Flying to Turkey
ONCE there was a beautiful actress in Rome (bright " star of boyhood's fiery thought," her name was Clotilda Leoni) who was the heroine of a musical comedy in which she flew to Stamboul. She had a chorus in which I joined :—
"Sale, sale, sale, Sopra it Bosforo vd, Sale, sale, sale, Sopra ratrapia eittol!"
—little thinking that twenty years later I should myself be gliding over that city in a flying boat. Yet so it was— and I daresay something equally unexpected will happen twenty years on.
With exquisite tact, the air porter at Brindisi disclosed a little locker in our hydroplane containing paper bags " per l'indisposizicine." We should not need them, he said, but still, there they were. And cotton wool for our ears. Our luncheons—books--cigarettes ? Rugs we should not need, for there is an electric stove. Pronto ! The hatch is closed. Contact ! The engine-starter coughs, then a steady roar begins, in which I always imagine I can hear the ringing of bells. Our fat little black under-wing drags whitely through the Mediter- ranean. Plop. Plop. Plop. A sense of lightness and freedom. We are " unstuck " and heading for Athens exactly on time.
Alas, it is foggy. After half an lthur we leave the coast of Italy. Then after reading two pages of my book (did my eyes close ?) I see the pink rocks of Corfu between patches of cloud and sunshine. Sleep now definitely overcomes me, for it seems exactly one second later that fantastic island shapes appear, wriggling in a wind- streaked sea. - Greece. When we come to the mainland it gives :us a little Slap, so to speak, but on the whole we keep very steady. Dear me, there's Missolonghi. And the Gulf of Corinth. I ought to wake up and take notice during this most lovely air journey in. Europe. The wind has dropped, but the sun does not shine and it is cold. We are gliding now over the mirror of an archipelago. Paxos. Anti- paxos. Chalehis. Boats with fishing nets. In spite of the clouds there is an intense refracted light, for one can see deep, deep down into the hyaline-waters. Did the virgii' goddess of the Athenians, I- wonder, snffer from cold feet in her chariot, coming from Zeus 'to men ? But doubtless she only made the trip when the sun was shining. Over there is an island of an incredible pink. And here we are : Athens of all the ages lies rosily below us. We veer south and then round until we head north again. The voice of the engines fades away, as if in awe, as we dip towards the Acropolis.
Thus ends the first half of my trip. I leave it just as it was written and cannot add more, for I am afraid I was asleep most of the time. And when I came to continue my journey still the sleepy, south wind blew, but now with greater force. That did not prevent a gorgeous sunrise. Most fresh and fair, it glinted over Hymettus. .,It lit the marble of the Acropolis. It gilded the shabby Piraeus into the semblance of a fairy city. I longed to . see the glory of this world from aloft. But, no ! The scirocco caused such a swell to roll in from outside, that the Dornier-Wal could not be trusted to its buffets. Instead, we were taken by car to Port Raphti where another machine awaited us.
For nearly two hours, then, I watched the fields and olive groves of Attica slip by. Raphti is a well-sheltered port, guarded by the long island of Euboea and hills of the mainland. Outside, the scirocco had lashed- the Mediterranean into one of its occasional hysterical attacks. Soon we were on the wings of the storm and I comforted myself with two reflections : (a) that if I had been travelling by sea it would have been so rough that I would -have lain in my bunk longing for death; whereas' now I sat in my armchair longing only -for a better view ; (b) that as the wind was dead astern, even if there was nothing to see we were traversing that emptiness at about 150 miles an hour. As a matter of fact, probably owing to the masterly touch on the controls of the chief of the two pilots (I could tell- the difference as soon as the other one-took charge), we were hardly " bumped " at all. Our black wings drove steadily through storm-wrack and sea-mist, in reniarkable contrast to a 'steamer we passed, somewhere off Skyros, which pitched so giddily that I had to look away.
There is ,a window in the back of the Dornier-Wals that enables one to see into the pilot's cockpit. The chief pilot was a typical North Italian, tall, lean, Dantesque. -After our own Imperial Airways staff I think the Aero Espresso has the steadiest and most careful personnel, and I know that this is also the 'opinion of better judges than I of such matters.
We had left Port Raphti at 10 a.m. At 11.80 I saw land ahead and thought it must be Mudros. I could hardly believe my eyes when the Straits appeared and I found we were over ground hallowed by many dead friends. At noon we sighted Constantinople and to my joy the weather lifted, so that the white bubbles of San Sophia, the exquisite minarets, the iridescent Marmora, revealed the enchantress of two continents as Loti saw and loved 'her.
As we swept over Galata Bridge I looked back and, almost with a sob, I made out the suburb of Psamattia from which I escaped when a. prisoner-of-war ten years ago, and the ruined zones where I spent some fugitive hours, and the warren of Serkedji where I lay low for weeks. Half life is memory : the other half, anticipation. Over the British Embassy we went, then up the Bosphorus at a hundred miles an hour, landing at beautiful Buyuk Dere at 12.45, having taken exactly 2} hours from Greece to Turkey. At all seasons except this I can recommend the Aero Espresso with confidence, and even in winter, as the reader will perhaps agree, such a trip- as mine has its advantages over the five to ten times longer sea route.
The scirocco had blown us in three hours ahead of time, so I spent this gift afternoon revisiting .scenes that had burned themselves into memory. In those gardens a very gallant Englishwoman planned our escape, under the eyes of our sentries. On that very doorstep we waited, my friend and I, one summer night, trembling lest we had mistaken the house or it should prove a trap. In that restaurant, where staid Turks are sitting now in slouch hats, what a vortex of intrigue swirled round a very innocent-looking spectacled waiter. Enough. The ghost from the clouds revisiting his youth must vanish. Our business is with Constantinople to-day.
F. YEATS-BROWN.
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