CHAPTER XVI
THE MONOPLANE
The Flying Stages of London were collected together in an irregularcrescent on the southern side of the river. They formed three groups oftwo each and retained the names of ancient suburban hills or villages.They were named in order, Roehampton, Wimbledon Park, Streatham, Norwood,Blackheath, and Shooter's Hill. They were uniform structures rising highabove the general roof surfaces. Each was about four thousand yards longand a thousand broad, and constructed of the compound of aluminum andiron that had replaced iron in architecture. Their higher tiers formed anopenwork of girders through which lifts and staircases ascended. Theupper surface was a uniform expanse, with portions--the startingcarriers--that could be raised and were then able to run on very slightlyinclined rails to the end of the fabric.
Graham went to the flying stages by the public ways. He was accompaniedby Asano, his Japanese attendant. Lincoln was called away by Ostrog, whowas busy with his administrative concerns. A strong guard of theWind-Vane police awaited the Master outside the Wind-Vane offices, andthey cleared a space for him on the upper moving platform. His passage tothe flying stages was unexpected, nevertheless a considerable crowdgathered and followed him to his destination. As he went along, he couldhear the people shouting his name, and saw numberless men and women andchildren in blue come swarming up the staircases in the central path,gesticulating and shouting. He could not hear what they shouted. He wasstruck again by the evident existence of a vulgar dialect among the poorof the city. When at last he descended, his guards were immediatelysurrounded by a dense excited crowd. Afterwards it occurred to him thatsome had attempted to reach him with petitions. His guards cleared apassage for him with difficulty.
He found a monoplane in charge of an aeronaut awaiting him on thewestward stage. Seen close this mechanism was no longer small. As it layon its launching carrier upon the wide expanse of the flying stage, itsaluminum body skeleton was as big as the hull of a twenty-ton yacht. Itslateral supporting sails braced and stayed with metal nerves almost likethe nerves of a bee's wing, and made of some sort of glassy artificialmembrane, cast their shadow over many hundreds of square yards. Thechairs for the engineer and his passenger hung free to swing by a complextackle, within the protecting ribs of the frame and well abaft themiddle. The passenger's chair was protected by a wind-guard and guardedabout with metallic rods carrying air cushions. It could, if desired, becompletely closed in, but Graham was anxious for novel experiences, anddesired that it should be left open. The aeronaut sat behind a glass thatsheltered his face. The passenger could secure himself firmly in hisseat, and this was almost unavoidable on landing, or he could move alongby means of a little rail and rod to a locker at the stem of the machine,where his personal luggage, his wraps and restoratives were placed, andwhich also with the seats, served as a makeweight to the parts of thecentral engine that projected to the propeller at the stern.
The flying stage about him was empty save for Asano and their suite ofattendants. Directed by the aeronaut he placed himself in his seat. Asanostepped through the bars of the hull, and stood below on the stage wavinghis hand. He seemed to slide along the stage to the right and vanish.
The engine was humming loudly, the propeller spinning, and for a secondthe stage and the buildings beyond were gliding swiftly and horizontallypast Graham's eye; then these things seemed to tilt up abruptly. Hegripped the little rods on either side of him instinctively. He felthimself moving upward, heard the air whistle over the top of the windscreen. The propeller screw moved round with powerful rhythmicimpulses--one, two, three, pause; one, two, three--which the engineercontrolled very delicately. The machine began a quivering vibration thatcontinued throughout the flight, and the roof areas seemed running awayto starboard very quickly and growing rapidly smaller. He looked fromthe face of the engineer through the ribs of the machine. Lookingsideways, there was nothing very startling in what he saw--a rapidfunicular railway might have given the same sensations. He recognisedthe Council House and the Highgate Ridge. And then he looked straightdown between his feet.
For a moment physical terror possessed him, a passionate sense ofinsecurity. He held tight. For a second or so he could not lift his eyes.Some hundred feet or more sheer below him was one of the big wind-vanesof south-west London, and beyond it the southernmost flying stage crowdedwith little black dots. These things seemed to be falling away from him.For a second he had an impulse to pursue the earth. He set his teeth, helifted his eyes by a muscular effort, and the moment of panic passed.
