With the Night Mail

With the Night Mail

A Story Of 2000 A. D.

(Together with extracts from the magazine in which it appeared)

A nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood on the lower
stages of one of the G.P.O. outward mail towers. My purpose was a
run to Quebec in "Postal Packet 162 or such other as may be
appointed"; and the Postmaster-General himself countersigned the
order. This talisman opened all doors, even those in the
despatching-caisson at the foot of the tower, where they were
delivering the sorted Continental mail. The bags lay packed close
as herrings in the long grey underbodies which our G.P.O. still
calls "coaches." Five such coaches were filled as I watched, and
were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waiting packets
three hundred feet nearer the stars.

From the despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous and
wonderfully learned official Mr. L.L. Geary, Second Despatcher of
the Western Route--to the Captains' Room (this wakes an echo of
old romance), where the mail captains come on for their turn of
duty. He introduces me to the captain of "162"--Captain Purnall,
and his relief, Captain Hodgson. The one is small and dark; the
other large and red; but each has the brooding sheathed glance
characteristic of eagles and aeronauts. You can see it in the
pictures of our racing professionals, from L.V. Rautsch to little
Ada Warrleigh--that fathomless abstraction of eyes habitually
turned through naked space.

On the notice-board in the Captains' Room, the pulsing arrows of
some twenty indicators register, degree by geographical degree,
the progress of as many homeward-bound packets. The word "Cape"
rises across the face of a dial; a gong strikes: the South
African mid-weekly mail is in at the Highgate Receiving Towers.
That is all. It reminds one comically of the traitorous little
bell which in pigeon-fanciers', lofts notifies the return of a
homer.

"Time for us to be on the move," says Captain Purnall, and we are
shot up by the passenger-lift to the top of the despatch-towers.
"Our coach will lock on when it is filled and the clerks are
aboard."

"No. 162" waits for us in Slip E of the topmost stage. The great
curve of her back shines frostily under the lights, and some
minute alteration of trim makes her rock a little in her
holding-down slips.

Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, "162"
comes to rest as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter
nose-cap (worn bright as diamond with boring through uncounted
leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the inset of her three built
out propeller-shafts is some two hundred and forty feet. Her
extreme diameter, carried well forward, is thirty-seven. Contrast
this with the nine hundred by ninety-five of any crack liner, and
you will realize the power that must drive a hull through all
weathers at more than the emergency speed of the Cyclonic!

The eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping
hair-crack of the bow-rudder--Magniac's rudder that assured us
the dominion of the unstable air and left its inventor penniless
and half-blind. It is calculated to Castelli's "gullwing" curve.
Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of
an inch and she will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she
is under control again. Give her full helm and she returns on her
track like a whip-lash. Cant the whole forward--a touch on the
wheel will suffice--and she sweeps at your good direction up or
down. Open the complete circle and she presents to the air a
mushroom-head that will bring her up all standing within a half
mile.

"Yes," says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought, "Castelli
thought he'd discovered the secret of controlling aeroplanes when
he'd only found out how to steer dirigible balloons. Magniac
invented his rudder to help war-boats ram each other; and war
went out of fashion and Magniac he went out of his mind because
he said he couldn't serve his country any more. I wonder if any
of us ever know what we're really doing."

"If you want to see the coach locked you'd better go aboard. It's
due now," says Mr. Geary. I enter through the door amidships.
There is nothing here for display. The inner skin of the
gas-tanks comes down to within a foot or two of my head and turns
over just short of the turn of the bilges. Liners and yachts
disguise their tanks with decoration, but the G.P.O. serves them
raw under a lick of grey official paint. The inner skin shuts off
fifty feet of the bow and as much of the stern, but the
bow-bulkhead is recessed for the lift-shunting apparatus as the
stern is pierced for the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies
almost amidships. Forward of it, extending to the turn of the bow
tanks, is an aperture--a bottomless hatch at present--into which
our coach will be locked. One looks down over the coamings three
hundred feet to the despatching-caisson whence voices boom
upward. The light below is obscured to a sound of thunder, as our
coach rises on its guides. It enlarges rapidly from a
postage-stamp to a playing-card; to a punt and last a pontoon.
The two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as it comes into
place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers and leap into
the docketed racks, while both captains and Mr. Geary satisfy
them selves that the coach is locked home. A clerk passes the
way-bill over the hatch coaming. Captain Purnall thumb-marks and
passes it to Mr. Geary. Receipt has been given and taken.
"Pleasant run," says Mr. Geary, and disappears through the door
which a foot high pneumatic compressor locks after him.

"A-ah!" sighs the compressor released. Our holding-down clips
part with a tang. We are clear.

Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid underbody porthole
through which I watch over-lighted London slide eastward as the
gale gets hold of us. The first of the low winter clouds cuts off
the well-known view and darkens Middlesex. On the south edge of
it I can see a postal packet's light ploughing through the white
fleece. For an instant she gleams like a star ere she drops
toward the Highgate Receiving Towers. "The Bombay Mail," says
Captain Hodgson, and looks at his watch. "She's forty minutes
late."

"What's our level?" I ask.

"Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on the bridge?"

The bridge (let us ever praise the G.P.O. as a repository of
ancientest tradition!) is represented by a view of Captain
Hodgson's legs where he stands on the Control Platform that runs
thwart-ships overhead. The bow colloid is unshuttered and Captain
Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is feeling for a fair slant. The
dial shows 4300 feet. "It's steep to-night," he mutters, as tier
on tier of cloud drops under. "We generally pick up an easterly
draught below three thousand at this time o' the year. I hate
slathering through fluff."

"So does Van Cutsem. Look at him huntin' for a slant!" says
Captain Hodgson. A foglight breaks cloud a hundred fathoms below.
The Antwerp Night Mail makes her signal and rises between two
racing clouds far to port, her flanks blood-red in the glare of
Sheerness Double Light. The gale will have us over the North Sea
in half-an-hour, but Captain Purnall lets her go
composedly--nosing to every point of the compass as she rises.

"Five thousand-six, six thousand eight hundred"--the dip-dial
reads ere we find the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of
snow at the thousand fathom level. Captain Purnall rings up the
engines and keys down the governor on the switch before him.
There is no sense in urging machinery when Eolus himself gives
you good knots for nothing. We are away in earnest now--our nose
notched home on our chosen star. At this level the lower clouds
are laid out, all neatly combed by the dry fingers of the East.
Below that again is the strong westerly blow through which we
rose. Overhead, a film of southerly drifting mist draws a
theatrical gauze across the firmament. The moonlight turns the
lower strata to silver without a stain except where our shadow
underruns us. Bristol and Cardiff Double Lights (those statelily
inclined beams over Severnmouth) are dead ahead of us; for we
keep the Southern Winter Route. Coventry Central, the pivot of
the English system, stabs upward once in ten seconds its spear of
diamond light to the north; and a point or two off our starboard
bow The Leek, the great cloud-breaker of Saint David's Head,
swings its unmistakable green beam twenty-five degrees each way.
There must be half a mile of fluff over it in this weather, but
it does not affect The Leek.

"Our planet's over-lighted if anything," says Captain Purnall at
the wheel, as Cardiff-Bristol slides under. "I remember the old
days of common white verticals that 'ud show two or three hundred
feet up in a mist, if you knew where to look for 'em. In really
fluffy weather they might as well have been under your hat. One
could get lost coming home then, an' have some fun. Now, it's
like driving down Piccadilly."

He points to the pillars of light where the cloud-breakers bore
through the cloud-floor. We see nothing of England's outlines:
only a white pavement pierced in all directions by these manholes
of variously coloured fire--Holy Island's white and red--St.
Bee's interrupted white, and so on as far as the eye can reach.
Blessed be Sargent, Ahrens, and the Dubois brothers, who invented
the cloud-breakers of the world whereby we travel in security!

"Are you going to lift for The Shamrock?" asks Captain Hodgson.
Cork Light (green, fixed) enlarges as we rush to it. Captain
Purnall nods. There is heavy traffic hereabouts--the cloud-bank
beneath us is streaked. with running fissures of flame where the
Atlantic boats are hurrying Londonward just clear of the fluff.
Mail-packets are supposed, under the Conference rules, to have
the five-thousand-foot lanes to themselves, but the foreigner in
a hurry is apt to take liberties with English air. "No. 162"
lifts to a long-drawn wail of the breeze in the fore-flange of
the rudder and we make Valencia (white, green, white) at a safe
7000 feet, dipping our beam to an incoming Washington packet.

There is no cloud on the Atlantic, and faint streaks of cream
round Dingle Bay show where the driven seas hammer the coast. A
big S.A.T.A. liner (Societe Anonyme des Transports Aeriens) is
diving and lifting half a mile below us in search of some break
in the solid west wind. Lower still lies a disabled Dane she is
telling the liner all about it in International. Our General
Communication dial has caught her talk and begins to eavesdrop.
Captain Hodgson makes a motion to shut it off but checks himself.
"Perhaps you'd like to listen," he says.

"Argol of St. Thomas," the Dane whimpers. "Report owners three
starboard shaft collar-bearings fused. Can make Flores as we are,
but impossible further. Shall we buy spares at Fayal?"

The liner acknowledges and recommends inverting the bearings. The
Argol answers that she has already done so without effect, and
begins to relieve her mind about cheap German enamels for
collar-bearings. The Frenchman assents cordially, cries "Courage,
mon ami," and switches off.

