Mysterious Aviator Read Free Page B

hitting them, and blowing ashore on to the beach. And there was always a row about it afterwards.
    “We never got more than three ten-minute joy-rides done in the hour,” he said. “And the engine running the whole time. It meant that we had to make the charge thirty shillings a flight.”
    And so it came to an end. They began operations in May at Brighton; by July they were in difficulties, and in September they gave up. They were lucky in that they were able to sell the machine, and in that way they realised sufficient of their capital to pay off most of the bills and to leave them with about fifty pounds each in hand.
    “I sent my wife back to her people for a bit,” said Lenden. “That was the first time.”
    He relapsed into silence, and sat there brooding over the table. And when he spoke again, I was suddenly sorry for the man. “It’s ruddy good fun having to do that,” he said quietly. “Especially when it’s the first time.”
    He went on to tell me that he had been out of a job then for about two months, hanging about the aerodromes and living on what he could pick up. He bought and sold one or two old cars at a profit; in those days there was ready money to be made that way. And so he eked out his little means until he got a job at Hounslow with A.T. and T.
    I raised my head inquiringly.
    “Aircraft Transport and Travel,” he replied. “On the Paris route. We used to fly Nines and Sixteens from Hounslow to Le Bourget, and get through as best you could. Later on we moved to Croydon.”
    I nodded. “I crossed that way once. They gave us paper bags to be sick into.”
    “Dare say. It was all right while the fine weather lasted, but in the winter … it was rotten. Rotten. No ground organisation to help you—no wireless or weather reports in those days. Days when it was too thick to see the trees beyond the aerodrome we used to ring up the harbour-master at Folkestone and get a weather report from him. But we didn’t do that much.
    “And people used to pay to come with us,” he said slowly. “On days like that.”
    He rested his chin upon one hand and stared across the white table into the shadows of the room. “I’ve taken a Sixteen off from Hounslow with a full load of passengers when theclouds were right down to the ground,” he said, “and flown all the way to the coast without ever getting more than two hundred feet up. Time and again. Jerking her nose up into a zoom when you came to a tree or a church, and letting her down again the other side so’s you could see the ground again. At over a hundred miles an hour. Crossing the Channel like that—ten minutes in a cold sweat, praying to God that your compass was right, and your engine would stick it out, and you’d see the cliffs the other side before you hit. And then, at the end of it all, to have to land in a field half-way between the coast and Le Bourget because it was getting too thick for safety.” He paused. “It was wicked,” he said.
    They used to carry the much advertised Air Mails. That meant that the machines had to fly whether there were passengers to be carried or not. It was left to the discretion of the pilot whether or not the flight should be cancelled in bad weather; the pilots were dead keen and went on flying in the most impossible conditions.
    “Sanderson got killed that way,” he said. “At Douinville. An’ all he had in the machine was a couple of picture postcards from trippers in Paris, sent to their families in England as a curiosity. That was the Air Mail. No passengers or anything—just the Mail.” He thought for a little. “Now that was a funny thing,” he said quietly. “Sanderson hit a tree on top of a little cliff, and he died about a week later. An’ all the time in the hospital he was explaining to the nurse how he’d put his machine in through the roof of the Coliseum and what a pity it was, because there was a damn good show going on at the time and he’d gone and spoilt it all. And