The Lost Flying Boat (33 page)

The test-bed roar of four engines increased the distance between the port float and the water. A white bird spun from the windscreen. ‘Per ardua ad astra,' Nash muttered, and the intercom almost went u/s with laughter.

The hull banged, destroying hope for a second, but the float lifted and the cliffs changed aspect, turned brown, then green, then opened out into sloping rocky hills, till underneath was a peace which meant contact with water had been lost. Ahead was a spur of black mountain, avoided by a quarter turn to port.

Bennett's voice came: ‘Log the time for QAD, Sparks.'

‘Roger-dodger.'

Heading into daylight, we were safe. On land was danger, but with four engines bearing us through the air, though overloaded with fuel and gold, the worst was over.

‘They wanted us to surrender,' I said.

‘Cheeky devils,' Appleyard laughed. ‘I hope you told 'em what to do.'

‘Radio silence. And no bad language.'

‘Pity,' Nash put in.

‘Keep it that way.'

Gaining height by inches. Kelp patched the narrowest point of the straits. An expanding funnel of land showed our route to the open sea. We were flying, all weight fallen from us, and waiting for it to go from the boat.

‘We'll be so high the earth'll be a tennis ball,' Appleyard said.

‘But who'll have the bat?'

‘Crawl down into your apple-pie bed and die,' said Nash.

‘063 magnetic,' said Bennett. ‘Until we're in the clear at 48 south 70 east. Log that as well, Sparks. Wind westerly, ten to fifteen. Bring the computer. When we're on automatic I'll work things out.'

I tore a sheet from Rose's log, noting the time and initial course. The island that divided us from the pursuing ship was two thousand feet high, so we were not visible. Nor when they turned the headland would they see any sign. They might search all indentations before realizing we had taken off, and then what could they do?

‘They're not as daft as you think,' said Nash. ‘But then, neither are we.'

17

We would reach base with fuel to spare, Bennett claimed, and our cargo intact. Rational and hopeful, he had worked his doubts out of existence. But logic said that while each mile lessened the weight of fuel to be carried, every gallon spent increased the possibility of not getting where we wanted to go. Rose had been right. We might as well be heading into space. The situation was that of a man humping food on his back through an area where no supplies were available. He would eat much and frequently in order to generate the energy to carry such heavy cargo. The more he ate the lighter his load would become, and he would need to eat less in order to transport what remained. But when all food had gone and he had not yet reached terrain where more was at hand, he would die of starvation. So the flying boat on running out of fuel would crash into the sea. Even if we had a little in reserve, a few failures of navigation would still cause a shortfall.

The track of the
Aldebaran
clipped the eastern dagger-point of Howe Island at a height of little more than a thousand feet, our gentle climb due as much to conserving fuel as to the weight being hauled. We go for the Equator, Bennett said, and keep travelling, and if we can't reach Ceylon because of fickle winds we'll beg, borrow or steal petrol – or even buy if the price is right! – from Diego Garcia, only 350 miles off our track.

He had studied the matter well, but Diego Garcia, the first outpost of civilization, was a dot on the ocean, and even if he worked the stars as competently as Rose (Nash insisted he could do it better), it would be a feat to locate the place, whether occupied at the controls or not. Instead of a thermal back-up at the tail, side winds would nudge us here and there, and difficulties in making the required track would adversely affect our fuel supply. If we weren't forced to ditch a hundred miles short of our objective, 3270 miles away, we'd be lucky to alight with a pint in each engine. Shipping routes lessened the danger of drowning, but the sea was unlikely to develop woolly arms into which we could safely alight.

Radio would help little if star sights were impossible, bearings only useful when confirmed from other sources. It was the same old tale, I said. The first wireless beacon was on Mauritius, 1200 miles off our track. Then Diego Garcia would give bearings either to home in on or provide lateral fixes till I contacted HF DF at Negombo in Ceylon on 6500 kilocycles. The latter part of the trip would be safer in this respect, though how we would feel after twenty-eight hours on our Flying Dutchman was hard to imagine.

