Presidential Mission

by Sinclair, Upton;

  Then, looking ahead, he guessed that he wasn’t going to have to bother with those problems. The enemy plane had started to climb again, and to turn, and he knew that it was coming back for another attack; there wasn’t a thing he could do to get out of the way of another burst of heavy slugs. He could only sit there, helpless as a rabbit gazing at a snake. He watched the other plane, and suddenly saw it change course again and start off to the north. For a moment he felt relief, but then he noticed a smell of smoke. He turned and saw a mass of black and red streaming behind; he knew then why the enemy was no longer bothering about him.

  The plane was on fire, and Lanny had a matter of seconds to get out of it alive. He unstrapped the belt which held him to his seat. Fortunately he knew the lever which threw off the stabilizer; the young Englishman had talked about it, and Lanny had seen it in other planes. He threw it off and gave the steering wheel of the plane a sharp turn to the left; that would create a centrifugal force to help him get out, and it might also help him to dodge the sheet of flame behind. Without a moment’s hesitation he opened the door and threw himself out. He felt a touch of fierce heat, but couldn’t know whether his clothing or parachute had caught fire. At least he couldn’t know for a few seconds.

  Count ten, and don’t count too fast; count as a clock counts, regularly, without emotion; to make sure, you say “thousand” between each number. Such was the British practice, as Alfy had told it to him. The count must begin with “nought.” So you say: “Nought thousand—one thousand—two thousand”—and all the time you are dropping like a lump of lead toward the earth. “Three thousand—four thousand”—and through Lanny’s mind flashed the remark he had heard a flying man make: “You never have to worry when you jump. If your parachute opens you have nothing to worry about, and if it don’t open it’s no use to worry”—“Six thousand—seven thousand—eight thousand—nine thousand—ten thousand.” Lanny had his finger in the ring at the end of the ripcord and he gave it a tug. The next instant it was as if all his insides were torn loose and thrust down to the bottom of the cavity in which they were contained. The blow threw his lower teeth up against his uppers, and for a moment he was staggered; then he realized that his parachute was open, and that he was safe for the times.

  He looked up and saw it, a great umbrella made of seventy yards of silk, yellowish in color, between him and the desert sun. There was a wind blowing which he hadn’t noticed in the plane; now he was swaying and swinging in it. “Rock-a-bye, baby! When the wind blows, the cradle will rock!” He wondered if the enemy plane would return to machine-gun him; they did that sometimes, he knew. But he never saw that plane again. He saw his own plane, far below him, plunging like a comet, flaming fire and smoke. It would reach the earth long before he did, and he would never see that one either.

  IX

  Far below was the Sahara Desert, and it was coming closer, slowly, slowly, or so it seemed from high up. And it was drifting by, southward, and that was to the good, because Lanny wanted to go north. More than once he had stood on land and watched parachutists on their way down and had tried to imagine what it would be like up there. Now that he was there, he found that he had but one thought: what am I going to hit? He remembered what the American officer had said: “Try to land feet first and backward, and roll with the chute.” Elsewhere Lanny had heard argument as to whether it was better to Have your feet apart or together. He had read that the Army considered it a good record if no more than one per cent of parachutists were killed; and that was comforting to all but the one per cent.

  The ground was coming nearer, and now Lanny discovered that the rate was alarmingly fast. He had heard that it was twenty miles per hour, and he was going to have a collision at that rate, and no way to lower it. If he hit a rock, he would surely be crippled, and if he were crippled in this desert land he would die a miserable death. He looked, and it seemed to him that the terrain below was all rocks; hardly a trace of sand in this unmapped border between Tripolitania and Tunisia. There were a few patches of what appeared to be bare earth; and one of these lay ahead, slightly to one side. Fortunately for the son of Budd-Erling, he had been listening to the talk of flying men off and on for many years, and he knew that if you pulled on the shroud lines at one side the chute would slide to that side. He tried the trick, aiming himself straight at the bare patch.