He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring intothe sky. Throb, throb, throb--beat, went the engine; throb, throb,throb--beat. He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, andsaw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return--perhaps alittle artificially. "A little strange at first," he shouted before herecalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some time. Hestared over the aeronaut's head to where a rim of vague blue horizoncrept up the sky. For a little while he could not banish the thought ofpossible accidents from his mind. Throb, throb, throb--beat; suppose sometrivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose--! He made agrim effort to dismiss all such suppositions. After a while they did atleast abandon the foreground of his thoughts. And up he went steadily,higher and higher into the clear air.
Once the mental shock of moving unsupported through the air was over,his sensations ceased to be unpleasant, became very speedilypleasurable. He had been warned of air sickness. But he found thepulsating movement of the monoplane as it drove up the faint south-westbreeze was very little in excess of the pitching of a boat head on tobroad rollers in a moderate gale, and he was constitutionally a goodsailor. And the keenness of the more rarefied air into which theyascended produced a sense of lightness and exhilaration. He looked upand saw the blue sky above fretted with cirrus clouds. His eye camecautiously down through the ribs and bars to a shining flight of whitebirds that hung in the lower sky. For a space he watched these. Thengoing lower and less apprehensively, he saw the slender figure of theWind-Vane keeper's crow's nest shining golden in the sunlight andgrowing smaller every moment. As his eye fell with more confidence now,there came a blue line of hills, and then London, already to leeward, anintricate space of roofing. Its near edge came sharp and clear, andbanished his last apprehensions in a shock of surprise. For the boundaryof London was like a wall, like a cliff, a steep fall of three or fourhundred feet, a frontage broken only by terraces here and there, acomplex decorative facade.
That gradual passage of town into country through an extensive sponge ofsuburbs, which was so characteristic a feature of the great cities of thenineteenth century, existed no longer. Nothing remained of it here but awaste of ruins, variegated and dense with thickets of the heterogeneousgrowths that had once adorned the gardens of the belt, interspersed amonglevelled brown patches of sown ground, and verdant stretches of wintergreens. The latter even spread among the vestiges of houses. But for themost part the reefs and skerries of ruins, the wreckage of suburbanvillas, stood among their streets and roads, queer islands amidst thelevelled expanses of green and brown, abandoned indeed by the inhabitantsyears since, but too substantial, it seemed, to be cleared out of the wayof the wholesale horticultural mechanisms of the time.
The vegetation of this waste undulated and frothed amidst the countlesscells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wallin a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses. Hereand there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remains ofVictorian times, and cable ways slanted to them from the city. Thatwinter day they seemed deserted. Deserted, too, were the artificialgardens among the ruins. The city limits were indeed as sharply definedas in the ancient days when the gates were shut at nightfall and therobber foeman prowled to the very walls. A huge semi-circular throatpoured out a vigorous traffic upon the Eadhamite Bath Road. So the firstprospect of the world beyond the city flashed on Graham, and dwindled.And when at last he cou
ld look vertically downward again, he saw belowhim the vegetable fields of the Thames valley--innumerable minute oblongsof ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.
His exhilaration increased rapidly, became a sort of intoxication. Hefound himself drawing deep breaths of air, laughing aloud, desiring toshout. After a time that desire became too strong for him, and heshouted. They curved about towards the south. They drove with a slightlist to leeward, and with a slow alternation of movement, first a short,sharp ascent and then a long downward glide that was very swift andpleasing. During these downward glides the propeller was inactivealtogether. These ascents gave Graham a glorious sense of successfuleffort; the descents through the rarefied air were beyond all experience.He wanted never to leave the upper air again.
For a time he was intent upon the landscape that ran swiftly northwardbeneath him. Its minute, clear detail pleased him exceedingly. He wasimpressed by the ruin of the houses that had once dotted the country, bythe vast treeless expanse of country from which all farms and villageshad gone, save for crumbling ruins. He had known the thing was so, butseeing it so was an altogether different matter. He tried to make outfamiliar places within the hollow basin of the world below, but at firsthe could distinguish no data now that the Thames valley was left behind.Soon, however, they were driving over a sharp chalk hill that herecognised as the Guildford Hog's Back, because of the familiar outlineof the gorge at its eastward end, and because of the ruins of the townthat rose steeply on either lip of this gorge. And from that he made outother points, Leith Hill, the sandy wastes of Aldershot, and so forth.Save where the broad Eadhamite Portsmouth Road, thickly dotted withrushing shapes, followed the course of the old railway, the gorge of thewey was choked with thickets.
