Survivor: The Autobiography Part 20

The Air American aviator who achieved world fame when, in May 1927, he made the first non-stop solo flight from New York to Paris. The flight, which took 33.5 hours, was made in a Ryan monoplane named Spirit of St Louis.

The Eighteenth Hour The minute hand has just pa.s.sed 1.00 a.m. It's dawn, one hour after midnight . . . With this faint trace of day, the uncontrollable desire to sleep falls over me in quilted layers. I've been staving it off with difficulty during the hours of moonlight. Now it looms all but insurmountable. This is the hour I've been dreading; the hour against which I've tried to steel myself. I know it's the beginning of my greatest test. This will be the worst time of all, this early hour of the second morning the third morning, it is, since I've slept.

I've lost command of my eyelids. When they start to close, I can't restrain them. They shut, and I shake myself, and lift them with my fingers. I stare at the instruments, wrinkle forehead muscles tense. Lids close again regardless, stick tight as though with glue. My body has revolted from the rule of its mind. Like salt in wounds, the light of day brings back my pains. Every cell of my being is on strike, sulking in protest, claiming that nothing, nothing in the world, could be worth such effort; that man's tissue was never made for such abuse. My back is stiff; my shoulders ache; my face burns; my eyes smart. It seems impossible to go on longer. All I want in life is to throw myself down flat, stretch out and sleep.

I've struggled with the dawn often enough before, but never with such a background of fatigue. I've got to muster all my reserves, all the tricks I've learned, all remaining strength of mind, for the conflict. If I can hold in air and close to course for one more hour, the sun will be over the horizon and the battle won. Each ray of light is an ally. With each moment after sunrise, vitality will increase.

Shaking my body and stamping my feet no longer has effect. It's more fatiguing than arousing. I'll have to try something else. I push the stick forward and dive down into a high ridge of cloud, pulling up sharply after I clip through its summit. That wakes me a little, but tricks don't help for long. They're only tiring. It's better to sit still and conserve strength.

My mind strays from the c.o.c.kpit and returns. My eyes close, and open, and close again. But I'm beginning to understand vaguely a new factor which has come to my a.s.sistance. It seems I'm made up of three personalities, three elements, each partly dependent and partly independent of the others. There's my body, which knows definitely that what it wants most in the world is sleep. There's my mind, constantly making decisions that my body refuses to comply with, but which itself is weakening in resolution. And there's something else, which seems to become stronger instead of weaker with fatigue, an element of spirit, a directive force that has stepped out from the background and taken control over both mind and body. It seems to guard them as a wise father guards his children; letting them venture to the point of danger, then calling them back, guiding with a firm but tolerant hand.

When my body cries out that it must sleep, this third element replies that it may get what rest it can from relaxation, but that sleep is not to be had. When my mind demands that my body stay alert and awake, it is informed that alertness is too much to expect under these circ.u.mstances. And when it argues excitedly that to sleep would be to fail, and crash, and drown in the ocean, it is calmly rea.s.sured, and told it's right, but that while it must not expect alertness on the body's part, it can be confident there'll be no sleep.

The Nineteenth Hour When I leave a cloud, drowsiness advances; when I enter the next, it recedes. If I could sleep and wake refreshed, how extraordinary this world of mist would be. But now I only dimly appreciate, only partially realize. The love of flying, the beauty of sunrise, the solitude of the mid-Atlantic sky, are screened from my senses by opaque veils of sleep. All my remaining energy, all the attention I can bring to bear, must be concentrated on the task of simply pa.s.sing through.

The Twentieth Hour The nose is down, the wing low, the plane diving and turning. I've been asleep with open eyes. I'm certain they've been open, yet I have all the sensations of waking up lack of memory of intervening time, inability to comprehend the situation for a moment, the return of understanding like blood surging through the body. I kick left rudder and pull the stick back cornerwise. My eyes jump to the altimeter. No danger; I'm at 1,600 feet, a little above my chosen alt.i.tude. In a moment, I'll have the plane levelled out. But the turn-indicator leans over the left the air speed drops the ball rolls quickly to the side. A climbing turn in the opposite direction! My plane is getting out of control!

The realization is like an electric shock running through my body. It brings instant mental keenness. In a matter of seconds I have the Spirit of St Louis back in hand. But even after the needles are in place, the plane seems to be flying on its side. I know what's happening. It's the illusion you sometimes get while flying blind, the illusion that your plane is no longer in level flight, that it's spiralling, stalling, turning, that the instruments are wrong.

