At six forty-five she crossed the equator and reported her position to Natal radio. At six fifty the left engine, then the right, started to miss, then to catch again. Too much oil, Amelia guessed. She looked out to the left and saw a plane streaking across the sky. It was an Air France plane. She would have liked to talk with it, but she knew it had only telegraphic key, and she in the cockpit only voice telephone. The Electra’s key for transmitting code was back in the navigation room with Fred; and even if she shouted back at him, he could not hear her over the noise of the engines. With all its modern devices, the “flying laboratory” lacked an intercom between pilot and navigator.
Locking in the auto pilot, she placed the stenographer’s pad on her knee. She scrawled hastily: “Gas fumes in plane from fueling made me sick again this morning after starting. Stomach getting weak, I guess.” Then she added later: “Have tried getting something on radio. No go. Rain, static. Have never seen such rain. Props a blur in it.” Fred had crawled up from in back to sit in the right seat. “Fred dozes,” she observed. “I never seem to get sleepy flying. Often tired but seldom sleepy.”
Fred stirred, woke up, and looked about. He got up from the seat and crawled back to the navigation room to see if he could get a fix. The haze was too thick. He studied his other instruments, then made an estimate. He jotted on a card:
3:36 change to 36°
Estimate 79 miles to
Dakar from 3:36 P.M.
then sent it up ahead to Amelia. She read it, shook her head, then added at the bottom in pencil:
What put us north?
Amelia disregarded the advice of her navigator. Although Fred’s directions indicated a turn to the right, she turned left: it seemed better to her.
Forty-five minutes later she found herself over St. Louis. She was north instead of south, and 163 miles off course to Dakar! She decided to let down and make a landing. It was too late to turn around and go back.
To hit a continent, such a refusal to follow directions was of no grave consequence; to hit an island, however, it could prove fatal.
The flight across the South Atlantic, Amelia was careful to note, took thirteen hours and twelve minutes. That was one hour and sixteen minutes less than it had taken for the solo hop across the North Atlantic.