The Plattner Story and Others Read online

  THE ARGONAUTS OF THE AIR

  One saw Monson's Flying Machine from the windows of the trains passingeither along the South-Western main line or along the line betweenWimbledon and Worcester Park,--to be more exact, one saw the hugescaffoldings which limited the flight of the apparatus. They rose overthe tree-tops, a massive alley of interlacing iron and timber, and anenormous web of ropes and tackle, extending the best part of two miles.From the Leatherhead branch this alley was foreshortened and in parthidden by a hill with villas; but from the main line one had it inprofile, a complex tangle of girders and curving bars, very impressiveto the excursionists from Portsmouth and Southampton and the West.Monson had taken up the work where Maxim had left it, had gone on atfirst with an utter contempt for the journalistic wit and ignorancethat had irritated and hampered his predecessor, and had spent (it wassaid) rather more than half his immense fortune upon his experiments.The results, to an impatient generation, seemed inconsiderable. Whensome five years had passed after the growth of the colossal iron grovesat Worcester Park, and Monson still failed to put in a flutteringappearance over Trafalgar Square, even the Isle of Wight trippers felttheir liberty to smile. And such intelligent people as did not considerMonson a fool stricken with the mania for invention, denounced him asbeing (for no particular reason) a self-advertising quack.

  Yet now and again a morning trainload of season-ticket holders wouldsee a white monster rush headlong through the airy tracery of guidesand bars, and hear the further stays, nettings, and buffers snap,creak, and groan with the impact of the blow. Then there would bean efflorescence of black-set white-rimmed faces along the sides ofthe train, and the morning papers would be neglected for a vigorousdiscussion of the possibility of flying (in which nothing new was eversaid by any chance), until the train reached Waterloo, and its cargoof season-ticket holders dispersed themselves over London. Or thefathers and mothers in some multitudinous train of weary excursionistsreturning exhausted from a day of rest by the sea, would find the darkfabric, standing out against the evening sky, useful in diverting somebilious child from its introspection, and be suddenly startled by theswift transit of a huge black flapping shape that strained upwardagainst the guides. It was a great and forcible thing beyond dispute,and excellent for conversation; yet, all the same, it was but flying inleading-strings, and most of those who witnessed it scarcely countedits flight as flying. More of a switchback it seemed to the run of thefolk.

  Monson, I say, did not trouble himself very keenly about the opinionsof the press at first. But possibly he, even, had formed but a pooridea of the time it would take before the tactics of flying weremastered, the swift assured adjustment of the big soaring shape toevery gust and chance movement of the air; nor had he clearly reckonedthe money this prolonged struggle against gravitation would costhim. And he was not so pachydermatous as he seemed. Secretly he hadhis periodical bundles of cuttings sent him by Romeike, he had hisperiodical reminders from his banker; and if he did not mind theinitial ridicule and scepticism, he felt the growing neglect as themonths went by and the money dribbled away. Time was when Monson hadsent the enterprising journalist, keen after readable matter, emptyfrom his gates. But when the enterprising journalist ceased fromtroubling, Monson was anything but satisfied in his heart of hearts.Still day by day the work went on, and the multitudinous subtledifficulties of the steering diminished in number. Day by day, too,the money trickled away, until his balance was no longer a matter ofhundreds of thousands, but of tens. And at last came an anniversary.

  Monson, sitting in the little drawing-shed, suddenly noticed the dateon Woodhouse's calendar.

  "It was five years ago to-day that we began," he said to Woodhousesuddenly.

  "Is it?" said Woodhouse.

  "It's the alterations play the devil with us," said Monson, biting apaper-fastener.

  The drawings for the new vans to the hinder screw lay on the tablebefore him as he spoke. He pitched the mutilated brass paper-fastenerinto the waste-paper basket and drummed with his fingers. "Thesealterations! Will the mathematicians ever be clever enough to save usall this patching and experimenting? Five years--learning by rule ofthumb, when one might think that it was possible to calculate the wholething out beforehand. The cost of it! I might have hired three seniorwranglers for life. But they'd only have developed some beautifullyuseless theorems in pneumatics. What a time it has been, Woodhouse!"

  "These mouldings will take three weeks," said Woodhouse. "At specialprices."

  "Three weeks!" said Monson, and sat drumming.

  "Three weeks certain," said Woodhouse, an excellent engineer, but nogood as a comforter. He drew the sheets towards him and began shading abar.

  Monson stopped drumming, and began to bite his finger-nails, staringthe while at Woodhouse's head.

