The Lost Flying Boat (23 page)

There was the sound of birds, and the noise of cascading water, and the crunch of boots as I walked a tight circle around the embedded pipe to keep warm.

2

Only a fool, on an uninhabited island, would take it for granted that he was alone, and to pass the time till the mist cleared and Bull came back I played a mental tactical game, using the disintegrating aspect of the island's map as a board, a picture-map as splashed out as if someone had thrown a coconut full speed at a watermelon. Bull, seeing the map on Bennett's table, had likened it to a patch of vomit on Saturday night outside a pub.

For tokens I had the
Aldebaran,
the ship I had contacted, and the vessel which was to meet us at our anchorage with high octane fuel. Manoeuvres became a game of dodge-and-run in numerous places of concealment. Throws of dice concerned bad weather, or colliding head-on while getting closer to the buried gold which I, naturally, was the first to find.

Another factor in the game came without any wanting, and caused a shudder which sent me more cold for the moment than climate ever could. Intuition placed Shottermill as a vital counter among the players. He stood before me, and in one move dominated the board. The question as to why a ship was waiting could be answered only by him. I hadn't realized – perhaps because I had not been sufficiently alone to meditate with advantage – that he was playing his hand for more than one side. Bennett thought it beneath his dignity to distrust a mere chandler who sold rotten cigars, but at least I hoped – the notion made me colder still – he had kept Shottermill away from any information as to where our landing place would be. He knew little more than that we were going to the Kerguelen Islands, and when. Bennett's caution was only fully operational when he was actually flying. On the ground he was easier to deceive. No wonder Shottermill was worried by a wireless operator being carried, who could give early warning of anything heard.

My eyes were closed but I was wide awake, hearing boots on gravel when the wind had lessened its howl, and the snort of an old man about to talk. At a shuffling in the mist I looked for the rifle I had not brought. I must have been heard leaping to my feet.

A hawking and honking reverberated, but I was afraid to make myself harder to find in case I never got back to the same place. I stood close to the pipe to prevent its being noticed and saw, as I started to sweat with fear, a penguin with head high and breast gleaming, even in the mist. I ran until it fell back trumpeting, and then with its loitering mate walked off with flappers going as if I was too disgusting an object to contend with. Their cries had so many echoes, I thought there were dozens, but the grumbling diminished and I settled to guarding our home-made trigonometrical point.

A ration of chocolate revived me in the clammy damp. I supposed Wilcox on the
Aldebaran
to be running an engine to check the oil pressure, but the sound was far off, and too light in tone. Distortion caused by the configuration of the land couldn't tell me from which direction it came, and as much as I cared to disbelieve my ears, I knew the sound to be that of an aeroplane above the blanket of mist which still concealed our flying boat.

From the southwest it sawed unevenly as if buffeted by currents stronger than the wind which pushed against me. The mist was no longer thick, only molecules hiding the light. Others also had an aircraft, though it was obviously single-engined and could not have flown to the island as ours had. The plane, however, was looking for us, suggesting that this was to be no unmolested treasure search, and my heart beat fast as I realized how much our fragile flying boat was in danger.

I doubted my ears. Perhaps the noise was from a motorboat, searching for us nonetheless, exploring inlets on the off-chance of finding our base. In this glacial hiding place any engine could sound like that of an aeroplane, distorting itself into whatever meaning the imagination concocted.

The sewing-machine purr diminished, having given up the search. Then, distinct and lower, it returned to hem another frayed edge of the sky, a tinny rattle of disappointment yet sounding as if determined to have a more serious go some other time. Its persistent motor noise finally departed.

I went back to my tactical game. The ship that my signals had sent to the southern part of the island had catapulted its seaplane to explore the northern side which was, after all, only twenty minutes' flying time away. Bad weather would keep us hidden for a while, but good weather would reveal us sooner or later, though perhaps not before we were airborne and carrying the loot. The game was still open for all contestants, and I wondered if anyone would finally win. I was plagued by Shottermill's features, but decided he was not in the game at all. Then it seemed obvious that he was.