Then lights sink under the curve of the ocean.

"That's one of Lundt & Bleamers' boats," says Captain Hodgson.
"Serves 'em right for putting German compos in their
thrust-blocks. She won't be in Fayal to-night! By the way,
wouldn't you like to look round the engine-room?"

I have been waiting eagerly for this invitation and I follow
Captain Hodgson from the control-platform, stooping low to avoid
the bulge of the tanks. We know that Fleury's gas can lift
anything, as the world-famous trials of '89 showed, but its
almost indefinite powers of expansion necessitate vast tank room.
Even in this thin air the lift-shunts are busy taking out
one-third of its normal lift, and still "162" must be checked by
an occasional downdraw of the rudder or our flight would become a
climb to the stars. Captain Purnall prefers an overlifted to an
underlifted ship; but no two captains trim ship alike. "When I
take the bridge," says Captain Hodgson, "you'll see me shunt
forty per cent of the lift out of the gas and run her on the
upper rudder. With a swoop upward instead of a swoop downward, as
you say. Either way will do. It's only habit. Watch our dip-dial!
Tim fetches her down once every thirty knots as regularly as
breathing."

So is it shown on the dip-dial. For five or six minutes the arrow
creeps from 6700 to 7300. There is the faint "szgee" of the
rudder, and back slides the arrow to 6000 on a falling slant of
ten or fifteen knots.

"In heavy weather you jockey her with the screws as well," says
Captain Hodgson, and, unclipping the jointed bar which divides
the engine-room from the bare deck, he leads me on to the floor.
Here we find Fleury's Paradox of the Bulk-headed Vacuum--which we
accept now without thought--literally in full blast. The three
engines are H.T.&T. assisted-vacuo Fleury turbines running from
3000 to the Limit--that is to say, up to the point when the
blades make the air "bell"--cut out a vacuum for themselves
precisely as over-driven marine propellers used to do. "162's"
Limit is low on account of the small size of her nine screws,
which, though handier than the old colloid Thelussons, "bell"
sooner. The midships engine, generally used as a reinforce, is
not running; so the port and starboard turbine vacuum-chambers
draw direct into the return-mains.

The turbines whistle reflectively. From the low-arched
expansion-tanks on either side the valves descend pillarwise to
the turbine-chests, and thence the obedient gas whirls through
the spirals of blades with a force that would whip the teeth out
of a power saw. Behind, is its own pressure held in leash of
spurred on by the lift-shunts; before it, the vacuum where
Fleury's Ray dances in violet-green bands and whirled turbillons
of flame. The jointed U-tubes of the vacuum-chamber are
pressure-tempered colloid (no glass would endure the strain for
an instant) and a junior engineer with tinted spectacles watches
the Ray intently. It is the very heart of the machine--a mystery
to this day. Even Fleury who begat it and, unlike Magniac, died a
multi-millionaire, could not explain how the restless little imp
shuddering in the U-tube can, in the fractional fraction of a
second, strike the furious blast of gas into a chill
greyish-green liquid that drains (you can hear it trickle) from
the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and the
mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous, one had
almost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh.
Bilge-tank, upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum,
main-return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the
ordained cycle. Fleury's Ray sees to that; and the engineer with
the tinted spectacles sees to Fleury's Ray. If a speck of oil, if
even the natural grease of the human finger touch the hooded
terminals, Fleury's Ray will wink and disappear and must be
laboriously built up again. This means half a day's work for all
hands and an expense of, one hundred and seventy-odd pounds to
the G.P.O. for radium-salts and such trifles.

"Now look at our thrust-collars. You won't find much German compo
there. Full-jewelled, you see," says Captain Hodgson as the
engineer shunts open the top of a cap. Our shaft-bearings are
C.M.C. (Commercial Minerals Company) stones, ground with as much
care as the lens of a telescope. They cost L837 apiece. So far we
have not arrived at their term of life. These bearings came from
"No. 97," which took them over from the old Dominion of Light
which had them out of the wreck of the Persew aeroplane in the
years when men still flew wooden kites over oil engines!

They are a shining reproof to all low-grade German "ruby"
enamels, so-called "boort" facings, and the dangerous and
unsatisfactory alumina compounds which please dividend-hunting
owners and turn skippers crazy. The rudder-gear and the gas
lift-shunt, seated side by side under the engine-room dials, are
the only machines in visible motion. The former sighs from time
to time as the oil plunger rises and falls half an inch. The
latter, cased and guarded like the U-tube aft, exhibits another
Fleury Ray, but inverted and more green than violet. Its function
is to shunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do without
watching. That is all! A tiny pump-rod wheezing and whining to
itself beside a sputtering green lamp. A hundred and fifty feet
aft down the flat-topped tunnel of the tanks a violet light,
restless and irresolute. Between the two, three white-painted
turbine-trunks, like eel-baskets laid on their side, accentuate
the empty perspectives. You can hear the trickle of the liquefied
gas flowing from the vacuum into the bilge-tanks and the soft
gluck-glock of gaslocks closing as Captain Purnall brings "162"
down by the head. The hum of the turbines and the boom of the air
on our skin is no more than a cotton-wool wrapping to the
universal stillness. And we are running an eighteen-second mile.

I peer from the fore end of the engine-room over the
hatch-coamings into the coach. The mail-clerks are sorting the
Winnipeg, Calgary, and Medicine Hat bags; but there is a pack of
cards ready on the table.

Suddenly a bell thrills; the engineers run to the turbine-valves
and stand by; but the spectacled slave of the Ray in the U-tube
never lifts his head. He must watch where he is. We are
hard-braked and going astern; there is language from the Control
Platform.

"Tim's sparking badly about something," says the unruffled
Captain Hodgson. "Let's look."

Captain Purnall is not the suave man we left half an hour since,
but the embodied authority of the G.P.O. Ahead of us floats an
ancient, aluminum-patched, twin-screw tramp of the dingiest, with
no more right to the 5000-foot lane than has a horse-cart to a
modern road. She carries an obsolete "barbette" conning tower--a
six-foot affair with railed platform forward--and our warning
beam plays on the top of it as a policeman's lantern flashes on
the area sneak. Like a sneak-thief, too, emerges a shock-headed
navigator in his shirt-sleeves. Captain Purnall wrenches open the
colloid to talk with him man to man. There are times when Science
does not satisfy.

"What under the stars are you doing here, you sky-scraping
chimney-sweep?" he shouts as we two drift side by side. "Do you
know this is a Mail-lane? You call yourself a sailor, sir? You
ain't fit to peddle toy balloons to an Esquimaux. Your name and
number! Report and get down, and be--!"

"I've been blown up once," the shock-headed man cries, hoarsely,
as a dog barking. "I don't care two flips of a contact for
anything you can do, Postey."

"Don't you, sir? But I'll make you care. I'll have you towed
stern first to Disko and broke up. You can't recover insurance if
you're broke for obstruction. Do you understand that?"

Then the stranger bellows: "Look at my propellers! There's been a
wulli-wa down below that has knocked us into umbrella-frames!
We've been blown up about forty thousand feet! We're all one
conjuror's watch inside! My mate's arm's broke; my engineer's
head's cut open; my Ray went out when the engines smashed; and
... and ... for pity's sake give me my height, Captain! We doubt
we're dropping."

"Six thousand eight hundred. Can you hold it?" Captain Purnall
overlooks all insults, and leans half out of the colloid, staring
and snuffing. The stranger leaks pungently.

"We ought to blow into St. John's with luck. We're trying to plug
the fore-tank now, but she's simply whistling it away," her
captain wails.

"She's sinking like a log," says Captain Purnall in an undertone.
"Call up the Banks Mark Boat, George." Our dip-dial shows that
we, keeping abreast the tramp, have dropped five hundred feet the
last few minutes.

Captain Purnall presses a switch and our signal beam begins to
swing through the night, twizzling spokes of light across
infinity.

"That'll fetch something," he says, while Captain Hodgson watches
the General Communicator. He has called up the North Banks Mark
Boat, a few hundred miles west, and is reporting the case.

"I'll stand by you," Captain Purnall roars to the lone figure on
the conning-tower.

"Is it as bad as that?" comes the answer. "She isn't insured.
She's mine."

"Might have guessed as much," mutters Hodgson. "Owner's risk is
the worst risk of all!"

"Can't I fetch St. John's--not even with this breeze?" the voice
quavers.

"Stand by to abandon ship. Haven't you any lift in you, fore or
aft?"

"Nothing but the midship tanks, and they're none too tight. You
see, my Ray gave out and--" he coughs in the reek of the escaping
gas.

"You poor devil!" This does not reach our friend. "What does the
Mark Boat say, George?"

"Wants to know if there's any danger to traffic. Says she's in a
bit of weather herself, and can't quit station. I've turned in a
General Call, so even if they don't see our beam some one's bound
to help--or else we must. Shall I clear our slings? Hold on! Here
we are! A Planet liner, too! She'll be up in a tick!"

"Tell her to have her slings ready," cries his brother captain.
"There won't be much time to spare ... Tie up your mate," he
roars to the tramp.

"My mate's all right. It's my engineer. He's gone crazy."

"Shunt the lift out of him with a spanner. Hurry!"

"But I can make St. John's if you'll stand by."

"You'll make the deep, wet Atlantic in twenty minutes. You're
less than fifty-eight hundred now. Get your papers."

