The Lost Flying Boat

by Alan Silltoe

  I stayed, and with Bull’s help made a neat bench mark on the spot under which we assumed the gold to be. But the part of me that had been decisively overridden nevertheless pictured what it would be like to flee down the immediate slope and turn left up the water-course, scrambling out of sight before anyone could shout or shoot. With such a good start, I would reach the two thousand foot summit a free man. The thickening mist would cover me.

  I was diverted by Bennett who, aware of the flying boat’s difficulties, ran to that part of the beach where Appleyard guarded the dinghy. His small figure appeared to move slowly, till flurries of rain took much of the clarity away. It seemed a bad sign that the skipper should run to try and save the flying boat. The hull was glancing against the rocks. Even if Bennett had been able to help I would not have expected him to run. It did not matter that I had sent out my own false radio signals. I wouldn’t have run myself, and maybe that’s why I was alarmed at him doing so. He only discovered what we on the hilltop knew, that on such terrain you couldn’t run. He fell, and lay still. ‘He’s kissing the earth.’

  Bull’s voice came out of the wind noise. ‘There ain’t much else he can do. Maybe you and me should do the same, Sparks – pray that the Aldebaran doesn’t go to bits.’

  I would witness the disaster standing up. Nash, Wilcox and Armatage wouldn’t get ashore if the boat broke in pieces. They were some way from the rocks, though how close or far was hard to say. The obscuring rain flung itself against our faces like needles of ice. Distances deceived. The wall across the fjord seemed as if it could be touched, yet the flying boat in turmoil by the shore was out of sight. Bennett winged his arms to where he had last seen it.

  We turned our collars up and crouched over the point we had been sent to mark. My hands covered my ears and met on the top of my head. If the flying boat disappeared we would be staked out in the wind till we died – or were spotted and rescued, which was unlikely. I brought my hands down. Rain penetrated. The gorge of the straits was blocked to the east by a dark wall advancing towards our cove like a cork being pushed home to bottle us up. I imagined the splintering of the thin hull.

  I needed to know the worst, but the loud wind created silence. My ears craved to hear the tinny noise of disaster, as at my radio I had extracted the faint squeak of a vital message, except that now our lives depended on it. No wind could hide the sound of the flying boat’s rending contest with rocks and gravel, and neither did it have the power to negate an irritated drone which came first from the mountains, then from another direction, and again out of the sky as if its own peculiar accelerating roar was being bounced slow-motion between the clouds.

  I knew what it was, but Bull shouted first. ‘They’ve started the engines to keep it off shore.’

  ‘Let’s hope they can.’

  He didn’t hear. ‘Good lads! Hold tight! Get it away!’ or some such words, to judge by the way he jumped up and down.

  Unable to see, our ears were attuned even more to the engine, and we became part of the struggle in the cove. The wind moaned as if signalling the death-rattle from the four-stroke throat. But the engines roared around us, ears and eyelids shivering as they overcame the bang of the wind. I almost expected to see the portly flank of the flying boat go by on take-off.

  It was hard to stay still, but to pace in circles to the wind’s screech, and the engines that fought marvellously against it, might be to lose the position we had worked so hard to find. Bull did not feel the same obligation, and there was no response to my call. I shouted full strength but hardly heard my voice – only the rattle of it in my head. Visibility wasn’t more than a few yards, and I supposed he had descended the hill to find a better view through the mist.

  The engines cut, but I continued to hear them. Either better times had come or the worst had taken place. How long ago they had stopped I couldn’t know, and I fought to stay calm, seeing no one and hearing only the cosmic shutterbang of the gale. I sat and imagined Bull lost, never to return, that Bennett, Appleyard and Rose had been drowned trying to reach the flying boat in the dinghy, and that those on board had gone down with the ship. But my face was wet from rain not tears.

  I might have assumed that the engines had been cut because the flying boat had found a secure anchorage, and that those on shore were sitting out the storm before coming up the hill to me. All was well in the world. I talked to Bennett as if our small globe of visibility had enough warmth to keep us alive. The only time I could attempt communication was when he was not present, and so I took to pieces the reasons for coming here, and put them back together in a way that suggested we had made a futile journey, but to show also that I had understood our motives sufficiently to remember them for the future.

