An Old Captivity

by Nevil Shute

  Presently Alix leaned forward and touched the pilot on the shoulder. She pointed at a shadow on the far horizon, dead ahead of them. “What’s that? Is it land?”

  He nodded, and turned in his seat to speak to her. “It’s Provincetown—the north end of Cape Cod. We’re just about dead on our course.” He showed her the map.

  Lockwood woke up and they all examined the map together; the pilot throttled a little and allowed the seaplane to lose height slowly as they approached the land. They sat back in their seats and waited as the end of the cape drew slowly near, as the machine sank gradually towards it. Fresh from his sleep, Lockwood looked around him and noticed the pilot’s face; it was drawn and tired, and very intent on the land. His appearance worried the don slightly; it was just as well, he thought, that this was the last flight they had to make. Thinking it over, it seemed to him that Ross had not had nearly enough rest. They had come from Julianehaab to Halifax in two long days of flying, and this was the third. It would be a good thing when they got down to New York, and there would be no more flying to be done.

  The noise of the engine died suddenly to a whisper, and the nose of the machine dropped to a glide. The don glanced quickly at the pilot. He was still gazing intently at the spit of land now looming ahead of them dead on their gliding path, and growing larger every minute. Then he saw that Ross had his hand upon the throttle, and knew that he was gliding down on purpose.

  The don said: “What is it?”

  The pilot never took his eyes from the low, sandy spit. “It’s all right, sir,” he said irritably. “I throttled down.”

  Lockwood said no more, but turned to look ahead. They were down nearly to a thousand feet, and the details of the land were clear. It was low and sandy; to the south of them it stretched on indefinitely. To the north it ended in the sea almost beneath them, curving away in a curious hook of sandbanks. There was a town of white wooden houses in the sandhills, Provincetown, and a very high square tower built of grey stone. There was a loop of arterial road around the town, with cars dotted about on it as it ran through the sandhills.

  Then all this swung round to their left as the pilot turned away, still on the glide. They were now low enough to see the detail of the sea, a heavy swell that broke in white surf upon the sunlit, sandy beaches. For an agonising moment both Alix and her father thought that the pilot was going to land upon the sea; the experience that they had gained upon the flight told each of them that landing on that sea could only mean disaster. Both controlled their feelings, neither of them moved or spoke to Ross. Then the beach appeared again on their right. The pilot’s hand moved slowly on the throttle, the engine came to life again, and they began to fly along the coast towards the south.

  They flew only a hundred yards or so from the beach, and barely twenty feet above a hideously rough sea. Both Lockwood and his daughter had implicit confidence in Ross. He had never flown so low with them before and they did not like it; they knew that height meant safety in the air. Their confidence told them that he probably had some good reason for it and that it would be better not to worry him. They relaxed a little, and looked at the land.

  It was extraordinarily similar. A sandy cliff seventy or a hundred feet in height seemed to be crowned with bushes and low scrub; as the top of it was above the seaplane most of the time they could only catch glimpses of the land behind. The foot of the cliff ran out in a short beach on which the white surf rolled and beat in breakers. Ahead of them, as far as they could see, this beach and cliff stretched on continuously, evenly, uninterrupted. They flew on low beside it for minute after minute, mile after mile; there was no break or interruption in the cliff or in the beach.

  Alix leaned forward and touched the pilot on the shoulder. “What a marvellous beach!”

  He turned a white, strained face to her. “I know this place. We called it Wonderstrands.”

  Alix was staggered for a moment. Then she rose to the occasion. She got up from her seat and leaned over his shoulder, her face very close to his, speaking into his ear. “Donald,” she said gently, “you dreamed about Wonderstrands. It was very wonderful, and lovely, but it was only a dream. This is a real place, Cape Cod.”

  A stray wisp of her hair brushed his cheek. He said: “I know. But this is the place we came to in my dream. Don’t you remember?”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t with you in your dream,” she said, a little sadly. “It was Hekja who was with you then, Donald. It wasn’t me. All I know is the present, that we’re in a seaplane, and we’re rather near the water. Don’t you think we might fly a little higher?”

  He said: “I wanted to see it as we saw it then, just to be sure.” He eased the wheel back, and climbed to three or four hundred feet.

  Lockwood stirred and was about to say something; his daughter motioned to him to be silent. She crouched beside the pilot, her head very near to his, her hand upon his shoulder. They flew on down the immense beach for another ten minutes; it seemed endless and unchanging. Presently Ross said uncertainly: “There was a little sandy island, where we found the honey-dew. I can’t see it yet.”

  Alix said gently: “You can’t expect everything to be quite the same as in your dream, Donald.”

  “I suppose not.”

