An Old Captivity (12 page)

The day was already hot; at that slow speed the heat was stifling in the cabin. None of them were wearing flying clothes. Lockwood and Ross wore tweed coats and grey flannel trousers; the girl wore her grey coat and skirt and a silk blouse. The back of the cabin was piled high with their sleeping-bags, luggage, and emergency rations; the flying suits were on top, ready if they were wanted on the way. It would be possible for Lockwood and his daughter to get out of their seats and put on flying suits in the air; the pilot would have to stay as he was till they landed.

The take-off, with twelve hundred miles of fuel on board, went moderately well. There was a light south-easterly breeze blowing up Southampton Water; the pilot headed into this and opened his throttle full. Then as she gathered speed slowly he worked with his elevators to rock her forward on to the step of the floats; she ploughed ahead, leaving a deep wash. Half a mile from the start he got her up on to the step; thereafter she gained speed quickly and finally left the surface after about a mile. For a few moments he nursed her upwards from the water, tense and alert; then as she gained speed he put her into a normal climb, and relaxed.

Lockwood said: “We seemed to go a long way on the water.”

“I know. She’s got fuel for twelve hundred miles on board. If we get her off with thirteen fifty, it’s all she’ll ever do. Of course, there’s not a lot of wind.”

“How far is it to Invergordon?”

“About seven hundred and fifty miles, the way we go. We’ve got to keep round the coast. Say six and a half hours. We ought to get there at about four o’clock, if all goes well.”

He turned, and began flying eastwards down the coast of
England, past Portsmouth and Brighton, on to Dungeness.

It was about nine o’clock in the morning. Ross climbed the machine slowly to about four thousand feet; the temperature up there was moderate. He reeled out his aerial and tested his wireless again, then settled down to the flight. The weather was perfect. The south coast of England, flat and uninteresting from the air, passed slowly by them. For the first half-hour Lockwood and the girl were interested and asked many questions about the towns they passed, the speed of the machine, and the height. Then they fell silent; the seaplane droned monotonously on.

The end of the first hour found them a little way past Dungeness, nearing Dover. He left the coast at Folkestone and cut across the end of Kent on a course for the Norfolk coast. They passed near Margate, and headed out over the Thames estuary.

By eleven o’clock they were near Yarmouth, cutting across a corner of the land again on their way to the coast of Lincolnshire.

The pilot sat motionless at the wheel. He wore a flying helmet fitted with headphones; he had turned on the radio to one of the continental stations and was listening to dance music. From time to time he made a small adjustment to the tail control above his head; as fuel was consumed the trim of the machine altered very slightly. Now and again he pulled a map from beneath his leg and compared it with some feature on the ground; from time to time he did a little sum upon a slide rule to check his ground speed. Every twenty minutes he re-set the directional gyro in agreement with the compass. These little occupations lessened the monotony for him; between them he listened to the dance band.

In the seat beside him, Lockwood had fallen asleep.

Behind the pilot Alix sat motionless, staring at the slowly moving countryside. She had not expected that a flight would be like this. She had expected that to fly would be thrilling, or at least interesting. In fact, she found that it was neither. Her head felt sick and woolly from the clamour of
the engine. A patch of sunlight lay across her lap; that part of her in the sun was unbearably hot, out of the sun she was a little cold. She could not move to any other seat; there was no blind to be pulled down.

They had been two hours in the machine; already she was tired, bored, and cross. The pilot said there were another five hours to go.

Her seat was getting very hard. She shifted her position uneasily.

At twelve o’clock they passed the mouth of the Humber, and Spurn Head. There were clouds in the sky now, and more ahead; the day was gradually becoming overcast as they got further north. Lockwood was awake again and studying the map, comparing it with the coast. Behind them the girl was falling into an uneasy coma of fatigue.

Presently Ross suggested lunch. They had brought sandwiches with them from the hotel at Hythe; they ate these off Sunderland, proceeding steadily towards Scotland. The food woke them up, and refreshed them. The weather here was almost wholly overcast and rather cold; they came down to fifteen hundred feet and felt better.

