We tried it; it did not work. A breeze had sprung up; it had much more effect on the flying machine than it had on us - that water-soaked sunbathing pad was practically nailed down, no sail area at all. Instead of being able to ,pull us to the flying machine, the man on the other end of the line was forced to let out more line to keep from pulling us off into the water.
He called out something; Margrethe answered. They shouted back and forth. She turned to me. 'He says to let loose the rope. They will go out and come back, this time directly at us, but slowly. As they come closest, we are to try to scramble up into the aeroplano. The machine.'
'All right.'
The machine left us, went out oil the water and curved back. While waiting, we were not bored; we had the dorsal fin of a huge shark to entertain us. It did not attack; apparently it had not made up its mind (what mind?) that we were good to eat. I suppose it saw only the underside of the kapok pad.
The flying machine headed directly toward us on the' water, looking like some monstrous dragonfly skimming the surface. I said, 'Darling, as it gets closest, you dive for the stanchion closest to you and I'll push you up. Then I'll come up behind you.'
'No, Alec.'
'What do you mean, "No"?' I was vexed. Margrethe was such a good comrade - then suddenly so stubborn. At the wrong time.
'You can't push me; you have no foundation to push from. And you can't stand up; you can't even sit up. Uh, you scramble to the right; I'll scramble to the left. If either of us misses, then back onto the pad - fast! The aeroplano will come around again.'
'But
'That's how he said to do it.'
There was no time left; the machine was almost on top of us. The 'legs' or stanchions joining the lower twin shapes to the body of the machine bridged the pad, one just missing me and the other just missing Margrethe. 'Now!' she cried. I lunged toward my side, got a hand on a stanchion.
And almost jerked my right arm out by the roots but I kept on moving, monkey fashion - got both hands on that undercarriage got a foot up on a horizontal kayak shape, turned my head.
Saw a hand reaching down to Margrethe - she climbed and was lifted onto the kite wing above, and disappeared. I turned to climb up my side - and suddenly levitated up and onto the wing. I do not ordinarily levitate but this time I had incentive: a dirty white fin too big for any decent fish, cutting the water right toward my foot.
I found myself alongside the little carriage house from which the teamsters directed 'their strange craft. The second man (not the one who had climbed out to help) stuck his head out a window, grinned at me, reached back and opened a little door. I crawled inside, head first. Margrethe was already there.
The space had four seats, two in front where the teamsters sat, and two behind where we were.
The teamster on my side looked around and said something, and continued - I noticed! - to look at Margrethe. Certainly she was naked, but that was not her fault, and a gentleman would not stare.
'He says,' Margrethe explained, 'that we must fasten our belts. I think he means this.' She held up a buckle on the end of a belt, the other end being secured to the frame of the carriage.
I discovered that I was sitting on a similar buckle, which was digging a hole into my sunburned backside. I hadn't noticed it up to then, too many other things demanding attention. (Why didn't he keep his eyes to himself! I felt myself ready to shout at him. That he had, at great peril to himself, just saved her life and mine did not that moment occur to me; I was simply growing furious that he would take such advantage of a helpless lady.)
I turned my attention to that pesky belt and tried to ignore it. He spoke to the other man beside him, who responded enthusiastically. Margrethe interrupted the discussion. 'What are they saying?' I demanded.
'The poor man is about to give me the shirt off his back. I am protesting... but I'm not protesting so hard as to put a stop to it. It's very gallant of them, dear, and, while I'm not foolish about it, I do feel more at ease among strangers with some sort of clothing.' She listened, and added, 'They're arguing as to which one has the privilege.'
I shut up. In my mind I apologized to them. I'll bet even the Pope in Rome has sneaked a quick look a time or two in his life.
The one on the right apparently won the argument. He squirmed around in his seat - he could not stand up - and got his shirt off, turned and passed it back to Margrethe. 'Señorita. Por favor.' He added other remarks but they were beyond my knowledge.
Margrethe replied with dignity and grace, and chatted with them as she wiggled into his shirt. It covered her mostly. She turned to me. 'Dear, the commander is Teniente Anibal Sanz Garcia and his assistant is Sargento Roberto Dominguez Jones, both of the Royal Mexican Coast Guard. Both the Lieutenant and the Sergeant wanted to give me a shirt, but the Sergeant won a finger-guessing game, so I have his shirt.'
'It's mighty generous of him. Ask them if there is anything at all in the machine that I can wear.'
'I'll try.' She spoke several phrases; I heard my name. Then she shifted back to English. 'Gentlemen, I have the honor to present my husband, Sefior Alexandro Graham Hergensheimer.' She shifted back to Spanish.
Shortly she was answered. 'The Lieutenant is devastated to admit that they have nothing to offer you. But he promises on his mother's honor that something will be found for you just as quickly as we reach Mazatlán and the Coast Guard headquarters there. Now he urges both of us to fasten our belts. tightly as we are about to fly.. Alec, I'm scared!'
'Don't be. I'll hold your hand.'
Sergeant Dominguez turned around again, held up a canteen. 'Agua?'
'Goodness, yes!' agreed Margrethe. 'Sí sí sí!'
Water has never tasted so good.
The Lieutenant. looked around when we returned the canteen, gave a bigsmile and a thumbs-up sign old as the Colosseum, and did something that speeded up his driving engines. They had been turning over very slowly; now -they speeded up to a horrible racket. The machine turned as he headed it straight into the wind. The wind had been freshening all morning; now it showed little curls of white on the tops of the wavelets. He speeded his engines still more, to an unbelievable violence, and we went bouncing over the water, shaking everything.
Then we started hitting about every tenth wave with incredible force. I don't know why we weren't wrecked.
Suddenly we were twenty feet off the water; the bumping stopped. The vibration and the noise continued. We climbed at a sharp angle - and turned and started down again, and I almost-not-quite threw up that welcome drink of water.
The ocean was right in front of us, a solid wall. The Lieutenant turned his head and shouted something.
I wanted to tell him to keep his eyes on the road! - but I did not. 'What does he say?'
'He says to look where he points. He'll point us right at it. EI tiburón blanco grande - the great white shark that almost got us.'
(I could have done without it.) Sure enough, right in the middle of this wall of water was a gray ghost with a fin cutting the water. Just when I knew that we were going to splash right down on top of it, the wall tilted away from us, my buttocks were forced down hard against the seat, my ears roared, and I again missed throwing up on our host only by iron will.
The machine leveled off and suddenly the ride was almost comfortable, aside from the racket and the vibration.
Airships are ever so much nicer.
The rugged hills behind the shoreline, so hard to see from our raft, were clearly in sight once we were in the air, and so was the shore - a series of beautiful beaches and a town where we were headed. The Sergeant looked around, pointed down a I t the town, and spoke. 'What did he say?'
'Sergeant Roberto says that we are home just in time for lunch. Almuerzo, he said, but notes that it's breakfast - desayuno - for us.'