by Nevil Shute
He went and got a sack and took them away.
Next day, early in the morning, they left Julianehaab. The governor and the doctor and the pastor all came down to see them off. For the last time Ajago took them to the seaplane in the motor boat; they said good-bye to him, and got in. Ross and Lockwood swung the inertia starter together and the engine fired; Ajago cast off the mooring for them, and they taxied out into the fiord.
The first attempt to take off was unsuccessful. They had a very heavy load of fuel on board; the machine ran for two miles up the fiord, but failed to leave the water. They taxied back again and hung on to the motor boat while Ross drained off some fuel into the sea; at the next attempt they left the water after a long run. Ross climbed the machine slowly to about three hundred feet; then he turned and passed over Julianehaab at about nine o’clock, letting out his aerial as he passed the settlement. He got on to his course, out over the sea.
Presently Julianehaab faded into the mists behind. There was a visibility of about fifteen miles; the sky was partly overcast at seven or eight thousand feet. They flew at about two thousand feet over a dappled leaden sea, transmitting on the wireless each half-hour. They sat in the machine, bored and motionless, for five hours. At two o’clock they saw the loom of land, very far ahead.
They held on the same course, and presently made out the entrance to Hamilton Inlet. Then they turned, having established their position, and flew southwards down the coast for another hour or so. Presently the pilot pointed to a few wooden houses scattered on a little island.
“That’s Battle Harbour,” he said. Peering down, they saw the masts of the wireless station.
He throttled down and put the seaplane into a wide gliding turn above the little settlement; presently they saw the red buoy on the water. They landed near it and Ross taxied up to it; Alix standing on the float, hooked on. The pilot cut his switches, and the engine came to rest. “That’s that,” he said, a little wearily.
They studied Battle Harbour from their seats, tired and reluctant to move. It looked very like Julianehaab, but not so big and not so well arranged. There were the same little wooden houses, a hospital, and a wireless station standing on the bleak, bare ground. “What will you do about the fuel?” asked Lockwood. “Will you fill up to-day?”
Ross said: “I think we’d better, sir. The weather is good at the moment. I’d like to make the most of it, and get along to-morrow down to Halifax.” He stared at the shore. “I don’t suppose you want to hang about here any longer than we’ve got to.”
A motor boat came out to them, and took them ashore. In half an hour Ross was back with the petrol, and was filling it into the machine with the assistance of a couple of men, trappers in the winter. By half-past six the work on the machine was done, and they were ready to go on next day.
The nurse in charge of the hospital provided a bed for Alix for the night; Ross and Lockwood slept in their bags in a loft over the Hudson Bay Company’s store. They had little time to explore Battle Harbour. They took one short walk after supper and found the place alive with sledge dogs; then they returned and went to bed at nine o’clock, in preparation for an early start next day. They were disappointed, for there was a morning mist. They were up at five to peer out into an iridescent, pearly fog with a pale sun above; they hung about disconsolate for hours. Shortly before ten o’clock a little breeze got up and blew the mist away; the pilot decided to make a start.
“We may have to come back again, if we don’t like the look of it,” he said to Lockwood. “But I think we’ll have a stab at it!”
They thanked their hosts and said good-bye, and went out to the seaplane in the motor boat. By half-past ten they were in the air and on a course for Halifax in Nova Scotia, flying above wreaths of the low mist that hung about the coast. Soon they came to the Straits of Belle Isle and crossed over them.
The northern part of Newfoundland was barren and low, lying, dotted with water lying on the land in lakes like puddles in a street. They followed down the western shore; slowly the land grew fertile, till it became thickly wooded. Presently Ross touched Lockwood on the elbow, and turned to draw the girl’s attention. He pointed downwards; below them there was a winding track cut in the pine forest, and a puff of steam. Presently they saw the little engine and the trucks. “This is the Bay of Islands,” he said, smiling. “You can go home by train now, if you like.”
The girl said: “I don’t want to go by train—it’s getting interesting now. Something to look at, instead of just sea. I never knew a forest looked so much like a game of spillikins.”
