A SEASHORE ONE MILE UP 



wind and wave, or grown by sun and rain, and I 

 know that the first hint of man is a great gHstening 

 mass of grave-stones, in the midst of the somber 

 habitations. 



The memory of one other flight must suffice. I 

 wanted to examine some hidden, hanging valleys 

 for possible new upland beaches, so at seven one 

 glorious morning in mid-May, Major Geiger and 

 I buckled on our parachutes and climbed aboard. 

 Twice in my life I have made parachute jumps — 

 once for practice and once from necessity, and I 

 should have disliked the third time to be among 

 Haitian mountains. It is one thing to jump in 

 open, or even flat-roofed country, but with ten 

 thousand spires of pine trees on the upper slopes 

 all sticking jaggedly upward, the prospect is not 

 nice. From a height of even three miles one may 

 drift safely downward for the first 15,820 feet, 

 only to be crippled for life by falling the last 20. 



Major Geiger is said to be the best flyer in his 

 branch of the service and I believe it. Also he 

 prefers three instead of five thousand for steady 

 going, and with me, skimming has always been 

 a practice to the point of obsession. As we went 

 over the swamps and open marshy flats just beyond 

 the city I saw a dozen white egrets and a compact 

 flock of some score of sandpipers. These latter 

 would have been quite invisible had it not been 

 for their massed, composite shadow moving be- 

 neath them, as they flew over the tan-colored 

 mud flats. 



103 



