“Aye, aye, sir,” sounded instantly from the operator’s table and as the light flashed, Roy was on duty again.
CHAPTER XX
THE FIRST SIGHT OF LONDON
On the morning of June 22 a fog lay on the Irish Coast until nine o’clock. Between that hour and ten o’clock the fog turned into a misty rain and it was not until nearly eleven o’clock that old Donald O’Meara, keeper of the north light on Arran Island off Galway bay, applied himself to the work of cleaning the outside metal and glass of the light house. At twenty minutes after eleven o’clock “Captain” O’Meara, sweeping the horizon as he recharged his little clay dudeen, made out a strange object in the west high above the sea.
“Captain” O’Meara was the first European to sight the first airship that crossed the Atlantic ocean. It was a few seconds after twenty-eight minutes after eleven o’clock when the Ocean Flyer passed the Arran light. As the giant airship approached this tower, the aeroplane seemed swooping toward the island as if to perch thereon. When the swift incline suddenly turned to horizontal and the dull metal wings carried the aeroplane ahead only a few hundred feet above the dazed light keeper’s head, O’Meara could make out no person aboard.
Although the veteran light keeper sprang into the tower when the roar of the cyclonelike propellers reached his ears and fled down the steps to his cottage below, the Flyer was yet in plain sight when he reported what he had seen, by telephone to the mainland. Within thirty minutes this information and similar reports had reached the Galway evening newspapers from a dozen sources.
“She looks like a big French aeroplane,” came one message from Bullyvaughan on the south shore of Galway bay. “Like as not lost in the fog early to-day.”
No observer suspected or suggested that the strange vehicle had actually crossed the Atlantic ocean. And the telegraph messages that hastened to London, receiving little attention in the midst of the coronation exercises, were not even repeated to America. Within the apparently untenanted car of the big air craft there was little excitement and almost no activity. The nerve tension of the long trip had resulted in a spiritless, almost tired condition that did not even prompt enthusiasm in the crew over the first glimpse of the long looked for shores of the old world.
Ned and Alan were both at the wheel. They had picked up the Galway bay light with no other comment than “There she is!” And Roy, heavy-eyed but wide awake, had made his observations and set down his figures as mechanically as if yet far a-sea. In truth, as the Flyer had made her night-long swift flight eastward, hour by hour holding to its course in unvarying response to the powerful engine that never faltered, the surprise would have been not to see the landmark that spelled success and victory.
The arrangement of the night watches had been, in the main, carried out as planned. At two o’clock Alan relieved Ned at the wheel. About four thirty o’clock Ned took charge again and Alan was off till seven. From that time until ten o’clock Ned slept and at ten both boys were together to stick to the end. Roy, at the observer’s table, got along with his three-quarter hour cat naps till seven o’clock in the morning when Bob spelled him off until ten o’clock. At this time Buck threw himself on the floor of the store room and was only called when the Arran light came in sight.