The Land God Gave to Cain

by Innes, Hammond;

  Possible, but not probable! And always there seemed to be the blank wall of Laroche to block any credence being given to my father’s message. “You’ll see I’ve asked them to meet you at Dorval Airport and I’ve given them your flight number,” he said. “I’ve also asked them to confirm through D.O.T. Communications. I don’t expect we’ll get a reply to-night, but it should come through fairly early in the morning.”

  I nodded. He couldn’t have done more. And at that moment his wife called down the stairs to say that Mrs. Karnak had gone and she’d made some fresh coffee for us.

  We went up then, and over coffee in the bright warmth of their living-room, he gave me the first detailed account of Briffe’s disappearance. He told it, of course, from the point of view of a man whose contact with the outside world was exclusively by radio. Like my father, he was confined to scraps of information plucked from the ether, to news broadcasts and messages from planes flying to search. But he was much closer to it. He had even met the men who figured in the disaster—Briffe twice, Laroche once, and he knew a good deal about Bill Baird from talks with his brother, Tim, the Company’s base manager.

  On September 12, Briffe had called for an air lift from Area C1, which was Lake Disappointment, up to C2, on the banks of the Attikonak River. This request was made in the course of his usual daily report. He had completed the survey at Disappointment. “Aptly named was how he described it.” Ledder smiled. And then he went on to explain that the survey party consisted of five men and the procedure in making the hop forward to the next area was always the same—three of the five men, Sagon, Hatch and Blanchard, would go forward as an advance party to establish the new camp, together with as much of the stores as the floatplane would carry and one canoe; Briffe and Baird would move up on the second flight with the transmitter, the other canoe and the rest of the stores.

  This was the procedure adopted on September 14, and Ledder was now more or less amplifying my father’s notes for me. The air lift was actually called for September 13, but the weather had been bad and Laroche had decided to wait. However, the following day it was better and he took off early in the morning. Ledder had actually seen the little Beaver floatplane scudding a broad arrow out across the still waters of the bay, had watched it take off, circle and disappear into the haze beyond Happy Valley, headed west. He was off duty that day and after about an hour he tuned in on the 75-metre band. But Briffe didn’t come through until 1133. Laroche had arrived, but thick fog had closed in on the camp and was preventing take off for C2. The delay in transmission had been due to condensation on the terminals of the hand generator.

  He immediately reported the delay in the flight to Montreal. It was apparently the normal procedure for either himself or his wife to keep a radio watch and report regularly to Montreal whenever a supply flight was made or the party were being air lifted to a new location. He reported again at 1230, Briffe having come through with the news that the fog had lifted and the Beaver had taken off with the advance party.

  After that he heard nothing from Briffe until 1500 hours when the survey party leader came through with the information that the Beaver had not returned and the fog had clamped down again. It was Ledder’s report of this information to Montreal that my father had picked up. “I began to get worried then,” Ledder said. “We had started picking up reports of a storm belt moving in from the Atlantic and things didn’t look so good. I asked Briffe to report every hour.”

  At 1600 Briffe came through again. The fog had cleared, but the Beaver had still not returned. And then, at 1700, Briffe reported the plane safely back. Laroche had come down on a lake about ten miles short of C2 just before the fog closed in and had taken off again as soon as it had lifted. The advance party were now at C2 and Briffe’s only concern was to get himself and Baird and the rest of the equipment up there before nightfall. “I told him,” Ledder said, “that I didn’t think it a good idea on account of the weather. He then asked me for a met forecast.” He was turning over the pages of his log which he had brought up with him. “Here you are.” He passed it across to me. Weather worsening rapidly. Ceiling 1,000, visibility 500, heavy rain. Expect airfield close down here shortly. In-coming flights already warned and westbound trans-Atlantic traffic grounded Keflavik. Rain will turn to snow over Labrador plateau. Winds to-night easterly 20 knots plus. To-morrow reaching 40 knots; rain, sleet or snow on high ground. Visibility nil at times.

  “And he decided to go on?” I asked.

