The Spirit of ST Louis (40 page)

a leather mitten and thrust my arm out the window. My palm is covered with stinging pinpricks. I pull the flashlight from my pocket and throw its beam onto a strut. The entering edge is irregular and shiny -- ice! And as far out into darkness as the beam penetrates, the night is filled with countless, horizontal, threadlike streaks. The venturi tubes may clog at any moment!

I've got to turn around, get back into clear air -- quickly! But in doing so those instrument needles mustn't move too far or too fast. Mind, not body, must control the turn. My bodily senses want to whip the Spirit of St. Louis into a bank and dive it out of the thunderhead, back into open sky:

"Kick rudder hard -- no time to lose -- the turn indicator's icing up right now."

But the mind retorts, "Steady, steady. It's easy enough to get into a steep bank, but more difficult to get out of one and on your course again. If you turn too fast, you'll lose more time than you save; the plane may get entirely out of control."

"If the turn indicator ices up, it'll get out of control anyway. There's no time -- only a few seconds -- quick – quick -- harder rudder -- kick it --"

"Don't do anything of the sort. I've thought all this out carefully and know just what's best to do. You remember, you are to obey my orders!"

"Yes, yes -- but just a little faster, then -- just a little --"

"No, no faster; turn just the right amount. You're to do exactly what I say; no more, no less!"

"Just a little!"

"No, none!"

I keep pressing rudder cautiously until the turn indicator's needle creeps a quarter-inch to the left. I push the stick over just enough to hold the proper bank -- ball high –low -- center again -- slow and steady movements -- mustn't let jerks from the turbulence throw me off -- The air speed drops ten miles an hour -- The altimeter shows a hundred foot descent --

"Turn faster! You see the air speed's dropping. It's ice doing that! Quick, or it'll be too late!"

"No, it's not ice -- at least not very likely. It's probably just the normal slowing down in a bank."

"But the altimeter's dropping too! It's ice, I tell you!"

I open the throttle another 50 revolutions. I don't dare push the stick forward very much to gain speed. The Spirit of St. Louis is too close to the top of the main cloud layer. There were less than a thousand feet to spare when I entered the thunderhead. That endless stratus layer is probably full of ice too. If I drop down into it, I may never see the stars again.

The altimeter needle falls 200 feet -- 300 feet -- I push the throttle wide open -- I
must
stay above that vast layer of cloud at the thunderhead's base -- The bank indicator shows a skid -- ball to right of center -- a blast of air strikes my cheek -- Ease up on the rudder -- The air Speed rises to 100 miles an hour -- The pitch indicator points nose down -- Stick back slightly

I ought to be turned around now -- Center the turn indicator -- level out the plane -- flashlight onto the liquid compass. (It's no time to trust the earth-inductor; it will be working backward anyhow, on a back-track heading.) No, not yet -- about 30 degrees more to go -- the card's swinging too much to read accurately.

I bank again and glance at the altimeter-10,300 feet. Good -- it's gone up a little. I throw my flashlight onto the wing strut. Ice is thicker!

The earth-inductor needle begins moving backward, jumping erratically – Level out wings -- About the right heading this time. Now, if the turn indicator doesn't ice up for a few minutes more -- I put my hand out the window again – – – the pinpricks are still there.

Steady the plane. Make the compass and card stop swinging -- but the air's too rough -- Is the turn-indicator getting sluggish -- icing? -- It seems to move back and forth more slowly -- Everything depends on its working till I get outside this cloud -- Just two or three more minutes

My eyes sense a change in the blackness of my cockpit. I look out through the window. Can those be the same stars? Is this the same sky? How bright! How clear! What safety I have reached! Bright, clear, safe? But this is the same hazy air I left, the same fraction of an earthly hour. I've simply been existing in a different frame of space and time. Values are relative, dependent on one’s circumstance. They change from frame to frame, and as one travels back and forth between them. Here I've found security where I left danger, flying over a major storm, above a frigid northern ocean. Here's something I never saw before -- the brilliant light of a black night.

