With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D.

West from Sourabaya to the Baltic —
Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw!
Mother Rugen's tea-house on the Baltic
And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!

The clips parted with a gesture of indignant dismissal, as though Quebec, glittering under her snows, were casting out these light and unworthy lovers. Our signal came from the Heights. Tim turned and floated up, but surely then it was with passionate appeal that the great tower arms flung open – or did I think so because on the upper staging a little hooded figure also opened her arms wide towards her father?

In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down to the receiving-caisson; the hostlers displaced the engineers at the idle turbines, and Tim, prouder of this than all, introduced me to the maiden of the photograph on the shelf. "And by the way," said he to her, stepping forth in sunshine under the hat of civil life, "I saw young Williams in the Mark Boat. I've asked him to tea on Friday."

AERIAL BOARD OF CONTROL BULLETIN

Lights

No changes in English Inland lights for week ending Dec. 18.

Planetary Coastal Lights. Week ending Dec. 18. Verde inclined guide-light changes from 1st proximo to triple flash – green white green – in place of occulting red as heretofore. The warning light for Harmattan winds will be continuous vertical glare (white) on all oases of trans-Saharan N. E. by E. Main Routes.

Invercargil (N. Z.) – From 1st prox.: extreme southerly light (double red) will exhibit white beam inclined 45 degrees on approach of Southerly Buster. Traffic flies high off this coast between April and October.

Table Bay – Devil's Peak Glare removed to Simonsberg. Traffic making Table Mountain coastwise keep all lights from Three Anchor Bay at least five shipping hundred feet under, and do not round to till beyond E. shoulder Devil's Peak.

Sandheads Light – Green triple vertical marks new private landing-stage for Bay and Burma traffic only.

Snaefell Jokul – White occulting light withdrawn for winter.

Patagonia – No summer light south C. Pilar. This includes Staten Island and Port Stanley.

C. Navarin – Quadruple fog flash (white), one minute intervals (new).

East Cape – Fog flash – single white with single bomb, 30 sec. intervals (new).

Malayan Archipelago lights unreliable owing eruptions. Lay from Somerset to Singapore direct, keeping highest levels.

For the Board:

Casualties

Week ending Dec. 18th.

Sable Island Landing Towers – Green freighter, number indistinguishable, up-ended, and fore-tank pierced after collision, passed 300-ft. level 2 p. m. Dec. 15th. Watched to water and pithed by Mark Boat.

N. F. Banks – Postal Packet 162 reports Halma freighter (Fowey – St. John's) abandoned, leaking after weather, 46° 15' N. 50° 15' W. Crew rescued by Planet liner Asteroid. Watched to water and pithed by postal packet, Dec. 14th.

Kerguelen Mark Boat reports last call from Cymena freighter (Gayer Tong-Huk & Co.) taking water and sinking in snow-storm South McDonald Islands. No wreckage recovered. Addresses, etc., of crew at all A. B. C. offices.

Fezzan – T. A. D. freighter Ulema taken ground during Harmattan on Akakus Range. Under plates strained. Crew at Ghat where repairing Dec. 13th.

Biscay, Mark Boat reports Carducci (Valandingham line) slightly spiked in western gorge Point de Benasque. Passengers transferred Andorra (same line). Barcelona Mark Boat salving cargo Dec. 12th.

Ascension, Mark Boat – Wreck of unknown racing-plane, Parden rudder, wire-stiffened xylonite vans, and Harliss engine-seating, sighted and salved 7° 20' S. 18° 41' W. Dec. 15th. Photos at all A. B. C. offices.

Missing

No answer to General Call having been received during the last week from following overdues, they are posted as missing.

General Call (all Mark Boats) out for:

Broke for Obstruction, and Quitting Levels

Valkyrie (racing plane), A. J. Hartley owner, New York (twice warned).

Geisha (racing plane), S. van Cott owner, Philadelphia (twice warned).

Marvel of Peru (racing plane), J. X. Peixoto owner, Rio de Janeiro (twice warned).

For the Board:

NOTES

High-Level Sleet

The Northern weather so far shows no sign of improvement. From all quarters come complaints of the unusual prevalence of sleet at the higher levels. Racing-planes and digs alike have suffered severely – the former from unequal deposits of half-frozen slush on their vans (and only those who have "held up" a badly balanced plane in a cross wind know what that means), and the latter from loaded bows and snow-cased bodies. As a consequence, the Northern and Northwestern upper levels have been practically abandoned, and the high fliers have returned to the ignoble security of the Three, Five, and Six hundred foot levels. But there remain a few undaunted sun-hunters who, in spite of frozen stays and ice-jammed connecting-rods, still haunt the blue empyrean.

Bat-Boat Racing

The scandals of the past few years have at last moved the yachting world to concerted action in regard to "bat" boat racing.