  “Yes, it was either that or stay at Disappointment, and the lake had poor holding ground, so that it meant the possible loss of the floatplane. In the end he decided to take a chance on it and make the flight.”

  I remembered my father’s comment. He had called Briffe a fool, and he added: What’s driving him? Had there been something besides concern for the floatplane? “The pilot has the final word, surely?”

  “I guess so,” Ledder said. “But by all accounts, Laroche isn’t frightened of taking a chance.”

  “He could have returned to base here.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “A twenty knot head wind and the risk that he’d be short of gas and unable to locate Goose. Maybe he thought going on to C2 the lesser of the two evils.” And then he went on to tell me how Briffe had failed to come through as arranged at 2200 and how he and his wife had kept watch all that night. “But he never came through,” Ledder said.

  And in the morning conditions had been so bad that nothing could get in to Goose, let alone fly a search over the Labrador plateau. It had been like that for two days, and then one of the floatplanes from the base had flown in to C2 and had come back with confirmation that Briffe and his party were missing. The search was on then, with the R.C.A.F. contributing four Lancasters out of the Nova Scotia Air Rescue Station and the Iron Ore people flying a search out of Menihek.

  He was giving me details of the search when his wife reminded him that they had promised to be at the Officers’ Mess at nine. “Perhaps Mr. Ferguson would like to come with us,” she suggested. But I hadn’t any Canadian money and, anyway, I wanted time to myself to think over what he had told me. I excused myself by saying I wanted to turn in early, finished my coffee and got up.

  “I’ll get the Company’s reply to you as soon as it comes through,” Ledder said as he saw me to the door. “If there’s anything else I can do, let me know.”

  I thanked him and went down the wooden steps, out into the night. “Good luck!” he called after me, and then the door closed and I was alone in the darkness. The stars were gone now and it was snowing. It was so still I could almost hear the flakes falling, and without a torch it took me some time to find my way back to the hotel.

  Actually I didn’t get to bed till almost midnight, for I sat up in the warmth of my room, making notes and thinking about what I should say to the Company officials. I suppose I was tired. At any rate, I didn’t wake up in the morning until a quarter to seven and I jumped out of bed in a panic, convinced that I had missed my flight. I hurried into my clothes and went along to Farrow’s room. To my relief he was still there, lying on his bed in his shirt and trousers. “I was afraid I’d missed you,” I said as he opened his eyes, regarding me sleepily.

  “Relax,” he murmured. “I won’t go without you.” And he added, “Take-off won’t be till nine-thirty or later. There was no point in waking you.” He turned over then and went to sleep again.

  The truck called for us at nine and we hung around on the airfield until almost ten-thirty whilst the maintenance crew, who had been working most of the night, finished fixing the engine. The snow had gone and the air was cool and crisp, the hills across the bay sharply defined under a cold, grey sky streaked with cloud. There was a steely quality about Goose that morning, the menace of winter in the air. The country round was all greys and blacks, the scrub spruce unrelieved by any colour. The harshness of it was almost frightening.

  And there was no word from Ledder. I told Farrow how Ledder had reacted when I had shown hi
m my father’s log books, and he phoned Communications for me. But Ledder wasn’t there and there was no message for me.

  We took off at ten-twenty and I had still heard nothing. I stood in the alley of the flight deck, watching Goose drop away from us below the port wing as we made a climbing turn. All ahead of us was a desolate waste of spruce with the thread of the Hamilton River winding through it. Then we were in cloud, and when we came out above it there was still no sun and the cloud layer below us was flat like a grey mantle of snow.

  Later, watching from the flight engineer’s seat, there were rifts in the cloud layer and I could see the ground below, looking strangely close, though I knew it couldn’t be for we were flying at 6,600 feet. It was all ridged the way sand is when the tide is out, but the ridges were dark and grim-looking, with patches of exposed rock worn smooth by the tread of Ice Age glaciers, and all between was water, flat like steel and frosted white at the edges.

  We flew on and on and the country below never changed. It was the grimmest land I had ever seen. The land God gave to Cain! It seemed as though it could never end, but would run on like that for ever, and after a while the flight engineer tapped me on the shoulder and I went back into the fuselage and sat down on the freight, feeling cold and depressed.

