I

THE weatherbeaten young man in the dressing gown sat at the telephone, talking to the airport. The apartment was quiet with the stillness of three o’clock in the morning. The conversation was a long one. On the polished table lay a large white map, with a faint blue outline of the seaboard down one side, and the rest the unlettered space of the ocean. The young man was tracing curious irregular ovals and wavelike lines, in pencil, as the voice at the other end dictated. Sometimes the silence of the night was broken by the sound of a street car or a taxi running down Madison Avenue; two or three lamps threw motionless circles of light on the green carpet; the ash trays had not been cleaned out — everything had the untidiness of early morning. The girl and an elderly man sat on the couch, their eyes fixed on the map, brilliant white under the table lamp.

The young pilot laid down his pencil, considered the map minutely; then he asked the man at the other end to hold on. He leaned back, the telephone on his chest, and considered. His eyes looked straight before him, through the walls of the warm apartment, through the crowded city; his brown face was intent. Once he leaned forward and examined the map, then relapsed into thought again. Finally he sat up straight and spoke into the instrument.

‘O.K. At five o’clock, then. Put Cliff on, will you?’ He waited.

‘Cliff, all set for five o’clock. I’ll be there soon after four. Start warming her at four, will you? What? No, fine; I’ve just had about four hours of the best. All right, then; I ’m starting as soon as I get dressed. ’Bye.’

He stood up; so did the girl. The apartment seemed to have an unearthly quiet. The girl and the man on the couch looked haggard, but the man in the dressing gown, his hair rumpled, his chin unshaven, looked strong and competent. The atmosphere was suddenly full of strain, but he betrayed no anxiety.

The girl spoke quickly.

‘Jim, do you mean you’re going?’

‘Yes, at last! The Bureau report follows out what they told us at eleven o’clock. It looks pretty good — as good as I can expect. Look here!’ He turned to the map. ‘Here’s a wide barometric high extending . . .’ Enthusiastically he explained the pencil scrawls over the white spaces of the map; the girl followed every word with strained and close attention.

‘It’s grand,’ he finished up. ‘It’s everything I could expect. I shall case her up several hundred miles to avoid this stuff here, and then run right down here and follow out the course.’ He paused, then spoke decisively: ‘I’ll take off at five.’

The girl did not question his decision; she gazed fixedly at the inanimate map, her thoughts racing out into the dark unknown miles of lonely air, while she strove to apprehend the unexpected changes, the unseen dangers, to quiet the forebodings in her heart. Then she turned briskly to him.

’All right, I’ll go and tell Clara about the coffee and eats. You go and get dressed.’ She eyed him reflectively for a moment. ‘And, Jim dear, off with all the bristles; you must look nice the

— the other side!’ She disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

‘Attagirl!’ he remarked appreciatively. ‘Harry, be a sport and ring up Joe and tell him I’m off at five o’clock, will you?’ The older man left the couch and made for the telephone.

‘Anybody else? Anything at all to do?’

‘No, everything’s arranged. Joe’s got a list of things he’s going to have done. Cliff will be rechecking the ship now and will start warming her in a few minutes. I won’t be long.’

When he came back the sleepy but excited maid had brought in coffee and food for all of them. They ate hurriedly, absent-mindedly, but he was made to eat methodically through his allotted portion.

‘But I’m groaning now, Betty!’ he protested. Firmly she made him go on.

‘You’ll need it all to-morrow night, my lad!’ she warned him. They caught each other’s eyes; through both their minds ran the same thought: ‘How far we’ll be from each other by then!’ Silently he covered her hand with his tanned one.

‘I’ll be close to a walloping meal by that time,’ he answered reassuringly. ‘Say, I’m warm!’ He stood up with a wriggle. Even in the matter of his clothes he had not forgotten any detail — the heavy underwear, the soft shirt, very easy round the neck, the old, roomy suit which would remain comfortable during the long hours of sitting, the oversize shoes and thick socks. He had no intention of having trifles build up into a maddening discomfort. He stood still for a minute or so, thinking over once again the things he had to remember. ‘Careful, don’t forget anything, don’t forget anything,’ he told himself. Then he turned to the others.

‘All right, fellers, let’s go. I want to have plenty of time, and I don’t want to miss a second of daylight.’

