With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D.
Rudyard Kipling
Produced by Stephen Hope, Carla Foust, Joseph Cooper andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printererrors have been changed and are listed at the end. All otherinconsistencies are as in the original.
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
A STORY OF 2000 A.D.
(TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE CONTEMPORARY MAGAZINE IN WHICH IT APPEARED)
BOOKS BY RUDYARD KIPLING
BRUSHWOOD BOY, THE
CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS
COLLECTED VERSE
DAY'S WORK, THE
DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND BALLADS AND BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS
FIVE NATIONS, THE
JUNGLE BOOK, THE
JUNGLE BOOK, SECOND
JUST SO SONG BOOK
JUST SO STORIES
KIM
KIPLING BIRTHDAY BOOK, THE
LIFE'S HANDICAP; Being Stories of Mine Own People
LIGHT THAT FAILED, THE
MANY INVENTIONS
NAULAHKA, THE (With Wolcott Balestier)
PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS
PUCK OF POOK'S HILL
SEA TO SEA, FROM
SEVEN SEAS, THE
SOLDIER STORIES
SOLDIERS THREE, THE STORY OF THE GADSBYS, and IN BLACK AND WHITE
STALKY & CO.
THEY
TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES
UNDER THE DEODARS, THE PHANTOM RICKSHAW and WEE WILLIE WINKIE
"A MAN WITH A GHASTLY SCARLET HEAD FOLLOWS, SHOUTING THATHE MUST GO BACK AND BUILD UP HIS RAY."]
With the Night Mail
A STORY OF 2000 A.D.
(TOGETHER WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE CONTEMPORARY MAGAZINE IN WHICH IT APPEARED)
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
_Illustrated in Color_
BY FRANK X. LEYENDECKER AND H. REUTERDAHL
[Decoration]
NEW YORK
Doubleday, Page & Company
1909
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1909, BY RUDYARD KIPLING PUBLISHED, MARCH, 1909
REPRINTED IN BOOK FORM BY PERMISSION OF THE S. S. McCLURE COMPANY
ILLUSTRATIONS
"A man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he must go back and build up his Ray" _Frontispiece_
FOLLOWING PAGE
"Slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her" 31
The Storm 39
"I've asked him to tea on Friday" 58
WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
A STORY OF 2000 A.D.
With the Night Mail
At nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood on the lower stages ofone of the G. P. O. outward mail towers. My purpose was a run to Quebecin "Postal Packet 162 or such other as may be appointed"; and thePostmaster-General himself countersigned the order. This talisman openedall doors, even those in the despatching-caisson at the foot of thetower, where they were delivering the sorted Continental mail. The bagslay packed close as herrings in the long gray under-bodies which ourG. P. O. still calls "coaches." Five such coaches were filled as Iwatched, and were shot up the guides to be locked on to their waitingpackets three hundred feet nearer the stars.
From the despatching-caisson I was conducted by a courteous andwonderfully learned official--Mr. L. L. Geary, Second Despatcher of theWestern Route--to the Captains' Room (this wakes an echo of oldromance), where the mail captains come on for their turn of duty. Heintroduces me to the Captain of "162"--Captain Purnall, and his relief,Captain Hodgson. The one is small and dark; the other large and red; buteach has the brooding sheathed glance characteristic of eagles andaeronauts. You can see it in the pictures of our racing professionals,from L. V. Rautsch to little Ada Warrleigh--that fathomless abstractionof eyes habitually turned through naked space.
On the notice-board in the Captains' Room, the pulsing arrows of sometwenty indicators register, degree by geographical degree, the progressof as many homeward-bound packets. The word "Cape" rises across the faceof a dial; a gong strikes: the South African mid-weekly mail is in atthe Highgate Receiving Towers. That is all. It reminds one comically ofthe traitorous little bell which in pigeon-fanciers' lofts notifies thereturn of a homer.
"Time for us to be on the move," says Captain Purnall, and we are shotup by the passenger-lift to the top of the despatch-towers. "Our coachwill 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 curveof her back shines frostily under the lights, and some minute alterationof trim makes her rock a little in her holding-down slips.
Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, "162" comes torest as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (wornbright as diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow,and ice) to the inset of her three built-out propeller-shafts is sometwo hundred and forty feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward,is thirty-seven. Contrast this with the nine hundred by ninety-five ofany crack liner and you will realize the power that must drive a hullthrough all weathers at more than the emergency-speed of the "Cyclonic"!
The eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the sweepinghair-crack of the bow-rudder--Magniac's rudder that assured us thedominion of the unstable air and left its inventor penniless andhalf-blind. It is calculated to Castelli's "gull-wing" curve. Raise afew feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an inch andshe will yaw five miles to port or starboard ere she is under controlagain. 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 shesweeps at your good direction up or down. Open the complete circle andshe presents to the air a mushroom-head that will bring her up allstanding within a half mile.
"Yes," says Captain Hodgson, answering my thought, "Castelli thoughthe'd discovered the secret of controlling aeroplanes when he'd onlyfound out how to steer dirigible balloons. Magniac invented his rudderto help war-boats ram each other; and war went out of fashion andMagniac he went out of his mind because he said he couldn't serve hiscountry any more. I wonder if any of us ever know what we're reallydoing."