  It didn’t wash. The rain did that. I felt like a stump of wood being worn away. He said: ‘You don’t talk to me, erk. I do the talking, if I care to. And what have I to say to a superannuated Backtune who wasn’t even on active service when he got his Dear John letter? On this stunt we not only do our jobs, but that little bit extra as well. The Aldebaran needs you, don’t forget. Remember also that the skipper takes an interest in your work.’

  There was little either of us could say. I was pulled into a trance. If I had not been acting as marker for the gold I would have walked to keep myself warm, but having given my word I was obliged to stay no matter how numb I became. I didn’t think about the possibility of death approaching as quickly as Appleyard said later that it might. Having sent the false signals made it obvious that I would now do as ordered. If I had not sent them I might have weakened, abandoned my position under the excuse of survival, and lost the location of the treasure, so that refinding it after the storm – the guide poles having been swept away by the wind – would have left us no time to get the gold up before we were discovered by those who wanted it for themselves. An unpleasant course of action was always seen as crucial.

  But the matter went deeper than doing what was obviously my duty. I would have stayed in any case, acceptance being composed of pride, tradition, greed, honour and a desire to explore my nature to the utmost. There was nothing more attractive to me at that time. I thought of fate as the unbreakable spider’s web, but did not know whether by being drawn to it I was the spider or the victim. In my imaginary conversation I told Bennett none of this.

  I sat on the ground and dozed. The lack of visibility was a sort of darkness, within whose protection I grew less cold.

  5

  If Bennett had been authorized to recommend any of his crew for medals, or to be mentioned in despatches, he would surely have honoured Nash for saving the headquarters of the expedition. It was not that he had been uninterested in the fact of our superbly winged vessel being poised for a fatal collision with the shore, but that he had got his priorities right. With one good man on board, and four prime engines, he felt no concern for the flying boat. He exercised fine tuning over his tactics, Rose said to me later. It was his strategy that had been out of control from the beginning.

  He sheltered under cover of the dinghy, for to try reaching us on the hill in such a tempest would have risked his party being scattered and perhaps lost. They stayed together till the wind died sufficiently for him to take a compass bearing and follow Rose and Appleyard up the hillside, keeping them in line-ahead.

  In the dream I banged my shoulder against a crenellated wall forty feet high and fell towards the ditch, pursued by half-bird and half-flying boat, nature’s work and man’s which, within the dreamscape, seemed absolute reality. A blow at the shoulder caused me to topple as if hollow, the dream sliced through. Appleyard thought I might be dead, but Rose knew better. Bennett’s demand as to where Bull had gone came above the rattle of the wind.

  I reached for the mound of stones and sat up, angry because unable to continue falling into the moat below the crenellations. After a trumpet call the wall would descend on me, and I would sleep forever after an endless drop not of my making.

  Bennett kicked around the area as
if spoiling an invisible sandcastle before the tide came in. ‘I asked where Bull was.’

  ‘Gone for a walk.’ I spoke three times before he understood. They had brought food and coffee from the dinghy, and the quick meal opened my eyes. Bull could be miles up the mountain. Perhaps he had fallen. He was bound to be lost. He didn’t need defending. Anyone with sense would have done the same. ‘He couldn’t stay put, and freeze to death.’

  ‘He’ll be court-martialled for dereliction of duty.’

  Appleyard worked as if excavating a slit trench for protection against artillery. He considered the air bracing – as I had a few hours ago. ‘No worse than a summer’s stroll in the Lake District.’

  ‘He deserves to be shot.’ Bennett laughed, but I didn’t like his humour.

  Maybe the bearings had been inaccurate. Perhaps they were false. The exploration was shallow, and there was no sign. I wondered whether I had moved without being aware. The soft and peaty soil was striated by occasional gravel. When Appleyard’s spade struck, Bennett took it from him and dug furiously, then gave the loosened boulder a kick to burst any toes.