As he turned to go, his eyes swept round the familiar little room — his odds and ends of treasures, photographs and pictures and books, all the things collected along the way, familiar reminders of friends, of events in an exciting life. For a moment he realized the security and warmth, he felt the contrast with the trackless cold sky awaiting him; for a moment he saw in the same flash of vision his warm bed and a pyramid of flame at the end of the airport runway. He knew a brief sense of poignancy; then the keen urge of adventure rushed through him, bore him forward on the wings of his own will.

The colored maid helped him into his coat. She contrived to blend reproach and well-wishing and tears; he shook hands with her. When they got into the elevator, he asked in surprise, ‘Are n’t you the day man? Why on so late?’

‘ Yes, sir, but I guess all the boys have waited to see you go, sir. A coupla them’ve gone out to the field. Yes, good luck, good luck, sir!’

The same wishes attended him through the lobby. He shook hands. Betty got into the roadster, Harry took the wheel, and the pilot squeezed in on the outside.

‘Phew, how many more hands to shake?’ he complained as they started off.

‘I think they’re darlings,’ Betty answered. ‘They’ve waited up for hours to give you a send-off.’ They drove rapidly through the deserted streets, without benefit of colored lights, over the Queensborough Bridge, then increased speed until the cool night air whipped t heir hair and chilled the back of their necks. The girl thought, ‘The faster we go, the nearer he is to the worst danger of it all, the take-off, but if we go slowly he’ll miss a few of the precious minutes of daylight.’ Relentlessly the road ribboned by under the headlights. She looked up for the stars, but they were not visible.

‘Jim, it’s very cloudy!’ she said. His arm tightened round her back.

‘Yes, but it’s dead clear about four hundred miles out, and that’s thin stuff anyway. I’ll get over it right away.’ There was a little pause.

‘Sure,’ she replied. ’That’s what I thought.’

II

The airport beacon threw a slim pencil up to the clouds. All the buildings were dark except one hangar, which blazed with electrics inside and a flood light turned on the concrete paving outside. Rows of cars were parked near it.

They drove out of the dark night into the glare of the flood light. A chorus of welcoming shouts met them from the little crowd of waiting pressmen, and they blinked in the glare of camera flashes. The press crowded round them, firing questions, making wise-cracks, cheering them with goodnatured chaff. The man who had all the arrangements in hand ran up.

'’Lo, Jim! ’Lo, Betty! Everything’s O. K., and directly you’re ready I’ll go over things with you. I ’ve arranged for a couple of motor-cycle cops to be here in a few minutes, and I’ve flagged the end of the runway. I think I’ll send out a couple of little flares, too; don’t you think so?’

‘Yes, Joe, maybe you’d better, but make ’em very small. I don’t want to be dazzled even a bit, with those trees to clear. How long has Cliff had her going?’

‘About twenty minutes. Say, she’s like a watch!’

They advanced toward the open hangar door. Just outside stood the aeroplane, the propeller turning over quietly, steadily, with absolute regularity. A hand was pushed out of the cockpit and waved to him. He waved back a greeting to his mechanic, and looked searchingly over the whole machine. It stood gleaming in the blaze of light, polished, beautiful, an artist’s dream of the Thing of Speed. It was quite small, with short metal wings and a tapering black body; on the front was the great radial engine, dwarfing the little aeroplane it was to tear through the skies. The slender undercarriage struts quivered slightly from the motion of the engine, the grass under the tail skid flattened and waved. Many men had labored over it; first on paper, with intricate calculations; then in wood, in gleaming steel, in rubber, for the long months until the day when the nervous designers had watched the miracle of its transformation into a thing of life and full-throated power as it swept through the air in towering climbs and arcs under the hands of its test pilot, a revolutionary design, a record breaker; now it was to answer for a man’s life.

The mechanic started to build up the engine speed. A representative of the engine makers made his way over to the pilot.

‘All right?’ asked the pilot.

‘The best we’ve ever done, Jimmy. Four of us have been going over it all night.’ He caught Betty’s eye. ‘Give her gas and she’ll run until you’re an old man, boy!’

A man appeared with the pilot’s flying suit and cap. Another brought out a cardboard box full of vacuum flasks and packets of food. Low in the east was the faintest suggestion of gray in the sky. Wordlessly the girl watched these preparations, and caught the note of finality. Round the little group there was a constant flow of chatter, inconsequential gossip that served partly to conceal the nervous excitement which filled everybody. The engine ran faster. Men shouted against it, then gradually became silent as the powerful roar expanded, deepened. The pilot involuntarily stepped a pace or two forward and stood listening, oblivious of everything but the message coming from the shimmering mass of steel; momentarily he forgot the people, the girl, the flight itself, and concentrated on the volume of sound, as a conductor might listen to an orchestra; his ears picked out subtle messages unheard except by the initiated.