  I had been there about an hour when the radio operator came aft to say that Farrow wanted a word with me. “We just got a message from Goose.”

  Back in the flight deck alley, Farrow handed me a message slip. On it was written: Presd. McGovern Mng & Ex now at Iron Ore Terminal. Wishes question Ferguson earliest. Can you land him Seven Islands? “Well, what do you want me to do?” Farrow shouted to me.

  “Seven Islands? But that’s just an Indian fishing village,” I said.

  “You think so?” He laughed. “Then I guess you’re in for a shock. It’s quite a town. The Iron Ore Company of Canada is building a railway north from there to get at the ore in the centre of Labrador. Worth seeing since you’re an engineer. About the biggest project on this continent right now.”

  So the line my father had pencilled on his map was a railway. “But can you land there?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Sure. They got a good airstrip. And they need it. They’re supplying their forward camps entirely by air lift, flying everything in—even cement for the dam at Menihek and bulldozers for the Knob Lake ore deposits.” He glanced back at me over his shoulder. “But I won’t be able to wait for you there. You understand that? You’ll be on your own from then on.”

  I didn’t know what to say. The plane was suddenly immensely precious to me, a familiar, friendly oasis in the immensity of Canada that was beginning to roll itself out before me. To abandon it would be like abandoning a ship in mid-Atlantic. “Better make up your mind,” Farrow shouted. “We got to alter course right now if we’re to drop you off at Seven Islands.” He was watching me curiously. I suppose he saw my dilemma, for he added, “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You’ve stirred ’em up, and you can’t go higher than the president of the Company.”

  There was nothing for it. I’d known that as soon as I had read the message. “All right,” I said. And then, because that sounded ungrateful, I added, “You’re sure it’s all right for you to land there?”

  “Who’s to know?” He grinned and pointed ahead through his side windows to where a pale glimmer like a cloud or mist showed along the horizon. “There’s the St. Lawrence now. Another hour and we’ll be very close to Seven Islands. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  He called back instructions to the navigator and the radio operator, and then looked at me with a grin and added, “Who knows—I may even get a mention in despatches if those poor devils are lifted out alive.”

  A mood of optimism swept over me then and, as I went back into the fuselage, I was thinking that some divine providence must be guiding me.

  The mood was still with me more than an hour later when we began to descend. I felt the check as the flaps went down and then the engines were throttled back and a moment later we touched down. We taxied for a while, bumping heavily over rough ground, and then we stopped, the engines quietly ticking over.

  Farrow himself came back down the fuselage and opened the doors for me. “Good luck,” he said. “And see they look after you. We’ll be in Montreal until midday to-morrow if you want a ride back.”

  “Of course I want to go back with you,” I shouted. I was appalled at the thought that he might return to England without me.

  He clapped me on the shoulder and I jumped out into the backwash of air from the slowly turning props.

  “I’ll be there,” I shouted up to him.

  The door slammed shut and I hurried clear, to stand a little way off, watching, with my suitcase gripped in my hand. Farrow was back at the controls. He waved to me through the windshield. The engines roared, kicking up a great swirl of dust, and then the machine that had brought me across the Atlantic went lumbering away over the hard-baked dirt of the airfield, out to the runway-end.

  I watched it take off—watched it until it was a speck in the sky. I hated to see Farrow go. I was alone now, and there was nobody here I knew. I stood there for a moment, waiting and turning the loose change over in my pocket. I’d a few pounds in my wallet, but that was all. Nobody came out to meet me.

  PART TWO

  THE LABRADOR RAILWAY

  I

  When I could no longer see the plane I walked slowly towards the line of pre-fabricated huts that were the airport buildings. I felt abandoned, almost lost now, for there was nothing about Seven Islands to give me a sense of ease.