  Rose and I had a turn, keeping our backs to the flurries of rain and sleet. Bennett gazed into the mire and listened to every tap of the spades. We could see further down the slope, and while I wanted the sky to clear sufficiently for a search party to go up the mountain, the others hoped that the mist would stay so that we could dig in safety. The low rampart shielded an area three yards square and a foot deep. I enjoyed the work, in spite of the ache to limbs and spine, and the heat on my palms preceding blisters. The depth of our excavation increased. ‘Anyone from a distance might think we’re digging our graves.’

  Appleyard told me to shut up and get-bloody-on with it. His spade met a hard object, but he pushed with his boot as if it were a temporary aberration in the composition of the soil. Bennett, on the edge of our visibility, was engrossed in the uncertainties of the weather. I also reached solid metal. ‘Something here, Skipper.’

  My feelings were out of contact with reality. The boxes or tins could have been filled with stones for all I cared. Unable to appreciate the great moment, we were exhausted and silent, but continued our slow-motion poking about the soil as more rectangular shapes became apparent. Bennett strolled over from the gloom, and saw how we were getting on. I lacked enthusiasm, but my memory was good, both qualities uppermost at the sight of him in muddy soil pulling boxes which weighed nearly sixty pounds. He drew one to the edge of the diggings as if it were a celluloid replica, and we gathered around like keen types as he hammered at rust-encrusted bolts and lifted a lid.

  The inside was lined with oilcloth. He took off his gloves for the occasion, hands looking more delicate and pink than during the unrolling of a chart, or when at the controls of the Aldebaran. He scooped up dull coins, and we were treated to the unforgettable sound of gold tumbling against gold, which I had never heard before and have not heard since.

  Soil and treasure produced a peculiar smell, a mixture of metal and mushrooms. The gold was not ours, nor any Bennett’s till it was transported to where the share-out would take place. Nevertheless, I think we all wanted to dip into the mess of pottage, and perhaps one of us, unwilling to miss a unique experience, would have done so if we hadn’t heard, in the declining wind, the echo of a full-throated scream.

  It was uncalled for, an intrusion at the wrong moment, causing more irritation than alarm. None of us moved, perhaps for as long as half a minute, to hear if the cry came again. My direction-finding ears got a fair bearing, and I stood up to point the way. ‘It came from the watercourse.’

  Bird cries filtered through the mist. ‘We’ll go and get him,’ Appleyard said.

  ‘Your work is here,’ Bennett said coolly, ‘not searching for a fool who should have stayed at his post.’

  I knew how cold the body could be, as ice went to my stomach and seemed to freeze it solid. But I felt incapable of a long hike up the mountains. ‘He’s injured. We can’t let him die.’

  ‘He’s had it already.’ Bennett was adamant. ‘If we go off searching for him we’ll be lost in no time – or fall down some precipice.’ The day’s rain sent enormous falls of water rushing to the sea. When the wind dropped, the sound of the torrent was unmistakable. ‘I’m responsible for holding this expedition together, and it’s already split between here and the ship, so I can’t send another two of you into this kind of countryside. If I had twice the crew, I wouldn’t sanction it without fair weather. To look for Bull now – even if it was him we heard – is to risk a real cock-up.’

  I’ll never know if he was right, yet he sounded reasonable. We got back to work and, still in daylight, stacked forty boxes like so many bricks on solid ground.

  6

  We huddled, eating, smoking, swigging whisky from Bennett’s flask, and hoping that the moment to begin our donkey-work would never come. We were to get the gold down to the beach, but in the meantime the last daylight was drawn from the sky like bleach out of a bottle encrusted by the detritus of a wasteland: clouds of swarf, rolls of gunmetal, wisps of green mould, puffs of damp blue, the strangest ochre-coloured sunset I ever saw from a pure-air part of the world. ‘God is up to some funny stuff.’

  Rose shielded his eyes. ‘Isn’t He always?’

  Appleyard spat. ‘You shouldn’t take His name in vain.’