A Planet liner, east bound, heaves up in a superb spiral and
takes the air of us humming. Her underbody colloid is open land
her transporter-slings hang down like tentacles. We shut off our
beam as she adjusts herself--steering to a hair--over the tramp's
conning-tower. The mate comes up, his arm strapped to his side,
and stumbles into the cradle. A man with a ghastly scarlet head
follows, shouting that he must go back and build up his Ray. The
mate assures him that he will find a nice new Ray all ready in
the liner's engine-room. The bandaged head goes up wagging
excitedly. A youth and a woman follow. The liner cheers hollowly
above us, and we see the passengers' faces at the saloon colloid.

"That's a pretty girl. What's the fool waiting for now?" says
Captain Purnall.

The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand by and see
him fetch St. John's. He dives below and returns--at which we
little human beings in the void cheer louder than ever--with the
ship's kitten. Up fly the liner's hissing slings; her underbody
crashes home and she hurtles away again. The dial shows less than
3000 feet. The Mark Boat signals we must attend to the derelict,
now whistling her death-song, as she falls beneath us in long
sick zigzags.

"Keep our beam on her and send out a General Warning," says
Captain Purnall, following her down. There is no need. Not a
liner in air but knows the meaning of that vertical beam and
gives us and our quarry a wide berth.

"But she'll drown in the water, won't she?" I ask. "Not always,"
is his answer. "I've known a derelict up-end and sift her engines
out of herself and flicker round the Lower Lanes for three weeks
on her forward tanks only. We'll run no risks. Pith her, George,
and look sharp. There's weather ahead."

Captain Hodgson opens the underbody colloid, swings the heavy
pithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally cased
as a smoking-room settee, and at two hundred feet releases the
catch. We hear the whir of the crescent-shaped arms opening as
they descend. The derelict's forehead is punched in, starred
across, and rent diagonally. She falls stern first, our beam upon
her; slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light,
and the Atlantic takes her.

"A filthy business," says Hodgson. "I wonder what it must have
been like in the old days?"

The thought had crossed my mind, too. What if that wavering
carcass had been filled with the men of the old days, each one of
them taught (that is the horror of it!) that, after death he
would very possibly go for ever to unspeakable torment?

And scarcely a generation ago, we (one knows now that we are only
our fathers re-enlarged upon the earth), we, I say, ripped and
rammed and pithed to admiration.

Here Tim, from the Control Platform, shouts that we are to get
into our inflators and to bring him his at once.

We hurry into the heavy rubber suits--the engineers are already
dressed--and inflate at the air-pump taps. G.P.O. inflators are
thrice as thick as a racing man's "flickers," and chafe
abominably under the armpits. George takes the wheel until Tim
has blown himself up to the extreme of rotundity. If you kicked
him off the c. p. to the deck he would bounce back. But it is
"162" that will do the kicking.

"The Mark Boat's mad--stark ravin' crazy," he snorts, returning
to command. "She says there's a bad blow-out ahead and wants me
to pull over to Greenland. I'll see her pithed first! We wasted
half an hour fussing over that dead duck down under, and now I'm
expected to go rubbin' my back all round the Pole. What does she
think a Postal packet's made of? Gummed silk? Tell her we're
coming on straight, George."

George buckles him into the Frame and switches on the Direct
Control. Now under Tim's left toe lies the port-engine
Accelerator; under his left heel the Reverse, and so with the
other foot. The lift-shunt stops stand out on the rim of the
steering-wheel where the fingers of his left hand can play on
them. At his right hand is the midships engine lever ready to be
thrown into gear at a moment's notice. He leans forward in his
belt, eyes glued to the colloid, and one ear cocked toward the
General Communicator. Henceforth he is the strength and direction
of "162," through whatever may befall.

The Banks Mark Boat is reeling out pages of A. B. .C. Directions
to the traffic at large. We are to secure all "loose objects";
hood up our Fleury Rays; and "on no account to attempt to clear
snow from our conning-towers till the weather abates."
Under-powered craft, we are told, can ascend to the limit of
their lift, mail-packets to look out for them accordingly; the
lower lanes westward are pitting very badly, "with frequent
blow-outs, vortices, laterals, etc."

Still the clear dark holds up unblemished. The only warning is
the electric skin-tension (I feel as though I were a lace-maker's
pillow) and an irritability which the gibbering of the General
Communicator increases almost to hysteria.

We have made eight thousand feet since we pithed the tramp and
our turbines are giving us an honest two hundred and ten knots.

Very far to the west an elongated blur of red, low down, shows us
the North Banks Mark Boat. There are specks of fire round her
rising and falling--bewildered planets about an unstable
sun--helpless shipping hanging on to her light for company's
sake. No wonder she could not quit station.

She warns us to look out for the back-wash of the bad vortex in
which (her beam shows it) she is even now reeling.

The pits of gloom about us begin to fill with very faintly
luminous films--wreathing and uneasy shapes. One forms itself
into a globe of pale flame that waits shivering with eagerness
till we sweep by. It leaps monstrously across the blackness,
alights on the precise tip of our nose, pirouettes there an
instant, and swings off. Our roaring bow sinks as though that
light were lead--sinks and recovers to lurch and stumble again
beneath the next blow-out. Tim's fingers on the lift-shunt strike
chords of numbers--1:4:7:--2:4:6:--7:5:3, and so on; for he is
running by his tanks only, lifting or lowering her against the
uneasy air. All three engines are at work, for the sooner we have
skated over this thin ice the better. Higher we dare not go. The
whole upper vault is charged with pale krypton vapours, which our
skin friction may excite to unholy manifestations. Between the
upper and lower levels--5000 and 7000, hints the Mark Boat--we
may perhaps bolt through if ... Our bow clothes itself in blue
flame and falls like a sword. No human skill can keep pace with
the changing tensions. A vortex has us by the beak and we dive
down a two-thousand foot slant at an angle (the dip-dial and my
bouncing body record it) of thirty-five. Our turbines scream
shrilly; the propellers cannot bite on the thin air; Tim shunts
the lift out of five tanks at once and by sheer weight drives her
bullet wise through the maelstrom till she cushions with jar on
an up-gust, three thousand feet below.

"Now we've done it," says George in my ear: "Our skin-friction,
that last slide, has played Old Harry with the tensions! Look out
for laterals, Tim; she'll want some holding."

"I've got her," is the answer. "Come up, old woman."

She comes up nobly, but the laterals buffet her left and right
like the pinions of angry angels. She is jolted off her course
four ways at once, and cuffed into place again, only to be swung
aside and dropped into a new chaos. We are never without a
corposant grinning on our bows or rolling head over heels from
nose to midships, and to the crackle of electricity around and
within us is added once or twice the rattle of hail--hail that
will never fall on any sea. Slow we must or we may break our
back, pitch-poling.

"Air's a perfectly elastic fluid," roars George above the tumult.
"About as elastic as a head sea off the Fastnet, ain't it?"

He is less than just to the good element. If one intrudes on the
Heavens when they are balancing their volt-accounts; if one
disturbs the High Gods' market-rates by hurling steel hulls at
ninety knots across tremblingly adjusted electric tensions, one
must not complain of any rudeness in the reception. Tim met it
with an unmoved countenance, one corner of his under lip caught
up on a tooth, his eyes fleeting into the blackness twenty miles
ahead, and the fierce sparks flying from his knuckles at every
turn of the hand. Now and again he shook his head to clear the
sweat trickling from his eyebrows, and it was then that George,
watching his chance, would slide down the life-rail and swab his
face quickly with a big red handkerchief. I never imagined that a
human being could so continuously labour and so collectedly think
as did Tim through that Hell's half-hour when the flurry was at
its worst. We were dragged hither and yon by warm or, frozen
suctions, belched up on the tops of wulii-was, spun down by
vortices and clubbed aside by laterals under a dizzying rush of
stars in the, company of a drunken moon.

I heard the rushing click of the midship-engine-lever sliding in
and out, the low growl of the lift-shunts, and, louder than the
yelling winds without, the scream of the bow-rudder gouging into
any lull that promised hold for an instant. At last we began to
claw up on a cant, bow-rudder and port-propeller together; only
the nicest balancing of tanks saved us from spinning like the
rifle-bullet of the old days.

"We've got to hitch to windward of that Mark Boat somehow,"
George cried.

"There's no windward," I protested feebly, where I swung shackled
to a stanchion. "How can there be?"

He laughed--as we pitched into a thousand foot blow-out--that red
man laughed beneath his inflated hood!

"Look!" he said. "We must clear those refugees with a high lift."

The Mark Boat was below and a little to the sou'west of us,
fluctuating in the centre of her distraught galaxy. The air was
thick with moving lights at every level. I take it most of them
were trying to lie head to wind, but, not being hydras, they
failed. An under-tanked Moghrabi boat had risen to the limit of
her lift, and, finding no improvement, had dropped a couple of
thousand. There she met a superb wulli-wa, and was blown up
spinning like a dead leaf. Instead of shutting off she went
astern and, naturally, rebounded as from a wall almost into the
Mark Boat, whose language (our G. C. took it in) was humanly
simple.

"If they'd only ride it out quietly it 'ud be better," said
George in a calm, while we climbed like a bat above them all.
"But some skippers -will navigate without enough lift. What does
that Tad-boat think she is doing, Tim?"