  The bull-dozed road, the dust, the maple leaf in the last flush of autumn, and the distant glimpse of new construction and heaped-up stores and equipment; it had a barbaric newness, an alien quality like the supply point for a battlefield. There were open hangar-like sheds piled with crates and sacks of foodstuffs, pieces of machinery, tyres, and a fork lift trundling the stuff out to a battered Dakota where a group of men stood smoking. They were a wild, mixed lot in strange headgear and gaily coloured bush shirts, and their kit stacked about them included bed rolls and thick, quilted jackets.

  The place had an edge-of-the-wilds smell about it, and in the despatch office they knew nothing about me. There was nobody to meet me, not even a message, and when I asked for the offices of the McGovern Mining & Exploration Company, they had never heard of it. “You a geologist?” the despatcher asked.

  “No.” I didn’t want to start explaining myself here.

  “Well, what’s your job then?”

  “I’m an engineer,” I said. “But that’s got nothing to do—”

  “You better report to Q.N.S. & L. then.” He went to the door and shouted to a truck driver who was just moving off. “He’ll take you down. Okay?” He was back at his desk, checking a despatch list, and because there seemed nothing else to do I went out to the truck and got in. An office would know where I ought to go or at least I could phone. “What’s Q.N.S. & L. stand for?” I asked the driver as we lurched out through the wire on to a dirt road. I was thinking of the pencilled line my father had drawn in on his map.

  “Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway.” He looked at me, his battered, sun-reddened face softened by a smile. “You from the Old Country?” He wore a scarlet-patterned woollen bush shirt and the open neck of it showed the hair of his chest grey with road dust. He asked about England. He’d been there with the Canadian Army. And then we crossed the track and he talked about the railway. “I worked on the Tote Road when we started two years back. Boy, that was real tough. Now the Americans are in and they got all the equipment they need to build the grade. You going up the line?”

  I shook my head. I was looking at the skyline ahead, staggered by the mushroom growth of buildings. And all to the left of us were acres of piled-up railway equipment—great stacks of rails and sleepers, and store sheds as big as hangars, and in between were the solid, powerful shapes of big diesel electric locomotives, their paintwork factory-
new.

  “Guess I wouldn’t mind going back up the line again,” he said. “Drive, drive, drive; but it’s good to see a thing take shape and be a part of it. You oughter go up there, just to tell ’em back in the Old Country how we built a railroad slap into the middle of nowhere.” And he went on: “Gee, you oughter see it now the heat’s on. Not more’n a month to go before the big freeze-up and Head of Steel pushing forward near on two miles a day.” He shook his big bullet head. “You oughter see it.” He jammed his foot on the brake pedal and the truck stopped with a jerk. “Okay, fellow. There’s the office.” He jerked his head at a group of wooden buildings and there was a board with Q.N.S. & L. R. on it.

  The airport despatcher must have phoned them, for the man in the office took me for a newly-arrived engineer. And when I told him I had just stopped off to see the president of the McGovern Mining & Exploration Company, he said, “Hell! I thought it was too good to be true.”

  “If you could direct me to the Company’s offices,” I suggested.

  He scratched his head. “There’s no company of that name here. There’s just ourselves and the Iron Ore Company and the construction combine.” He tipped his chair back, looking at me. “What’s this fellow’s name?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I was just told to meet him here in Seven Islands.”

  “There was a guy called McGovern at breakfast this morning. Came in last night from Montreal—big man with a voice like a nutmeg grater. That him?”

  “Couldn’t you ring somebody and find out for me?” I asked. “The plane landed me here specially. There must be a message for me somewhere.”

  He sighed and reached for the phone. “Maybe the Iron Ore Company will know something about you. They handle all the mining and exploration side. We’re just the railroad here.” He got through to somebody and told him my name and who I’d come to see, and after listening for a bit, he put the receiver down. “Well, McGovern’s your man all right. But he’s busy right now. A conference.” His chair was tilted back again and he was looking at me with renewed interest. “That was Bill Lands I was on to. He keeps tabs on Burnt Creek and all the geological parties. He’ll be right over. I’m Staffen, by the way. Alex Staffen.” He held out his hand to me. “I’m the personnel manager. Bill said something about your being here in connection with this survey party that crashed?”