  "How long have they been calling this Monson's Folly?" he said suddenly.

  "_Oh!_ Year or so," said Woodhouse carelessly, without looking up.

  Monson sucked the air in between his teeth, and went to the window. Thestout iron columns carrying the elevated rails upon which the start ofthe machine was made rose up close by, and the machine was hidden bythe upper edge of the window. Through the grove of iron pillars, redpainted and ornate with rows of bolts, one had a glimpse of the prettyscenery towards Esher. A train went gliding noiselessly across themiddle distance, its rattle drowned by the hammering of the workmenoverhead. Monson could imagine the grinning faces at the windows of thecarriages. He swore savagely under his breath, and dabbed viciously ata blowfly that suddenly became noisy on the window-pane.

  "What's up?" said Woodhouse, staring in surprise at his employer.

  "I'm about sick of this."

  Woodhouse scratched his cheek. "Oh!" he said, after an assimilatingpause. He pushed the drawing away from him.

  "Here these fools ... I'm trying to conquer a new element--trying todo a thing that will revolutionise life. And instead of taking anintelligent interest, they grin and make their stupid jokes, and callme and my appliances names."

  "Asses!" said Woodhouse, letting his eye fall again on the drawing.

  The epithet, curiously enough, made Monson wince. "I'm about sick ofit, Woodhouse, anyhow," he said, after a pause.

  Woodhouse shrugged his shoulders.

  "There's nothing for it but patience, I suppose," said Monson, stickinghis hands in his pockets. "I've started. I've made my bed, and I've gotto lie on it. I can't go back. I'll see it through, and spend everypenny I have and every penny I can borrow. But I tell you, Woodhouse,I'm infernally sick of it, all the same. If I'd paid a tenth part ofthe money towards some political greaser's expenses--I'd have been abaronet before this."

  Monson paused. Woodhouse stared in front of him with a blank expressionhe always employed to indicate sympathy, and tapped his pencil-case onthe table. Monson stared at him for a minute.

  "Oh, _damn_!" said Monson suddenly, and abruptly rushed out of the room.

  Woodhouse continued his sympathetic rigour for perhaps half a minute.Then he sighed and resumed the shading of the drawings. Something hadevidently upset Monson. Nice chap, and generous, but difficult to geton with. It was the way with every amateur who had anything to do withengineering--wanted everything finished at once. But Monson had usuallythe patience of the expert. Odd he was so irritable. Nice and roundthat aluminium rod did look now! Woodhouse threw back his head, and putit, first this side and then that, to appreciate his bit of shadingbetter.

  "Mr. Woodhouse," said Hooper, the foreman of the labourers, putting hishead in at the door.

  "Hullo!" said Woodhouse, without turning round.

  "Nothing happened, sir?" said Hooper.

  "Happened?" said Woodhouse.

  "The governor just been up the rails swearing like a tornader."

  "_Oh!_" said Woodhouse.

  "It ain't like him, sir."

  "No?"

  "And I was thinking perhaps"--

  "Don't think," said Woodhouse, still admiring the drawings.

&
nbsp; Hooper knew Woodhouse, and he shut the door suddenly with a viciousslam. Woodhouse stared stonily before him for some further minutes,and then made an ineffectual effort to pick his teeth with his pencil.Abruptly he desisted, pitched that old, tried, and stumpy servitoracross the room, got up, stretched himself, and followed Hooper.

  He looked ruffled--it was visible to every workman he met. When amillionaire who has been spending thousands on experiments that employquite a little army of people suddenly indicates that he is sick ofthe undertaking, there is almost invariably a certain amount of mentalfriction in the ranks of the little army he employs. And even before heindicates his intentions there are speculations and murmurs, a watchingof faces and a study of straws. Hundreds of people knew before the daywas out that Monson was ruffled, Woodhouse ruffled, Hooper ruffled. Aworkman's wife, for instance (whom Monson had never seen), decided tokeep her money in the savings-bank instead of buying a velveteen dress.So far-reaching are even the casual curses of a millionaire.

  Monson found a certain satisfaction in going on the works and behavingdisagreeably to as many people as possible. After a time eventhat palled upon him, and he rode off the grounds, to every one'srelief there, and through the lanes south-eastward, to the infinitetribulation of his house steward at Cheam.

  And the immediate cause of it all, the little grain of annoyance thathad suddenly precipitated all this discontent with his life-workwas--these trivial things that direct all our great decisions!--halfa dozen ill-considered remarks made by a pretty girl, prettilydressed, with a beautiful voice and something more than prettinessin her soft grey eyes. And of these half-dozen remarks, two wordsespecially--"Monson's Folly." She had felt she was behaving charminglyto Monson; she reflected the next day how exceptionally effective shehad been, and no one would have been more amazed than she, had shelearned the effect she had left on Monson's mind. I hope, consideringeverything, that she never knew.

