As ancient saints and heroes turned from selfish and material concerns upon receiving a sign from God, so I took all these events as a sign I should go forth into America, to spread our message across every square mile of that great and vital nation. Within a year I would become so famous the matter of one small factory and an insignificant municipal airport would seem a petty concern indeed. I had been given the opportunity to conquer the entire New World with my genius. A strong, scientifically advanced America would be the most powerful country on Earth. Once celebrated here, I would automatically come to influence the world. Then at last Russia, my old, spiritual Russia, could be rescued from the Bolshevik scavengers. The steppe would grow green and beautiful again; the wheat-lands would bloom, the forests retain their tranquil profundity and new golden cities would arise, the cities of reborn Byzantium.
I am not so vain as to claim God Himself created the circumstances driving poor Gilpin and Roffy from Memphis, releasing me to fulfil His work through the medium of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. However there is no doubt in my mind that what originally seemed a disaster actually set me on my proper path, to use my God-given powers of prophecy in direct service of the Christian faith. As Paul the Greek was chosen to become Christ’s envoy to Rome, so might it be said I, inheritor of the Greek ideal, was to be envoy to this New Rome. Having made my decision, I was at once suffused with joy. My confusion died away. I no longer waited desperately for news of Esmé, Kolya or Mrs Cornelius. I should see them again in the fullness of time. I knew, with every atom of my being, that I had at last found my true vocation.
I departed from Memphis the next day, into the sky above the old Park Field air training base. I left sad friends and scowling critics alike, amidst the noise of a great crowd which gathered to witness The Knight Hawk slip her moorings. We would ascend into a terrible sky, in which black clouds rolled and streamed against a ground of deep, greenish blue. A storm was coming. A storm was gathering in the South. A storm was coming to sweep the whole United States. And her prophets would stand on the decks of flying cities or the platforms of gigantic airships to cry their warnings, as if from Heaven itself: beware the heretic, the infidel, the pagan! wake up, america, to the perils which face ye. wake up to the vision of the alien sword which cuts you down as you sleep; the alien voice which seduces your children; the alien creed which robs you of your religion.’ wake up, america, in the name of christ, wake up to your peril and your salvation. The Storm carries God’s prophet on noisy wings; the thunder and the lightning herald his coming. Out of the South, out of Memphis, which was once in Egypt, he shall come as Moses came to lead the children of the New World towards a glorious future, their rightful scientific inheritance. From fertile Florida to frozen Alaska, where the Tsar once raised his standard, where the two-headed eagle cast his eyes upon the land and saw at last an ally with whom to build Christendom afresh, he shall be heard. Wake up, America! The ship of the prophet is seen in the sky and his sign is a fiery cross, the cross of Kyrios the Greek. Thus did the Greek give name and substance to His knights. Kuklos: a circle. Kuklos: the Circle of the Sun. The Circle and the Cross are One! Kyrie Eleison! Christ is risen! Christ is risen!
The Knight Hawk, free of her moorings, rose steadily into the air above the field. Strong winds hurled their power against her hull. She shuddered and slewed with every blow. I gripped the side of my cockpit, watching the crowd fall away from me. The winds were so strong I feared we must crash, but Major Sinclair had handled this type of ship many times since the War; he held fast to her wheel while operating height and trim levers with graceful expertise. The Rolls Royce engine whined to full power. We began to push forward until we were directly over the great river and her anchored steamboats. Memphis, with her steel and concrete centre, her brick and wood outer zones, her bridges and her railroad tracks, gradually lost identity, meaning no more or less than a dozen other urban settlements along the riverbanks. I leaned over the lip of the cockpit, studying Major Sinclair’s techniques with the controls. The wind slapped at my face, tugged my clothes, threatened to rip helmet and goggles from my head. Our gondola was vibrating so violently I thought the rivets must soon be shaken out of her. Everything aboard not absolutely rigid or completely flexible rattled vigorously, yet Major Sinclair was plainly not in the least alarmed. To him all this agitated commotion was so familiar I doubt if he was greatly conscious of it.
Later, when he had reduced the power and there was a lull in the wind, the major shouted above the engine’s whine: ‘These smaller blimps don’t have enough power, so can’t keep their course as efficiently as the big ships. In decent weather they’re a lot easier to handle.’ The altimeter in my cockpit showed we were now a thousand feet up while my speedometer indicated forty-five knots. At first I had felt uneasy in my stomach but the sensation was forgotten as I peered through the windscreen at wide fields and strips of trees. Immediately below were the railroad tracks which, as was normal in those days of primitive instruments, Major Sinclair followed. Soon I was enjoying the spectacle of a long freight train moving like a fire-breathing snake across the brown and yellow ground. Occasionally there would be a tiny car or, more commonly, a horse-drawn buggy on a dirt road, a small farm, a collection of shacks, a mansion, still doubtless the core of some great plantation.
The sky remained lively, the sun was frequently obscured by garish, unstable cloud. Major Sinclair planned to put down in Little Rock for the night. There he could also refuel, complete his business in Arkansas, then head South East for Tuscaloosa and more benzine. From there, he said, it would almost certainly be a direct flight to Atlanta. He usually carried a rigger with him, but the man had been caught drunk by the police in Knoxville some nights ago and was in jail. (Major Sinclair no longer had any use for him. ‘He can let me down and I’ll give him a break. But I won’t let him drag the Klan under. He knew what would happen to him.’) Our job in Little Rock was chiefly to ‘show the flag’. We would advertise the newspaper by taking a few turns over the city, drop some leaflets, drive home the fact that the Klan was not the mob of disaffected farmhands and backward manual labourers people claimed. Then we would land just outside the city and take delivery of funds for the central treasury in Atlanta. Personally, I would be glad to be heading east again. At that moment we fought headwinds. If they remained constant they would help us when at last we turned towards Georgia. Major Sinclair constantly had to correct course while I, checking map and compass, acted as observer. Great stretches of land were virtually featureless to my unfamiliar eyes and I prayed I correctly identified the few rivers and small forests, the tracks and plantations which occasionally appeared below.