Stephen Morris (25 page)

Dennison got up stiffly after breakfast and went on deck. From the saloon came a low hum of voices; Sir David was busy with his secretary, a hard-driven bespectacled young man. Dennison spent the morning in
the deck-house, smoking and yarning with Captain Rawdon.

He asked no direct question, but he was pretty certain that he could place Rawdon now. During the war he had had several friends in the Flying Corps and, though he had taken little interest himself in aeroplanes, the name Rawdon seemed to recall memories of these men. At one time they had been enthusiastic over a machine called, if he remembered rightly, the Rawdon Rat, and later there was another one, the Rawdon Ratcatcher. It was not a very common name, and, coupled with the fact that Morris was an aeroplane pilot, seemed good evidence to Dennison. It was evident to him that they had some very secret experiment on hand; he guessed that it had to do with aeroplanes and that it was maritime. However, it was certainly no concern of his. It surprised him rather that they had taken him on board.

He went ashore with Rawdon after lunch and walked, a little painfully, to Flanagan’s yard to inspect the
Irene.
They met Flanagan and inspected the little vessel. Then, rather to his surprise, Rawdon left him to himself with the intimation that he would meet him at the jetty at four o’clock, and disappeared with Flanagan along the yard, deep in conversation. Dennison finished his examination of his vessel and walked up into the town, a little puzzled at the relations between Flanagan and Rawdon. He had had no idea that Rawdon was interested in yachts. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that the relations between them were not those of yacht owner to builder but more intimate, suggesting some closer tie between them. Besides, to the best of his knowledge, Rawdon was not a yachtsman.

He decided to leave the
Clematis
next day and to put up at a hotel till the
Irene
was ready. Now that he was able to get about, it was evident that his presence on the vessel would quickly become an embarrassment
to them; they were engaged in some matter that they wished to keep dark. It was clearly his place to leave them as soon as he could. For these reasons, and because his side was hurting him more than a little, he retired to bed after tea, and so did not see Morris on his return, about nine o’clock in the evening.

He heard the dinghy come alongside and bump gently at the ladder, and steps over his head. The door of the saloon opened and he heard Sir David’s voice outside his cabin.

‘Mr Morris? Have you had dinner?’

Morris came down the companion. ‘I had it on the train,’ he said. ‘A very comfortable journey.’

‘Right. Come in and tell us how you got on – after you have taken off your things.’

Dennison heard Morris move into his cabin and presently emerge and pass into the saloon. For a moment the door was left ajar.

‘Well,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I found out quite a lot about him – all that’s of any importance, I think. It seems he’s quite all right. I asked –’ Then the door was closed and the remainder of the sentence lost.

Dennison was immensely disgusted. Though scrupulous, he was a man of keen natural curiosity and he had been eager to hear before he left the vessel exactly what it was that they were engaged upon. He felt that this would be the last chance that he would have, and it had produced nothing that was of any interest whatsoever.

He decided to leave the vessel after breakfast next morning, and dropped off to sleep while the others still sat talking in the saloon, talking away the quiet hours of darkness.

Dennison got up for breakfast and was first into the saloon in the morning. The table was laid and the coffee steaming in the pot, sending a little column of vapour
up into a patch of sun. On deck the movements of a couple of men attracted Dennison’s attention; he glanced up through the open skylight and saw that they were taking the cover off the mainsail. He was concerned. He had planned to leave the vessel that morning and go ashore in Cowes to wait for the
Irene.
If they were making sail, he would not have an opportunity to leave them.

‘It’s their funeral,’ he thought.

His side began to pain him a little, and he moved to the settee to sit down. It was littered with loose-leaf books full of typescript, a number of loose sheets of pencilled calculations, and one or two great sheets of engineers’ blue-print, evidently cleared from the table by the steward when the time came to lay the cloth. Dennison cleared a place to sit down on, and wedged himself into a corner with a cushion, to consider the position. It would be devilish inconvenient if they were to leave Cowes that morning.