The roar built up; it spread out over everything, rending the quiet night. It dominated the little gathering completely. Everyone turned and watched with close attention, filled with the comprehension that here was the essence of it all, success or failure, life or death for the man who stood and listened to it so closely; did it falter only once over the lonely thousands of miles, no skill, no forethought, would save him. The flippant pressmen were serious. The girl stared at it fiercely, thoughtless of anything in the world except hope.

Now it was running at full throttle; streaks of flame burst from the exhaust manifolds; the glittering points of reflection all over the machine danced as it quivered and strained under the terrific pull of the racing propeller. The undercarriage wheels were chocked up against big wooden blocks, the tail skid was tied down with ropes to a stake. The grass was perfectly flat on the earth. A mechanic trying to make a short cut past the tail was instantly blown on to his knees, and clawed his way back out of the slip stream.

Minute followed minute, ears aching with the sizzling roar, but still inexorably it went on. The pilot felt it in his very bones; he knew, he understood the meaning to him of this whole adventure. Behind him lay all the weeks of careful planning, the minute attention to every detail, the tireless consideration of things large and small, the preparation so methodical that the object of it all began to seem remote; now the crisis was immediately before him — he was caught up in his own gamble. These were the last few minutes before he was committed beyond withdrawal to risking the very fullness of life itself against an enterprise which might finish, he reflected grimly, at the end of the runway; the thought sharpened his already supersensitive ear for the faintest unusual note in the torrent of sound, but it was unchanging.

Suddenly it dwindled, almost ceased; in the strange quietness the voice of the mechanic came from the cockpit.

‘All ready!’

The engine was turning over slowly, regularly, as when they came. The pilot took off his hat and put it on the box of food; someone handed him his flying suit and he started to wriggle into it. The men were bringing cans of gasoline to replace that used in the long warming-up process; out of the tail of his eye he saw Cliff jealously inspecting the wash-leather filter before they started pouring into the funnel. Joe was stowing the vacuum flasks into the cockpit, putting the packets of food in the prearranged place for them.

He adjusted the suit very carefully, made sure his coat sleeves were comfortable, tried it all over before he pulled the zipper fastening up to his neck. Amid the babble of talk round him he asked someone the time; it was a quarter to five. He fitted his furlined cap, with the clips for the oxygen mouthpiece, over his head, tried on his gauntlets, and took them off again. They were moving the machine off to the beginning of the runway. It was all purposeful, but unhurried, just as he wanted it to be. As he moved with them, away from the flood light, he saw the first faint light of the coming day, a sort of pearliness in the atmosphere.

Betty walked by his side. The machine was turned facing the long runway. He gave his gloves to Betty, climbed in, and began a minute inspection. He went over all the instruments, one by one. He examined the first setting of the earth inductor compass — he knew it by heart; and he also knew that the instrument had been tested again and again, He examined the gasoline gauges and the master gauge. He tested the oxygen apparatus, and saw that the vacuum flasks and the food packets were securely in their places. He checked the maps, and the writing bracket with its pad and pencil. Again and again he forced himself to be deliberate, to follow his set routine; throughout his work came the faint vibration and muffled clumpety-clump of the idling engine.

It was ten minutes before he crawled out again. He looked around; he could see people’s faces in the growing light. He could not think of anything else to do. He looked at Joe and Cliff.

‘Boys, guess I’ll go now.’

They nodded, their eyes on his face. He started the necessary round of handshaking. There was a chorus from the newspaper boys, and shouts for him to stand while they photographed. He stood with his back against the side of the aeroplane and blinked in the blinding magnesium flares. There was one steady glare from the moving-picture outfits; an operator ran forward with the ’mike’ connected to one of the talkie outfits.

‘Come on, Jimmy, say sumpin’ — what you’re going to do!’

He faced the eager crowd; the man held the microphone a few feet in front of him. The pilot spoke hurriedly, trying to conceal his impatience.

