by Nevil Shute
The Iberian pushed her way out between the twin forts and headed for the Warner and the Nab Tower. Presently Sir David and Dennison left the chart-room and went up on to the bridge; Morris was left alone. On the first trial he was to fly the machine off the deck alone, after which he was to fly back and put down off Flanagan’s yard. There the machine would be lifted on to a lighter, so that by the time the Iberian returned, she could be hoisted on board again, for a second flight.
They passed the Warner. Morris moved across the cabin to the port and stood looking down upon the machine, ready upon its catapult. Above the pulsing of the engines and the wash of the sea, he could hear the pumps clucking and sighing as they charged the reservoirs for the pneumatic ram that would catapult him off the deck into the air …
A mechanic climbed up on to the planes of the machine and commenced to turn a crank upon the engine; the propeller began to revolve, infinitely slow. It seemed incredible that she should start. Suddenly he heard a half-hearted spit; the propeller leaped forward and became half invisible, and a steady rumble told him that the engine was running. They were nearly up to the Nab.
Morris turned from the window and took his helmet and gloves from the table. He opened the door of the little house and stood for a moment in the doorway, looking back over the water to the Island. It was a warm, sunny day; the clouds were white and the sea was very blue. It was a day on which one could do anything.
He stood in the doorway and stretched himself. From below came the steady rumble of the engine. ‘She runs very sweetly,’ he thought. ‘She’s better on the benzole mixture than the other.’
As they passed the Nab, Morris was in his seat and running his engine up to its full power. Satisfied, he throttled down again. Rawdon stepped to the side of the machine and looked up at Morris in the pilot’s seat above him.
‘You all right?’ he shouted.
The helmeted figure nodded cheerfully. ‘Quite all right.’
Rawdon stepped back and stood with the engineer of the catapult by the gear that would release the machine. On the bridge, Captain Willett broke off his conversation with the baronet.
‘All ready,’ he said. ‘All right – take the wheel, Mr Mate.’ He moved down to the voice-tube of the engine-room and spoke quietly down it. ‘All ready now. Yes. Whack her up. Yes. All right.’
The mate relieved a seaman at the wheel.
The Iberian turned into the wind, and immediately the difference became evident.
‘This ought to help her off,’ said Dennison.
The captain was still at the voice-pipe. He straightened up, leaned over the dodger, and waved to Rawdon. Rawdon signalled to Morris, who nodded in return; the note of the engine swelled to a roar, tremulously deafening. Morris raised his hand.
‘Right!’ shouted Rawdon to the engineer.
The machine leaped forward and shot away down the track. The ram came to the end of its travel with a dull thud and the machine ran rapidly down the deck. Some distance from the bows light appeared beneath the wheels; she touched again, then lifted clear. On the bridge the mate spun the wheel hard over; the vessel yawed wildly. But there was no danger of running down the machine. She lifted clear, put her nose up, and went up on a slant, levelled, and circled the Iberian. They could see Morris wave his hand; then he took a course for the Island and dwindled into the distance.
The vessel returned to the Solent.
The machine was waiting in Cowes Roads upon a lighter when they got back; Flanagan had done his work well and quickly. A derrick was swung out and the machine was hoisted bodily aboard and placed on the catapult again before lunch, a little miracle of organised handling by slipshod-looking gentlemen in mufti. Then came the wearisome business of filling three-quarters of a ton of petrol into her tanks by two-gallon cans. The vessel lay at anchor; Morris and Dennison sat in deck-chairs in the sun below the bridge, half asleep. The second trial was to take place after tea if the machine were ready in time; this time Dennison would go with Morris.
The petrol-cans jangled monotonously throughout the afternoon. Dennison turned in his chair and glanced attentively at the sky to windward. ‘Wind’s dying,’ he said. ‘We shall have a flat calm after tea.’
Both were well aware of the significance of this. A calm would make it more difficult for the machine to leave the deck – and this trial was to be fully loaded.