"Playin' kiss in the ring," was Tim's unmoved reply. A
Trans-Asiatic Direct liner had found a smooth and butted into it
full power. But there was a vortex at the tail of that smooth, so
the T. A. D. was flipped out like a pea from off a finger-nail,
braking madly as she fled down and all but over-ending.

"Now I hope she's satisfied," said Tim. "I'm glad I'm not a Mark
Boat . . . Do I want help?" The General Communicator dial had
caught his ear. "George, you may tell that gentleman with my
love--love, remember, George--that I do not want help. Who is the
officious sardine-tin?"

"A Rimouski drogher on the look-out for a tow."

"Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. This postal packet isn't
being towed at present."

"Those droghers will go anywhere on a chance of salvage," George
explained. "We call' em kittiwakes."

A long-beaked, bright steel ninety-footer floated at ease for one
instant within hail of us, her slings coiled ready for rescues,
and a single hand in her open tower. He was smoking. Surrendered
to the insurrection of the airs through which we tore our way, he
lay in absolute peace. I saw the smoke of his pipe ascend
untroubled ere his boat dropped, it seemed, like a stone in a
well.

We had just cleared the Mark Boat and her disorderly neighbours
when the storm ended as suddenly as it had begun. A shooting-star
to northward filled the sky with the green blink of a meteorite
dissipating itself in our atmosphere.

Said George: "That may iron out all the tensions." Even as he
spoke, the conflicting winds came to rest; the levels filled; the
laterals died out in long, easy swells; the air-ways were
smoothed before us. In less than three minutes the covey round
the Mark Boat had shipped their power-lights and whirred away
upon their businesses.

"What's happened?" I gasped. The nerve-store within and the
volt-tingle without had passed: my inflators weighed like lead.

"God, He knows!" said Captain George soberly "That old
shooting-star's skin-friction has discharged the different
levels. I've seen it happen before. Phew: What a relief!"

We dropped from ten to six thousand and got rid of our clammy
suits. Tim shut off and stepped out of the Frame. The Mark Boat
was coming up behind us. He opened the colloid in that heavenly
stillness and mopped his face.

"Hello, Williams!" he cried. "A degree or two out o' station,
ain't you?"

"May be," was the answer from the Mark Boat. "I've had some
company this evening."

"So I noticed. Wasn't that quite a little draught?"

"I warned you. Why didn't you pull out north? The east-bound
packets have."

"Me? Not till I'm running a Polar consumptives' sanatorium boat.
I was squinting through a colloid before you were out of your
cradle, my son."

"I'd be the last man to deny it," the captain of the Mark Boat
replies softly. "The way you handled her just now--I'm a pretty
fair judge of traffic in a volt-hurry--it was a thousand
revolutions beyond anything even I've ever seen."

Tim's back supples visibly to this oiling. Captain George on the
c. p. winks and points to the portrait of a singularly attractive
maiden pinned up on Tim's telescope bracket above the
steering-wheel.

I see. Wholly and entirely do I see!

There is some talk overhead of "coming round to tea on Friday," a
brief report of the derelict's fate, and Tim volunteers as he
descends: "For an A. B. C. man young Williams is less of a
high-tension fool than some. Were you thinking of taking her on,
George? Then I'll just have a look round that port-thrust seems
to me it's a trifle warm--and we'll jog along."

The Mark Boat hums off joyously and hangs herself up in her
appointed eyrie. Here she will stay a shutterless observatory; a
life-boat station; a salvage tug; a court of ultimate
appeal-cum-meteorological bureau for three hundred miles in all
directions, till Wednesday next when her relief slides across the
stars to take her buffeted place. Her black hull, double
conning-tower, and ever-ready slings represent all that remains
to the planet of that odd old word authority. She is responsible
only to the Aerial Board of Control the A. B. C. of which Tim
speaks so flippantly. But that semi-elected, semi-nominated body
of a few score of persons of both sexes, controls this planet.
"Transportation is Civilisation," our motto runs. Theoretically,
we do what we please so long as we do not interfere with the
traffic AND ALL IT IMPLIES. Practically , the A. B. C. confirms
or annuls all international arrangements and, to judge from its
last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little planet
only too ready to shift the whole burden of public administration
on its shoulders.

I discuss this with Tim, sipping mate on the c. p. while George
fans her along over the white blur of the Banks in beautiful
upward curves of fifty miles each. The dip-dial translates them
on the tape in flowing freehand.

Tim gathers up a skein of it and surveys the last few feet, which
record "162's" path through the volt-flurry.

"I haven't had a fever-chart like this to show up in five years,"
he says ruefully.

A postal packet's dip-dial records every yard of every run. The
tapes then go to the A. B. C., which collates and makes composite
photographs of them for the instruction of captains. Tim studies
his irrevocable past, shaking his head.

"Hello! Here's a fifteen-hundred-foot drop at fifty-five degrees!
We must have been standing on our heads then, George."

"You don't say so," George answers. "I fancied I noticed it at
the time."

George may not have Captain Purnall's catlike swiftness, but he
is all an artist to the tips of the broad fingers that play on
the shunt-stops. The delicious flight-curves come away on the
tape with never a waver. The Mark Boat's vertical spindle of
light lies down to eastward, setting in the face of the following
stars. Westward, where no planet should rise, the triple
verticals of Trinity Bay (we keep still to the Southern route)
make a low-lifting haze. We seem the only thing at rest under all
the heavens; floating at ease till the earth's revolution shall
turn up our landing-towers.

And minute by minute our silent clock gives us a sixteen-second
mile.

"Some fine night," says Tim, "we'll be even with that clock's
Master."

"He's coming now," says George, over his shoulder. "I'm chasing
the night west."

The stars ahead dim no more than if a film of mist had been drawn
under unobserved, but the deep airboom on our skin changes to a
joyful shout.

"The dawn-gust," says Tim. "It'll go on to meet the Sun. Look!
Look! There's the dark being crammed back over our bows! Come to
the after-colloid. I'll show you something."

The engine-room is hot and stuffy; the clerks in the coach are
asleep, and the Slave of the Ray is ready to follow them. Tim
slides open the aft colloid and reveals the curve of the
world--the ocean's deepest purple--edged with fuming and
intolerable gold.

Then the Sun rises and through the colloid strikes out our lamps.
Tim scowls in his face.

"Squirrels in a cage," he mutters. "That's all we are. Squirrels
in a cage! He's going twice as fast as us. Just you wait a few
years, my shining friend, and we'll take steps that will amaze
you. We'll Joshua you!"

Yes, that is our dream: to turn all earth into the Yale of Ajalon
at our pleasure. So far, we can drag out the dawn to twice its
normal length in these latitudes. But some day--even on the
Equator--we shall hold the Sun level in his full stride.

Now we look down on a sea thronged with heavy traffic. A big
submersible breaks water suddenly. Another and another follows
with a swash and a suck and a savage bubbling of relieved
pressures. The deep-sea freighters are rising to lung up after
the long night, and the leisurely ocean is all patterned with
peacock's eyes of foam.

"We'll lung up, too," says Tim, and when we return to the c. p.
George shuts off, the colloids are opened, and the fresh air
sweeps her out. There is no hurry. The old contracts (they will
be revised at the end of the year) allow twelve hours for a run
which any packet can put behind her in ten. So we breakfast in
the arms of an easterly slant which pushes us along at a languid
twenty.

To enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on a sunny morning half a
mile or so above the dappled Atlantic cloud-belts and after a
volt-flurry which has cleared and tempered your nerves. While we
discussed the thickening traffic with the superiority that comes
of having a high level reserved to ourselves, we heard (and I for
the first time) the morning hymn on a Hospital boat.

She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath us and we
caught the chant before she rose into the sunlight. "Oh, ye Winds
of God," sang the unseen voices: "bless ye the Lord! Praise Him
and magnify Him for ever!"

We slid off our caps and joined in. When our shadow fell across
her great open platforms they looked up and stretched out their
hands neighbourly while they sang. We could see the doctors and
the nurses and the white-button-like faces of the cot-patients.
She passed slowly beneath us, heading northward, her hull, wet
with the dews of the night, all ablaze in the sunshine. So took
she the shadow of a cloud and vanished, her song continuing. "Oh,
ye holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord! Praise Him
and magnify Him for ever."

"She's a public lunger or she wouldn't have been singing the
Benedicite; and she's a Greenlander or she wouldn't have
snow-blinds over her colloids," said George at last. "She'll be
bound for Frederikshavn or one of the Glacier sanatoriums for a
month.

If she was an accident ward she'd be hung up at the
eight-thousand-foot level. Yes--consumptives."

"Funny how the new things are the old thing I've read in books,"
Tim answered, "that savages used to haul their sick and wounded
up to the tops of hills because microbes were fewer there. We
hoist 'em in sterilized air for a while. Same idea. How much do
the doctors say we've added to the average life of man?"

"Thirty years," says George with a twinkle in his eye. "Are we
going to spend 'em all up here, Tim?"

"Flap ahead, then. Flap ahead. Who's hindering?" the senior
captain laughed, as we went in.

