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 WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
by Rudyard Kipling
Newly annotated by David Haden, August 2022. Version 1.0
“With The Night Mail” is Rudyard Kipling’s famous
and seminal ‘hard’ science-fiction story. Over time
the story came to have the honour of opening ‘the
history of science fiction’, taking that place in the
highly influential Gollancz yellow-jacket survey
anthology One Hundred Years of Science Fiction (1969).
“Night Mail” was first published in 1905 in
McClure’s Magazine (November 1905, U.S.) and The
Windsor Magazine (December 1905, U.K.). Cover
dates, then as now, are no indication of the date of a
magazine’s actual arrival on the news-stands, and I
am uncertain which actually came first. Perhaps such
data is no longer recoverable, though I note that the
two texts are distinctly different in many points.
The U.S. story also had the sub-head “June, 2025,
A.D.” while the U.K. had “October, A.D. 2147”.
The British editor thus seems to miss a trick, but the
U.S. editor sees the trick and turns it. In the U.S. the
tale is deemed to be a feature reporter’s polished
account of his taking what was clearly implied to be
the key ‘Christmas mail journey’ back in December
2024. The U.K. editor’s dating misses this ‘seasonal’
opportunity, and the headline date merely places the
trip to Quebec at some unspecified time in the winter
of the year of 2146/47.
“With the Night Mail” was later published in New
York by Doubleday as a handsome illustrated book in
March 1909, titled With the night mail : a story of
2,000 A.D. : together with extracts from the
contemporary magazine in which it appeared. This
added new additional items such as official reports of
shipping losses, a ‘book review from the future’ as
back-story, and many ‘adverts’. All of which served to
build a larger picture of the A.B.C. world and to add
new dates
In London, also in 1909, the text was published in
the Kipling single-author collection Actions and
Reactions, there sub-headed “A Story of 2000 A.D.”
This book also had the same additional material as
the U.S. edition of 1909. Actions and Reactions was
the only fiction book taken on the first Atlantic
crossing of the famous British airship “R34” in 1919.
I have now seen all four early printed versions. No
definitive text seems possible, but in my footnotes I
note most of the textual variations that might be of
any consequence to scholars or the RPG crowd.
I regret I have not been able to see the typescript of
“Night Mail”, listed as being held by the University
of Sussex in the U.K. But this is apparently an “early
draft” in typescript(s).
 WITH THE NIGHT MAIL
A Story of 2000 A.D.1
by Rudyard Kipling
At NINE O’CLOCK2 of a gusty winter night I stood
on the lower stages of one of the G.P.O.3 outward
mail towers.4 My purpose was a run to Quebec in
“Postal Packet 162 or such other as may be
appointed”; and the Postmaster-General himself
countersigned the order. This talisman opened all
doors, even those in the despatching-caisson5 at the
foot of the tower, where they were delivering the
sorted Continental mail. The bags lay packed close
as herrings in the long grey underbodies which our
G.P.O. still calls “coaches.”6 Five such coaches were
filled as I watched, and were shot up the guides to be
locked on to their waiting packets7 three hundred feet
nearer the stars.
1 The 1905 U.S. first appearance had “June, 2025, A.D.” and
the U.K. had “October, A.D. 2147”. The dating was later
fully revised and aligned, for the expanded 1909 editions.
2 nine o’clock The first U.S. publication in 1905 has at “21
o’clock”, a 24-hour reckoning of time. The first British
publication has “At 9.30 p.m.” Modern or future readers may
not know that o’clock was shorthand for “of the clock”,
meaning a traditional circular clock face with hands.
3 G.P.O. The ‘General Post Office’, then a real British
institution and responsible for all national and international
mail, issuing of postage stamps and suchlike.
4 towers The first 1905 publication had tower, singular. The
1909 book version has towers.
5 caisson A 1906 U.S. patent described… “a caisson, which
consists in building a working-chamber without a roof,
supporting metal ribs from the walls of said chamber,
supporting a temporary floor from said ribs”. Often man-
sized and used for underwater work, since enough air can be
trapped in a weighted caisson for a session of submerged work.
6 coaches The reference could be taken as being to railway
coaches, but the word still used here seems to imply the old
‘mail-coaching’ roads of the 17th and 18th centuries.
7 packets Dirigible airships. It is implied that the Quebec run
is not the only mail-packet making a run that night.
From the despatching-caisson I was conducted by a
courteous and wonderfully learned official Mr. L.L.
Geary, Second Despatcher of the Western Route —
to the Captains’ Room (this wakes an echo of old
romance),8 where the mail captains come on for their
turn of duty. He introduces me to the captain of
“162” — Captain Purnall, and his relief, Captain
Hodgson.9 The one is small and dark; the other large
and red; but each has the brooding sheathed glance
characteristic of eagles and aeronauts. You can see it
in the pictures of our racing professionals, from L.V.
Rautsch to little Ada Warrleigh10 — that fathomless
abstraction of eyes habitually turned through naked
space.
On the notice-board in the Captains’ Room, the
pulsing arrows of some twenty indicators register,
degree by geographical degree, the progress of as
many homeward-bound packets.11 The word “Cape”
rises across the face of a dial; a gong strikes: the
South African mid-weekly mail is in at the Highgate
Receiving Towers. That is all. It reminds one
comically of the traitorous little bell which in pigeon-
fanciers’ lofts, notifies the return of a homer.12
8 romance This implies a story-type, not a love-interest. H.G.
Wells’ equally seminal The Time Machine (1895) is often termed
a ‘scientific romance’, for instance, to distinguish it from the
later ‘hard’ science-fiction which began with “Night Mail”.
9 Purnall (small and dark) is later ‘Tim’. Hodgson (large and
red, presumably red-headed) is later ‘George’.
10 Rautsch is noted in the 1909 additions as the year’s ‘big
race’ prize-winner. Ada In the earliest years of flight there
were a number of girl fliers, some in dirigibles such as the 19
year old Aida de Acosta — first female pilot in the world, in
1903. The Ada name is basically the same.
11 packets Here meaning postal packets, a name used in
maritime shipping for fast mail carriers. The visual tracking
of these is similar to radar, then still many decades away.
12 homer A homing-pigeon, used for racing and betting
purposes in the Edwardian period and greatly prized by
 “Time for us to be on the move,” says Captain
Purnall, and we are shot up by the passenger-lift to
the top of the despatch-towers. “Our coach will lock
on when it is filled and the clerks are aboard.”
“No. 162” waits for us in Slip E of the topmost
stage. The great curve of her back shines frostily
under the lights, and some minute alteration of trim
makes her rock a little in her holding-down slips.13
Captain Purnall frowns and dives inside. Hissing
softly, “162” comes to rest as level as a rule. From her
North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn bright as
diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of
14
hail, snow, and ice) to the inset of her three built
out propeller-shafts is some two hundred and forty
feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward, is
thirty-seven. Contrast this with the nine hundred by
ninety-five of any crack liner, and you will realize the
power that must drive a hull through all weathers at
more than the emergency speed of the “Cyclonic”!15
The eye detects no joint in her skin plating save the
sweeping hair-crack of the bow-rudder — Magniac’s
rudder that assured us the dominion of the unstable
air and left its inventor penniless and half-blind. It is
calculated to Castelli’s “gull-wing” curve. Raise a few
owners. To the Edwardian mind this would have continued
the previous paragraph’s theme of racing and speed.
13 trim Nautical term indicating the way a water craft sits on
the waterline, something can be adjusted by manipulating
ballast tanks, floats and sometimes the cargo or passengers.
14 bright as diamond In the 1909 notes and additions, the
reader learns that hardened glass is the preferred material for
such nose-cones.
15 “Cyclonic” In terms of formatting I have respected the
initial “.” rather than italicising all such titles, Cyclonic. The
name of the craft presumably indicates the best liner of the
era. I have also accepted throughout the comma in x,000 feet.
feet of that all but invisible plate three-eighths of an
inch and she will yaw five miles to port or starboard
ere she is under control again. Give her full helm and
she returns on her track like a whip-lash. Cant the
whole forward — a touch on the wheel will suffice —
and she sweeps at your good direction up or down.
Open the complete circle and she presents to the air a
mushroom-head that will bring her up all standing
within a half mile.
“Yes,” says Captain Hodgson, answering my
thought, “Castelli thought he’d discovered the secret
of controlling aeroplanes when he’d only found out
how to steer dirigible balloons.16 Magniac invented
his rudder to help war-boats ram each other; and war
went out of fashion and Magniac he went out of his
mind because he said he couldn’t serve his country
any more.17 I wonder if any of us ever know what
we’re really doing.”18
16 dirigible A rigid framed airship, to be distinguished from a
‘bag’ balloon and basket. In 1905 the aeroplane was still
almost unknown, and dirigibles appeared to be the clear
future of manned flight.
