With The Night Mail Part 3

"She's a public lunger or she wouldn't have been singing the _Benedicite_; and she's a Greenlander or she wouldn't have snow-blinds over her colloids," said George at last. "She'll be bound for Frederikshavn or one of the Glacier sanatoriums for a month. If she was an accident ward she'd be hung up at the eight-thousand-foot level.

Yes--consumptives."

"Funny how the new things are the old things. I've read in books," Tim answered, "that savages used to haul their sick and wounded up to the tops of hills because microbes were fewer there. We hoist 'em into sterilized air for a while. Same idea. How much do the doctors say we've added to the average life of a man?"

"Thirty years," says George with a twinkle in his eye. "Are we going to spend 'em all up here, Tim?"

"Flap along, then. Flap along. Who's hindering?" the senior captain laughed, as we went in.

We held a good lift to clear the coastwise and Continental s.h.i.+pping; and we had need of it. Though our route is in no sense a populated one, there is a steady trickle of traffic this way along. We met Hudson Bay furriers out of the Great Preserve, hurrying to make their departure from Bonavista with sable and black fox for the insatiable markets. We over-crossed Keewatin liners, small and cramped; but their captains, who see no land between Trepa.s.sy and Blanco, know what gold they bring back from West Africa. Trans-Asiatic Directs, we met, soberly ringing the world round the Fiftieth Meridian at an honest seventy knots; and white-painted Ackroyd & Hunt fruiters out of the south fled beneath us, their ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites. Their market is in the North among the northern sanatoria where you can smell their grapefruit and bananas across the cold snows. Argentine beef boats we sighted too, of enormous capacity and unlovely outline. They, too, feed the northern health stations in ice-bound ports where submersibles dare not rise.

Yellow-bellied ore-flats and Ungava petrol-tanks punted down leisurely out of the north like strings of unfrightened wild duck. It does not pay to "fly" minerals and oil a mile farther than is necessary; but the risks of trans.h.i.+pping to submersibles in the ice-pack off Nain or Hebron are so great that these heavy freighters fly down to Halifax direct, and scent the air as they go. They are the biggest tramps aloft except the Athabasca grain-tubs. But these last, now that the wheat is moved, are busy, over the world's shoulder, timber-lifting in Siberia.

We held to the St. Lawrence (it is astonis.h.i.+ng how the old water-ways still pull us children of the air), and followed his broad line of black between its drifting ice blocks, all down the Park that the wisdom of our fathers--but every one knows the Quebec run.

We dropped to the Heights Receiving Towers twenty minutes ahead of time and there hung at ease till the Yokohama Intermediate Packet could pull out and give us our proper slip. It was curious to watch the action of the holding-down clips all along the frosty river front as the boats cleared or came to rest. A big Hamburger was leaving Pont Levis and her crew, uns.h.i.+pping the platform railings, began to sing "Elsinore"--the oldest of our chanteys. You know it of course:

_Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic_-- _Forty couple waltzing on the floor!_ _And you can watch my Ray,_ _For I must go away_ _And dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!_

Then, while they sweated home the covering-plates:

_Nor-Nor-Nor-Nor-_ _West from Sourabaya to the Baltic--_ _Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw!_ _Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic_ _And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!_

The clips parted with a gesture of indignant dismissal, as though Quebec, glittering under her snows, were casting out these light and unworthy lovers. Our signal came from the Heights. Tim turned and floated up, but surely then it was with pa.s.sionate appeal that the great tower arms flung open--or did I think so because on the upper staging a little hooded figure also opened her arms wide towards her father?

In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down to the receiving-caisson; the hostlers displaced the engineers at the idle turbines, and Tim, prouder of this than all, introduced me to the maiden of the photograph on the shelf. "And by the way," said he to her, stepping forth in suns.h.i.+ne under the hat of civil life, "I saw young Williams in the Mark Boat. I've asked him to tea on Friday."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I'VE ASKED HIM TO TEA ON FRIDAY"]

AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL BULLETIN

Aerial Board of Control

Lights

No changes in English Inland lights for week ending Dec. 18.

PLANETARY COASTAL LIGHTS. Week ending Dec. 18. Verde inclined guide-light changes from 1st proximo to triple flash--green white green--in place of occulting red as heretofore. The warning light for Harmattan winds will be continuous vertical glare (white) on all oases of trans-Saharan N. E. by E. Main Routes.

INVERCARGIL (N. Z.)--From 1st prox.: extreme southerly light (double red) will exhibit white beam inclined 45 degrees on approach of Southerly Buster. Traffic flies high off this coast between April and October.

TABLE BAY--Devil's Peak Glare removed to Simonsberg. Traffic making Table Mountain coastwise keep all lights from Three Anchor Bay at least five s.h.i.+pping hundred feet under, and do not round to till beyond E.

shoulder Devil's Peak.

SANDHEADS LIGHT--Green triple vertical marks new private landing-stage for Bay and Burma traffic only.

SNAEFELL JOKUL--White occulting light withdrawn for winter.

PATAGONIA--No summer light south C. Pilar. This includes Staten Island and Port Stanley.

C. NAVARIN--Quadruple fog flash (white), one minute intervals (new).

EAST CAPE--Fog flash--single white with single bomb, 30 sec. intervals (new).

MALAYAN ARCHIPELAGO lights unreliable owing eruptions. Lay from Somerset to Singapore direct, keeping highest levels.

_For the Board_: CATTERTHUN } ST. JUST } _Lights._ VAN HEDDER }

Casualties

Week ending Dec. 18th.

SABLE ISLAND LANDING TOWERS--Green freighter, number indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-tank pierced after collision, pa.s.sed 300-ft. level 2 P.M. Dec. 15th. Watched to water and pithed by Mark Boat.

N. F. BANKS--Postal Packet 162 reports _Halma_ freighter (Fowey--St.

John's) abandoned, leaking after weather, 46 15' N. 50 15' W. Crew rescued by Planet liner _Asteroid_. Watched to water and pithed by postal packet, Dec. 14th.

KERGUELEN MARK BOAT reports last call from _Cymena_ freighter (Gayer Tong-Huk & Co.) taking water and sinking in snow-storm South McDonald Islands. No wreckage recovered. Addresses, etc., of crew at all A. B. C.

offices.

FEZZAN--T. A. D. freighter _Ulema_ taken ground during Harmattan on Akakus Range. Under plates strained. Crew at Ghat where repairing Dec.

13th.

BISCAY, MARK BOAT reports _Carducci_ (Valandingham line) slightly spiked in western gorge Point de Benasque. Pa.s.sengers transferred _Andorra_ (same line). Barcelona Mark Boat salving cargo Dec. 12th.

ASCENSION, MARK BOAT--Wreck of unknown racing-plane, Parden rudder, wire-stiffened xylonite vans, and Harliss engine-seating, sighted and salved 7 20' S. 18 41' W. Dec. 15th. Photos at all A. B. C. offices.

Missing

No answer to General Call having been received during the last week from following overdues, they are posted as missing.

_Atlantis_, W. 17630 Canton--Valparaiso _Audhumla_, W. 809 Stockholm--Odessa _Berenice_, W. 2206 Riga--Vladivostock _Draco_, E. 446 Coventry--Puntas Arenas _Tontine_, E. 3068 C. Wrath--Ungava _Wu-Sung_, E. 41776 Hankow--Lobito Bay

General Call (all Mark Boats) out for:

_Jane Eyre_, W. 6990 Port Rupert--City of Mexico _Santander_, W. 5514 Gobi-desert--Manila _V. Edmundsun_, E. 9690 Kandahar--Fiume

Broke for Obstruction, and Quitting Levels