  "How are you getting on with your flying-machine?" she asked. ("Iwonder if I shall ever meet any one with the sense not to ask that,"thought Monson.) "It will be very dangerous at first, will it not?"("Thinks I'm afraid.") "Jorgon is going to play presently; have youheard him before?" ("My mania being attended to, we turn to rationalconversation.") Gush about Jorgon; gradual decline of conversation,ending with--"You must let me know when your flying-machine isfinished, Mr. Monson, and then I will consider the advisability oftaking a ticket." ("One would think I was still playing inventionsin the nursery.") But the bitterest thing she said was not meant forMonson's ears. To Phlox, the novelist, she was always conscientiouslybrilliant. "I have been talking to Mr. Monson, and he can think ofnothing, positively nothing, but that flying-machine of his. Do youknow, all his workmen call that place of his 'Monson's Folly'? He isquite impossible. It is really very, very sad. I always regard himmyself in the light of sunken treasure--the Lost Millionaire, you know."

  She was pretty and well educated,--indeed, she had written anepigrammatic novelette; but the bitterness was that she was typical.She summarised what the world thought of the man who was workingsanely, steadily, and surely towards a more tremendous revolution inthe appliances of civilisation, a more far-reaching alteration in theways of humanity than has ever been effected since history began.They did not even take him seriously. In a little while he would beproverbial. "I _must_ fly now," he said on his way home, smarting witha sense of absolute social failure. "I must fly soon. If it doesn'tcome off soon, by God! I shall run amuck."

  He said that before he had gone through his pass-book and his litter ofpapers. Inadequate as the cause seems, it was that girl's voice and theexpression of her eyes that precipitated his discontent. But certainlythe discovery that he had no longer even one hundred thousand pounds'worth of realisable property behind him was the poison that made thewound deadly.

  It was the next day after this that he exploded upon Woodhouse andhis workmen, and thereafter his bearing was consistently grim forthree weeks, and anxiety dwelt in Cheam and Ewell, Malden, Morden, andWorcester Park, places that had thriven mightily on his experiments.

  Four weeks after that first swearing of his, he stood with Woodhouseby the reconstructed machine as it lay across the elevated railway,by means of which it gained its initial impetus. The new propellerglittered a brighter white than the rest of the machine, and a gilder,obedient to a whim of Monson's, was picking out the aluminium barswith gold. And looking down the long avenue between the ropes (gildednow with the sunset), one saw red signals, and two miles away anant-hill of workmen busy altering the last falls of the run into arising slope.

  "I'll _come_," said Woodhouse. "I'll come right enough. But I tell youit's infernally foolhardy. If only you would give another year"--

  "I tell you I won't. I tell you the thing works. I've given yearsenough"--

  "It's not that," said Woodhouse. "We're all right with the machine. Butit's the steering"--

  "Haven't I been rushing, night and morning, backwards and forwards,through this squirrel's cage? If the thing steers true here, it willsteer true all across England. It's just funk, I tell you, Woodhouse.We could have gone a year ago. And besides"--

  "Well?" said Woodhouse.

  "The money!" snapped Monson over his shoulder.

  "Hang it! I never thought of the money," said Woodhouse, and then,speaking now in a very different tone to that with which he had saidthe words before, he repeated, "I'll come. Trust me."

  Monson turned suddenly, and saw all that Woodhouse had not thedexterity to say, shining on his sunset-lit face. He looked for amoment, then impulsively extended his hand. "Thanks," he said.

  "All right," said Woodhouse, gripping the hand, and with a queersoftening of his features. "Trust me."

