by Alan Silltoe
Bennett was calm. ‘We’ll turn the cape, and take off as they come towards us.’
‘Mind their gun, Skipper.’
‘Will do.’
‘As we pass over their heads we’ll rake their decks.’
‘Good show, Nash.’
‘We’ve been in hotter spots, Skipper.’
‘You there, Appleyard?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘See what you can do from the front turret.’
‘I’ll shoot ’em with shit.’
‘Sparks?’
‘Skipper?’
‘What’s going on?’
Atmospherics raged like the noise of a forest fire. ‘I’m listening.’
‘Roger-dodger.’
‘Hi-di-hi,’ said Nash.
‘Ho-di-ho,’ Bennett said.
We taxied towards the water-runway of the straits. The Difda operator sent: ‘NOTHING TO BE DONE STOP CHEERIO QRU QRT.’ I tapped ‘GOOD LUCK’ – thinking it deserved to be our turn next but hoping for no such downfall. He pounded SOS three times, then screwed his key onto a continuous note so that anyone with a mind for rescue could home in on the bearing. After a few seconds his penny-whistle stopped.
The tail banged into a trough as we picked up speed. An odd chop shook the aircraft, and the subtle but deadly winds of dawn were set for a rampage. Bennett slowed his taxi-ing, and I felt a steady washboard grating under the hull. A blade of weak sun lit the nose of the south-pointing promontory. The water was speckled white towards our turning point, faint breakers creaming both shores. The low hill where we had buried Wilcox was outlined.
Maybe Bennett waved goodbye. ‘What news, Sparks?’
We turned to starboard, under the lee of the cape. ‘Sounds like they got aboard and signed him off. Smashed his gear. They’re coming for us.’
‘Press on remorseless,’ Nash said.
‘Remorseless it is.’
A pale grey glacier rose between the flanks of two basaltic mountains, a broken expanse of other glaciers beyond, in places pink, and merging into a semicircle of cloud. Crevasses, ice ridges, solidified waterfalls stretched to the south as far as we could see. ‘Better than the view from Boston Stump,’ Nash said. ‘It was worth coming this far for!’
The sea was calm, straits widening. Engines on full power muffled the bang and drowned the whistling shell which preceded a waterspout in front. The earphone-lead enabled me to look out and see a ship coming from behind an indentation of the western coast.
‘Two miles,’ Appleyard said, ‘and it ain’t made of cardboard.’
‘Nor is that 88-millimetre screwed on the deck,’ Nash told him. ‘And I’ve just got the last clue.’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Perseverance – it must be.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Bennett. ‘We’re back on form.’
Another shell exploded so close that a wall of water swept the canopy. ‘Third one has it, Skipper.’
I was flung at the navigating table while Bennett did as tight a circle as he dared without smashing the port float, the hull in a cloud of shooting spray. I grabbed the radio handle as if to wrench it from the fitting.
‘They should be put on a charge for dumb insolence,’ said Appleyard. ‘They’re trying to drown us.’
‘Kilroy was here,’ said Nash. A shell exploded to port. ‘Give ’em the figure of eight, Skipper. We can take it.’
‘Get on your radio, Sparks, and tell them that if we go up in flames, everything on board will sink to the bottom.’
He turned to starboard, and another half circle took us so close we could no longer be seen by the ship’s gunners. Bennett hurled back up the straits, and when he drew level with our old mooring place and saw the way clear for five miles ahead, let all engines have full throttle and began moving for take-off.
During these manoeuvres it had been impossible to send his signal, but when on the straight I was about to do so he told me to scrub it.
‘Prepare for take-off.’
‘Minefield starts at four thousand yards,’ said Nash.
‘Give or take the odd furlong,’ Appleyard added.
‘Fact noted,’ Bennett said.
‘Is our new address to be Carnage Cottage, then, or the “Old Bull and Bush”?’
Rather than give up the gold, he would kill us and send it to the bottom. Morse from the Nemesis (or whatever name the other ship had) was fast, but so faulty in rhythm that it was difficult to tell dots from dashes, though the message was unmistakable. ‘WE HAVE YOU CORNERED STOP SURRENDER HEAVE TO.’
They knew we were hellbent for a minefield, but I told them to get stuffed as we flogged up speed – tactically flexible, and versatile unto death.
‘Salt water for breakfast,’ Nash said.
‘On toast,’ laughed Appleyard.
Expecting flak from above and below, we trusted Bennett to get us clear. He saw no reason not to proceed, and sped by the cliffs. But there was no lift, meaning we’d get through the minefield only to crash into the hill blocking the end of the channel. The same text from the Nemesis was repeated, demanding capitulation. They imagined us skulking behind the headland, contemplating the damage they had caused, and debating what to do next while we adjusted our reading glasses. ‘We’ll get up,’ said Nash. ‘We aren’t in a bloody railway carriage, and that’s a fact.’
We seemed to be travelling between the sleeve of the cliffs forever, pounding forward too slowly for our ominous weight. There was little wind to help. No one spoke. For better or worse, Bennett’s fight was ours and we left him to it, sat tight and prayed to get airborne without suddenly ceasing to exist. I looked out of the porthole to see, if only for a second, the nipple or big apple of a mine that would demob us for good and take us into a dream impossible to wake from. Supposition as to life after death watered my fear while we went through a zone marked on the chart as dangerous, and I wondered whether they were as thickly sown as eyes in a plate of sago, or as thinly as balls on a wet-day bowling green.
The Nemesis wouldn’t follow, and that was certain, but with a long-range gun it didn’t need to, though the dilemma of boarding was for them to crack. Their ship had not yet turned the final headland to watch either our spectacular fireball demise, or see us wiggle our tail as we lifted into the wide blue yonder. Bennett was too much locked in his fight to wonder about the seaplanes. Every rivet spar and panel vibrated as if, should we put on another knot of speed, we’d come to pieces.
The shakes diminished, but the hull scraped against the carborundum wheel of the water which seemed intent on grinding us down to the extinction of a wafer. In spite of the universal thrust, our boat was dead if it couldn’t lift – and so were we. Disintegration beamed on us, but a hummed tune came through the intercom and while I mulled on an end to our history, I recognized words which I joined in though only under my breath so as not to break our luck. Why that song rang out I’ll never know, nor who was the instigator, but in that couple of minutes I loved it for melting the wax of menace from us all.
Perhaps it was a case of spiritual buffoonery carried to its greatest extent, considering our crucial situation, but the words took me out of this perilous fjord and back to the palm-beach coast of Malaya where our staging post had been, and I heard again Peter Dawson’s voice booming from a loudspeaker nailed halfway up a tree, singing ‘The Road to Mandalay’. And now we were mocking it blind with tears in our eyes, but singing all the same as if it were a hymn.
‘On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flying fishes play …’
and we were one of those fishes, about to lift off for longer than any flier of the deep sea could, which no one in the history of the world would be able to gainsay, our great flying boat ascending, its twin along the surface of the blue water accompanying as if to see us safe into the air, when we would say goodbye because we’d no longer be either visible or necessary to each other, and so slide apart. We sang as if China really was across the bay, an
d Bennett would get us there and beyond to a safety of his own devising.
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.’
&nb
sp; ‘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.’