The Lost Flying Boat

by Alan Silltoe

  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, havi
ng 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.

  Thinking of her took me away from the activity around. The landscape was no longer inspiring. A feeling of vulnerability replaced the sense of adventure. Questions cracked the structure of our group. My sending of false signals had disordered the edifice, so that from now on I could only live as the moments came, which didn’t seem like living at all.

  ‘Adcock! Come out of that ten-foot hole!’ He pointed at the theodolite telescope, and then along the line of its bearing. Parallel to a turn of the coast, and a thousand yards southwest, was a short ridge of black rock, green and yellow vegetation at the summit. A watercourse beyond streaked down the re-entrant and ran into the sea. ‘It’s on that rise.’

  I was to station myself there with the surveyor’s pole, and find the line of the bearing according to Bennett’s signals, which Bull would observe through binoculars. It sounded a plain enough routine, and I set off over the rocks and moss with the pole on my shoulder, cheerful now that I had a task which needed a good eye and some activity. The wind from the port quarter did not let me hear myself whistling. The sun was as high as it would get that day. Bennett worked against the storm, having a good idea from where it might come. I’d have felt safer if any of us could know where danger from men was likely to appear – who were perhaps a worse part of Nature’s wrath.

  The ridge, separated from the main line of the mountains, lost itself for a while in the general undulations, and I maintained track by counting the paces, releasing one digit from a clenched hand every hundred, knowing I would be more or less there when both hands were open. I kept my steps as even as possible, and though many fell short and I zigzagged to avoid large rocks, I realized the eminence was under my feet when the land sloped down before me and I could see the hidden section of the watercourse.

  The hill was four hundred feet high, sea nearly a mile away. Bennett and Rose were waving their arms. Appleyard sat by the dinghy like a statue, as if marooned until death. Our flying boat heaved on the water: if the roaming seaplane came close it would soon find how spiky she was. Bull focused the binoculars. ‘They want you to go to the right.’

  I hoisted the pole so that they could mark me, and moved ten paces.

  ‘A bit more.’

  I walked twenty.

  He laughed. ‘They’re having fits. You’re to go back.’

  I went, two by two.

  ‘Stop!’

  The wind whistled, and pushed hard, but I kept the pole vertical. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Left,’ he said. ‘But creep. None of your bloody two-step, or they’ll have your guts for garters.’

  I took half a pace.

  ‘Stop again. You’re spot on – I think.’

  I scooped a circle in the mossy ground, and stabbed the pole in. Bull grinned at my useless work. ‘They want you to move to the right.’

  The hole I dug filled with water. A cold wind beat on my jacket. If this was summer, I preferred Singapore. He put down the field glasses and hammered the stave which, though bolstered with rocks, nothing would make firm. ‘You’d better sit on top.’

  ‘You’re not my bloody oppoe,’ I told him.

  We carried stones, and though the first hundredweight displaced water, even on a hilltop, we gradually erected a pyramid.

  ‘They’re giving the thumbs-up. Rose is making semaphore signals. Flag-wagging isn’t up my street.’

  I preferred lamp-work, but was able to read semaphore slowly, which was all right because Rose couldn’t send quickly. Arms outstretched meant R. The left at one o’clock said E. The same over the head, and the right at ten o’clock signified T. ‘V’ of the arms added U to the word that was coming. Two arms fully horizontal again denoted R. And both at the inverted ‘V’ position ended the word with N.

  ‘Return,’ I said to Bull.

  ‘Where to?’

  B was indicated, so I sent C to say I’d got the message.

  ‘Return to B. They want us back with them.’

  He marvelled. ‘Communication’s a wonderful thing. No chance of a quiet skive with a bod like you in the party.’