Her father said: “I noticed that. There seem to be fallen trees everywhere you look.”
Ross nodded. “It’s always like that, but you only see it from the air. Any untouched, virgin forest looks like that.”
They followed the coast on down to Cape Ray, eating a lunch of bully beef and biscuits in their fingers. They crossed Cabot Strait and passed over the collieries and steelworks of Sidney; in the warm afternoon they followed down the east coast of Nova Scotia. At half-past five they came in sight of a large town upon the south shore of a wide, extensive harbour.
The pilot said: “Halifax.” He put the seaplane into a wide turn above the town. “That’s where we land—that oil wharf—where the ferry’s going in.”
Lockwood said: “Do you know this place?”
Ross nodded. “I came here several times, in the old days.”
The machine swept low beside an island opposite the docks and landed in front of the town; the pilot turned and taxied in towards the oil wharf. A flat-bottomed motor dory with a couple of men in it came out to meet them and took them in tow; presently the seaplane was securely moored by bow and stern between two wharves, floating safely and sheltered in the bay between.
They got down into the dory for the few yards to the wharf; Alix stared around. She had never been in North America, and it had a foreign air to her. The piles that the wharves were built upon were just the rough-trimmed trunks of trees; in England the timber would have been squared off. Everything on the water-front was built of wood and corrugated iron, severely practical and rather shabby. The signs upon the buildings in themselves seemed strange, RAKWANA TEA and THE SCOTIA FLOUR AND FEED LTD. A little crowd of men upon the wharf contained three negro labourers.
One of the men in the dory turned to Ross.
“You come from Battle Harbour to-day?”
The pilot said: “That’s right.”
The man turned the chew in his cheek, spat into the water, and said: “Why do them letters start with G? All the ones I ever seen begin with C.” He indicated the registration letters painted on the yellow fuselage.
Ross said: “It’s a British registration. G means England. C is for Canada.”
“Uh. Quite a ways from home, aren’t you?”
The pilot said: “That’s so.”
They clambered up a rickety ladder on the oil wharf; the manager was at the top to meet them. “’Evening, Jimmie,” said the pilot. “How’ve you been keeping? Guess you’ve put on weight since I was out here last.”
The manager said: “Hi-ho, Donald—you don’t alter much. Still going around in airplanes? Tell me, before the hands go home—what octane gas do you use in this thing?”
They talked about the details of the refuelling for a few minutes; the manager arranged to keep some men on overtime to fill the seaplane up for them. Ross turned to Lockwood. “We can leave it all to them, sir,” he said. “They’re used to handling ships here. I’ll come down after dinner and just look her over; then we can get along to-morrow bright and early.”
They went up to the red stone Customs House carrying their tiny baggage. At the desk the officer looked at their passports deliberately, slowly, and with some interest. At last he said: “You’ve come all the way from Southampton, then, by way of Iceland and Greenland?”
The pilot said: “That’s right.”
The man considered the position for a minute. Then he s
aid: “You made quite a flight.”
Ross said: “Yes. We’re not stopping in Canada. We’re going on down into the States to-morrow—to New York.”
“Yah. I guess I’ll have to see the boss. We don’t get many Atlantic fliers in these parts.”
He took their passports off into an inner room; at the desk Alix turned to Ross in wonder. “He said we were Atlantic fliers. Is that what we are?”
He smiled down at her. “More or less, Miss Lockwood. We’ve flown it in a sort of way.”
The don said: “I never realised that we were putting ourselves into that distinguished category.”
The pilot said: “Well, sir, that’s what you hired me for. And I remember showing you the map before we started, so you can’t blame me.”
Lockwood said quietly: “Yes, and you told me it was going to be a tough trip. You’ve done a very good job, Mr. Ross.”
The pilot said: “It’s been the weather. We’ve had awful luck with that.”
