Back Aa

Unicorns

<h2>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> <h2>RIDING THE WHIRLWIND</h2> Once Swinburne, in a Baudelaire mood, sang: "Shall no new sin be born for men's troubles?" And it was an Asiatic potentate who offered a prize for the discovery of a new pleasure. Or was it a sauce? Mankind soon wearies. The miracles of yesteryear are the commonplaces of to-day. Steam, telegraphy, electric motors, wireless, and now wireless telephony are accepted as a matter of course by the man in the street. How stale will seem woman suffrage and prohibition after they have conquered. In the world of art conditions are analogous. The cubist nail drove out the impressionist, and the cubist will vanish if the futurist hammer is sufficiently heavy. Nevertheless, there is a novel sensation in store for those who make a first flight through the air. I don't mean in a balloon, whether captive or free; in the case of the former, a trip to the top of the Washington Monument or the Eiffel Tower will suffice; and while I rode in a Zeppelin at Berlin in 1912 (100 marks, or about $25, was the tariff) and saw Potsdam at my feet, yet I was unsatisfied. The passengers sat in a comfortable salon, ate, [Pg 340] drank, even smoked. The travelling was so smooth as to suggest an inland lake on a summer day. No danger was to be apprehended. The monster air-ship left its hangar and returned to it on schedule time. The entire trip lacked the flavour of adventure. And that leads me to a personal confession. I am not a sport. In my veins flows sporting blood, but only in the Darwinian sense am I a "sport," a deviation from the normal history of my family, which has always been devoted to athletic pleasures. A baseball match in which carnage ensues is a mild diversion for me. I can't understand the fury of the contest. I yawn, though the frenzied enthusiasm of the spectators interests me. I have fallen asleep over a cricket match at Lord's in London, and the biggest bore of all was a Sunday afternoon bull-fight in Madrid. It was such a waste of potential beefsteaks. Prize-fights disgust, shell races are puerile, football matches smack of obituaries. As for golf—that is a prelude to senility, or the antechamber to an undertaker's establishment. The swiftness of film pictures has set a new metronomic standard for modern sports. I suppose playing Bach fugues on the keyboard is as exciting a game as any; that is, for those who like it. A four-voiced polyphony at a good gait is positively hair-raising. It beats poker. All this is a preliminary to my little tale. Conceive me as an elderly person of generous [Pg 341] waist measurement, slightly reckless like most near-sighted humans; this recklessness is psychical. Safety first, and I always watch my step; painful experience taught me years ago the perils that lurk in ambush for a Johnny-look-in-the-air. Flying in heavier-than-air machines fascinated me. The fantastic stories of H. G. Wells were ever a joy. When the Argonauts of the Air appeared, flying was practically assured, although a Paris mathematician had demonstrated with ineluctable logic that it was impossible; as proved a member of the Institute a century earlier that birds couldn't fly. It was an illusion. Well, the Wrights flew, even if Langley did not—Langley, the genuine father of the aeroplane. Living so long in France and Belgium, I had grown accustomed to the whirring of aerial motors, a sound not unlike that of a motor-boat or the buzzing of a sawmill. I became accustomed to this drone above the housetops, and since my return to America I have often wondered why in the land where the aeroplane first flew, so little public interest was manifested. To be sure, there are aero clubs, but they never fly where the interest of the greater public can be intrigued. Either there is a hectic excitement over some record broken or else the aviator sulks in his tent. Is the money devil at the bottom of the trouble? Sport for sport's sake, like art for art's sake, [Pg 342] is rarely encountered. The government has taken up flying, but that is for pragmatic purposes. The aeroplane as a weapon of defence, not the aeroplane as a new and agreeable pleasure. We are not a disinterested nation; even symphony concerts and opera and the salvation of souls are commercial propositions. Else would our skies be darkened by flying machines instead of smoke, and our churches thronged with aviators. Walking on the famous and fatiguing Boardwalk of Atlantic City I suddenly heard a familiar buzzing in the air and looked up. There it was, a big