Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Read Free Book Online Page A

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. We must do away with mystery. Men who have gone down into the pit of darkness must come up and say—there’s nothing in it! This man must enter the inmost heart of night, that clotted darkness, without even his little miner’s daw whose light falling only on a hand or wing suffices to push the unknown a shoulder’s breath away.
    Yet a silent communion, deep within them, united Rivière and his pilots in the battle. All were like shipmates, sharing a common will to victory.
    Rivière remembered other battles he had joined to conquer night. In official circles darkness was dreaded as a desert unexplored. The idea of
launching a craft at a hundred and fifty miles an hour against the storm and mists and all the solid obstacles night veils in darkness might suit the military arm; you leave on a fine night, drop bombs and return to your starting point. But regular night services were doomed to fail. “It’s a matter of life and death,” said Rivière, “for the lead we gain by day on ships and railways is lost each night.”
    Disgusted, he had heard them prate of balance sheets, insurance, and, above all, public opinion. “Public opinion!” he exclaimed. “The public does as it’s told!” But it was all waste of time, he was saying to himself. There’s something far above all that. A living thing forces its way through, makes its own laws to live and nothing can resist it. Rivière had no notion when or how commercial aviation would tackle the problem of night flying but its inevitable solution must be prepared for.
    Those green tablecloths over which he had leaned, his chin propped on his arm, well he remembered them! And his feeling of power as he heard the others’ quibbles! Futile these had seemed, doomed from the outset by the force of life. He felt the weight of energy that gathered in him. And I shall win, thought Rivière, for the weight of argument is on my side. That is the natural trend of things. They urged him to propose a Utopian scheme, devoid of every risk. “Experience will guide us to the rules,” he said. “You cannot make rules precede practical experience.”
    After a hard year’s struggles, Rivière got his way. “His faith saw him through,” said some, but
others: “No, his tenacity. Why, the fellow’s as obstinate as a bear!” But Rivière put his success down to the fact that he had lent his weight to the better cause.
    Safety first was the obsession of those early days. Planes were to leave only an hour before dawn, to land only an hour after sunset. When Rivière felt surer of his ground, then and only then did he