‘This flight will, I hope, demonstrate a step forward in flying, in high-speed flying. I am confident in the machine, which is of radical design. I expect to get there in record time’ (The hell you do!) ‘and I am satisfied with the weather conditions. I shall be flying at a great height the whole way.’ (What about fog, you fool?) ‘Yes, I’ve got a very heavy load of gasoline, but the machine will lift it with a comfortable margin.’ (Can it, can it? Yes, but can it?)

He waved to them. He saw that they were nearly all on one side, so as not to face each other’s flash lights. He seized Betty’s arm, quickly ducked under the machine, and stood up with her on the other side. For a brief space they held each other close, and looked full in each other’s eyes. She had braced her nerves to control her t hrough this minute she had been dreading. He kissed her ; as he did so he was conscious of the almost unbearable tension she was under, the strain so near to snapping point; for a second, in spite of herself, she gave herself away.

‘Stick it, kid,’ he said softly.

‘Yes, Jim. . . . It’s only the takeoff, the . . .’

‘I know I can get her off. I know I can do it! Believe me, kid, won’t you ?' Her eyes steadied on his own,

‘All right, Jim; I believe it.’ She grinned bravely. He held her tight; for a little instant their very souls fused one into the other; never again in their lives could they be closer than at this moment. . . . Then he stepped back, ducked under the polished fuselage again, and slipped into the aeroplane.

He settled himself comfortably into his seat, as comfortably as the tension of his own nerves would let him. He arranged the oxygen mask handy for use. He tested the controls mechanically. His fingers opened up the throttle slowly as he gave the engine a final wide-open test, while he watched the oil temperature and the revolution counter; he saw that he was getting the maximum possible revolutions. He closed the throttle, let the control stick come forward to central again. He waved his hand as a signal for the chocks to be taken away. There was a blinding barrage of magnesium flares, a chorus of farewell shouts. He had a last vision of Betty, slim and erect, her hands close to her sides, her head up. She did not wave or move. . . .

He eased the machine forward about twenty yards, and closed his eyes tight while he sat and waited for the effect of the magnesium flares to wear off. When he opened them again, he could just see the dim gray plain of the airport surface; the cloudy sky, gray also in the diffused light. Far away, straight ahead of him, were two pin points of light marking the end of the runway. Breathing deeply, he opened the throttle, slowly at first, so as not to pull her over on her nose; then, as she gathered way, he opened it wide. The engine pounded and roared like a thing possessed. He eased the stick forward to get the tail up level; his feet were frantically busy correcting the heavily loaded aeroplane’s tendency to swing from side to side. Now her tail was level, the stick rested central, jolting against his fingers as the machine tore over the rough ground. His eyes were strained ahead over the engine cowling. The tearing note of the wind mounted, shriller and shriller, as he raced on. The shocks on the undercarriage were getting close together, staccato and very sharp, like blows from a hammer. The field had become a streaming blur, throwing itself behind him; the pin points of light hurled themselves toward him and he began to see the ghostly row of trees on the other side. Faster . . . faster still ! . . .

The machine took a long, low bound; as it touched the ground again his sensitive hand pulled the stick back a shade to ease the shock; then another long bound, but this time there was no shock; the wheels brushed the grass in a long sweep. He sat, his shoulders hunched, every nerve in his body, every last atom of sensibility, concentrated in his wrist and fingers. With infinite delicacy, with a degree of concentration almost inhuman, he eased the stick back, pulling the laboring machine up foot by foot. The flares flashed by; he had a camera-shutter vision of figures waving. The trees rushed toward him, higher than he was. His life, the swift accounting of utter finality, rested on the skill of his steady fingers. Still he eased the nose up; the speed was at the maximum — she would go no faster. He felt her rising, gaining buoyancy. In one last long crowding of seconds, they swept forward; then the trees flicked by just under the still-turning wheels. He saw the horizon; a long white glow spread along the distant ruler edge of the sea; he headed out toward it.

III

Wearily he considered the descending sun, gleaming in nearly level rays on a polished metal wingtip, throwing a splash of light on a corner of the instrument board, and once again he estimated the remaining daylight. At this great height, no mote of dust glittered in the beams streaming through the cockpit windows; the light was clear and hard.

