CHAPTER III
ACROSS EUROPE TO THE BOSPHOROUS
It had just turned half-past twelve on Friday morning when Smith saidgood-bye to his friend William Barracombe on Epsom Downs. The sky wasclear; the moon shone so brightly that by its light alone he couldread the compass at his elbow, without the aid of the small electriclamp that hung above it. He set his course for the south-east, andflew with a light breeze at a speed of at least two hundred miles anhour.
His machine was a biplane, and represented the work and thought ofyears. Smith never minimized the part which Laurent Rodier had had inits construction; indeed, he was wont to say that without Rodier hewould have been nowhere. Their acquaintance and comradeship had begunin the most accidental way. Two years before, Smith was taking part inan aeroplane race from Paris to London. On reaching the Channel, hefound himself far ahead of all his competitors, except a Frenchman,who, to his chagrin, managed to keep a lead of almost a mile. Eachcarried a passenger. Not long after leaving the French coast, a cloudof smoke suddenly appeared in the wake of the Frenchman's aeroplane,and to Smith's alarm the machine in a few seconds dropped into thesea. Instantly he steered for the spot, and brought his own aeroplaneto within a few feet of the water. To his surprise, he saw that partof the wreckage was floating, and a man, apparently only halfconscious, was clinging to one of the stays. But for the engine havingprovidentially become disconnected in the fall, the whole machine withits passengers must have sunk to the bottom.
Smith saw that it was impossible for him to rescue the man while hehimself remained in his aeroplane, for the slightest touch upon theother would inevitably have submerged it. There was only one thing todo. Leaving the aeroplane to the charge of his friend, he dived intothe sea, and rising beside the man, seized him at the moment when hishold was relaxing, and contrived to hold him up until a fast motorlaunch, which had witnessed the accident, came up and rescued themboth.
The man proved to be the chauffeur of the aeroplane; his employer wasdrowned. Smith lost the race, but he gained what was infinitely morevaluable to him, the gratitude and devotion of Laurent Rodier. Findingthat the Frenchman was an expert mechanician, Smith took him into hisemployment. Rodier turned out to be of a singularly inventive turn ofmind, and the two, putting their heads together, evolved after longexperiment a type of engine that enabled them to double the speed ofthe aeroplane. These aerial vessels had already attained a maximum ofa hundred miles an hour, for progress had been rapid since Paulhan'sepoch-making flight from London to Manchester. To the youngergeneration the aeroplane was becoming what the motor-car had been totheir elders. It was now a handier, more compact, and more easilymanaged machine than the earlier types, and the risk of breakdown wasno greater than in the motor-car of the roads. The engine seldomfailed, as it was wont to do in the first years of aviation. Theprincipal danger that airmen had to fear was disaster from strongsqualls, or from vertical or spiral currents of air due to somepeculiarity in the confirmation of the land beneath them.
Smith's engine was a compound turbine, reciprocating engines havingproved extravagant in fuel. There were both a high and a low pressureturbine on the same shaft, which also drove the dynamo for thesearchlight and the lamp illuminating the compass, and for ignitingthe explosive mixture. By means of an eccentric, moreover, the shaftworked a pump for compressing the mixture of hot air and petrol beforeignition, the air being heated by passing through jackets round thehigh-pressure turbines. The framework of the planes consisted ofhollow rods made of an aluminum alloy of high tensile strength, andthe canvas stretched over the frames was laced with wire of the samematerial. To stiffen the planes, a bracket was clamped at the axis,and thin wire stays were strung top and bottom, as the masts of ayacht are supported. The airman was in some degree protected from thewind by a strong talc screen, also wire-laced; by means of this, and alight radiator worked by a number of accumulators, he was enabled toresist the cold, which had been so great a drawback to the pioneers ofairmanship.
In this aeroplane Smith and Rodier had made many a long expedition.They had found that the machine was capable of supporting a totalweight of nearly 1,200 lbs., and since Smith turned the scale ateleven stone eight, and Rodier at ten stone, in their clothes, thetotal additional load they could carry was about 900 lbs. Eightygallons of petrol weighed about 600 lbs. with the cans, and twentygallons of lubricating oil about 160 lbs., so that there was a marginof nearly 150 lbs. for food, rifles, and anything else there might beoccasion for carrying at any stage of the journey.
Smith was in charge of the aeroplane attached to his ship, theAdmiralty having adopted the machine for scouting purposes. It wasonly recently that he had brought his own aeroplane to its presentperfection, after laborious experiments in the workshops heestablished in the corner of his father's park, where he toiledincessantly whenever he could obtain leave, and where Rodier wasconstantly employed. His machine had just completed its trials, and heexpected to realize a considerable sum by his improvements. Of this hehad agreed to give Rodier one half, and the Frenchman had furtherstipulated that the improvements should be offered also to the FrenchGovernment. This being a matter of patriotism, Smith readilyconsented, remarking with a laugh that he would not be the first tobreak the _entente cordiale_.
Just as a voyage round the world was a dream until Drake accomplishedit, so a flight round the world was the acme of every airman'sambition. It was the accident of his father's plight that crystallizedin Smith's mind the desires held in suspension there. The act wassudden: the idea had been long cherished.
He had decided on his course after a careful examination of the globeborrowed from Mr. Dawkins, the village school-master. The most directroute from London to the Solomon Islands ran across Norway and Sweden,the White Sea, Northern Siberia, Manchuria, Korea and Japan, andthence to New Guinea. But since it traversed some of the most desolateregions of the earth, where the indispensable supplies of petrol andmachine oil could not be secured, he had chosen a route through fairlylarge centres of population, along which at the necessary intervals hecould ensure, by aid of the telegraph, that the fuel would be inreadiness.
