With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D.

by Rudyard Kipling

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

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

  "I warned you. Why didn't you pull out round by Disko? The east-boundpackets have."

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

  "I'd be the last man to deny it," the captain of the Mark Boat repliessoftly. "The way you handled her just now--I'm a pretty fair judge oftraffic in a volt-flurry--it was a thousand revolutions beyond anythingeven _I_'ve ever seen."

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

  I see. Wholly and entirely do I see!

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

  The Mark Boat hums off joyously and hangs herself up in her appointedeyrie. Here she will stay, a shutterless observatory; a life-boatstation; a salvage tug; a court of ultimate appeal-cum-meteorologicalbureau for three hundred miles in all directions, till Wednesday nextwhen her relief slides across the stars to take her buffeted place. Herblack hull, double conning-tower, and ever-ready slings represent allthat remains to the planet of that odd old word authority. She isresponsible only to the Aerial Board of Control--the A. B. C. of whichTim speaks so flippantly. But that semi-elected, semi-nominated body ofa few score persons of both sexes, controls this planet. "Transportationis Civilization," our motto runs. Theoretically, we do what we please solong as we do not interfere with the traffic _and all it implies_.Practically, the A. B. C. confirms or annuls all internationalarrangements and, to judge from its last report, finds our tolerant,humorous, lazy little planet only too ready to shift the whole burdenof private administration on its shoulders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The stars ahead dim no more than if a film of mist had been drawn underunobserved, but the deep air-boom on our skin changes to a joyful shout.

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

  The engine-room is hot and stuffy; the clerks in the coach are asleep,and the Slave of the Ray is near to follow them. Tim slides open the aftcolloid and reveals the curve of the world--the ocean's deepestpurple--edged with fuming and intolerable gold. Then the Sun rises andthrough the colloid strikes out our lamps. Tim scowls in his face.

  "Squirrels in a cage," he mutters. "That's all we are. Squirrels in acage! He's going twice as fast as us. Just you wait a few years, myshining friend and we'll take steps that will amaze you. _We'll_ Joshuayou!"

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

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

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

  To enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on a sunny morning half a mile orso above the dappled Atlantic cloud-belts and after a volt-flurry whichhas cleared and tempered your nerves. While we discussed the thickeningtraffic with the superiority that comes of having a high level reservedto ourselves, we heard (and I for the first time) the morning hymn on aHospital boat.

  She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath us and we caughtthe chant before she rose into the sunlight. "_Oh, ye Winds of God_,"sang the unseen voices: "_bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Himforever!_"

  We slid off our caps and joined in. When our shadow fell across hergreat open platforms they looked up and stretched out their handsneighbourly while they sang. We could see the doctors and the nurses andthe white-button-like faces of the cot-patients. She passed slowlybeneath us, heading northward, her hull, wet with the dews of the night,all ablaze in the sunshine. So took she the shadow of a cloud andvanished, her song continuing. _Oh, ye holy and humble men of heart,bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him forever._

  "She's a public lunger or she wouldn't have been singing the_Benedicite_; and she's a Greenlander or she wouldn't have snow-blindsover her colloids," said George at last. "She'll be bound forFrederikshavn or one of the Glacier sanatoriums for a month. If she wasan accident ward she'd be hung up at the eight-thousand-foot level.Yes--consumptives."

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

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

  "Flap along, then. Flap along. Who's hindering?" the senior captainlaughed, as we went in.

  We held a good lift to clear the coastwise and Continental shipping;and we had need of it. Though our route is in no sense a populated one,there is a steady trickle of traffic this way along. We met Hudson Bayfurriers out of the Great Preserve, hurrying to make their departurefrom Bonavista with sable and black fox for the insatiable markets. Weover-crossed Keewatin liners, small and cramped; but their captains, whosee no land between Trepassy and Blanco, know what gold they bring backfrom West Africa. Trans-Asiatic Directs, we met, soberly ringing theworld round the Fiftieth Meridian at an honest seventy knots; andwhite-painted Ackroyd
& Hunt fruiters out of the south fled beneath us,their ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites. Their market is inthe North among the northern sanatoria where you can smell theirgrapefruit and bananas across the cold snows. Argentine beef boats wesighted too, of enormous capacity and unlovely outline. They, too, feedthe northern health stations in ice-bound ports where submersibles darenot rise.

