The Lonely Sea and the Sky (34 page)

  In due course a sampan arrived, sculled by a small Japanese in a sailor suit, with a whistle cord and a round unpeaked cap with ribbons streaming from the back. He manoeuvred his flat-bottomed sampan with great skill, using a scull like Father Time's scythe attached to a blade at the stern. When the Japanese came alongside I gave them my journey logbook, sealed camera, double-barrelled pistol and ammunition. 'My seaplane has a hole in the bottom, you understand, and is sinking, sinking. I must get it ashore at once.' There was another long discussion, and then the interpreter said, 'They will inspect your baggage now.'

  'They can inspect my baggage when my seaplane is on shore and not before,' I said desperately. 'I tell you my seaplane is sinking.' After another long conference, they threw me a line from the launch, and towed the seaplane to a mooring above the pier. A worse situation could not be imagined; the current was so strong that the launch could barely make headway against it, and any mistake would mean my plane's being swept right into the piles of the pier. When they reached the mooring the float upon which I was standing went under water. I jumped across to the other float, and shouted to the launch to tow the seaplane to the beach immediately. They could not, or would not, understand; I could not land until the quarantine officer had been on board. A fourth launch arrived, with another Englishman on board. He was McKay, the Shell representative. When I told him what was wrong he understood at once, and tried to explain to the Japanese. Ten of them talked together very rapidly. At last I burst out to the Shell man, 'For God's sake, throw me a line yourself, man, and tow me in. I tell you the seaplane is going to sink at any moment.' He looked scared, 'No, no. I couldn't do that.' However, he redoubled his efforts with the Japanese, and his soft, almost timid, manner with them, was successful; the launch towed me in close to the mud shore, a line was thrown and the seaplane secured in shallow water. McKay undertook to have the seaplane carried ashore on bamboo poles. He gave me complete confidence, and he put the operation in hand while I surrendered to the Japanese officials. First, I was shepherded through the crowd to the Customs House, to a long bare wooden table with wine glasses and a bottle of port on it. Standing round, they drank a toast to the foreign aviator. Then they got down to the real business of the meeting. Why had I not alighted at Karenko where I was supposed to? What route had I followed from Aparri? What was the horsepower of my engine? They surrounded me, hissing these questions and many others at the interpreter, not just two or three times each question, but dozens of times. One of the most repeated was, 'At what hour had I left Aparri?' I could seldom remember details about time immediately after a flight, and said, 'Five or six hours ago.' This really stirred them up.

  'The telegram said you left Aparri yesterday.'

  'I can't help what the telegram says.'

  'You flew over Basco at 11.05 today, the telegram says. Is that so?'

  'I dare say.'

  'You left Aparri yesterday; you flew over Basco today. Where were you in the interval?'

  'At Aparri, I suppose, since I left Aparri today, and not yesterday.'

  'At what hour did you leave Aparri?'

  They asked it twenty times, with a different selection of silly questions in between. It seemed incredibly stupid, because in the first place, had I spent the night photographing fortifications in south Formosa, the last thing I should do would be to lie about the time I left Aparri, which could easily be checked. Secondly, if there were anything worth spying on, surely there would have been a guard there capable of detecting the presence of an aeroplane.

  Then they started on my route through the mountains. I became uneasy. Had they been leading up to this all the time? I said I had flown as straight as I could across the island as ordered, and I stuck to this right through. I had resented their having pushed me into the mountains so unnecessarily, and as the questioning went on for hour after hour, and seemed to be developing into a 'third degree' interrogation, I hardened up inside. In fact, the very minute of my leaving Aparri was marked on the chart and staring me in the eye, but by then I would not say it, and I stuck to my 'five or six hours'. I felt that they were repeating this same question endlessly, to make me break down and confess that I had been spying. A sort of cold rage took me, childish, perhaps, but I had had a gruelling day, apart from the 500-mile flight. Next time they asked me what the horsepower of my motor was, after I had been repeating 100 h.p. until I was sick of it, I replied '20 h.p.' for a change. Then I said 25, and every time they asked me I added 5 horsepower, curious to see how high I would get. Actually, the horsepower varied with the revolutions, minimum 20 and maximum 100. Presently I began pulling their legs and making poor jokes. In the end they handed me over to Ovens, who took me home; he told me I had done a very risky thing in making fun of the Japanese, but they had made me bloody minded.

  McKay came up to tell me about the float. The drain plug had been fastened to a plate. Screws used to fix the plate to the hull had not drawn tight, and when the float was in the water, the water pressed the plate away from the hull and rushed in. As soon as the float came out of the water, the water inside pressed the plate against the hull and stopped the leak. The mystery was solved. I asked McKay if he could get it mended for me, and he said he could, but that he would have to use steel, as he had no duralumin. I asked him to go ahead, and said that I would have to leave tomorrow because of the typhoon. Ovens said he knew nothing of any typhoon and went off for a forecast. It said, 'No low pressure in the neighbourhood of Formosa or Shanghai. Fine weather expected between them.'

