant. They make it seem like evening – make me want to sleep.

I slip the glasses back into their pocket, pull out the first-aid kit, and idly snap it open. It contains adhesive tape, compact bandages, and a little pair of scissors. Not enough to do much patching after a crash. Tucked into one corner are several silk-covered, glass capsules of aromatic ammonia. ‘For use as Smelling Salts’, the labels state. What did the doctor think I could do with smelling salts over the ocean? This kit is made for a child’s cut finger, or for some debutante fainting at a ball! I might as well have saved its weight on the take-off, for all the good it will be to me. I put it back in the chart bag – and then pull it out again. If smelling salts revive people who are about to faint, why won’t they revive people who are about to fall asleep? Here’s a weapon against sleep lying at my side unused, a weapon which has been there all through the morning’s deadly hours. A whiff of one of these capsules should sharpen the dullest mind. And no eyes could sleep stinging with the vapour of ammonia.

I’ll try one now. The fumes ought to clear my head and keep the compass centered. I crush a capsule between thumb and fingers. A fluid runs out, discolouring the white silk cover. I hold it cautiously, several inches from my nose. There’s no odour. I move it closer, slowly, until finally it touches my nostrils. I smell nothing! My eyes don’t feel the slightest sting, and no tears come to moisten their dry edges. I inhale again with no effect, and throw the capsule through the window. My mind now begins to realize how deadened my senses have become, how close I must be to the end of my reserves. And yet there may be another sleepless night ahead.

The Twenty-seventh Hour

I’m flying along dreamily when it catches my eyes, that black speck on the water two or three miles southeast. I realize it’s there with the same jerk to awareness that comes when the altimeter needle drops too low in flying blind. I squeeze my lids together and look again. A boat! A small boat! Several small boats, scattered over the surface of the ocean!

Seconds pass before my mind takes in the full importance of what my eyes are seeing. Then, all feeling of drowsiness departs. I bank the
Spirit of St Louis
towards the nearest boat and nose down towards the water. I couldn’t be wider awake or more keenly aware if the engine had stopped.

Fishing boats!
The coast, the European coast, can’t be far away!
The ocean is behind, the flight completed. Those little vessels, those chips on the sea, are Europe. What nationality? Are they Irish, English, Scotch, or French? Can they be from Norway, or from Spain? What fishing bank are they anchored on? How far from the coast do fishing banks extend? It’s too early to reach Europe unless a gale blew behind me through the night. Thoughts press forward in confused succession. After fifteen hours of solitude, here’s human life and help and safety.

The ocean is no longer a dangerous wilderness. I feel as secure as though I were circling Lambert Field back home. I could land alongside any one of those boats, and someone would throw me a rope and take me on board where there’d be a bunk I could sleep on, and warm food when I woke up.

The first boat is less than a mile ahead – I can see its masts and cabin. I can see it rocking on the water. I close the mixture control and dive down fifty feet above its bow, dropping my wing to get a better view.

But where is the crew? There’s no sign of life on deck. Can all the men be out in dories? I climb higher as I circle. No, there aren’t any dories. I can see for miles, and the ocean’s not rough enough to hide one. Are the fishermen frightened by my plane, swooping down suddenly from the sky? Possibly they never saw a plane before.
Of course
they never saw one out so far over the ocean. Maybe they all hid below the decks when they heard the roar of my engine. Maybe they think I’m some demon from the sky, like those dragons that decorate ancient mariners’ charts. But if the crews are so out of contact with the modern world that they hide from the sound of an airplane, they must come from some isolated coastal village above which airplanes never pass. And the boats look too small to have ventured far from home. I have visions of riding the top of a hurricane during the night, with a hundred-mile-an-hour wind drift. Possibly these vessels are anchored north of Ireland, or somewhere in the Bay of Biscay. Then shall I keep on going straight, or turn north, or south?

I fly over to the next boat bobbing up and down on the swells. Its deck is empty too. But as I drop my wing to circle, a man’s head appears, thrust out through a cabin porthole, motionless, staring up at me. In the excitement and joy of the moment, in the rush of ideas passing through my reawakened mind, I decide to make that head withdraw from the porthole, come out of the cabin, body and all, and to point towards the Irish coast. No sooner have I made the decision than I realize its futility. Probably that fisherman can’t speak English. Even if he can, he’ll be too startled to understand my message, and reply. But I’m already turning into position to dive down past the boat. It won’t do any harm to try. Why deprive myself of that easy satisfaction? Probably if I fly over it again, the entire crew will come on deck. I’ve talked to people before from a plane, flying low with throttled engine, and received the answer through some simple gesture – a nod or an outstretched arm.

I glide down within fifty feet of the cabin, close the throttle, and shout as loudly as I can ‘
WHICH WAY IS IRELAND
?’

How extraordinary the silence is with the engine idling! I look back under the tail, watch the fisherman’s face for some sign of understanding. But an instant later, all my attention is concentrated on the plane. For I realize that I’ve lost the ‘feel’ of flying. I shove the throttle open, and watch the air-speed indicator while I climb and circle. As long as I keep the needle above sixty miles an hour, there’s no danger of stalling. Always before, I’ve known instinctively just what condition my plane was in – whether it had flying speed or whether it was stalling, and how close to the edge it was riding in between. I didn’t have to look at the instruments. Now, the pressure of the stick no longer imparts its message clearly to my hand. I can’t tell whether air is soft or solid.