17 Magniac Combination of magnetic and maniac. war went
out of fashion Kipling anticipates the modern dilemma of what
to do with such men when defence is no longer an option for
their energies. The additional notes of the 1909 edition state
war became “unprofitable” in 1967, presumably due to world
trade under libertarian free-market economy. There is also the
possibility that the A.B.C. was by then powerful enough to
prevent any conflict in the name of free-trade, and had means
to deter mad dictators or petty kings who might want to
threaten trade routes. As the sequel shows, by 2065 A.D. the
A.B.C. has advanced sonic and light-based weapons that
temporarily incapacitate large crowds or armies, but this is a
world without rocketry or the computers/electronics required
to control rockets. Nor does the world have rabble-rousing
broadcast media, or constant undermining by communists
and their carping fellow-travellers. Indeed, democratic comes to
be a ‘dirty word’, as seen in the additions for the 1909 books.
18 This might be seen as a self-referential comment on
Kipling’s own story, in terms of the tale’s long-term impact.
 “If you want to see the coach locked you’d better
go aboard. It’s due now,” says Mr. Geary. I enter
through the door amidships.19 There is nothing here
for display. The inner skin of the gas-tanks comes
down to within a foot or two of my head and turns
20
over just short of the turn of the bilges. Liners and
yachts disguise their tanks with decoration, but the
G.P.O. serves them raw under a lick of grey official
paint. The inner skin shuts off fifty feet of the bow
and as much of the stern, but the bow-bulkhead21 is
recessed for the lift-shunting apparatus as the stern is
pierced for the shaft-tunnels. The engine-room lies
almost amidships. Forward of it, extending to the
turn of the bow tanks, is an aperture — a bottomless
hatch at present — into which our coach will be
22
locked. One looks down over the coamings three
hundred feet to the despatching-caisson whence
voices boom upward. The light below is obscured to
a sound of thunder, as our coach rises on its guides.
It enlarges rapidly from a postage-stamp23 to a
playing-card;24 to a punt25 and last a pontoon.26 The
19 amidships In the middle of the ship or craft.
20 bilges The lowest part of a maritime ship, often where
fugitive water and condensed moisture safety collects and
which then needs to be periodically pumped out.
21 bow / stern The forward and rear sections, respectively.
22 coaming A curved inner strut, one of a sequence similar to
the teeth of a comb. A 1902 Canadian patent for an airship
has… “An air ship comprising a buoyant vertical member
arranged between the coaming and said bracket…”
23 stamp A small piece of paper affixed by gum to a larger
paper mailing envelope, to indicate postage paid for delivery.
24 playing-card A small hand-sized durable paper card, usually
in a variegated ‘pack’ of several dozen. Various table-games
are played the cars of the ‘pack’, usually with a number of
players. Later these clerks are seen finishing their labours and
are ready to relax with a ‘game of cards’.
25 punt A type of flat and wide pleasure-boat, slow and very
stable in the water and capable of carrying around five or six
people on sedate river trips.
26 pontoon A large flat section of a temporary bridge erected
over water.
two clerks, its crew, do not even look up as it comes
into place. The Quebec letters fly under their fingers
and leap into the docketed27 racks, while both
captains and Mr. Geary satisfy themselves that the
coach is locked home. A clerk passes the way-bill
over the hatch coaming. Captain Purnall thumb-
marks and passes it to Mr. Geary. Receipt has been
given and taken. “Pleasant run,” says Mr. Geary,
and disappears through the door which a foot high
pneumatic compressor locks after him.
“A-ah!” sighs the compressor released. Our
holding-down clips part with a tang. We are clear.
Captain Hodgson opens28 the great colloid29
underbody porthole through which I watch million-
lighted London30 slide eastward as the gale gets hold
of us. The first of the low winter clouds cuts off the
well-known view and darkens Middlesex. On the
south edge of it I can see a postal packet’s light
27 docketed Labelled destination racks, perhaps with large
envelope dockets in each rack and ready to be filled with
bundles of letters.
28 opens The 1905 British version instead has… “I beg your
pardon” says Captain Hodgson, and slides back a plate discovering the
great colloid underbody porthole…”
29 colloid In the science of 1905 this word was applied to a
viscous transparent gelatine-like layer or globule. It was not
dry and crystalline, as indicated by the scientific usage of the
time in “between colloid and a crystalloid”. But other
mentions of the nature of the colloid in the story suggest that it
was intended to indicate a mechanically hardened and
transparent material akin to modern Perspex. The 1909
book’s adverts mention Xylonite, a thermoplastic celluloid
then deemed still under patent.
The addition of porthole here suggests a metal frame with
light translucent colloid being used in the place of glass. Hence
the words colloids for the airship’s large portholes, a term
encountered throughout the story. The material is probably
not as clear as glass, since a character is later described as
having to squint through it. The portholes also have shutters.
30 million-lighted London In 1909 changed to “over-lighted
London”, perhaps to align with the timeline and the growing
sensibilities about privacy and public health that were to be
elaborated by the sequel story.
ploughing through the white fleece. For an instant
she gleams like a star ere she drops toward the
Highgate Receiving Towers.31 “The Bombay Mail,”32
says Captain Hodgson, and looks at his watch.
“She’s forty minutes late.”
“What’s our level?” I ask.
“Four thousand. Aren’t you coming up on the
bridge?”
The bridge (let us ever praise the G.P.O. as a
repository of ancientest tradition!) is represented by a
view of Captain Hodgson’s legs where he stands on
the Control Platform that runs thwart-ships
overhead. The bow colloid is unshuttered and
Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is feeling for
a fair slant. The dial shows 4,300 feet. “It’s steep to-
night,” he mutters, as tier on tier of cloud drops
under. “We generally pick up an easterly draught
below three thousand at this time o’ the year. I hate
slathering through fluff.”
“So does Van Cutsem. Look at him huntin’ for a
slant!” says Captain Hodgson. A fog-light breaks
cloud a hundred fathoms below.33 The Antwerp
Night Mail34 makes her signal and rises between two
racing clouds far to port, her flanks blood-red in the
glare of Sheerness Double Light.35 The gale will
31 Highgate Receiving Towers A district of London, most likely
with the towers located on or around Hampstead Heath.
32 Mail In the 1905 British version this is simply mail.
33 fathoms A fathom is a nautical measure for six feet, thus
here it is ‘600 feet’ below them. Antwerp is in Holland.
34 Night Mail In the 1905 British version this is night mail.
35 Sheerness Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, on the south-east
coast of England. About fifty miles from London.
have us over the North Sea36 in half an hour, but
Captain Purnall lets her go composedly — nosing to
every point of the compass as she rises.
“Five thousand-six, six thousand eight hundred” —
the dip-dial reads ere we find the easterly drift,
heralded by a flurry of snow at the thousand fathom
level.37 Captain Purnall rings up the engines38 and
keys down the governor on the switch before him.
There is no sense in urging machinery when Aeolus39
himself gives you good knots for nothing. We are
away in earnest now — our nose notched home on
our chosen star. At this level the lower clouds are
laid out, all neatly combed by the dry fingers of the
East. Below that again is the strong westerly blow
through which we rose. Overhead, a film of
southerly drifting mist draws a theatrical gauze across
the firmament. The moonlight turns the lower strata
to silver without a stain except where our shadow40
under-runs us. Bristol and Cardiff Double Lights
(those statelily41 inclined beams over Severnmouth)
are dead ahead of us; for we keep the Southern
Winter Route. Coventry Central, the pivot of the
36 North Sea The 1905 British version uses the older name of
German Ocean, indicating the same sea.
37 The 1909 additions add ‘weather reports’ that indicate the
year’s weather had been seen by fliers as unusually cold. The
world is evidently a cold one — with reference to ice-packs,
glaciers etc — but the winter is about the same as 1905 or
today and I have found no internal evidence to suggest that
Kipling was trying to hint at an emerging new Ice Age.
38 rings up the engines Probably implies the use of a ringed
mechanical communication device, for precisely and quickly
signalling power needs to the men operating the Engine
Room. Fellow writer and boating expert Arthur Ransome
somewhat later has… “there was nothing for it but to ring up
the engines for full speed ahead” (The Big Six, 1940).
39 Aeolus Divine ‘keeper of winds’, for the Ancient Greeks.
40 shadow The British 1905 version has lean shadow.
41 statelily The spelling is correct. Meaning, in a stately
manner.
English system, stabs upward once in ten seconds its
spear of diamond light to the north; and a point or
two off our starboard bow The Leek, the great cloud-
breaker of Saint David’s Head, swings its
unmistakable green beam twenty-five degrees each
way.42 There must be half a mile of fluff over it in
this weather, but it does not affect The Leek.43
“Our planet’s over-lighted if anything,” says
Captain Purnall at the wheel, as Cardiff-Bristol slides
under. “I remember the old days of common white
verticals that ’ud show two or three hundred feet up
in a mist, if you knew where to look for ’em. In really
fluffy weather they might as well have been under
your hat. One could get lost coming home then, an’
have some fun. Now, it’s like driving down
Piccadilly.”44
He points to the pillars of light where the cloud-
breakers bore through the cloud-floor. We see
nothing of England’s outlines: only a white pavement
pierced in all directions by these manholes of
variously coloured fire — Holy Island’s45 white and
42 Saint David’s Head The reader is expected to know that
the location is Wales, and that the green and white leek plant
is a national emblem.
