Free Monsieur Pamplemousse Aloft by Michael Bond Page B

reading the last few words when a seat belt warning light above the flight-deck bulkhead came on and there was a roar from somewhere behind him as first one and then the other of the two engines were started up. He looked through the window. The two large fans mounted towards the rear of the gondola had begun to turn.
    As the crew completed their cockpit check, the men outside who had been holding the gondola steady began removing bags of ballast, while those holding the lines got ready to take the strain. He felt the pilot take control as the nose of the airship was detached from its mooring and the fans were rotated until they were at an angle of 45 degrees facing the ground.
    Hand signals were exchanged and the airship began moving forward, slowly at first, then faster, until suddenly the ground started to slip away from them as the craft rose, nosedown, into the air. He had a momentary feeling of guilt as he caught a glimpse of Pommes Frites. His mouth was open as though he was howling and his plaster was hanging loose. Then they turned to port and the concrete area disappeared from view.
    Almost immediately they were over the cliffs, with the sea breaking angrily in clouds of white foam on the granite rocks below. It looked as though they were in for a spell of bad weather. The wind must be coming up from the Bay of Biscay.
    He tried to break the ice with the stewardess. ‘I think,
Mademoiselle,
we are better off up here,
n’est-ce pas
?’
    She looked at him in surprise, as though the very idea was extraordinary, then disappeared behind some curtains at the rear of the compartment. Clearly she was in no mood for making polite conversation.
    Monsieur Pamplemousse gave a shrug as the airship executed a wide turn to port, skirted along past St. Marc, where Monsieur Hulot spent his famous holiday, and headed for the Côte d’Amour around La Baule. He reached for his camera as he looked out of the window and saw people on the beach stand up to wave as they flew over. This was the life. There was no doubt about it – the Director was right – the dirigible was an elegant solution to the problem of manned flight. He ought to consider himself lucky to enjoy such a unique experience.
    A moment later they had crossed the narrow strip of town and were over the Grande Brière, the vast area of swamp and marshland behind La Baule, home of peat-diggers and rush gatherers. Its streams were full of eels, pike, roach and wildfowl, their banks yellow with iris in spring and early summer.
    Monsieur Pamplemousse began to wish he’d brought more film; his automatic winder had been working overtime. By the time they headed west towards the sea he could hardly have documented the area more fully had he been commissioned to make an aerial survey.
    To his left he could see a group of islands; ahead of themwas the long arm of the Quiberon peninsula. The few people out and about hardly bothered to look up as they passed over. Most of them seemed too busy packing up their belongings. A
vedette
scuttled across the bay, heading towards the harbour.
    Monsieur Pamplemousse was so busy with his camera he was scarcely aware of the motion, which was not unpleasant at first – a little like drifting at sea in a small boat, rising and falling with the waves. If every so often the Captain pushed the nose down in order to pin-point a landmark, so much the better; it gave him a better angle, as did the rolling gently first to one side and then the other. He managed to get a particularly good shot of the oyster-beds in Locmariaquer from a near vertical position. And when the nose went in the opposite direction – towards the sky – it gave him a chance to reload. He wished now he had brought his entire range of lenses and filters. Some of the cloud effects could have been quite spectacular through a dark filter; one moment black and angry-looking, the next moment like an etching as the sun broke through a gap and make a bright rim round their edge.
    He