I was in the thunderhead for ten minutes at most; but it's one of those incidents that can't be measured by minutes. Such periods stand out like islands in a sea of time. It's not the limitless vista of experience, not hours or years that are most important. It's the islands, no matter how small. They impress the senses as they draw the eye at sea. Against them, years roll in and break, as waves upon a coast.

How much ice has accumulated on the plane? I move my flashlight from one spot to another. There's none on the bottom surface of the wing; but a thin layer forward on the strut tells me that it's also clinging to the airfoil's entering edge. I can't see that from my cockpit. There's not enough weight to make much difference, but what about resistance? Will the change in contours have great effect on speed? The air-speed needle shows a five-mile drop. Is it because of ice on the Pitot tube, or the increased drag of the plane? Have those few minutes in the cloud cost me five miles an hour cruising? That seems a heavy penalty to pay.

I turn southward, skirting the edge of the cloud pillar. I'll have to fly around these thunderheads. But can I? There are more masses ahead, and fewer stars. Will they merge into one great citadel of storm? Will I follow up a canyon in the heavens, as I often have done on earth, to see it disappear against a mountain ridge? Or can I find real passes in these clouds, as I've found them in the mountains, where a plane can slip between the icy walls?

By day, I could set my course from the edge, of one pillar directly to the next ahead, cutting down the angles of my zigzag route. But in the blackness of night, and in the haze that still contaminates the sky, one cloud merges into another miles behind it so I can't distinguish edge from center point. I have to bank as I approach, and follow around the vague wall of mist until I can again take up my compass heading.

Would it be wiser to change my course entirely, and try to

fly around the whole storm area, as I'm now flying around its single columns? That's what my fuel reserve is for. Is this the emergency in which to use it? The ship lanes lie three hundred miles to the southward. Clear weather was reported there. But that report is getting old. It's almost fourteen hours since I took off from Roosevelt Field, and most of the weather messages were assembled some time before I left. They told of yesterday's weather, not today's. An unknown storm may have drifted over the ship lanes hours ago. "A high pressure area over the North Atlantic" can't last forever. Stars in the southern sky outline a ridge of cloud fully as high as lies ahead. And to the north? It's the same. I lean to the side of my cockpit and look back at the sky behind. It too is blocked out for thousands of feet above the level where I'm flying.

Great cliffs tower over me, ward me off with icy walls. They belong to mountains of another world, mountains with forms that change; with summits that overhang; mountains alluring in their softness. There'd be no rending crash if my wing struck one of them. They carry a subtler death. A crash against an earthly mountain is like a sword stroke; one flash and it's over. But to plunge into these mountains of the heavens would be like stepping into quicksand. They enmesh intruders. They're barbaric in their methods. They toss you in their inner turbulence, lash you with their hailstones, poison you with freezing mist. It would be a slow death, a death one would have long minutes to struggle against, trying blindly to regain control of an ice-crippled airplane, climbing, stalling, diving, whipping, always downward toward the sea.

For the first time, the thought of turning back seriously enters my mind. I can climb another five or six thousand feet. The canyons up there may be wider. If they're not, and I can find no passes east or southward, I'll have to turn back -- back through the haze-filled valleys behind me, back over Newfoundland, over those ice fields, over Nova Scotia, over New England, over the stretches of ocean between them, back fourteen hundred miles to New York, back for another start from that narrow, muddy runway on Long Island. And when I got back, if I could find my way out through the maze of passageways I've entered, if fog hasn't re-formed along the American coast, if that other storm in Nova Scotia hasn't blocked my route, then, after bucking the wind which
swiftly, I'd have been about thirty hours in the air -- long enough to reach Ireland, if I can keep on heading eastward. Think of flying long enough to reach Ireland, and ending up at Roosevelt Field!