  Holding onto the shroud lines, he could turn. When he was a few feet from the uprushing earth he turned his back to the direction of the drift, and when he felt the ground he rolled backward, making himself into a ball. The result was that he got himself tied up in a dozen silken cords, each sixty feet long, and was dragged until he was stopped by a large rock. The blow wasn’t as hard as if he had been falling, and the rock held him against the pull of the parachute in the wind. He disentangled himself, and pulled the three rings which released the shrouds from his harness. Then, gingerly, he got to his feet, tested his arms and legs and back, and found that they all worked. He was safe, with nothing worse than a few bruises.

  The first thing he became aware of in his new environment was the suffocating heat. He took off his parachute harness, then his flying suit, then his winter overcoat, which had been intended for Moscow, not for the Sahara. He sat on them, because the earth was hot and the stones like so many stove lids. He rested, and let the pounding of his heart die down, and meantime he thought. No use to do anything in a rush; the chances appeared to be very much against him, and his life might depend upon choosing the wisest course.

  He could be sure that search planes would be sent out to look for him; but he wouldn’t be missed until late afternoon, and nothing could be done till next day. They would know the route that Weybridge would follow; but what a vast area they would have to search—a two-thousand-mile journey—and who could guess how far the pilot might have chosen to veer to the south? Assuming that the veering was no more than a hundred miles, that would be two hundred thousand square miles of desert to be searched for the remains of one wrecked plane and one parachute spread out on the ground. A man might perish of thirst many times over while such a search was going on.

  Lanny examined the flying suit, which had been put on him in a hurry. He made the pleasant discovery that the United States Army Air Corps had given thought to the exigencies of desert flying. The suit was heavily padded, and instead of hanging things onto the outside, where they would get banged about and might be torn off in a parachute jump, the objects had been fitted into depressions of the suit and buttoned fast. Marvelous beyond belief, there was a flat canvas bag filled with water, so full that it was solid and did not gurgle when you shook it. There was a flat packet of food—K-rations they were called; there was a small first-aid kit, and a sheath knife, and even a tiny compass. Lanny recalled Christmas morning at Newcastle—but this time be sure that the recipient of the gifts appreciated them!

  Important also was that leaflet in the Arabic language which the American officer had mentioned. He had hoped that the passenger wouldn’t need it; but now the passenger might need it urgently, and he put it away safely in the jacket he was wearing. He hoped that the language was eloquent and the reward adequate.

  X

  The first thing the castaway used was the sheath knife. He cut some chunks out of the beautiful silk parachute and made himself a four-ply hood to go over his head and hang down over his shoulders and back. Made fast with silken shroud lines, it would protect his head and spine from this burning sun—and he took it that the dark men of the desert had not been thinking entirely of ornament when they designed their elaborate headdress. With other cords he tied the Christmas gifts about his waist. He spread out the parachute on the ground, with its cords pointing toward the north, and put rocks on it to hold it in place. To accentuate the arrow effect he spread the flying suit farther north, and the harness still farther; he could figure that if any search plane came gliding down to inspect that array, they would understand that the parachutist was heading for the Mediterranean on foot.

/>   That was what Lanny had decided to do, and without delay. Along the coast of Tunisia the great midland sea makes a dip far to the south, and as well as Lanny could figure the course of the plane, he ought to be within a hundred miles of that coast. It was his guess that he might make his water bottle last for that long a walk, and he would be within the “search belt” most of the distance. His last action was to cut a silken flag from the parachute, about four feet by six; the material was light, and if he saw a plane in the sky he would wave it. It caused him a pang to leave his elegant brown tweed overcoat there on the desert floor, to be covered with windblown dust and buried forever; but he knew that he couldn’t walk in it, and the effort to carry it might be just the margin between life and death.

