I shan't weary you with the further analysis of my soul-states during this tempestuous period. I ate a light breakfast, swallowed much tea. Then I resolutely went in company with a friend, and we boarded an Inlet car. I had the day previous resorted to a major expedient of cowards. I had said, so as to bolster up my fluttering resolution, that I was going to fly; an expedient that seldom misses, for I should never have been able to face the chief clerk, the head waiter, or the proprietor at the hotel if I failed to keep my promise.
"Boaster! Swaggerer!" I muttered to myself en route. "Now are you satisfied? Thou tremblest, carcass! Thou wouldst tremble much more if thou knewest whither I shall soon lead thee!" I quoted Turenne, and I was beginning to babble something about Icarus—or was it Phæton, or Simon Magus?—brought to earth in the Colosseum by a prayer from the lips of Saint Peter—when we arrived. How I hated the corner where we alighted. It seemed mean and dingy and sinister in the dazzling sunlight—a red-hot Saturday, September 11, 1915, and the hour was 10.30 A. M. A condemned criminal could not have noted more clearly every detail of the life he was about to quit. We ploughed through the sand. We reached the scaffold—at least it looked like one to me. "Hello, here's a church. Let's go in," I felt like exclaiming in sheer desperation, remembering Dickens and Mr. Wemmick. I would have, such was my blue funk, quoted Holy Scripture to the sandlopers, but I hadn't the chance.
I asked my friend, and my voice sounded steady enough, whether the wind and weather seemed propitious for flying. Never better was the reply, and my heart went down to my boots. I really think I should have escaped if a stout man with a piratical moustache hadn't approached me and asked: "Going up to-day?" I marvelled at his calmness, and wished for his instant dissolution, but I gave an affirmative shake of the head. Cornered at last! Handing my watch, hat, and wallet to my friend, I coldly awaited the final preparations. I had forgotten my ear protector, but cotton-wool would answer the purpose of making me partially deaf to the clangorous vibration of the propeller blades—which resemble in a magnified shape the innocent air-fans of offices and cafés. I essayed one more joke—true gallows humour—before I was led like a lamb (a tough one) to the slaughter. I asked an attendant to whom I had paid the official fee if my widows would be refunded the money in case of accident; but this antique and tasteless witticism was indifferently received, as it deserved. Finally the young man gave me a raincoat, grabbed me around the waist, and bidding me clasp his neck he carried me out into shallow water and sat me beside the air-pilot, who looked like a mere lad in his bathing-clothes. My hand must have been trembling (ah, that old piano hand), for he inquiringly eyed me. The motor was screaming as we flew through the water toward the Inlet. I hadn't courage of mind to make a farewell signal to my companion. Too late, we're off! I thought, and at once my trepidation vanished.
I had for some unknown reason, possibly because of absolute despair, suffered a rich sea-change. We churned the waves. I saw tiny sails studding the deep blue. Men fished from the shore. As we neared the Inlet, where a shambling wooden hotel stands on the sandy point, the sound of the motor grew intenser. We began to lift, not all at once, but gradually. Suddenly her nose poked skyward, and the boat climbed the air with an ease that was astonishing. No shock. No jerkiness. We simply glided aloft as if the sky were our native heath—you will pardon the Hibernicism—and as if determined to pay a visit to the round blazing sun bathing naked in the brilliant blue. And with the mounting ascent I became unconscious of my corporeal vesture. I had become pure spirit. I feared nothing. The legend of angels became a certainty. I was on the way to the Fourth Dimensional vista. I recalled Poincaré's suggestion that there is no such thing as matter; only holes in the ether. Nature embracing a vacuum instead of abhorring it. A Swiss cheese universe. Joseph Conrad has said "Man on earth is an unforeseen accident which does not stand close investigation." But man in the air? Man is destined to wings. Was I not proving it? Flying is the sport of gods, and should be of humans now that the motor-car is become slightly "promiscuous."
The Inlet and thoroughfare at my feet were a network of silvery ribbons. The heat was terrific, the glare almost unbearable. But I no longer sneezed. Aviation solves the hay-fever problem. The wind forced me to clench my teeth. We were hurled along at seventy miles an hour, and up several thousand feet, yet below the land seemed near enough to touch. As we swung across the masts of yachts I wondered that we didn't graze them—so elusive was the crystal clearness of the atmosphere, a magic mirror that made the remote contiguous. The mast of the sunken schooner hard by the sand-bar looked like a lead-pencil one could grasp and write a message to Mars.
Hello! I was become lyrical. It is inescapable up in the air. The blood seethes. Ecstasy sets in; the kinetic ecstasy of a spinning-top. I gazed at the pilot. He twisted his wheel nonchalantly as if in an earthly automobile. I looked over the sides of the cedar boat and was not giddy, for I had lived years at the top of an apartment-house, ten stories high, from which I daily viewed policemen killing time on the sidewalks; besides, I have strong eyes and the stomach of a drover. Therefore, no giddiness, no nausea. Only exaltation as we swooped down to lower levels. Atlantic City, bizarre, yet meaningless, outrageously planned and executed, stretched its ugly shape beneath us; the most striking objects were the exotic hyphenated hotel, with its Asiatic monoliths and dome, and its vast, grandiose neighbour, a mound of concrete, the biggest hotel in the world. The piers were salient silhouettes. A checker-board seemed the city, which modulated into a tremendous arabesque of ocean and sky. I preferred to stare seaward. The absorbent cotton in my ears was transformed into gun-cotton, so explosive the insistent drumming of the motor-engine. Otherwise, we flew on even keel, only an occasional dip and a sidewise swing reminding me that I wasn't footing the ordinary highway. The initial intoxication began to wear off, but not the sense of freedom, a glorious freedom; truly, mankind will not be free till all fly.
Alas! though we become winged we remain mortal. We may shed our cumbersome pedestrian habits, but we take up in the air with us our petty souls. I found myself indulging in very trite thoughts. What a pity that war should be the first to degrade this delightful and stimulating sport! Worse followed. Why couldn't I own a machine? Base envy, you see. The socialistic leaven had begun to work. No use; we shall remain human even in heaven or hell.
I have been asked to describe the sensation of flying. I can't. It seems so easy, so natural. If you have ever dreamed of flying, I can only say that your dream will be realised in an aeroplane. Dreams do come true sometimes. (Curiously enough, I've not dreamed of flying since.) But as there is an end even to the most tedious story, so mine must finish.
Suddenly the sound of the engine ceased. The silence was thrilling, almost painful. And then in huge circles, as if we were descending the curves of an invisible corkscrew, we came down, the bow of the flying boat pointing at an angle of forty-five degrees. Still no dizziness, only a sense of regret that the trip was so soon over. It had endured an eternity, but occupied precisely twenty-one minutes.
We reached the water and settled on the foam like a feather. Then we churned toward the beach; again I was carried, this time on to solid land, where I had ridiculous trouble in getting the cotton from my harassed eardrums. Perhaps my hands were unsteady, but if they were, my feet were not.