43 does not affect Although not laser-beams, Kipling appears
to have been one of the first to offer the reader a powerful
‘pulsing laser’ type beam-light in science-fiction. The sequel
also introduces the idea of man-made invisible force-fields.
44 Piccadilly A famous and fashionable busy street in central
London, akin in style to what Fifth Avenue was in New York
City. Though in some eras, such as the Edwardian and inter-
war era, London’s Piccadilly area had a somewhat more louche
reputation due to the area’s theatre-life and its hangers-on.
45 Holy Island Usually a term for Lindisfarne, in which case
this would indicate the future’s crass disregard for the sanctity
of that place. Given the direction of travel, however, this is
far more likely to be the larger isle of Anglesey (often spelled
as Angelsea) in North Wales — once a ‘Holy Island’ to the
ancient British and still sometimes referred to as such.
red — St. Bee’s interrupted white,46 and so on as far
as the eye can reach. Blessed be Sargent, Ahrens, and
the Dubois brothers, who invented the cloud-
breakers of the world whereby we travel in security! 47
“Are you going to lift for The Shamrock?” asks
Captain Hodgson. Cork Light (green, fixed)
enlarges as we rush to it.48 Captain Purnall nods.
There is heavy traffic hereabouts — the cloud-bank
beneath us is streaked with running fissures of flame
where the Atlantic boats are hurrying Londonward
just clear of the fluff. Mail-packets are supposed,
under the Conference rules,49 to have the five-
thousand-foot lanes to themselves, but the foreigner
in a hurry is apt to take liberties with English air.
“No. 162” lifts to a long-drawn wail of the breeze in
the fore-flange of the rudder and we make Valencia50
(white, green, white) at a safe 7,000 feet, dipping our
beam to an incoming Washington packet.
46 St. Bee’s St. Bee’s Lighthouse, a then-famous maritime
lighthouse of 1822. On a high promontory, it served as a
vital guide for nearly all traffic between the various ports of
Wales and the Solway Firth in Scotland.
47 travel in security Here the journalist somewhat ‘over-eggs
the pudding’ in the magazine version of his report, as a
journalist might really do at this point to please his client. The
1909 additions to the tale give a week’s sampling of ‘losses
and missing’ that suggests that even with the A.B.C. in
control there were still many mishaps in air-traffic — albeit
probably very rarely for the highly efficient passenger and
mail services. Kipling’s “Night Mail” was some thirty years
ahead of its time in depicting a world of air-traffic control
linked and operated by voice radio on tuneable frequencies.
48 Shamrock / Cork The Edwardian reader is expected to
know already that Cork is a large town in Ireland, and that the
green and ‘lucky’ Shamrock plant is a national emblem.
49 Conference Annual conference of the A.B.C., setting global
and per-route rules for transport and travel, and rules for
anything that might affect or hinder such things.
50 Valencia Today one might assume this to be the light of
the distant port in Spain. But it appears to be the point in
Ireland where the then-famous under-sea telegraph cable
reached the British Isles. Presumably every Edwardian reader
would know that this name was a remote spot in Ireland, not
a city in Spain.
 There is no cloud on the Atlantic, and faint streaks
of cream round Dingle Bay51 show where the driven
seas hammer the coast. A big S.A.T.A. liner (Societe
Anonyme des Transports Aeriens) is diving and lifting
half a mile below us in search of some break in the
solid west wind. Lower still lies a disabled Dane she
is telling the liner all about it in International.52 Our
General Communication dial has caught her talk and
begins to eavesdrop. Captain Hodgson makes a
motion to shut it off but checks himself. “Perhaps
you’d like to listen,” he says.
““Argol” of St. Thomas,” the Dane whispers.53
“Report Conference rules owners three starboard
shaft collar-bearings fused. Can make Flores as we
are, but impossible further. Shall we buy spares at
Fayal?”
The liner acknowledges and recommends inverting
the bearings. The “Argol” answers that she has
already done so without effect, and begins to relieve
her mind about cheap German enamels for collar-
bearings. The Frenchman assents cordially, cries
“Courage, mon ami,” and switches off.54
Then lights sink under the curve of the ocean.
51 Dingle Bay A lonely and romantic Irish coastline in County
Kerry, about which many songs have been sung, and a
western edge of the British Isles.
52 International Mentioned several times, this appear to be a
new world-wide quick-communications lingo, newly invented
and thus akin to our modern Esperanto.
53 whispers The 1909 book text has wimpers. Whispers is in
the original 1905 version, and makes more sense in terms of
the reporter listening to a faint radio communication. Either
word indicates that International is vocal, and not delivered in
some sort of telegraphed Morse Code. There were no radio-
telephones in 1905.
54 Courage, mon ami English: ‘Have courage, my friend’.
“That’s one of Lundt & Bleamers’ boats,” says
Captain Hodgson. “Serves ’em right for putting
German compos55 in their thrust-blocks. She won’t
be in Fayal to-night!56 By the way, wouldn’t you like
to look round the engine-room?”
I have been waiting eagerly for this invitation and I
follow Captain Hodgson from the control-platform,
stooping low to avoid the bulge of the tanks. We
know that Fleury’s gas can lift anything, as the world-
famous trials of ’89 57 showed, but its almost
indefinite powers of expansion necessitate vast tank
room. Even in this thin air the lift-shunts are busy
taking out one-third of its normal lift, and still “162”
must be checked by an occasional downdraw of the
rudder or our flight would become a climb to the
stars. Captain Purnall prefers an overlifted to an
underlifted ship; but no two captains trim ship alike.
“When I take the bridge,” says Captain Hodgson,
“you’ll see me shunt forty per cent of the lift out of
the gas and run her on the upper rudder. With a
swoop upward instead of a swoop downward, as you
say. Either way will do. It’s only habit. Watch our
dip-dial! Tim fetches her down once every thirty
knots as regularly as breathing.”
55 compos Seems to indicate composite materials, perhaps
ceramics.
56 Fayal Portuguese island of Fayal, which had a certain
reputation as a lively pleasure centre. Flores, also mentioned,
is another in the same group of islands.
57 ’89 1989. The 1905 British version has ’78. Either way
the date of the cessation of war is thus a decade or more
before the invention of Fleury’s gas. The gas was thus not
the trigger for the cessation of war, by Kipling’s timeline. A
trial is an industry term for final flight tests of an aircraft,
usually with spectators and officials present.
 So is it shown on the dip-dial. For five or six
minutes the arrow creeps from 6,700 to 7,300. There
is the faint “szgee” of the rudder, and back slides the
arrow to 6,000 on a falling slant of ten or fifteen
knots.
“In heavy weather you jockey her with the screws
as well,” says Captain Hodgson, and, unclipping the
jointed bar which divides the engine-room from the
bare deck, he leads me on to the floor. Here we find
Fleury’s Paradox of the Bulk-headed Vacuum —
which we accept now without thought — literally in
full blast. The three engines are H.T.&T. assisted-
vacuo Fleury turbines running from 3,000 to the
Limit — that is to say, up to the point when the
blades make the air “bell” — cut out a vacuum for
themselves precisely as over-driven marine propellers
used to do. “162’s” Limit is low on account of the
small size of her nine screws, which, though handier
than the old colloid Thelussons,58 “bell” sooner. The
midships engine, generally used as a reinforce, is not
running; so the port and starboard turbine vacuum-
chambers draw direct into the return-mains.
The turbines whistle reflectively. From the low-
arched expansion-tanks on either side the valves
descend pillarwise to the turbine-chests, and thence
the obedient gas whirls through the spirals of blades
with a force that would whip the teeth out of a power
saw. Behind, is its own pressure held in leash of
spurred on by the lift-shunts; before it, the vacuum
58 old colloid here we have the first inkling that the see-
through colloid could also be made extremely hard and
durable. A few lines later we get pressure-tempered colloid.
Obviously the substance is very adaptable.
where Fleury’s Ray dances in violet-green bands and
whirled turbillons of flame.59 The jointed U-tubes of
the vacuum-chamber are pressure-tempered colloid
(no glass would endure the strain for an instant) and a
junior engineer with tinted spectacles watches the
Ray intently. It is the very heart of the machine — a
mystery to this day. Even Fleury who begat it and,
unlike Magniac, died a multi-millionaire, could not
explain how the restless little imp shuddering in the
U-tube can, in the fractional fraction of a second,
strike the furious blast of gas into a chill greyish-
green liquid that drains (you can hear it trickle) from
the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes
and the mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to
its gaseous, one had almost written sagacious, state
and climbs to work afresh. Bilge-tank, upper tank,
dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main-
return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the
ordained cycle. Fleury’s Ray sees to that; and the
engineer with the tinted spectacles sees to Fleury’s
Ray. If a speck of oil, if even the natural grease of the
human finger touch the hooded terminals, Fleury’s
Ray will wink and disappear and must be laboriously
built up again. This means half a day’s work for all
hands and an expense of, one hundred and seventy-
odd pounds to the G.P.O. for radium-salts60 and
such trifles.