When I pass over the boat a third time, the head is still at the porthole. It hasn’t moved or changed expression since it first appeared. It came as suddenly as the boats themselves. It seems as lifeless. I didn’t notice before how pale it is – or am I now imagining its paleness? It looks like a severed head in that porthole, as though a guillotine had dropped behind it. I feel baffled. After all, a man who dares to show his face would hardly fear to show his body. There’s something unreal about these boats. They’re as weird as the night’s temples, as those misty islands of Atlantis, as the fuselage’s phantoms that rode behind my back.

Why don’t sailors gather on the decks to watch my plane? Why don’t they pay attention to my circling and shouting? What’s the matter with this strange flight, where dreams become reality, and reality returns to dreams? But these aren’t vessels of cloud and mist. They’re tangible, made of real substance like my plane – sails furled, ropes coiled neatly on the decks, masts swaying back and forth with each new swell. Yet the only sign of crew is that single head, hanging motionless through the cabin porthole. It’s like ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ my mother used to read aloud. These boats remind me of the ‘painted ship upon a painted ocean’.

I want to stay, to circle again and again, until that head removes itself from the porthole and the crews come out on deck. I want to see them standing and waving like normal, living people. I’ve passed through worlds and ages since my last contact with other men. I’ve been away, far away, planets and heavens away, until only a thread was left to lead me back to earth and life. I’ve followed that thread with swinging compasses, through lonely canyons, over pitfalls of sleep, past the lure of enchanted islands, fearing that at any moment it would break. And now I’ve returned to earth, returned to these boats bobbing on the ocean. I want an earthly greeting. I deserve a warmer welcome back to the fellowship of men.

Shall I fly over to another boat and try again to raise the crew? No, I’m wasting minutes of daylight and miles of fuel. There’s nothing but frustration to be had by staying longer. It’s best to leave. There’s something about this fleet that tries my mind and spirit, and lowers confidence with every circle I make. Islands that turn to fog, I understand. Ships without crews, I do not. And that motionless head at the porthole – it’s no phantom, and yet it shows no sign of life. I straighten out the
Spirit of St Louis
and fly on eastward.

The Twenty-eighth Hour

Is that a cloud on the northeastern horizon, or a strip of low fog – or –
can it possibly be land
? It looks like land, but I don’t intend to be tricked by another mirage. Framed between two grey curtains of rain, not more than ten or fifteen miles away, a purplish blue band has hardened from the haze – flat below, like a waterline – curving on top, as though composed of hills or aged mountains.

I’m only sixteen hours out from Newfoundland. I allowed eighteen and a half hours to strike the Irish coast. If that’s Ireland, I’m two and a half hours ahead of schedule. Can this be another, clearer image, like the islands of the morning? Is there something strange about it too, like the fishing fleet and that haunting head? Is each new illusion to become more real until reality itself is meaningless? But my mind is clear. I’m no longer half asleep. I’m awake – alert – aware. The temptation is too great. I can’t hold my course any longer. The
Spirit of St Louis
banks over towards the nearest point of land.

I stare at it intently, not daring to believe my eyes, keeping hope in check to avoid another disappointment, watching the shades and contours unfold into a coastline – a coastline coming down from the north – a coastline bending toward the east – a coastline with rugged shores and rolling mountains. It’s much too early to strike England, France or Scotland. It’s early to be striking Ireland; but that’s the nearest land.

A fjorded coast stands out as I approach. Barren islands guard it. Inland, green fields slope up the sides of warted mountains. This
must
be Ireland. It can be no other place than Ireland. The fields are too green for Scotland; the mountains too high for Brittany or Cornwall.

Now, I’m flying above the foam-lined coast, searching for prominent features to fit the chart on my knees. I’ve climbed to two thousand feet so I can see the contours of the country better. The mountains are old and rounded; the farms small and stony. Rain-glistened dirt roads wind narrowly through hills and fields. Below me lies a great tapering bay; a long, bouldered island; a village. Yes, there’s a place on the chart where it all fits – line of ink on line of shore – Valentia and Dingle Bay,
on the south-western coast of Ireland!

I can hardly believe it’s true. I’m almost exactly on my route, closer than I hoped to come in my wildest dreams back in San Diego. What happened to all those detours of the night around the thunderheads? Where has the swinging compass error gone? The wind above the storm clouds must have blown fiercely on my tail. In edging northward, intuition must have been more accurate than reasoned navigation.

The southern tip of Ireland! On course; over two hours ahead of schedule; the sun still well up in the sky; the weather clearing! I circle again, fearful that I’ll wake to find this too a phantom, a mirage fading into mid-Atlantic mist. But there’s no question about it; every detail on the chart has its counterpart below; each major feature on the ground has its symbol on the chart. The lines correspond exactly. Nothing in that world of dreams and phantoms was like this. I spiral lower, looking down on the little village. There are boats in the harbour, wagons on the stone-fenced roads. People are running out into the streets, looking up and waving. This is earth again, the earth where I’ve lived and now will live once more. Here are human beings. Here’s a human welcome. Not a single detail is wrong. I’ve never seen such beauty before – fields so green, people so human, a village so attractive, mountains and rocks so mountainous and rocklike.