Bull came out of the mist with the pole on his shoulder. ‘How's the forgotten army?'

The plane was like a bee in my ear, dying but never dead. The dropped pole struck my boot. ‘If you damage it' –angry, yet glad to see him – ‘the skipper will push you out of the hatch from ten thousand feet.'

‘Wouldn't be the first time he's done such a thing.'

I slotted the pole into place, telling him to hold it upright so that I could pack gravel around. ‘What do you mean?'

‘He's that sort. Do anybody in who stood in his way.'

I made as neat a mound as could be done without tape, ruler and scalpel. He patted the structure as if it were his own work. ‘You don't need a war to make that sort.'

I took the offered cigarette. ‘What does make 'em?'

‘You're born like it.'

It was time to get back to the dinghy. ‘Did you hear that plane?'

‘What plane?'

‘One of those funny bird things with two wings and an engine that goes phut-phut and travels in the sky.'

My sarcasm made no impression. ‘Oh yes,' he said, and as if recollecting an event from stone-ages ago: ‘It's gone, though, hasn't it?'

With my back to the damp air I felt the mist dispersing, pressure higher on my left. The increasing wind played a peculiar chanson, its booming voice coming down the mountain and channelled into a flute as it hit the fjord, which acted like an everfilling bagpipe and sent a banshee wail through to my bones. Our white flying boat was half a mile away against a mountain background, on blue water so clear its replica wavered into the deeps. Such beauty made it seem fragile, and I felt an affection close to love because it was the only vehicle which would take us back to civilization. The sun illuminated its fluted hull and port float which, though of different sizes, were waterdynamic twins, graceful lines meeting at the stems but with shadow between. Three propeller blades in each nacelle had 1200 horse power behind them, four units joined by the leading edge.

The slightly ponderous fuselage, with its line of portholes retreating under the wing, was eighty-five feet from nose to tail, where the rear turret was angled high above the water. If the flying boat was on shore its height would have been nearly thirty feet, and it was no wonder that, once you were inside its body, everything outside lost significance. The last obscuring mist withdrew. The flying boat would take us back to a world in which I at any rate had no option but to belong. I would have to make sure, however, that what Shottermill might have told them had not been enough.

3

Cool air in the sunshine steamed our clothes as we walked over moss and sank into pools at each step. The dark shape of a bird hedge-hopped rocks in front, a skua with a four-foot wingspan wafting the air, whose eyes in a wicked head gazed like the blades of twin axes.

‘I'd trade my right arm for the pop-gun,' Bull said as the bird came round again but swept wide towards the cliffs. ‘I'm not used to having animals fly at me.' We struggled through potholes of black slush, boots and trousers saturated. If I were stranded like Robinson Crusoe, how long would it be before I got myself to the highest cliff and dropped off in despair? Skuas would pick out my lights before I touched bottom. It was no life for a death. Not a tree in sight. No tools, matches, gunpowder, the flying boat gone to pieces, and little to pick from its equipment. Crusoe did well, but I wanted our work done, and to quit the island.

Appleyard's cartridge-belt sagged around his middle. He stood by the upturned boat with the gun crooked as if he were a gamekeeper ready to plug the guts of stealthy marauders. ‘You should have peppered those birds,' Bull told him.

‘What birds?'

‘Or salted 'em. I thought the buggers would peck us to bits.'

‘Rose told me I was only to shoot people.' He leaned the gun, and took off a glove to scratch his nose. ‘Nash is in the mid-upper, ready to spray the hills. Or the sky, come to that. We take no chances. Good job it was foggy when that plane went over. The skipper wouldn't even let us speak. We had to stand as if on parade. Nash would have got him though, if he'd come down for a proper dekko.'

Bull opened the theodolite box as if hoping to find food. ‘They're looking for us, right enough.' He closed the lid on the delicate instrument inside.

‘Bound to find us with a seaplane,' Appleyard said, ‘sooner or later.' In the distance Bennett and Rose slotted the second surveying pole in place.

