CHAPTER XVIIIA DAY-DREAM
Somewhere in the North of France,Saturday.
The other day I had a dream; at six o’clock in the morning, at 10,000 feet up in the air, with the biting cold wind whistling by my ears. On all sides stretched the air, a boundless infinity; beneath, a moving panorama of wood, river, and hill, of men, guns and battle-field. Far in the distance, the waters of the North Sea glinted blue in the early morning sun; when suddenly the air became filled with a strange purring sound, and from all sides came flying hundreds of aircraft of varying shapes and sizes. Among them I noticed one, a leviathan. A long cigar-shaped, silver-tinted, super-airship; beneath and swinging easily in the breeze, the hull was in the shape of the old-fashioned sea-going steamer. For’ard was a wide expanse of promenade deck, where could plainly be distinguished the passengers walking to and fro. In the center, on a raised dais, a band, resplendentin blue and gold, were strumming some popular air. Amidships a great bridge, where the officer of the watch and the quartermaster were directing her course. Astern was another wide expanse of deck, but this apparently was reserved for the crew. Now a large group of men were busily engaged round a small, bullet-shaped aeroplane. With a whirr, she started off across the wide deck, and a second later was gracefully clearing the great ship’s side, and missing a green and white balloon buoy literally by inches, sank rapidly in a southerly direction; and then our wireless telephone rang. It was the big ship speaking us, “Had we seen anything of the home-bound mail?” “No, we had not.” “Could we say what the Siberian weather conditions had been the day previous?” “Well, nothing extraordinary, slight haze over North China.” “Strange, the Menelaus left Canton yesterday, should have reported Bombay this morning, Moscow reports her two hours overdue.” “No, we have seen nothing of the missing liner;” and, leaving the great pleasure ship miles in the rear, we skim across the Carpathians, speaking two Serbian cruisers on patrol duty along the Northern Frontier. From thence we run into a storm, have to climb to 5000, and by the time the mist and darkness clears away, the North Sea has loomed into view. Now we are more in the beaten track, swarms of small pleasure craft go cruisingby; the Paris-London way is chock-a-block with traffic: cumbersome great four and eight engined merchant vessels, slim graceful pleasure craft, Government vessels, two giant American liners, and an Australian non-stop mail-boat, some naval craft and small police patrol craft, endeavoring to order the converging lines, and two military transports bringing home leave men from Abyssinia. The Far East fleet, flying majestically and impressively along with the flagshipTwentieth Centuryleading the line, the hind portion tapering off gracefully and far into the rear to the smaller aeroplane—torpedo craft. The air is full of the crackling of the wireless, every master endeavoring at the same time to engage a berth in either the London or Norwich aerodromes. Soon the fleet makes a sharp turn to the left, the less important and smaller craft scurrying hurriedly away to give her passage. The Home Fleet looms into view, silent and majestic; in the dim distance the two units sight each other, and after paying the usual compliments, pass on their respective ways. Nearer the English coast the air swarms with pleasure vessels, elegant and tiny airships float lazily in the air, their occupants lolling idly in the sun. Over Dover can be seen the ugly form of the new floating dock, said to be large enough to accommodate even an air dreadnought.
Strung across the North Sea; about 2000 feetup, and well below the level of the trade routes, are the small gray ships of the Aerial Sporting League. We speak one of them. There is to be an international race this morning between London and Petrograd. Amused, we watch the long gray line at the starting-post, among the green fields of Kent, presently they are beneath us in a long extended line, two machines of our own red, white and blue, well to the fore. We give our number and business to the Patrol airship at the Nore, and come down slowly to pick up our landing stage, somewhere east of Greenwich, when suddenly the waters of the Thames below are cleft in twain, as if by an earthquake, and from the disturbance there rises a squat, peculiarly shaped craft, that commences to glide along the smooth surface of the water towards Purfleet, where she climbs gently out onto the far bank, into a wide gray slipway, some quarter of a mile in width. Still crawling along on her belly, she reaches the Government repair works where, taking fresh supplies aboard, she suddenly sprouts two wings and commences climbing up into the air. Again there is an unpleasant purring noise, and a yet more unpleasant concussion....
“Shrapnel,” my observer bawls into my ear, “better go higher,” and we do.