"If you want to see the coach locked you'd better go aboard. It's duenow," says Mr. Geary. I enter through the door amidships. There isnothing here for display. The inner skin of the gas-tanks comes down towithin a foot or two of my head and turns over just short of the turn ofthe bilges. Liners and yachts disguise their tanks with decoration, butthe G. P. O. serves them raw under a lick of gray official paint. Theinner skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow and as much of the stern, butthe bow-bulkhead is recessed for the lift-shunting apparatus as thestern is pierced for the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies almostamidships. Forward of it, extending to the turn of the bow tanks, is anaperture--a bottomless hatch at present--into which our coach will belocked. One looks down over the coamings three hundred feet to thedespatching-caisson whence voices boom upward. The light below isobscured to a sound of thunder, as our coach rises on its guides. Itenlarges rapidly from a postage-stamp to a playing-card; to a punt andlast a pontoon. The two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as itcomes into place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers and leapinto the docketed racks, while both captains and Mr. Geary satisfythemselves that the coach is locked home. A clerk p
asses the waybillover 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 compressorlocks after him.
"A-ah!" sighs the compressor released. Our holding-down clips part witha tang. We are clear.
Captain Hodgson opens the great colloid underbody-porthole throughwhich I watch million-lighted London slide eastward as the gale getshold of us. The first of the low winter clouds cuts off the well-knownview and darkens Middlesex. On the south edge of it I can see a postalpacket's light ploughing through the white fleece. For an instant shegleams like a star ere she drops toward the Highgate Receiving Towers."The Bombay Mail," says Captain Hodgson, and looks at his watch. "She'sforty minutes late."
"What's our level?" I ask.
"Four thousand. Aren't you coming up on the bridge?"
The bridge (let us ever bless the G. P. O. as a repository of ancientesttradition!) is represented by a view of Captain Hodgson's legs where hestands on the control platform that runs thwartships overhead. The bowcolloid is unshuttered and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, isfeeling for a fair slant. The dial shows 4,300 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 thistime o' the year. I hate slathering through fluff."
"So does Van Cutsem. Look at him huntin' for a slant!" says CaptainHodgson. A fog-light breaks cloud a hundred fathoms below. The AntwerpNight Mail makes her signal and rises between two racing clouds far toport, her flanks blood-red in the glare of Sheerness Double Light. Thegale will have us over the North Sea in half an hour, but CaptainPurnall lets her go composedly--nosing to every point of the compass asshe rises.
"Five thousand--six, six thousand eight hundred"--the dip-dial reads erewe find the easterly drift, heralded by a flurry of snow at thethousand-fathom level. Captain Purnall rings up the engines and keysdown the governor on the switch before him. There is no sense in urgingmachinery when AEolus himself gives you good knots for nothing. We areaway in earnest now--our nose notched home on our chosen star. At thislevel the lower clouds are laid out all neatly combed by the dry fingersof the East. Below that again is the strong westerly blow through whichwe rose. Overhead, a film of southerly drifting mist draws a theatricalgauze across the firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata tosilver without a stain except where our shadow underruns us. Bristol andCardiff Double Lights (those statelily inclined beams over Severnmouth)are dead ahead of us; for we keep the Southern Winter Route. CoventryCentral, the pivot of the English system, stabs upward once in tenseconds its spear of diamond light to the north; and a point or two offour starboard bow The Leek, the great cloud-breaker of Saint David'sHead, swings its unmistakable green beam twenty-five degrees each way.There must be half a mile of fluff over it in this weather, but it doesnot affect The Leek.
"Our planet's overlighted if anything," says Captain Purnall at thewheel, as Cardiff-Bristol slides under. "I remember the old days ofcommon white verticals that 'ud show two or three thousand feet up in amist, if you knew where to look for 'em. In really fluffy weather theymight as well have been under your hat. One could get lost coming homethen, an' have some fun. Now, it's like driving down Piccadilly."
He points to the pillars of light where the cloud-breakers bore throughthe cloud-floor. We see nothing of England's outlines: only a whitepavement pierced in all directions by these manholes of variouslycoloured fire--Holy Island's white and red--St. Bee's interrupted white,and so on as far as the eye can reach. Blessed be Sargent, Ahrens, andthe Dubois brothers, who invented the cloud-breakers of the worldwhereby we travel in security!
"Are you going to lift for The Shamrock?" asks Captain Hodgson. CorkLight (green, fixed) enlarges as we rush to it. Captain Purnall nods.There is heavy traffic hereabouts--the cloud-bank beneath us is streakedwith running fissures of flame where the Atlantic boats are hurryingLondonward just clear of the fluff. Mail-packets are supposed, under theConference rules, to have the five-thousand-foot lanes to themselves,but the foreigner in a hurry is apt to take liberties with English air."No. 162" lifts to a long-drawn wail of the breeze in the fore-flange ofthe rudder and we make Valencia (white, green, white) at a safe 7,000feet, dipping our beam to an incoming Washington packet.
