Landfall (23 page)

Back on the aerodrome, Chambers reported to Hewitt: “It worked all right, sir, at the second shot. They’re loading up again now for the trial this afternoon.”

The wing-commander nodded. “Any particular reason why it didn’t work the first time?”

“None at all, that I could see, sir.” He paused. “As a matter of fact, it didn’t go a bit as the professor said. You know he said that the current on the milliammeter would go up suddenly, in two and half seconds?”

The wing-commander said: “Yes. He was very worried about it.”

“Well, he’s got it all wrong. It just went creeping up, very slowly—much slower than the battleship. It must have taken seven or eight seconds. I switched off when it got to thirty-six.”

“That’s funny. He was all wrong about the rate of rise?”

“Yes, sir. It went up very slowly.” The pilot hesitated. “Do you think we ought to let him know?”

“Send him a code signal by radio, you mean? We can’t send that in clear.”

They glanced at each other. They had both had some experience of code signals in the hands of wireless operators in training. It might very well take three or four hours to get an intelligible answer to a cable of that sort.

The pilot said: “I should think it would be all right if we just carry on. After all, it only means there’s that much more time to cut the switch.”

The wing-commander said: “That’s all it can mean. I should carry on, and tell him tonight.”

“Very good, sir.”

Chambers went off to the mess for a quick lunch. At the table somebody asked him: “How’s it going?”

“Not so bad,” he said. “Did the cruiser a bit of no good this morning—or would have done if the thing had been real.”

Somebody else said: “The Navy are all hot and bothered over it.”

“And well they may be.”

He walked back to the hangar. The machine was not quite ready; he put in his parachute-harness and his Mae West and stood waiting on the tarmac. It was a fine, breezy, sunny afternoon: cold with the blustering cold of March, but invigorating with the promise of summer to come. The flight-lieutenant came and stood by him.

“Bloody nice day,” he said, “Going to flirt with death again?”

Chambers grinned. “Nice day for the ceremony. I always think rain spoils a funeral.”

“How’s it going?”

“Not so bad. I think we’ve got it pretty well whacked now.”

The flight-sergeant came up to them. “All ready now, sir.” The pilot turned and got into the machine.

Presently he took off and flew towards the coast, on the alert for other aircraft. As he passed out over the beach at about a thousand feet he was turning over in his mind the morning’s trial. He had a firm impression that this hit-and-miss business of experiment was quite unnecessary. There was some means of procedure that they could adopt, somewhere, somehow, that would make this rather tricky method of experiment obsolete. Some combination of the height and speed and modulation, and frequency which would ring the bell each time, delivering the stick of chocolate with accuracy and regularity. He had a feeling that the problem contained within itself a neat and accurate solution, and a safe one, too. He knew that Professor Legge had the same instinct, but neither had been able to formulate it in words.

Presently, far ahead of him upon the sunny corrugated sea, he saw the cruiser, with the trawler lying at a little distance from her. He closed them rapidly and circled round above the trawler at about a thousand feet. In a minute the white flashes of the Aldis lamp showed
from her bridge; he turned away and flew south for a couple of minutes, getting distance for his run towards the ship. Then he turned again, and made for the cruiser.

He switched on current to the apparatus at the main switch and pulled over the safety-switch. The milliammeter showed sixteen or seventeen; that was about normal at the beginning of the run. He glanced quickly at the cruiser to check the direction, ruddering slightly to maintain his course.

Then he glanced back at the milliammeter. Still only about eighteen: it wasn’t rising as it should.

The run was going to be another failure.

He shot another quick glance at the ship, corrected slightly with his feet, and back to the dial of the ammeter.

The needle wasn’t there.

For an instant, perhaps the fifth of a second, he was bewildered: then his hand began to move towards the switch.

At the same moment he saw the needle in a different place, right up at the far end of the scale. It was over fifty.

Quick as he moved his hand, the current passed along the circuit-wires more quickly. He never heard the detonation, nor felt the burst of flame. He saw, but did not feel, the structure of the cockpit dissolve round him.

He felt no pain.

He saw the port engine fall out and go down, trailing a plume of black smoke in its fall. He saw the flaming wreckage of the wings collapse and leave him, and he saw, but did not feel, the fuselage rear up and go into its long, uneven plunge tail first towards the sea.

