by Max Hennessy
‘It doesn’t matter, Ira’ – she was shaking her head angrily now, her voice pleading – ‘let me go!’
She tried to push his hands away, but, his fingers twisted into her collar, he hung on to her while she fought to free herself. A feebly swinging hand hit him across the face and her finger caught agonisingly under his eyelid, but he slowly inched her higher and higher until she lay face downwards across the wing, her feet still in the water, lying like a fish in a basket, gasping and exhausted and staring at the cold sea in front of her face.
Then he became aware that they were lying close to the windward side of one of the humps of rock that stuck out of the water. As he watched, the sluggish swinging movement of the aeroplane stopped with a soft jar. The tail began to move round towards the east at once like a pendulum as the breeze flowed past the fin, turning them into wind like a boat at anchor, and it dawned on him then that they had been set against some underwater projection of rock that had probably caught the submerged undercarriage.
He gave a half-hysterical laugh, and inching Alix higher on the wing he held her head up so she could see.
‘We made it,’ he yelled in her ear. ‘Alix, we made it! We’ve actually reached land!’
Chapter 11
For a long time neither of them moved, the water slapping at their faces, cold and wet, and, now that the first excitement had died, despairingly aware of failure.
The Dixie showed no sign of sinking. Air was trapped in the tail and the empty tanks were keeping her afloat, the magnificent Wright Whirlwind under the surface of the sea, one wing half out of the water, the great white word, Dixie, like a banner on the red side of the fuselage.
Neither of them spoke, both occupied with the same bitter thoughts. But for Courtney’s failure and the Hughesden Company’s vengeful insistence on their rights, they would easily have succeeded because Hal Woolff’s aeroplane was as good as he’d said it would be and, except when it was starved of fuel, the Wright engine had shown no sign of letting them down.
As he lifted his head to look for the fishing boat, Ira heard a murmur of anguish from Alix.
‘Did they see us?’ she asked.
He nodded, jerking a frozen hand at the fishing boat which was still heading agonisingly slowly towards them.
She was lying alongside him now and he was holding her on to the wing with one arm round her waist, trying to protect her from the cut of the water, and he could see that the gash on her head was deeper than he’d thought. She seemed to be only half-conscious and he could hear her muttering softly above the lap of the waves.
‘Ira, I didn’t let you down, did I?’
‘No, by God, Alix! Never.’
‘I didn’t want to let you down,’ she whispered. ‘I wanted so much for you to succeed.’
He managed a shaky smile. ‘We nearly made it.’
‘I wanted you to. I wanted like hell for you to. I didn’t want a single damn thing out of it but that.’
‘We did all right, Alix.’
She became silent, and, as her head sank forward, he thought she’d become unconscious, but she lifted her head again and smiled with a brief show of her old spirit.
‘Where’s that lousy boat?’ she said.
‘She’ll be here any time now.’
‘I was just thinking…’ Her voice came slowly now, her words stumbling as though the cold were beginning to affect her. ‘Whatever happens now, they’ll know we tried.’
For a long time they were silent again and Ira could feel the thumping of the waves under the wing, producing a hollow booming sound in his ear. They slid into a trough between two waves, dropping down as though they were sinking out of life itself, and as the following wave caught them and lifted them, he saw the brown sail of the fishing boat again, nearer than he’d expected.
It was almost on top of them now, black against the sky, moving across the waves in a lumpy, lurching movement, a man in a blue jersey standing up in the bows, shouting words at them they couldn’t understand. Behind him another man leaned over the tiller.
AJix’s eyes opened again now and he saw her blinking away the tears, then she grasped his hand, lying her cheek on it, her lips moving in a little unselfconscious prayer.
The brown sail rattled down as the boat swung alongside, and there was a babble of shouting.
‘The aeroplane,’ Ira gasped as Alix disappeared from the wing across the gunwale. ‘Can you get a line on her and tow her ashore?’
The fisherman jabbered at him in a thin high-pitched voice that sounded odd coming from his burly frame. His face was reddened and raw with the wind and his thin pointed nose was long and ugly, but there was a wide grin on his mouth that showed broken teeth, and it looked angelic.
‘Sure, you’re a long way off course, bhoy!’ he said. ‘Where yiz from?’
‘America.’
The man stared, then grinned disbelievingly.
A flicker of a smile broke across Ira’s face. ‘That’s right,’ he insisted. ‘We left New York at dawn yesterday.’
For a moment the two men in the boat stared at each other, then the red-faced one frowned. ‘Sure,’ he said again. ‘You’ll be pullin’ me leg now, wouldn’t yiz?’
Ira tried to explain, then the fishermen looked at each other and slowly the man in the bows began to grin. ‘Be Jaysus,’ he said. ‘I thought ye wuz from Baldonnel or somewheres like that.’