flying boat like a prehistoric dragon-fly, speeding from the Inlet down to the million-dollar pier. Presently there were two of them flying, and I felt as if I were in a civilised land. On the trolleys were signs: "See the Flying Boats at the Inlet!" I did, the very next morning. I had no notion of being a passenger. I was not tempted by the thought. But as Satan finds work for idle hands, I lounged down the beach to the Kendrick biplane, and stared my full at its slender proportions. A young man in a bathing-suit explained to me the technique of flying, and insinuated that hundreds and hundreds had flown during the season without accident. Afternoon saw me again on the sands, an excited witness of a flight; excited because I stood behind the motor when it was started for a preliminary tryout—"tuning up" is the slang phrase of [Pg 343] the profession—and the cyclonic gale blew my hat away, loosened my collar, and made my teeth chatter. Such a tornadic roar! I firmly resolved that never would I trust myself in such a devil's contrivance. Why, it was actually riding the whirlwind—and, perhaps, reaping a watery grave. What else but that? On a blast of air you sail aloft and along. When the air ceases you drop (less than forty-five miles an hour). And this in a flimsy box kite. Never for me! Not to-day, baker, call to-morrow with a crusty cottage! as we used to say in dear old "Lunnon" years ago. Nevertheless, the poison was in my veins; cunningly it began to work. I saw a passenger, a fat man, weighing two hundred and four pounds—I asked for the figures—trussed up like a calf in the arms of a slight, muscular youth, who carried him a limp burden and deposited him on a seat in the prow of the boat. I turned my head away. I am not easily stirred—having reported musical and theatrical happenings for a quarter of a century—but the sight of that stout male, a man and a brother (I didn't know him from Adam), evoked a chord of pity in my breast. I felt that I would never set eyes again on this prospective food for fishes. I quickly left the spot and returned to my hotel, determined to say, "Retro me, Sathanas!" if that personage should happen to show me his hoofs, horns, and hide. [Pg 344] But he did not. The devil is a subtle beast. He had simply set jangling the wires of suggestion, and my nerves accomplished the rest. One morning, a few days later, I awoke parched with desire. I drank much strong tea to steady me and smoked unremittingly. Again, during the early afternoon, I found myself up the beach. "My feet take hold on hell," I said to myself, but it was only hot sand. I teased myself with speculations as to whether the game was worth the candle—yes, I had got that far, traversing a vast mental territory between the No-Sayer and the Yes-Sayer. I was doomed, and I knew it when I began to circle about the machine. Courteously the bonny youth explained matters. It was a Glenn H. Curtiss hydro-aeroplane, furnished with one of the new Curtiss engines of ninety horse-power, capable of flying seventy to ninety miles an hour, of lifting four hundred pounds, and weighing in all about a ton. Was it safe? Were the taut, skinny piano wires that manipulated the steering-gear and the plane durable? Didn't they ever snap? Of course they were durable, and, of course, they occasionally snapped. What then? Why, you drop, in spiral fashion—volplane—charming vocable! But if the engine?—same thing. You would come to earth, rather water, as naturally as a child takes the breast. Nothing to fear. Young Beryl Kendrick is an Atlantic City [Pg 345] product—he was a professional swimmer and life-guard—and will look after you. The price is fifteen dollars; formerly twenty-five dollars, but competition, which is said to be the life of trade, had operated in favour of the public. Rather emotionally I bade my man good day, promising to return for a flight the next morning, a promise I certainly did not mean to keep. This stupendous announcement he received coolly. Flying to him was a quotidian banality. And then I noticed that the blazing sun had become darkened. Was it an eclipse, or were some horrid, monstrous shapes like the supposititious spindles spoken of by Langley devouring the light of our parent planet? No, it was the chamber of my skull that was full of shadows. The obsession was complete. I would go up, but I must suffer terribly in the interim. Why should I fly and pay fifteen good shekels for the unwelcome privilege? I computed the cost of various beverages, and as a consoling thought recalled Mark Twain's story of the Western