There's only one thing to do shut off feeling from the mind as much as your ability permits. Let a wing stay low as far as bodily senses are concerned. Let the plane seem to manoeuvre as it will, dive, climb, sideslip, or bank; but keep the needles where they belong. Gradually, when the senses find that the plane is continuing on its course, that air isn't screaming through the cowlings as it would in a dive, that wings aren't trembling as they would in a stall, that there's really no pressure on the seat as there would be in a bank, they recover from their confusion and make obeisance to the mind.

As minutes pa.s.s and no new incident occurs, I fall into the state of eye-open sleep again. I fly with less anguish when my conscious mind is not awake. At times I'm not sure whether I'm dreaming through life or living through a dream. It seems I've broken down the barrier between the two, and discovered some essential relations.h.i.+p between living and dreaming I never recognized before. Some secret has been opened to me beyond the ordinary consciousness of man. Can I carry it with me beyond this flight, into normal life again? Or is it forbidden knowledge? Will I lose it after I land, as I've so often lost the essence of some midnight's dream?

The Twenty-second Hour Will the fog never end? Does this storm cover the entire ocean? Except for that small, early morning plot of open sea, I've been in it or above it for nine hours. What happened to the high pressure area that was to give me a sunny sky? The only storms reported were local ones in Europe!

I remind myself again that I didn't wait for confirmation of good weather. Dr Kimball said only that stations along the coast reported clearing, and that a large high-pressure area was moving in over the North Atlantic. He didn't say there'd be no storms. The weather's no worse than I expected when I planned this flight. Why should I complain of a few blind hours in the morning? If the fog lifts by the time I strike the European coast, that's all I should ask. The flight's been as successful as I ever hoped it would be. The only thing that's seriously upset my plans is the sleepless night before I started those extra twenty-three hours before take-off.

Of course no one thought the weather would break enough to let me start so quickly. But why did I depend on what anyone thought? Why did I take any chance? I didn't have to go to a show that evening. I didn't have to go to New York. This is the price for my amus.e.m.e.nt, and it's too high. It imperils the entire flight. If this were the first morning without sleep instead of the second, blind flying would be a different matter, and my navigation on a different plane.

The fog dissolves, and the sea appears. Flying two hundred feet higher, I wouldn't have seen it, for the overcast is just above me. There's no sun; only a pocket of clear air. Ahead, is another curtain of mist. Can I get under it this time? I push the stick forward. Waves are mountainous even higher than before. If I fly close to their crests, maybe I can stay below the next area of fog.

I drop down until I'm flying in salt spray whipped off whitecaps by the wind. I clip five feet above a breaker with my wheels, watch tossing water sweep into the trough beyond. But the fog is too thick. It crowds down between the waves themselves. It merges with their form. A gull couldn't find enough ceiling to fly above this ocean. I climb. The air's rougher than before, swirling like the sea beneath it. I open my throttle wider to hold a margin of speed and power.

Before I reach a thousand feet, waves show again, vaguely whitecaps veiled and unveiled by low-lying scuds of fog. I nose down; but in a moment they're gone, smothered by mist. I climb.

While I'm staring at the instruments, during an unearthly age of time, both conscious and asleep, the fuselage behind me becomes filled with ghostly presences vaguely outlined forms, transparent, moving, riding weightless with me in the plane. I feel no surprise at their coming. There's no suddenness to their appearance. Without turning my head, I see them as clearly as though in my normal field of vision. There's no limit to my sight my skull is one great eye, seeing everywhere at once.

These phantoms speak with human voices friendly, vapourlike shapes, without substance, able to vanish or appear at will, to pa.s.s in and out through the walls of the fuselage as though no walls were there. Now, many are crowded behind me. Now, only a few remain. First one and then another presses forward to my shoulder to speak above the engine's noise, and then draws back among the group behind. At times, voices come out of the air itself, clear yet far away, travelling through distances that can't be measured by the scale of human miles; familiar voices, conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, rea.s.suring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.

The Twenty-third Hour.

Sea, clouds and sky are all stirred up together dull grey mist, blinding white mist, patches of blue, mottling of black, a band of sunlight sprinkling diamond facets on the water. There are clouds lying on the ocean, clouds just risen from its surface, clouds floating at every level through twenty thousand feet of sky; some small, some overpowering in size wisps, ma.s.ses, layers. It's a breeding ground for mist.

I fly above, below, between the layers, as though following the interstices of a giant sponge; sometimes under a blue sky but over an ocean veiled by thick and drifting mist; sometimes brus.h.i.+ng grey clouds with my wings while my wheels are almost rolling in the breakers' foam. It's like playing leapfrog with the weather. These cloud formations help me to stay awake. They give me something on which to fix my eyes in pa.s.sing, but don't hold my stare too long. Their tremendous, changing, flas.h.i.+ng world removes monotony from flight.

