Chapter 7 With the Night Mail - â…
A nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood on the lower stages of one of
the G.P.O. outward mail towers. My purpose was a run to Quebec in "Postal Packet
162 or such other as may be appointed"; and the Postmaster–General himself
countersigned the order. This talisman opened all doors, even those in the
despatching-caisson at the foot of the tower, where they were delivering the
sorted Continental mail. The bags lay packed close as herrings in the long grey
underbodies which our G.P.O. still calls "coaches." Five such coaches were
filled as I watchedMBT trainers,
and were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waiting packets three
hundred feet nearer the stars.
From the despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous and wonderfully
learned official Mr. L.L. Geary, Second Despatcher of the Western Route — to the
Captains' Room (this wakes an echo of old romance), where the mail captains come
on for their turn of duty. He introduces me to the captain of "162"— Captain
Purnall, and his relief, Captain Hodgson. The one is small and dark; the other
large and red; but each has the brooding sheathed glance characteristic of
eagles and aeronauts. You can see it in the pictures of our racing
professionals, from L.V. Rautsch to little Ada Warrleigh — that fathomless
abstraction of eyes habitually turned through naked space.
On the notice-board in the Captains' Room, the pulsing arrows of some twenty
indicators register, degree by geographical degree, the progress of as many
homeward-bound packets. The word "Cape" rises across the face of a dial; a gong
strikes: the South African mid-weekly mail is in at the Highgate Receiving
Towers. That is all. It reminds one comically of the traitorous little bell
which in pigeon-fanciers', lofts notifies the return of a homer.
"Time for us to be on the move," says Captain Purnall, and we are shot up by
the passenger-lift to the top of the despatch-towers. "Our coach will lock on
when it is filled and the clerks are aboard."
"No. 162" waits for us in Slip E of the topmost stage. The great curve of her
back shines frostily under the lights, and some minute alteration of trim makes
her rock a little in her holding-down slips.
Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, "162" comes to rest
as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn bright as
diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the
inset of her three built out propeller-shafts is some two hundred and forty
feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward, is thirty-seven. Contrast this
with the nine hundred by ninety-five of any crack linerMBT shoes sale, and you will realize
the power that must drive a hull through all weathers at more than the emergency
speed of the Cyclonic!
The eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping hair-crack of
the bow-rudder — Magniac's rudder that assured us the dominion of the unstable
air and left its inventor penniless and half-blind. It is calculated to
Castelli's "gullwing" curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate
three-eighths of an inch and she will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere
she is under control again. Give her full helm and she returns on her track like
a whip-lash. Cant the whole forward — a touch on the wheel will suffice — and
she sweeps at your good direction up or down. Open the complete circle and she
presents to the air a mushroom-head that will bring her up all standing within a
half mile.
"Yes," says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought, "Castelli thought he'd
discovered the secret of controlling aeroplanes when he'd only found out how to
steer dirigible balloons. Magniac invented his rudder to help war-boats ram each
other; and war went out of fashion and Magniac he went out of his mind because
he said he couldn't serve his country any more. I wonder if any of us ever know
what we're really doing."
"If you want to see the coach locked you'd better go aboard. It's due now,"
says Mr. Geary. I enter through the door amidships. There is nothing here for
display. The inner skin of the gas-tanks comes down to within a foot or two of
my head and turns over just short of the turn of the bilges. Liners and yachts
disguise their tanks with decoration, but the G.P.O. serves them raw under a
lick of grey official paint. The inner skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow and
as much of the stern, but the bow-bulkhead is recessed for the lift-shunting
apparatus as the stern is pierced for the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies
almost amidships. Forward of it, extending to the turn of the bow tanks, is an
aperture — a bottomless hatch at present — into which our coach will be locked.
One looks down over the coamings three hundred feet to the despatching-caisson
whence voices boom upward. The light below is obscured to a sound of thunder, as
our coach rises on its guides. It enlarges rapidly from a postage-stamp to a
playing-card; to a punt and last a pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do not
even look up as it comes into place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers
and leap into the docketed racks, while both captains and Mr. Geary satisfy them
selves that the coach is locked home. A clerk passes the way-bill over the hatch
coaming. Captain Purnall thumb-marks and passes it to Mr. Geary. Receipt has
been given and taken. "Pleasant run," says Mr. Geary, and disappears through the
door which a foot high pneumatic compressor locks after him.
"A-ah!" sighs the compressor released. Our holding-down clips part with a
tangMBT shoes uk. We are clear.
Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid underbody porthole through which I
watch over-lighted London slide eastward as the gale gets hold of us. The first
of the low winter clouds cuts off the well-known view and darkens Middlesex. On
the south edge of it I can see a postal packet's light ploughing through the
white fleece. For an instant she gleams like a star ere she drops toward the
Highgate Receiving Towers. "The Bombay Mail," says Captain Hodgson, and looks at
his watch. "She's forty minutes late."