  'That typhoon,' I thought, 'must be a myth. How could Father Selga have known about it in July without the Japanese knowing anything about it on 5 August?' So I decided to stay at Tamsui another day.

In the morning Ovens motored me to Taihoku where I had been 'commanded' to meet the Governor-General. At his palace we were ushered into a high room with a row of pillars down the middle, the walls hung with long black tapestries. The Governor sat at a square table, and watched me for a long time without the least sign of any feeling. After a long silence he spoke without taking his eyes off me, and the interpreter said, 'His Excellency says that he is pleased you reached his country of Formosa with success.' I also waited before answering, 'You will please thank His Excellency for the honour he does me?'

  His Excellency grunted and there was another long silence before he spoke again. In this manner the conversation had not got very far at the end of a quarter of an hour, but my opinion of the Governor changed. Although both his eyes and features remained completely blank of expression I seemed to become aware of his thoughts. I do not think they were complimentary, though I believe he had a feeling of bored weariness with his office and faintly envied me my bit of fun and freedom. At the end, there was a bad moment when the interpreter said, 'His Excellency desires to know the horsepower of your motor,' and I only just managed to suppress a laugh before I answered, 'You will tell His Excellency that the horsepower of my motor is 80' – that being the figure I had now reached with five horsepower rises. His Excellency clapped his hands and a bottle of sweet champagne suddenly arrived, of which a single glass was formally drunk.

  Ovens then took me to the Chinese Consul to whom the British Ambassador at Peking had cabled his permission for me to visit China. The amiable Chinese asked me where I proposed touching the Chinese coast, and when I replied 'Funingfu' he warned me not on any account to have a forced landing or alight anywhere along the section of coast north of it. It was infested with pirates, and every man there was apparently a potential pirate of a valuable-looking seaplane with only one man to guard it.

  The rest of that day was a holiday. I discovered at last why my finger had been hurting and irritating so much; the stitched up flesh had healed but a piece of fingernail had grown inside it, and could not get out. I cut open a gap for it with a razor blade. Next morning Ovens hummed and hawed about the work he ought to do and said that he could not come down to the seaplane. In the end I persuaded him to come. The seaplane still rested on empty petrol cases in the mud, and after I had refuelled and stowed my gear, police officials ceremoniously returned me my camera and my thirteen cartridges, solemnly counting them into my hand one by one. I was then led to a kitchen table planted in the mud on which stood the same twelve wine glasses as before (Ovens told me that they were his, borrowed for the occasion). Across the wide muddy river the sunburnt mountainside rose abruptly; the river flowed a few yards from our feet. Iron stakes had been driven into the mud with a dirty rope stretched between them to keep a square patch select, and here we stood round the table in the hazy sunlight, drinking port wine. I felt friendly towards my inquisitors. A squad of coolies lifted the seaplane by means of bamboo poles under the floats. The foreman snatched off one coolie's conical straw hat which threatened to puncture a wing, and then, sounding their cries like a lot of human swans, the coolies sloshed over the mud and set down their load in the water. They were a good-humoured, easy-going, practical lot, I think Formosans and not Japanese. Several were holding the floats when I started the engine, and the slipstream catching one of the enormous round hats sent it bowling over the mud, which drew a roar of applause from the onlookers. The owner of the hat was laughing as much as anybody. The current was running fast the same way as the breeze, and I could not get off. One of the launches came up and an official, picking up a rope, offered me a tow to the sea. I would have preferred to drift down, but could not refuse his kindly offer. A mile short of the bar we entered a small tide rip, where the broken water was ideal. I shouted and cast off the rope, and at that moment there came a waft of sea breeze. I started the engine, jumped in, and opened right up at one stroke. The
Gipsy Moth
rose from the waves easily, and I swept round in a wide arc and flew up-river. I saluted the Ovenses waving on their flat roof, then dived to the water and saluted each launch as I flashed past. I could see belches of white steam at the sirens of the ships and steam launches as I passed, but could hear no noise above the roar of my own engine.

  That day the sun was behind me; I had overtaken it, so to speak, and I was leaving it to the south. I was soon out of sight of land, and the sea, which used to give me a cold feeling, was now like an old friend, restful and soothing. A hundred miles from Formosa I flew over the first Chinese territory, a small island 45 miles from the mainland called Tung Yung. I shot past the lighthouse, where five Chinese stood intent on something in a small walled-in yard at the foot of the lamp buildings. As I drew alongside they broke out a red and black Chinese flag at the foot of the mast. The sight of that bunting warmed me, and I regretted having no flag of my own to return their salute. The best I could do was to dip my wings.