  A minute or two later they came level with Eastham. Looking ahead, the girl saw a series of wide stretches of inland water separated from the sea by sand-bars, calm and inviting. She said quietly: “We could land on one of those lagoons. Why don’t we put down there? We could have lunch on shore, and see if we could make sense of it all.”

  He turned to her, smiling bitterly. “I daresay you think I’m off my head. I’m quite all right, Miss Alix. But I’m telling you—this is the place I came to in my dream.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to land?”

  “I’ll land if you want to. But I’d rather go on, myself, and see the whole of it.”

  She hesitated, and then said: “All right.”

  He flew on down the coast past Pleasant Bay and Chatham, the girl crouching close beside him. They turned the corner of the land and began to follow the shore westwards on the south side of the Cape. They flew on down the low-lying, sandy coast for a quarter of an hour, past Harwich and Hyannis; presently the country got a little bolder, and the shores more thickly wooded. Suddenly the pilot put the seaplane into a steep turn above a harbour entrance between sandy spits, leading to inland water.

  He said to Alix: “This is the place where we went in. I’m going to go down low again to have a look. Don’t be afraid.”

  She smiled, and said: “Don’t go and hit anything.”

  “I won’t do that.”

  He throttled back, and circled out to sea. The yellow seaplane sank towards the water; presently he opened up again and flew towards the harbour entrance about thirty feet above the water.

  “This is the place,” he said.

  They passed the sand-spit and flew on above the placid inland water, with Osterville Grand Island on their right hand and Cotuit on the left. They passed on between the wooded shores into the Great Bay and turned to the north. A narrow, river-like stretch of water led inland with wooded country to the west and fairly open, park-like country to the east. They shot up this at ninety miles an hour; it opened out into a still, inland lagoon completely surrounded by the woods. The pilot took the seaplane up to about three hundred feet, and circled round.

  “That’s where we came to,” he said quietly. “We made our camp down there, under that little knoll.”

  They stared down at the lagoon. It lay still and attractive in the morning sunlight; the woods cast bright reflections in the calm water. There were two or three shacks or summer cottages clustered at one end of it and one or two large houses dotted about among the trees, not very near the shore. Otherwise it was deserted.

  Alix said: “Are you sure about it, Donald?”

  He said: “There’s nothing changed here since we came before. Only those houses in the woods have come. Would you g
et back into your seat, Miss Alix? I’m going down to land.”

  She slipped back into her seat. The pilot closed the throttle and put the seaplane into a wide gliding turn. He came in over the little shacks at the east end of the lagoon, slipped down towards the water, and flattened out with a little burst of engine. The floats touched gently and bit down into the surface; the seaplane slowed, sank down into the water, and came to rest before the little cove. Ross turned and taxied in towards the beach.

  The floats touched on the sand, and the machine came to rest. The pilot cut the switches and the propeller stopped; silence closed down upon them. He turned to Lockwood. “This is the place we came to in my dream,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I had to land.”

  He got out of his seat and pressed past Alix, opened the cabin door, and made his way along the float. From their seats the don and his daughter watched him as he splashed through the shallow water to the beach, as he stood upon the sand looking around.

  The girl said uncertainly: “Daddy, what ought we to do? Do you think he’s all right?”

  Her father said slowly: “I think so. He’s had a curious experience, and he’s been living under a great strain. I think he’s quite all right.” He turned to her. “We don’t know everything there is to know,” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of in that.”

  She said: “I’d never be afraid of Mr. Ross, Daddy.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t.”

  She stirred uneasily in her seat. “I don’t think he ought to be alone.”

  Her father said: “You go to him. You’re nearer him than I shall ever be.”

  She got out of her seat, got down on to the float, and went along it to the beach. Lockwood followed her a minute later. She reach the pilot. “Donald,” she said gently. “Is it the place you thought it was?”

  He nodded. “It’s the place, all right. We made our camp up there, at the top of the beach.”

  He turned to meet the don as he came up. “I suppose you think I’m mad, sir,” he said evenly. “Probably I am. If so, I’m not fit to fly for you any more. But you’re all right here, and the machine’s safe enough. You’ll only have to walk a mile to find a telephone. Ring up the Boston air port, and they’ll send a pilot down to take her away.”

  Lockwood said: “Do you mean that you want to resign the job, Mr. Ross?”

  The pilot said: “That’s right. I’ve flown enough for the time being, evidently. There comes a time when you’ve just got to stop. It may be I shall never fly again. In any case, I’m chucking up the job.”

  “You’re doing nothing of the sort,” said Lockwood.

  There was a momentary silence.

  The don faced him squarely. “If you are ill now—and I don’t think you are—it’s just because you’ve worked too hard to make this journey a success. I’m not going to let you give up your job like this. I’ll get someone else to take the seaplane down to Baltimore by all means, if you like. But I want you to come back with us to England.”