"What's our level?" I ask.
"Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on the bridge?"
The bridge (let us ever praise the G.P.O. as a repository of ancientest
tradition!) is represented by a view of Captain Hodgson's legs where he stands
on the Control Platform that runs thwart-ships overhead. The bow colloid is
unshuttered and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is feeling for a fair
slant. The dial shows 4300 feet. "It's steep to-night," he mutters, as tier on
tier of cloud drops under. "We generally pick up an easterly draught below three
thousand at this time o' the year. I hate slathering through fluff."
"So does Van Cutsem. Look at him huntin' for a slant!" says Captain Hodgson.
A foglight breaks cloud a hundred fathoms below. The Antwerp Night Mail makes
her signal and rises between two racing clouds far to port, her flanks blood-red
in the glare of Sheerness Double Light. The gale will have us over the North Sea
in half-an-hour, but Captain Purnall lets her go composedly — nosing to every
point of the compass as she rises.
"Five thousand-six, six thousand eight hundred"— the dip-dial reads ere we
find the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of snow at the thousand fathom
level. Captain Purnall rings up the engines and keys down the governor on the
switch before him. There is no sense in urging machinery when Eolus himself
gives you good knots for nothing. We are away in earnest now — our nose notched
home on our chosen star. At this level the lower clouds are laid out, all neatly
combed by the dry fingers of the East. Below that again is the strong westerly
blow through which we rose. Overhead, a film of southerly drifting mist draws a
theatrical gauze across the firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata to
silver without a stain except where our shadow underruns us. Bristol and Cardiff
Double Lights (those statelily inclined beams over Severnmouth) are dead ahead
of us; for we keep the Southern Winter Route. Coventry Central, the pivot of the
English system, stabs upward once in ten seconds its spear of diamond light to
the north; and a point or two off our starboard bow The Leek, the great
cloud-breaker of Saint David's Head, swings its unmistakable green beam
twenty-five degrees each wayMBT.
There must be half a mile of fluff over it in this weather, but it does not
affect The Leek.
"Our planet's over-lighted if anything," says Captain Purnall at the wheel,
as Cardiff–Bristol slides under. "I remember the old days of common white
verticals that 'ud show two or three hundred feet up in a mist, if you knew
where to look for 'em. In really fluffy weather they might as well have been
under your hat. One could get lost coming home then, an' have some fun. Now,
it's like driving down Piccadilly."
A nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood on the lower stages of one of
the G.P.O. outward mail towers. My purpose was a run to Quebec in "Postal Packet
162 or such other as may be appointed"; and the Postmaster–General himself
countersigned the order. This talisman opened all doors, even those in the
despatching-caisson at the foot of the tower, where they were delivering the
sorted Continental mail. The bags lay packed close as herrings in the long grey
underbodies which our G.P.O. still calls "coaches." Five such coaches were
filled as I watchedMBT trainers,
and were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waiting packets three
hundred feet nearer the stars.
From the despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous and wonderfully
learned official Mr. L.L. Geary, Second Despatcher of the Western Route — to the
Captains' Room (this wakes an echo of old romance), where the mail captains come
on for their turn of duty. He introduces me to the captain of "162"— Captain
Purnall, and his relief, Captain Hodgson. The one is small and dark; the other
large and red; but each has the brooding sheathed glance characteristic of
eagles and aeronauts. You can see it in the pictures of our racing
professionals, from L.V. Rautsch to little Ada Warrleigh — that fathomless
abstraction of eyes habitually turned through naked space.
On the notice-board in the Captains' Room, the pulsing arrows of some twenty
indicators register, degree by geographical degree, the progress of as many
homeward-bound packets. The word "Cape" rises across the face of a dial; a gong
strikes: the South African mid-weekly mail is in at the Highgate Receiving
Towers. That is all. It reminds one comically of the traitorous little bell
which in pigeon-fanciers', lofts notifies the return of a homer.
"Time for us to be on the move," says Captain Purnall, and we are shot up by
the passenger-lift to the top of the despatch-towers. "Our coach will lock on
when it is filled and the clerks are aboard."
"No. 162" waits for us in Slip E of the topmost stage. The great curve of her
back shines frostily under the lights, and some minute alteration of trim makes
her rock a little in her holding-down slips.
Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, "162" comes to rest
as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn bright as
diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the
inset of her three built out propeller-shafts is some two hundred and forty
feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward, is thirty-seven. Contrast this
with the nine hundred by ninety-five of any crack linerMBT shoes sale, and you will realize
the power that must drive a hull through all weathers at more than the emergency
speed of the Cyclonic!
The eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweeping hair-crack of
the bow-rudder — Magniac's rudder that assured us the dominion of the unstable
air and left its inventor penniless and half-blind. It is calculated to
Castelli's "gullwing" curve. Raise a few feet of that all but invisible plate
three-eighths of an inch and she will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere
she is under control again. Give her full helm and she returns on her track like
a whip-lash. Cant the whole forward — a touch on the wheel will suffice — and
she sweeps at your good direction up or down. Open the complete circle and she
presents to the air a mushroom-head that will bring her up all standing within a
half mile.
"Yes," says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought, "Castelli thought he'd
discovered the secret of controlling aeroplanes when he'd only found out how to
steer dirigible balloons. Magniac invented his rudder to help war-boats ram each
other; and war went out of fashion and Magniac he went out of his mind because
he said he couldn't serve his country any more. I wonder if any of us ever know
what we're really doing."
"If you want to see the coach locked you'd better go aboard. It's due now,"
says Mr. Geary. I enter through the door amidships. There is nothing here for
display. The inner skin of the gas-tanks comes down to within a foot or two of
my head and turns over just short of the turn of the bilges. Liners and yachts
disguise their tanks with decoration, but the G.P.O. serves them raw under a
lick of grey official paint. The inner skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow and
as much of the stern, but the bow-bulkhead is recessed for the lift-shunting
apparatus as the stern is pierced for the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies
almost amidships. Forward of it, extending to the turn of the bow tanks, is an
aperture — a bottomless hatch at present — into which our coach will be locked.
One looks down over the coamings three hundred feet to the despatching-caisson
whence voices boom upward. The light below is obscured to a sound of thunder, as
our coach rises on its guides. It enlarges rapidly from a postage-stamp to a
playing-card; to a punt and last a pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do not
even look up as it comes into place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers
and leap into the docketed racks, while both captains and Mr. Geary satisfy them
selves that the coach is locked home. A clerk passes the way-bill over the hatch
coaming. Captain Purnall thumb-marks and passes it to Mr. Geary. Receipt has
been given and taken. "Pleasant run," says Mr. Geary, and disappears through the
door which a foot high pneumatic compressor locks after him.
"A-ah!" sighs the compressor released. Our holding-down clips part with a
tangMBT shoes uk. We are clear.
Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid underbody porthole through which I
watch over-lighted London slide eastward as the gale gets hold of us. The first
of the low winter clouds cuts off the well-known view and darkens Middlesex. On
the south edge of it I can see a postal packet's light ploughing through the
white fleece. For an instant she gleams like a star ere she drops toward the
Highgate Receiving Towers. "The Bombay Mail," says Captain Hodgson, and looks at
his watch. "She's forty minutes late."
"What's our level?" I ask.
"Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on the bridge?"
The bridge (let us ever praise the G.P.O. as a repository of ancientest
tradition!) is represented by a view of Captain Hodgson's legs where he stands
on the Control Platform that runs thwart-ships overhead. The bow colloid is
unshuttered and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is feeling for a fair
slant. The dial shows 4300 feet. "It's steep to-night," he mutters, as tier on
tier of cloud drops under. "We generally pick up an easterly draught below three
thousand at this time o' the year. I hate slathering through fluff."
"So does Van Cutsem. Look at him huntin' for a slant!" says Captain Hodgson.
A foglight breaks cloud a hundred fathoms below. The Antwerp Night Mail makes
her signal and rises between two racing clouds far to port, her flanks blood-red
in the glare of Sheerness Double Light. The gale will have us over the North Sea
in half-an-hour, but Captain Purnall lets her go composedly — nosing to every
point of the compass as she rises.
"Five thousand-six, six thousand eight hundred"— the dip-dial reads ere we
find the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of snow at the thousand fathom
level. Captain Purnall rings up the engines and keys down the governor on the
switch before him. There is no sense in urging machinery when Eolus himself
gives you good knots for nothing. We are away in earnest now — our nose notched
home on our chosen star. At this level the lower clouds are laid out, all neatly
combed by the dry fingers of the East. Below that again is the strong westerly
blow through which we rose. Overhead, a film of southerly drifting mist draws a
theatrical gauze across the firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata to
silver without a stain except where our shadow underruns us. Bristol and Cardiff
Double Lights (those statelily inclined beams over Severnmouth) are dead ahead
of us; for we keep the Southern Winter Route. Coventry Central, the pivot of the
English system, stabs upward once in ten seconds its spear of diamond light to
the north; and a point or two off our starboard bow The Leek, the great
cloud-breaker of Saint David's Head, swings its unmistakable green beam
twenty-five degrees each wayMBT.
There must be half a mile of fluff over it in this weather, but it does not
affect The Leek.
"Our planet's over-lighted if anything," says Captain Purnall at the wheel,
as Cardiff–Bristol slides under. "I remember the old days of common white
verticals that 'ud show two or three hundred feet up in a mist, if you knew
where to look for 'em. In really fluffy weather they might as well have been
under your hat. One could get lost coming home then, an' have some fun. Now,
it's like driving down Piccadilly."