The Lonely Sea and the Sky (15 page)

  I altered course and made for the foothills, where the map showed a railway line. I was sidling or crabbing across a 50-mile wind, zigzagging to dodge the rain columns. Gradually I was forced lower. The big raindrops stung like hail. After flying over jungle for 200 miles, I came on a river with a narrow strip cleared along one bank, perhaps 100 yards wide, where a dozen native huts were squatting. They had dark thatch, and overhanging eaves. Close by, I came to a narrow cutting through the jungle, with a pipeline in the centre twisting through the forest as far as I could see. Suddenly I came on a town with a landing-ground, a railway and some roads that fixed it as Lahat. Here, the cloud came right down to the ground at the edge of hills, and I was forced to turn about and fly east to escape. Except for Lahat, during six hours' flying I had seen only one spot where I could possibly have put down the plane in an emergency.

  I had been flying seven and a quarter hours when I reached the south-east coast of Sumatra. The storm clouds were heavier, and there was one big black cloud ahead, but as it was not raining underneath, I held my course. As I got under the middle of the big cloud the bottom seemed to drop out; it was the heaviest rain I had ever known. I whirled round at once to get out, but I was still in the turn in a nearly vertical bank when visibility disappeared, and I was flying blind. As I was already accelerating in the turn, I could not regain a sense of direction or altitude. I sat tight, and checked each acceleration as smoothly as I could as soon as I identified it. If the speed increased till the struts screamed I eased up the nose. If the acceleration built up sideways I rolled to what I thought was level trim. If that put me upside down I looped. I tried not to overcorrect the control movements. I kept looking as nearly as possible in every direction; I knew that I was coming down, but I could not tell how. Suddenly, the sea appeared dead ahead – I was diving straight into it. I flattened out above the water, and tried to press on through the rain, but the visibility was so bad and the air so rough, that I turned back. I emerged abruptly from the wall of rain, flew 5 miles out to sea along the side of the storm, and got round it.

  I could now see hills on the western corner of Java, and set course straight across the sea for them. Java was entirely different; the rain was normal, and every square inch of the ground was cultivated. I could see thousands of little squares of water where the rice fields were flooded. I landed after eight hours thirty-eight minutes in the air, for a 660-mile flight. To my surprise I found that I was on a modern airport, and surrounded by a lot of handsome Dutchmen speaking perfect English.

I made a mistake here; I decided to stay for a day to buy food, and to find out about landing-grounds ahead, etc. My time from Tripoli to here was the same as Hinkler had taken from Malta. However, I was not trying to beat Hinkler now, but only to satisfy myself. The mistake I made was that I got more tired staying than I would have if I had flown on next day. After official and business calls, many talks and interviews, laying in a fresh supply of stores, and servicing my motor, I was utterly fatigued. I could not rest, the hotel seemed to be rustling and whispering with life, and the air was so wet and heavy that I expected to touch it. The city swarmed with people, and on one side of the street modern ferro-concrete buildings contrasted with hundreds of Malay women washing clothes in a dirty canal, and looking most seductive with their wet clothes clinging to their lovely bodies.

  I wanted to find out about a landing-ground in Timor, the last island before crossing the Timor Sea to Australia. A Dutch air force pilot, representing the Dutch Government, said that Koepang was not to be used. A KLM pilot whom I met said that it was excellent, and much the best airfield before crossing to Darwin. Later at Surabaya, I was told that Koepang was unusable. Farther on, at Bima, I was told that it was in first-class order, and that the other airfield I had intended to use was not usable. I was growing desperate about this when I was told that the Resident of Koepang himself was there, who settled the matter for me by saying that Koepang was bad in one place, making it slightly dangerous for landing, whereas the other airfield, Atemboea, was in excellent order. All along the route I had the same difficulty in finding out about the next airfield. Then there was difficulty about distances; no two maps of the East Indies seemed to agree. The best that I had been able to find had a scale of one inch to 64 miles. This gave the distance from Batavia to Semarang, for example, as 260 miles, whereas a map much used in Java and which I saw there gave it as 324 miles.

  One hundred and twenty miles after leaving Batavia I came to Cheribon, and there achieved what must surely be one of the slowest flights on record. I found a heavy rainstorm blocking the route ahead, so flew south for 10 miles to avoid it, only to find a bigger one ahead that stretched right to the mountains in the south. I returned to the coast and flew into the rain. It was like flying into a heavy shower­bath. I throttled back to 60mph, and water began to trickle down my back. I turned round to fly back to Cheribon, but as soon as I got outside the rain I decided to have another shot. This time I got in farther, but was down to within a few feet of the ground and it was nervy work looking out for trees. The nearer I came to the centre of the storm, the more the plane was tossed about. The water stung my forehead like hail, streamed into my eyes, down my chest and back. I cursed myself for a fool, and turned back again. 'If only I can get out of this and find a landing-ground, nothing will budge me till this storm is finished,' I told myself. I got out and headed west, but thirty seconds later decided to have another attempt. I was flying round in a circle, wondering what was the best thing to do, when I saw a three-engined Dutch mail plane emerge from the middle of the black patch ahead. He was flying a few feet above the sea near the coast. 'Well,' I thought, disregarding the fact that he would be fully equipped with blind-flying instruments, 'if he can do it, I can.'

  I thrust in again; it was more like entering a bath than a shower­bath. I was a few feet above the sea, bumped about badly, and missed the masts of a fishing-boat by inches. I turned left, and flew 5 miles out to sea. I could see nothing there, except a small patch of water a few feet vertically beneath the plane, and this was hard to distinguish, because both sea and rain were the same dirty colour. I made for land, and the bumps began again.

