The Lonely Sea and the Sky (21 page)

  The boat, like a big clumsy whaler, was bearing down fast on my frail Moth. A crew was driving it with powerful sweeps of great oars, and a big man stood in the stern, with a long steering oar. 'Hey there!' I shouted. 'Stand off, you're going to ram me!'

  'All right, skipper, all right,' sang out the helmsman, who looked like Caligula, 'don't get excited, we won't hurt you.' They were very patient, considering that they must be some of the best boatmen in the world.

  I wanted to refuel quickly, to be ready for an early start next morning. Petrol had to be fetched from the other side of the island, but the trip took only about ten minutes. When the petrol arrived, the fun began. Riding the swell, the Moth had a twisting pitch, which made it impossible to stand on the engine to fill the top tank. I sat astride the narrow engine cowling, holding a four-gallon tin under one arm, and the collapsible funnel in my right hand, while I tried to fill the 20-gallon tank in the front cockpit. That funnel was a hellish instrument. As the seaplane pitched and tossed, the bottom of the funnel would fold up, the top fill, and petrol would spill on my leg. When I handled the second tin the petrol and sea water on my shoes, the floats and wings had made them all as slippery as wet ice. I slithered about with the tin in my arms, trying to get it up on to the top of the engine. I was soaked to the knees in salt water, and wet through with petrol in places below the waist. This petrol was strong stuff, because I found afterwards that it had burnt six inches of skin off my left leg.

  I had a feeling of utter futility; the sea was calm now, but God help the seaplane, and me too, if it got rough. No wonder that no one had ever attempted to make a long-distance flight alone in a seaplane before! Then, 'Bah!' I thought, feeling savage, 'don't be weak! You're just not used to it.' I decided to leave the rest of the fuelling, and fixed on the engine and cockpit covers with the aid of my torch. At least I had covered the 718 miles before sunset.

  I was invited to spend the night at Government House, which had been the Prison Governor's house when the island was a penal settlement. The walls were so thick that outside my room there was a sentry box cut out of the solid stone. It did not seem ten seconds before I was being knocked up at 4 a.m. I groaned as I dressed wearily, in sticky, cold clothes. I had some bacon and eggs, with a strong whisky and soda. Then I was asked to wait until dawn, for the administrator to arrive. He asked me to carry letters to his wife and to the Governor of New South Wales.

  We set off in the secretary's car, picking up boatmen on the way. They lived in thick-walled, squat stone cottages, which once housed prison officers; before our knocking finished echoing, a door would open, and out would come a man, rubbing his eyes with one hand, and chasing elusive buttons with the other. These men were descendants of the Bounty mutineers who had come on to Norfolk Island from Pitcairn Island sixty-six years after Christian and Co. had landed at Pitcairn.

  As soon as I got on board the seaplane, I tried out the compression by swinging the propeller. No. 4 cylinder was bad enough, but No. 3 had no compression at all. That meant that I should have to try to get off the water with a full load before starting on an eight-hour flight across the ocean with a defective motor. Possibly No. 3 would regain compression when warmed up. I finished my engine drill, checking the tappet clearances, inspecting the petrol filter, replenishing the oil, etc., then finished loading the petrol, and packed away my tools and gear. In the hope of a faint off shore breeze, I taxied out to sea, to fly back into it. The seaplane ploughed through the water and bumped, but never approached take-off speed. Then there seemed to be a sea breeze, so I tried heading out to sea. At the end of a long run, hitting a succession of larger swells, the seaplane swerved to starboard, and I felt that I was beginning to capsize. I closed the throttle, quickly, mopped the sea water off my face, and wiped my goggles clear of water and the evaporated salt. With the motor ticking over, I let the seaplane move on slowly seawards. The pounding must have been a terrific strain. Turning was oddly difficult; I thought that this was because of the lumpy sea, but really it was due to the starboard float's being half full of water, though I did not know about it at the time. I had to use bursts of motor at full throttle to turn, and then, with the floats settled in deep, the propeller time after time hit heavy spray, or nearly solid wave crests with a crack which made the seaplane quiver from end to end. It was nervy work, watching the rough water ahead, and closing the throttle every time I saw a curling crest in front of the propeller. I had to keep on wiping the spray from my goggles.

  I reached down for the thick volume of
Raper's Log Tables
on the bottom of the cockpit, and sat on the books to get a better view. The seaplane felt heavy in the water, like a log of wood. She would get up speed on the crest of a swell, and perhaps shoot off it, only to strike the rise of the next swell. There the floats ploughed in deep, and the sea­plane slowed down again. How about trying across the swell? I remembered the words of the seaplane training manual, 'A cross-wind take-off along the line of the swell is an extremely hazardous proceeding, and should not be attempted except by the most experienced sea­plane pilot, and only then in cases of emergency.'

  But I should never get off into the swell, so I headed along the line of swell, and opened the throttle. The seaplane gained more speed than before, swayed and rocked, knocking the waves. It was much harder to control, made a big jump into the air, yawed to the right, and came down slightly across its course. A bigger jump, and a worse yaw made me realise that little more would be needed to sheer off the floats, or to capsize the plane. I was now well out to sea, picking up rough water of a deep-purple blue. It was solitary out there. I had a feeling that my personality had split, and that I was watching myself futilely struggling. I was weary all through.