Blood had a smell, and that was a fact. The gun under my table was still tacky. With five rounds in the chamber I could persuade Bennett to make for Freemantle. The distance was a thousand miles less, and we would have the wind pushing from behind. But I couldn't hold the gun at his temple for ten hours, beyond which he would have no option but to carry on. Nash and Appleyard, what's more, had absolute faith in his ability to get us non-stop to Timbuctoo if he said he could – grumble as they might at his eccentricities. Against all three I was helpless. And then my duty was braced by a call from our pursuers, loud signals proving that we were not yet out of their reach.

‘PZX DE WXYZ = RETURN TO TAKE OFF POSITION = +'

I passed the chit, and Bennett decided there would be no acknowledgement. I thought it would be best to ask for terms, having done well enough to secure peace with honour. I preferred to live rather than perish in trying to save the gold for Bennett's own use. And to fly on meant that, either way, destruction was certain. But to make clandestine contact would have been my last act. I was as chained to my position as a machinegunner in the Great War, for though my loyalty was not to Bennett and his gold, nor even to us as a crew, I felt much affection for this aircraft flying over the sea, with its engines, ailerons, guiding rudder, and all other parts. I viewed it as from outside, ascending slowly with sunlight occasionally flooding the canopy and shining on Bennett as if he had been fixed in his position during the plane's construction and launched at the controls. Whether it would have been possible to see him as an ordinary person like the rest of us I do not know, for perhaps I thought that if I succeeded in doing so I would not be able to defend any of us against him should the time ever come.

The same view of the
Aldebaran
that I envisaged was in reality obtained by a seaplane on the starboard quarter. Nash regretted that there were no dark nimbus-cupboards immediately available in which to play hide-and-seek. ‘Watch that Dornier before he gets under our belly.'

‘I'll have him, Skipper,' Appleyard said as it veered away.

The plane came back and flew level, fixed at our speed, and kept its distance so cleverly that we seemed to have spawned a satellite. Another hung onto our tail, but at a greater distance. The crew of two in tandem, canopies back, were clearly seen. The rear man flashed a lamp.

‘Read it, Sparks.'

‘Will do.'

Nash got the message over the intercom. ‘We're out of range.'

‘Hold them till we hit cloud.'

The message was repeated. ‘TURN OR WE DESTROY YOU.'

‘What kind of English is that? said Nash.

‘Sounds like Fu Manchu,' said Appleyard. ‘Tell 'em to go to hell.'

Bennett surprised me. ‘Ask what's the matter.'

‘“Going to a dance, send three-and-fourpence,”' said Nash. ‘I don't mind a fighter plane. All's fair in love and war. But it's the flak I can't stand. Getting too old for it.'

My morse could not have been easy to read. The lamp was almost too heavy to hold. The second seaplane to starboard also winked its light across the blue, a message impossible to misread. At 2000 feet we were climbing, but like a flying barn compared to their nimble craft.

‘Watch 'em, Nash. They'll try and nudge us in the opposite direction.'

‘You take the bastard to port,' Appleyard said. ‘And I'll sic the other.'

‘Can't throw the old flying boat around like a Spitfire this time, Skipper.'

‘Straight and level does it. Press on regardless.'

Nash laughed. ‘Did we ever do anything else?'

The message was always the same. I wanted to send ‘Per ardua ad astra' in morse, something I'd never thought of doing while wearing the uniform. We could no more turn than if we were in a railway train. The refuge of cloud got no closer. They lacked the range to follow us far, but we were only a hundred miles north of the island, its black humps still close.

At getting no sense the seaplanes broke station, zoomed up steeply and ahead. What did the sky look like to them? They saw a victim, prime and squat, a lumbering tortoise sent for their enjoyment, with all the heavens a playpen. The scene gave me the horrors, until an order came from Nash. ‘Sit in the mid-upper, Sparks, and see what you can do.'

Hindsight mellows, time distorts, so how can the reality be grasped as it was in the act? Only first impressions count. Sickness in the guts fled when I moved. I saw little. Nash waited till the plane was a few hundred yards away, then opened up. The attack came from astern. They thought we had put coloured sticks in the turrets instead of Brownings. ‘Otherwise how could they be so daft?' Appleyard called. We spoke to ourselves. The plane lifted, smoke like shite-hawk feathers rippling the sky. A pale belly sheered up the side of our tailplane, a full view of two floats before slipping to starboard and down to the sea.