  I plugged along till a sudden bump stalled the plane nearly dead, causing the slots to fly open with a loud clang. The plane dropped, and the stalled ailerons and elevators made the control stick feel like a dead man's hand. The plane did not pick up flying speed until it cushioned, just above the surface of the water. I breathed again, but decided that I had had enough fooling. I turned about to make for the first landing-ground I could find.

  It seemed easy flying back through the storm; which shows the difference between the first and second times of attempting anything. I passed between the masts of a junk drawn up on the beach and another in the water fifty yards away. Half the Malays on the beach threw themselves on the sand, and the rest bolted up the beach. This cheered me up. I soon came to the emergency landing-ground I was looking for, circled it, and touched down. The ground felt soft, so I gave the motor a burst at full throttle to keep the tail down with the slipstream. The landing finished well.

  The glued fabric surface of the propeller was worn right through in some places, and the inside of the propeller blades had marks as if they had struck a cloud of stones. I wrung the water out of my flying­helmet, and made a hole to let the water out of the canvas pocket in the cockpit where I kept my papers and maps. A stream of Malays, like a column of ants, was winding towards me from the trees. Most wore coolie hats; some held banana leaves over their heads. I had a few sentences in Malay written down and tried these out. 'Saja minta satu orang djaga,' etc. In a few minutes I had engaged a watchman, sent for a policeman, sent a telegram, and successfully made signs that I wanted to sleep. I set off with the policeman. I walked round the first few pools of water on the airfield, but soon got tired of that, and waded through them. We came to a big house, which seemed to be the policeman's. We entered a large room floored with hard mud, with a pigeon in a cage hung from one corner, a parrot in another corner, and two other birds I did not know. There was a big cane chair, and within thirty seconds I was asleep. An hour later I woke up, to find the room empty except for a very old man who was expert at spitting. I sensed a lot of life and activity behind a bamboo curtain. I asked for something to eat, and was given a bowl of rice, and some incredibly tough curried chicken for which I was grateful. The weather was clearing up, so I made a sign that I wanted to fly off again.

  After I had presented some guilders, the policeman marshalled about 400 Malays clear of a take-off lane, and I took off. It had taken me an hour and twenty-two minutes to cover the 57 miles between Cheribon and this place, Pemalang, which must surely be a record in slow flying.

  I landed at Surabaya after six and a half hours in the air for a flight of only 420 miles for the day. The
Gipsy Moth's
wheels bogged down on the airfield, and she refused to move with full throttle; it required all hands from the hangar to pull her in. The morning's antics from the monsoon upset my plans. I did not reach Surabaya until 3.35 p.m. when it was too late to fly the next leg of 300 miles before dark. That cost me an extra day.

  Next morning I flew 150 miles before I began dodging rainstorms. I think that if I had started earlier, perhaps before dawn, and landed in the middle of the day when these rainstorms were at their worst I should have been better off. And, of course, if I had flown over the route before, it would have all seemed rnuch easier; but then the great romance of the unknown would have gone.

  I spent the night at Bima, in Sumbawa, after a 450-mile flight, taking six hours. The men of Bima mostly carried knives in their belts, and looked fighters, quite different from the Javanese. I made a social blunder by asking a big fat man in the crowd to help me with my fuelling, and the Dutch Resident told me that he was the Vizir of the Sultan of Sumbawa. I think he got square with me next morning by telling me that twenty warriors had guarded the
Gipsy Moth
all night, and that payment was wanted for them. The Resident fixed me up with a room in the Government resthouse, where I slept on a hard mattress under mosquito netting. In the evening I sat on the veranda, watching the house lizards, tjic-tjacs, stalking and chasing moths and large flying beetles on the ceiling. The lizards seemed a sporting lot, and willing to tackle beetles as large as themselves.

  When I took off again, I scanned the slopes of the next island, Komodo, for sight of one of the giant lizards, or dragons, for which it is famous, but I had no luck. On the south coast of Flores I flew over a perfect miniature volcano, only 200 feet high, with a smouldering cone. From there I had a 44-mile water hop to Timor Island. The landing-ground was in a valley, running parallel with the coast, and it was like flying in the heat of an open furnace. I landed there after a 500-mile flight, which had taken me six and three-quarter hours. It was only 1 o'clock, and I had some lunch with the officer commanding a small squad of soldiers. He left me to sleep till 4 o'clock, when he had to call me three times before I stumbled off the bed, still half asleep. He drove me to the airfield and I started work on the motor. I wanted to check it thoroughly before the big water­crossing. The officer lent me some petrol lamps, but they attracted thousands of flying ants and bugs, which kept on walking over my eyes and into my ears, where it was difficult to dislodge them. I had taken the intake manifold off because of a crack in it, but found that the crack was only superficial. I finished the last nut five hours after I had started: I blew up my rubber boat, to make sure that it had no leaks, and arranged it so that I only had to pull a rope to yank it out of the front cockpit. I secured the mast, sail and oars to an inner tube, so that they would float if the plane sank. I got to bed at midnight, and slept well, except for the same nightmare that I had had at Tripoli. I recorded this at the time in these words:

  'I dreamed that I was flying, when suddenly my vision went completely, and I just had to sit tight until the plane crashed.' I left Atemboea at 7.30 a.m. and flew along the coast for 70 miles before heading out to sea. I was out of sight of land in twelve minutes. I was excited, and elated to be crossing the famous Timor Sea. I had discussed many times the question of coming down in the sea and I was determined that if it did happen, I would glide down as usual, and kick the plane across its path at the last moment to pancake sideways. I aimed for Bathurst Island, north of Darwin, the nearest land to my take-off point. This reduced the water crossing to 320 miles.