Actions and Reactions

R >> Rudyard Kipling >> Actions and Reactions

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To enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on a sunny morning half a
mile or so above the dappled Atlantic cloud-belts and after a
volt-flurry which has cleared and tempered your nerves. While we
discussed the thickening traffic with the superiority that comes
of having a high level reserved to ourselves, we heard (and I for
the first time) the morning hymn on a Hospital boat.

She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath us and we
caught the chant before she rose into the sunlight. "Oh, ye Winds
of God," sang the unseen voices: "bless ye the Lord! Praise Him
and magnify Him for ever!"

We slid off our caps and joined in. When our shadow fell across
her great open platforms they looked up and stretched out their
hands neighbourly while they sang. We could see the doctors and
the nurses and the white-button-like faces of the cot-patients.
She passed slowly beneath us, heading northward, her hull, wet
with the dews of the night, all ablaze in the sunshine. So took
she the shadow of a cloud and vanished, her song continuing. "Oh,
ye holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord! Praise Him
and magnify Him for ever."

"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 thing 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 in sterilized air for a while. Same idea. How much do
the doctors say we've added to the average life of man?"

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

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

We held a good lift to clear the coastwise and Continental
shipping; 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 overcossed Keewatin
liners, small and cramped; but their captains, who see no land
between Trepassy and Lanco, know what gold they bring back from
West Erica. 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 grape-fruit 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 icebound 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 transhipping 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 astonishing how the old
water-ways still pull us children of the air), and followed his
broad line of black between its drifting iceblocks, 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, unshipping 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 passionate 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 toward 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 sunshine under the hat of civil
life, "I saw young Williams in the Mark Boat. I've asked him to
tea on Friday."

AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL

Lights

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

CAPE VERDE--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 two thousand feet under, and do not round to till
East of 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 Cape 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
Cape Somerset to Singapore direct, keeping highest levels.

For the Board:

CATTERTHUN }
ST. JUST } Lights.
VAN HEDDER }

Casualties

Week ending Dec. 18th.

SABLE ISLAND--Green single barbette-tower freighter, number
indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-tank pierced after
collision, passed 300-ft. level Q P. as. 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, 46 151 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. Messages and wills 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 Caducci (Valandingham Line) slightly
spiked in western gorge Point de Benasdue. Passengers transferred
Andorra (Fulton Line). Barcelona Mark Boat salving cargo Dec.
12th.

ASCENSION, MARE 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. 889 . Stockholm--Odessa
Berenice, W. 2206 .. . Riga--Vladivostock
Draw, E. 446 . . Coventry--Pontes
Arenas Tontine, E. 5068 . 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. 6514 . . Gobi Desert--Manila
Y. Edmundsun, E. 9690 . . Kandahar--Fiume

Broke for Obstruction, and Quitting Levels

VALKYRIE (racing plane), A. J. Hartley owner, New York
(twice warned).
GEISHA (racing plane), S. van Cott owner, Philadelphia
(twice warned).
MARVEL of PERU (racing plane), J. X. Peixoto owner, Rio de
Janeiro (twice warned).
For the Board:

LAZAREFF }
McKEOUGH } Traffic
GOLDBRATT }

NOTES

High-Level Sleet

The Northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement. From
all quarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet
at the higher levels. Racing planes and digs alike have suffered
severely--the former from 'unequal deposits of half-frozen slush
on their vans (and only those who have "held up" a badly balanced
plane in a cross-wind know what that means), and the latter from
loaded bows and snow-cased bodies. As a consequence, the Northern
and North-western upper levels have been practically abandoned,
and the high fliers have returned to the ignoble security of the
Three, Five, and Six hundred foot levels. But there remain a few
undaunted sun-hunters who, in spite of frozen stays and
ice-jammed connecting-rods, still haunt the blue empyrean.

