AERONAUTICS: England to Australia

It was a holiday in Port Darwin, Australia. Bunting fluttered in the streets. August sunshine beat down on the white-powdered road out to Mindil Beach, where the Timor Sea lay breathless blue under an offshore breeze. Soon after breakfast time, the beachward procession began—Port Darwin merchants cool in their white ducks; bronzed " 'roos" ("Kangaroos," i.e. Australians) from the cattle country; darker aborigines shuffling along in silent excitement; cooing Chinese in bright pajamas. They watched the horizon all morning. Some had gone home for midday tiffin, but most remained, chattering, scanning, pondering, when a school urchin jumped forward, his eyes bulging, his rigid forefinger jabbing northwestward. "I see 'um!" he cried. First it was a mosquito-like speck over the ocean, then an ephemeral insect frame, then a droning, then a roaring seaplane that circled Darwin Heads and harbor, over the blasting sirens of steamers and warships, then a tired great gull floating on Fannie Bay off the naval aviation grounds. Mechanics swarmed to lift the craft (a big De Havilland biplane) ashore and fit her with wheels; she was to fly on, over desert and bush, to Sydney and Melbourne. And Pilot Alan Cobham, his hand wrung red with congratulations, regaled officials with the story of his 10,000-mile flight from England in 36 days. Crossing Arabia, he had flown low over the desert when "Crack!" a Bedouin sniper had shot his mechanic stone dead. At Basra, Sergeant Ward of the Royal Air Force had volunteered—the listeners' eyes shifted to a beet-red, grinning stalwart beside Pilot Cobham—and together they had whirred high over the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, drifting slightly out of their course and bringing up in the Dutch East Indies There, on the island called Komodo, they had seen a portent—two enormous captive dragons, ten feet long, with claws and jaws rapacious enough to slaughter horses, veritable St. Georgian monsters,* "emitting fumes not unlike smoke. Cobham planned to rest at Melbourne only long enough to have his ship overhauled. Then he was off again for England. He hoped to prove the feasibility of air-routes over impenetrable, hazardous portions of the globe.