59 turbillons Indicates an action in a fluid that is akin to
bathwater going down a plug-hole, and forming a whirl
around a hollow funnel. The inventor name of Fleury is thus
rather fitting, indicating in French a ‘flower shape’. Note that
the violet-green bands are the same shades as the earth’s natural
aurora, which the 1909 additions to “Night Mail” incorporate
into the back-story of the A.B.C. world.
60 radium-salts Radium, a naturally radioactive material.
Kipling evidently imagines radioactivity as part of the process
 “Now look at our thrust-collars. You won’t find
much German compo there.61 Full-jewelled, you
see,” says Captain Hodgson as the engineer shunts
open the top of a cap. Our shaft-bearings are
C.M.C. (Commercial Diamond Company) stones,
ground with as much care as the lens of a telescope.
They cost £37 apiece.62 So far we have not arrived at
their term of life. These bearings came from “No.
97,” which took them over from the old “Dominion
of Light” which had them out of the wreck of the
“Perseus” aeroplane in the years when men still flew
kites over thorium engines!63
They are a shining reproof to all low-grade German
“ruby” enamels, so-called “boort”64 facings, and the
dangerous and unsatisfactory alumina compounds65
which please dividend-hunting owners and turn
skippers crazy. The rudder-gear and the gas lift-
shunt, seated side by side under the engine-room
of starting the Ray. In the Edwardian period there was not
the blind panic about radioactivity that there was after 1945,
and it was even thought healthy in small doses.
61 German The Germans are evidently a somewhat
secondary part of this A.B.C. world, with the British-based
A.B.C. dominant in trade and technology and yet also vastly
more benign than the Germans might be in the same
situation. This broadly mirrors the situation and sensibility of
the British Empire in 1905.
62 Commercial Diamond Company In the 1905 British and U.S.
versions. Later versions omit Diamond and have instead
Commercial Minerals Company. Presumably the reader was
thought to be at risk of being confused. Perhaps thinking that
the shafts were made of diamond, and then wondering how
diamonds that large could be found or made. It makes more
sense to the everyday reader that diamonds drills and lathes
were used in the shaping of some other type of hard mineral.
63 thorium This is the original wording, as in the 1909 U.S.
version. The original 1905 British version had “tin kites over
Thorium engines”. The 1909 British book version has the
rather less evocative “wooden kites over oil engines”. In modern
audiobooks I have also heard the phrase “linen kites” used.
64 boort A term used in the Dutch diamond industry “to
refer to shards of non-gem-grade diamonds”, which can then
become a specially abrasive powder.
65 alumina Aluminium oxide, a fine lubricant.
dials, are the only machines in visible motion. The
former sighs from time to time as the oil plunger rises
and falls half an inch. The latter, cased and guarded
like the U-tube aft, exhibits another Fleury Ray, but
inverted and more green than violet. Its function is
to shunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do
without watching. That is all! A tiny pump-rod
wheezing and whining to itself beside a sputtering
green lamp. A hundred and fifty feet aft down the
flat-topped tunnel of the tanks a violet light, restless
and irresolute. Between the two, three white-painted
turbine-trunks, like eel-baskets66 laid on their side,
accentuate the empty perspectives. You can hear the
trickle of the liquefied gas flowing from the vacuum
into the bilge-tanks and the soft gluck-glock of gas-
locks closing as Captain Purnall brings “162” down
by the head. The hum of the turbines and the boom
of the air on our skin is no more than a cotton-wool
wrapping to the universal stillness. And we are
running an eighteen-second mile.
I peer from the fore end of the engine-room over
the hatch-coamings into the coach. The mail-clerks
are sorting the Winnipeg, Calgary, and Medicine
Hat bags; but there is a pack of cards ready on the
table.67
Suddenly a bell thrills; the engineers run to the
turbine-valves and stand by; but the spectacled slave
of the Ray in the U-tube never lifts his head.
66 Turbine-trunks Indicates that the turbines had an outer
‘trunk’ casing, probably able to flex with the heat being
generated. Eel-baskets Stiff woven wicker baskets permeable
to a flow of water, and laid in rivers to catch some of the
numerous migrating eels.
67 Winnipeg, Calgary, and Medicine Hat Places in Canada.
He must watch where he is. We are hard-braked and
going astern; there is language from the control-
platform.
“Tim’s sparking badly about something,” says the
unruffled Captain Hodgson. “Let’s look.”
Captain Purnall is not the suave man we left half an
hour since, but the embodied authority of the G.P.O.
Ahead of us floats an ancient, aluminum-patched,
twin-screw tramp of the dingiest, with no more right
to the 5,000-foot lane than has a horse-cart to a
modern road. She carries an obsolete “barbette”
conning tower68 — a six-foot affair with railed
platform forward — and our warning beam plays on
the top of it as a policeman’s lantern flashes on the
area sneak. Like a sneak-thief, too, emerges a shock-
headed navigator in his shirt-sleeves. Captain
Purnall wrenches open the colloid to talk with him
man to man. There are times when Science does not
satisfy.
“What under the stars are you doing here, you sky-
scraping chimney-sweep?” he shouts as we two drift
side by side. “Do you know this is a Mail-lane? You
call yourself a sailor, sir? You ain’t fit to peddle toy
balloons to an Esquimaux.69 Your name and number!
Report and get down, and be —— !”
“I’ve been blown up once,” the shock-headed man
cries, hoarsely, as a dog barking. “I don’t care two
flips of a contact for anything you can do, Postey.”70
68 barbette A crown-like shaped control tower.
69 Esquimaux Old name for the Eskimo people.
70 Postey Slang for a postman, aka a mail delivery man.
“Don’t you, sir? But I’ll make you care. I’ll have
you towed stern first to Disko71 and broke up. You
can’t recover insurance if you’re broke for obstruction.
Do you understand that?”
Then the stranger bellows: “Look at my propellers!
There’s been a wulli-wa72 down below that has
knocked us into umbrella-frames! We’ve been blown
up about forty thousand feet! We’re all one
conjuror’s watch inside!73 My mate’s arm’s broke; my
engineer’s head’s cut open; my Ray went out when
the engines smashed; and … and … for pity’s sake
give me my height, Captain! We doubt we’re
dropping.”
“Six thousand eight hundred. Can you hold it?”
Captain Purnall overlooks all insults, and leans half
out of the colloid, staring and snuffing. The stranger
leaks pungently.
“We ought to blow into St. John’s with luck.74
We’re trying to plug the fore-tank now, but she’s
simply whistling it away,” her captain wails.
“She’s sinking like a log,” says Captain Purnall in
an undertone. “Call up the Banks Mark Boat,
George.” Our dip-dial shows that we, keeping abreast
71 Disko A remote icy island off Greenland, presumably by
that time become a wrecker’s island for dirigibles. Later this
island is mentioned again as part of a possible detour route.
72 wulli-wa Atmospheric effect, a whirling waterspout.
73 conjurer’s watch He alludes to a music-hall trick of the
Edwardian period. A valuable watch is borrowed from an
audience members, seemingly smashed on stage, it is feigned
that the trick has gone wrong and the watch really smashed,
but then it is returned unharmed in some amusing way.
74 St. John’s Main settlement in Newfoundland. Possibly
also the name of the ship’s kitten, as seems to be later implied
to perhaps comic effect for some.
the tramp, have dropped five hundred feet the last
few minutes.
Captain Purnall presses a switch and our signal
beam begins to swing through the night, twizzling
spokes of light across infinity.
“That’ll fetch something,” he says, while Captain
Hodgson watches the General Communicator. He
has called up the North Banks Mark Boat, a few
hundred miles west, and is reporting the case.
“I’ll stand by you,” Captain Purnall roars to the
lone figure on the conning-tower.
“Is it as bad as that?” comes the answer. “She isn’t
insured. She’s mine.”
“Might have guessed as much,” mutters Hodgson.
“Owner’s risk is the worst risk of all!”
“Can’t I fetch St. John’s — not even with this
breeze?” the voice quavers.
“Stand by to abandon ship. Haven’t you any lift in
you, fore or aft?”
“Nothing but the midship tanks, and they’re none
too tight. You see, my Ray gave out and — ” he
coughs in the reek of the escaping gas.
“You poor devil!” This does not reach our friend.
“What does the Mark Boat say, George?”
“Wants to know if there’s any danger to traffic.
Says she’s in a bit of weather herself, and can’t quit
station. I’ve turned in a General Call, so even if they
don’t see our beam some one’s bound to help — or
else we must. Shall I clear our slings? Hold on! Here
we are! A Planet liner, too! She’ll be up in a tick!”75
“Tell her to have her slings ready,” cries his brother
captain. “There won’t be much time to spare … Tie
up your mate,” he roars to the tramp.