editor who, missing from his accustomed haunts, was later found serenely drunk, passionately reading to a group of miners from a table his lantern-illuminated speech, in which he denounced the cruel raw waste of grain in the making of bread when so many honest men were starving for whisky. Yet did I feel that I would not begrudge my hard-earned royalties (I'm not a best-seller), and thus tormented [Pg 346] between the devil of cowardice and the deep sea of curiosity I retired and dreamed all night of fighting strange birds that attacked me in an aeroplane. I shan't weary you with the further analysis of my soul-states during this tempestuous period. I ate a light breakfast, swallowed much tea. Then I resolutely went in company with a friend, and we boarded an Inlet car. I had the day previous resorted to a major expedient of cowards. I had said, so as to bolster up my fluttering resolution, that I was going to fly; an expedient that seldom misses, for I should never have been able to face the chief clerk, the head waiter, or the proprietor at the hotel if I failed to keep my promise. "Boaster! Swaggerer!" I muttered to myself en route. "Now are you satisfied? Thou tremblest, carcass! Thou wouldst tremble much more if thou knewest whither I shall soon lead thee!" I quoted Turenne, and I was beginning to babble something about Icarus—or was it Phæton, or Simon Magus?—brought to earth in the Colosseum by a prayer from the lips of Saint Peter—when we arrived. How I hated the corner where we alighted. It seemed mean and dingy and sinister in the dazzling sunlight—a red-hot Saturday, September 11, 1915, and the hour was 10.30 A. M. A condemned criminal could not have noted more clearly every detail of the life he was about to quit. We ploughed through the [Pg 347] sand. We reached the scaffold—at least it looked like one to me. "Hello, here's a church. Let's go in," I felt like exclaiming in sheer desperation, remembering Dickens and Mr. Wemmick. I would have, such was my blue funk, quoted Holy Scripture to the sandlopers, but I hadn't the chance. I asked my friend, and my voice sounded steady enough, whether the wind and weather seemed propitious for flying. Never better was the reply, and my heart went down to my boots. I really think I should have escaped if a stout man with a piratical moustache hadn't approached me and asked: "Going up to-day?" I marvelled at his calmness, and wished for his instant dissolution, but I gave an affirmative shake of the head. Cornered at last! Handing my watch, hat, and wallet to my friend, I coldly awaited the final preparations. I had forgotten my ear protector, but cotton-wool would answer the purpose of making me partially deaf to the clangorous vibration of the propeller blades—which resemble in a magnified shape the innocent air-fans of offices and cafés. I essayed one more joke—true gallows humour—before I was led like a lamb (a tough one) to the slaughter. I asked an attendant to whom I had paid the official fee if my widows would be refunded the money in case of accident; but this antique and tasteless witticism was indifferently received, as it deserved. Finally the young man gave me a raincoat, [Pg 348] grabbed me around the waist, and bidding me clasp his neck he carried me out into shallow water and sat me beside the air-pilot, who looked like a mere lad in his bathing-clothes. My hand must have been trembling (ah, that old piano hand), for he inquiringly eyed me. The motor was screaming as we flew through the water toward the Inlet. I hadn't courage of mind to make a farewell signal to my companion. Too late, we're off! I thought, and at once my trepidation vanished. I had for some unknown reason, possibly because of absolute despair, suffered a rich sea-change. We churned the waves. I saw tiny sails studding the deep blue. Men fished from the shore. As we neared the Inlet, where a shambling wooden hotel stands on the sandy point, the sound of the motor grew intenser. We began to lift, not all at once, but gradually. Suddenly her nose poked skyward, and the boat climbed the air with an ease that was astonishing. No shock. No jerkiness. We simply glided aloft as if the sky were our native heath—you will pardon the Hibernicism—and as if determined to pay a visit to the round blazing sun bathing naked in the brilliant blue. And with the mounting ascent I became unconscious of my corporeal vesture. I had become pure spirit. I feared nothing. The legend of angels became a certainty. I was on the way to the Fourth Dimensional vista. I recalled Poincaré's suggestion