The complete works, p.96
The Complete Works, page 96
influence that might have brought the aeropile to a
more rapid perfection had been withheld; these
inventions had never been used in warfare. The last great international struggle had occurred before the
usurpation of the Council.
The Flying Stages of London were collected
together in an irregular crescent on the southern side of the river. They formed three groups of two each
and retained the names of ancient suburban hills or
villages. They were named in order, Roehampton,
Wimhledon Park, Streatham, Norwood, Blackheath,
and Shooter's Hill. They were uniform structures
rising high above the general roof surfaces. Each was about four thousand yards long and a thousand broad, and constructed of the compound of aluminium and
iron that had replaced iron in architecture. Their
higher tiers formed an openwork of girders through
which lifts and staircases ascended. The upper
surface was a uniform expanse, with portions--the
starting carriers--that could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly inclined rails to the end of the fabric. Save for any aeropiles or aeroplanes that were in port these open surfaces were kept clear for arrivals.
During the adjustment of the aeroplanes it was the
custom for passengers to wait in the system of
theatres, restaurants, news-rooms, and places of pleasure and indulgence of various sorts that interwove with the prosperous shops below. This portion of London was
in consequence commonly the gayest of all its
districts, with something of the meretricious gaiety of a seaport or city of hotels. And for those who took a
more serious view of aeronautics, the religious
quarters had flung out an attractive colony of devotional chapels, while a host of brilliant medical establishments competed to supply physical preparatives for the
journey. At various levels through the mass of chambers and passages beneath these, ran, in addition to the
main moving ways of the city which laced and
gathered here, a complex system of special passages
and lifts and slides, for the convenient interchange of people and luggage between stage and stage. And a
distinctive feature of the architecture of this section was the ostentatious massiveness of the metal piers
and girders that everywhere broke the vistas and
spanned the halls and passages, crowding and twining up to meet the weight of the stages and the weighty
impact of the aeroplanes overhead.
Graham went to the flying stages by the public ways.
He was accompanied by Asano, his Japanese attendant.
Lincoln was called away by Ostrog, who was
busy with his administrative concerns. A strong
guard of the Wind-Vane police awaited the Master
outside the Wind-Vane offices, and they cleared a
space for him on the upper moving platform. His
passage to the flying stages was unexpected,
nevertheless a considerable crowd gathered and followed him to his destination. As he went along, he could
hear the people shouting his name, and saw numberless men and women and children in blue come swarming
up the staircases in the central path, gesticulating and shouting. He could not hear what they shouted.
He was struck again by the evident existence of a
vulgar dialect among the poor of the city. When at last he descended, his guards were immediately surrounded by a dense excited crowd. Afterwards it
occurred to him that some had attempted to reach him with petitions. His guards cleared a passage for him with difficulty.
He found an aeropile in charge of an aeronaut
awaiting him on the westward stage. Seen close this
mechanism was no longer small. As it lay on its
launching carrier upon the wide expanse of the flying stage, its aluminium body skeleton was as big as the hull of a twenty-ton yacht. Its lateral supporting sails braced and stayed with metal nerves almost like the
nerves of a bee's wing, and made of some sort of
glassy artificial membrane, cast their shadow over
many hundreds of square yards. The chairs for the
engineer and his passenger hung free to swing by a
complex tackle, within the protecting ribs of the
frame and well abaft the middle. The passenger's
chair was protected by a wind-guard and guarded
about with metallic rods carrying air cushions. It
could, if desired, be completely closed in, but Graham was anxious for novel experiences, and desired that it should be left open. The aeronaut sat behind a glass that sheltered his face. The passenger could secure
himself firmly in his seat, and this was almost
unavoidable on landing, or he could move along by means of a little rail and rod to a locker at the stem of the machine, where his personal luggage, his wraps and
restoratives were placed, and which also with the seats, served as a makeweight to the parts of the central
engine that projected to the propeller at the stern.
The engine was very simple in appearance. Asano,
pointing out the parts of this apparatus to him, told him that, like the gas-engine of Victorian days, it was of the explosive type, burning a small drop of a substance called "fomile" at each stroke. It consisted simply of reservoir and piston about the long fluted crank of the propeller shaft. So much Graham saw of
the machine.
The flying stage about him was empty save for
Asano and their suite of attendants. Directed by the aeronaut he placed himself in his seat. He then drank a mixture containing ergot--a dose, he learnt, invariably administered to those about to fly, and designed
to counteract the possible effect of diminished air
pressure upon the system. Having done so, he declared himself ready for the journey. Asano took the empty
glass from him, stepped through the bars of the hull, and stood below on the stage waving his hand.