“My mate’s all right. It’s my engineer. He’s gone
crazy.”
“Shunt the lift out of him with a spanner.76
Hurry!”
“But I can make St. John’s if you’ll stand by.”
“You’ll make the deep, wet Atlantic in twenty
minutes. You’re less than fifty-eight hundred now.
Get your papers.”
A Planet liner, east bound, heaves up in a superb
spiral and takes the air of us humming. Her
underbody colloid is open and her transporter-slings
hang down like tentacles.77 We shut off our beam as
she adjusts herself — steering to a hair — over the
tramp’s conning-tower. The mate comes up, his arm
75 The 1909 book edition of the story added reports relating
to the world of the story. These included an item that is
relevant here, giving the vessel names of the story…
CASUALTIES
Week ending Dec. 18th.
N. F. Banks — Postal Packet 162 reports Halma
freighter (Fowey—St. John’s) abandoned, leaking
after weather, 46 151’ N. 50 15’ W. Crew rescued
by Planet liner Asteroid. Watched to water and
pithed by Postal Packet, Dec. 14th.
N. F. Banks indicates the ‘Newfoundland Banks’, a vast area
of underwater sandbanks well known to shipping. “In a tick”
is a common British expression meaning a very short time.
76 shunt i.e: ‘hit him with a spanner to snap him out of it’.
77 tentacles By the 1920s and 30s, many pulp magazine
illustrations depicted airships deploying grabbing ‘tentacles’.
strapped to his side, and stumbles into the cradle. A
man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that
he must go back and build up his Ray. The mate
assures him that he will find a nice new Ray all ready
in the liner’s engine-room. The bandaged head goes
up wagging excitedly. A youth and a woman follow.
The liner cheers hollowly above us, and we see the
passengers’ faces at the saloon colloid.
“That’s a good girl.78 What’s the fool waiting for
now?” says Captain Purnall.
The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand
by and see him fetch St. John’s. He dives below and
returns — at which we little human beings in the
void cheer louder than ever — with the ship’s
kitten.79 Up fly the liner’s hissing slings; her
underbody crashes home and she hurtles away again.
The dial shows less than 3,000. The Mark Boat
signals we must attend to the derelict, now whistling
her death-song, as she falls beneath us in long sick
zigzags.
“Keep our beam on her and send out a General
Warning,” says Captain Purnall, following her down.
There is no need. Not a liner in air but knows the
meaning of that vertical beam and gives us and our
quarry a wide berth.
“But she’ll drown in the water, won’t she?” I ask.
“Not always,” is his answer. “I’ve known a derelict
78 good girl In both the 1905 and 1909 U.S. version. The
1909 British book version instead has “pretty”. But it makes
more sense that the captain simply admires her calmness.
79 kitten The tradition of “the ship’s cat” is an ancient one,
and it was often also deemed a lucky mascot by sailors. If the
kitten’s name is “St. Johns” then he has indeed “fetched” it.
up-end and sift her engines out of herself and flicker
round the Lower Lanes for three weeks on her
forward tanks only. We’ll run no risks. Pith her,
George, and look sharp. There’s weather ahead.”
Captain Hodgson opens the underbody colloid,
swings the heavy pithing-iron80 out of its rack which
in liners is generally cased as a smoking-room81
settee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch. We
hear the whir of the crescent-shaped arms opening as
they descend. The derelict’s forehead is punched in,
starred across, and rent diagonally. She falls stern
first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down
that pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes
her.
“A filthy business,” says Hodgson. “I wonder what
it must have been like in the old days?”
The thought had crossed my mind, too. What if
that wavering carcass had been filled with filled with
International-speaking men of all the
Internationalities,82 each one of them taught (that is
the horror of it!) that, after death he would very
possibly go for ever to unspeakable torment?
And scarcely a generation ago, we (one knows now
that we are only our fathers re-enlarged upon the
80 pithing iron A humane way used to slaughter cattle.
81 settee This is later expanded to “smoking-room settee”.
The hazard of fire on an airship was one that would make the
industry notorious and mark it as a ‘risk’.
82 The British Actions and Reactions story collection (only)
changes this to the less specific “the men of the old days”. The
original texts all imply that the International lingo is spoken
only by nations that believe in holy sin and the possibility of
Hell after death. It further implies that there has been a great
spread of instructed Christianity by this time.
earth),83 we, I say, ripped and rammed and pithed to Greenland. I’ll see her pithed first! We wasted half
admiration.84 an hour fussing over that dead duck down under, and
now I’m expected to go rubbin’ my back all round the
Here Tim, from the Control Platform, shouts that
Pole. What does she think a Postal packet’s made of?
we are to get into our inflators and to bring him his at
Gummed silk?86 Tell her we’re coming on straight,
once.
George.”
We hurry into the heavy rubber suits — the
George buckles him into the Frame and switches
engineers are already dressed — and inflate at the air-
on the Direct Control.87 Now under Tim’s left toe
pump taps. G.P.O. inflators are thrice as thick as a
lies the port-engine Accelerator; under his left heel
racing man’s “flickers,”85 and chafe abominably under
the Reverse, and so with the other foot. The lift-
the arm-pits. George takes the wheel until Tim has
shunt stops stand out on the rim of the steering-
blown himself up to the extreme of rotundity. If you
wheel where the fingers of his left hand can play on
kicked him off the c.p. to the deck he would bounce
them. At his right hand is the midships engine lever
back. But it is “162” that will do the kicking.
ready to be thrown into gear at a moment’s notice.
“The Mark Boat’s mad — stark ravin’ crazy,” he He leans forward in his belt, eyes glued to the colloid,

snorts, returning to command. “She says there’s a and one ear cocked toward the General
bad blow-out ahead and wants me to pull over to Communicator. Henceforth he is the strength and
direction of “162,” through whatever may befall.
83 our fathers re-enlarged It appears re-incarnation has been
scientifically proven, and then deftly fitted to prevailing The Banks Mark Boat is reeling out pages of
Christian beliefs. One assumes that Kipling felt that the
‘psychical’ research of the period might actually bear fruit of A.B.C. Directions88 to the traffic at large. We are to
such a sort. Evidently few now believe in Hell, but the
question of the eventual ascent of the soul to Heaven secure all “loose objects”; hood up our Fleury Rays;
(perhaps after many reincarnations?) is left open by Kipling.
Note that the extra material in the 1909 editions make it and “on no account to attempt to clear snow from our
quite clear that Roman Catholicism is still alive and well as a
devout faith, and its followers obedient to a still active Pope conning-towers till the weather abates.” Under-
in Rome. We must then assume that religious toleration and
respect had become an active force in this A.B.C. world. powered craft, we are told, can ascend to the limit of
Catholics and others may still hold out against the apparently
conclusive evidence for re-incarnation, but if so they are not their lift, mail-packets to look out for them
hounded or persecuted for it. Note that Catholics were still
accordingly; the lower lanes westward are pitting very
frowned on and converts sometimes ostracised by their
families in the England of 1905 (see the early biography of
J.R.R. Tolkien, as one example).
84 admiration Recall the earlier observation that “war had

gone out of fashion”. In the 1909 edition this point is

dated… “War, as a paying concern, ceased in 1967”. Though
it is not quite formally outlawed by the A.B.C., and can be
undertaken just… “so long as it does not interfere with traffic
[i.e.: free-trade and transport] and all that implies”.
85 flickers A waterproof all-in-one oil-skin suit for bodily
protection while flying. The 1905 British edition calls them
heavies. They seem akin to the heavy underwater diving-suits
86 gummed silk Small and fragile flying toys can be made, by
mounting a small shallow candle inside a frame of gummed
silk. The warmed air inside will usual cause the toy to rise.
87 Frame This appears to be a sort of ‘exo-skeleton’, as we
might now call it. Albeit one that does not allow the human
strapped inside it to then walk around.
88 Directions The 1905 British edition instead has Aerial Route

of the Edwardian period. Directions.

badly, “with frequent blow-outs, vortices, laterals,
etc.”
Still the clear dark holds up unblemished. The only
warning is the electric skin-tension (I feel as though I
were a lace-maker’s pillow)89 and an irritability which
the gibbering of the General Communicator
increases almost to hysteria.
We have made eight thousand feet since we pithed
the tramp and our turbines are giving us an honest
two hundred and ten knots.
Very far to the west an elongated blur of red, low
down, shows us the North Banks Mark Boat. There
are specks of fire round her rising and falling —
bewildered planets about an unstable sun — helpless
shipping hanging on to her light for company’s sake.
No wonder she could not quit station.
She warns us to look out for the back-wash of the
bad vortex in which (her beam shows it) she is even
now reeling.
The pits of gloom about us begin to fill with very
faintly luminous films — wreathing and uneasy
shapes. One forms itself into a globe of pale flame90
that waits shivering with eagerness till we sweep by.
