by Nevil Shute
With the first move that they made from their seats came the realization of their fatigue. They had been flying for nine hours; every muscle ached and quivered uncontrollably. They were stupid with noise, and shouted at each other in hoarse voices. It was impossible to continue the flight at once.
"It means flying at night if we don't," said Morris huskily. "There'll be a good moon."
They decided to rest for an hour. Wearily they clambered our of the machine and walked a little way up the sand to the top of the beach. There Dennison began to shed his clothes.
"What does A do?" he said, weakly facetious. "Answer adjudged correct; A has a cold bath."
Morris stared at him blankly for a minute, then laughed and followed his example. They wriggled out of their fleecy suits and out of their clothes, and hobbled down the beach to the water. A short bath and they were dressing again, cool and fresh and only very tired.
They took their full hour of rest. Taking the remainder of their food, they climbed up on to a knoll that dominated the harbour and sat down to eat their meal. Nearby they found a spring from which they drank their fill in company with two sheep, the only living creatures that they saw upon the island.
Then for the precious minutes that remained they sat and watched the sun drop down towards the sea.
It was a sunset such as only the west of Ireland can afford. Away to the north lay Mizzen Head, shrouded in a thin, opalescent haze; to the east the bay swept round towards them dotted with promontories and islands, clear in the sunset light. To Morris, stretched comfortably upon the soft turf, life was suddenly very sweet. His eye fell upon the flying boat below them on the sand, and suddenly he wondered why they should go on at all. Here they were in the British Isles, having brought their cargo in up to time. To go on meant that they would expend the petrol that was their cargo. Surely, to have got the cargo so far was as good as to go on to Padstow without it? He thought of his little house in the suburbs, and the unfinished paths in his garden, and his wife, and his puppy.
He had never flown a flying boat at night before, far less landed one in the darkness with no flares. They would touch the water at not less than fifty miles an hour.
Then came to his mind a quaint pride in their achievement. True, they would have expended four-fifths of their cargo. They would still have one-fifth to take to Padstow— the empty petrol cans. If they were to stop now, Sir David would count the flight as a failure; it was little use commercially to land a cargo two hundred miles from the spot intended. To give up now would be—failure.
He glanced at his watch. Their time was up.
"Let's get down to the machine," he said.
"Well," said Morris. "By the time we'd got the petrol into the tanks it was a quarter to nine. The sun was getting pretty low, but I didn't care much about that—the moon was up already. And then came the real difficulty—starting her up again. I don't know now what it was; it may have been that we got her too rich—1 don't know. We were both pretty tired to begin with, and we took turns at swinging on that bloody crank till we were pretty nearly sick, while the other sat and twiddled the starting mag. And all the time it was getting darker.
"We got her going at last. It was half-past nine by the time she fired, and then we had to get our things on and get settled down. It was practically dark when we taxied out of Kinish and took off."
He paused, weary of his tale. "Well, that's about all there is to it. We put down here about one-fifteen. I didn't risk the crossing direct to Cornwall, though it would have been much shorter, of course. The only light we'd got was that rotten little torch, and if that had packed up when we were halfway across so that we couldn't see the compass ... It wasn't good enough. We came home with one foot on dry land. We went along the south of Ireland and crossed by the Fishguard Route, and then along the south of Wales nearly up to Cardiff, till we could see the other side. We went pretty far up, you see. Then we came down the north coast of Devon. We found this easily enough—it's a good mark on the coast. I put her down rather badly, as a matter of fact—we nearly as possible went over—cross wind, you know. You'd have banked on it blowing up and down the river, wouldn't you? Well, it wasn't. And then when we came to look for it we found we'd lost the perishing Very pistol . . ."
He answered one or two questions, then turned to Sir David with a sudden spasm of nervous energy. "Look here," he said. "It's just damn silly trying to do this flight direct. I didn't see that before, but I do now. Look. Wash out Pad-stow and make the terminus Milford Haven. Then the machine can make for the west of Ireland and come along the south coast, easy as shelling peas. Then you can have an emergency refuelling station at Baltimore, in case you get a head wind. You won't need it one flight in ten—but if it's there you can take more chances."
They broke into a discussion on the commercial aspects of the scheme.
Tiring of the discussion of ways and means, Dennison turned away and began to walk up the beach to the sand hills to collect his kit. He had not spoken to Sheila. Once he had glanced at the girl, but she had avoided his eyes. After that he had concentrated on the story of the flight that Morris told.
At the top of the beach he glanced backwards. She had left the others and was coming up the beach towards him. Blindly he stooped and fumbled with his flying suit upon the sand. Then, as the girl drew near, he turned to face her. "Good morning," he said gently.
The girl faced him steadily, bareheaded against a deep blue sea breaking on the yellow sands. "I oughtn't to have come, of course," she said. "But I got worried, and I wanted to come and say I was sorry. And then Helen said she'd bring me down here, and I came."
"I see," said Dennison. He glanced at her, and laughed suddenly. "Half a minute," he said.
The girl stood gazing at him anxiously. He raised his head. "Before you say any more," he said, "I want you to think of one thing. It's never very wise to make a decision in a hurry, or under exceptional circumstances—if you can put if off. This flight has put us all out of step a bit. Suppose we put off discussing it—till next week?"
The girl smiled. "But I only heard of this flight a week ago. And before then I had written to you to—to say that I'd changed my mind, and ... I'd come to Hong Kong with you, if you'd have me."
And after that there was no more to be said. "As a matter of fact," said Dennison a little later, "the Hong Kong scheme is off."
The girl drew herself up and looked at him in wonder. "But Peter," she said. "Is there anything else? What are we going to do?"
"I couldn't very well go to Hong Kong,", said Dennison. "I've got to sail Cbrysanthe, Sir David's new yacht, at Cowes. I shall have to do that every season, I expect, so of course, I couldn't go abroad." He spoke seriously, but there was a gleam of humor in his eyes.
"But Peter, dear," said the girl. "You can't let that decide —everything . . ."
"Sir David quite saw that, of course," said Dennison. "As a matter of fact, the same objection holds for any job. I shall have to have a couple of months off in the yachting season, you see. It meant a special arrangement. I'm being absorbed into the legal department of the Fisher Line. Its rather a good job, I think—I'm to be second-in-command to the old chap who does all their legal business for them now. And it's the work I'm keen on."
Down by the flying boat the discussion drew to a close. Morris stood leaning against the lower wing, one arm round his wife's shoulders, talking earnestly to Rawdon and Sir David Fisher. Behind them the fisherman was swabbing out his motorboat, oblivious of his part in history.
Morris made his last point and stood erect by the machine. "Anyway," he said. "Let's have some breakfast and talk about it afterwards."
His wife caught his eye. "Give them a little longer," she said softly.
All four turned and gazed at the two figures sitting together in the sand hills at the head of the beach.
Rawdon laughed shortly and turned away. "God bless my soul!" he said tersely. "They don't want any breakfast."
Nevil Shute, Stephen Morris