Morris closed his eyes. ‘There will be plenty of wind,’ he said. ‘Vertical … ’
Dennison chuckled and relapsed again into his chair. Presently, roused by an indisputable snore, Morris raised his head and glanced at his companion. Dennison was asleep. For a moment Morris sat looking at him curiously, then he relaxed again into his chair.
The petrol was filled into the machine and five hundred pounds of ballast in sandbags was placed in her little hold, to represent the bags of mail. The Iberian weighed, and they had tea going down the Solent. At Spithead, Morris went on deck and found the mate. He drew him aside.
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘You’ll be steering her, won’t you?’ He paused. ‘Well, it’s going to be a touchy business in this calm. I may have to jump her off before she’s flying. If I do that, we shall probably flop down into the water. Look. I’m going to edge to starboard as soon as I’m in the air.’
‘I’ll give her a cast to port,’ said the officer.
‘That’s it. But for God’s sake, don’t let her run off till I’m clear of the deck or you’ll put us in the ditch. Keep her straight till I’m clear. And one other thing. Boats, and all that sort of business. Have them ready.’
‘That’s arranged,’ said the mate. ‘Those two rafts astern. See? We cut them loose as we pass you.’
‘Right you are,’ said Morris. He returned to the chart-room as they passed the Warner.
At the Nab they took their places, Dennison beside Morris in the little cockpit of the flying-boat. Before them stretched the track, level to within a short distance of the bows and then sloping away downwards to assist the machine to leave the deck. It seemed very short.
The engine was run up, throttled again, and they settled themselves into their places. Dennison had flown in the machine several times before, and he was well accustomed to his position. He strapped himself in, settled his shoulders comfortably against the back of his seat, and waited, watching his companion.
Morris ran the engine up to full power and raised his hand. For a moment nothing happened; then suddenly the machine moved forward and began to hurtle down the track. The acceleration was terrific. It was painful; the seat pressed intolerably upon the back. Dennison’s legs were suddenly drawn under his seat by an invisible agency; he gripped the side of the cockpit and fought to draw his breath. He glanced at Morris beside him, calm and motionless.
There was a thud as the ram came home, and they began to run along the track. Morris pressed the wheel forward and the tail of the machine rose so high from the deck that from the cockpit it seemed that she must catch her long bow on the track and turn a somersault. So she ran along. Dennison watched the track, eager and curious. There was none of that buoyant feeling that he knew must come before she could fly. She was fifty feet from the end – thirty feet. It was coming; she bounced more lightly. Ten feet.
Morris pulled the wheel back sharply with both hands; the rail dropped suddenly and they were in the air. Instantly he pressed the nose of the machine down and dived for the water a couple of hundred yards ahead, yawing a little to starboard. Dennison, watching the manoeuvre with detached interest, saw from the corner of his eye the hand of the air speed indicator creeping up and knew that the danger was over. Ten feet from the surface Morris checked the dive and flew along close above the water for a mile or so, then gently pulled the nose up. The machine responded sluggishly and climbed from the water; in a minute they had climbed perhaps a hundred feet.
On the bridge there was a general relaxation. As in all such affairs, the tension had been most severe among the spectators. The machine had run
to the very end of the track and had then leaped ten or twelve feet into the air. As the Iberian yawed to port, the machine had dropped slowly towards the water; then the fall had been checked and she had flown along in the manner of a cormorant for nearly a minute, barely clear of the water, rising not at all. Finally had come the gradual climb that showed that all was well.
The first mate wiped his brow and relinquished the wheel to a seaman. ‘I wouldn’t go in that thing for a thousand pounds,’ he said fervently.
Morris flew the machine back along the Solent to Cowes and put down into the Roads. The machine sank down to the water at, perhaps, seventy miles an hour. She flattened out close above the surface and touched suddenly with a crash, a little shower of spray, and a great foaming of water beneath her bows. Morris raised his goggles and wiped the spray from his face, then turned her and taxied her into Flanagan’s slipway, where mechanics in waders were waiting to guide the machine as he taxied her up the slip upon her wheels.
