Part 13 (1/2)

My instructor turned around to me: ”d.a.m.n it, Collins,” he said, ”don't run into the ground wheels first like that. Level off about six feet in the air and wait until the s.h.i.+p begins to settle. Then ease the stick back. When you feel the s.h.i.+p begin to fall out from under you, pull the stick all the way back into your guts and the s.h.i.+p will set itself down.

Go around and try it again.”

”Yes, sir.”

I came in the next time, hit the ground wheels first, and bounced. My instructor righted the s.h.i.+p.

”No, Collins. No,” he fumed. ”Six feet. Look, I'll show you what six feet looks like.”

He took the s.h.i.+p off and flew over the open fields, then came around and landed.

”Now do you know what six feet looks like?” he shouted back to me.

”Yes, sir,” I lied. I was afraid to tell him that I could not see the ground right. He might send me to the hospital to have my eyes examined.

They might find some slight defect in my eyes that they had overlooked in the original examination and wash me out of the school.

”Well, then, go around and make a decent landing for me,” my instructor said.

”Yes, sir.”

I leveled off too high the next time. My instructor grabbed his controls and prevented us from cracking up.

”d.a.m.n it, Collins,” he shouted when the s.h.i.+p had stopped rolling, ”don't run into the ground wheels first. And don't level off as high as the telegraph wires. Level off at about six feet. Then set her down. Now go round and try it again.”

”Yes, sir.”

”d.a.m.n it, Collins, don't sit back there and say 'Yes, sir' and then do the same d.a.m.ned thing again.”

”No, sir.”

MOONLIGHT AND SILVER

Pat paints. She also flies.

Pat and I landed at Jacksonville, Fla., late one night in Pat's Stearman biplane. Pat was taking cross-country instruction from me. We ga.s.sed hurriedly and took off again. We left the glare of the floodlights behind us as we headed our s.h.i.+p along the line of flas.h.i.+ng beacons stretching southward toward Miami. The stars were brilliant in the cloudless sky, but the night was very dark. There was no moon.

Soon we were flying down the coast. White breakers rolled in under us from the Atlantic Ocean on our left and dimly marked the coast line.

Swamps stretched away to the inland on our right but were invisible in the black night. Beacons flashed brilliantly out of the darkness in a long line far behind us and far ahead. Blotches of lights slipped slowly past under us when we flew over towns.

We saw clouds ahead. We nosed down under them. We had to fly uncomfortably low to stay under the clouds. We nosed up to get above them.

We flew into them. The lights beneath us dimmed and disappeared. We climbed in opaque blackness, flying by instruments.

We emerged into an open s.p.a.ce where the clouds were broken. The lights reappeared. The stars became visible.

The clouds spread out under us to the horizon in all directions. They were lit a dim silver by the stars. They softly undulated like a mystic, limitless sea beneath us.