We held a good lift to clear the coastwise and Continental
shipping; and we had need of it. Though our route is in no sense
a populated one, there is a steady trickle of traffic this way
along. We met Hudson Bay furriers out of the Great Preserve,
hurrying to make their departure from Bonavista with sable and
black fox for the insatiable markets. We overcossed Keewatin
liners, small and cramped; but their captains, who see no land
between Trepassy and Lanco, know what gold they bring back from
West Erica. Trans-Asiatic Directs we met, soberly ringing the
world round the Fiftieth Meridian at an honest seventy knots; and
white-painted Ackroyd & Hunt fruiters out of the south fled
beneath us, their ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites.
Their market is in the North among the northern sanatoria where
you can smell their grape-fruit and bananas across the cold
snows. Argentine beef boats we sighted too, of enormous capacity
and unlovely outline. They, too, feed the northern health
stations in icebound ports where submersibles dare not rise.

Yellow-bellied ore-flats and Ungava petrol-tanks punted down
leisurely out of the north, like strings of unfrightened wild
duck. It does not pay to "fly" minerals and oil a mile farther
than is necessary; but the risks of transhipping to submersibles
in the ice pack off Nain or Hebron are so great that these heavy
freighters fly down to Halifax direct, and scent the air as they
go. They are the biggest tramps aloft except the Athabasca
grain-tubs. But these last, now that the wheat is moved, are
busy, over the world's shoulder, timber-lifting in Siberia.

We held to the St. Lawrence (it is astonishing how the old
water-ways still pull us children of the air), and followed his
broad line of black between its drifting iceblocks, all down the
Park that the wisdom of our fathers--but every one knows the
Quebec run.

We dropped to the Heights Receiving Towers twenty minutes ahead
of time, and there hung at ease till the Yokohama Intermediate
Packet could pull out and give us our proper slip. It was curious
to watch the action of the holding-down clips all along the
frosty river front as the boats cleared or came to rest. A big
Hamburger was leaving Pont Levis and her crew, unshipping the
platform railings, began to sing "Elsinore"--the oldest of our
chanteys. You know it of course:

Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic
Forty couple waltzing on the floor!
And you can watch my Ray,
For I must go away
And dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!

Then, while they sweated home the covering-plates:

Nor-Nor-Nor-Nor
West from Sourabaya to the Baltic--
Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw!
Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic
And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!

The clips parted with a gesture of indignant dismissal, as though
Quebec, glittering under her snows, were casting out these light
and unworthy lovers. Our signal came from the Heights. Tim turned
and floated up, but surely then it was with passionate appeal
that the great tower arms flung open--or did I think so because
on the upper staging a little hooded figure also opened her arms
wide toward her father?

* * * * * * * *

In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down to the
receiving-caisson; the hostlers displaced the engineers at the
idle turbines, and Tim, prouder of this than all, introduced me
to the maiden of the photograph on the shelf. "And by the way,"
said he to her, stepping forth in sunshine under the hat of civil
life, "I saw young Williams in the Mark Boat. I've asked him to
tea on Friday."

AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL

Lights

No changes in English Inland lights for week ending Dec. 18th.

CAPE VERDE--Week ending Dec. 18. Verde inclined guide-light
changes from 1st proximo to triple flash--green white green--in
place of occulting red as heretofore. The warning light for
Harmattan winds will be continuous vertical glare (white) on all
oases of trans-Saharan N. E. by E. Main Routes.

INVERCARGIL (N. Z.)--From 1st prox.: extreme southerly light
(double red) will exhibit white beam inclined 45 degrees on
approach of Southerly Buster. Traffic flies high off this coast
between April and October.

TABLE BAY--Devil's Peak Glare removed to Simonsberg. Traffic
making Table Mountain coastwise keep all lights from Three Anchor
Bay at least two thousand feet under, and do not round to till
East of E. shoulder Devil's Peak.

SANDHEADS LIGHT -Green triple vertical marks new private
landing-stage for Bay and Burma traffic only.

SNAEFELL JOKUL--White occulting light withdrawn for winter.

PATAGONIA--No summer light south Cape Pilar. This includes Staten
Island and Port Stanley.

C. NAVARIN--Quadruple fog flash (white), one minute intervals
(new).

EAST CAPE--Fog--flash -single white with single bomb, 30 sec.
intervals (new).

MALAYAN ARCHIPELAGO--Lights unreliable owing eruptions. Lay from
Cape Somerset to Singapore direct, keeping highest levels.

For the Board:

CATTERTHUN }
ST. JUST } Lights.
VAN HEDDER }

Casualties

Week ending Dec. 18th.

SABLE ISLAND--Green single barbette-tower freighter, number
indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-tank pierced after
collision, passed 300-ft. level Q P. as. Dec. 15th. Watched
to water and pithed by Mark Boat.

N. F. BANKS--Postal Packet 162 reports Halma freighter
(Fowey--St. John's) abandoned, leaking after weather, 46 151 N.
50 15' W. Crew rescued by Planet liner Asteroid. Watched to
water and pithed by Postal Packet, Dec. 14th.

KERGUELEN, MARK BOAT reports last call from Cymena freighter
(Gayer
Tong Huk & Co.) taking water and sinking in snow-storm South
McDonald Islands. No wreckage recovered. Messages and wills of
crew at all A. B. C. offices.

FEZZAN--T. A. D. freighter Ulema taken ground during Harmattan on
Akakus Range. Under plates strained. Crew at Ghat where repairing
Dec. 13th.

BISCAY, MARK BOAT reports Caducci (Valandingham Line) slightly
spiked in western gorge Point de Benasdue. Passengers transferred
Andorra (Fulton Line). Barcelona Mark Boat salving cargo Dec.
12th.

ASCENSION, MARE BOAT--Wreck of unknown racing-plane, Parden
rudder, wire-stiffened xylonite vans, and Harliss engine-seating,
sighted and salved 7 20' S. 18 41' W. Dec. 15th. Photos at all A.
B. C. offices.

Missing

No answer to General Call having been received during the last
week from following overdues, they are posted as missing:

Atlantis, W.17630 . Canton--Valparaiso
Audhumla W. 889 . Stockholm--Odessa
Berenice, W. 2206 .. . Riga--Vladivostock
Draw, E. 446 . . Coventry--Pontes
Arenas Tontine, E. 5068 . C. Wrath--Ungava
Wu-Sung, E. 41776 . . Hankow--Lobito Bay

General Call (all Mark Boats) out for:

Jane Eyre, W. 6990 . Port Rupert--City of Mexico
Santander, W. 6514 . . Gobi Desert--Manila
Y. Edmundsun, E. 9690 . . Kandahar--Fiume

Broke for Obstruction, and Quitting Levels

VALKYRIE (racing plane), A. J. Hartley owner, New York
(twice warned).
GEISHA (racing plane), S. van Cott owner, Philadelphia
(twice warned).
MARVEL of PERU (racing plane), J. X. Peixoto owner, Rio de
Janeiro (twice warned).
For the Board:

LAZAREFF }
McKEOUGH } Traffic
GOLDBRATT }

NOTES

High-Level Sleet

The Northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement. From
all quarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet
at the higher levels. Racing planes and digs alike have suffered
severely--the former from 'unequal deposits of half-frozen slush
on their vans (and only those who have "held up" a badly balanced
plane in a cross-wind know what that means), and the latter from
loaded bows and snow-cased bodies. As a consequence, the Northern
and North-western upper levels have been practically abandoned,
and the high fliers have returned to the ignoble security of the
Three, Five, and Six hundred foot levels. But there remain a few
undaunted sun-hunters who, in spite of frozen stays and
ice-jammed connecting-rods, still haunt the blue empyrean.

Bat-Boat Racing

The scandals of the past few years have at last moved the
yachting world to concerted action in regard to "bat" boat
racing. We have been treated to the spectacle of what are
practically keeled racing-planes driven a clear five foot or more
above the water, and only eased down to touch their so-called "
native element" as they near the line. Judges and starters have
been conveniently blind to this absurdity, but the public
demonstration off St. Catherine's Light at the Autumn Regattas
has borne ample, if tardy, fruit. In the future the "bat" is to
be a boat, and the long-unheeded demand of the true sportsman for
"no daylight under mid-keel in smooth water" is in a fair way to
be conceded. The new rule severely restricts plane area and lift
alike. The gas compartments are permitted both fore and aft, as
in the old type, but the water-ballast central tank is rendered
obligatory. These things work, if not for perfection, at least
for the evolution of a sane and wholesome waterborne cruiser. The
type of rudder is unaffected by the new rules, so we may expect
to see the Long-Davidson make (the patent on which has just
expired) come largely into use henceforward, though the strain on
the sternpost in turning at speeds over forty miles an hour is
admittedly very severe. But bat-boat racing has a great future
before it.

Crete and the A. B. C.

The story of the recent Cretan crisis, as told in the A. B. C.
Monthly Report, is not without humour. Till the 25th October
Crete, as all our planet knows, was the sole surviving European
repository of "autonomous institutions," "local self-government,"
and the rest of the archaic lumber devised in the past for the
confusion of human affairs. She has lived practically on the
tourist traffic attracted by her annual pageants of Parliaments,
Boards, Municipal Councils, etc., etc. Last summer the islanders
grew wearied, as their premier explained, of "playing at being
savages for pennies," and proceeded to pull down all the
landing-towers on the island and shut off general communication
till such time as the A. B. C. should annex them. For
side-splitting comedy we would refer our readers to the
correspondence between the Board of Control and the Cretan
premier during the "war." However, all's well that ends well. The
A. B. C. have taken over the administration of Crete on normal
lines; and tourists must go elsewhere to witness the"debates,"
"resolutions," and "popular movements" of the old days. The only
people to suffer will be the Board of Control, which is
grievously overworked already. It is easy enough to condemn the
Cretans for their laziness; but when one recalls the large,
prosperous, and presumably public-spirited communities which
during the last few years have deliberately thrown themselves
into the hands of the A. B. C., one, cannot be too hard upon St.
Paul's old friends.