  Fortunately he was a good walker, and had had practice in Casablanca and Algiers, due to the shortage of vehicles. He made one last examination of the flying suit and the pockets of his overcoat; he held the little compass in his hand, picked out a distant ridge of rock as his landmark, and then set out. He had no thermometer, but he knew that the heat was greater than anything he had ever endured before in his life. He didn’t know how long he could walk in it, but there was nothing to do but try. It would bake the moisture out of his body, and he would have to replace it from the precious bottle, one sip at a time, and only when the need was extreme.

  He walked, dodging the big rocks and stepping over the small ones. When he saw a level place he headed for it; but always he kept the guiding ridge in view. He tried not to think about the heat; the Arabs lived in it, and Doughty and Lawrence and other Englishmen had proved that they could do the same. An interesting fact, he did not perspire; at least no perspiration formed, and he knew that the tiny fountains were evaporated the instant they were pumped out of his body. With every step he took he was drying up, and there was nothing but the contents of a canvas bag between him and being turned into a bundle of bones covered by parchment. What became of the soul of a man when that happened?

  XI

  He walked until the sun went down, a huge pulsating red ball. The twilight was brief, and after that he had to stop. There was no moon, and the ground had depressions full of boulders; a man might sprain his ankle, or even break his neck, and the latter would be the more merciful. Lanny lay on the bare ground; it was hot, but he doubted if it would stay that way. He knew that on the heights the nights became bitterly cold; he wasn’t sure how it would be here on the flat. He was not impressed by the immensity of the vault above him, with stars brighter and more numerous than he had ever seen before. He was a poor insect, struggling to survive against natural forces wholly beyond his control. He took a sip of water, and gave himself suggestions of peace and safety—what Parsifal Dingle called saying prayers. But unfortunately this reminded him of home and started a painful train of ideas. Would he be reported as missing, and would the newspapers carry the story? Would his wife, and his families on three continents, have the pain of waiting and hoping and despairing, the fate of so many millions of families on every part of those continents?

  At last he fell asleep. When the air grew chill, as it did before many hours, he crept into a nest of boulders, which held their heat longer. Propped against these, he slept again. He was tormented by both hunger and thirst, for he was stingy with his supplies and took only enough to keep him going. At the first streak of dawn he was up and ready to travel, for these were the best hours, and he would walk for his life. He picked out one landmark after another, always due north, having learned that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points and wanting very much to get to the other point.

  No trace of a cloud, no mercy from the sun’s heat. By noon the traveler could no longer stand it; his tongue was swelling up and threatening to choke him. He crawled into a steep wadi, whose walls offered a bit of shade, and lay there gasping for a couple of hours. He dozed, and was haunted by dreams of the aqueducts of Marrakech, the half-dozen clear cool streams running through the grounds of La Saadia, and the fountains for ablutions for which he had been bargaining. What a price he would have paid for one of them now, with water supply included!

  He crawled out again, for every moment of daylight was precious. He toiled onward, now and then stopping to look up at the sky, in any direction but that toward the blazing murderous sun. Now was the time for the search planes to be out; Lanny saw a plane, high up and far away, bound eastward. Surely a search plane didn’t behave like that! Perhaps it was another dispatch plane, carrying duplicates of the documents which had been lost. The war had to go on, no matter who was missing—even a V.I.P. like the son of Budd-Erling! Lanny waved his yellow-white flag, but the plane gave no sign of interest in that microscopic object.

  XII

  On the second night the traveler lay down again, picking out a deep wadi to shelter him from the wind, which was hot now but would be cold before daylight. He had to take sip after sip of his precious water before he could nibble his food. Of the two the water rated higher, for a man can fast and keep walking for a long time, but he cannot walk when the moisture has been dried out of his body cells. Lanny had kept count of the number of hours he had walked, but as he didn’t know how far he had to go it did him little good. He slept between extreme heat and extreme cold, and waited as best he could for the dawn. Then he took another sip of water and started again.