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

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

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

  _Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic_-- _Forty couple waltzing on the floor!_ _And you can watch my Ray,_ _For I must go away_ _And dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!_

  Then, while they sweated home the covering-plates:

  _Nor-Nor-Nor-Nor-_ _West from Sourabaya to the Baltic--_ _Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw!_ _Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic_ _And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!_

  The clips parted with a gesture of indignant dismissal, as thoughQuebec, glittering under her snows, were casting out these light andunworthy lovers. Our signal came from the Heights. Tim turned andfloated up, but surely then it was with passionate appeal that the greattower arms flung open--or did I think so because on the upper staging alittle hooded figure also opened her arms wide towards her father?

  * * * * *

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

  "I'VE ASKED HIM TO TEA ON FRIDAY"]

  AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL BULLETIN

  Aerial Board of Control

  Lights

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

  PLANETARY COASTAL LIGHTS. Week ending Dec. 18. Verde inclinedguide-light changes from 1st proximo to triple flash--green whitegreen--in place of occulting red as heretofore. The warning light forHarmattan winds will be continuous vertical glare (white) on all oasesof trans-Saharan N. E. by E. Main Routes.

  INVERCARGIL (N. Z.)--From 1st prox.: extreme southerly light (doublered) will exhibit white beam inclined 45 degrees on approach ofSoutherly Buster. Traffic flies high off this coast between April andOctober.

  TABLE BAY--Devil's Peak Glare removed to Simonsberg. Traffic makingTable Mountain coastwise keep all lights from Three Anchor Bay at leastfive shipping hundred feet under, and do not round to till beyond E.shoulder Devil's Peak.

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

  SNAEFELL JOKUL--White occulting light withdrawn for winter.

  PATAGONIA--No summer light south C. Pilar. This includes Staten Islandand Port Stanley.

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

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

  MALAYAN ARCHIPELAGO lights unreliable owing eruptions. Lay from Somersetto Singapore direct, keeping highest levels.

  _For the Board_: CATTERTHUN } ST. JUST } _Lights._ VAN HEDDER }

  Casualties

  Week ending Dec. 18th.

  SABLE ISLAND LANDING TOWERS--Green freighter, number indistinguishable,up-ended, and fore-tank pierced after collision, passed 300-ft. level 2P.M. Dec. 15th. Watched to water and pithed by Mark Boat.

  N. F. BANKS--Postal Packet 162 reports _Halma_ freighter (Fowey--St.John's) abandoned, leaking after weather, 46 deg. 15' N. 50 deg. 15' W. Crewrescued by Planet liner _Asteroid_. Watched to water and pithed bypostal packet, Dec. 14th.

  KERGUELEN MARK BOAT reports last call from _Cymena_ freighter (GayerTong-Huk & Co.) taking water and sinking in snow-storm South McDonaldIslands. No wreckage recovered. Addresses, etc., of crew at all A. B. C.offices.

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

  BISCAY, MARK BOAT reports _Carducci_ (Valandingham line) slightly spikedin western gorge Point de Benasque. Passengers transferred _Andorra_(same line). Barcelona Mark Boat salving cargo Dec. 12th.

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

  Missing

  No answer to General Call having been received during the last week fromfollowing overdues, they are posted as missing.

  _Atlantis_, W. 17630 Canton--Valparaiso _Audhumla_, W. 809 Stockholm--Odessa _Berenice_, W. 2206 Riga--Vladivostock _Draco_, E. 446 Coventry--Puntas Arenas _Tontine_, E. 3068 C. Wrath--Ungava _Wu-Sung_, E. 41776 Hankow--Lobito Bay

  General Call (all Mark Boats) out for:

  _Jane Eyre_, W. 6990 Port Rupert--City of Mexico _Santander_, W. 5514 Gobi-desert--Manila _V. Edmundsun_, E. 9690 Kandahar--Fiume

  Broke for Obstruction, and Quitting Levels

  VALKYRIE (racing plane), A. J. Hartley owner, New York (twice warned).