  The pilot said: “I don’t care, either way.” Nothing seemed to matter now. There was a bitterness in his voice that made the girl’s heart ache.

  He turned away and moved up the beach; she followed a little way behind him in the soft sand. Lockwood hesitated, and let them go alone.

  The pilot stopped at the edge of the woods and looked around. “It’s all very like it was, as I remember it,” he said. “Only, the trees are smaller—it’s all second growth, this stuff. It’s a shame, that. It was so pretty then.”

  The girl said gently: “This place means a lot to you, Donald, doesn’t it?”

  He said: “I was very happy here.”

  He turned towards the little knoll. “That’s our hill,” he said. “Would you come up there with me?”

  She said in a low tone: “Of course.”

  They turned, and left the beach in silence. In silence they climbed up the little knoll above the quiet lagoon; the ground was soft and springy under their feet. At the top the girl stood for a minute, looking around. The still water lay beneath them, mirroring reflections of the trees and of the sky; the yellow seaplane lay below them on the beach. It was very quiet.

  “It’s a friendly place,” she said at last.

  “Why do you say that?”

  She turned to the pilot. He was on his knees beside a rock, covered in lichen and half buried in the sand. He was staring up at her. “Why did you say that?” he asked again.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Donald. Some places are happy places. This is one of them.”

  “I know.” He glanced at the rock. “Do you remember this?”

  She knelt down on the turf beside him. “I’m afraid not, Donald,” she said quietly.

  He laid his hand upon it. “This is our stone.”

  “You mean, this is the stone you dreamed about?” she asked.

  He nodded. “This is it.”

  Lockwood came up the knoll to them; the pilot raised his head. “I dreamed that we put a stone up on this hill, sir,” he said evenly. “Well, here it is.”

  The don put on his spectacles and said: “Let’s have a look at it.” There was something very soothing in his practical acceptance of the fact. He dropped on to his knees with them beside the stone, and passed his hand over it. Then he got his knife and scraped a corner of it with a sharp tool. After a time he said: “It looks like a tertiary basalt—an augitite.”

  He raised his head and stared out over the lagoon. “If that’s the case,” he said, “it can’t be native to the cape. It’s all sand and silica formations here. There’s no basalt in these parts. Somebody must have brought it from some other place.”

  Ross nodded. “We got it from the hill above our camp at Brattalid. That’s where we got all the ballast for the ship.”

  They all stared down at it in silence for a time.

  “That’s a possibility,” Lockwood said at last. “You get this sort of basalt there, all right.”

  The pilot got to his feet. “Let’s lift it up and have a proper look,” he said. “I think it’s got some more to tell us, if it gets a chance.”

  It was half buried in the turf; with some difficulty they heaved it from its bed. The buried face was cleaner than the top part; there were marks cut deep into the stone that ran under the lichens of the part that was exposed. They bent over it and scraped the lichens clear, working in silence.

  Presently the don said: “These are runic carvings.”

  He brushed the dust away, and stepped back to see them in full view. The marks were quite clear where they had been covered by the ground, weathered and less distinct above. They made a pattern:

  “Haki and Hekja,” Ross said softly. “And it’s been here all this time.”

  Lockwood glanced at him. “That’s what it seems to mean.” He stooped and traced the markings with his finger. “Haki and Hekja. So this is where Leif came to.” He stared out absently across the lagoon, and was silent for a minute. Then he turned to Ross. “This ought to set your mind at rest,” he said. “The Norsemen must have come here, as you thought.”

  He got to his feet, and went down to the seaplane to get a camera to photograph the stone before it was disturbed again. The pilot stood up, and stared across the woods towards the west, towards the gently rising foothills of the mainland. “It’s turned out a good country,” he said thoughtfully. “We told Leif that it was the best land in the world. And so it was.”

  The girl was still crouching down beside the stone, fingering the runes. He knelt down again beside her. She ran her fingers slowly over the lines.

  “I know these marks,” she said at last. “I’ve done this before, some time …”

  She raised her eyes to his. “You were very much in love with Hekja, Donald, weren’t you?”

  He nodded without speaking.

  The girl said gently: “Tell me, what was she like?”

  He said: “She was like you.”

  He took her hand in his. “We were ver
y much in love in those days,” he said softly. “We could be again. Leif said our names would be together, for as long as this stone should endure.”

  “I know, Donald.” There was a little pause, and then she said: “The names of two young Scots, who should have been remembered for the work they did, who have been quite forgotten.”

  He said: “Not quite. We shall remember them.”

  FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, AUGUST 2010

  Copyright © The Trustees of the Estate of Nevil Shute Norway

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published by William Heinemann in 1940 and subsequently published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House Group Limited in London in 2009.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-47413-1

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.0