IT IS POSSIBLE, ALTHOUGH not probable, that I might still be flying, had not a small incident occurred on my fourth and last flight which put a brake on my enthusiasm.
We had landed in what appeared to be somebody’s back yard, to pick up a parcel. It was quite simple. We came down in a field, taxied over a laid-down fence, ducked under the washing, and came up by the kitchen door. So far so good.
But when we turned and started off we seemed to have miscalculated our lifting power or something, for at the end of the field we just cleared a low shed, and our rudder did not. If it is the rudder which is at the tail of the thing. I never did know.
Anyhow there was a jar, and the roof of the shed seemed to lift a bit and then settle down. But we went on and up, and when my nerves had quieted I turned and looked behind. The rudder had been torn from its wires, or whatever they call them, and was swaying drunkenly as we rose!
I had no idea what would happen. Since rudders were to steer by it seemed quite evident to me that we could no longer steer, and that we would have to go on in a straight line as long as our gas held out, and then—well, I knew we would come down sometime. Nobody has ever stayed up there for good. But how?
The situation was not relieved when we reached the flying field. Men began to run around, waving their arms at us, and generally showing excitement. But what they were showing was nothing to what I felt.
Then to my relief I found we could still turn. We banked steeply and went down, and at last we were taxiing like mad across the field, with our rudder bumping and leaping like a demon behind us, and no other harm done whatever.
But I had had enough. I have never been up since. Now and then I see great ships in the air, huge metal monsters with Pullman-finished interiors, and I think of that little mosquito plane and its flapping rudder; its strip of canvas under my feet, on either side of which was a space to peer down into eternity; of that handsome youth who took me up for the stunt flying, and who was killed a month later in that same machine. And I stay on the ground.
But I never see our army aviators go up without thinking back to the early days of the Great War, I used to watch the primitive ships of those days; one now can realize the air situation as it was when I first reached the front, in January of 1915. Hardly more than strips of wood and canvas, those early airplanes, and so feeble was the Allied air defense that I myself have stood under a zooming German ship and watched the pilot and his observer calmly inspecting us beneath!
Nor were things much better by the time we went into the war. There can be no doubt that we sent many of our boys up to almost certain death, at home as well as abroad. Antiquated methods and hasty quantity production took their heavy toll of them. We had nothing ready. It takes months to dry the particular type of wood used for wings, and it must be cut and shipped from the Pacific Coast, or had to be in those days.
But with all of Europe seething like a cauldron, with an increasing foreign resentment of our prosperity and the possibility at some time in the future of an enormously powerful coalition against us, our short-sighted policy finds us almost where we were in 1917.
Like school children, we learned the lesson for the day and as promptly forgot it.
Wars will not be fought out in the air. But the battle of the future, on land or on sea, will be decided by the men in the air; the eyes of the fighting forces.
Why should we shut our eyes, when our enemies can see?
No, I am doing no flying now. My ideal airplane has a gas bag overhead, so that if there is engine trouble it can fly anyhow, and if lightning strikes the gas bag one can fall back on the engine. It will also have a catamaran arrangement beneath, in case of landing in the sea.
But the truth is that I am not seeking any adventure at the present time. I seem increasingly loath to go trouble hunting; perhaps I am tired, perhaps—well, there may be another reason, but let’s forget that. Here I am, just back from a tour of the West Indies, and instead of doing it in some old hooker of a tramp steamer we went personally conducted! And liked it, too!
Still, there is hope. There are days when I waken up with the urge of the wanderlust strong in me; when I want to buy jade in China and furs in Mongolia; when the long-mooted matter of that trip after elephants in Africa comes into my mind and stays there; when I remember an old chest at Gibraltar I wanted and didn’t buy.
And even without any of that there is still the ranch. It is April now. By the end of May I shall be on my way there, to ride off the winter dinner parties and Prince’s six months’ accumulation of spirit, and to clear my head of worry and of work.
The prairie dogs, Rose and Lily, will not be there to meet me. They are at the Zoo in Sheridan. But the old horse-shoe knocker will still be hanging on the door, and the creek will rush and rumble at the back.
And I shall take off and put away my eastern clothing, and don my old breeches and boots. And then I shall go out on the sleeping porch, where the five beds used to be in a row, and see the newest and latest improvement.
They are putting up a bathroom!