He started the energizing wheel going, waited a space of seconds, then threw on the fuel-booster switch. First the right engine began coughing. Mary worked her two levers that enriched the fuel mixture. Sparky eased his throttle back to one thousand, then nodded to the mechanic. The mechanic removed the chocks from before the wheels, and the big ship started to move.
“We’re off!” Mary thought with a little choking sensation at her throat.
Sparky cursed some small, foreign plane that, taxiing across the field, caused him to swing sharply to the right.
“Looks like he did that on purpose,” said Mary.
“May have, at that,” was the reply. “There are some Hitler sympathizers down this way.
“Well,” he sighed ten seconds later. “I fooled him. Now the runway’s clear, so here we go.” The powerful motors roared in unison. They rose sharply toward the stars. Ten minutes later they were out over the blue-black sea and still slowly climbing.
“The sea is so black,” Mary thought. “The sky is all filled with night. Hours of this! How can I bear it?”
Then, as a sense of real joy, the feeling that must come to a night-flying bird, passed over her, she whispered, “But we’re rushing east to meet the dawn.”
“Get on your oxygen mask,” Sparky commanded, crashing into her dream. “We’re going up where there isn’t any weather and mighty little air.”
Their masks were attached by rubber tubes to pipes running from the oxygen storage tanks. When Mary had pulled on her mask she sighed, “Ah! That’s great! Isn’t it wonderful that they should mould our masks to fit our faces!”