An Old Captivity

by Nevil Shute

  “I made you some Bovril, Mr. Ross,” she said simply.

  He got up stiffly. “That’s terribly good of you,” he said. “Did you make any for yourself?”

  She nodded. “I left mine up by the fire. I’ll go and get it.”

  She joined him presently, and they sat down together on the sandy turf. Both were wearing flying suits and fur-lined boots; they sat together in the half-light warming their hands upon their mugs.

  Presently he said: “I’m afraid I was very rude to you last night, Miss Lockwood. I was a bit tired. I didn’t think what I was saying.”

  She said: “Oh, that’s all right—I knew you were tired. But, Mr. Ross, can’t we do some of this work for you?”

  He said: “I’d rather see to it myself. It’s no work, really, just sitting here and giving her a shove from time to time.”

  She did not press the point; she was afraid of irritating him again. And presently he said:

  “I suppose you think I’m terribly fussy, don’t you?”

  She shook her head. “I’d never think of you like that. But I think you’re working much too hard, Mr. Ross.”

  “I’m not. But even if I were, I’d rather do that than have a flock of accidents.”

  She was silent for a minute. Then she said gently: “Nobody could hold it against you if anything happened to the seaplane on a trip like this. We ought to have had four or five men to help you—proper engineers. My father sees that now. As for accidents, a fragile thing like that is bound to have an accident from time to time.” She pointed to the seaplane, rocking gently on the dark water of the cove.

  He said emphatically, almost viciously: “All seaplanes don’t have accidents. Mine don’t. And mine aren’t going to. Accidents don’t just happen of themselves.”

  “Why do they happen, then?”

  He sat staring out over the dark water of the fiord to the dim mountains on the other side. The night was very still. He said quietly: “Accidents happen because men are foolish, and reckless, and negligent, and lazy. Sometimes, because there isn’t enough money for what they want to do. One crash in a hundred may have been because God willed it so. Not more than that.”

  She was silent.

  He said: “Sir David has seen that we’ve got enough money for this trip. If God has set His mind on it, we shall have a crash. Apart from that, my job here is to see we don’t, and we’re not going to.”

  She sat there with him for the remainder of his watch. At half-past three he let the seaplane go aground, and waited till he could see how she was lying. Then they went up together to the camp, taking their mugs with them.

  In the half-light she stopped by her tent. “Good night, Mr. Ross.”

  He stood before her, broad in his flying clothes, a massive figure dimly seen. “Good night, Miss Alix,” he said. “It was good of you to come down and sit up with me. I am sorry I was short with you that time. Don’t mind about that.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said softly.

  “Good night, Miss Alix.”

  “Good night, Mr. Ross.”

  He went into the tent where Lockwood was asleep, took a tablet of his Troxigin, and fell asleep himself.

  He slept for an hour and woke up with a violent start, in a great fright. He raised himself upon one elbow and stared round about him, sweating and rather cold. He was terrified of something; he did not know of what. He got up and went out of the tent to see if the machine was still all right; she stood beached upon the sand far from the receding tide. He went over to the girl’s tent and put his ear to it; the steady, even breathing told him all was well. He stood for a few minutes recovering himself; it was a fine, starry night with an icy little draught straight from the ice-cap. Everything was quiet and serene. He had made a fool of himself.

  He went back to his sleeping-bag, but he did not sleep again. He lay dozing, half awake, and watched the blue sky framed in the tent door grow lighter into grey, to broad daylight. Presently he heard Ajago and Mayark moving about the camp; he woke Lockwood and got up himself.

  That day he flew to Julianehaab to refuel. The machine was practically empty; with the assistance of the Eskimo boatman and his son he put in about two hundred and forty gallons. It took all the morning to do that. In the early afternoon he went and had a short talk with the governor at his house; then he took off for Brattalid again. He got back to the camp at three o’clock as the fog was just beginning to close down.

