After forty minutes of the exhilaration of flight which never grows stale, the pilot thumped one of the wings which gave out the sound of a drumhead to attract my attention and indicated an immense white arrow on a pasture pointing toward the bank of mist that hid the channel. This was the guide-post of the aerial ferry. He wheeled around it in order to give me a better view, which was his only departure from routine before, on the line of the arrow's pointing, he took his course, leaving the railroad behind, while ahead the green carpet seemed to end in a vaporish horizon.
Usually as they rose for the channel crossing pilots ascended to a height of ten thousand feet, in order that they should have range in case of engine trouble for a long glide which might permit them to reach shore, or, if they must alight in the sea, to descend close to a vessel. In both England and France along the established aerial pathway are certain way stations fit to give rubber tires a soft welcome, with gasoline in store if a fresh supply is required. It was the pride of my pilot, who had formerly been in the navy and had come from South Africa to "do his bit," that in twenty crossings he had never had to make a stop. To-day the clouds kept us down to an altitude of only four thousand feet.
Hills and valleys do not exist, all landscape being flat to the aviator's eye, as we know; but against reason some mental kink made me feel that this optical law should not apply to the chalk cliffs when we came to the coast, where only the green sward which crowns them was visible and beyond this a line of gray, the beach, which had an edge of white lace that was moving--the surf.
Soldiers who were returning from leave in the regular way were having a jumpy passage, as one knew by the whitecaps that looked like tiny white flowers on a pewter cloth; only if you looked steadily at one it disappeared and others appeared in its place. Otherwise, the channel in a heavy sea was as still as a painted ocean with painted ships which, however fast they were moving, were making no headway to us traveling as smoothly in our 'bus as a motor boat on a glassy lake.
I looked at my watch as we crossed the lace edging on the English side and again as we crossed it on the French side. The time elapsed was seventeen and a half minutes, which is not rapid going, even for the broader part of the channel which we chose. The fastest plane, I am told, has made it at the narrowest point in eight and a half minutes. Not going as high as usual, the pilot did not speed his motor, as the lower the altitude the more uncomfortable might be the result of engine trouble to his passenger.