Sunlight flashes as I emerge from a cloud. My eyes are drawn to the north. My dreams are startled away. There, under my left wing, only five or six miles distant, a coastline parallels my course purple, haze-covered hills; clumps of trees; rocky cliffs. Small, wooded islands guard the sh.o.r.e.

But I'm in mid-Atlantic, nearly a thousand miles from land! Half-formed thoughts rush through my mind. Are the compa.s.ses completely wrong? Am I hopelessly lost? Is it the coast of Labrador or Greenland that I see? Have I been flying north instead of east?

It's like waking from a sound sleep in strange surroundings, in a room where you've never spent a night before. The wallpaper, the bed, the furniture, the light coming in the window, nothing is as you expected it to be.

I shake my head and look again. There can be no doubt, now, that I'm awake. But the sh.o.r.eline is still there. Land in mid-Atlantic! Something has gone wrong! I couldn't have been flying north, regardless of the inaccuracy of my compa.s.ses. The sun and the moon both rose on my left, and stars confirmed that my general direction was towards Europe. I know there's no land out here in mid-ocean nothing between Greenland and Iceland to the north, and the Azores to the south. But I look down at the chart for rea.s.surance; for my mind is no longer certain of its knowledge. To find new islands marked on it would hardly be stranger than the flight itself.

No, they must be mirages, fog islands sprung up along my route; here for an hour only to disappear, mushrooms of the sea. But so apparently real, so cruelly deceptive! Real clouds cover their higher hills, and pour down into their ravines. How can those bluffs and forests consist of nothing but fog? No islands of the earth could be more perfect.

The Twenty-fourth Hour.

Here it's well into midday and my mind's still s.h.i.+rking, still refusing to meet the problems it undertook so willingly in planning for this flight. Are all those months of hard and detailed work to be wasted for lack of a few minutes of concentrated effort? Is my character so weak that I can't pull myself together long enough to lay out a new, considered course? Has landing at Le Bourget become of so little import that I'll trade success for these useless hours of semiconscious relaxation? No; I must, I will become alert, and concentrate, and make decisions.

There are measures I haven't yet used too extreme for normal times. But now it's a case of survival. Anything is justified that has effect. I strike my face sharply with my hand. It hardly feels the blow. I strike again with all the strength I have. My cheek is numb, but there's none of the sharp stinging that I counted on to wake my body. No jump of flesh, no lash on mind. It's no use. Even these methods don't work. Why try more?

But Paris is over a thousand miles away! And there's still a continent to find. I must be prepared to strike a fog-covered European coast hundreds of miles off course; and, if necessary, to fly above clouds all the hours of another night. How can I pa.s.s through such ordeals if I can't wake my mind and stir my body? But the alternative is death and failure. Can I complete this flight to Paris? Can I even reach the Irish coast? But the alternative is death and failure! Death! For the first time in my life, I doubt my ability to endure.

The stark concept of death has more effect than physical blow or reasoned warning. It imbues me with new power, power strong enough to communicate the emergency to my body's senses, to whip them up from their lethargy and marshall them once more in straggling ranks, but with some semblance of order and coordination. It's life, life, life itself at stake. This time I'm not just saying so. I know it.

The Twenty-sixth Hour.

Is there something alive down there under my wing? I thought I saw a dark object moving through the water. I search the surface, afraid to hope, lest I lose confidence in vision. Was it a large fish, or were my eyes deceiving me? After the fog islands and the phantoms, I no longer trust my senses. The Spirit of St Louis itself might fade away without causing me great surprise. But yes, there it is again, slightly behind me now, a porpoise the first living thing I've seen since Newfoundland. Fin and sleek, black body curve gracefully above the surface and slip down out of sight.

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

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

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

I s.h.i.+ft 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 rea.s.sure my eyes they're there, tucks my helmet and goggles in more neatly, and fingers the s.h.i.+ny little first-aid kit and the dark gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.ses 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, gla.s.s capsules of aromatic ammonia. 'For use as Smelling Salts', the labels state. What did the doctor think I could do with smelling salts over the ocean? This kit is made for a child's cut finger, or for some debutante fainting at a ball! I might as well have saved its weight on the take-off, for all the good it will be to me. I put it back in the chart bag and then pull it out again. If smelling salts revive people who are about to faint, why won't they revive people who are about to fall asleep? Here's a weapon against sleep lying at my side unused, a weapon which has been there all through the morning's deadly hours. A whiff of one of these capsules should sharpen the dullest mind. And no eyes could sleep stinging with the vapour of ammonia.

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

The Twenty-seventh Hour.