  A period of very perfect weather followed then, ideal for survey. They flew the next day and the day after that; on the third he went to Julianehaab again to refuel. Then they went on with the survey. The tides, forty minutes later every day, became high in the early morning, later and later as the days went on. The pilot took his sleep in bits and snatches, as and when he could. He could usually manage to get in two or three hours after the test development, and another two or three hours at some time in the night. After a day or two he found difficulty in sleeping in the daytime at irregular hours, and had to resort to his tablets to assist him in his daytime sleep. For that they worked all right, but they became less satisfactory for his night-time sleep. Once in the night, dead tired but wakeful, and with only two hours’ sleep to come, he took two tablets and slept heavily and well. He did not need to take two tablets the next night, because that was a refuelling day and he could get a stretch of over five hours on end; when next he took two tablets they had little effect. The next night, in desperation, with the survey all but finished, he took three.

  Two and a half hours later the alarm rang in his ear till it ran down, but he did not wake up. After ten minutes Lockwood shook him gently by the arm, and then more vigorously. Then he called Alix from her tent.

  AN OLD CAPTIVITY

  VIII

  THE pilot lay on his back in his sleeping-bag, with eyes closed and his tanned face drained of colour. The girl kneeled by him with her father; they shook him by the shoulder, without effect. He was inert and limp; his respiration was regular, but low.

  The girl said: “It’s a sort of a faint. Wait, and I’ll get some water.”

  They sponged his face with the cold water from the stream, and raised his head. But he did not come round.

  Lockwood was utterly at sea. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he muttered. “I suppose it’s just exhaustion.”

  His daughter said: “It’s those wretched tablets he’s been taking, I should think.”

  The don said sharply: “What tablets are those?”

  “He got them at Reykjavik when he couldn’t sleep. He showed them to me once.”

  “I never knew he was taking anything of that sort. Do you know where he kept them?”

  There were not very many private places in the tent. After a short search Lockwood found the bottle; it was half empty. He read the label with interest and slipped it in his pocket. “Well, that’s the end of that,” he said grimly.

  Alix said: “What do you think we’d better do, Daddy?” A hideous feeling of disaster was in the background of her mind.

  Her father did not answer for a moment. He knelt there by the pilot staring down at him. They had laid him in what seemed a comfortable position with his head raised; his face was wet and dripping from the water. “I don’t know,” he said irresolutely. “I suppose we’ll have to wait till he comes round. How many of the damn things did he take?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I never liked to ask.”

  They became aware of Ajago and Mayark peering in at them through the opening of the tent. Alix got up and went outside to them. Ajago said in Danish: “Rogg is ill.”

  The girl shook her head. “He is only asleep. Very soon he will wake up.”

  Mayark said something in an excited tone in Eskimo, evidently in disagreement. Ajago answered him sharply in the same language, and got a volley of words in reply. An incomprehensible argument or quarrel developed between the natives; both grew very much excited. Alix sighed irritably, and went back to the tent
.

  A quarter of an hour later she discovered Ajago squatting morose and alone beside the fire. She asked him: “Where is Mayark?”

  Without moving the native said: “One is foolish, and has gone away.”

  “Why has he gone away?”

  He raked awkwardly among the ashes. “One has been afraid.”

  The girl said: “You are not afraid, Ajago? There is nothing here to be afraid of?”

  He raised his eyes to hers uneasily. “I will stay here,” he said simply.

  “Thank you, Ajago.” She touched his shoulder, and went back into the tent.

  She told her father what the Eskimo had said. He bit his lip. “It’s most unlucky,” he said quietly. “They said that someone would get ill if we camped here, and now it’s happened. I suppose Mayark’s gone away for good. Will Ajago stay with us to-night? We’ll be done if they both go.”

  “I think he’s all right, Daddy. You’d better come and have a word with him.”

  They left the pilot, and went out of the tent. The native was still squatting by the fire; he had some kind of amulet in his hands which he concealed hurriedly as they came towards him. Alix remembered that he was supposed to be a Christian. He got to his feet to meet them.