‘One gone,' said Nash. ‘But there's the other, so don't put your finger back in yet.' Was it bagatelle or skittles? Don't ask, said Bennett. The sky was empty, and not my turn to have a go, and a sense of solitude made me sweat. My hands shook, eyes wanting to close. There was something in my eye, but was it fear? The plane came at speed. Time slowed so that he was in my sights as he weaved side on in an attempt to unstitch us from stem to stern. My heart crashed into him as I fired the two guns.

‘Cut the bad language.'

Appleyard tried, and the plane slid out of his sights. I sent another burst. He fell away early, not mad enough to die.

‘Hold your fire,' said Nash. ‘I'll get the gold-lover.'

He came from the north, a quarter turn to put his gunner in line. ‘I see him,' said Appleyard. ‘And would you believe it? He's blue-eyed, blond and wearing a yellow scarf.'

‘Don't care if he's in his underpants,' said Nash. Bullets ripped the fuselage. They were throwing pebbles. I didn't know where they struck, but hoped the radio wasn't hit. I tasted ashy rage at the thought. Blowing bubbles, said Nash. Spite will get you nowhere. As the plane wheeled the length of the flying boat he fired from side-on. The plane continued south.

‘Going home with a cat up his arse,' Nash mumbled.

Bennett kept his unflinching course. ‘Call the roll.'

‘OK, Skipper. You all right?'

‘Nose shipped a few.'

‘Sparks?'

‘Sir!'

‘Salute when you speak to me!'

‘Hi-di-hi!'

‘Ho-di-ho!'

There was a pause while levity sank away.

‘Appleyard?'

Nash sounded weary: ‘After action I'm knackered. Like an orgy – done in, for ever and ever, though it's nothing a good kip or a fried egg won't cure. Have a dekko, Sparks, there's a good lad.'

I knocked on all protuberances. The plane roared steadily, gaining height, but only by the mile. Take ten years before we need oxygen, but I felt light-headed at the thought that we had seen the last of the
Nemesis
and its bluebottle-seaplanes. Well, don't be so sure. Life's full of nasty surprises. They must have been discouraged, anyhow, by one down and the other damaged. I wanted to return to my wireless in case I learned something new.

Appleyard's turret was spattered with holes, and a mess of blood poured from his stomach. I was fixed by a paralysis that would enable me to remember, and then tell about it. He began screaming that he didn't want to die, and because I couldn't save him, I willed him to.

Nash opened a field dressing. To staunch the flow, he said, would be like trying to patch a burst dam with a postage stamp. Which might be something you can do in Holland, he added, his face flour-white, the lines deeply accentuated, but not here.

18

The reek of petrol and oil seemed to put up the temperature. Haggard from turning the nose-gunner's body into the sea, Nash said that one of the tanks might have sprung a leak. That last raking did damage. It was certain, however, that Bennett's high octane optimism hadn't yet started to spill out. Perhaps it was better so, because in the end only his press-on-regardless spirit might save us.

I clung to the refuge of my wireless station. The magic-eye would be the last glowing item before we went into the dark. Unless I could contract to homunculus proportions, assume salamander-like properties, take on the role of a phoenix and get between the valves of the transmitter, it would be a dark I would never come out of. As long as I didn't think of it I was not afraid, yet I resented being unable to dwell on matters for that reason.

Everything seemed so certain that I felt as if I were on a conveyor belt, but such thoughts insisted on being cold shouldered by my fingers flicking the various switches in spite of myself and to no real purpose, though my ears were listening for any tinkle of hope. The seaplanes must have radioed their base ship, for the wireless operator on board sent a message which he knew I must receive. ‘TELL CAPTAIN PROCEEDS SHARED BETWEEN YOUR FORCE AND WE STOP SAFE CONDUCT GUARANTEED TO YOUR GALLANT CREW STOP TERMS HONOURABLY KEPT IF YOU RETURN.'

‘Gee,' said Nash, ‘let's throw the oboe out of the window and contact the consul!'

I passed the half-full bottle of whisky. ‘Calm down. Have a drink.'

He imitated Tommy Handley's side-kick to perfection. ‘Don't mind if I do!'