CORRESPONDENCE

Skylarking on the Equator

To THE EDITOR: Only last week, while crossing the Equator (W.
26-15), I became aware of a furious and irregular cannonading
some fifteen or twenty knots S. 4 E. Descending to the 500 ft.
level, I found a party of Transylvanian tourists engaged in
exploding scores of the largest pattern atmospheric bombs (A. B.
C. standard) and, in the intervals of their pleasing labours,
firing bow and stern smoke-ring swivels. This orgie--I can give
it no other name--went on for at least two hours, and naturally
produced violent electric derangements. My compasses, of course,
were thrown out, my bow was struck twice, and I received two
brisk shocks from the lower platform-rail. On remonstrating, I
was told that these "professors" were engaged in scientific
experiments. The extent of their "scientific" knowledge, may be
judged by the fact that they expected to produce (I give their
own words)" a little blue sky" if "they went on long enough."
This in the heart of the Doldrums at 450 feet! I have no
objection to any amount of blue sky in its proper place (it can
be found at the 4000 level for practically twelve months out of
the year), but I submit, with all deference to the educational
needs of Transylvania, that "skylarking" in the centre of a
main-travelled road where, at the best of times, electricity
literally drips off one's stanchions and screw blades, is
unnecessary. When my friends had finished, the road was seared,
and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure layers, spirals,
vortices, and readjustments for at least an hour. I pitched badly
twice in an upward rush--solely due to these diabolical
throw-downs--that came near to wrecking my propeller. Equatorial
work at low levels is trying enough in all conscience without the
added terrors of scientific hooliganism in the Doldrums.
Rhyl. J. VINCENT MATHEN.

[We entirely sympathize with Professor Mathen's views, but till
the Board sees fit to further regulate the Southern areas in
which scientific experiments may be conducted, we shall always be
exposed to the risk which our correspondent describes.
Unfortunately, a chimera bombinating in a vacuum is, nowadays,
only too capable of producing secondary causes.- Editor.]

Answers to Correspondents

VIGILANS--The Laws of Auroral Derangements are still imperfectly
understood. Any overheated motor may of course "seize" without
warning; but so many complaints have reached us of accidents
similar to yours while shooting the Aurora that we are inclined
to believe with Lavalle that the upper strata of the Aurora
Borealis are practically one big electric "leak," and that the
paralysis of your engines was due to complete magnetization of
all metallic parts. Low-flying planes often "glue up" when near
the Magnetic Pole, and there is no reason in science why the same
disability should not be experienced at higher levels when the
Auroras are "delivering" strongly.

INDIGNANT--On your own showing, you were not under control. That
you could not hoist the necessary N. U. C. lights on approaching
a traffic-lane because your electrics had short-circuited is a
misfortune which might befall any one. The A. B. C., being
responsible for the planet's traffic, cannot, however, make
allowance for this kind of misfortune. A reference to the Code
will show that you were fined on the lower scale.

PLANISTON--(1) The Five Thousand Kilometre (overland) was won
last year by L. V. Rautsch; R. M. Rautsch, his brother, in the
same week pulling off the Ten Thousand (oversee). R. M.'s average
worked out at a fraction over 500 kilometres per hour, thus
constituting a record. (2) Theoretically, there is no limit to
the lift of a dirigible. For commercial and practical purposes
15,000 tons is accepted as the most manageable.

PATERFAMILIAS--None whatever. He is liable for direct damage both
to your chimneys and any collateral damage caused by fall of
bricks into garden, etc., etc. Bodily inconvenience and mental
anguish may be included, but the average courts are not, as a
rule, swayed by sentiment. If you can prove that his grapnel
removed any portion of your roof, you had better rest your case
on decoverture of domicile (see Parkins v. Duboulay). We
sympathize with your position, but the night of the 14th was
stormy and confused, and--you may have to anchor on a stranger's
chimney yourself some night. Verbum sap!

ALDEBARAN--(1) war, as a paying concern, ceased in 1987. (2) The
Convention of London expressly reserves to every nation the right
of waging war so long as it does not interfere with the traffic
and all that implies. (3) The A. B. C. was constituted in 1949.

L. M. P.--(1) Keep her full head-on at half power, taking
advantage of the lulls to speed up and creep into it. She will
strain much less this way than in quartering across a gale. (2)
Nothing is to be gained by reversing into a following gale, and
there is always risk of a turnover. (3) The formulae for stun'sle
brakes are uniformly unreliable, and will continue to be so as
long as air is compressible.

PEGAMOID- (1) Personally we prefer glass or flux compounds to any
other material for winter work nose-caps as being absolutely
non-hygroscopic. (2) We cannot recommend any particular make.

PULMONAR--(1) For the symptoms you describe, try the Gobi Desert
Sanatoria. The low levels of most of the Saharan Sanatoria are
against them except at the outset of the disease. (2) We do not
recommend boarding-houses or hotels in this column.

BEGINNER--On still days the air above a large inhabited city
being slightly warmer--i.e., thinner--than the atmosphere of the
surrounding country, a plane drops a little on entering the
rarefied area, precisely as a ship sinks a little in fresh water.
Hence the phenomena of "jolt" and your "inexplicable collisions"
with factory chimneys. In air, as on earth, it is safest to fly
high.

EMERGENCY--There is only one rule of the road in air, earth, and
water. Do you want the firmament to yourself?

PICCIOLA--Both Poles have been overdone in Art and Literature.
Leave them to Science for the next twenty years. You did not send
a stamp with your verses.

NORTH NIGERIA--The Mark Boat was within her right in warning you
off the Reserve. The shadow of a low-flying dirigible scares the
game. You can buy all the photos you need at Sokoto.

NEW ERA--It is not etiquette to overcross an A. B. C. official's
boat without asking permission. He is one of the body responsible
for the planet's traffic, and for that reason must not be
interfered with. You, presumably, are out on your own business or
pleasure, and must leave him alone. For humanity's sake don't try
to be "democratic."

EXCORIATED--All inflators chafe sooner or later. You must go on
till your skin hardens by practice. Meantime vaseline.

REVIEW

The Life of Xavier Lavalle
(Reviewed by Rene Talland. Ecole Aeronautique, Paris)

Ten years ago Lavalle, "that imperturbable dreamer of the
heavens," as Lazareff hailed him, gathered together the fruits of
a lifetime's labour, and gave it, with well-justified contempt,
to a world bound hand and foot to Barald's Theory of Vertices and
"compensating electric nodes." "They shall see," he wrote--in
that immortal postscript to The Heart of the Cyclone--"the Laws
whose existence they derided written in fire beneath them."

"But even here," he continues, "there is no finality. Better a
thousand times my conclusions should be discredited than that my
dead name should lie across the threshold of the temple of
Science--a bar to further inquiry."

So died Lavalle--a prince of the Powers of the Air, and even at
his funeral Cellier jested at "him who had gone to discover the
secrets of the Aurora Borealis."

If I choose thus to be banal, it is only to remind you that
Collier's theories are today as exploded as the ludicrous
deductions of the Spanish school. In the place of their fugitive
and warring dreams we have, definitely, Lavalle's Law of the
Cyclone which he surprised in darkness and cold at the foot of
the overarching throne of the Aurora Borealis. It is there that
I, intent on my own investigations, have passed and re-passed a
hundred times the worn leonine face, white as the snow beneath
him, furrowed with wrinkles like the seams and gashes upon the
North Cape; the nervous hand, integrally a part of the mechanism
of his flighter; and above all, the wonderful lambent eyes turned
to the zenith.

"Master," I would cry as I moved respectfully beneath him, "what
is it you seek today?" and always the answer, clear and without
doubt, from above: "The old secret, my son!"

The immense egotism of youth forced me on my own path, but (cry
of the human always!) had I known--if I had known--I would many
times have bartered my poor laurels for the privilege, such as
Tinsley and Herrera possess, of having aided him in his
monumental researches.

It is to the filial piety of Victor Lavalle that we owe the two
volumes consecrated to the ground-life of his father, so full of
the holy intimacies of the domestic hearth. Once returned from
the abysms of the utter North to that little house upon the
outskirts of Meudon, it was not the philosopher, the daring
observer, the man of iron energy that imposed himself on his
family, but a fat and even plaintive jester, a farceur incarnate
and kindly, the co-equal of his children, and, it must be
written, not seldom the comic despair of Madame Lavalle, who, as
she writes five years after the marriage, to her venerable
mother, found "in this unequalled intellect whose name I bear the
abandon of a large and very untidy boy." Here is her letter:

"Xavier returned from I do not know where at midnight, absorbed
in calculations on the eternal question of his Aurora--la belle
Aurore, whom I begin to hate. Instead of anchoring,--I had set
out the guide-light above our roof, so he had but to descend and
fasten the plane--he wandered, profoundly distracted, above the
town with his anchor down! Figure to yourself, dear mother, it is
the roof of the mayor's house that the grapnel first engages!
That I do not regret, for the mayor's wife and I are not
sympathetic; but when Xavier uproots my pet araucaria and bears
it across the garden into the conservatory I protest at the top
of my voice. Little Victor in his night-clothes runs to the
window, enormously amused at the parabolic flight without reason,
for it is too dark to see the grapnel, of my prized tree. The
Mayor of Meudon, thunders at our door in the name of the Law,
demanding, I suppose, my husband's head. Here is the conversation
through the megaphone--Xavier is two hundred feet above us:

"'Mons. Lavalle, descend and make reparation for outrage of
domicile. Descend, Mons. Lavalle!'