And now he was fairly off. Constantinople was to be the first place ofcall. He knew the orographical map of Europe as well as he knew hismanual of navigation. It was advisable to avoid mountainous country asfar as possible, for the necessity of rising to great heights, inorder to cross even the lower spurs of the Alps, would involve loss oftime, to say nothing of the cold, and the risk of accident in thedarkness. Coming to the coast, in the neighbourhood of Dover, abouthalf-an-hour after leaving Epsom, he steered for a point on theopposite shore of the Channel somewhere near the Franco-Belgianfrontier. As an experienced airman he had long ceased to find theinterest of novelty in the scenes below him. The lights of the Calaisboat, and of vessels passing up and down the Channel, were almostunnoticed. On leaving the sea, he flew over a flat country until, onhis right, he saw in the moonlight a dark mass which from deadreckoning he thought must be the Ardennes. The broad river he had justcrossed, which gleamed like silver in the moonlight, was without doubtthe Meuse, and that which he came to in about an hour must be theMoselle. At this point Rodier, who had been dozing, sat up and beganto take an interest in things; afterwards he told Smith that they musthave passed over the little village in which he was born, and he felta sentimental regret that the flight was not by day, when he mighthave seen the red roof beneath which his mother still lived.
After another half-hour Smith began to feel the strain of remaining inone position, with all his faculties concentrated. The air was socalm, and the wind-screen so effective, that he suffered none of thenumbing effects which the great speed might otherwise have induced;but it was no light task to keep his attention fixed at once on theengine, the map outspread before him, the compass, and the countrybelow; and by the time he reached a still broader river, which couldonly be the Rhine, he was tired. As yet he had been flying for onlythree hours: could he live through seven days of it? He had oncecrossed Amer
ica in the Canadian Pacific, and though he got eighthours' sleep every night, he felt an utter wreck at the end of thejourney. To be sure, he was now in the fresh air instead of a stuffyrailway carriage, and he was riding as smoothly as on a steamer,without the jar and jolt that made journeys by rail so fatiguing.Still, he thought it only good policy to pay heed to the first signsof strain, and so he slowed down until the noise of the engine hadabated sufficiently for him to make his voice heard, and said:
"Roddy, you must take a turn. We're near the frontier between Badenand Alsace, I fancy. The Bavarian hills can't be far off. You hadbetter rise a bit, and don't go too fast, or we may be knocking ournoses before we know where we are."
"Right O, mister," replied the Frenchman. "You take forty winks, andeat some chocolate for what you call a nightcap."
"A good idea. I'd rise to about 4,500 feet, I think. Keep your eye onthe aneroid."
They exchanged places. Smith ate two or three sticks of chocolate,took a good drink of water, and in five minutes was fast asleep. Buthis nap lasted no more than a couple of hours. It appeared to him thathe never lost consciousness of his errand. When he opened his eyes thedawn was already stealing over the sky, and at the tremendous pace towhich Rodier had put the engine the aeroplane seemed to rush into thesunlight. Far below, the earth was spread out like a patchwork,greens and whites and browns set in picturesque haphazard patterns;men moving like ants, and horses like locusts.
"Where are we?" he bawled in Rodier's ear.
The Frenchman put his finger on the map. Smith glanced at his watch;it was past five o'clock. They must be near the Servian frontier. Thatbroad streak of blue must be the Danube. Another three hours shouldsee them at Constantinople, the first stage of their journey. On theyrushed, feeling chill in the morning air at the height of nearly fivethousand feet. Lifting his binocular, Smith saw a railway trainrunning in the same direction as themselves, and though from the lineof smoke it was going at full speed, it appeared to be crawling like aworm, and was soon left far behind. Now they were in Bulgaria: thosegrey crinkly masses beyond must be the Balkans. Crossing the DragomanPass, they came into an upward current of air that set the machinerocking, and Smith for the first time felt a touch of nervousness lestit should break down and fall among these inhospitable crags. Rodierplaned downwards, until they seemed to skim the crests. The air wascalmer here: the aeroplane steadied; and when the mountains were leftbehind they came still lower, following the railway line.
Here was Philippopolis, with its citadel perched on a frowning rock.It seemed but a few minutes when Adrianople came into view, and but afew more when, descending to within five hundred feet of the ground,they raced over the plains of St. Stefano. Now Rodier checked thespeed a little, and steering past the large monument erected to thememory of the Russians who fell in '78, came within sight ofConstantinople. Smith was bewildered at the multitude of domes,minarets, and white roofs before him. It would soon be necessary tochoose a landing-place, and Rodier planed upwards, so that he couldscan the whole neighbourhood in one comprehensive glance.
"Slow down!" Smith shouted.
There was a large open space below him; it was the Hippodrome. He madea quick calculation of its length, and decided not to alight. A littlefarther on he came to the Ministry of War with its large square; butthere a regiment of soldiers was drilling. Rodier steered a point tothe north-west, and the aeroplane passed over the Galata bridge thatspans the Golden Horn. The bridge was thronged with people, who, asthey caught sight of the strange machine flying over their heads,stood and craned their necks, and the airmen heard their shouts ofamazement. To the right they saw, beyond the hill of Pera, a stretchof low open country. Passing the second bridge over the Horn, theycame to a broad green space just without the city. It was the oldarchery grounds of the Sultans.
"Dive, Roddy!" Smith cried.
Rodier jerked the lever back: the humming clatter of the engineceased; and the aeroplane swooped down as gracefully as a bird,alighting gently on the green sward.
Round the World in Seven Days Page 4