Morris and Dennison returned to the Clematis and lived in her for the next two or three days. During that time the flying-boat was taken to pieces and crated, and placed in the hold of the Iberian with the greater part of the catapult gear. It would be re-erected in New York, where the machine was to be rigged and placed ready upon the catapult. There it would remain till the vessel was approximately nine hundred and fifty miles from Cornwall. This was timed to be early in the morning of 2 June. A staff of mechanics would sail in the Iberian.
The Iberian finished her arrangements and moved to Southampton to ship a cargo. Originally laid down as a passenger boat, the war had caught her in an early stage of construction. For a time, work on her had been suspended; then, as the need for fast cargo vessels became more evident, the design was modified to the exclusion of the great part of the passenger accommodation. By reason of the change, the vessel was cranky and ungainly, but she was fast, and for this purpose she answered admirably. In her the promoters of the venture had found the necessary speed with the privacy that they desired.
She was to take three days loading. Morris and Dennison returned to London and separated, to meet again at lunch with Rawdon and Sir David Fisher the day before the vessel sailed.
There was no business to be done. Everything had been settled; the arrangements for the landing at Padstow were complete. There remained only to make a good lunch and to drink to the success of the flight.
‘Oh, rot that,’ said Morris. ‘We can drink a better one than that.’ He raised his glass. ‘The success of the venture. Good dividends!’
Soon afterwards the party broke up. ‘We meet again at Padstow,’ said Sir David quietly. ‘The very best of luck.’
Dennison walked a little way along the street with Morris. ‘I don’t suppose it’s any good asking you to dine with me this evening?’ he said.
‘Not the least,’ said Morris dryly.
Dennison smiled, a little pensively. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Meet you on the ten-fifty at Waterloo, then?’
‘Right you are,’ said Morris. He hailed a taxi. ‘Keep me a corner if you’re there first. Cheer-oh.’
He drove to Paddington and took a local train to his home in the suburbs. He lived in a house just outside the aerodrome, a little high-gabled, ‘New Art’ house that he had built himself the year before. He had placed it well, overlooking the aerodrome, and had given himself a large piece of pasture for a garden. During the winter he had been very busy transforming a portion of this into a tennis-court.
He had tea with his wife overlooking the garden. It was beginning to have the appearance of a garden at last; he surveyed it with some pleasure. His wife was a great gardener. When they had built the house they had decided that they would have a ‘proper’ garden, and had straightway planned a garden of flowering trees and hollyhocks and cypresses and crazy pavement and a sundial. It was taking shape; it ran from the house to the hedge bordering the aerodrome, perhaps an acre in all. While he had been away, Helen had planted the bald patches in the lawns with grass seed.
He turned to his wife. She was several years younger than he, hardly more than a girl. ‘I say,’ he said, and munched steadily for a moment or two. ‘We ought to have a double cherry somewhere. We had one at school – it was just outside my bedroom window. Great.’
‘M’yes,’ said the girl doubtfully. ‘I don’t know whether it would do in this soil.’
‘It would have a damn good try,’ said Morris firmly. ‘We’ll look it up in the book of the words after dinner and see what it says.’
He went upstairs, changed into old clothes, and spent the evening laying down great russet slabs of crazy-paving along one of his paths, while his wife scratched the turf and scattered grass seed. He worked well, and had finished several yards when his wife came out and stopped him.
‘Time you went and had your bath,’ she said.
He straightened up and gazed at her affectionately, dusted his hands together, and trod heavily upon the last stone.
‘ “The benison of hot water,” ’ he said reflectively. Then ingenuously, ‘Have we got a nice dinner?’
The girl laughed cheerfully, though she had little heart for it. ‘I’m not going to tell you what you’ve got,’ she said. ‘You’ll enjoy your bath all the more. The pleasures of anticipation.’
‘I shall probably be able to smell it when I go indoors, anyway,’ said Morris. He did not move, but stood meditatively wiping his hands upon the seat of his trousers, surveying the unfinished portion of the path.