  With darkness the mist drew back. Bennett put a large torch into my hand and looked into the luminous gradations of his prismatic compass. ‘Face the same direction, and when you find the signal-button get in touch with Nash on the flight deck. Tell him to come ashore in the second dinghy with Armatage. Make it as short as you can. We want no interception.’

  I held a steady light on the downhill bearing and sent a series of AAAs. Bennett paced behind. ‘Keep on. They’ll see it.’

  I lifted my eyes. ‘There’s a star in the sky.’

  He had faith, and everything to gain by persistence. ‘We want foul weather. The fouler the better.’

  I thought of Bull, dead or dying on the hillside, and hoped for the good of us all that he was alive. After a further string of AAAs the steady white flash of an answer came, and I sent slowly so that Wilcox or Nash could interpret with ease. ‘O K ERE STOP NASH AND ARM CUM SHORE THEN WAIT OK?’

  QSL showed that Nash had worked it out and would comply.

  ‘Send a second signal.’ Bennett spoke as if we were in station headquarters, and I had a full-scale wireless section to look after his traffic. ‘Tell them to beam on us every five minutes.’

  Rose was to stay on the hill with the torch and guide us back, while the occasional flash from the flying boat would enable us to locate our beachhead on the way down. Bennett had spent so many weeks working out the drill that he didn’t have to think. He had netted the landscape with pre-computed vertical and horizontal triangles, devising an intricate movement and communications procedure. It was hard to think that slide rule or compass would lead him astray, though with so many stitches in the fabric it was also difficult to see how the pattern could hold.

  Nash was as clumsy with a signal lamp as I would have been in a four-Browning turret – but he was effective. The opening and closing lights fused into letters, then words, and the second message was received and understood.

  We started, and pressure on my ankles due to humping a half hundredweight metal box made the stint with the theodolite seem like a carefree brush with a football. Bennett, as became his rank, carried nothing, his job being to locate the dinghy and the reinforcements from the flying boat. He frequently stopped to make sure no one spun headlong on the slow descent, or wandered off track with such precious cargo. If I vanished and was picked up by a whaler in six months I’d be richer by twelve thousand pounds. Invest that, and I would live modestly without working for the rest of my life. The haul for Bennett and his backers was a quarter of a million, and the cost of getting it, including the hire of the fuel steamer, could not be above thirty thousand. The well lit picture of
a happy share-out in a Hong Kong or Singapore hotel was hard to credit as I stumbled in waterlogged clothes behind Bennett’s shadowy back, which now and again stooped as – counting the paces – he consulted the compass to keep us in the right direction.

  A reassuring light winked off-shore. Low clouds held their rain, and the sharp air was sweet. I had forgotten what it was like to move without being breathless. Wandering unladen over such landscape might be pleasant. But like a pack animal I dwelt on nothing, determined that never again would I indulge in such work.

  Forty boxes would mean twenty trips uphill and down. The Duke of York’s army would have nothing on us. Even if reinforcements doubled the number of hard shoulders, ten trips would still be needed, which would take fifteen miles of humpbacked walking. Soldiers or mountaineers had done as much, and the daunting prospect was forgotten when a light flickered and we heard Nash’s voice at the beach. ‘You’ve got it?’

  Bennett nodded. ‘All we do is fetch it down, and tuck it up on board before daylight.’

  ‘Not at this rate you won’t. Where’s Bull?’

  ‘He went missing.’

  ‘In this place? Couldn’t you stop him?’

  ‘He just wandered off.’

  I took a few seconds to realize who Bennett meant when he said: ‘The wireless operator stayed at his post.’

  Nash peered into the darkness. ‘We’d better get going. How far is it?’

  Bennett told him. ‘One man will stay here, to guide us in.’

  Nash waved his arm. ‘To hell with that, Skipper. The quicker it’s down, the better.’ He lashed a switched-on torch to a surveying pole stuck in the sand. ‘What’s the angle? We can beam on this. Don’t need a man to hold it. The battery will last. The more of us at work the sooner we get back on board to a bucket of cocoa and a ham sandwich!’