The Spirit of ST Louis (56 page)

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 vapor 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, discoloring the white silk cover. I hold it cautiously, several inches from my nose. There's no odor, 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.

I lean out into the slipstream again, to breathe the fresher air. I nose down next to the water, gliding along tail high, swiftly, with lightened load and faster turning engine. I force the wheels as close as I dare to the waves, playing with their crests to stimulate my senses. I sharpen the blade of skill on the stone of danger.

Now, I fly in tight formation with my shadow, less than ten feet above the waves. Now, I let the Spirit of St. Louis rise to masthead height while I sink back to rest within the cockpit. At times I'm tempted to touch my tires on the water to break monotony and see spray fly up.

I did this once on the Mississippi River at St. Louis, racing with a speedboat. There was a regatta that day. The shores were lined with spectators, and the competition between boat and airplane was a star attraction. Our course lay around the piers of two bridges a half-mile or so apart. My old Standard biplane was so much faster than the speedboat that it was more an exhibition than a race. I throttled down to keep from gaining too many laps on my adversary. I flew under the bridge spans with him to give the crowd an extra thrill. I ran my tires through the wave tops -- they were ripples compared to these out here -- and flew so low over a launch that one of the crewmen jumped overboard when he saw my plane approaching. The crowd enjoyed it immensely. But the president of the company for whom I flew was not so impressed by my skill. He said he'd expected to see me crash into the water at any moment, and that the man who jumped overboard telephoned him the next morning, cursing and threatening suit.

No, I won't clip the top off a whitecap out here, hundreds of miles from shore. It wouldn't be like swimming halfway across the Mississippi and paying for a five-hundred-dollar airplane if I misjudged my height!

The Mississippi River -- how it has wound in and out through my life, like the seasons! I grew up on its banks, swam through its rapids, portaged its headwaters with my father. From Montana to Alabama, from Wisconsin to Texas, I've barnstomed through its valley. Each flight on my mail route took me over its junction with the muddy Missouri. Now, the movement of the ocean waves below, extending on to the straight line of the horizon, reminds me of the river's wheatfields. They too bent and rippled in the wind. I've flown mile after mile above their golden tassels, in Kansas, no higher than I'm flying now above the Atlantic. Sometimes I saw a coyote loping away from my plane, just as I saw the porpoise here at sea.

Is that a piece of driftwood? No, it's moving, it's a bird, a gull, wheeling low over the waves. A second sign of life! I twist around to watch the flapping wings pass behind my tail. There's another gull in the distance, a speck rising and lowering against the southern sky. This is becoming a populated ocean. What are gulls doing here so far from land? I've heard that they follow ships all the way from America to Europe, dropping down to pick up scraps of refuse. Then have I drifted south to the ship lanes? Are these birds simply waiting for the next liner to pass by? But there's not a ship in sight; not a sign of refuse on the surface -- no spar, no floating box, no orange peel.

Those gulls may have been resting on the water. How fortunate they are! Maybe they can sleep -- head tucked under wing and floating on the swells. They are really children of ocean and air, while I am an intruder where I don't belong. Gulls fly by nature, by God's design; I stay aloft by man's witchcraft. It takes no more than a stuck valve or cracked pipe line to break the spell of my flight. If my engine failed at this altitude of fifty feet, I'd scarcely have time to bank left into the wind, pull the stick back, and stall onto the water. Within half a minute, I'd be submerged in it, feeling its wetness, tasting its salt.

Of course the Spirit of St. Louis would float a long time with two-thirds of the fuel gone -- for hours -- perhaps for days. The sea is light. There'd be no rush about getting the raft out -- I could take my time pumping it up and loading in the equipment. I'd have a fair chance of being rescued, too -- in these European waters, especially if I'm on the ship lanes. With the sun overhead, beating down through a clear sky, it wouldn't be so very cold after I got the raft inflated and bailed out. I'd moor to the wreckage of the plane, curl up on the rubberized canvas bottom, and give way to sleep. I'd forget about all my problems. Nothing would matter until I'd slept --

Is that a spout rising from the sea, a half-mile ahead? Are there whales too out here, a few feet below those waves? I fix my eyes on the area and wait, as one waits for the second flash of an airway beacon at night. But it doesn't appear again. Probably I imagined that I saw a spout. At least I'll charge it to imagination. There must be no question about what is real and what is not. I'm still too close to the border line where one merges with the other.

Far away, in the northeastern sky, a layer of clouds is forming. Does that mean another storm ahead? It looks like a single stratus layer, several thousand feet above the ocean. But -- I study it carefully -- possibly broken cumulus clouds have bunched together to appear as a layer at a distance.