‘It does seem a pity to leave it,’ he said. ‘I never seem to get any time at home nowadays.’
The girl gave a little gasp. ‘I’ll – I’ll get Adams to finish it while you’re away,’ she said.
Morris turned and took her arm, his grubby hand upon her white sleeve. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said. ‘I want to do them myself.’
‘All right,’ said Helen. She drew him a little closer to her, and moved towards the house.
Morris lingered for a moment, and looked over his shoulder at the unfinished paths. ‘There’s a lot to do yet,’ he said. ‘Still, we’re getting on. And I shall only be away just over three weeks this time.’
He turned to the house and walked up the garden arm in arm with his wife. ‘Then we shall have all the summer to get it into order,’ he said. ‘Only about three and a half weeks. That’s hardly any time.’
But the girl did not answer, and they walked on up to the house in silence. They went indoors and closed the garden door behind them. Presently light shone out from behind thin curtains in the leaded, casement windows; cheerful lights, such lights as are to be seen in the dusk from any prosperous little suburban home where the middle-class business-man takes his ease of an evening in the bosom of his family.
The sky turned slowly to a deeper blue than ever the Council of the garden suburb had dared to paint the dial of a clock.
Dennison sat in the smoking-room of his club before the fire, a novel on his knee, a pipe in his mouth, and an empty coffee-cup by his side. Outside there was a touch of frost in the air; he found the fire comforting. Though he had dined alone, he had put on a dinner-jacket; he did not quite know why. It was half-past nine. He had made a good dinner, and he was very comfortable.
He could not read his novel. He had sat in the smoking-room since dinner, smoking his pipe, watching the flickering of the fire, and wondering dispassionately whether he would ever sit there again. He had done sufficient flying during the past month to be able to picture the flight in his mind beforehand. He knew what the Atlantic looked like. He had had some experience of it in the Irene. He knew what the flight would be like. They would be catapulted from the ship in a similar manner to the trial flight, would climb slowly from the water upon a compass course. Then would come hour after hour of monotonous travel across the waste, deafened and stupid with noise, and listening all the time with morbid anxiety for a splutter in the roaring of the engine. For ten hours they would sit like that if they were lucky – ten
hours of watching the long Atlantic swell ahead of them, mesmerised by noise, numb and deaf. At the end of that time land would appear as a line upon the horizon; he would have to cast off his fatigue, find out what land it was, and guide Morris to Padstow.
That was the programme.
Presently he got up and left the club. He turned down a side street into Pall Mall and walked along to the St James’s end. Outside the gate of Marlborough House there was a guardsman on sentry, stiff and erect; in the square the lamps were bright. It was very quiet. A taxi passed with a whirr and vanished into the Mall; the towers of the Palace were very straight and stiff.
One could not be afraid.
He turned up St James’s towards Piccadilly. Near King Street he was accosted by a very old man; a man with long white hair flowing on to his shoulders from under a battered, old-fashioned hat. From the folds of his cape he drew a sheaf of envelopes.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said in a gentle refined voice. ‘But do you by any chance patronise the Turf?’
Dennison paused.
‘I can give you a remarkably good selection for Ascot,’ said the old man. ‘I can assure you that you may place every confidence in them.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dennison, ‘but I’m not a racing man.’
‘The Oaks?’ hazarded the ancient. ‘I could put you in the way of a very considerable turnover upon the Oaks.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Dennison, ‘but I don’t bet at all.’
For a moment the old man gazed at him searchingly, incredulously. ‘Ah yes,’ he said at last. ‘I see. You never touch it. You never touch it at all. Well, perhaps that is the better way after all.’ He moved aside. ‘Good night, sir. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’
‘One moment,’ said Dennison. ‘I never bet – I don’t know enough about it to back my fancy. But – I am leaving England tomorrow. A long journey, and perhaps a dangerous one. I should be very glad if you would drink with me this evening.’