16.Back Home Again
Amelia shook her head and rubbed her eyes. After staring at her instruments and following them during the night, she looked forward to the dawn. She had missed it on the Atlantic solo because of the clouds. There was still time, she knew, before light could crack through the darkness of the eastern horizon. Like a window with the panes painted black, it was closed shut.
She felt warm and cozy in the small cockpit. She yawned. Easily she held the stick between her legs and thighs, then reached her arms high and stretched, working her long fingers open and shut. She took the stick again with her right hand, brought her feet up from the rudders, then pressing her heels on the floor, she sat up and down in quick, short jumps.
Resettled on the cushion of the seat, she scanned her instruments, then looked out. To the right, a thin line of light lay on the dark horizon. She looked up through the hatch: the stars were gone. Slowly, well to the right of course, the top arc of the sun appeared. Amelia was puzzled: she should be flying into the sun. She wondered if she weren’t heading for Alaska. She quickly checked her maps and charts, then the compass before her on the left. Everything was as it should be. Obviously, then, the sun was wrong and she was right.
From the compartment in the left wing, where she kept her small tools, an extra flashlight, spare batteries, and other odds and ends, she took out her sunglasses and hooked them behindher ears. She wanted to be ready for the full brilliance of the morning sun.
Through the dark glasses she saw below her a solid overcast of clouds. They looked like the stiffly-beaten whites of eggs, and they made her think of breakfast. She reached into the cupboard in the right wing and pulled out a hard-boiled egg from the picnic lunch.
While she nibbled on the egg, she looked at one of the three chronometers she had set in Honolulu, the one for indicating lapsed time. She had been flying for fifteen hours, and according to her time and distance figures, she should be somewhere near San Francisco—if there had been no head winds during the night. Below, the ocean was blanketed in overcast.
The fog over the water began to break up. Through one of the holes she hoped to see signs of land, but she saw only water, blue in the morning sun, ruffled, and flecked with white. Then through another larger hole, she caught sight of a ship; from 8,000 feet it looked like a toy boat. Down through the opening Amelia plunged, and pulled out at 200 feet to investigate. She circled the ship several times, and discovered it was thePresident Pierce. The wake from the ship, which stretched for a mile, was exactly on her compass course. AE followed the foam as if it were a beam.
She tried to make radio contact with the ship, but was unsuccessful. She then tried radio station KPO in San Francisco and this time established contact. She asked for the position ofPresident Pierceand was told that the ship was 300 miles out from San Francisco. Amelia checked her map and grinned: that was exactly where the ship was supposed to be. Settling back in her seat, AE cruised at 1,500 feet and made straight for the coast.
She strained her eyes for sight of land. The clouds overhead played tricks on her: their shadows on the water looked exactly like islands. Amelia now wondered if real land would look like cloud shadows.
She climbed to 1,800 feet. Dead ahead on course she saw an undulating outline of what she hoped were the coastal hills of northern California. As she approached, they were unmistakable. She looked up for the tops, then noticed a valley between them. She added throttle and nosed over the hills. Squinting ahead as far as she could see, she saw at last the familiar notch of land and water that could only be San Francisco Bay. Directly below, San Mateo rolled into view.
In the next six minutes she crossed over the bay, then sighted Oakland, and finally the airport. She had made it back home. Elated with her victory, she felt a new tide of energy surge within her, flooding out the ache and soreness of tired muscles. As she had done so many times before at Oakland, she made her approach and landed.
As she started to taxi from the end of the runway, she noticed great crowds waiting at the ramp. Then the barriers broke and thousands of people ran toward her plane. Amelia chopped the throttle, cut the engine switch, and locked her brakes. She opened the hatch and stood on the seat, and as she shook her mop of hair from out of her helmet, a deafening roar assailed her ears.
Amelia climbed down from the Vega and dropped to the ground. Her knees felt weak; her face, as if it were drained. “I feel swell,” she said, stroking her hair with a quick sweep of the hand. She held a stray lock between her fingers. “I always look this way,” she explained. “I’m a little tired—you will have to excuse me.” She was driven away in a waiting car.