  Then both men turned to the big apparatus that lay with its flat wingsextended upon the carrier, and stared at it meditatively. Monson,guided perhaps by a photographic study of the flight of birds, and byLilienthal's methods, had gradually drifted from Maxim's shapes towardsthe bird form again. The thing, however, was driven by a huge screwbehind in the place of the tail; and so hovering, which needs an almostvertical adjustment of a flat tail, was rendered impossible. The bodyof the machine was small, almost cylindrical, and pointed. Forward andaft on the pointed ends were two small petroleum engines for the screw,and the navigators sat deep in a canoe-like recess, the foremost onesteering, and being protected by a low screen, with two plate-glasswindows, from the blinding rush of air. On either side a monstrous flatframework with a curved front border could be adjusted so as either tolie horizontally, or to be tilted upward or down. These wings workedrigidly together, or, by releasing a pin, one could be tilted througha small angle independently of its fellow. The front edge of eitherwing could also be shifted back so as to diminish the wing-area aboutone-sixth. The machine was not only not designed to hover, but it wasalso incapable of fluttering. Monson's idea was to get into the airwith the initial rush of the apparatus, and then to skim, much as aplaying-card may be skimmed, keeping up the rush by means of the screwat the stern. Rooks and gulls fly enormous distances in that way withscarcely a perceptible movement of the wings. The bird really drivesalong on an aerial switchback. It glides slanting downward for aspace, until it has gained considerable momentum, and then alteringthe inclination of its wings, glides up again almost to its originalaltitude. Even a Londoner who has watched the birds in the aviary inRegent's Park knows that.

  But the bird is practising this art from the moment it leaves its nest.It has not only the perfect apparatus, but the perfect instinct touse it. A man off his feet has the poorest skill in balancing. Eventhe simple trick of the bicycle costs him some hours of labour. Theinstantaneous adjustments of the wings, the quick response to a passingbreeze, the swift recovery of equilibrium, the giddy, eddying movementsthat require such absolute precision--all that he must learn, learnwith infinite labour and infinite danger, if ever he is to conquerflying. The flying-machine that will start off some fine day, drivenby neat "little levers," with a nice open dec
k like a liner, and allloaded up with bombshells and guns, is the easy dreaming of a literaryman. In lives and in treasure the cost of the conquest of the empire ofthe air may even exceed all that has been spent in man's great conquestof the sea. Certainly it will be costlier than the greatest war thathas ever devastated the world.

  No one knew these things better than these two practical men. And theyknew they were in the front rank of the coming army. Yet there ishope even in a forlorn hope. Men are killed outright in the reservessometimes, while others who have been left for dead in the thickestcorner crawl out and survive.

  "If we miss these meadows"--said Woodhouse presently in his slow way.

  "My dear chap," said Monson, whose spirits had been rising fitfullyduring the last few days, "we mustn't miss these meadows. There'sa quarter of a square mile for us to hit, fences removed, ditcheslevelled. We shall come down all right--rest assured. And if we don't"--

  "Ah!" said Woodhouse. "If we don't!"

  Before the day of the start, the newspaper people got wind of thealterations at the northward end of the framework, and Monson wascheered by a decided change in the comments Romeike forwarded him. "Hewill be off some day," said the papers. "He will be off some day,"said the South-Western season-ticket holders one to another; theseaside excursionists, the Saturday-to-Monday trippers from Sussexand Hampshire and Dorset and Devon, the eminent literary people fromHazlemere, all remarked eagerly one to another, "He will be offsome day," as the familiar scaffolding came in sight. And actually,one bright morning, in full view of the ten-past-ten train fromBasingstoke, Monson's flying-machine started on its journey.

  They saw the carrier running swiftly along its rail, and the white andgold screw spinning in the air. They heard the rapid rumble of wheels,and a thud as the carrier reached the buffers at the end of its run.Then a whirr as the Flying-Machine was shot forward into the networks.All that the majority of them had seen and heard before. The thing wentwith a drooping flight through the framework and rose again, and thenevery beholder shouted, or screamed, or yelled, or shrieked after hiskind. For instead of the customary concussion and stoppage, the FlyingMachine flew out of its five years' cage like a bolt from a crossbow,and drove slantingly upward into the air, curved round a little, so asto cross the line, and soared in the direction of Wimbledon Common.

  It seemed to hang momentarily in the air and grow smaller, then itducked and vanished over the clustering blue tree-tops to the east ofCoombe Hill, and no one stopped staring and gasping until long after ithad disappeared.

  That was what the people in the train from Basingstoke saw. If you haddrawn a line down the middle of that train, from engine to guard'svan, you would not have found a living soul on the opposite side tothe flying-machine. It was a mad rush from window to window as thething crossed the line. And the engine-driver and stoker never tooktheir eyes off the low hills about Wimbledon, and never noticed thatthey had run clean through Coombe and Maiden and Raynes Park, until,with returning animation, they found themselves pelting, at the mostindecent pace, into Wimbledon station.