Bat-Boat Racing

The scandals of the past few years have at last moved the
yachting world to concerted action in regard to "bat" boat
racing. We have been treated to the spectacle of what are
practically keeled racing-planes driven a clear five foot or more
above the water, and only eased down to touch their so-called "
native element" as they near the line. Judges and starters have
been conveniently blind to this absurdity, but the public
demonstration off St. Catherine's Light at the Autumn Regattas
has borne ample, if tardy, fruit. In the future the "bat" is to
be a boat, and the long-unheeded demand of the true sportsman for
"no daylight under mid-keel in smooth water" is in a fair way to
be conceded. The new rule severely restricts plane area and lift
alike. The gas compartments are permitted both fore and aft, as
in the old type, but the water-ballast central tank is rendered
obligatory. These things work, if not for perfection, at least
for the evolution of a sane and wholesome waterborne cruiser. The
type of rudder is unaffected by the new rules, so we may expect
to see the Long-Davidson make (the patent on which has just
expired) come largely into use henceforward, though the strain on
the sternpost in turning at speeds over forty miles an hour is
admittedly very severe. But bat-boat racing has a great future
before it.

Crete and the A. B. C.

The story of the recent Cretan crisis, as told in the A. B. C.
Monthly Report, is not without humour. Till the 25th October
Crete, as all our planet knows, was the sole surviving European
repository of "autonomous institutions," "local self-government,"
and the rest of the archaic lumber devised in the past for the
confusion of human affairs. She has lived practically on the
tourist traffic attracted by her annual pageants of Parliaments,
Boards, Municipal Councils, etc., etc. Last summer the islanders
grew wearied, as their premier explained, of "playing at being
savages for pennies," and proceeded to pull down all the
landing-towers on the island and shut off general communication
till such time as the A. B. C. should annex them. For
side-splitting comedy we would refer our readers to the
correspondence between the Board of Control and the Cretan
premier during the "war." However, all's well that ends well. The
A. B. C. have taken over the administration of Crete on normal
lines; and tourists must go elsewhere to witness the"debates,"
"resolutions," and "popular movements" of the old days. The only
people to suffer will be the Board of Control, which is
grievously overworked already. It is easy enough to condemn the
Cretans for their laziness; but when one recalls the large,
prosperous, and presumably public-spirited communities which
during the last few years have deliberately thrown themselves
into the hands of the A. B. C., one, cannot be too hard upon St.
Paul's old friends.

CORRESPONDENCE

Skylarking on the Equator

To THE EDITOR: Only last week, while crossing the Equator (W.
26-15), I became aware of a furious and irregular cannonading
some fifteen or twenty knots S. 4 E. Descending to the 500 ft.
level, I found a party of Transylvanian tourists engaged in
exploding scores of the largest pattern atmospheric bombs (A. B.
C. standard) and, in the intervals of their pleasing labours,
firing bow and stern smoke-ring swivels. This orgie--I can give
it no other name--went on for at least two hours, and naturally
produced violent electric derangements. My compasses, of course,
were thrown out, my bow was struck twice, and I received two
brisk shocks from the lower platform-rail. On remonstrating, I
was told that these "professors" were engaged in scientific
experiments. The extent of their "scientific" knowledge, may be
judged by the fact that they expected to produce (I give their
own words)" a little blue sky" if "they went on long enough."
This in the heart of the Doldrums at 450 feet! I have no
objection to any amount of blue sky in its proper place (it can
be found at the 4000 level for practically twelve months out of
the year), but I submit, with all deference to the educational
needs of Transylvania, that "skylarking" in the centre of a
main-travelled road where, at the best of times, electricity
literally drips off one's stanchions and screw blades, is
unnecessary. When my friends had finished, the road was seared,
and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure layers, spirals,
vortices, and readjustments for at least an hour. I pitched badly
twice in an upward rush--solely due to these diabolical
throw-downs--that came near to wrecking my propeller. Equatorial
work at low levels is trying enough in all conscience without the
added terrors of scientific hooliganism in the Doldrums.
Rhyl. J. VINCENT MATHEN.

[We entirely sympathize with Professor Mathen's views, but till
the Board sees fit to further regulate the Southern areas in
which scientific experiments may be conducted, we shall always be
exposed to the risk which our correspondent describes.
Unfortunately, a chimera bombinating in a vacuum is, nowadays,
only too capable of producing secondary causes.- Editor.]

Answers to Correspondents

VIGILANS--The Laws of Auroral Derangements are still imperfectly
understood. Any overheated motor may of course "seize" without
warning; but so many complaints have reached us of accidents
similar to yours while shooting the Aurora that we are inclined
to believe with Lavalle that the upper strata of the Aurora
Borealis are practically one big electric "leak," and that the
paralysis of your engines was due to complete magnetization of
all metallic parts. Low-flying planes often "glue up" when near
the Magnetic Pole, and there is no reason in science why the same
disability should not be experienced at higher levels when the
Auroras are "delivering" strongly.