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

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

Fis.h.i.+ng 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 fis.h.i.+ng bank are they anch.o.r.ed on? How far from the coast do fis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s. 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 pa.s.sing through my reawakened mind, I decide to make that head withdraw from the porthole, come out of the cabin, body and all, and to point towards the Irish coast. No sooner have I made the decision than I realize its futility. Probably that fisherman can't speak English. Even if he can, he'll be too startled to understand my message, and reply. But I'm already turning into position to dive down past the boat. It won't do any harm to try. Why deprive myself of that easy satisfaction? Probably if I fly over it again, the entire crew will come on deck. I've talked to people before from a plane, flying low with throttled engine, and received the answer through some simple gesture a nod or an outstretched arm.

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

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

When I pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.ses, 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 fellows.h.i.+p 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. s.h.i.+ps without crews, I do not. And that motionless head at the porthole it's no phantom, and yet it shows no sign of life. I straighten out the Spirit of St Louis and fly on eastward.

The Twenty-eighth Hour.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCES & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

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

Andree, S. A., Nils Strindberg, Knut Fraenkel, The Andree Diaries, John Lane The Bodley Head, 1931.

Barrington, A. J., 'Diary of a West Coast Prospecting Party', Early Travellers in New Zealand, ed. Nancy M. Taylor, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959 Blashford-Snell, J., A Taste for Adventure, Readers Union, 1979.

Bonatti, W., On the Heights, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964 Byrd, R. E., Alone, Neville Spearman, 1955 Callahan, S., Adrift, Bantam Press, 1986. Copyright Steven Callahan 1986 Casteret, N., The Descent of Pierre Saint-Martin, Dent, 1955 Corbett, J., The Temple Tiger, Oxford India Paperbacks, 1997.

Cousteau, J., The Silent World of Jacques Cousteau, Hamish Hamilton, 1953 Danziger, N., Danziger's Travels, Paladin, 1988. Copyright N. Danziger 1987. Reprinted by Permission of Harper Collins Publishers.

Drummond, E., 'Mirror, Mirror', Ascent, 1973 Fiennes, R., To the Ends of the Earth, Mandarin, 1995. Copyright Ranulph Fiennes 1983. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown Fleming, P., News from Tartary, Futura, 1980. Reprinted by permission Giles, E., Australia Twice Traversed, 1889 Hedin, S., My Life as an Explorer, Ca.s.sell, 1926 Herzog, M., Annapurna, Jonathan Cape Heyerdahl, T., The Kon-Tiki Expedition, Penguin, 1963.

Hillary, E., High Adventure, Hodder & Stoughton, 1957 Lindbergh, C., The Spirit of St Louis, John Murray 1953 Mawson, D., The Home of the Blizzard, Hodder & Stoughton, 1930 Ridgway, J., Blyth, C., Fighting Chance, Paul Hamlyn, 1966. Copyright J. Ridgway & C. Blyth 1966 Roosevelt, T., Through the Brazilian Wilderness, John Murray, 1914 Saint-Exupery, A. de, Wind, Sand & Stars, Heinemann, 1939. Trans. copyright Lewis Galantire Scott, R. F., Scott's Last Expedition, John Murray, 1923 Shackleton., E., South, Lyons Press, 1998.

Snow, S., 'Kings of the Equator', Explorers' And Travellers' Tales, ed. O. Tcherine, The Adventurers Club, 1963. Copyright Sebastian Snow 1958 Thomas, B., 'The First Crossing of the Great Souths Arabian Desert', Explorer's All, ed. Sir Percy Sykes, George Newnes Ltd, 1938 Van der Post, L., Venture to the Interior, The Hogarth Press, 1952 Waterton, C., Wanderings in South America, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1891.

ENDNOTES.

1. Because of this blinding, suffocating drift, in the Antarctic winds of only moderate velocity have the punis.h.i.+ng force of full-fledged hurricanes elsewhere.

2. Half a gale. The velocity of wind is denoted by numbers (110).

3. The gorge of the Olivine River, into which Forgotten River flows.

4. Alabaster Pa.s.s.

5. Lost Trail Pa.s.s into Montana on the west slope of the Continental Divide.

6. Bitterroot River, originally named Clark's River by the explorers.

7. At Weippe, Idaho.

8. The Chopunnish, or Nez Perces, were located on the Salmon and Snake rivers.

9. These stoves were fuelled with butane gas.

10. Singular of Bedouin.

11. The night's vigil proved to have been unnecessary, for at dawn the tracks of a sand-wolf were traced near by; its whoop had been mistaken for the war-cry of raiders in the final act.

12. Familiar to British breeders as the Salukhi hound.

13. Native women.

14. The Prince of Ala-shan.

15. Colonel Prejevalesky's setter.