"No one answers.

"'Xavier Lavalle, in the name of the Law, descend arid submit to
process for outrage of domicile.'

"Xavier, roused from his calculations, comprehending only the
last words: 'Outrage of domicile? My dear mayor, who is the man
that has corrupted thy Julie?'

"The mayor, furious, 'Xavier Lavalle--'

"Xavier, interrupting: 'I have not that felicity. I am only a
dealer in cyclones!'

"My faith, he raised one then! All Meudon attended in the
streets, and my Xavier, after a long time comprehending what he
had done, excused himself in a thousand apologies. At last the
reconciliation was effected in our house over a supper at two in
the morning--Julie in a wonderful costume of compromises, and I
have her and the mayor pacified in bed in the blue room."

And on the next day, while the mayor rebuilds his roof, her
Xavier departs anew for the Aurora Borealis, there to commence
his life's work. M. Victor Lavalle tells us of that historic
collision (en plane) on the flank of Hecla between Herrera, then
a pillar of the Spanish school, and the man destined to confute
his theories and lead him intellectually captive. Even through
the years, the immense laugh of Lavalle as he sustains the
Spaniard's wrecked plane, and cries: "Courage! I shall not fall
till I have found Truth, and I hold you fast!" rings like the
call of trumpets. This is that Lavalle whom the world, immersed
in speculations of immediate gain, did not know nor suspect--the
Lavalle whom they adjudged to the last a pedant and a theorist.

The human, as apart from the scientific, side (developed in his
own volumes) of his epoch-making discoveries is marked with a
simplicity, clarity, and good sense beyond praise. I would
specially refer such as doubt the sustaining influence of
ancestral faith upon character and will to the eleventh and
nineteenth chapters, in which are contained the opening and
consummation of the Tellurionical Records extending over nine
years. Of their tremendous significance be sure that the modest
house at Meudon knew as little as that the Records would one day
be the planet's standard in all official meteorology. It was
enough for them that their Xavier--this son, this father, this
husband--ascended periodically to commune with powers, it might
be angelic, beyond their comprehension, and that they united
daily in prayers for his safety.

"Pray for me," he says upon the eve of each of his excursions,
and returning, with an equal simplicity, he renders thanks "after
supper in the little room where he kept his barometers."

To the last Lavalle was a Catholic of the old school,
accepting--he who had looked into the very heart of the
lightnings--the dogmas of papal infallibility, of absolution, of
confession--of relics great and small. Marvellous--enviable
contradiction!

The completion of the Tellurionical Records closed what Lavalle
himself was pleased to call the theoretical side of his
labours--labours from which the youngest and least impressionable
planeur might well have shrunk. He had traced through cold and
heat, across the deeps of the oceans, with instruments of his own
invention, over the inhospitable heart of the polar ice and the
sterile visage of the deserts, league by league, patiently,
unweariedly, remorselessly, from their ever-shifting cradle under
the magnetic pole to their exalted death-bed in the utmost ether
of the upper atmosphere each one of the Isoconical Tellurions
Lavalle's Curves, as we call them today. He had disentangled the
nodes of their intersections, assigning to each its regulated
period of flux and reflux. Thus equipped, he summons Herrera and
Tinsley, his pupils, to the final demonstration as calmly as
though he were ordering his flighter for some mid-day journey to
Marseilles.

"I have proved my thesis," he writes. "It remains now only that
you should witness the proof. We go to Manila to-morrow. A
cyclone will form off the Pescadores S. 17 E. in four days, and
will reach its maximum intensity twenty-seven hours after
inception. It is there I will show you the Truth."

A letter heretofore unpublished from Herrera to Madame Lavalle
tells us how the Master's prophecy was verified.

I will not destroy its simplicity or its significance by any
attempt to quote. Note well, though, that Herrera's preoccupation
throughout that day and night of superhuman strain is always for
the Master's bodily health and comfort.

"At such a time," he writes, "I forced the Master to take the
broth"; or "I made him put on the fur coat as you told me." Nor
is Tinsley (see pp. 184, 85) less concerned. He prepares the
nourishment. He cooks eternally, imperturbably, suspended in the
chaos of which the Master interprets the meaning. Tinsley, bowed
down with the laurels of both hemispheres, raises himself to yet
nobler heights in his capacity of a devoted chef. It is almost
unbelievable! And yet men write of the Master as cold, aloof,
self-contained. Such characters do not elicit the joyous and
unswerving devotion which Lavalle commanded throughout life.
Truly, we have changed very little in the course of the ages! The
secrets of earth and sky and the links that bind them, we
felicitate ourselves we are on the road to discover; but our
neighbours' heart and mind we misread, we misjudge, we condemn
now as ever. Let all, then, who love a man read these most human,
tender, and wise volumes.

*************

transcriber's note: These "advertisements" appeared in the format
that would have been used in a newspaper or magazine ad
section--that is in two columns for the smaller ads, and in
quarter, half, full and double page layouts for the others. also
L is used as the symbol for pounds.
*************

------------------------------------------------

MISCELLANEOUS
[ WANTS ]

REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY, FOR East Africa, a thoroughly competent
Plane and Dirigible Driver, acquainted with Petrol Radium and
Helium motors and generators. Low-level work only, but must
understand heavy-weight digs.
MOSSAMEDES TRANSPORT ASSOC.
84 Palestine Buildings, E. C.

------------------------------------------------

MAN WANTED-DIG DRIVER for Southern Alps with Saharan summer
trips. High levels, high speed. high wages:
Apply M. SIDNEY
Hotel San Stefano. Monte Carlo.

------------------------------------------------

FAMILY DIRIGIBLE. A COMPETENT, steady man wanted for slow speed,
low level Tangye dirigible. No night work, no sea trips. Must be
member of the Church of England, and make himself useful in the
garden.
M. R.
The Rectory, Gray's Barton, Wilts.

------------------------------------------------

COMMERCIAL DIG, CENTRAL and Southern Europe. A smart, active man
for a L. M. T. Dig. Night work only. Headquarters London and
Cairo. A linguist preferred.
BAGMAN
Charing Cross Hotel, W. C. (urgent.)

------------------------------------------------

FOR SALE--A BARGAIN--Single Plane, narrow-gauge vans, Pinke
motor. Restayed this autumn. Hansen air-kit, 58 in. chest, 153
collar. Can be seen by appointment.
N. 2650 This office.

------------------------------------------------

The BEE-LINE BOOKSHOP

BELT'S WAY-BOOKS, giving town lights for all towns over 4,000
pop. as laid down by A. B. O.
THE WORLD. Complete 2 vols. Thin Oxford, limp back. 12L 6d.
BELT'S COASTAL ITINERARY. Short Lights of the World. 7s. 6d.
THE TRANSATLANTIC AND MEDITERRANEAN TRAFFIC LINES.
(By authority of the A.B.C.) Paper,
1s. 6d.; cloth. 2s. 6d. Ready, Jan. 16.
ARCTIC AEROPLANING. Siemens and Gait. Cloth, bds. Ss. 6d.
LAVALLE'S HEART OF THE CYCLONE, with supplementary charts. 4s.
6d.
RIMINGTON'S PITFALLS IN THE AIR, and Table of Comparative
Densities 3s. 6d.
ANGELO'S DESERT IN A DIRIGIBLE. New edition, revised. 5s. 9d.
VAUGHAN'S PLANE RACING IN CALM AND STORM. 2s. 6d.
VAUGHAN'S HINTS TO THE AIRMATEUR 1s.
HOFMAN'S LAWS OF LIFT AND VELOCITY. With diagrams, 3s. 6d.
DE VITRE'S THEORY OF SHIFTING BALLAST IN DIRIGIBLES. 2s. 6d.
SANGERS WEATHERS OF THE WORLD. 4s.
SANGER'S TEMPERATURES AT HIGH ALTITUDES. 4s.
HAWKIN'S FOG AND HOW To AVOID IT. 3s.
VAN ZUYLAN'S SECONDARY EFFECTS OF THUNDERSTORMS. 4s. 6d.
DAHLGREN'S AIR CURRENTS AND EPIDEMIC DISEASES. 5s. 6d.
REDMAYNE'S DISEASE AND THE BAROMETER. 7s. 6d.
WALTON'S HEALTH RESORTS OF THE GOBI AND SHAMO. 3s. 6d.
WALTON'S THE POLE AND PULMONARY COMPLAINTS. 7s. ad.
MUTLOWS HIGH LEVEL BACTERIOLOGY. 7s. 6d.
HALLIWELL'S ILLUMINATED STAR MAP, with clockwork attachment,
giving apparent motion of heavens, boxed, complete with
clamps for binnacle, 36 inch size, only L2. 2. 0.
Invaluable for night work.) With A.B.C. certificate. L3. 10s.
0d. Zalinski's Standard Works:
PASSES OF THE HIMALAYAS, 5s.
PASSES OF THE SIERRAS, 5s.
PASSES OF THE ROOKIES. 5s.
PASSES OF THE URALS, 5s.
The four boxed, limp cloth, with charts, 15s.
GRAY'S AIR CURRENTS at MOUNTAIN GORGES, 7s. 6d.