INDIGNANT--On your own showing, you were not under control. That
you could not hoist the necessary N. U. C. lights on approaching
a traffic-lane because your electrics had short-circuited is a
misfortune which might befall any one. The A. B. C., being
responsible for the planet's traffic, cannot, however, make
allowance for this kind of misfortune. A reference to the Code
will show that you were fined on the lower scale.

PLANISTON--(1) The Five Thousand Kilometre (overland) was won
last year by L. V. Rautsch; R. M. Rautsch, his brother, in the
same week pulling off the Ten Thousand (oversee). R. M.'s average
worked out at a fraction over 500 kilometres per hour, thus
constituting a record. (2) Theoretically, there is no limit to
the lift of a dirigible. For commercial and practical purposes
15,000 tons is accepted as the most manageable.

PATERFAMILIAS--None whatever. He is liable for direct damage both
to your chimneys and any collateral damage caused by fall of
bricks into garden, etc., etc. Bodily inconvenience and mental
anguish may be included, but the average courts are not, as a
rule, swayed by sentiment. If you can prove that his grapnel
removed any portion of your roof, you had better rest your case
on decoverture of domicile (see Parkins v. Duboulay). We
sympathize with your position, but the night of the 14th was
stormy and confused, and--you may have to anchor on a stranger's
chimney yourself some night. Verbum sap!

ALDEBARAN--(1) war, as a paying concern, ceased in 1987. (2) The
Convention of London expressly reserves to every nation the right
of waging war so long as it does not interfere with the traffic
and all that implies. (3) The A. B. C. was constituted in 1949.

L. M. P.--(1) Keep her full head-on at half power, taking
advantage of the lulls to speed up and creep into it. She will
strain much less this way than in quartering across a gale. (2)
Nothing is to be gained by reversing into a following gale, and
there is always risk of a turnover. (3) The formulae for stun'sle
brakes are uniformly unreliable, and will continue to be so as
long as air is compressible.

PEGAMOID- (1) Personally we prefer glass or flux compounds to any
other material for winter work nose-caps as being absolutely
non-hygroscopic. (2) We cannot recommend any particular make.

PULMONAR--(1) For the symptoms you describe, try the Gobi Desert
Sanatoria. The low levels of most of the Saharan Sanatoria are
against them except at the outset of the disease. (2) We do not
recommend boarding-houses or hotels in this column.

BEGINNER--On still days the air above a large inhabited city
being slightly warmer--i.e., thinner--than the atmosphere of the
surrounding country, a plane drops a little on entering the
rarefied area, precisely as a ship sinks a little in fresh water.
Hence the phenomena of "jolt" and your "inexplicable collisions"
with factory chimneys. In air, as on earth, it is safest to fly
high.

EMERGENCY--There is only one rule of the road in air, earth, and
water. Do you want the firmament to yourself?

PICCIOLA--Both Poles have been overdone in Art and Literature.
Leave them to Science for the next twenty years. You did not send
a stamp with your verses.

NORTH NIGERIA--The Mark Boat was within her right in warning you
off the Reserve. The shadow of a low-flying dirigible scares the
game. You can buy all the photos you need at Sokoto.

NEW ERA--It is not etiquette to overcross an A. B. C. official's
boat without asking permission. He is one of the body responsible
for the planet's traffic, and for that reason must not be
interfered with. You, presumably, are out on your own business or
pleasure, and must leave him alone. For humanity's sake don't try
to be "democratic."

EXCORIATED--All inflators chafe sooner or later. You must go on
till your skin hardens by practice. Meantime vaseline.

REVIEW

The Life of Xavier Lavalle
(Reviewed by Rene Talland. Ecole Aeronautique, Paris)

Ten years ago Lavalle, "that imperturbable dreamer of the
heavens," as Lazareff hailed him, gathered together the fruits of
a lifetime's labour, and gave it, with well-justified contempt,
to a world bound hand and foot to Barald's Theory of Vertices and
"compensating electric nodes." "They shall see," he wrote--in
that immortal postscript to The Heart of the Cyclone--"the Laws
whose existence they derided written in fire beneath them."

"But even here," he continues, "there is no finality. Better a
thousand times my conclusions should be discredited than that my
dead name should lie across the threshold of the temple of
Science--a bar to further inquiry."

