The pilot tried to explain.

“I couldn’t see a thing. No doubt, further on ... perhaps ... the radio said.... But my lamp was getting weak and I couldn’t see my hands. I tried turning on my flying-light so as to spot a wing anyhow, but I saw nothing. It was like being at the bottom of a huge pit, and no getting out of it. Then my engine started a rattle.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, we had a look at it. In perfect order. But a man always thinks the engine’s rattling when he gets the wind up.”

“And who wouldn’t? The mountains were above me. When I tried to climb I got caught in heavy squalls. When one can’t see a damned thing, squalls, you know.... Instead of climbing I lost three hundred feet or more. I couldn’t even see the gyroscope or the manometers. It struck me that the engine was running badly and heating up, and the oil pressure was going down. And it was dark as a plague of Egypt. Damned glad I was to see the lights of a town again.”

“You’ve too much imagination. That’s what it is.”

The pilot left him.

Rivière sank back into the armchair and ran his fingers through his grizzled hair.

The pluckiest of my men, he thought. It was a fine thing he did that night, but I’ve stopped him from being afraid.

He felt a mood of weakness coming over him again.

To make oneself beloved one need only show pity. I show little pity, or I hide it. Sure enough it would be fine to create friendships and human kindness around me. A doctor can enjoy that in the course of his profession. But I’m the servant of events and, to make others serve them too, I’ve got to temper my men like steel. That dark necessity is with me every night when I read over the flight reports. If I am slack and let events take charge, trusting to routine, always mysteriously something seems to happen. It is as if my will alone forbade the plane in flight from breaking or the storm to hold the mail up. My power sometimes amazes me.

His thoughts flowed on.

Simple enough, perhaps. Like a gardener’s endless labor on his lawn; the mere pressure of his hand drives back into the soil the virgin forest which the earth will engender time and time again.

His thoughts turned to the pilot.

I am saving him from fear. I was not attacking him but, across him, that stubborn inertia which paralyzes men who face the unknown. If I listen and sympathize, if I take his adventure seriously, he will fancy he is returning from a land of mystery, and mystery alone is at the root of fear.