  Being downhill, the way back was quicker. Bull’s leather soles sent him skidding on the moss, legs flailing so that he resembled a figure of matchsticks stuck in an impeded potato, except that a spud couldn’t yell such foul language. He tried a cat walk after the first come-uppance. All was well, till he imagined no more spills likely and hastened his pace a little, smiling at the success of each careful footstep. Then cozened into optimism, down he flashed, no vegetation to grab, rolling like a baby and bumped like a kitten. When he struck his elbow on a rock and was in real pain he forgot to curse. The hillside was made of black lard, and he was shod in roller skates. He ended more out of breath going down than he had after the climb.

  4

  ‘What did you find to talk about?’ He glared on his way by. ‘There’s too much dawdling and gassing. We want speed in this operation.’

  Rose packed the theodolite and handed it to me. No time had been lost, and Bennett’s hurry, though understandable, was futile. Heaps of cloud inched from the sky, giving total coverage up the fjord and on the opposite shore. Bull fancied he caught a whiff of frying sausages from the flying boat, and complained that he was starving. We had more important things on our plate than food, said Rose. ‘If we aren’t on target in the next half hour we’ll be staggering around in the mist for days.’

  I held the theodolite in my arms like a wounded bird that had to be kept alive. The white flying boat was pressed between black water and the sky’s ebony ceiling. While Bennett and Rose set up the theodolite on the end of the base line, Bull and I ascended the hill carrying a spade and pole each. Accustomed to the terrain, and though the skin on my heel was worn away, the thousand yards seemed little distance. A flight of skuas threatened, as if they guarded some secret at the summit and were warning of the fate which would befall any who solved it. They dive-bombed, coming at low-level with prominent wings and avaricious beaks. Bull swung his heart-shaped spade. ‘Looks as if they mean business.’

  They lost interest halfway and soared towards the beach. The triangulation, given bearings and distances, was a matter of alignment on the surveyor’s poles. Providing the theodolite was accurate, all should fall into place.

  The summit was familiar, but weather changed the view. Bennett wanted to get the treasure while the mist held off, but once found, the same concealment would be an advantage. If God was on Bennett’s side – and nothing had so far happened to suggest that he was not – there was no more perfect scheme.

  We aligned our poles on their separate bearings and walked forward along them until we met. That would be the spot on which to dig. The difficulty was to place ourselves on the exact bearing from the two ends of the base line. Bull unstrapped his binoculars. ‘They’re having a bit of an argy-bargy. The skipper’s tearing a strip off p
oor old Rose.’

  I was as interested in helping to solve the problem of intersection as I had been in plotting decoy signals from the flying boat. Trying to create order out of confusion made me feel like a gambler. Every act – from a minor diversion to a matter of life and death – involved risk. Conscience had no say. My element had been found, and a safe life was impossible to imagine.

  The flying boat bobbed on the water, white chops around the hull. Wind stung like clouds of flying pepper and brought tears from Bull’s eyes when he lowered the field glasses. ‘You’ve got to shift.’

  ‘Which way?’ I stood by the centre pole.

  ‘Left. No. What the hell are they on with? Right, I think. Yes, smartly to the right.’

  I didn’t know whether the continual roar came from wind, or walls of water breaking at cliffs beyond the headland. We had a better view of the flying boat than Bennett got from below, and it was nearer the shore than a few minutes ago.

  ‘Back a bit,’ Bull said.

  The flying boat was about to be pounded to aluminium and plywood, while Nash, Wilcox and Armatage ate themselves senseless in the galley, or yarned by the bunks over a quiet smoke.

  ‘Another pace to the right.’

  We had no world but the flying boat, and the rocks were a row of rotten yet still strong teeth waiting to bite. Appleyard was waving for help, but no one could see. The roar of the wind choked my shout.

  ‘Right on the market place!’ Bull was keen. ‘Stay till we fix it.’ If I ran into the wilds there would be the problem of rediscovering that hallowed spot, and the hurry of recouping time lost. I wanted to abandon the post which I had a duty to maintain, but could not do so even to save my own life. I refused to follow instinct in order to see what happened. Instinct and sense might well be in agreement, but if I ‘did the right thing’ I would deny myself the excitement of wondering whether or not I would survive if I ‘did the wrong thing’.