Twenty thousand feet beneath, the sea formed a blue-gray background for the scattered islands of creamy cotton wool; in every direction the beautiful desolation of space, but no sign of land or the friendly smoke of a ship. To the westward, the sea was a floor of gold. Straight ahead he followed his course, in solitude which might for him be endless. Strain his eyes as he might, he could see nothing but ocean; it became difficult for him to conceive land. The rarefied air made him drowsy; he began to think of the vast depths of the sea, the eternal utter blackness of a world where there had never been light, where there could be no sound, where immense pressures of many tons to every square inch encompassed great sightless monsters. The images were insistent, but woolly; for a few seconds his mind swam darkly in vague presentiments; then it was called back by the increasing pitch of the engine note. He pulled himself together and removed the weight of his arm from the stick. The instrument board wavered before him; quietly he turned the tap of the oxygen line to his mouthpiece and breathed deeply. The instrument board became sharp, he saw and thought clearly again. For the hundredth time he stretched about in his seat and tried for a more comfortable position.

Most of the sheets of his note pad had been covered with penciled calculations and turned back under the elastic band — notes on engine speed, oil temperature, height, speed, and the gasoline consumption, interleaved with differences in compass variation and his attempts at dead reckoning. For the first few hours his mind had been keen, until the effect of the height began to get him; then he had become more and more tired with every effort. He had passed over two great storms, and one of them had reached up to within a few thousand feet of him; he had flown through vast surges of the mighty wind currents, bumps which threw the machine up and down hundreds of feet, while he fought to keep on his compass course, panting with the physical effort, unwilling to use up too much of his precious oxygen supply. Time lengthened out in the air; each storm had taken only an hour or two to pass over, yet it had seemed a whole day until things had calmed down again. He had eaten some of his provisions at regular intervals; they had been tasteless and not worth the trouble, but he had forced himself to eat them to keep up his vitality.

It was terribly monotonous, yet the longer it went on, the more of a strain it was. It was a continuous and increasing fight, with nothing to strike against except the intangible slowness of time. Now he was looking everything over again, noting down the instrument readings. Cheered by the oxygen, he grinned at the thought of having made all these pages of careful notes for aeronautical experts to mull over; counting chickens, counting chickens. . . .

He had long since ceased to be anxious about the engine. It endlessly maintained its sizzling, drumming roar, turning over as steadily as a sewing machine, fed with gasoline from the big tanks and air from the supercharger. The wind beat and whistled against the forward windows, the propeller remained the same shimmering ghost ring. The air was very calm; the aeroplane sped along on an undeviating course, without the slightest perceptible rise or fall. He had no sensation of speed; it was as though he were suspended in a gale while the clouds and sea passed slowly beneath.

He straightened up and peered ahead over the engine cowling; he ranged his eyes backward and forward along the slightly curved horizon, but could see nothing. He put on a pair of amber-tinted glasses to cut the haze near the horizon and looked again, but still saw nothing but the empty plain of the sea. In dull disappointment he took off the glasses, minutely examined the gasoline gauge, and figured the consumption per hour into the gallons which were left. This was the crux of the whole flight. He had reason to suppose that he had followed an approximately accurate course, not dangerously out of line; but he had flown for hours over storms, and high fog afterward, and had been given no chance to estimate his sideways drift or, by working his ground sights on a ship, to discover how the wind was affecting his true speed. He knew from his instruments that he had been making tremendous speed through the air, but he did not know to within five hundred miles how far he had come; he was still going on the figures he had compiled in his apartment in far-away New York. The apartment . . . the girl sitting there while he telephoned . . . how far away it seemed, part of another world, infinitely desirable, infinitely remote and poignant!

It was strange, too, that all the richness of life up to now, all there was to come of love and gayety and adventure, were brought to a summation by this little column of colorless liquid in a glass tube. Fraction by fraction the column descended, and one or two big things and a thousand little simple ones receded like some happy dream. Even while he looked ahead, his mind was busy with thoughts of all that was so dear to him, doubly so now that it was to be taken from him. He sighed and settled himself back in the lonely little cockpit; half his mind told him that he was getting morbid from overstrain and worry, but the other half told him there was much to lose.

Running at what he believed was record speed through the thin upper air, his calculations showed that he should have sighted land some time before, so the great winds which swept above the highest clouds had evidently been against him somewhere; still, he had nearly two hours’ gasoline left. He relaxed his head against the bulkhead and hoped. He had faced the actual business of dying too often to be stampeded by it now that it was near; and he was so tired as to be almost placid.