that [Pg 349] there is no such thing as matter; only holes in the ether. Nature embracing a vacuum instead of abhorring it. A Swiss cheese universe. Joseph Conrad has said "Man on earth is an unforeseen accident which does not stand close investigation." But man in the air? Man is destined to wings. Was I not proving it? Flying is the sport of gods, and should be of humans now that the motor-car is become slightly "promiscuous." The Inlet and thoroughfare at my feet were a network of silvery ribbons. The heat was terrific, the glare almost unbearable. But I no longer sneezed. Aviation solves the hay-fever problem. The wind forced me to clench my teeth. We were hurled along at seventy miles an hour, and up several thousand feet, yet below the land seemed near enough to touch. As we swung across the masts of yachts I wondered that we didn't graze them—so elusive was the crystal clearness of the atmosphere, a magic mirror that made the remote contiguous. The mast of the sunken schooner hard by the sand-bar looked like a lead-pencil one could grasp and write a message to Mars. Hello! I was become lyrical. It is inescapable up in the air. The blood seethes. Ecstasy sets in; the kinetic ecstasy of a spinning-top. I gazed at the pilot. He twisted his wheel nonchalantly as if in an earthly automobile. I looked over the sides of the cedar boat and was not giddy, for I had lived years at the top of an apartment-house, [Pg 350] ten stories high, from which I daily viewed policemen killing time on the sidewalks; besides, I have strong eyes and the stomach of a drover. Therefore, no giddiness, no nausea. Only exaltation as we swooped down to lower levels. Atlantic City, bizarre, yet meaningless, outrageously planned and executed, stretched its ugly shape beneath us; the most striking objects were the exotic hyphenated hotel, with its Asiatic monoliths and dome, and its vast, grandiose neighbour, a mound of concrete, the biggest hotel in the world. The piers were salient silhouettes. A checker-board seemed the city, which modulated into a tremendous arabesque of ocean and sky. I preferred to stare seaward. The absorbent cotton in my ears was transformed into gun-cotton, so explosive the insistent drumming of the motor-engine. Otherwise, we flew on even keel, only an occasional dip and a sidewise swing reminding me that I wasn't footing the ordinary highway. The initial intoxication began to wear off, but not the sense of freedom, a glorious freedom; truly, mankind will not be free till all fly. Alas! though we become winged we remain mortal. We may shed our cumbersome pedestrian habits, but we take up in the air with us our petty souls. I found myself indulging in very trite thoughts. What a pity that war should be the first to degrade this delightful and stimulating sport! Worse followed. Why [Pg 351] couldn't I own a machine? Base envy, you see. The socialistic leaven had begun to work. No use; we shall remain human even in heaven or hell. I have been asked to describe the sensation of flying. I can't. It seems so easy, so natural. If you have ever dreamed of flying, I can only say that your dream will be realised in an aeroplane. Dreams do come true sometimes. (Curiously enough, I've not dreamed of flying since.) But as there is an end even to the most tedious story, so mine must finish. Suddenly the sound of the engine ceased. The silence was thrilling, almost painful. And then in huge circles, as if we were descending the curves of an invisible corkscrew, we came down, the bow of the flying boat pointing at an angle of forty-five degrees. Still no dizziness, only a sense of regret that the trip was so soon over. It had endured an eternity, but occupied precisely twenty-one minutes. We reached the water and settled on the foam like a feather. Then we churned toward the beach; again I was carried, this time on to solid land, where I had ridiculous trouble in getting the cotton from my harassed eardrums. Perhaps my hands were unsteady, but if they were, my feet were not. I reached the Inlet via the Boardwalk, making record time, and drew the first happy sigh in a week as I sat down, lighted a cigar, and twiddled my fingers at a waiter. Even if I [Pg 352] had enjoyed a new pleasure I didn't propose to give up the old ones. Then my nerves! And when I meet Gabriele d'Annunzio I can look him in the eye. He flew over Trieste, but I flew over my fears—a moral as well as a physical victory for a timid conservative. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [Pg 353] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.