‘He hasn't found anything yet,' said Bull. ‘Only the indications. And there's nothing priceless about them. We'll need to stand on the loot before we know we've earned our pay. I'd rather have a bottle of whisky than a handful of gold. Feels like ten years since I had a drink.'

‘If you don't keep off it,' said Appleyard, ‘you'll see two kites instead of one.'

‘And hit neither,' I said.

‘You should have shot them gannets, all the same,' Bull complained.

‘Skuas,' I said.

‘That mountain's about a one-in-two gradient.' Bull lifted his legs high as if chary of stepping in the unavoidable mud. ‘A walk to the knocking-shop every night of the week just wasn't good enough training to shin up that.'

‘You should have stayed on board if you don't like it out of doors,' Appleyard said. ‘Before the war I used to run up Kinder Scout like a jackrabbit.'

‘Life was a piece of cake ten years ago,' said Bull.

The slope was less steep where the watercourse descended. Maybe what we were looking for was in that direction, but whichever way, the clock would turn against us if the seaplane spotted us in daylight.

Rose was breathless when he came back from working with Bennett. ‘Bring the theodolite. Skipper wants to sight the angles.'

I humped the twenty-pound box onto my shoulder, and Bull carried the tripod which weighed almost as much. Rose turned from his path-finder's position in front. ‘Don't drop your load, Sparks, or you'll have to go all the way back to Blighty to steal another from the stores.'

The distance was less to Bennett's second station, though far enough on puddled terrain. I looked intently at the moss to make sure I didn't step into an unexpected hole. ‘Mind you,' Rose said, ‘I think a box sextant would have done just as well, and you could have carried that in a haversack.'

Bull reshouldered the weighty tripod, and told him to embark on a course of action which, Rose realized before turning to me, was all the nastier for being suggested among such superb scenery. It was uncalled for, and best ignored, and hard to say whether he was being serious till he went on: ‘It's a pity we have to be so super-accurate to get anywhere or find anything. Takes the sport out of life. I lost something when I became a navigator, Adcock.'

I felt pain at his baleful tone. ‘Maybe you gained something as well.'

‘Not very much. As we get older we lose more than we gain, however much we change.'

‘I don't like to think so.'

‘No one does,' he said. ‘We're the end of the line.'

‘Speak for yourself. I'm not a fish on the end of any line.' Even while I spoke I had a strong impression I was wrong and that Rose, detecting my lack of conviction, knew why there was no need to answer.

I changed pressure to another shoulder, for in spite of my padded jacket the box had a fine time grinding the bone. Bennett's voice came on the strengthening wind. ‘Pull your bloody fingers out. Come on! We'll have the fog back soon.'

Gravel had worked into my left boot, and grated the skin off my heel. Hurry was impossible if I was to avoid dropping the theodolite and spoiling its accuracy. Cloud covered the mountaintops. Rose said that the peak to the north – though Bull cursed him for a schoolmaster – was over two thousand feet. Skuas stayed high, enraged that we had invaded their territory, making a noise as if calling for reinforcements to drive us away.

Bennett worked his computations on a small drawing board and, having fixed the length of the base line and its angle, took the surveyor's pole from the pipe and set up the tripod, gauging the perpendicular with a plumb line from the box. He and Rose then clamped the theodolite onto the base plate.

We stood aside while they aligned on the pole which I had installed, and then set the sights according to the bearing which Bennett extrapolated from his notes. I wondered whether the German hadn't scribbled a few jottings in order to play a joke on anyone foolish enough to be taken in. Perhaps he had buried a mine which, at the greedy touch of an exploring spade, would blow any treasure-seekers into pieces-of-eight and back again.

Bull and I smoked in silence while the drill of checking for collimation went on. Sundry technical terms floated away on the wind, and I wondered what surprises the other party had for rendering our efforts null. They had no directions for getting at the treasure, but maybe there was more than one vessel to bottle up the
Aldebaran
once they located us. I mulled on our plight, supposing such thoughts to be better than brooding about Anne and why we had left each other – as for some reason I began to do, convinced by now that the separation had been good for us both.