  The desert had become black volcanic rock, alternating with patches of soft sand into which his feet sank. The sun came up, a great round copper ball; as it mounted in the sky it seemed to quiver more than ever. Lanny couldn’t be sure whether this was because of heat waves in the air, or whether he was becoming dizzy. Ahead of him he saw a tree, and his heart began to pound with excitement. He veered off his course toward it, thinking it must mean water, but he found that it was a tree skeleton, and whatever moisture there had been must have sunk deep into the sand. If he had had a spade he might have dug to it, but the efforts with his sheath knife revealed no trace of moisture. He picked out another landmark and toiled on toward the north. His endurance gave out sooner now, and he sought a rock shelter, gasping, and in between gasps straining his ears for the sound of an airplane engine in the sky. He imagined that he heard one several times, but he was no longer sure if he could trust his senses.

  Twice he noticed wild camels on the desert horizon, and once a small antelope galloped away from him. A jackal followed him for a while, and he wondered if this creature would reappear when his strength began to wane. The presence of these animals indicated that water must be somewhere available, but he had no way to get the secret from them. Staggering onward, he watched for the faintest sign of moisture, and nature played a cruel joke upon him. He saw a level place, shining with what appeared to be water. He wondered: Could this be the mirage of the desert, about which he had read so often? He came nearer and decided that it really was water; he hastened to it with pounding heart; he splashed into it, stooped and scooped up a handful of it and put it into his mouth, then spat it out quickly. It was bitter alkaline; he had come to one of those salt marshes, called shotts, of which he had been told that this locality was full. He was ready to weep with despair.

  He found himself a rock shelter for the night; he ate the last morsels of his food and drained the last drops of water from the bag. He told himself that he would be good for one more effort in the morning; if he did not come to an oasis, he would be done for; he would fall somewhere on this oven floor and hide his face from the sun and give up the struggle. He passed a fevered night, and rose at the first glimpse of dawn. He saw that the way to the north was level before him—perhaps more shotts. His tongue was so swollen that it was hard to breathe, and his eyes were so burned that he kept them closed most of the time, taking a peek only now and then to be sure of his path. When the heat grew too intense for endurance, he slid under the edge of a rock and lay there, gasping, resisting an impulse to give up and say that he would not try to rise again. There was nothing before him any different from what was behind him, and w
hat was the use?

  His heart was pounding, fighting for its life and his. He could hear it, and he could hear something, perhaps his own blood, making a dull murmur in his ears. Listening, he began after a while to imagine that he heard another sound—of bells. He was prepared to believe that he was becoming delirious; he had every right to expect that, and didn’t want it to happen. He said: “I am dreaming,” but the sound continued, a clear continuous jangling, and suddenly an idea struck him: Sheep bells. Or camel bells. A nomadic shepherd, or a native caravan!

  He started up and gazed to the north, where his route lay. There on the horizon was a line of perhaps a dozen camels, a couple of hundred yards away; they were moving slowly, and were already half past him. It took him only a fraction of a second to unfurl his silken flag and start waving; he began running toward the caravan, shouting in a cracked and feeble voice. Soon he realized that they wouldn’t hear him, on account of the bells; he saved his energy to put into running.

  The next minute was one of desperate bodily effort and agony of mind. They were going by, paying no heed; and he knew that if they passed he wouldn’t have strength enough to overtake them. He could see them so plainly, and was gripped by such a nightmare sense of impotence. There were half a dozen men in the caravan, each riding a loaded camel and leading by a rope a second and still more heavily loaded camel. They were Bedouin Arabs, wrapped in their long robes which had once been white but now were the color of desert dust. Voluminous hoods over their heads, covering their ears and sometimes even their eyes; they were rocking back and forth with the swaying motion of the steeds—something that was their life for all the hours of daylight, day after day, week after week. Perhaps they were asleep, dreaming as Lanny had dreamed, of oases with running water and green date palms, or perhaps their special Mohammedan dream of a heaven full of houris.