His eye fell on one of the blue-prints, open upon the settee beside him. He glanced at it curiously, bewildered by the strangeness of the white lines on the blue paper and by the wealth of minute detail. Gradually, he began to comprehend what he was looking at, and to glean some idea of the outline of the scheme. It was a picture of a flying-boat apparently furnished with wheels outside the hull, perched at one end of a long horizontal structure of steel girders. Close beneath this structure lay a long cylindrical machine, apparently something in the nature of a hydraulic or pneumatic ram.

There was a sound of voices outside the door and Rawdon entered the room, followed by Morris. The latter greeted Dennison, crossed to the settee, and began to tidy up the papers.

‘I forgot we left all this stuff out last night,’ he said. ‘Mr Evans usually tidies it up – Sir David’s secretary –
but he turned in early last night with a headache.’

‘There’s no need to put it away on my account,’ said Dennison. ‘I mean – that sort of thing is a sealed book to me.’

Morris laughed. ‘There’s nothing here that we mind you seeing,’ he said. He turned to Rawdon waving the blue-print in his hand. ‘Where do we keep the arrangement of the catapult?’

‘In the table drawer, I think,’ said Rawdon. Dennison rose to his feet as Sir David entered the room.

‘Good morning,’ said the baronet incisively. ‘A little late, I’m afraid. A good morning for a turn down to the Forts and back. A fine sailing breeze.’ He turned to Rawdon. ‘You are spending the morning ashore at the yard?’

‘I think so,’ said Rawdon. ‘They’re putting the engine in this morning – and Flanagan was worrying about his slipway, too. I’ll go ashore after breakfast, before you get under way.’

Here Dennison broke in and diffidently set out his plan to leave the vessel. He proceeded in an embarrassing silence; the suggestion that he had thought would be so welcome to them was evidently received with something approaching consternation. Presently Dennison stopped talking and looked from one to the other, utterly at a loss. Sir David stepped into the breach.

‘I shall be very disappointed if you leave us, Mr Dennison,’ he said genially. ‘As a matter of fact, I was hoping that you would take the helm this morning and wake up my crew for me. These are some of the men that I shall put in the
Chrysanthe.
Of course, we can’t do very much till we get her in commission. I thought of having a turn round the buoys, though, to try and rub some of the corners off.’

Dennison flushed with pleasure. ‘It would be a great treat to me,’ he said. ‘But I must tell you, I’ve never
handled a crew before – racing, that is, and I’ve never happened to sail a vessel with a wheel.’

‘The skipper does the hazing,’ said the baronet equably, ‘you just tell him what you want. As for the wheel, I shouldn’t think that ought to worry you very much. Really, I should be very glad if you would take her round a course this morning.’

After breakfast, Rawdon went ashore alone. He paused on the jetty and watched his boat row back to the
Clematis
, watched it hoisted on the davits and secured. Then the mainsail crept to the hounds and took shape, to the accompaniment of a slow rattle of chain from the bows. Finally she broke out a jib and bore away towards the mainland, cutting her anchor and crowding on sail as she went, white and majestic in the sunshine. Rawdon turned and made his way to the yard.

Three hours later Flanagan pointed out to Rawdon the
Clematis
returning; he left the large hangar and walked to the jetty. The vessel did not come to an anchor as he had expected, but dropped her topsail and lay to outside the Roads, lowering a dinghy. Presently it arrived at the jetty; he embarked and was rowed out to the vessel.

Morris met him at the gangway. ‘Sir David thinks of running down to the Needles this afternoon,’ he said. ‘It’s a great day for sailing.’ They dropped into a pair of basket-chairs. ‘I say, that chap Dennison’s nuts at this game.’

Rawdon glanced round the deck. ‘Where is he now?’ he asked. ‘Have you seen him yet?’

Morris shook his head. ‘Not yet. He’s in the saloon, talking to Sir David about the
Chrysanthe.
Sir David’s all over him – it was an extraordinarily good show, apparently. Even I could see he knew the job all right.’ He paused, and laughed suddenly. ‘It was the funniest thing out. When he took over, the skipper sort of stood
over him to tell him what to do. It took this chap just about five seconds to put him in his place, and then they stood together side by side. I never heard him give any orders, but now and again he’d say something confidentially to the skipper and I tell you – the skipper got those fellows moving all right. Fair made me sweat to watch ’em.’