The girl said nothing. The reference to Atlantic fliers and the memory of the journey they had made were bringing home to her the magnitude of the task that the pilot had achieved. Each step of the journey, considered at the time, did not seem very difficult or very arduous; it was only when you came to look back upon it as a whole that you saw what a job it had been. Her father was right. They had never realised in Oxford what the journey would be like; if they had had the knowledge then that they had now, they might never have started at all. But the pilot, with his experience, had known all about it. He had known the difficulties that they would meet, and had not been afraid. She did not quite know if she was in love with Ross. She did know that she respected him enormously.
Presently the formalities were completed; they left the office and took a taxi up to the hotel. It was a fine, modern and luxurious hotel facing a park on the high ground behind the town. They marched in, carrying their little linen kit-bags, and registered at the desk.
In the spotless elevator, going up, Lockwood said diffidently: “I’m not sure that we’ve got the clothes for a place like this, Mr. Ross.”
“We’re quite all right, sir. Nobody changes for dinner here.”
Alix said: “It will be nice to have a bath. I haven’t had a bath since Reykjavik.”
Ross said: “I’m afraid I had my last in Invergordon, Miss Lockwood.”
The memory of the hotels that they had stayed in came back to her. “Shall we meet for a drink before dinner, Mr. Ross?”
The pilot smiled. “Sure, Miss Lockwood. I’ll slip down to the town and get a bottle. Shall I come to your room, or will you come to mine?”
She stared at him. “Whatever are you talking about?”
He said: “The licensing laws. You can’t get a drink in the hotel here, like you would in England. You’re allowed to buy one bottle a day in this province. You go and get it personally at the liquor store. You aren’t allowed to drink it in a public place, or with your meals in the restaurant. So when you want to have a drink, you throw a party in a bedroom. It’s the normal thing to do.”
He paused. Then he smiled slowly, and said: “It kind of breaks the ice when you take a girl out for the evening.”
“I’m sure it does, Mr. Ross. But is this true? You’re not pulling my leg?”
They reached the bedrooms; the bellboy opened the doors for them. The pilot shook his head. “Sure I’m not. See, here’s the bottle opener screwed on the window-sill, and here’s the corkscrew. And here’s the list of table waters, under the Bible.” He turned away. “I’ll only be able to get just one bottle, so you can’t have a gin and Italian. Shall I get a bottle of Scotch?”
She said: “All right. Daddy could drink a whisky and soda, I expect. Let’s meet here, in my room, at seven o’clock.”
“Right you are. Would you telephone down for the soda, then?” He went down again in the elevator and took a taxi to the liquor store; then he came back and had a long, hot bath. At seven o’clock he tapped at her door, bottle in hand. Lockwood was there; they opened the bottle, poured out the drinks, and sat about the room drinking for a quarter of an hour before dinner.
“How far is it to New York from here?” asked Lockwood.
“Five or six hours’ flight, sir. If we’re in the air by eight o’clock it’s plenty time enough. I told them at the oil wharf we’d be down there at half-past seven.”
“How do we go?”
“Follow the coast down to Cape Sable, sir, and then straight on a compass course. Then there’s about a couple of hundred miles of sea to cross, and then we cut across a bit of Massachusetts. After that we go straight on down Long Island Sound.”
“Do you know the coast down there?”
The pilot shook his head. “I’ve never been down in the States at all, except once to Detroit.”
They emptied their glasses and went down to dinner. Then they took a taxi and drove down to the wharf. Ross left them there, to go and check up the refuelling and to drain the sumps. The Lockwoods took the taxi on for a drive round Halifax in the warm evening.
They got back to the hotel at about ten o’clock. The pilot was before them; they found him sitting in the lounge, He got up as they came in; for a few minutes they discussed the town. Then he said:
“I’m going to turn in before very long, sir. Would you like another whisky and soda before going to bed?”
The don shook his head. “I don’t think I will; I think I’ll go up now. You have one.”
Ross shook his head. “I don’t believe in solitary drinking.”
Alix laughed. “What nonsense! I’m thirsty; I’ll have a very little one with you, Mr. Ross.”
