Since channel swimming become a practically unknown sport, after it was learned that all one needed was a heavy blanket of fog and a strong oarsman, the spotlight of publicity for not doing things has shifted to aviation. "Our Ruth", as we never call her, proved that all one needed was to come down beside a big merchantman, be picked up in the orthodox way, taken to port, and live thereafter in a Paradise of dotted lines.

So it would have been with Captain Frederick A. Giles, if he could have got his freighter. But there was none in sight and he must needs fly all the way to the California coast whence he started. At least so say the weather experts, who claim that the sun was shining calmly in the spot five hundred miles from shore where he claims that a tempest blew away all his instruments, food and signal charts. All the equipment is certainly gone, and it seems that only the word of the weather burean can keep Captain Giles from the damp quill and the two-a-day. But there will always remain a few skeptics who, keeping in mind that he admitted jettisoning 300 gallons of fuel, will class him with Cosy Dolan as the first to throw a World Series or a transoceanic flight.