Rawdon smiled. ‘Where did you go?’

‘Twice round some buoys, down about as far as Ryde. It was really rather odd to see him standing there sort of whispering shyly to the skipper now and then, and the men sweating blood as a result. There was that spinnaker, for instance … I couldn’t judge the whole nicety of it, of course. I noticed one or two things. Whenever we had to cross the tide between two buoys, he set a course directly we came about that looked as if it would miss the other buoy by half a mile. Well, each time I watched the compass, and I swear he never altered course a degree, but we hit the buoy to within ten yards each time. And another thing I noticed was how smoothly it all went. No fuss, no waste of time, no talking – a clean turn at each buoy and away on the new course like a knife. I’m really very glad to have seen it.’

They lunched, and after lunch got under way again. Morris and Dennison went up on deck; Sir David and Rawdon stayed in the saloon with their cigars.

Rawdon glanced at the other. ‘So he did well?’ he said.

The baronet blew a long blue cloud. ‘Very well,’ he said quietly. ‘Very well indeed. It’s not the first time that Flanagan has put me right.’

Morris and Dennison went up on deck and sat in the basket-chairs, watching the Island slip past them. Dennison was tired and willing enough to rest; the act of standing all morning had made his side ache painfully, though he had not noticed it at the time.

‘You must be an authority on this coast,’ said Morris. ‘I suppose you know pretty well every harbour and inlet in the south.’

Dennison lit a pipe. ‘I know a good many,’ he said cautiously.

‘Do you know Padstow?’

‘Not very well. I’ve been in there two or three times. But one doesn’t cruise up that coast much, you know. Padstow and Bideford are the only two possible inlets, and they’re neither of them much fun to get into except in clear weather. Bideford dries out pretty well at low water, and Padstow’s got a shocking great sandbank right across the entrance. You have to go carefully into both of them.’

‘You know the west coast of Ireland, too, don’t you?’

‘Lord, no,’ said Dennison. ‘I spent one summer holiday mucking about between Baltimore and Valentia, but that’s all.’

A gull swooped down upon the vessel, made a circuit or two, approached the stern, hovered for a moment, and dropped accurately to perch on top of the mizzen mast. Both watched it intently.

Morris laughed. ‘Slow landings,’ he said. ‘It’s having the nerves next to the muscles, I suppose. We’ll never get it quite like that.’

The helmsman waved his arm and the gull flew away. Dennison turned to Morris.

‘Your business is flying, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I remember Miss Wallace mentioned you once.’

‘That so?’ said Morris. ‘Yes, my business is flying. Though I work chiefly on design stuff now, under Captain Rawdon. I fly most of the Rawdon machines on test.’

‘One sees a lot about commercial aviation in the papers,’ said Dennison. ‘It doesn’t pay, does it?’

‘No,’ said Morris. ‘It doesn’t pay to run a regular
service – yet. That’s why it’s called commercial, of course. A pious hope.’

He tilted his chair back. ‘I can talk till tea-time on that subject, of course,’ he said. ‘Probably bore you stiff. But as for civil aviation, it’s coming, you know. It’s coming faster than you think. One never hears anything in the papers of the steady progress that is made – one only hears of the accidents. But nowadays you can fly fairly reliably twice a day to Paris or Brussels or Rotterdam at any time of year. And that’s something.’ He paused.

‘And of course, the mails … ’ he said. He paused thoughtfully and then continued, picking his words with care.

‘Communications … ’ he said. ‘It seems to me that communications are the whole keynote of present-day politics. One has means for limited rapid communication already, of course, by wireless and cable. But think what it would mean if one could carry bulky documents rapidly. Or people. Think what it would have meant if in August 1914 we could have had every Dominion Prime Minister in London within a week. By air.’