CHAPTER XVIII WHEN THE HEART SUFFERS A BLOW
What says the body when they spring
Some monster torture-engine's whole
Strength on it? No more says the soul.
Count Gismond.
Flying is no sport for the sluggard. The calmest hours of the twenty-four are often those before the dawn, and the earnest aviator must be ready to turn out of his warm bed at six, five, four, even three o'clock in the morning, whether in the pleasant summer, or in the correspondingly unpleasant winter. He may then have to spend long hours at the 'drome waiting for the fog to lift, or the rain to clear, or the wind to drop; and in the end, as like as not, he may have to go home, wet, chilly, and sleepy, without having flown a yard. Decidedly not the sport for a sluggard.
Six A.M. in mid-October, and bitterly cold. There was a gray sky, ripple on ripple of quilted cloud with never a gleam, and a small icy wind that blew persistently from the north. The coarse bice-green of the marshes was all discolored; the sedge, biscuit-pale, was clotted with mud from the September floods; the brimming dikes were ruled by the wind into long ripples, hard and black against the dawn. The dawn itself, how wan and threatening! Denis, surveying the signs of the sky as he unlocked the hangar, exerted himself to remark to Simpson that it looked like rain. Simpson, expert mechanic and latter-day Grimaud, assented with his civil grunt. His uncivil grunt he did not use on Denis, who had once been his officer.
Like every worker who spins his stuff out of his own brain, Denis at times "went stale." For the past ten days the flying boat had been laid aside, and he had been tinkering at the monoplane by way of relaxation. Never losing sight of the function for which she had been built, that of a small fast scout in the war which he expected, he was always adding small improvements. Thus, after his experience in the Birmingham race, he had fitted her with self-starting gear, which enabled the pilot to get away at will, independent of outside help. Now he was working at a brake. Landing is still one of the chief dangers in cross-country flying, especially in England, where fields are small, and there is often a web of overhead wires. At that time (1913) there were not a dozen aerodromes in the kingdom, and not one aëroplane in ten had a brake of any sort.
Theoretically, Denis's new design was all it should be; practically, of course, it might upset the machine and kill the pilot. Not that Denis ever believed he would be killed. "The airman hath said in his heart, Tush, I shall never be cast down, there shall no harm happen unto me." He believed other people might be killed, however, and for this reason had severely snubbed Simpson when he offered to take on the trials. Simpson, faithful dog, bore no resentment. He had been watching the events of the past few weeks, and had come to the conclusion that 'e (in Simpson's mind Denis was always 'e) wasn't to say accountable just now. "You'd 'a' thought 'e might 'a' took warning by Muster Wandesforde," he reflected. "'E's a nice gent spoiled by the women, if ever there was one. But no. Jane! JANE! 'Ave you got that stooed steak on yet? You ain't? Then it'll be as tough as your shoe again. 'E ain't complained? 'E lef' the lot at the side of 'is plate last time, and if that ain't complainin' I dono what is. Now you get it on at once and let's hear no more chat. Seems to me you ain't good for anything, 'cep that bein' so deaf you can't gossip. Women," added Simpson, knocking out his pipe against his boot, "they're the devil!"