ERNIE stayed on a few weeks longer and then flew home
over the new four-continent Clipper route, by way of Lis-
bon, Portuguese Guinea, Brazil, Trinidad, and Puerto
Rico.

I went to New York, and was at La Guardia Field before dawn
when the Dixie Clipper put down in the Marine Basin. The flight
had taken four days, and Ernie was tired. He was carrying an in-
cendiary bomb (a dud which landed on the Air Ministry and from
which someone had removed the thermite contents) and a bag-
ful of bomb fragments. We caught a very little sleep in New
York, called on a few people, flew to Washington for a crowded
week-end, then Ernie went on to Dana. And once more he wrote
a column about his mother:

"One winter night a few years ago I was sitting in the dark
cabin of a westbound airplane high over the rolling hills of south-
ern Ohio. . . . My mother had had a second stroke, and they
said over the phone she might not live. I had taken the first plane
from Washington that went toward Indiana.

"I had flown many thousands of miles before, but never had I
flown in emergency. And for the first time I felt the full signifi-
cance of what aviation science had given me and others like me
suddenly faced with the need for desperate hurry.

"Perhaps I felt it too much, for my flight through the night

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