The Laughter of Carthage

The Knight Hawk, free of her moorings, rose steadily into the air above the field. Strong winds hurled their power against her hull. She shuddered and slewed with every blow. I gripped the side of my cockpit, watching the crowd fall away from me. The winds were so strong I feared we must crash, but Major Sinclair had handled this type of ship many times since the War; he held fast to her wheel while operating height and trim levers with graceful expertise. The Rolls Royce engine whined to full power. We began to push forward until we were directly over the great river and her anchored steamboats. Memphis, with her steel and concrete centre, her brick and wood outer zones, her bridges and her railroad tracks, gradually lost identity, meaning no more or less than a dozen other urban settlements along the riverbanks. I leaned over the lip of the cockpit, studying Major Sinclair’s techniques with the controls. The wind slapped at my face, tugged my clothes, threatened to rip helmet and goggles from my head. Our gondola was vibrating so violently I thought the rivets must soon be shaken out of her. Everything aboard not absolutely rigid or completely flexible rattled vigorously, yet Major Sinclair was plainly not in the least alarmed. To him all this agitated commotion was so familiar I doubt if he was greatly conscious of it.

Later, when he had reduced the power and there was a lull in the wind, the major shouted above the engine’s whine: ‘These smaller blimps don’t have enough power, so can’t keep their course as efficiently as the big ships. In decent weather they’re a lot easier to handle.’ The altimeter in my cockpit showed we were now a thousand feet up while my speedometer indicated forty-five knots. At first I had felt uneasy in my stomach but the sensation was forgotten as I peered through the windscreen at wide fields and strips of trees. Immediately below were the railroad tracks which, as was normal in those days of primitive instruments, Major Sinclair followed. Soon I was enjoying the spectacle of a long freight train moving like a fire-breathing snake across the brown and yellow ground. Occasionally there would be a tiny car or, more commonly, a horse-drawn buggy on a dirt road, a small farm, a collection of shacks, a mansion, still doubtless the core of some great plantation.

The sky remained lively, the sun was frequently obscured by garish, unstable cloud. Major Sinclair planned to put down in Little Rock for the night. There he could also refuel, complete his business in Arkansas, then head South East for Tuscaloosa and more benzine. From there, he said, it would almost certainly be a direct flight to Atlanta. He usually carried a rigger with him, but the man had been caught drunk by the police in Knoxville some nights ago and was in jail. (Major Sinclair no longer had any use for him. ‘He can let me down and I’ll give him a break. But I won’t let him drag the Klan under. He knew what would happen to him.’) Our job in Little Rock was chiefly to ‘show the flag’. We would advertise the newspaper by taking a few turns over the city, drop some leaflets, drive home the fact that the Klan was not the mob of disaffected farmhands and backward manual labourers people claimed. Then we would land just outside the city and take delivery of funds for the central treasury in Atlanta. Personally, I would be glad to be heading east again. At that moment we fought headwinds. If they remained constant they would help us when at last we turned towards Georgia. Major Sinclair constantly had to correct course while I, checking map and compass, acted as observer. Great stretches of land were virtually featureless to my unfamiliar eyes and I prayed I correctly identified the few rivers and small forests, the tracks and plantations which occasionally appeared below.