A. C. BELT & SON, READING
------------------------------------------------
SAFETY WEAR FOR AERONAUTS
------------------------------------------------
Fickers! Flickers! Flickers!

HIGH LEVEL FLICKERS

"He that is down need fear no fall,"
Fear not! You will fall lightly as down!

Hansen's air-kits are down in all respects. Tremendous reductions
in prices previous to winter stocking. Pure para kit with
cellulose seat and shoulder-pads, weighted to balance. Unequalled
for all drop-work.

Our trebly resilient heavy kit is the ne plus ultra of
comfort and safety.

Gas-buoyed, waterproof, hail-proof, nonconducting Flickers with
pipe and nozzle fitting all types of generator. Graduated tap on
left hip.

Hansen's Flickers Lead the Aerial Flight
197 Oxford Street

The new weighted Flicker with tweed or cheviot surface
cannot be distinguished from the ordinary suit till inflated.

Fickers! Flickers! Flickers!
------------------------------------------------

APPLIANCES FOR AIR PLANES

------------------------------------------------
What
"SKID"
was to our forefathers on the ground,
"PITCH"
is to their sons in the air.

The popularity of the large, unwieldy, slow, expensive Dirigible
over the light swift, Plane is mainly due to the former's
immunity from pitch.

Collison's forward-socketed Air Van renders it impossible for any
plane to pitch. The C.F.S. is automatic, simple as a shutter,
certain\ as a power hammer, safe as oxygen. Fitted to any make of
plane.

COLLISON
186 Brompton Road
Workshops, Chiswick

LUNDIE do MATTERS
Sole Agts for East'n Hemisphere

------------------------------------------------

STARTERS AND GUIDES

Hotel, club, and private house plane-starters, slips and guides
affixed by skilled workmen in accordance with local building
laws.

Rackstraww's forty-foot collapsible steel starters with automatic
release at end of travel--prices per foot run, clamps and
crampons included. The safest on the market.

Weaver & Denison
Middleboro

------------------------------------------------

AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLE GOODS

------------------------------------------------

REMEMBER

Planes are swift--so is Death
Planes are cheap--so is Life

Why does the plane builder insist on the safety of his machines?
Methinks the gentleman protests too much.

The Standard Dig Construction Company do not build kites.

They build, equip and guarantee dirigibles.

Standard Dig construction Co.
Millwall and Buenos Ayres

------------------------------------------------
HOVERS

POWELL'S
Wind Hovers

for 'planes lying-to in heavy weather, save the motor and strain
on the forebody. Will not send to leeward. "Albatross"
wind-hovers, rigid-ribbed; according to h.p. and weight.

We fit and test free to
40 east of Greenwich Village

L. & W. POWELL
196 Victoria Street, W.

------------------------------------------------

REMEMBER

We shall always be pleased to see you.

We build and test and guarantee our dirigibles or all purposes.
They go up when you please and they do not come down till you
please.

You can please yourself, but--you might as well choose a
dirigible.

STANDARD DIRIGIBLE CONSTRUCTION CO.
Millwall and Buenos Ayres

------------------------------------------------

GAYER AND HUNT
Birmingham and Birmingham
Eng. Ala.

Towers. Landing Stages,
Slips and Lifts
public and private

Contractors to the A. B. C., South-Western European Postal
Construction Dept. Sole patentees and owners of the
Collison anti-quake diagonal tower-tie. Only gold medal Kyoto
Exhibition of Aerial Appliances, 1997.

------------------------------------------------

AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLES

------------------------------------------------

C. M. C.
Our Synthetical Mineral
BEARINGS

are chemically and crystal logically identical with the minerals
whose names they bear. Any size, any surface. Diamond,
Rock-Crystal, Agate and Ruby Bearings-cups, caps and collars for
the higher speeds. For tractor bearings and spindles-Imperative.
For rear propellers-Indispensable. For all working
parts-Advisable.

Commercial Minerals Co.
107 Minories

------------------------------------------------

RESURGAM!

If you have not Clothed YOURSELF in a

NORMANDIE RESURGAM

YOU WILL PROBABLY NOT BE INTERESTED IN OUR NEXT WEEK'S LIST OF
AIR-KIT.

RESURGAM AIR-KIT EMPORIUM

HYMANS & GRAHAM
1198 Lower Broadway, New York

------------------------------------------------

REMEMBER!

------------------------------------------------

* It is now nearly, a generation since the Plane was to
supersede the Dirigible for all purposes. * TO-DAY none of the
Planet's freight is carried en plane. * Less than two per rent of
the Planet's passengers are carried en plane.

We design, equip guarantee Dirigibles for all purposes.

Standard Dig Construction Company MILLWALL and BUENOS AYRES
------------------------------------------------

BAT-BOATS
------------------------------------------------

FLINT & MANTEL
SOUTHAMPTON
FOR SALE

at the end of Season the following Bat-Boats:

GRISELDA, 65 knt., 42 ft., 430(nom.) Maginnis Motor,
under-rake rudder.
MABELLE, 50 knt., 40 ft., 310 Hargreaves Motor,
Douglas' lock-steering gear.
IVEMONA, 50 knt., 35 ft., 300 Hargreaves (Radium accelerator),
Miller keel and rudder.

The above are well known on the South Coast as sound, wholesome
knockabout boats, with ample cruising accommodation. Griselda
carries spare set of Hofman racing vans and can be lied three
foot clear in smooth water with ballast-tank swung aft. The
others do not lift, clear of water, and are recommended for
beginners.

Also, by private treaty, racing B.B. Tarpon (76 winning flags)
120 knt., 60 ft.; Long-Davidson double under-rake rudder, new
this season and unstrained. 850 nom. Maginnis motor, Radium
relays and Pond generator. Bronze breakwater forward, and treble
reinforced forefoot and entry. Talfourd rockered keel: Triple set
of Hofman vans, giving maximum lifting surface of 5327 sq. ft.

Tarpon-has been lifted and held seven feet for two miles between
touch and touch.

Our Autumn List of racing and family Bats ready on the 9th
January.

------------------------------------------------

AIR PLANES AND STARTERS

------------------------------------------------

HINKS MODERATOR

Monorail overhead starter
for family and private planes
up to twenty-five foot over all

Absolutely Safe

Hinks & Co.. Birmingham
------------------------------------------------
J. D. ARDAGH

I AM NOT CONCERNED WITH YOUR PLANE I AFTER IT LEAVES MY GUIDES,
BUT TILL THEN I HOLD MYSELF PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR LIFE,
SAFETY, AND COMFORT. MY HYDRAULIC BUFFER-STOP CANNOT RELEASE
TILL THE MOTORS ARE WORKING UP TO BEARING SPEED, THUS SECURING
A SAFE AND GRACEFUL FLIGHT WITHOUT PITCHING.

Remember our motto, "Upward and Outward,"
and do not trust yourself to so-called "rigid" guide-bars

J. D. ARDAGH, BELFAST AND TURIN

------------------------------------------------

ACCESSORIES AND SPARES

------------------------------------------------

CHRISTIAN WRIGHT & OLDIS
ESTABLISHED 1924

ACCESSORIES and SPARES

Hooded Binnacles with dip-dials automatically recording
change of level (illuminated face).

All heights from 50 to 15,000 feet L2 10 0
With Aerial Board of Control certificate L3 11 0
Foot and Hand Foghoms; Sirens toned to any club note; with
air-chest belt-driven horn motor L6 8 0
Wireless installations syntonised to A.B.C. requirements, in neat
mahogany case, hundred mile range L3 3 0

Grapnels, mushroom--anchors, pithing-irons, winches, hawsers,
snaps, shackles and mooring ropes, for lawn, city, and public
installations.

Detachable under-cars, aluminum or stamped steel.

Keeled under-cars for planes: single-action detaching-gear,
turning car into boat with one motion of the wrist. Invaluable
for sea trips.

Head, side, and riding lights (by size) Nos.00 to 20 A.B.C.
Standard. Rockets and fog-bombs in colours and tones of the
principal clubs (boxed).
A selection of twenty L2 17 6
International night-signals (boxed) L1 11 6

Spare generators guaranteed to lifting power marked on cover
(prices according to power).

Wind-noses for dirigibles--Pegamoid, cane-stiffened, lacquered
cane or aluminum and flux for winter work.

Smoke-ring cannon for hail storms, swivel mounted, bow or stern.

Propeller blades: metal, tungsten backed; paper-mache wire
stiffened; ribbed Xylonite (Nickson's patent); all razor-edged
(price by pitch and diameter).

Compressed steel bow-screws for winter work.

Fused Ruby or Commercial Mineral Co. bearings and collars.
Agate-mounted thrust-blocks up to 4 inch.

Magniac's bow-rudders--(Lavales patent grooving).

Wove steel beltings for outboard motors (nonmagnetic).

Radium batteries, all powers to 150 h.p. (in pairs).

Helium batteries, all powers to 300 h.p. (tandem).

Stun'sle brakes worked from upper or lower platform.

Direct plunge-brakes worked from lower platform only, loaded silk
or fibre, wind-tight.

CATALOGUES FREE THROUGHOUT THE PLANET

-THE END-
Rudyard Kipling's short story: With the Night Mail

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