He stared at Ira then impulsively thrust out his hand.
‘Sure, I’m glad we wuz around,’ he said. ‘We’ll save yer plane, misther. Where was ye headin’ for?’
‘Paris. Where’s this place?’
‘Castlegowan. That’s Guinan Island. Twenty-five miles off Ballydavid Head.’
‘And the bay over there?’
‘Castlegowan Bay. Sure, wan of the luvliest in Ireland. Ye nearly made it.’
‘Yes.’ Ira nodded. ‘We nearly made it.’
* * *
It was hard to realise they’d failed. As they were helped ashore some time later, stumbling stiff-legged, bruised and shaken, faces lined the stark stone jetty and they saw women with shawls over their heads peering down at them, their children peeping round their legs, raw-faced women in rough clothes who looked as though the battle with the elements on the wild Atlantic coast was as hard for them as it was for their menfolk.
As they climbed the weed-covered steps, the faces above them were sympathetic and there was a spatter of clapping and pats on the shoulder. Stumbling over the rough stones of the jetty, they passed more people arriving from the village to gape and grin shyly at them from among the lobster pots and fish boxes and strings of nets and piles of rotting rope and tackle. Then an ancient car drove up, older than anything they’d ever seen in America, and hands reached out to help them in. Blankets were thrown about them and curious welcoming faces stared at them, then a child in a ragged dress, pushed forward by a clucking woman, thrust forward a fistful of wilting blue flowers.
Alix looked at Ira, her expression a mixture of pride and humility, and he saw her throat work with emotion. There were tears in her eyes as she bent down to kiss the child’s grubby face.
Castlegowan was too poor to boast an hotel, but a room was set aside for them in the local pub, by a bowing, scraping landlord who treated them as though they’d descended from heaven, and to the little wilting fistful of blue wild flowers were added bunches of crocuses and daffodils picked from the sheltered corners of the barren island.
Someone found a doctor, a big man who looked like a vet and smelled as though he probably doubled in the capacity. He slapped a plaster over the cut on Alix’s forehead and bandaged her torn fingers, then, with an air of satisfaction, he lit a pipe and blew out clouds of thick acrid smoke.
‘Sure, it looks very dashin’ on a pretty face,’ he said, blatantly admiring her. ‘Ye were lucky! Ye’ll be interested to know another one of your lot got off. They heard it on the wireless at the big house this morn. They told me when I went up there to do
se the cook. I thought ye’d want to know.’
A change of clothing was produced, ugly and ill-cut but dry. The landlord dug out the elderly postmistress whose duties were shared with the responsibility of running a rope and paraffin store, and they managed, after a lot of difficulty and explaining, to persuade her to send telegrams to New York. It wasn’t easy because she’d never had to send anything further before than Killyguinan, the only town on the island, or to Ballydavid on the mainland.
There was a surprising response. Within an hour they were called to the telephone to answer questions shot at them over a bad line by an awed reporter on the mainland whose accent was so thick he was barely understandable. Almost immediately, congratulatory telegrams began to come in, so that the postmistress had to shout for help to her relatives in the village shop, and they propped the buff sheets up on an old-fashioned dresser among the chipped pint pots and the portraits of the landlord’s relations and a stuffed owl in a glass case. They were as full of praise and excitement as if they’d succeeded and there were offers from English and Continental newspapers for their story, the postmistress’s nephew running along the village street with them one after the other as they arrived. By the time it grew dark, they began to arrive from America, too, a jubilant one from Sammy and Mae saying, ‘Well done. Come home. All is forgiven,’ and others from Hal Woolff, Loerner and Boyle. There were more from the Wright Company and one from the people of Medway, to say nothing of dozens of unknown admirers in Dublin, Belfast, London and on the Continent.
When the flowers had first appeared, they had imagined it was merely the excitement of seeing something new and strange in the village, and they had never imagined that anyone would be interested in unsuccessful aviators, but then they’d caught the looks and realised that they’d come near enough to success to have aroused a surprising amount of admiration in Europe.
‘It’s almost as if we’d made it, Ira,’ Alix said.
Ira shrugged. ‘When someone does make it,’ he said realistically, ‘they’ll forget us.’
She looked at him curiously. ‘You disappointed?’
He grinned. ‘I suppose so,’ he admitted. ‘But I’m grateful to be alive and I’m not ashamed. We know what let us down and it’ll all come out in the wash. We’ll still sell Courtneys to the airlines. Hal was dead right.’
The Courtney, still in one piece if a little battered by the handling it had received from fishermen unused to handling aeroplanes and the depredations of souvenir hunters, who’d come from Killyguinan in motor cars, traps and jaunting cars, was lashed down to stakes in a rocky meadow next to the pub, guarded by a policeman and covered with a tarpaulin borrowed from the harbour.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Hal was right.’
