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"Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on the bridge?" 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.
Captain Purnall overlooks all insults, and leans half out of the colloid, staring and snuffing. The stranger leaks pungently. "We ought to blow into St. John's with luck. We're trying to plug the fore-tank now, but she's simply whistling it away," her captain wails. "She's sinking like a log," says Captain Purnall in an undertone. "Call up the Banks Mark Boat, George."
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. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward, is thirty-seven.
Five such coaches were filled as I watched, 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. He introduces me to the captain of "162" Captain Purnall, and his relief, Captain Hodgson.
Our dip-dial shows that we, keeping abreast the tramp, have dropped five hundred feet the last few minutes. Captain Purnall presses a switch and our signal beam begins to swing through the night, twizzling spokes of light across infinity. "That'll fetch something," he says, while Captain Hodgson watches the General Communicator.
She carries an obsolete "barbette" conning tower a six-foot affair with railed platform forward and our warning beam plays on the top of it as a policeman's lantern flashes on the area sneak. Like a sneak-thief, too, emerges a shock-headed navigator in his shirt-sleeves. Captain Purnall wrenches open the colloid to talk with him man to man. There are times when Science does not satisfy.
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.
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.
He has called up the North Banks Mark Boat, a few hundred miles west, and is reporting the case. "I'll stand by you," Captain Purnall roars to the lone figure on the conning-tower. "Is it as bad as that?" comes the answer. "She isn't insured. She's mine." "Might have guessed as much," mutters Hodgson. "Owner's risk is the worst risk of all!" "Can't I fetch St.
"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.
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