At two o’clock they were off the Firth of Forth; away to the west they saw the smoke of Leith and Edinburgh. They crossed the mouth of the firth and met the coast again at Arbroath; then for nearly an hour they followed it to Aberdeen. At Aberdeen they took a cut across the land, and came to Banff at about three o’clock.

Up there the day was bright again, and the sun warm. Ross turned north-west by compass for Cromarty; presently he was able to show his passengers an indentation in the heather-covered cliffs ahead, and an appearance of water behind.

“Cromarty Firth,” he said. “Invergordon’s on the north side somewhere.”

Lockwood smiled. “I shan’t be sorry to get there.”

“I know. It’s very boring, isn’t it?”

He turned and spoke to Alix: “Are you very tired, Miss Lockwood?”

She shook her head. “No—I’m not tired. But I shall be very glad to get out.”

“So shall I.”

Ross brought the machine down to a thousand feet and flew into Cromarty from the sea. He had never been there before, but he found Invergordon without difficulty and circled low over the water to find the red buoy that he had arranged should be prepared for him to moor the seaplane to. He saw it in the position that he had arranged, a little to the west of the main jetty. There were no ships in the firth, and no sign of any boat to meet him at the buoy. He went up to a thousand feet again and turned to Lockwood.

“When we land,” he said, “we’ve got to make fast to that red buoy. I can taxi up to it on the water; can you get down on to the float and catch it?”

“Of course I can. Tell me what I’m to do.”

The mooring gear was very simple. A bridle of steel cable joined two stout bollards, one in the nose of each float. From the centre of this bridle a cable was led down the outside of the port float to a point near the cabin door, and was held in clips from which it could be readily pulled out. At the aft end this cable carried a large spring hook, exactly like a dog-leash clip on an enormous scale.

To moor the seaplane, somebody had to get down from the cabin and stand upon the curved top of the float as the seaplane taxied up to the buoy. The top of the float was only a few inches from the water; if there were waves they would wet his feet. He had to pull the cable from its clips along the float and have the spring hook ready in one hand. Then the machine would manœuvre to bring the buoy to his feet; he would catch it with a little boathook that they carried in the cabin, clip the hook on to it, and let it go. The seaplane would then ride to the buoy, attached to it by the cable and the bridle to the floats.

Ross explained this to Lockwood as they cruised around over Invergordon; the don had no difficulty in understanding what he had to do. But the girl interposed.

“You’d better not do that, Daddy,” she said. “I can get down there much better. You stay here.”

She turned to Ross “I’ve just got to catch the buoy with the boathook, and clip the spring hook on to it?”

He nodded. He was glad that she had volunteered. It seemed to him that there was nothing difficult about it, but perhaps it was a job better for youth than for age. “That’s all you’ve got to do,” he said. “Keep a good hold on something—the float may be slippery. Try not to lose the boat-hook. There’s a little leather loop on it—put that over your wrist. And look, don’t try and hold on to the buoy, if you can’t manage. Let it go, and I’ll bring her round to it again.”

“I suppose there’s something on the buoy for the spring hook to clip on to?”

“There ought to be a metal ring.”

“That’s quite clear, Mr. Ross.”

“All right. I’ll put her down now. Don’t open the cabin door until I tell you.”

He made a wide sweep into wind and sank to the surface of the water. He touched down gently; the machine sank forward on the floats and pulled up quickly. Ross opened the side window at his elbow to its full extent, swung the machine round, and taxied towards the buoy. When he was near it he slowed the machine down to a walking pace and turned to the girl.

“All right now, Miss Lockwood. Be careful how you get down on the float.”

She got up from her seat and opened the door. The float below was practically awash; she did not like the look of it at all. Still, she had said that she could do it. In any case, it had to be either her or her father, since the pilot could not leave his seat. She was suddenly angry that he should expect her to do such a thing. It was absurd that she should have to do this. It was an error in the organisation, an inefficiency for which he was responsible. Still, there was nothing for it.

She crawled backwards out of the open door and, lying on
her stomach on the sill, felt for the float with her toes. She levered herself out further, and touched it. Her skirt was rucked up to her waist, making her angrier still; mercifully there was nobody there to see.

