“One more crack, and you don’t hear anything,” said Bob. “Remember the rules, no interruptions from the gallery.”
“We stand corrected. Go on.”
Bob settled himself once again into the grass. “Well, we’ve got Lindy into the air. No sooner had he set out when people began reporting that they’d seen him. Some of them had. A lot of them were just excited individuals who’d heard a motorcycle back-firing. But somebody actually did see him flying over Rhode Island, and about two hours, nearly, after he had set out, they flashed back that he’d been seen at Halifax, Massachusetts. Then he dropped out of sight. Nobody reported seeing him. That was because he took an over-water route, and was out some distance, flying along the coast of New England.
“They saw him next over Nova Scotia, running along nicely, and then Springfield, Nova Scotia saw him. It was about one o’clock, and he was going strong. But he was getting into a dangerous region, cold and foggy. They had watchers looking for him everywhere. Lindy left Nova Scotia at Cape Breton, headed for Newfoundland. It was pretty stiff going, about 200 miles without sight of land, and over a pretty treacherous sea. But at 7:15 they saw him flying low over St. John’s, in Newfoundland. They could see the number on the wings, and sent back word to the world that he had passed there. And that was the last word that anybody received that Friday.
“The going had been pretty good until then. The weather was clear, and the ceiling pretty high. But as soon as it got dark, Lindy and his plane hit some pretty bad weather. It grew mighty cold, and a thick swirling fog came up and swallowed up the plane. This was mighty tough, because if he flew low, he was bound to run into one of the icebergs that were floating in the icy sea. So he climbed up to about 10,000 feet, and stayed there. Flying high was all right, but it added another danger. Ice was forming on the wings of the Spirit of St. Louis, and if it got thick enough, it would break off a wing of the plane, and send the plane and Lindy into the sea.
“Lindy could have turned back, but he didn’t. He kept right on, through fog and sleet and rain. His motor never missed. It was a good pal, and no wonder he included it in his feat, and said later that ‘we crossed the Atlantic.’
“When morning came, a whole flock of cables came, too. It seems a whole lot of ships had sighted Lindy’s plane, or somebody’s plane, anywhere from 500 to 100 miles off the coast of Ireland, where he was headed. Nobody knew who to believe, but at 10:00 o’clock came the real news, that he was over a place called Valencia, Ireland.
“Lindy wondered where he was, himself. Flying blind as he had, he didn’t know just where he had come out. So he decided to ask the first person he met. Now you can imagine the air roads weren’t full of planes flying to Ireland, and Lindy had to wait until he sighted a fishing schooner. He swooped low and shouted out, ‘Am I headed for Ireland?’ The fishermen were so astounded that they couldn’t answer, so Lindy flew on his course, depending as he had all night, on his compass. Pretty soon he came in sight of land, and knew that it was Ireland.”
“Because it was so beautiful,” said Pat.
“No, because it was rocky, and his maps indicated that the land would be rocky,” said Bob.