  Lockwood asked: “Where is Mayark, Ajago? Has he gone to the other camp?”

  Alix interpreted: the man said something in reply. “He says, Mayark’s gone home.”

  “Ask him if he will stay with us.”

  The man burst into a torrent of nervous speech, mostly in his own language. Alix interrupted him gently, and told him to speak Danish. For ten minutes they wrestled with the language difficulty.

  The girl turned to her father. “What he’s trying to say is that we’re crazy to stay here. He doesn’t want to leave us. But he thinks we’re awful fools to have camped here at all. And of course, he’s saying that he warned us this would happen.”

  The don stood looking round him, deep in thought. He saw the low, bare hill, the stream, the beach, the low stone walls of the abandoned buildings. Quite suddenly, it was distasteful to him; he came to a decision. “Tell him that as soon as Ross recovers we’ll all move over to the other camp.”

  She did so. The man said something to her very earnestly, and repeated it several times.

  “What’s that?” asked Lockwood.

  She turned to him with a scared face. “He says that if we keep Mr. Ross here he … he’ll die to-night.”

  “Oh!”

  There was a long pause; Lockwood had to do some rapid thinking. If the native felt like that about it, it was most unlikely that he would stay with them; if Ross did not recover very soon, Ajago would desert. Without the Eskimo it would become impossible for them to carry on at all. If they were to retain him, they must make some compromise with his superstition.

  “Ask him if he would like us to move over to the other camp to-day.”

  The girl did so; there was very little doubt of Ajago’s feelings on that matter.

  The don returned to his daughter. “What do you think, Alix?”

  She stared around at the camp site. “I don’t know, Daddy,” she said slowly. “It’s much better here, of course—the water’s good, and there’s more level ground. But we could pull the seaplane right up at high tide, and leave her. There can’t really be anything in what he says, can there?”

  Her father hesitated. “Of course there can’t,” he said, a little uncertainly. “Ross has taken too many of those tablets—he’d be just the same in Oxford. Still—I don’t know.”

  Alix said: “Daddy, I’d just as soon that we went over there …”

  “All right.” He turned to the native. “We will wait here till midday,” he said. “If Ross has recovered then, we will stay here. If not, we’ll move him over to your camp this afternoon.”

  The girl translated this, and Ajago received it with a smile. They turned back to the tent. The Eskimo came running after them, and said something to the girl.

  “What’s that?” asked Lockwood.

  She frowned, and hesitated. “Literally, I think he’s saying that Mr. Ross has gone on a journey with the people who used to live here, Daddy,” she said. “In case we didn’t quite understand …”

  They nodded and smiled at the man, and went back into the tent. The pilot was still lying as they had left him; it seemed to them that the respiration was not quite so strong. They made another effort to rouse him and sponged his face with the cold water again, with not the least success. His hands and feet were growing cold; they filled bottles with hot water and put them in his sleeping-bag. Then they had done all that they could do.

  At high tide Lockwood went down with Ajago to the water’s edge, and beached the seaplane at the top of the tide. They made her fast to stakes driven into the ground, securing her as firmly as they could. Then they went back to the camp, where Alix was still sitting by the pilot in the tent, immersed in her own thoughts. She had learned, that morning, what the pilot meant to her.

  From time to time she sponged his face with the cold water, with absolutely no effect at all. By noon they could not deny that he was a good deal worse. The respiration was very low, and the pulse was feeble. Outside, Ajago was busy constructing a stretcher of birch boughs. Lockwood turned to Alix.

  “It’s absolutely crazy,” he said, “but I believe I’d like to take him to the other camp. He’s doing no good here.”

  She inclined her head. “It is crazy, Daddy,” she said seriously. “There’s absolutely nothing the matter with this place—we’ve only got the wind up because Ajago’s been talking to us. But I agree with you. If we wait till this afternoon he may be so weak that we won’t want to move him. If we’re going, we’d better go now.”

