TransAtlantic Read Online Free PDF Page B

blue, spinning blue, are we out? Blue here. Black there. We’re out, Jack,we’re out! Catch her. Catch her for godsake. Christ, we’re out. Are we out? Another line of black looms. The sea stands soldier-straight and dark. Light where the water should be. Sea where the light should crest. Ninety feet. Eighty-five. That’s the sun. Christ, it’s the sun, Teddy, the sun! There. Eighty now. The sun! Alcock gives the machine a mouthful of throttle. Over there. Open her. Open her. The engines catch. He fights the jolt. The sea turns. The plane levels. Fifty feet to spare, forty feet, thirty, no more. Alcock glances down at the Atlantic, the waves galloping white-edged beneath them. The sea sprays upwards onto the windscreen. Not a sound from either of the men until the plane is leveled again and they begin to rise once more.
    They sit, silent, rigid with terror.
    Oh go ’way man
    you just hold your breath a minit
    for there’s not a stunt that’s in it
    with the Maple Leaf Rag
    LATER THEY WILL joke about the spin, the fall, the rollout over the water—
if your life doesn’t flash in front of your eyes, old boy, does that mean you’ve had no life at all?
—but climbing upwards they say nothing. Brown leans out and slaps the flank of the fuselage. Old horse. Old Blackfoot.
    THEY LEVEL OUT along the water, at five hundred feet, in clear air. A horizon line now. Brown reaches for his drift-bearing plate, corrects his compass. Almost eight o’clock Greenwich Mean Time. Brown scrambles around for his pencil.
Ticklish?
he scrawls, with a series of exclamation marks. He catches the sideways grin of Alcock. It is thefirst time in hours they have had a run without fog or layers of cloud. A dull, chewy gray out over the water. Brown scribbles down the last of the calculations. They are north, but not so far as to miss Ireland altogether. Brown reckons the course is 125 degrees true, but allowing for variation and wind he sets a compass course at 170. Ruddering south.
    He can feel it rising up in him, the prospect of grass, a lonesome cottage on the horizon, perhaps a row of huddled cattle. They must be careful. There are high cliffs along the coast. He has studied the geography of Ireland: the hills, the round towers, the expanses of limestone, the disappearing lakes. Galway Bay. There had been songs about that during the war. The roads to Tipperary. The Irish were a sentimental lot. They died and drank in great numbers. A few of them for Empire. Drank and died. Died. Drank.
    He is screwing back the lid on the flask of hot tea when he feels Alcock’s hand on his shoulder. He knows before turning around that it is there. As simple as that.
    Rising up out of the sea, nonchalant as you like: wet rock, dark grass, stone tree light.
    Two islands.
    The plane crosses the land at a low clip.
    Down below, a sheep with a magpie sitting on its back. The sheep raises its head and begins to run when the plane swoops, and for just a moment the magpie stays in place on the sheep’s back: it is something so odd Brown knows he will remember it forever.
    The miracle of the actual.
    In the distance, the mountains. The quiltwork of stone walls. Corkscrew roads. Stunted trees. An abandoned castle. A pig farm. A church. And there, the radio towers to the south. Two-hundred-foot masts in a rectangle of lockstep, some warehouses, a stone house sittingon the edge of the Atlantic. It is Clifden, then. Clifden. The Marconi Towers. A great net of radio masts. They glance at each other. No words. Bring her down. Bring her down.
    They follow their line out over the village. The houses are gray. The roofs, slate. The streets unusually quiet.
    Alcock whoops. Shuts the engines. Angles in, flattens the Vimy out.
    Their helmets applaud. Their hair roars. Their fingernails whistle.
    FROM OUT OF the grass a flock of long-billed snipe rises and soars.
    IT LOOKS TO them like the perfect landing field, hard and level and green, yet what they don’t notice coming