It leaps monstrously across the blackness, alights on
the precise tip of our nose, pirouettes there an instant,
and swings off. Our roaring bow sinks as though that
light were lead — sinks and recovers to lurch and
89 pillow Large cushion for lace-making, holding bobbins
and treads in tension. The implication here is that static
electricity is already piercing the heavy suit, as if pins through
a cushion.
90 globe St. Elmo’s fire, natural electrical phenomena.
stumble again beneath the next blow-out. Tim’s
fingers on the lift-shunt strike chords of numbers —
1:4:7: — 2:4:6: — 7:5:3, and so on; for he is running
by his tanks only, lifting or lowering her against the
uneasy air. All three engines are at work, for the
sooner we have skated over this thin ice the better.91
Higher we dare not go. The whole upper vault is
charged with pale krypton vapours, which our skin
friction may excite to unholy manifestations.92
Between the upper and lower levels — 5,000 and
7,000, hints the Mark Boat — we may perhaps bolt
through if … Our bow clothes itself in blue flame
and falls like a sword. No human skill can keep pace
with the changing tensions. A vortex has us by the
beak and we dive down a two-thousand foot slant at
an angle (the dip-dial and my bouncing body record
it) of thirty-five. Our turbines scream shrilly; the
propellers cannot bite on the thin air; Tim shunts the
lift out of five tanks at once and by sheer weight
drives her bullet wise through the maelstrom till she
cushions with jar on an up-gust, three thousand feet
below.
“Now we’ve done it,” says George in my ear: “Our
skin-friction, that last slide, has played Old Harry93
with the tensions! Look out for laterals, Tim; she’ll
want some holding.”
91 thin ice Kipling references a common English phrase,
‘skating on thin ice’, meaning that one is in a tricky and
imminently dangerous situation of unknown depth and risk.
92 krypton An invisible noble gas. When electric current is
passed through krypton, it gives a very bright light. The name
of the gas is capitalised in some editions.
93 Old Harry Meaning “the devil”. Common and very old
slang name for the Christian devil, now no longer feared by
most because Hell has somehow been scientifically disproved.
Foreshadows the later mention of Hell’s half-hour.
 “I’ve got her,” is the answer. “Come up, old
woman.”94
She comes up nobly, but the laterals buffet her left
and right like the pinions of angry angels. She is
jolted off her course four ways at once, and cuffed
into place again, only to be swung aside and dropped
into a new chaos. We are never without a corposant
grinning on our bows or rolling head over heels from
nose to midships, and to the crackle of electricity
around and within us is added once or twice the rattle
of hail — hail that will never fall on any sea. Slow we
must or we may break our back, pitch-poling.95
“Air’s a perfectly elastic fluid,” roars George above
the tumult. “About as elastic as a head sea off the
Fastnet, ain’t it?”96
He is less than just to the good element. If one
intrudes on the Heavens when they are balancing
their volt-accounts; if one disturbs the High Gods’
market-rates97 by hurling steel hulls at ninety knots
of the hand. Now and again he shook his head to
clear the sweat trickling from his eyebrows, and it was
then that George, watching his chance, would slide
down the life-rail and swab his face quickly with a big
red handkerchief. I never imagined that a human
being could so continuously labour and so collectedly
think as did Tim through that Hell’s half-hour when
the flurry was at its worst. We were dragged hither
and yon by warm or, frozen suctions, belched up on
the tops of wulii-was, spun down by vortices and
clubbed aside by laterals under a dizzying rush of
stars in the, company of a drunken moon.
I heard the rushing click of the midship-engine-
lever sliding in and out, the low growl of the lift-
shunts, and, louder than the yelling winds without,
the scream of the bow-rudder gouging into any lull
that promised hold for an instant. At last we began
to claw up on a cant, bow-rudder and port-propeller
together; only the nicest balancing of tanks saved us
from spinning like the rifle-bullet of the old days.

across tremblingly adjusted electric tensions, one

“We’ve got to hitch to windward of that Mark
must not complain of any rudeness in the reception.
Boat somehow,” George cried.
Tim met it with an unmoved countenance, one
corner of his under lip caught up on a tooth, his eyes “There’s no windward,” I protested feebly, where I
fleeting into the blackness twenty miles ahead, and swung shackled to a stanchion. “How can there be?”
the fierce sparks flying from his knuckles at every turn
He laughed — as we pitched into a thousand foot
blow-out — that red man laughed beneath his
94 old woman The 1905 U.K. edition instead has crazy old kite.
95 pitch-poling When the speed and mass of a downward
inflated hood!
surging vessel in heavy seas causes it to slam in a way that the
bow is pitched back over the stern.
96 Fastnet The Fastnet Rock, off the south coast of Ireland.
“Look!” he said. “We must clear those refugees
Off which, a famously dangerous ‘head’ of sea.
97 market-rates In the source literature of the Edwardian
with a high lift.”
shipping trade, I find “market rates calculated per ton of
cargo carried” — being the price to the customer, calculated
after bulk discounts, warehousing costs, and other costs were
all carefully accounted for.
 The Mark Boat was below and a little to the
sou’west of us, fluctuating in the centre of her
distraught galaxy. The air was thick with moving
lights at every level. I take it most of them were
trying to lie head to wind, but, not being hydras, they
failed.98 An under-tanked Moghrabi boat99 had risen
to the limit of her lift, and, finding no improvement,
had dropped a couple of thousand. There she met a
superb wulli-wa, and was blown up spinning like a
dead leaf. Instead of shutting off she went astern
and, naturally, rebounded as from a wall almost into
the Mark Boat, whose language (our G.C. took it in)
was humanly simple.
“If they’d only ride it out quietly it ’ud be better,”
said George in a calm, while we climbed like a bat
above them all. “But some skippers will navigate
without enough lift. What does that Tad-boat think
she is doing, Tim?”
“Playin’ kiss in the ring,” was Tim’s unmoved
reply. A Trans-Asiatic Direct liner had found a
smooth and butted into it full power. But there was a
vortex at the tail of that smooth, so the T.A.D. was
flipped out like a pea from off a finger-nail, braking
madly as she fled down and all but over-ending.
“Now I hope she’s satisfied,” said Tim. “I’m glad
I’m not a Mark Boat . . . Do I want help?” The
General Communicator dial had caught his ear.100
98 hydras A mythical hag-like beast know from classical
times onward, and battled by heroes. Has a large body with
nine heads, able to turn all ways.
99 Moghrabi Probably an old spelling, indicating a Berber
craft hailing from the Maghreb desert in North Africa.
100 caught his ear The 1905 British version instead has “The
whispering G.C. dial had caught his ear.”
“George, you may tell that gentleman with my love
— love, remember, George — that I do not want
help. Who is the officious sardine-tin?”
“A Rimouski drogher101 on the look-out for a tow.”
“Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. This postal
packet isn’t being towed at present.”
“Those droghers will go anywhere on a chance of
salvage,” George explained. “We call’ em
kittiwakes.”102
A long-beaked, bright steel ninety-footer floated at
ease for one instant within hail of us, her slings coiled
ready for rescues, and a single hand in her open
tower. He was smoking. Surrendered to the
insurrection of the airs through which we tore our
way, he lay in absolute peace. I saw the smoke of his
pipe ascend untroubled ere his boat dropped, it
seemed, like a stone in a well.103
We had just cleared the Mark Boat and her
disorderly neighbours when the storm ended as
suddenly as it had begun. A shooting-star to
northward filled the sky with the green blink of a
meteorite dissipating itself in our atmosphere.
101 Rimouski. A major port several hundred miles from
Quebec. The ‘missing’ and ‘lost’ reports in the 1909 editions
of “Night Mail” indicate that such salvage operators operating
from this spot would have had a good deal of business from
the trans-Atlantic routes. A drogher was a common small
maritime vessel “employed in the lading or unlading of a
ship”, and seemingly also capable of acting as something of a
tug-boat if needed.
102 kittiwakes A large sea-bird which will often follow
storms to feed on the debris brought to the sea’s surface.
103 seemed There is a just faint possibility here that the
altitude and storm and stress combined are causing a partial
hallucination. But that is purely my speculation.
 Said George: “That may iron out all the tensions.”
Even as he spoke, the conflicting winds came to rest;
the levels filled; the laterals died out in long, easy
swells; the air-ways were smoothed before us.
In less than three minutes the covey104 round the
Mark Boat had shipped their power-lights and
whirred away upon their businesses.
“What’s happened?” I gasped. The nerve-storm
within and the volt-tingle without had passed: my
inflators weighed like lead.
“God, He knows!” said Captain George soberly
“That old shooting-star’s skin-friction has discharged
the different levels. I’ve seen it happen before.
Phew: What a relief!”
We dropped from ten to six thousand and got rid
of our clammy suits. Tim shut off and stepped out of
the Frame. The Mark Boat was coming up behind
us. He opened the colloid in that heavenly stillness
and mopped his face.
“Hello, Williams!” he cried. “A degree or two out
o’ station, ain’t you?”
“Maybe,” was the answer from the Mark Boat.
“I’ve had some company this evening.”
“So I noticed. Wasn’t that quite a little draught?”