Suddenly he seemed to slide along the stage to the right and vanish.
The engine was beating, the propeller spinning, and
for a second the stage and the buildings beyond were gliding swiftly and horizontally past Graham's eye;
then these things seemed to tilt up abruptly. He
gripped the little rods on either side of him
instinctively. He felt himself moving upward, heard the air whistle over the top of the wind screen. The
propeller screw moved round with powerful rhythmic
impulses--one, two, three, pause; one, two, three--
which the engineer controlled very delicately. The
machine began a quivering vibration that continued
throughout the flight, and the roof areas seemed
running away to starboard very quickly and growing
rapidly smaller. He looked from the face of the engineer through the ribs of the machine. Looking sideways,
there was nothing very startling in what he saw
--a rapid funicular railway might have given the same sensations. He recognised the Council House and the
Highgate Ridge. And then he looked straight down
between his feet.
For a moment physical terror possessed him, a
passionate sense of insecurity. He held tight. For a second or so he could not lift his eyes. Some hundred feet or more sheer below him was one of the big
windvanes of south-west London, and beyond it the
southernmost flying stage crowded with little black dots.
These things seemed to be falling away from him.
For a second he had an impulse to pursue the earth.
He set his teeth, he lifted his eyes by a muscular effort, and the moment of panic passed.
He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into the sky. Throb, throb, throb--beat, went the engine; throb, throb, throb,--beat.
He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and saw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. He smiled
in return--perhaps a little artificially. "A little strange at first," he shouted before he recalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some
time. He stared over the aeronaut's head to where a
rim of vague blue horizon crept up the sky. For a
little while he could' not banish the thought of possible accidents from his mind. Throb, throb, throb--beat;
suppose some trivial screw went wrong in that
supporting engine! Suppose--! He made a grim
effort to dismiss all such suppositions. After a while they did at least abandon the foreground of his
thoughts. And up he went steadily, higher and higher into the clear air.
Once the mental shock of moving unsupported
through the air was over, his sensations ceased to be unpleasant, became very speedily pleasurable. He had been warned of air sickness. But he found the
pulsating movement of the aeropile as it drove up the faint south-west breeze was very little in excess of the
pitching of a boat head on to broad rollers in a moderate gale, and he was constitutionally a good sailor. And the keenness of the more rarefied air into which they ascended produced a sense of lightness and exhilaration.
He looked up and saw the blue sky above
fretted with cirrus clouds. His eye came cautiously
down through the ribs and bars to a shining flight of white birds that hung in the lower sky. For a space
he watched these. Then going lower and less apprehensively, he saw the slender figure of the Wind-Vane
keeper's crow's nest shining golden in the sunlight and growing smaller every moment. As his eye fell with
more confidence now, there came a blue line of hills, and then London, already to leeward, an intricate
space of roofing. Its near edge came sharp and clear, and banished his last apprehensions in a shock of surprise.
For the boundary of London was like a wall,
like a cliff, a steep fall of three or four hundred feet, a frontage broken only by terraces here and there, a
complex decorative facade.
That gradual passage of town into country through
an extensive sponge of suburbs, which was so
characteristic a feature of the great cities of the nineteenth century, existed no longer. Nothing remained of it
but a waste of ruins here, variegated and dense with thickets of the heterogeneous growths that had once
adorned the gardens of the belt, interspersed among
levelled brown patches of sown ground, and verdant
stretches of winter greens. The latter even spread
among the vestiges of houses. But for the most part
the reefs and skerries of ruins, the wreckage of
suburban villas, stood among their streets and roads, queer islands amidst the levelled expanses of green and
brown, abandoned indeed by the inhabitants years
since, but too substantial, it seemed', to be cleared out of the way of the wholesale horticultural mechanisms of the time.
The vegetation of this waste undulated and frothed
amidst the countless cells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wall in a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses.
Here and there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remains of Victorian times, and cable ways
slanted to them from the city. That winter day they
seemed deserted. Deserted, too, were the artificial
gardens among the ruins. The city limits were indeed as sharply defined as in the ancient days when the
gates were shut at nightfall and the robber foreman
prowled to the very walls. A huge semi-circular throat poured out a vigorous traffic upon the Eadhamite
Bath Road. So the first prospect of the world beyond the city flashed on Graham, and dwindled. And when
at last he could look vertically downward again, he
saw below him the vegetable fields of the Thames
valley -- innumerable minute oblongs of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.