So died Lavalle--a prince of the Powers of the Air, and even at
his funeral Cellier jested at "him who had gone to discover the
secrets of the Aurora Borealis."

If I choose thus to be banal, it is only to remind you that
Collier's theories are today as exploded as the ludicrous
deductions of the Spanish school. In the place of their fugitive
and warring dreams we have, definitely, Lavalle's Law of the
Cyclone which he surprised in darkness and cold at the foot of
the overarching throne of the Aurora Borealis. It is there that
I, intent on my own investigations, have passed and re-passed a
hundred times the worn leonine face, white as the snow beneath
him, furrowed with wrinkles like the seams and gashes upon the
North Cape; the nervous hand, integrally a part of the mechanism
of his flighter; and above all, the wonderful lambent eyes turned
to the zenith.

"Master," I would cry as I moved respectfully beneath him, "what
is it you seek today?" and always the answer, clear and without
doubt, from above: "The old secret, my son!"

The immense egotism of youth forced me on my own path, but (cry
of the human always!) had I known--if I had known--I would many
times have bartered my poor laurels for the privilege, such as
Tinsley and Herrera possess, of having aided him in his
monumental researches.

It is to the filial piety of Victor Lavalle that we owe the two
volumes consecrated to the ground-life of his father, so full of
the holy intimacies of the domestic hearth. Once returned from
the abysms of the utter North to that little house upon the
outskirts of Meudon, it was not the philosopher, the daring
observer, the man of iron energy that imposed himself on his
family, but a fat and even plaintive jester, a farceur incarnate
and kindly, the co-equal of his children, and, it must be
written, not seldom the comic despair of Madame Lavalle, who, as
she writes five years after the marriage, to her venerable
mother, found "in this unequalled intellect whose name I bear the
abandon of a large and very untidy boy." Here is her letter:

"Xavier returned from I do not know where at midnight, absorbed
in calculations on the eternal question of his Aurora--la belle
Aurore, whom I begin to hate. Instead of anchoring,--I had set
out the guide-light above our roof, so he had but to descend and
fasten the plane--he wandered, profoundly distracted, above the
town with his anchor down! Figure to yourself, dear mother, it is
the roof of the mayor's house that the grapnel first engages!
That I do not regret, for the mayor's wife and I are not
sympathetic; but when Xavier uproots my pet araucaria and bears
it across the garden into the conservatory I protest at the top
of my voice. Little Victor in his night-clothes runs to the
window, enormously amused at the parabolic flight without reason,
for it is too dark to see the grapnel, of my prized tree. The
Mayor of Meudon, thunders at our door in the name of the Law,
demanding, I suppose, my husband's head. Here is the conversation
through the megaphone--Xavier is two hundred feet above us:

"'Mons. Lavalle, descend and make reparation for outrage of
domicile. Descend, Mons. Lavalle!'

"No one answers.

"'Xavier Lavalle, in the name of the Law, descend arid submit to
process for outrage of domicile.'

"Xavier, roused from his calculations, comprehending only the
last words: 'Outrage of domicile? My dear mayor, who is the man
that has corrupted thy Julie?'

"The mayor, furious, 'Xavier Lavalle--'

"Xavier, interrupting: 'I have not that felicity. I am only a
dealer in cyclones!'

"My faith, he raised one then! All Meudon attended in the
streets, and my Xavier, after a long time comprehending what he
had done, excused himself in a thousand apologies. At last the
reconciliation was effected in our house over a supper at two in
the morning--Julie in a wonderful costume of compromises, and I
have her and the mayor pacified in bed in the blue room."

And on the next day, while the mayor rebuilds his roof, her
Xavier departs anew for the Aurora Borealis, there to commence
his life's work. M. Victor Lavalle tells us of that historic
collision (en plane) on the flank of Hecla between Herrera, then
a pillar of the Spanish school, and the man destined to confute
his theories and lead him intellectually captive. Even through
the years, the immense laugh of Lavalle as he sustains the
Spaniard's wrecked plane, and cries: "Courage! I shall not fall
till I have found Truth, and I hold you fast!" rings like the
call of trumpets. This is that Lavalle whom the world, immersed
in speculations of immediate gain, did not know nor suspect--the
Lavalle whom they adjudged to the last a pedant and a theorist.

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