“I warned you. Why didn’t you pull out round by
Disko? The east-bound packets have.”
104 covey Correct spelling, not a mis-spelling for ‘convoy’.
British hunting terms for a group of startled birds in flight.
“Me? Not till I’m running a Polar Consumptives’
Sanatorium105 boat. I was squinting through a colloid
before you were out of your cradle, my son.”106
“I’d be the last man to deny it,” the captain of the
Mark Boat replies softly. “The way you handled her
just now — I’m a pretty fair judge of traffic in a volt-
hurry — it was a thousand revolutions beyond
anything even I’ve ever seen.”
Tim’s back supples visibly to this oiling.107 Captain
George on the c.p. winks and points to the portrait
of a singularly attractive maiden pinned up on Tim’s
telescope bracket above the steering-wheel.108
I see. Wholly and entirely do I see!
There is some talk overhead of “coming round to
tea on Friday,” a brief report of the derelict’s fate, and
Tim volunteers as he descends: “For an A.B.C. man
young Williams is less of a high-tension fool than
some. Were you thinking of taking her on, George?
Then I’ll just have a look round that port-thrust
seems to me it’s a trifle warm — and we’ll jog
along.”109
The Mark Boat hums off joyously and hangs
herself up in her appointed eyrie. Here she will stay a
105 Sanitorium Isolation hospital for tuberculosis cases.
Tubercular people were once known as ‘consumptives’.
Sanitorium is capitalised in the first appearance. in 1905.
Hospital is also later capitalised. In the 1909 additions other
Sanatoria are mentioned, in the Sahara and the Gobi deserts.
106 squinting The colloid was perhaps not as clear as glass?
107 supples … oiling An allusion to the sort of back-massage a
man might get in the Turkish baths of a London club, in
1905.
108 maiden The 1905 British version adds, for hasty readers
who might not quite see the connection, “She is Tim’s
daughter”. I assume this was an editor’s addition.
109 jog The 1905 British version instead has fan along.
shutterless observatory; a life-boat station; a salvage
tug; a court of ultimate appeal-cum-meteorological
bureau for three hundred miles in all directions, till
Wednesday next when her relief slides across the stars
to take her buffeted place. Her black hull, double
conning-tower, and ever-ready slings represent all
that remains to the planet of that odd old word
authority.110 She is responsible only to the Aerial
Board of Control — the A.B.C. of which Tim speaks
so flippantly. But that semi-elected, semi-nominated
body of a few score of persons of both sexes,111
controls this planet.112 “Transportation is Civilisation,”
our motto runs. Theoretically, we do what we please
so long as we do not interfere with the traffic and all
it implies. Practically , the A.B.C. confirms or annuls
all international arrangements and, to judge from its
last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little
110 The 1905 British version instead has“all that remains to this
planet of effective authority”.
111 both sexes The phrase “both sexes” is used in the 1905
and 1909 versions, but not in the version extract given in the
sequel. The sequel uses the less politically blunt persons, and
heads itself with…
“The A.B.C., that semi-elected, semi-nominated
body of a few score persons, controls the Planet.
Transportation is Civilisation, our motto runs.
Theoretically we do what we please, so long as we
do not interfere with the traffic and all it implies.
Practically, the A.B.C. confirms or annuls all
international arrangements, and, to judge from its
last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little
Planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of
public administration on its shoulders.” — from
“With The Night Mail”.
112 The 1905 British version instead has “governs this planet”.
Evidently the system is essentially libertarian free-market in a
system of nations/federated-regions/city-states, with a highly
efficient and strongly meritocratic guild-like group in charge
of all matters essential for trade and travel. Not unlike the
British Empire at its height, but without the firepower.
planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of
public administration on its shoulders.113
I discuss this with Tim, sipping mate114 on the c.p.
while George fans her along over the white blur of
the Banks115 in beautiful upward curves of fifty miles
each. The dip-dial translates them on the tape in
flowing freehand.
Tim gathers up a skein of it and surveys the last few
feet, which record “162’s” path through the volt-
flurry.116
“I haven’t had a fever-chart like this to show up in
five years,” he says ruefully.
A postal packet’s dip-dial records every yard of
every run. The tapes117 then go to the A.B.C., which
collates and makes composite photographs of them
for the instruction of captains. Tim studies his
irrevocable past, shaking his head.
“Hello! Here’s a fifteen-hundred-foot drop at fifty-
five degrees! We must have been standing on our
heads then, George.”
“You don’t say so,” George answers. “I fancied I
noticed it at the time.”118
113 The 1905 British version instead has “private administration”
rather than public.
114 mate A traditional South American caffeine-rich infused
drink, similar in effect to strong coffee.
115 Banks Vast underwater sandbanks. The 1905 British
version calls them the Newfoundland Banks, a real place in the
ocean off Newfoundland. Hence, the “Banks Mark Boat”.
116 volt-flurry Voltage. A strong electrical storm.
117 tapes Kipling was the first to depict automatic real-time
data collected to tape, and also the ability to ‘re-play’ it later.
118 noticed The 1905 British edition instead has “I fancy I
noticed a duck.”
 George may not have Captain Purnall’s catlike
swiftness, but he is all an artist to the tips of the
broad fingers that play on the shunt-stops. The
delicious flight-curves come away on the tape with
never a waver. The Mark Boat’s vertical spindle of
light lies down to eastward, setting in the face of the
following stars. Westward, where no planet should
rise,119 the triple verticals of Trinity Bay (we keep still
to the Southern route)120 make a low-lifting haze.
We seem the only thing at rest under all the heavens;
floating at ease till the earth’s revolution shall turn up
our landing-towers.
And minute by minute our silent clock gives us a
sixteen-second mile.
“Some fine night,” says Tim, “we’ll be even with
that clock’s Master.”
“He’s coming now,” says George, over his
shoulder. “I’m chasing the night already.”121
The stars ahead dim no more than if a film of mist
had been drawn under unobserved, but the deep air-
boom on our skin changes to a joyful shout.
“The dawn-gust,” 122 says Tim. “It’ll go on to meet
the Sun. Look! Look! There’s the night being
119 no planet should rise All stars and planets appear to shift
slowly westward during the night. Hence one would not
expect to see any planet rising in the westward part of the
pre-dawn sky.
120 Trinity Bay The coast of Newfoundland. Site of a three-
beam cloud-breaker.
121 night already Later changed to “I’m chasing the night west”.
122 the dawn-gust This lovely phrase appears to originate in
English with Kipling. Though the post-dawn winds can be
found in prominent Victorian poetry, e.g. Tennyson’s “the
dew-impearled winds of dawn…”.
crammed back over our bow!123 Come to the after-
colloid. I’ll show you something.”124
The engine-room is hot and stuffy; the clerks in the
coach are asleep, and the Slave of the Ray is ready to
follow them. Tim slides open the aft colloid and
reveals the curve of the world — the ocean’s deepest
purple — edged with fuming and intolerable gold.
Then the Sun rises and through the colloid strikes
out our lamps. Tim scowls in his face.
“Squirrels in a cage,” he mutters. “That’s all we
are. Squirrels in a cage! He’s going twice as fast as us.
Just you wait a few years, my shining friend, and we’ll
take steps that will amaze you. We’ll Joshua you!”
Yes, that is our dream: to turn all earth into the
Vale of Ajalon at our pleasure.125 So far, we can drag
out the dawn to twice its normal length in these
latitudes. But some day — even on the Equator —
we shall hold the Sun level in his full stride.
Now we look down on a sea thronged with heavy
traffic. A big submersible breaks water suddenly.
Another and another follows with a swash and a suck
and a savage bubbling of relieved pressures. The
deep-sea freighters are rising to lung up after the long
night, and the leisurely ocean is all patterned with
peacock’s eyes of foam.
123 In 1909 this was changed to “the dark being crammed back
over our bows”.
124 something The 1905 British edition has “something pretty”.
125 Vale of Ajalon The Bible, Joshua 10:1-43. The miracle of
the sun and moon at the time of the battle in the Vale of
Ajalon. Joshua commanded: “Sun, stand thou still”.
 “We’ll lung up, too,” says Tim, and when we
return to the c.p. George shuts off, the colloids are
opened, and the fresh air sweeps her out. There is no
hurry. The old contracts (they will be revised at the
end of the year) allow twelve hours for a run which
any packet can put behind her in ten. So we
breakfast in the arms of an easterly slant which
pushes us along at a languid twenty.
To enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on a sunny
morning half a mile or so above the dappled Atlantic
cloud-belts and after a volt-flurry which has cleared
and tempered your nerves. While we discussed the
thickening traffic with the superiority that comes of
having a high level reserved to ourselves, we heard
(and I for the first time) the morning hymn on a
Hospital boat.
