passed and we were nearing Wales, facts which accounted for the diagonal course of the America proceeding through the Irish sea.
Soon after the fruitless orange bombing, we saw several fishing vessels so small that we knew they could not be many miles off shore. What shore we did not know—or care.
Just as the America had loomed out of the fog, so land appeared. In the previous hours we had seen so many dark clouds which looked like land that at first we thought this new shape was simply more shadow geography. But it stayed, undissolved, and grew larger through the mist and rain. Land it was, very definitely.
Very low we skirted the cliffs against which the sea was beating, and looked down on a story-book country-side of neatly kept hedges, compact fields and roadways lined with trees.
The Friendship had to follow water, for being fitted with pontoons, we did not dare cross large areas of unfamiliar land, particularly with only a few gallons of fuel in the tanks. After some minutes of cruising along the shore, we came to what seemed a break in the channel we were following, and decided to descend near a little town. That landing, we knew, would be the end of the journey, for it would not be possible to take off again with the quantity of fuel we had left. So low it was by this time that the engines were supplied only when we were flying level.
Stultz set the Friendship down in mid-channel