The whole expanse of the Downs escarpment, so far as the grey hazepermitted him to see, was set with wind-wheels to which the largest ofthe city was but a younger brother. They stirred with a stately motionbefore the south-west wind. And here and there were patches dotted withthe sheep of the British Food Trust, and here and there a mountedshepherd made a spot of black. Then rushing under the stern of themonoplane came the Wealden Heights, the line of Hindhead, Pitch Hill, andLeith Hill, with a second row of wind-wheels that seemed striving to robthe downland whirlers of their share of breeze. The purple heather wasspeckled with yellow gorse, and on the further side a drove of black oxenstampeded before a couple of mounted men. Swiftly these swept behind, anddwindled and lost colour, and became scarce moving specks that wereswallowed up in haze.
And when these had vanished in the distance Graham heard a peewitwailing close at hand. He perceived he was now above the South Downs, andstaring over his shoulder saw the battlements of Portsmouth Landing Stagetowering over the ridge of Portsdown Hill. In another moment there cameinto sight a spread of shipping like floating cities, the little whitecliffs of the Needles dwarfed and sunlit, and the grey and glitteringwaters of the narrow sea. They seemed to leap the Solent in a moment, andin a few seconds the Isle of Wight was running past, and then beneath himspread a wider and wider extent of sea, here purple with the shadow of acloud, here grey, here a burnished mirror, and here a spread of cloudygreenish blue. The Isle of Wight grew smaller and smaller. In a few moreminutes a strip of grey haze detached itself from other strips that wereclouds, descended out of the sky and became a coast-line--sunlit andpleasant--the coast of northern France. It rose, it took colour, becamedefinite and detailed, and the counterpart of the Downland of England wasspeeding by below.
In a little time, as it seemed, Paris came above the horizon, and hungthere for a space, and sank out of sight again as the monoplane circledabout to the north. But he perceived the Eiffel Tower still standing, andbeside it a huge dome surmounted by a pin-point Colossus. And heperceived, too, though he did not understand it at the time, a slantingdrift of smoke. The aeronaut said something about "trouble in theunder-ways," that Graham did not heed. But he marked the minarets andtowers and slender masses that streamed skyward above the citywind-vanes, and knew that in the matter of grace at least Paris stillkept in front of her larger rival. And even as he looked a pale blueshape ascended very swiftly from the city like a dead leaf driving upbefore a gale. It curved round and soared towards them, growing rapidlylarger and larger. The aeronaut was saying something. "What?" saidGraham, loth to take his eyes from this. "London aeroplane, Sire," bawledthe aeronaut, pointing.
They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it cameand nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb--beat, of themonoplane's flight, that had seemed so potent, and so swift, suddenlyappeared slow by comparison with this tremendous rush. How great themonster seemed, how swift and steady! It passed quite closely beneaththem, driving along silently, a vast spread of wire-netted translucentwings, a thing alive. Graham had a momentary glimpse of the rows and rowsof wrapped-up passengers, slung in their little cradles behindwind-screens, of a white-clothed engineer crawling against the gale alonga ladder way, of spouting engines beating together, of the whirling windscrew, and of a wide waste of wing. He exulted in the sight. And in aninstant the thing had passed.
It rose slightly and their own little wings swayed in the rush of itsflight. It fell and grew smaller. Scarcely had they moved, as it seemed,before it was again only a flat blue thing that dwindled in the sky. Thiswas the aeroplane that went to and fro between London and Paris. In fairweather and in peaceful times it came and went four times a day.
They beat across the Channel, slowly as it seemed now to Graham'senlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them.
"Land," called the aeronaut, his voice small against the whistling ofthe air over the wind-screen.
"Not yet," bawled Graham, laughing. "Not land yet. I want to learn moreof this machine."
"I meant--" said the aeronaut.
"I want to learn more of this machine," repeated Graham.
