Free Chasing Icarus by Gavin Mortimer Page B

lifeboat. But instead of contemplating their grisly demise, the men’s thoughts turned to ways of solving the problem. Lewis Loud suggested the most obvious solution—to get rid of the equilibrator. How exactly? they asked. Easy, replied Loud. He proposed to sit in the boatswain’s chair while the others lowered him down and he cut the cords that held it. Brave, said Wellman, and bold, but also impractical; the loss of the equilibrator would create such an imbalance that after a rapid rise the America would gradually sink down into the water.
    The other two solutions were dependent on factors outside their control. They could wait for a calm sea and still breeze before launching the lifeboat, so that they stood less chance of being hit by the equilibrator, or they could sit it out in the airship until they made contact with a passing vessel.
    They decided to sit it out, to keep headed toward Bermuda for as long as possible while they scanned the endless ocean for a ship. Their best chance of salvation in the opinion of Irwin lay in the regular steamer that left Bermuda each Monday bound for New York. Taking their charts and plotting the steamer’s probable speed, they reckoned it should be under them sometime on Tuesday morning. The information passed around the men like a mug of strong rum, warming them with hope. But soon the feeling faded and each contemplated the risks they faced during the night if the wind got up or rain fell. Then the equilibrator would drag them down, but they no longer had the reserves of gasoline to lift themselves clear of danger; instead they would have to take to the lifeboat, in the darkness and on a heavy sea, and with the equilibrator eyeing them like some ruthless monster from the deep.
    Wellman spent the late afternoon locked in the watertight compartment of the lifeboat, his eyes glued to the barometer in case the reading should start to drop. But by six P.M. the weather was still fair, so Wellman gave the order to throw overboard what ever they could spare. Simon tossed away a five-pound box of sugar, several jars of bacon, and some biscuits. What a waste! young Aubert thought, laughing, as he looked on. The sharks won’t think so, said Simon, and who knows, perhaps they’ll be so full they won’t eat us. The joke wasn’t appreciated.
    They had a feast for supper of cold bacon, biscuits, and malted-milk tablets, then lay back in the lifeboat smoking and spinning yarns. There was no talk of equilibrators or engines; instead, the tales were of “fair damsels left behind,” and of their slim ankles and silken hair.
    Despite the uncertainty of what lay ahead, there was no anxiety in the boat; rather there was a serenity, the sort experienced on the eve of a battle by soldiers who have put their faith in a higher power. Simon marveled at the night sky and wrote that in the bright moonlight “millions of stars are twinkling and the water below gleams like silver. Flying fish hover around our strange craft, and below big batches of gulf weed drift lazily by. It’s perfectly calm, peaceful . . . we all feel elated—the reaction, possibly, after tremendous strain during the last two days. We have no fears for our immediate future.”

    Several hundred miles west of the airship America the moonlight was drawing out the lyricist in the New York Herald ’s correspondent as he sat in the empty press stand at Belmont Park. It had been a slow day thus far, and the pages of his notebook were as empty as the seats around him, save for a few quotes from Count Bertrand de Lesseps, brother of the aviator, Jacques, about the exorbitant rates demanded by Lloyd’s of London for the insurance of spectators during the forthcoming air show. With a suit for damages having recently been filed against the Asbury Park Meet organizers, * American companies had recoiled at the idea of underwriting the Belmont Park Meet. Lloyd’s hadn’t, however, though they’d charged $500,000, and the organizers had