  After one more try, I decided to make for Duncombe Bay, 2½ miles farther on from Cascade. Off Bird Rock, between the two bays, I had to nag at the controls the whole time, to get through the cross sea safely. Suddenly I heard a loud scream behind my head, and twisted round as if I had been stabbed! This was one place where I felt sure I was alone, and I was more startled because I had never before heard a noise above that of the engine roar. It was a large bird, with spread wings, outstretched neck and pointed bill, swooping at my head. (The bird was a sheerwater, called 'mutton bird' by the islanders.) I ducked, but the bird swept on, turned, and then flew straight at the propeller. I watched anxiously, wondering if it could see the flying blades. It spun round when a few inches from them. Dozens of the birds appeared, whirling, screeching, and just missing me, while I cursed at them, knowing that the propeller would be smashed if it hit one. When at last I reached Duncombe, the water was smoother, and I decided to try once more before testing the bilges. Here the breeze was parallel with the cliffs, and to get the longest run as close under the cliffs as possible, where the water was calm, I threaded a way through craggy rocks to the far side of the bay. But these efforts to take off failed too. I switched off the motor, and wondered how I could test the bilges. I had no bilge pump, and if I removed the manholes, the floats would promptly be swamped by the waves. I dug out a rubber tube, and pushed one end down the pipe leading to the bottom of a float compartment. The other end I sucked, but there was no water in that bilge. From the fourth compartment I sucked a mouthful of water. I began sucking the water up three or four feet, and spitting it out. I was squatting in my socks, with one knee on the float, my feet awash, and waves lapping me to the waist. Now and then the floats submerged with a gurgle, and broke surface again like toy submarines, with water streaming away each side. The water was not really cold, but clammy. My mouth began to ache, my cheeks grew sore where they were drawn against my teeth, and soon my jaw muscles began to cramp. After half an hour's sucking, I reckoned that I had drawn up four gallons, and my jaws ached as if they had been hit with a pole. I no longer had the strength to spit the water out, but could only open my mouth, and let it fall out. Then my mouth jammed altogether with cramp. I could think of no other way of pumping the bilges, so replaced the cap on that bilge pipe, and left the rest unplumbed.

  I started the motor and taxied inshore to calmer water. There was a rock ahead, and I put on some engine and full rudder to avoid it. The seaplane was slow to turn. The throttle was now nearly full open, and suddenly the seaplane was nearly on top of the rock – I found myself staring down at the black stone crown of it, some six feet above water, dead ahead. The seaplane had refused to turn, and my only hope was to do something drastic. I put on full opposite rudder and maximum engine. The seaplane lurched round, heeled over, and the wing-tip dipped into white water. I dared not slow the motor, but I eased the rudder amidships, and the seaplane dragged clear.

  I thought, 'I may do it yet!' The next time I kept the seaplane on the surface, planing until I thought it was going as fast as it could, when I yanked the stick back hard, to pull her off suddenly. She jumped from the crest of the swell, and was in the air, but she had not enough speed to stay airborne, sank back and plunked into the sea. Again I tried, but this time as the seaplane hit the water, I saw a wire flicker like a rapier blade. One of the twelve inter-float bracing-wires had snapped. The question now was, Could I get back to Cascade? Each wave spread the floats apart like flat feet, and in the troubled sea off Bird Rock I was expecting them to break up every minute of the passage. I was surprised and relieved when I arrived.

The next few days were spent in worrying efforts to get the wire stay replaced, and to take off. People were very kind to me. Mr Martin, a merchant, invited me to stay with his family – it was a most friendly, hospitable house. A man named Brent, who turned out to be a crack mechanic, gave me enormous help with the plane. Martin found some wire rope to make a new stay, and Brent fixed a shackle to take it. After he had fixed the shackle he started dismantling the motor. Holding the detached cylinder head, he said, 'You're lucky, aren't you? Look at this!' The exhaust and inlet valves had been changed over, and the metal seating of the exhaust valve had begun to unscrew and was already a third of the way out. 'It's a wonder it did not come right out and jam the valve port open or shut, in which case the motor would have broken up,' he said. It looked as if reaching the island was due to fate rather than to skill on my part.

  Meanwhile I studied the floats. How had the water got in if they were watertight at Auckland? Martin helped me to fill up the eight float compartments one by one with fresh water. There was no sign of a leak – only a slight weeping at one place; but that would not have let in ten gallons in a month. Brent and I examined them carefully, and finally decided that the only possible entry was under the inspection plates screwed into the top of each compartment. Some of the screw threads were worn, and we decided that the plates must have lifted when the floats were submerged. Brent fitted larger screws and we thought the trouble was fixed. But it wasn't. The
real
trouble, which eluded all the technicians who handled and examined these floats in New Zealand and later, was that after the floats had been dropped on the deck of the cruiser, the keels had been replaced with stainless steel; and electrolytic action (which no one thought about in those days) corroded away the rivets and some of the thin duralumin skin of the float. When the floats were in the water, the thin sides were pressed away from the keel, and the water flowed in. As soon as they came out of the water, the water inside pushed the sides of the float against the keel and stopped the leak.

  Martin's stepson made me a bilge pump by reversing the valve in a bicycle pump, and he made me a new anchor in a borrowed forge. Martin collected a mail of 140 letters for me to take to Lord Howe Island and Australia.

  When all this was done I tried to take off. It was a perfect, cloudless day, but there was not the slightest breeze, and still a swell from the south-east. I tried runs away from the island and towards the swell, but it was useless. I jettisoned an hour's petrol, my rubber dinghy and everything else I could possibly do without, and then the bracing wire fitting snapped. Brent repaired it on board the seaplane. Time after time I tried to take off, each time handling the seaplane more harshly, and I was amazed that it stood up to the bashing. The bracing wire snapped again. I needed a completely new idea. I went ashore and strolled about thinking; suddenly an idea came – the seaplane must be structurally rigid without the fore and aft bracing wires; why not see if one of these would fit in place of the actual wire which had snapped? Brent returned with me to the seaplane, and the wire fitted. It was then too late to start for Lord Howe Island, so I went off with Martin for something to eat.