"I'm coming to you," he said, and had flung himself free of his chair andtaken a step along the guarded rail between them. He stopped for amoment, and his colour changed and his hands tightened. Another step andhe was clinging close to the aeronaut. He felt a weight on his shoulder,the pressure of the air. His hat was a whirling speck behind. The windcame in gusts over his wind-screen and blew his hair in streamers pasthis cheek. The aeronaut made some hasty adjustments for the shifting ofthe centres of gravity and pressure.
"I want to have these things explained," said Graham. "What do you dowhen you move that engine forward?"
The aeronaut hesitated. Then he answered, "They are complex, Sire."
"I don't mind," shouted Graham. "I don't mind."
There was a moment's pause. "Aeronautics is the secret--the privilege--"
"I know. But I'm the Master, and I mean to know." He laughed, full ofthis novel realisation of power that was his gift from the upper air.
The monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham'sface and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to thewest. The two men looked into each other's eyes.
"Sire, there are rules--"
"Not where I am concerned," said Graham, "You seem to forget."
The aeronaut scrutinised his face "No," he said. "I do not forget, Sire.But in all the earth--no man who is not a sworn aeronaut--has ever achance. They come as passengers--"
"I have heard something of the sort. But I'm not going to argue thesepoints. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? To fly!"
"Sire," said the aeronaut, "the rules--if I break the rules--"
Graham waved the penalties aside.
"Then if you will watch me--"
"No," said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine lifted itsnose again for an ascent. "That's not my game. I want to do it myself.Do it myself if I smash for it! No! I will. See I am going to clamber bythis--to come and share your seat. Steady! I mean to fly of my ownaccord if I smash at the end of it. I will have something to pay for mysleep. Of all other things--. In my past it w
as my dream to fly.Now--keep your balance."
"A dozen spies are watching me, Sire!"
Graham's temper was at end. Perhaps he chose it should be. He swore.He swung himself round the intervening mass of levers and themonoplane swayed.
"Am I Master of the earth?" he said. "Or is your Society? Now. Take yourhands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes--so. And now, how do weturn her nose down to the glide?"
"Sire," said the aeronaut.
"What is it?"
"You will protect me?"
"Lord! Yes! If I have to burn London. Now!"
And with that promise Graham bought his first lesson in aerialnavigation. "It's clearly to your advantage, this journey," he said witha loud laugh--for the air was like strong wine--"to teach me quickly andwell. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!"
"Back, Sire! Back!"
"Back--right. One--two--three--good God! Ah! Up she goes! But thisis living!"
And now the machine began to dance the strangest figures in the air. Nowit would sweep round a spiral of scarcely a hundred yards diameter, nowrush up into the air and swoop down again, steeply, swiftly, falling likea hawk, to recover in a rushing loop that swept it high again. In one ofthese descents it seemed driving straight at the drifting park ofballoons in the southeast, and only curved about and cleared them by asudden recovery of dexterity. The extraordinary swiftness and smoothnessof the motion, the extraordinary effect of the rarefied air upon hisconstitution, threw Graham into a careless fury.
But at last a queer incident came to sober him, to send him flying downonce more to the crowded life below with all its dark insoluble riddles.As he swooped, came a tap and something flying past, and a drop like adrop of rain. Then as he went on down he saw something like a white ragwhirling down in his wake. "What was that?" he asked. "I did not see."
The aeronaut glanced, and then clutched at the lever to recover, for theywere sweeping down. When the monoplane was rising again he drew a deepbreath and replied, "That," and he indicated the white thing stillfluttering down, "was a swan."
"I never saw it," said Graham.
The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon hisforehead.
They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger'splace out of the lash of the wind. And then came a swift rush down, withthe wind-screw whirling to check their fall, and the flying stage growingbroad and dark before them. The sun, sinking over the chalk hills in thewest, fell with them, and left the sky a blaze of gold.
Soon men could be seen as little specks. He heard a noise coming up tomeet him, a noise like the sound of waves upon a pebbly beach, and sawthat the roofs about the flying stage were dense with his peoplerejoicing over his safe return. A black mass was crushed together underthe stage, a darkness stippled with innumerable faces, and quivering withthe minute oscillation of waved white handkerchiefs and waving hands.