She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath
us and we caught the chant before she rose into the
sunlight. “Oh, ye Winds of God,” sang the unseen
voices: “bless ye the Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him
for ever!”126
We slid off our caps and joined in. When our
shadow fell across her great open platforms they
looked up and stretched out their hands neighbourly
while they sang. We could see the doctors and the
nurses and the white-button-like faces of the cot-
patients. She passed slowly beneath us, heading
northward, her hull, wet with the dews of the night,
126 Winds of God etc. Sung at Morning Prayers in the Church
of England. Formally Benedicite, Omnia Opera Domini or A Song
of Creation. Based on The Bible, Daniel, re: the miraculous
delivery of three men from a fiery furnace.
all ablaze in the sunshine. So took she the shadow of
a cloud and vanished, her song continuing. “Oh, ye
holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord! Praise
Him and magnify Him for ever.”
“She’s a public lunger or she wouldn’t have been
singing the Benedicite; and she’s a Greenlander or she
wouldn’t have snow-blinds over her colloids,” said
George at last. “She’ll be bound for Frederikshavn127
or one of the Glacier sanatoriums for a month. If she
was an accident ward she’d be hung up at the eight-
thousand-foot level. Yes — consumptives.”128
“Funny how the new things are the old thing I’ve
read in books,” Tim answered, “that savages used to
haul their sick and wounded up to the tops of hills
because microbes were fewer there. We hoist ’em in
sterilized air for a while. Same idea.129 [130 - missing section]
127 Frederikshavn A health resort in North Jutland, Denmark.
Denmark then had and still has responsibility for Greenland,
administering it as a colony or ‘district’.
128 consumptives Consumptives, as they grew frailer and
nearer death, often took on a beautiful and very white cast of
face, as if they were become somewhat ‘angelic’ or at least
‘ethereal’ in looks. The undertow of human tragedy in the
world of 2000 A.D. is that some diseases such as this are still
incurable, and even appear to be becoming more widespread.
129 Same idea The 1905 British edition has “Same thing, isn’t
it?”. See also the following footnote.
130 A whole section of dialogue is missing here, which only
appears in the original 1905 British version. It runs…
… “Same thing, isn’t it?”.
“Did you ever read about the epidemics we used
to have in the old days right on the ground ?” said
George, knocking out his pipe. “It must have been
bad. And we talked about Fresh Air, too—! Fresh
air — in a city — with horses and cows and pigs
an’ rats and people in direct contacts! I wonder we
didn’t all die twice a week. We must have been an
enamel-faced community.”
“I dunno — we died at seventy or thereabouts?
(I’ve read), and a centenarian was a curio in those
days. How much do the doctors say...”
How much do the doctors say we’ve added to the
average life of man?”
“Thirty years,” says George with a twinkle in his
eye. “Are we going to spend ’em all up here, Tim?”131
“Flap ahead, then. Flap ahead. Who’s hindering?”
the senior captain laughed, as we went in.
We held a good lift to clear the coastwise and
Continental shipping; and we had need of it.
Though our route is in no sense a populated one,
there is a steady trickle of traffic this way along. We
met Hudson Bay furriers out of the Great Preserve,132
hurrying to make their departure from Bonavista with
sable and black fox for the insatiable markets. We
over-crossed Keewatin liners, small and cramped;133
but their captains, who see no land between Trepassy
and Blanco, know what gold they bring back from
West Africa. Trans-Asiatic Directs we met, soberly
ringing the world round the Fiftieth Meridian134 at an
honest seventy knots; and white-painted Ackroyd &
Hunt fruiters135 out of the south fled beneath us, their
ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites. Their
This suppressed theme of epidemics and plague is continued
in the sequel to “Night Mail”, which is set later in the future.
131 The 1905 British version here adds here… “Our letters ‘ll
be a trifle discharged”. Discharged seems to refer to items the
postman had culpably failed to deliver on time.
132 Great Preserve Later a reference is also made to the great
Park, apparently as proper wilderness (not a human play-park
called a wilderness, as today).
133 Keewatin From the North-west Territories of Canada.
Blanco Cabo Blanco, West Africa.
134 Fiftieth Meridian Meridian in astronomy is an imaginary
circle relative to the equator of a globe. Kipling thus indicates
the one-week transit circle running at 50-degrees North,
around the top of the earth: The Lizard — Atlantic —
Newfoundland — Canada — Pacific — Russia — Mongolia
— Poland — Germany — France — English Channel.
135 fruitiers Fruit sellers. Ackroyd & Hunt appears to be
wholly invented, and is not a name since used.
market is in the North among the northern sanatoria
where you can smell their grape-fruit and bananas
across the cold snows. Argentine beef boats we
sighted too, of enormous capacity and unlovely
outline.136 They, too, feed the northern health
stations in icebound ports where submersibles dare
not rise.
Yellow-bellied ore-flats and Ungava petrol-tanks
punted down leisurely out of the north, like strings of
unfrightened wild duck. It does not pay to “fly”
minerals and oil a mile farther than is necessary; but
the risks of transhipping to submersibles in the ice
pack off Nain or Hebron137 are so great that these
heavy freighters fly down to Halifax direct, and scent
the air as they go. They are the biggest tramps aloft
except the Athabasca grain-tubs. But these last, now
that the wheat is moved, are busy, over the world’s
shoulder, timber-lifting in Siberia.
We held to the St. Lawrence138 (it is astonishing
how the old water-ways still pull us children of the
air), and followed his broad line of black between its
drifting iceblocks, all down the Park that the wisdom
of our fathers.
136 Argentine The 1905 British version instead has “Brazilian
beef-boats we signed, of enormous capacity and Teutonic outline.”
Teutonic meaning sternly Germanic in design, and implying
vast German cattle ranches in Brazil. The text’s switch to
Argentina may have something to do with the strong British
interest there. It may be rather amazing for modern readers
to learn that the basket-case nation of Argentina was once, in
Kipling’s time… “one of the world’s largest trading nations
and, according to some, the tenth most prosperous country in
the world”. (Britain and the Making of Argentina, 2012).
137 Hebron. Hebron in Canada.
138 St. Lawrence. The main river system of Canada.
 But every one knows the Quebec run.139
We dropped to the Heights Receiving Towers
twenty minutes ahead of time, and there hung at ease
till the Yokohama Intermediate Packet could pull out
and give us our proper slip.140 It was curious to watch
the action of the holding-down clips all along the
frosty river front as the boats cleared or came to rest.
A big Hamburger141 was leaving Pont Levis142 and
her crew, unshipping the platform railings, began to
sing “Elsinore” — the oldest of our chanteys.143 You
know it of course:
Mother Rugen’s tea-house on the Baltic
Forty couple waltzing on the floor!
And you can watch my Ray,
For I must go away
And dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!
Then, while they sweated home the covering-
plates:
Nor-Nor-Nor-Nor
West from Sourabaya to the Baltic —
Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw!
Mother Rugen’s tea-house on the Baltic
139 I here use the original 1905 British formatting and
lineage.
140 Yokohama Bound for a major port city in Japan.
141 Hamburger Bound for Hamburg in Germany.
142 Pont Levis The large rocky headland above Quebec.
Evidently also the site for the Heights Receiving Towers.
143 chanteys Sea-shanties, with the archaic spelling seemingly
now almost entirely used only in America and Canada, e.g.
the Folkways album Colonial & Revolutionary War Sea Songs &
Chanteys (1975).
And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore! 144
The clips parted with a gesture of indignant
dismissal, as though Quebec, glittering under her
snows, were casting out these light and unworthy
lovers. Our signal came from the Heights. Tim
turned and floated up, but surely then it was with
passionate appeal that the great tower arms flung
open — or did I think so because on the upper
staging a little hooded figure also opened her arms
wide toward her father?
*****
In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down
to the receiving-caisson; the hostlers145 displaced the
engineers at the idle turbines, and Tim, prouder of
this than all, introduced me to the maiden of the
photograph on the shelf. “And by the way,” said he
to her, stepping forth in sunshine under the hat of
civil life, “I saw young Williams in the Mark Boat.
I’ve asked him to tea on Friday.”
THE END
144 Elsinore The English approximation for the name of a
city in the east of Denmark. The location of the palace of
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and there Hamlet says he is maddened
by the north-north-west wind (Nor_Nor_Nor… ).
A number of real craft have since been named the ‘Ella
Sweyn’, but so far as I can tell Kipling appears to have
originated the name.
145 hostlers Traditional inn-keeper’s name for the stable-lads
who took care of the horses immediately after a guest’s
arrival.
The ‘gold-blocked boards of the 1909 U.S. edition, a book which newly contained many pages of additional material
such as A.B.C. reports, adverts and more.

Freely available as a good scan at: https://archive.org/details/withnightmailsto00kipl though without dustjacket.

This 2022 annotated text: my footnotes total 4,800 words.

Bonus, new illustrative artwork:

Captain George Hodgson.

“…and the Postmaster-General himself countersigned the order.”
“Blessed be Sargent, Ahrens, and the Dubois brothers, who invented the cloud-breakers of the
world whereby we travel in security!”
“Magniac’s rudder that assured us the dominion of the unstable air and left its inventor penniless
and half-blind.”