CURLY:-
Ploughing over the cliffs
And crabbing out to sea,
Flying half-sideways into the wind.
Two hours to cross the Channel,
And the yellow light
From the Promenade Deck windows
Shows the white tops of the breakers;
They're very close.
Too low and too slow!
Then engine No. 5 gets going again,
And the cold fist in my gut
Relaxes just a bit,
As I chat to the chaps in the Chart Room
About football, jazz bands, girls and cars,
Almost anything...
Except India...

The French coast at last
And the wind still rising,
40 miles an hour now;
Crawling up the Valley of the Somme
In the teeth of this mad, black,
Force 8 gale,
Painfully counting off
Each small, dim town...
St. Val‚ry, Moyenneville,
Oisement, Hornoy...

Before my Watch,
I take a turn along the keel
To see how things are inside...

In the echoing darkness above me,
The bags are surging to and fro
Against the frames,
And they look too flabby;
I'll bet they're leaking,
And they slap unpleasantly as they tug
And rattle their bridle chains.
They're lined with skin
From a bullock's intestines:
The guts of a million dead cows
Shipped from the stockyards of Chicago.
There are ghost cattle up there,
Moaning and squealing,
Trying to stampede...
She won't take this punishment for long.
Hope to God we can get as far
As Orly Aerodrome...

I saw him a long way off,
Coming down the cat-walk,
A young rigger.
When he reached me we stood silently,
Looking up at the billowing bladders,
As the girders creaked and groaned
And the rain beat against
The soggy drum-skin
Of the envelope.
Suddenly he spoke.

THE RIGGER:-
We're buggered, aren't we Sir.

CURLY:-
"Good luck, Roberts", I said.

THE RIGGER:-
Good luck yourself, Curly.

CURLY:-
He replied,
And passed on down the keel.

There's fifty miles
And maybe two hours flying
Before we can try an emergency landing
At Orly.
We're over Beauvais now,
Two o'clock in the morning,
Waking up the town.
Thundering slowly over the chimney pots,
A seventh of a mile
Of spark-happy hydrogen
Hanging above Beauvais cathedral
Like the Angel of Death...

The wind still rising,
45 miles an hour now.
Keep going, darling! Stay up, sweetheart!
You can do it for me!

Time to take over in the Control Car,
And the O.O.W. says...

OFFICER:-
Watch her, Old Boy, she's behaving
Like a perfect little 'B'.

CURLY:-
You can say that again;
The swine is heaving about,
Only just under control.
Sky Hunt at the elevators, thank God,
Struggling to keep her nose up
To get dynamic lift.
Clear of the town, now and into the black,
And down goes her damn nose
Once again...

The dip becomes a vicious little dive.
Full power! Full up-elevator!
I can't hold her! We're still diving!
What the hell's going on?

The rotten cover's blown in at the bow!
The for'ard bags have broken loose!
Dump all ballast!
Sky, go and warn the rest!
I'll try and turn her out of the wind.
What's that? Oh God, it's the ground....