His exhilaration increased rapidly, became a sort of intoxication. He found himself drawing deep breaths
of air, laughing aloud, desiring to shout. After a time that desire became too strong for him, and he shouted.
The machine had now risen as high as was customary
with aeropiles, and they began to curve about
towards the south. Steering, Graham perceived, was
effected by the opening or closing of one or two thin strips of membrane in one or other of the otherwise
rigid wings, and by the movement of the whole engine backward or forward along its supports. The
aeronaut set the engine gliding slowly forward along its rail and opened the valve of the leeward wing until the stem of the aeropile was horizontal and pointing
southward. And in that direction they drove with a slight list to leeward, and with a slow alternation of
movement, first a short, sharp ascent and' then a long downward glide that was very swift and pleasing.
During these downward glides the propellor was
inactive altogether. These ascents gave Graham a
glorious sense of successful effort; the descents
through the rarefied air were beyond all experience.
He wanted never to leave the upper air again.
For a time he was intent upon the minute details of
the landscape that ran swiftly northward beneath him.
Its minute, clear detail pleased him exceedingly. He was impressed by the ruin of the houses that had once dotted the country, by the vast treeless expanse of
country from which all farms and villages had gone,
save for crumbling ruins. He had known the thing
was so, but seeing it so was an altogether different matter. He tried to make out places he had known
within the hollow basin of the world below, but at first he could distinguish no data now that the Thames valley was left behind. Soon, however, they were driving over a sharp chalk hill that he recognised as the Guildford Hog's Back, because of the familiar outline of the
gorge at its eastward end, and because of the ruins of the town that rose steeply on either lip of this gorge.
And from that he made out other points, Leith Hill,
the sandy wastes of Aldershot, and so forth. The
Downs escarpment was set with gigantic slow-moving
wind-wheels. Save where the broad Eadhamite
Portsmouth Road, thickly dotted with rushing shapes, followed the course of the old railway, the gorge of the Wey was choked with thickets.
The whole expanse of the Downs escarpment, so far
as the grey haze permitted him to see, was set with
wind-wheels to which the largest of the city was but a younger brother. They stirred with a stately motion
before the south-west wind. And here and there were
patches dotted with the sheep of the British Food
Trust, and here and there a mounted shepherd made a
spot of black. Then rushing under the stern of the
aeropile came the Wealden Heights, the line of
Hindhead, Pitch Hill, and Leith Hill, with a second row of wind-wheels that seemed striving to rob the downland whirlers of their share of breeze. The purple heather was speckled with yellow gorse, and on the further
side a drove of black oxen stampeded before a
couple of mounted men. Swiftly these swept behind,
and dwindled and lost colour, and became scarce
moving specks that were swallowed up in haze.
And when these had vanished in the distance
Graham heard a peewit wailing close at hand. He
perceived he was now above the South Downs,
and staring over his shoulder saw the battlements
of Portsmouth Landing Stage towering over the
ridge of Portsdown Hill. In another moment there
came into sight a spread of shipping like floating
cities, the little white cliffs of the Needles dwarfed and sunlit, and the grey and glittering waters of the narrow sea. They seemed to leap the Solent in a moment,
and in a few seconds the Isle of Wight was running
past, and then beneath him spread a wider and wide
extent of sea, here purple with the shadow of a cloud, here grey, here a burnished mirror, and here a spread of cloudy greenish blue. The Isle of Wight grew
smaller and smaller. In a few more minutes a strip of grey haze detached itself from other strips that were clouds, descended out of the sky and became a coastline--sunlit and pleasant--the coast of northern
France. It rose, it took colour, became definite and detailed, and the counterpart of the Downland of
England was speeding by below.
In a little time, as it seemed, Paris came above the horizon, and hung there for a space, and sank out of sight again as the aeropile circled about to the north again. But he perceived the Eiffel Tower still
standing, and beside it a huge dome surmounted by a
pinpoint Colossus. And he perceived, too, though he did not understand it at the time, a slanting drift of smoke.
The aeronaut said something about "trouble in the underways," that Graham did not heed at the time.
But he marked the minarets and towers and slender
masses that streamed skyward above the city
windvanes, and knew that in the matter of grace at least Paris still kept in front of her larger rival. And even as he looked a pale blue shape ascended very swiftly from the city like a dead leaf driving up before a gale.
It curved round and soared towards them growing
rapidly larger and larger. The aeronaut was saying