  From the moment when Monson had started the carrier with a "_Now!_"neither he nor Woodhouse said a word. Both men sat with clenchedteeth. Monson had crossed the line with a curve that was too sharp,and Woodhouse had opened and shut his white lips; but neither spoke.Woodhouse simply gripped his seat, and breathed sharply through histeeth, watching the blue country to the west rushing past, and down,and away from him. Monson knelt at his post forward, and his handstrembled on the spoked wheel that moved the wings. He could seenothing before him but a mass of white clouds in the sky.

  The machine went slanting upward, travelling with an enormous speedstill, but losing momentum every moment. The land ran away underneathwith diminishing speed.

  "_Now!_" said Woodhouse at last, and with a violent effort Monsonwrenched over the wheel and altered the angle of the wings. The machineseemed to hang for half a minute motionless in mid-air, and then hesaw the hazy blue house-covered hills of Kilburn and Hampstead jumpup before his eyes and rise steadily, until the little sunlit dome ofthe Albert Hall appeared through his windows. For a moment he scarcelyunderstood the meaning of this upward rush of the horizon, but as thenearer and nearer houses came into view, he realised what he had done.He had turned the wings over too far, and they were swooping steeplydownward towards the Thames.

  The thought, the question, the realisation were all the business of asecond of time. "Too much!" gasped Woodhouse. Monson brought the wheelhalf-way back with a jerk, and forthwith the Kilburn and Hampsteadridge dropped again to the lower edge of his windows. They had beena thousand feet above Coombe and Maiden station; fifty seconds afterthey whizzed, at a frightful pace, not eighty feet above the EastPutney station, on the Metropolitan District line, to the screamingastonishment of a platformful of people. Monson flung up the vansagainst the air, and over Fulham they rushed up their atmosphericswitchback again, steeply--too steeply. The 'buses went flounderingacross the Fulham Road, the people yelled.

  Then down again, too steeply still, and the distant trees and housesabout Primrose Hill leapt up across Monson's window, and then suddenlyhe saw straight before him the greenery of Kensington Gardens and thetowers of the Imperial Institute. They were driving straight down uponSouth Kensington. The pinnacles of the Natural History Museum rushed upinto view. There came one fatal second of swift thought, a moment ofhesitation. Should he try and clear the towers, or swerve eastward?

  He made a hesitating attempt to release the right wing, left the catchhalf released, and gave a frantic clutch at the wheel.

  The nose of the machine seemed to leap up before him. The wheel pressedhis hand with irresistible force, and jerked itself out of his control.

  Woodhouse, sitting crouched together, gave a hoarse cry, and sprang uptowards Monson. "Too far!" he cried, and then he was clinging to thegunwale for dear life, and Monson had been jerked clean overhead, andwas falling backwards upon him.

  So swiftly had the thing happened that barely a quarter of the peoplegoing to and fro in Hyde Park, and Brompton Road, and the ExhibitionRoad saw anything of the aerial catastrophe. A distant winged shapehad appeared above the clustering houses to the south, had fallenand risen, growing larger as it did so; had swooped swiftly downtowards the Imperial Institute, a broad spread of flying wings, hadswept round in a quarter circle, dashed eastward, and then suddenlysprang vertically into the air. A black object shot out of it, andcame spinning downward. A man! Two men clutching each other! They camewhirling down, separated as they struck the roof of the Students' Club,and bounded off into the green bushes on its southward side.

  For perhaps half a minute, the pointed stem of the big machine stillpierced vertically upward, the screw spinning desperately. For onebrief instant, that yet seemed an age to all who watched, it had hungmotionless in mid-air. Then a spout of yellow flame licked up itslength from the stern engine, and swift, swifter, swifter, and flaringlike a rocket, it rushed down upon the solid mass of masonry which wasformerly the Royal College of Science. The big screw of white and goldtouched the parapet, and crumpled up like wet linen. Then the blazingspindle-shaped body smashed and splintered, smashing and splintering inits fall, upon the north-westward angle of the building.

  But the crash, the flame of blazing paraffin that shot heavenward fromthe shattered engines of the machine, the crushed horrors that werefound in the garden beyond the Students' Club, the masses of yellowparapet and red brick that fell headlong into the roadway, the runningto and fro of people like ants in a broken ant-hill, the galloping offire-engines, the gathering of crowds--all these things do not belongto this story, which was written only to tell how the first of allsuccessful flying-machines was launched and flew. Though he failed, andfailed disastrously, the record of Monson's work remains--a sufficientmonument--to guide the next of that band of gallant experimentalistswho will sooner or later master this great problem of flying. Andbetween Worcester Park and Malden there still stands that portentousavenue of iron-wor
k, rusting now, and dangerous here and there, towitness to the first desperate struggle for man's right of way throughthe air.