  GEISHA (racing plane), S. van Cott owner, Philadelphia (twice warned).

  MARVEL OF PERU (racing plane), J. X. Peixoto owner, Rio de Janeiro(twice warned).

  _For the Board_:

  LAZAREFF } MCKEOUGH } _Traffic._ GOLDBLATT }

  NOTES

  Notes

  High-Level Sleet

  The Northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement. From allquarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet at thehigher levels. Racing-planes and digs alike have suffered severely--theformer from unequal deposits of half-frozen slush on their vans (andonly those who have "held up" a badly balanced plane in a cross windknow what that means), and the latter from loaded bows and snow-casedbodies. As a consequence, the Northern and Northwestern upper levelshave been practically abandoned, and the high fliers have returned tothe ignoble security of the Three, Five, and Six hundred foot levels.But there remain a few undaunted sun-hunters who, in spite of frozenstays and ice-jammed connecting-rods, still haunt the blue empyrean.

  Bat-Boat Racing

  The scandals of the past few years have at last moved the yachting worldto concerted action in regard to "bat" boat racing.

  We have been treated to the spectacle of what are practically keeledracing-planes driven a clear five foot or more above the water, and onlyeased down to touch their so-ca
lled "native element" as they near theline. Judges and starters have been conveniently blind to thisabsurdity, but the public demonstration off St. Catherine's Light at theAutumn Regattas has borne ample, if tardy, fruit. In future the "bat"is to be a boat, and the long-unheeded demand of the true sportsman for"no daylight under mid-keel in smooth water" is in a fair way to beconceded. The new rule severely restricts plane area and lift alike. Thegas compartments are permitted both fore and aft, as in the old type,but the water-ballast central tank is rendered obligatory. These thingswork, if not for perfection, at least for the evolution of a sane andwholesome _waterborne_ cruiser. The type of rudder is unaffected by thenew rules, so we may expect to see the Long-Davidson make (the patent onwhich has just expired) come largely into use henceforward, though thestrain on the sternpost in turning at speeds over forty miles an hour isadmittedly very severe. But bat-boat racing has a great future beforeit.

  CORRESPONDENCE

  Correspondence

  Skylarking on the Equator

  TO THE EDITOR--Only last week, while crossing the Equator (W. 26.15), Ibecame aware of a furious and irregular cannonading some fifteen ortwenty knots S. 4 E. Descending to the 500 ft. level, I found a party ofTransylvanian tourists engaged in exploding scores of the largestpattern atmospheric bombs (A. B. C. standard) and, in the intervals oftheir pleasing labours, firing bow and stern smoke-ring swivels. Thisorgy--I can give it no other name--went on for at least two hours, andnaturally produced violent electric derangements. My compasses, ofcourse, were thrown out, my bow was struck twice, and I received twobrisk shocks from the lower platform-rail. On remonstrating, I was toldthat these "professors" were engaged in scientific experiments. Theextent of their "scientific" knowledge may be judged by the fact thatthey expected to produce (I give their own words) "a little blue sky" if"they went on long enough." This in the heart of the Doldrums at 450feet! I have no objection to any amount of blue sky in its proper place(it can be found at the 2,000 level for practically twelve months out ofthe year), but I submit, with all deference to the educational needs ofTransylvania, that "sky-larking" in the centre of a main-travelled roadwhere, at the best of times, electricity literally drips off one'sstanchions and screw blades, is unnecessary. When my friends hadfinished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequalpressure-layers, spirals, vortices, and readjustments for at least anhour. I pitched badly twice in an upward rush--solely due to thesediabolical throw-downs--that came near to wrecking my propeller.Equatorial work at low levels is trying enough in all conscience withoutthe added terrors of scientific hooliganism in the Doldrums.