Quetzal

Mexico City. It is just before dawn. People have gathered from the shadows of the night at Valbuena Field; more people than gathered at Roosevelt Field when Charles Augustus Lindbergh flew for Paris; more than gathered at Le Bourget, Paris, when he flew for London, via Brussels.

A little white spot dances slowly around the cabin of The Spirit of St. Louis. Col. Lindbergh is meticulously examining the ship by electric flashlight; guaranteeing to himself her fitness. In her cabin he stows unaccustomed implements, fish hooks, a cruel, keen machete.* Fish hooks for food; the knife to cut a path out of any tangled jungle into which ill luck may spill him.

Beside the shadowy Spirit bulks the heavier black shape of the great Ford-Stout monoplane in which Evangeline Lodge Lindbergh is presently to fly back to her Detroit schoolroom after the family Christmas. Mother and son stand together for a moment, bidding farewell. Col. Lindbergh shakes hands with Gen. Alvarez who brought to him the good-byes of President Plutarco Elias Calles.

"I had a pleasant time in Mexico."

The plane roars, shivers, wheels away, rises. The Mexican crowd cries: "Adios, Hermanito (Little Brother), adios."

The ship dwindles swiftly. Off between the stately peaks of Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl it is a speck against the fires of dawn.

Guatemala City. Through the streets of a 400-year-old town a gay white float is passing by, "The Spirit of St. Louis," made all in flowers in honor of the guest. The real Spirit is lodged in an open hangar guarded by barefoot Indian soldiers. In the city Col. Lindbergh is making his grave, honest speeches. He is the city's first adopted son; receiving a medal engraved with the national bird, the quetzal.

Belize. The Spirit of St. Louis hovers uncertainly over a polo field, swerves downward, barely missing a skein of telegraph wires, touches and runs almost to the field's end; The crowd cries in wonder. Col. Lindbergh has brought his plane down on a field where none thought he could dare to land. The first land plane in history has settled on the soil of British Honduras. He lunches with Governor John Burdon, eating Honduran grapefruit. Public holiday is declared. Col. Lindbergh tinkers anxiously over a broken air pipe, minor mid-air accident to the hitherto uncannily flawless mechanism of The Spirit.

San Salvador. Three cannon blasts bumped the air and the thickening crowd at the air field cheered. Col. Lindbergh was due in one hour. Late comers chugged eagerly up, arguing excitedly at tripled taxi prices; their eyes on the sky. Presently the shattering "Viva Lindbergh." The crowd charged the plane; Col. Lindbergh screamed them back. 'It took 15 minutes for his escort to push him through the crowd to the hangar where waited President Pio Romero Bosque, the Cabinet, the General Staff, diplomats.

* Large, heavy knife resembling a broadsword. Used by Spanish Americans for cutting cane, clearing paths, or for self defense.