They were discussing the imponderables of the trip when the landlord and his wife appeared. ‘Ye’ll be takin’ a measure in the bar, I hope,’ he said. ‘Everybody wants to meet ye.’
He paused, somewhat embarrassed. ‘Does the young lady feel up to a public appearance?’ he went on, looking at Alix.
‘I guess so. I’d like that.’
The landlord smiled, then he glanced at his wife and went on hesitantly. ‘Because ye might as well make as much of the limelight as ye can get,’ he said. He stopped awkwardly and looked again at his wife and they sensed that he was trying to tell them something as he shuffled his feet and his wife’s eyes rested on Alix’s tired white face.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ira asked. ‘Something is.’
The landlord managed a smile. ‘Sure, nothin’s wrong,’ he said. ‘Nothin’ at all. But sure to God, they just sent the car down from the big house with a message. They’ll be shoutin’ for somebody else tomorrow. One of yer friends just landed in Paris. Them French turned out in millions, they say.’
Alix’s eyes flew to Ira’s face and the landlord nodded sympathetically. ‘Just this minute they picked up a message, they say. It’ll be in the newspapers tomorrow.’
Ira drew a deep breath. So someone had proved it could be done, after all! Despite his disappointment, he felt only pride at being associated, however indirectly, with success.
‘Who was it?’ he asked.
The landlord shrugged. ‘Sure to God, I didn’t catch the name. Lindbergh? Would that be it? Lindbergh?’
He had brought a bottle of Irish whiskey with him and they drank to the fair-haired young pilot from St Louis, then, as the door closed behind the landlord and his wife, Ira was silent for a while. They had been eager to get back to their customers and he suspected they were keen to hear more of the celebrations that would be taking place in Paris. The glory had gone from them already, he knew, as quickly as it had come, and as surely as if someone had turned out a spotlight. It was directed now on to another plane and they’d not even be noticed when they reached the mainland, because everyone – even the reporter who’d telephoned them – would be thinking of the tall young man with the Ryan.
Alix touched Ira’s hand again, a small secretive confident movement. ‘We can try again, Ira,’ she said.
Ira smiled and shook his head. ‘No. Not again. There’ll be so many trying it now, they’ll look like cabs along Fifth Avenue. There’ll be hundreds now that Lindbergh’s proved it can be done. Only the first one really means anything, Alix. The second one only proves the first one wasn’t a fluke. It’s time to turn to something else.’
She looked puzzled and he shrugged. ‘We’ve hardly started yet,’ he pointed out. ‘This is only the beginning. This is only the first ocean. And there’ll be other things to do besides break records. It’s time now to look towards the next step.’
He reached out his hand and she took it without embarrassment. Outside, the night was dark now and they could see only an occasional star in the black sky above the line of the headland. The sound of the sea came to them on the breeze, surging and strong, bringing with it all the fears and anxieties of the previous night and all the agonising moments they’d lived through. It wasn’t hard to imagine it as the sound of the crowd swarming round the triumphant pilot in Paris.
They both knew that by the time they’d been ferried to the mainland and reached the civilisation of Tralee or Killarney or Cork, the excitement attending their arrival would have died. By the time they’d reached England, it would have faded completely and by the time they’d got mechanics to dismantle the Dixie, had transported it to a ship and carried it back to America, they’d be quite forgotten in the hullabaloo that would have been raised round Lindbergh, and only Sammy and Hal Woolff and a few others would be there to greet them. What they’d done would have been unbelievable a year or two before, would still be unbelievable if Lindbergh hadn’t succeeded in doing what they’d failed to do. But he had, and they were already probably forgotten in the capitals of Europe.
Ira jerked his head at the door and grinned at Alix. Outside, in the bar, they could hear the babble of broad-accented voices as the citizens of Castlegowan waited for them. Whatever was thought of them tomorrow, whatever was thought of them already, he knew that Castlegowan wasn’t likely to forget in a hurry the excitement of their arrival. There’d never again be any transatlantic fliers arriving in the village and tonight might well be a celebration that would be remembered for a lifetime.
‘Come on,’ he said, opening the door so that the excitement outside rushed in at them in a surge of sound. ‘Whatever happens tomorrow, this ought to be quite a night. When it’s over we shall sleep for a week.’
Alix stared back at him. Her face was still pale and peaked but her eyes were merry.
‘At least they haven’t got Prohibition and the whiskey’ll be worth drinking,’ she said, and, grasping his hand, they went together into the smoke-filled noisy bar.
The Flying Ace Thrillers
The Mustering of the Hawks
The Mercenaries
The Courtney Entry
Find out more
First published in the United Kingdom in 1970 by The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © John Harris, 1970
The moral right of John Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788636872
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either 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.
Look for more great books at www.canelo.co