The Fledgling

by Charles Nordhoff

I spent my ten days' leave in a trip to Nice, and used up about half of it in getting there.

The trip south was a martyrdom—a long stifling ride to Paris, three days' wait there for a reserved place to Marseilles, a day and a night standing up in a corridor from Paris to Marseilles (had to give up my seat to an unfortunate woman with two youngsters), and twenty-three hours more in a corridor to get to Cannes. On the whole, the worst journey I recollect. No stops for meals, so we all nearly starved, till I finally obtained an armful of bottled beer and some sandwiches.

I sat down on a trunk in the corridor and nodded off to sleep, only to be awakened half an hour later by H—— F—— (S——'s cousin), who stole up with a gesture for silence, and pointed at me with a shake of his head and a broad grin. It must have been rather a rakish tableau. On the floor to my left were half a dozen empty bottles; on one end of the trunk I sat, heavy-eyed and half awake, and beside me, sound asleep, with her head on my shoulder, was a respectable, very attractive, and utterly unknown young woman! C'est la guerre! I motioned H——away and promptly went to sleep again.

In Marseilles I had time for the Corniche, to see Monte Cristo's castle, and eat a bouillabaisse, which I cannot recommend without reserve. With an enormous floating population of sailors, shipping booming, and streets ablaze at night, Marseilles seems far away from the war, after the hushed gloom of nocturnal Paris.

The trials for my military brevet were by far the most interesting thing I have done in aviation. On finishing the sixty horse-power Blériot class, I was told that I would have to do my brevet work on a small Caudron biplane, as there were no Blériots available. A few short flights in the Caudron gave me confidence that I could handle it; so one rather cloudy morning the officer told me to make my official altitude—which is merely one hour's stay at heights of over seven thousand feet. I pulled on my great fur combination and fur-lined boots, adjusted mittens, helmet, and goggles, and stepped into my machine, number 2887, which the mechanic had been tuning up. "Coupe, plein gaz," he shouted, above the roar of a score of motors, and gave the stick half a dozen turns. Then, "Contact reduit"; and as I yelled back, "Contact reduit," after the old starting formula, he gave a quick half turn to the blades. Off she went with a roar, all ten cylinders hitting perfectly, so I motioned him to pull out the blocks from before the wheels. A quick rush and a turn headed me into the wind, and the next moment the starter's arm shot forward.

Old 2887 is a bully 'bus. I was off the ground and heading up in forty yards. It was rather an occasion for a beginner who had never before flown over twenty-five hundred feet. The little Caudrons, of course, are not high-powered, but she climbed splendidly. In ten minutes I was circling over the camp at thirty-eight hundred feet, and in twenty, I had reached six thousand, just under the roof of the clouds. There was only one blue hole through, so up this funnel I climbed in decreasing circles, till I finally burst out into the gorgeous upper sunlight. At eight thousand feet I began to float about in a world of utter celestial loneliness—dazzlingly pure sun, air like the water of a coral atoll, and beneath me a billowy sea of clouds, stretching away to infinity. Here and there, from the cloudy prairies, great fantastic mountain ranges reared themselves; foothills and long divides, vast snowy peaks, impalpable sisters of Orizaba or Chimborazo, and deep gorges, ever narrowing, widening, or deepening, across whose shadowy depths drove ribbons of thin gray mist.

Once, as I was sailing over a broad cañon, I saw, far off in the south, a dark moving dot, and knew with a sudden thrill that another man like myself, astride his gaunt buzzing bird, was exploring and marveling at this upper dream-world.

At last the hour was up. I shut off the motor and drove downward in a series of long easy glides. Going through the clouds, one loses all sense of balance and direction. It is bizarre and sometimes dangerous. You plunge out into the old gray world beneath, to find yourself in a nose-dive, or off on a wing, or upside down—it is all the same in a cloud.

The balance of the military trials consists in spirals, and so forth, and a lot of cross-country flying by map and compass. First you make two round trips to a place fifty miles away, and then two triangular trips of about one hundred and fifty miles each. It is very easy, if you keep your wits about you and have no hard luck. Roads, railroads, rivers, woods, and canals are the principal guides to follow; towns and cities you can only recognize by having counted their predecessors, unless there is some very prominent building, cathedral or factory. A road, from three thousand feet, shows as a very straight white line, occasionally making angular turns. A railroad is a dark gray line, always curving gently when it turns. Canals are ribbons of water, very straight, between twin lines of trees. And so on. You watch your compass, to check up the tend of roads and railroads, watch your altimeter and tachometer (which tells the speed of your engine), and above all watch always ahead for suitable landing fields, in case of motor trouble. The wind also must be borne in mind; its direction can be told from smoke. I was lucky and had no trouble at all.