They went up in the elevator; Lockwood left them and went to bed. The pilot went with the girl to her room; the whisky and soda were still standing on her dressing-table among her personal articles, her brush and comb, her powder compact, her little bottle of scent. Most of these the pilot knew by sight already.
He poured out the drinks, a medium one for himself and a small one for her, and put in the soda. Then he took his glass and strolled over to the open window, and stood looking out over the harbour.
“It’s not a bad place, this,” he said. “I’ve had some good times here.”
She came and stood by him. “It’s a very shabby town.”
“I know. But there’s something about it that I like. It’s a man’s town.”
“Have you been here a lot?”
“Half a dozen times, perhaps.” He turned to her. “I’m glad we came here for the last night of our flight. To-morrow we’ll be in New York, and it’ll all be over.”
She said slowly: “I’ve been thinking of that, too. I’ve enjoyed this trip, every minute of it. I’ve never done anything like this before. It’ll be something to look back on, all my life.”
He glanced down at her. The curl of the hair around her neck fascinated him; it was all he could do to prevent himself from touching it.
He stirred suddenly. “It’s the last lap to-morrow,” he said a little harshly. Then he smiled, and raised his glass. “The last lap—may the luck still hold.”
She stood there looking up at him, more like Hekja than he had ever known her. Involuntarily he caught his breath. She raised her own glass. “To our luck,” she said. “No more dreams, Mr. Ross.”
He stared at her for a moment; she was Hekja to the life. “No,” he said very quietly, “no more dreams.” He set his glass down, took her by the shoulders, and kissed her.
In a moment he released her, and they stood facing each other, breathing a little quickly. “I’m sorry I did that,” he said unsteadily. “But it’s the last lap, and it’s just as well that you should know.”
She said: “I’m not sorry, if you wanted to, Mr. Ross. But please don’t do it again.”
He turned back to the window. “You needn’t be afraid of that,” he said. “I don’t know why I did it then—something you said about my dream. But you know the way I feel about you.”
She smiled faintly. “It was a pretty good demonstration.” She paused, and then she said: “I’ve never been in love. Not since I was a schoolgirl, and in love with Leslie Howard. It doesn’t happen easily to me.”
“I know,” he said. “Nor very easily to me.” He turned back to her, and took her hand. “Do you think that it would ever happen?”
She said in a low tone: “I don’t know, Donald. If it did, I’d let you know.”
They stood in silence for a minute; then he let her go. “I think I’d better say good night, Miss Alix,” he said heavily. “It’s a vicious law, this one that makes you drink in bedrooms. It puts ideas into one’s head.”
She came with him to the door. “Not a bit of it,” she said. “They’ve been there for a long time. I know that.”
He smiled. “Maybe you’re right.” He turned to her. “Good night.”
She said softly: “Good night, Mr. Ross,” and shut the door on him. Both went to bed, and lay awake most of the night. Neither of them slept for more than an hour or so before the telephone bell rang to call them to get up.
They breakfasted in the deserted dining-room, the pilot taciturn, and Alix very attentive to the requirements of her father. Then they went down to the seaplane in a taxi. They went on board, the mooring lines were slipped, and the motor dory towed them out into the harbour. By eight o’clock they were in the air, and turning to head southwards down the coast.
For the first hour they flew down the eastern side of Nova Scotia, past Chester and Liverpool. At a quarter-past nine they came to the end of the land; the pilot got upon his compass course and they went droning out south-westwards over a deep blue sea. It was warm in the cabin of the seaplane, though they were flying at three thousand feet. Lockwood dozed in his seat beside the pilot. Alix sat behind, watching Ross at his work, thinking about the episode of the night. She had become aware that she was very fond of him; it was inconceivable that after the flight was over she should never see him again. But it was everything or nothing, now. She must be fair to him.
The pilot busied himself with the navigation, and with transmitting messages upon the radio from time to time. For two hours the seaplane droned on over the sea.