Of course I could try diving quickly to a lower level, where the air may be too warm for ice to form. My mind grasps at the thought of a secret portal to the storm, a passageway deep down in the clouds. Might it lead me through to safety and the light of day again? Hours of blind flying seem less formidable, now -- if they're free of ice.

No, it would be a fool's chance; the danger is too great. As far north as Newfoundland and in the cold of night, icing conditions probably extend down to the waves themselves. There's no reason to believe I'd find a ceiling underneath the clouds; and once I got down into their lower levels, ice would clog my instruments long before I could climb back up again.

The pillars of cloud multiply and thicken. I follow narrow canyons between them, weaving in and out around thunderheads, taking always the southward choice for course, edging toward the ship lanes and what I hope is clearer weather. Dark forms blot out the sky on every side, but stars drop down to guide me through the passes.

THE FIFTEENTH HOUR
Over the Atlantic
TIME - 9:52 P.M.

Wind Velocity Unknown Visibility Night – haze

Wind Direction Unknown Altitude 10,500 feet

True Course 66° Air Speed 87m.p.h.

Variation 33° W Tachometer 1700 r.p.m.

Magnetic Course 99° Oil Temp. 35°C

Deviation 0° Oil Pressure 60 lbs.

Compass Course 99° Fuel pressure 3 lbs.

Drift Angle 10° R Mixture 4

Compass heading 89° Fuel tank Fuselage

Ceiling Unlimited

Above Clouds

Fourteen hundred miles behind. Twenty-two hundred miles to go. All readings normal. I make the log entries and throw my flashlight onto the wing strut again. The coating of ice is thinner. It's evaporating slowly. When will it all be gone -- in an hour, two, or five? I don't know. I've never picked up ice before on a flight long enough to consider its evaporation. When ice collected on our mail planes it stayed with us till we landed. Then we had either to wait until it melted, or peel it off the wings with our hands and beat it off the wires with a stick.

The haze continues to clear. I can see cloud formations farther away, fly closer to their walls, follow a straighter course through their valleys. There's another mushroomed column, miles ahead. Its top silhouettes against a star-brightening sky. I bank toward the southern edge, and settle back in my cockpit.

In keeping his heading by the stars, a pilot must remember that they move. In all the heavens, there is only one he can trust, only one that won't lead him off his course -- Polaris, faint star of the northern pole. Those other more brilliant points of light, which at first seem motionless too, sweep through their arcs so rapidly that he can use them only as temporary guides, lining one up ahead, letting it creep to the side, dropping the first to pick a second; then the second for a third; and so on through the night.

As a child, I'd lie on my bed in Minnesota and watch the stars curve upward in their courses -- the box-like corners of Orion's Belt -- Sirius's piercing brilliance -- rising over treetops, climbing slowly toward our roof. I would curl up under my blankets and web the constellations into imaginary scenes of celestial magnitude -- a flock of geese in westward flight -- God's arrow shooting through the sky. I'd make my wishes on the stars, and drift from wakefulness to sleep as I desired. Dreams of day and dreams of night could merge, while a planet's orbit had no effect on my security. There was no roar of an engine in my ears, no sound above the wind in leaves except the occasional whistle of a train, far away across the river.

That whistle was the only note to break the peace of night, to connect me to the modern world in which fate and my would carry me back to Washington in September, as it carried me westward to our farm in June. It followed the steel cords which tied marble buildings and deliberative halls to my fields and rolling hills a thousand miles away --Washington -- Detroit -- my sleeping porch in Minnesota --

Wheels clatter on tracks. The tempo changes as our train curves, and brakes across the bridge. Down river, over those long stretches of white rapids, I see the great tops of Norway pine that mark our farm. Our train slows, jerks, stops -- "Little-Falls." I jump after the conductor, down onto the board walk, and turn to wait for my mother. Winter's school is over. Summer has come; and with it, our Minnesota home.