  Soon I was over the mainland of China. The moist hot air was oppressive, and I was so drowsy that my head nodded. I started looking for a suitable bay on which to come down. One after another I rejected Funingfu, Tehinkoen, Namkwan Harbour, and Tanue Bay ­ they were all crowded with junks and sampans with black or brown sails, or white sails with black battens like ribs. The whole coast was infested with junks, and it seemed incredible that a single fish could survive so many fishermen. By the time I reached Lotsing Bay I decided to come down, junks or no junks. I chose the southern end, where I could see only one junk for several miles, and I decided that if I kept an eye on that one it should be at least an hour before any of the others could reach me. I shut off, twisted down steeply, skimmed the water to inspect it closely for fishing stakes or flotsam, circled and bounced before settling. That bump humbled my pride in my flying skill, but on coming to rest I found that I had bumped a smooth swell which was invisible from above. Every junk in the bay immediately set sail for the seaplane – except the one close behind me to the south, which continued on its course. I lit a pipe and stood on a float, idly watching the water lap at my feet. It was soothing to be close to the water in a heat so sweltering. Suddenly I spotted a sampan with five or six Chinese on board within 100 yards of the seaplane's tail. Nothing could have cured my drowsiness more effectively. That sampan must have been quietly dropped off the far side of the junk as it sailed past. I threw my coat into the cockpit, jumped across to the other float, switched on, and began swinging the propeller, wondering if the motor would jib. At the fourth swing it started, and I taxied off seawards. As I rose from the bay I roared with laughter, the slipstream catching me in my teeth. The heat was nearly overpowering, and when I spotted a black rain squall to the east I changed course and flew into it. At first it was delicious, but within a few seconds the sea was beaten flat and covered with a layer of spray indistinguishable from the grey downpour. I turned round and bolted back the way I had come. For 10 or 15 miles I had to fly over the sea, dodging small islands and junks that suddenly loomed up in the murk. After the squall I flew over a hilly coast with a solid little village on every other hilltop, looking like a grey roofed nest of pirates. All the hills were spotted with tombs like cathedral doors fallen flat in stone-faced niches in the hillsides. When I reached the city of Shanghai I flew down the Wusung River beside a cliff of solid buildings. A strong wind blowing across river was broken up by the mass of buildings, and the heat rising from the streets. The seaplane, slapped and buffeted by the gusts, rocked and lurched and bumped down the river, crabbing along half sideways in the cross wind. This drift did give me an unobstructed view to one side of the engine, of the fairway and the ship masts in it. The river was swarming with junks and sampans, but seemed even more crowded with steamers and warships, mostly gunboats, strung together stem to stern between great iron buoys. The neat little warships in grey or pale blue looked tiny beside the steamers. I bumped along 10 miles to Wusung at the mouth of the river, where the cross wind was strong enough to raise a sea. We were tossed about like a leaf as I circled the mouth of the river looking for a flagged buoy. I could not see one, and flew back to the first bend, where a fleet of junks was anchored; still I could see nothing. Then I noticed a dribble of steam at the siren of a launch, and I dived towards it, and saw someone wave. I circled again, and with a firm hand put the seaplane down nearby. Drifting rapidly, I was some distance downwind of the launch before I got my anchor down. The launch, or small tug, came at me. Shouting as hard as I could I persuaded them to hold off, and to send me a sampan. 'He wants a sampan,' someone said in an ordinary voice, which I could hear quite plainly coming downwind. They drew off, and beckoned a big sampan to them. It was a wooden antique, like the hull of Noah's Ark with a high raised platform at the square stern. It looked more suitable for ferrying elephants than boarding my seaplane, and the entire crew was one old woman with wisps of hair streaming in the wind. She stood on the stern platform, wielding a heavy bent scull. A thickset white man, with a mop of long black hair, jumped into this craft, and encouraged the old woman to make for me with dramatic excited gestures as if I was drowning. The sampan came straight downwind for the seaplane, driven by the old woman's oar plus a 30-mile wind. Taking him for a high official in the Chinese Government I was as polite as possible when I shouted that the sampan was too big to come downwind. Every time I shouted he urged the old woman on more excitedly. The sampan struck the float tip end on with a bang; the stem scraped past, and in spite of my pushing against it with all my strength, fetched up against the wing. A coolie who had jumped into the sampan with the white man seized a boat hook, and jabbed at the leading edge of the wing mercilessly, I was able to strike it aside before it penetrated. Then the wind caught the stern of the sampan, and swung it round broadside on to the wing. The old woman's cheery smile had not changed, and her steady efforts with the big scull had not ceased; the coolie pushed off the wing, and the sampan drifted past and astern. It had been a lucky escape, and I felt sure that the man would realise that he must come up from astern. To my dismay he returned to the position upwind of the seaplane as fast as he could. 'Can't stay here,' he shouted so dictatorially that I assumed that he was a white mandarin. 'You are right in the way of shipping; have to move you.'