  “I think so, too.”

  They went and told Ajago of their decision. He finished the stretcher and went down and brought the motor boat to the beach; then they lifted the pilot in his sleeping-bag and laid him carefully upon the stretcher. They carried him down to the boat and, wading in the shallow water, laid the stretcher across the gunwales. The stretcher made access to the engine difficult; rather than bother with it for the short trip, Ajago took the oars and rowed the boat across the cove. In half an hour they were carrying him up from the boat to the Eskimos’ tent in the new camp.

  At the entrance to the tent Ajago made them lay the stretcher down. Alix asked him the reason in Danish, and the man replied.

  She turned to her father. “He says, we’ve got to wait,” she said.

  They watched the Eskimo, a little irritably. He went into the tent and dragged his own sleeping-bag out on to the grass. Then he took down a bunch of vegetation that was hanging in the roof, and began to sprinkle little portions of it on the ground sheet. Satisfied with that, he crushed the remainder in his hands and rubbed it over the cloth entrance flaps. Lockwood watched him, keenly interested.

  Alix asked: “What is that stuff? What’s he doing to the tent?”

  He said quietly: “It’s wild garlic. He’s making a protection against spirits. I’ve never seen this done before.”

  Satisfied with his work upon the tent, the Eskimo came over to the stretcher, and kneeled down beside the pilot. He looked at him critically and laid a hand upon his forehead; then he said something to the girl. She turned to her father.

  “He wants to put some of those weeds in his bag,” she said.

  Her father said: “I guessed as much. I don’t think it can do him any harm—it’s only wild garlic. If we’re going to try mediaeval treatment we may as well go the whole hog.”

  They nodded their assent to Ajago. The Eskimo undid his bag and put sprigs of garlic in beside the sleeping man, and laid a little on his chest. Then they carried him into the tent and made him comfortable upon the bed.

  They had a hurried meal; then Ajago and Lockwood spent the afternoon transferring the camp with successive journeys in the motor boat, while Alix stayed with Ross. By evening a definite improvement was noticeable. The pilot’s bre
athing was much stronger and the pulse was better; moreover, he seemed to be keeping warmer.

  Lockwood stood up from examining him. “It’s wearing off,” he said, a little uncertainly. “Drugs of that sort get absorbed into the system in time. It’s only a matter of time …”

  Alix agreed. “Of course. I mean, it couldn’t be anything else.”

  Ajago looked in at the tent door, bent over the pilot critically, and got to his feet very pleased. He said something to the girl, beaming all over his face; she turned to her father.

  “He’s saying, ‘I told you so.’”

  “Of course, he would say that.”

  The man said in Danish: “It is good. To-morrow one will wake up.” He went out of the tent; when Alix went out later she discovered that he had spread a circle of wild garlic on the grass right round the tent.

  That night they took turns to sit with the pilot. Alix went to sleep after supper and Lockwood stayed with the sick man in the tent; at two in the morning the girl came to relieve him.

  She bent over the pilot and looked at him in the dim light of the candle lantern. “He’s ever so much better, Daddy,” she said quietly. “He’s got more colour, and he’s warmer. He’s breathing much more strongly, too, than when I saw him last. Ought we to try and wake him?”

  The don said: “I don’t think so. I should let him sleep it off.”

  The girl nodded. “All right, Daddy—he’s got plenty to make up. You go along and get some sleep yourself. I’ll be all right.”

  She settled down beside the pilot in the tent; Lockwood went to the other tent to sleep. The man lay motionless, his head a little on one side, his breathing regular and even. The girl sat by him, deep in her own thoughts. From time to time she went out of the tent and threw some wood upon the fire; the night was fine, and still, and starry. Over the barren moors and the mountains, over the ice-cap and the fiord, a great peace reigned. From time to time she stood outside the tent and looked around; in spite of everything she was happy. The barren landscape seemed to be a friendly place to her. There was nothing bad here, nothing to be afraid of. It was only a little strange.