Survivor: The Autobiography (66 page)

I bank steeply around and set my course southeastward, cutting across the bouldered fjords, flying low over the hilltop farms, the rock fences and the small, green fields of Kerry. Now, I can check the engine – All cylinders hitting on the left switch – All cylinders hitting on the right – And all instrument readings are normal.

Sheep and cattle graze on their sloping pastures. Horse-drawn carts crawl along their shiny roads. People move across walled-in barnyards, through doorways of the primitive stone buildings. It must be a hard place to gain a living from the soil. And it would be worse than New England for a forced landing.

Even the wish to sleep has left, and with it the phantoms and voices. I didn’t notice their absence before; but now, as I settle down for the last six hundred miles to Paris, I realize that they remained behind with the fishing fleet. They vanished with that first strange touch of Europe and of man. Since I sighted those specks on the water, I’ve been as wide awake as though I started the flight this morning after a warm breakfast and a full night’s sleep. The thought of floating off in a bed of feathers has lost its attractiveness.

Time is no longer endless, or the horizon destitute of hope. The strain of take-off, storm, and ocean, lies behind. There’ll be no second night above the clouds, no more grappling with misty walls of ice. There’s only one more island to cross – only the narrow tip of an island. I look at England’s outline on my map. And then, within an hour, I’ll see the coast of France; and beyond that, Paris and Le Bourget. As Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were stepping-stones from America, Ireland and England are stepping-stones to Europe. Yesterday, each strip of sea I crossed was an advance messenger of the ocean. Today, these islands down below are heralds to a continent.

It’s as though a curtain has fallen behind me, shutting off the stagelike unreality of this transatlantic flight. It’s been like a theatre where the play carries you along in time and place until you forget you’re only a spectator. You grow unaware of the walls around you, of the programme clasped in your hand, even of your body, its breath, pulse, and being. You live with the actors and the setting, in a different age and place. It’s not until the curtain drops that consciousness and body reunite. Then, you turn your back on the stage, step out into the cool night, under the lights of streets, between the displays of store windows. You feel life surging in the crowd around you, life as it was when you entered the theatre, hours before. Life is real. It always was real. The stage, of course, was the dream. All that transpired there is now a memory, shut off by the curtain, by the doors of the theatre, by the passing minutes of time.

Striking Ireland was like leaving the doors of a theatre – phantoms for actors; cloud islands and temples for settings; the ocean behind me, an empty stage. The flight across is already like a dream. I’m over villages and fields, back to land and wakefulness and a type of flying that I know. I’m myself again, in earthly skies and over earthly ground. My hands and feet and eyelids move, and I can think as I desire. That third, controlling element has retired to the background. I’m no longer three existences in one. My mind is able to command, and my body follows out its orders with precision.

Ireland, England, France, Paris! The night at Paris!
This
night at Paris – less than six hours from Now –
France and Paris!
It’s like a fairy tale. Yesterday I walked on Roosevelt Field; today I’ll walk on Le Bourget.

SOURCES & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editor has made every effort to locate all persons having any rights in the selections appearing in this anthology and to secure permission from the holders of such rights. Any queries regarding the use of material should be addressed to the editor c/o the publishers.

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High Adventure
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The Spirit of St Louis
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Mawson, D.,
The Home of the Blizzard
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Saint-Exupéry, A. de, Wind, Sand & Stars, Heinemann, 1939. Trans. copyright © Lewis Galantíre

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Explorers’ And Travellers’ Tales
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ENDNOTES