We have been treated to the spectacle of what are practically keeled racing-planes driven a clear five foot or more above the water, and only eased down to touch their so-called "native element" as they near the line. Judges and starters have been conveniently blind to this absurdity, but the public demonstration off St. Catherine's Light at the Autumn Regattas has borne ample, if tardy, fruit. In future the "bat" is to be a boat, and the long-unheeded demand of the true sportsman for "no daylight under mid-keel in smooth water" is in a fair way to be conceded. The new rule severely restricts plane area and lift alike. The gas compartments are permitted both fore and aft, as in the old type, but the water-ballast central tank is rendered obligatory. These things work, if not for perfection, at least for the evolution of a sane and wholesome waterborne cruiser. The type of rudder is unaffected by the new rules, so we may expect to see the Long-Davidson make (the patent on which has just expired) come largely into use henceforward, though the strain on the sternpost in turning at speeds over forty miles an hour is admittedly very severe. But bat-boat racing has a great future before it.

CORRESPONDENCE

Skylarking on the Equator

To the Editor – Only last week, while crossing the Equator (W. 26.15), I became aware of a furious and irregular cannonading some fifteen or twenty knots S. 4 E. Descending to the 500 ft. level, I found a party of Transylvanian tourists engaged in exploding scores of the largest pattern atmospheric bombs (A. B. C. standard) and, in the intervals of their pleasing labours, firing bow and stern smoke-ring swivels. This orgy – I can give it no other name – went on for at least two hours, and naturally produced violent electric derangements. My compasses, of course, were thrown out, my bow was struck twice, and I received two brisk shocks from the lower platform-rail. On remonstrating, I was told that these "professors" were engaged in scientific experiments. The extent of their "scientific" knowledge may be judged by the fact that they expected to produce (I give their own words) "a little blue sky" if "they went on long enough." This in the heart of the Doldrums at 450 feet! I have no objection to any amount of blue sky in its proper place (it can be found at the 2,000 level for practically twelve months out of the year), but I submit, with all deference to the educational needs of Transylvania, that "sky-larking" in the centre of a main-travelled road where, at the best of times, electricity literally drips off one's stanchions and screw blades, is unnecessary. When my friends had finished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure-layers, spirals, vortices, and readjustments for at least an hour. I pitched badly twice in an upward rush – solely due to these diabolical throw-downs – that came near to wrecking my propeller. Equatorial work at low levels is trying enough in all conscience without the added terrors of scientific hooliganism in the Doldrums.

    Rhyl. J. Vincent Mathews.

[We entirely sympathize with Professor Mathews's views, but unluckily till the Board sees fit to further regulate the Southern areas in which scientific experiments may be conducted, we shall always be exposed to the risk which our correspondent describes. Unfortunately, a chimera bombinating in a vacuum is, nowadays, only too capable of producing secondary causes. —Editor.]

Answers to Correspondents

Vigilans – The Laws of Auroral Derangements are still imperfectly understood. Any overheated motor may of course "seize" without warning; but so many complaints have reached us of accidents similar to yours while shooting the Aurora that we are inclined to believe with Lavalle that the upper strata of the Aurora Borealis are practically one big electric "leak," and that the paralysis of your engines was due to complete magnetization of all metallic parts. Low-flying planes often "glue up" when near the Magnetic Pole, and there is no reason in science why the same disability should not be experienced at higher levels when the Auroras are "delivering" strongly.

Indignant – On your own showing, you were not under control. That you could not hoist the necessary N. U. C. lights on approaching a traffic-lane because your electrics had short-circuited is a misfortune which might befall any one. The A. B. C., being responsible for the planet's traffic, cannot, however, make allowance for this kind of misfortune. A reference to the Code will show that you were fined on the lower scale.

Planiston – (1) The Five Thousand Kilometre (overland) was won last year by L. V. Rautsch, R. M. Rautsch, his brother, in the same week pulling off the Ten Thousand (oversea). R. M.'s average worked out at a fraction over 500 kilometres per hour, thus constituting a record. (2) Theoretically, there is no limit to the lift of a dirigible. For commercial and practical purposes 15,000 tons is accepted as the most manageable.

Paterfamilias – None whatever. He is liable for direct damage both to your chimneys and any collateral damage caused by fall of bricks into garden, etc., etc. Bodily inconvenience and mental anguish may be included, but the average jury are not, as a rule, men of sentiment. If you can prove that his grapnel removed any portion of your roof, you had better rest your case on decoverture of domicile (See Parkins v. Duboulay). We entirely sympathize with your position, but the night of the 14th was stormy and confused, and – you may have to anchor on a stranger's chimney yourself some night. Verbum sap!

Aldebaran – War, as a paying concern, ceased in 1967. (2) The Convention of London expressly reserves to every nation the right of waging war so long as it does not interfere with the world's traffic. (3) The A. B. C. was constituted in 1949.