The Captain looked contrite. “It must have been Hal,” he said. “I beg your pardon. Go on with your story. Where does the poetry come in?” “I was going to tell you, before you interrupted, so rudely, that there’s somebody who’s written a poem—a lot of poetry, to music—a cantata I think they call it. It’s about Lindy’s flight, and it tells the story of the flight across the Atlantic. I guess it’s pretty thrilling. Maybe that’s the only way the story can be told—in poetry and music, because it always sounds pretty flat when you just say Lindy flew across the Atlantic in a monoplane. It needs music, with a lot of trumpets—” “Go on, go on, my lad. More words, less music.” Pat seemed to be getting impatient. The sun was pretty high over their heads now, and bees were buzzing drowsily in the tall grass all around them. Hal had stretched out on his stomach, facing the little group, which was seated now in a semi-circle. “I’ll be falling asleep if you don’t get on.” Bob laughed embarrassedly. “All right, you just stop me if I get to rambling. You keep me straight, Irish.” Captain Bill leaned back on a hummock of earth, his arms folded behind his head. “I’m so comfortable, I could listen to anything, even to Bob telling a story. Go on, Bob.” “One more crack, and you don’t hear anything,” said Bob. “Remember the rules, no interruptions from the gallery.” “We stand corrected. Go on.” Bob settled himself once again into the grass. “Well, we’ve got Lindy into the air. No sooner had he set out when people began reporting that they’d seen him. Some of them had. A lot of them were just excited individuals who’d heard a motorcycle back-firing. But somebody actually did see him flying over Rhode Island, and about two hours, nearly, after he had set out, they flashed back that he’d been seen at Halifax, Massachusetts. Then he dropped out of sight. Nobody reported seeing him. That was because he took an over-water route, and was out some distance, flying along the coast of New England. “They saw him next over Nova Scotia, running along nicely, and then Springfield, Nova Scotia saw him. It was about one o’clock, and he was going strong. But he was getting into a dangerous region, cold and foggy. They had watchers looking for him everywhere. Lindy left Nova Scotia at Cape Breton, headed for Newfoundland. It was pretty stiff going, about 200 miles without sight of land, and over a pretty treacherous sea. But at 7:15 they saw him flying low over St. John’s, in Newfoundland. They could see the number on the wings, and sent back word to the world that he had passed there. And that was the last word that anybody received that Friday.