for us to see Ireland. However, if we had mistaken our course and gone out of our way, then with our diminishing supply of gasoline, our situation might be serious. Minutes passed and we saw no Emerald Isle.
But suddenly out of the fog, on a patch of sea beneath us, appeared a big transatlantic vessel. Instead of its course paralleling ours, as we thought it ought to, it was going directly across our path. Its action was unpleasantly puzzling. After all, were we lost?
We circled around the vessel, hoping that the Captain would guess what we wanted and have the bearings painted on the deck for us to read. But nothing happened. Then I wrote out a request that he do so, put the note into a bag with a couple of oranges for ballast, and tried to drop it on the deck, through the hatchway in the bottom of the plane. But my amateur bombing did not work; my aim was faulty and the two oranges landed in the water some distance from the ship.
What to do? We couldn’t expend further fuel in aimless circling. If our course was really wrong, should we give up, land in the water beside the unknown vessel, and be hauled aboard in safety, or should we stick to our guns and keep going, trusting in the accuracy of our observations?
Tacitly, the crew agreed to follow through. We knew we had about two hours’ gas or a little less than that left, and it seemed sensible to use it up in an effort to complete the job.