There is no cloud on the Atlantic, and faint streaks of cream roundDingle Bay show where the driven seas hammer the coast. A bigS. A. T. A. liner (_Societe Anonyme des Transports Aeriens_) is divingand lifting half a mile below us in search of some break in the solidwest wind. Lower still lies a disabled Dane: she is telling the linerall about it in International. Our General Communication dial has caughther talk and begins to eavesdrop. Captain Hodgson makes a motion to shutit off but checks himself. "Perhaps you'd like to listen," he says.
"'Argol' of St. Thomas," the Dane whimpers. "Report owners threestarboard shaft collar-bearings fused. Can make Flores as we are, butimpossible further. Shall we buy spares at Fayal?"
The liner acknowledges and recommends inverting the bearings. The"Argol" answers that she has already done so without effect, and beginsto relieve her mind about cheap German enamels for collar-bearings. TheFrenchman assents cordially, cries "_Courage, mon ami_," and switchesoff.
Their lights sink under the curve of the ocean.
"That's one of Lundt & Bleamers's boats," says Captain Hodgson. "Serves'em right for putting German compos in their thrust-blocks. _She_ won'tbe in Fayal to-night! By the way, wouldn't you like to look round theengine-room?"
I have been waiting eagerly for this invitation and I follow CaptainHodgson from the control-platform, stooping low to avoid the bulge ofthe tanks. We know that Fleury's gas can lift anything, as theworld-famous trials of '89 showed, but its almost indefinite powers ofexpansion necessitate vast tank room. Even in this thin air thelift-shunts are busy taking out one-third of its normal lift, and still"162" must be checked by an occasional downdraw of the rudder or ourflight would become a climb to the stars. Captain Purnall prefers anoverlifted to an underlifted ship; but no two captains trim ship alike."When _I_ take the bridge," says Captain Hodgson, "you'll see me shuntforty per cent. of the lift out of the gas and run her on the upperrudder. With a swoop upwards instead of a swoop downwards, _as_ you say.Either way will do. It's only habit. Watch our dip-dial! Tim fetches herdown once every thirty knots as regularly as breathing."
So is it shown on the dip-dial. For five or six minutes the arrow creepsfrom 6,700 to 7,300. There is the faint "szgee" of the rudder, and backslides the arrow to 6,500 on a falling slant of ten or fifteen knots.
"In heavy weather you jockey her with the screws as well," says CaptainHodgson, and, unclipping the jointed bar which divides the engine-roomfrom the bare deck, he leads me on to the floor.
Here we find Fleury's Paradox of the Bulkheaded Vacuum--which we acceptnow without thought--literally in full blast. The three engines areH. T. &. T. assisted-vacuo Fleury turbines running from 3,000 to theLimit--that is to say, up to the point when the blades make the air"bell"--cut out a vacuum for themselves precisely as over-driven marinepropellers used to do. "162's" Limit is low on account of the small sizeof her nine screws, which, though handier than the old colloidThelussons, "bell" sooner. The midships engine, generally used as areinforce, is not running; so the port and starboard turbinevacuum-chambers draw direct into the return-mains.
The turbines whistle reflectively. From the low-arched expansion-tankson either side the valves descend pillarwise to the turbine-chests, andthence the obedient gas whirls through the spirals of blades with aforce that would whip the teeth out of a power-saw. Behind, is its ownpressure held in leash or spurred on by the lift-shunts; before it, thevacuum where Fleury's Ray dances in violet-green bands and whirledturbillions of flame. The jointed U-tubes of the vacuum-chamber arepressure-tempered colloid (no glass would endure the strain for aninstant) and a junior engineer with tinted spectacles watches the Ra
yintently. It is the very heart of the machine--a mystery to this day.Even Fleury who begat it and, unlike Magniac, died a multi-millionaire,could not explain how the restless little imp shuddering in the U-tubecan, in the fractional fraction of a second, strike the furious blast ofgas into a chill grayish-green liquid that drains (you can hear ittrickle) from the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes andthe mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous, one hadalmost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh. Bilge-tank,upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main-return (as aliquid), and bilge-tank once more is the ordained cycle. Fleury's Raysees to that; and the engineer with the tinted spectacles sees toFleury's Ray. If a speck of oil, if even the natural grease of the humanfinger touch the hooded terminals Fleury's Ray will wink and disappearand must be laboriously built up again. This means half a day's workfor all hands and an expense of one hundred and seventy-odd pounds tothe G. P. O. for radium-salts and such trifles.
"Now look at our thrust-collars. You won't find much German compo there.Full-jewelled, you see," says Captain Hodgson as the engineer shuntsopen the top of a cap. Our shaft-bearings are C. M. C. (CommercialMinerals Company) stones, ground with as much care as the lens of atelescope. They cost L37 apiece. So far we have not arrived at theirterm of life. These bearings came from "No. 97," which took them overfrom the old "Dominion of Light," which had them out of the wreck of the"Perseus" aeroplane in the years when men still flew linen kites overthorium engines!
They are a shining reproof to all low-grade German "ruby" enamels,so-called "boort" facings, and the dangerous and unsatisfactory aluminacompounds which please dividend-hunting owners and turn skippers crazy.