She found her foothold on the float and stood erect. He had warned her that it might be slippery; it was. She was wearing her normal walking shoes, with leather soles and medium high heels. She ought to have had rubbers on for this. He should have told her.

She clutched the wing strut and turned forward; from his window he was watching her intently. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She said shortly and acidly: “I’m quite all right, thank you, Mr. Ross.”

She turned gingerly and took the boathook from the floor of the cabin; then she stooped down and unfastened the spring hook from the float. The pilot opened a chink of throttle very gently, keeping one eye upon the girl standing behind his shoulder on the float; the machine crept forward to the buoy.

There was a strong tidal current running past the buoy. The wind was light; he made a circuit and approached up the tide. He knew from much experience in the past that the only real danger in this sort of thing lay in allowing the machine to become held by the mooring with the floats broadside to the tide. Then, if the tide were strong enough, the seaplane might be capsized; it was a real danger, that. In a way the tide made it easier, however; he could keep steerage way and yet come very slowly to the buoy. The girl should have no difficulty, he thought.

A wave slopped over the float and over the girl’s feet, filling her shoes with water. She became suddenly furious, but said nothing.

The buoy appeared beside the float. Ross nursed the machine gently up to it. Alix stooped as it came to her, caught it easily with the boathook, and slipped the cable to the ring. From the window ahead of her the pilot said:

“Good show. Let it go now.”

She did not hear him very well. She stood there with the buoy held in her hand, looking forward at him. “Do you mean put it in the water?”

He sat screwed round in his seat, looking backwards at her. “Just throw it all in.”

She shuffled a little, and threw the buoy back into the sea with the cable attached to it. “Do you mean like that?”

“That’s fine.”

The pilot swung round in his seat. In the short time that he had taken his eyes from the forward view the seaplane had been blown round, and she now lay well across the tide, drifting rapidly down-stream as the slack of the cable took up. There was no time to be lost.

He said: “Bloody hell!” and thrust the throttle wide open, treading hard upon the rudder to get her straight again. The engine opened out with a roar and a blast of air from the propeller; at the same moment there was a considerable jerk from the floats as the machine was brought up sharply on the mooring. There was a scuffling noise behind him as the seaplane swung back to the stream, and then a splash. The machine swung straight, he pulled the throttle back, and turned in his seat, aghast. The girl had fallen in.

Ross jumped from his seat, pushed past Lockwood, and was at the cabin door in a moment. She was swimming strongly a yard or two away from the float; the swing had carried the machine a little way from her. He was down on the float in an instant, caught her hand, and pulled her up beside him; she still held the boathook.

Her wet silk blouse clung to her like a bathing dress. For the fraction of an instant the pilot’s eyes rested on her figure in subconscious surprise. She could be beautiful. Then he was full of stammering apologies.

“I say Miss Lockwood—I’m terribly sorry. Did you hurt yourself?”

In the cabin door her father stooped, looking down at her, and he was laughing.

She swung round on the pilot. She was streaming with
water, and she had lost one shoe; she balanced precariously on the other upon the slippery float.

“You did that on purpose!” she said furiously. “You meant me to fall off!”

Her father had stopped laughing. “Don’t talk such nonsense, Alix,” he said sharply. “It was an accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident at all! He put on his engine, and the rush of air pushed me off the float!”

Ross said: “I’m really most awfully sorry. I had to open her up and get her straight, or I’d have had her over. She was all across the tide.”

She said: “I don’t believe a word of it.” The pilot said nothing; in stony silence she got back into the cabin, helped by her father.

Over her shoulder Lockwood glanced at the pilot expressively; Ross smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. He followed her into the cabin, squeezed past them, and stopped the engine. Through the windscreen he saw a motor boat approaching them from the shore.

He got down on to the float again and held the boat off as it came alongside, fearful of damage to the machine. The boatman knew his job, however; it was not the first time he had had to deal with seaplanes. In silence the girl and her father got down into the boat. Ross went back into the cabin, closed the windows, and handed down their personal luggage; he passed her flying boots down to the girl.