(ili the "Sunday Express")
Captain Smith, chief pilot commanding trans-Atlantic survey flight number four, switched his gaze from ihe general dreariness surrounding the flying-boat to the softly lighted instrument panel before him.
His compass told him he was dead on course. He reached out, switched on the automatic pilot, and relaxed in his seat.
They were dive hours out from Foynes and should make a landfall at Port Botwood, Newfoundland, in another eight hours' flying if no head wind blew up. The second officer came up the corridor between the big fuel tanks and took his place at the spare controls.
Way behind them the dawn had come and was striding over the ocean towards them, catching them up. It brought no sun, but just exposed the greyness of the limitless sea below them, foaming in the ocean swell.
Pilot Smith took comfort in the instruments in front of him, messengers from every part of the big ship. They all told a satisfactory tale. His air speed indicator gave him 150 miles an hour, his revolution counters 2,100 revolutions a minute, telling that the flying boat was cruising at less than 60 per cent. of its full 3,000 house power.
He glanced at the weather report in front of him. It gave a twenty miles an hour tail wind at 5,000 feet from the Irish coast.
He didn't know how long that tail wind would last and worried about it. There were no comforting, regular airline data out here. He had to find out for himself. On the facts he gathered depended the success of future flights.
A chirping of morse came from behind him and ceased. The radio operator was talking to the shore bases. A few seconds later a message was put in front of He read it and wrinkled his brows. It was a new weather report. Ships had reported heavy squalls about halfway over. A second later another note came, this time from Botwood.
The Normandie was experiencing heavy weather at about the same position.
That didn't help him much. He wondered how high the storms went and if he could get over them. Halfway across didn't give him a choice of argument anyway. There was no point in turning Back, He left the controls and went bach to the charts, a red line across the blue tracing BW
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.