Time passed. The engine kept up its monotonous work — suck in, compress, fire, and exhaust, hundreds of times a minute; the supercharger caught and compressed the thin air and fed it to the engine; the altimeter needle trembled around the same figure of twenty; the radium-lined figures on the compass ring did not move, the needle trembled upright on its brother, the earth inductor. The sun sank. He continued to sit in a dream, half-hypnotized by the rhythm.

It was at the end of another hour that he roused himself to make another edition of his methodical notes. He opened the oxygen tap for a spell, to give him enough energy to carry out his routine. He knew that he was near the end of everything. Significantly, it was the gasoline gauge that he examined first. The column of liquid was a little stumpy object sitting at the bottom of the tall glass tube; it looked a pitiful thing to be fighting his battle for him, the humble evidence of a few gallons of smelly gasoline swashing about in the bottoms of the nearly empty tanks. . . . He sat up and peered yet again over the shining cowling, and scanned the horizon.

IV

It was then that he saw the miracle; ahead of him, through the shimmering ring of the propeller, the horizon was crinkled with a black, wavering line. Pulling himself nearly upright with one hand, unmindful of the engine’s gathering roar as his body pushed the control stick forward, he stared unbelievingly. In an agony of suspense he tried to follow the line out to his right or left; then, far to his left, he saw an unmistakable promontory pointing into the graying sea. Land! He yelled, but was not conscious of any sound. The blood pounded in his head, his ears, and he panted heavily for breath. His eyes still on the land, he sank back into his seat and fumbled for the oxygen tap. Recklessly he gave it a quick turn, and inhaled eagerly. Impatiently he jerked the stick back and brought the machine level again; the engine note sank half an octave.

He could not take his eyes away from the most wonderful sight he had ever seen. All his weariness fell from him; he was intensely alert, wildly excited. He could not control his crazily thumping heart or try to think; he just drank in the whole panorama and abandoned himself to an exhilaration which kept every muscle in his body tight and quivering. Each minute brought an additional solidity to the hazy coast line; it began to widen and have depth.

He seized his pencil and began to scribble down the exact time. It was hard to make it legible; he could not write the words and figures clearly. He dropped the pencil on its string and began to fumble for his maps. How many times during the long flight he had looked down at them, neatly folded and clipped against the side of the fuselage, and longed for a chance to use them, to read the signs on the solid ground! He spread one out on his knees and tried to memorize the coast outline for comparison with the land he was approaching, but he could not concentrate. Impatiently he dropped it, and resumed his gaze ahead. The land was very plain now; he stared his fill. He became conscious that the oxygen mask was sticking to his cheeks. Tears! ‘Ridiculous!’ he thought. ‘I must be going crazy — I must be losing my grip!’ But he knew he was not ashamed. Now he was panting heavily again; the excitement and exertion were using up his oxygen too fast. ‘Steady!’ he told himself. ‘Must n’t spoil it all now! Take it slow!’ He forced himself to relax while he strove to fend off the dizziness. He sat very still, while the gleaming machine drove forward over the lonely sea on weary but triumphant wings.

Some tiny specks — steam trawlers, probably; some larger ones dotted about; coastwise shipping made the sea appear crowded all of a sudden. The moments seemed to pass so easily; he felt no weariness now, oniy a grateful joyousness which filled his very bones. Moving cautiously, he spread the map out again, and examined the coast line. It did not take him many minutes to identify the bold sweeps and capes; he was so high that he could see a tremendous distance in every direction except toward the sun. He put on the tinted glasses again and peered down through the golden haze. He picked out a blob of gleaming white objects on the very point of a headland. ‘Coast-guard station,’ he thought. ‘They’ve probably seen me and are sending telegrams all over.’ That made him think of the ultimate destination. He watched the gasoline gauge narrowly; he had to bend down to estimate the height of the remnant of the once high column. He made a guess at the gallons remaining, and then read the air-speed indicator; it was unchanged. The evening air was perfectly calm; he knew that he was going at enormous speed, and decided to carry straight on and try to make it. He knew he ought to be methodical and triangulate out his land speed through the sights, but he rebelled against breaking the spell of this last hour, the wonderful beauty of this flight back into Life.