Europe -- I know from maps and newspapers and books it's there, somewhere over the horizon, as tangible and earthlike as America; but my senses will be skeptical of its existence until my eyes actually see it down below, until I fly close and find that its land does not dissolve into mist and shadow.

It must be there. The charts show it. They didn't lie about Nova Scotia. They told the truth about Newfoundland. I've measured them accurately. Europe must be there too. I know people who have been to Europe. Geographies and histories confirm its existence. Flying eastward from Newfoundland, it's impossible to miss. All I have to do is hold my course, and sooner or later I'll be bound to strike land -- as I struck Nova Scotia -- as I struck Newfoundland.

But how endlessly the ocean stretches out ahead. How mythical the European countries seem. Ireland, England, France, what lands of fable, how far away from home -- vague countries of my mother's people. They are there. They've got to be there. They're not like the cloud islands. They're like the porpoise and the gulls. By evening I should strike one of their coasts. In three hours, if I haven't sighted land, I'll turn thirty degrees to the north.

The shadows in my cockpit have assumed a different angle. The sun is lower. The wind has decreased. There are no longer foam streaks on the sea. Cumulus clouds mirror white on the deep blue water. A light haze replaces midday's crystal clarity. Gray areas in the distance mark scattered squalls.

During the hours of brilliant sunlight there seemed no need to concern myself greatly with problems of European weather. I could afford to fly lazily along, now aware of my surroundings, now far away in dreams. Why accuse such clear air of harboring a storm; why be suspicious of such an open sky? But those squalls ahead can no longer be shut out by blinders of the mind. They're real. They're not many miles away. They require a definite plan of action.

I've already spent fuel to increase my chance of a daylight landfall, so it's essential to stay underneath the clouds. I'll climb above them only as a last resort. Even if the sky becomes completely overcast the cloud base may stay high. If I can see only a few miles when I strike the coast line, I should be able to locate my position in daylight.

If vision is cut down by haze, I'll fly low over the first town I come to, and let the signboards tell me which country I'm in. Maybe I can read the name of the town itself on the railroad station, as I've done so often on cross-country flights at home. But you must be cautious flying over a land you don't know. I remember a day near New Orleans when my eye caught slender, vertical lines of steel ambushed in the haze and extending into the clouds above my Canuck. They were a few seconds of flight away, but I had to look carefully to see them, for they showed only a shade darker than the haze itself. Interconnected and held erect by an invisible maze of wires, those radio towers formed a great spider web for aircraft. Any one of their wires would have cut through a wing as scissors cut through paper. Such hazards aren't marked on the best maps one can buy.

The greatest test of my navigation will come if I make a landfall in darkness, when hills merge into valleys and railroad intersections are impossible to see. Then, I'll have to keep a sharp watch ahead to avoid flying into some hill or mountain before I know I'm leaving the ocean behind. Then, I'll have to establish my position from the general contour of the coast -- the bays, the peninsulas, the harbors, the meandering shore line. Then, I'll set a compass course from the lights of one major city to those of another, checking the distance between them against the air speed and the clock. If I find my position to be on the coast of northern Ireland, for instance, I'll set course first for Dublin, then for Birmingham, next London, and finally for Pairs. All four cities are so large that I should be able to find them if there's any ceiling at all beneath the clouds. The lights of ground traffic will help, too. In Europe, as in America, it must be true that "all roads lead to Rome."

My mind goes back to other nights; to submarine oceans of darkness, under a surface of thick clouds, over shoals of hills and trees. Many a night on the mail I've bored into one of those shallows, guided only by an occasional village and the dim lights of farmhouse windows. On such nights, ground and air are cloaked in a blackness that leaves no shade for horizon, no shadow for perception. Sometimes, when the mail was late, the lights in the windows blinked out, one after other, until there'd be only a single farmhouse as a beacon. Then I'd hope that some forgotten chore would keep the housewife busy for an extra minute, until I'd passed.

I used to search the ground below for the most meager craps of guidance. The lights of a motorcar were diamonds of information. Fence posts, in wintertime, were black pearls strung out to lead me on. I remember Love saying that one murky night he had crossed the river at Peoria by following cracks in the ice. The black network of water showing through helped him to judge his vital hundred feet of altitude.

There'll be no ice cracks to follow in Europe at the end of May, and no snow to accentuate trees and fences. But there will be shore lines with village lights on one side and not on the other, and roads with motorcars running along them. And in extreme emergency, there may be a softer shade of blackness to mark a clearing.

I'm flying along dreamily when it catches my eye, 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 toward the nearest boat and nose down toward the water. I couldn't be wider 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 toward 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, watching 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 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.