He decided to chance it. The ground was becoming faintly suffused with purple, but the light was still clear enough four miles high. About a hundred miles away from his landing place he made an adjustment to the tail stabilizer: the nose dropped and the speed increased as they began to lose height in gradual stages. At fifteen thousand feet he leveled off for ten minutes, then started down again on the invisible sloping path. The light weakened noticeably; the air became thicker; the thermometer crept up to zero, then above zero. At ten thousand feet he adjusted the stabilizer again and kept a level flight. He was now near the end. He passed a formation of three aeroplanes, probably on the lookout for him, but he flashed by them with his superior speed. Time seemed to crowd up on him. He reveled in being able to breathe normally again, being able to move without the everlasting panting for enough air. He kept the oxygen on a little, fearful of losing clear grasp of everything for even a minute.

At last he saw the edge of the thick canopy of smoke and dust which betokened the presence of a huge city. How often he had dreamed of this moment! How often he had thought of the time when he would alter his course as he was doing now, to make for the great airport! Every detail of the field was clear in his mind; he had examined photographs of it, from every angle, hundreds of times. Within five minutes he saw it, an irregular clear space below him. At last!

With the realization that it was all over, the tension snapped, the exhilaration disappeared. Instantly he felt intensely tired, desperately sleepy. . . . ‘Now,’ he thought, ‘one more effort.’ He fumbled at the little food rack and secured a small cardboard box tied with a flaring red ribbon. He removed a glove, slipped the ribbon off, and opened the box. Inside were two or three capsules. He swallowed one. The powerful tonic began to whip his nerves. He maintained a wide circle. He took off the oxygen mask and dropped it on the floor. He closed his fingers round the engine throttle. ‘This ought to be an ecstatic moment,’ he thought, ‘ but oh, to go to sleep — to go to sleep!’ . . . He shut off the gas, and for the first time since he had left the ground the faithful engine hesitated, spluttered for a second, then dwindled down to a barely audible mutter as the propeller idled. He altered the tail surface to gliding position, and began a wide, slow spiral. He intended to go down slowly in order to accustom his eyes to the fading light, which became less and less as he lost height. He wanted to take at least ten minutes.

Peering over the down-wing side of the machine, he looked at the airport, at the foot of his invisible spiral staircase. He could see everything perfectly distinctly. He saw the line of concrete hangars; and all around them, and stretching out on either side, a dense mass of people, thousands upon thousands. More automobiles than he had ever seen were massed in every direction. The several roads leading to the airport were jammed and black with vehicles. The ground looked much nearer than it actually was; everything was magnified after his long and lonely journey.

He knew that a vast crowd awaited him, fame, the realization of a great achievement, but his jangled nerves fought with his tired body and he could not grasp anything without effort. There was only one welcome in the world he wanted, and the peace it would bring. . . . As the aeroplane drifted past the five-thousand-feet mark he grasped the pencil and began to write a cable on his writing pad. He would never be able to do it on the ground. There was not a bump in the evening air; the machine slid round and round its great circle with scarcely a sound, only the sough of the air over the polished surfaces. It was only a few words, but he wrote the message with difficulty, signed it with an initial.

The huge crowd surged to and fro, shouting, cheering, hysterical with wild excitement, their faces turned upward in the dusk toward the aeroplane coming in so quietly from one of the greatest flights the world had ever known. ... A little group of radio announcers strove to control their voices, to keep free from the delirium which swept in vast waves over the mob. The airport telephones were monopolized by pressmen, peering out of windows, dictating in staccato rushes to city desks, while type was set paragraph by paragraph, while the ocean cables were held open, while all over the darkening country people sat silently by their radios waiting for each word.

The pilot glanced at the wind socks drooping on the tops of the hangars. He could land in any direction. The landing ground was tolerably clear, but the edge of the mob rippled in and out and threatened to spread out over the field. He made one final circle, getting very low, and then turned in toward the field. He braced himself for the last effort. A hangar roof flashed by his wingtip, the ground came up under the engine cowling and tore past. He leveled off; the sound of the wind sank to nothing. He was past trying to make a pretty landing; he waited. Suddenly the machine sank a few feet, there was a jar, and he felt the wheels rolling along the ground. At the end of the run he turned the machine round, toward the line of hangars, saw he could not get there, and switched the engine off. The propeller came to rest, a blade sticking bolt upright above the cowling.

He saw the police cordons burst aside, and the long front of the mob, like an ocean wave, roll rapidly toward him. Two mounted policemen galloped furiously across the field to get to him first. His deafened ears barely caught a tremendous roar, rushing at him, about to engulf him. He sat, too utterly weary to move, to think; then he lowered his head and smiled, like a child going to sleep, at the penciled cable folded in his hand, to the girl in New York.