He thought: “This is being killed.”

And then he thought: “My God, we’ve been a pack of bloody fools.”

Clear in his mind was what they should have done. It was so easy, such a simple little trick. It would have freed the trials from all risk. It would have saved his life.

He was being killed and nobody would know. Another pilot would come forward and would carry on the trials and he, too, would be killed. And then another, and another one. He could have stopped all that, but he was being killed.

As the wrecked fuselage plunged tail first into the sea, one thought was paramount, pervading every fibre of his being.

He must,
must
try and live, to tell Professor Legge.

It is a horrible thing to see an aeroplane destroyed by an explosion from within.

On the trawler the naval officers stood stupefied. The detonation blew the belly of the machine out downwards, and a sheet of flame shot outwards from the fuselage, coloured a cherry-red against the pale-blue sky. The big monoplane staggered, practically stopped. Then a round mass that was an engine fell from the port wing and went down to the sea, leaving a great plume of black smoke behind it in its fall.

The wrecked bomber put its nose up and the port wing burst into flame. Then the wings crumpled up and the whole port wing parted from the fuselage, and hung for a time suspended by the hot air of its own combustion. The remnant of the fuselage and the starboard wing dropped backwards in a tail slide, and plunged down to the water, gathering speed at every moment of its fall.

It hit the sea a few hundred yards from the cruiser, with a resounding crash and a great sheet of spray. It bobbed up to the surface in the middle of the foam of its own fall, and began sinking fairly slowly. Above it
the port wing hovered flaming, dropping streams of blazing petrol to the sea. Then it, too, began to fall, quicker and quicker, till it hit the sea a little way away.

A motor-pinnace splashed down heavily into the water from the cruiser, turned, and made for the sinking wreckage.

On the bridge of the trawler, Captain Burnaby stood staring at the disaster. He moved once to speak to the captain; the R.N.V.R. lieutenant jumped for the telegraph and rang it to full speed. The trawler turned slowly and made for the floating wreckage.

Burnaby stood staring at the wreck through field-glasses, grim and silent.

By his side, Professor Legge stood white and sick, gripping the rail before him with both hands. He had seen a boy killed before his eyes, a boy that he had known, talked to, consulted with, a young man that he had admired for his light-hearted courage. And his one reaction was a feeling of relief.

Relief that it was over. The long, grinding tension of anxiety was finished, for the worst had happened. There would be no need now to lie awake at nights, worrying desperately if there were no more that he could do. There would be no more arguing and pleading with the officers for a more cautious programme and no more rebuffs. This marked a period.

The tension of anxiety was snapped. Unnoticed, a tear trickled down his cheek to his moustache, but he only felt relief, an immense thankfulness that it was over.

The motor-boat was now beside the wreck.

I
N
the snack-bar that evening, Miriam said: “I don’t know what’s come over you. You’re looking pleased as a dog with two tails tonight. What’s it all about, anyway?”

Mona tossed her head. “Nothing to do with you.”

The other smiled. “It’s that Air Force officer you go out with. Meeting him tonight?”

Mona shook her head. “He can’t get off till next week.”

“Well, then, what are you so pleased about? Got another one?”

“Don’t talk so soft. It’s nothing like that.”

Miriam sighed, unbelieving, and broke off to serve a couple of whiskies. The evening progressed along the usual lines. The bar was moderately full; as the months went fry the proportion of women in the bar tended to increase. The W.A.A.F.s and the W.R.N.S. seemed to come more frequently: sometimes they came with naval or Air Force officers, but frequently they came in little groups of two or three of their own service. Then they would sit at a table by themselves, rather self-conscious in so masculine a place, drinking with care and feminine economy.

About eight o’clock Mona nudged Miriam. “There’s those Wren officers you know. The one in the middle, what you said was the daughter of the officer at the Navigating School.”

Miriam looked across the room. “Why, that’s right,” she said. “That’s Miss Hancock. I don’t know who them others are with her.”

“What’s that Miss Hancock like? Do you know her?”

The other shook her head. “I never spoke to her. My cousin Flora was in service there—that’s how I know her. Flora said she was all right. A bit stuck up, like. But all officers’ daughters get like that.”

Mona said: “I suppose they do. Would she mind it if I went and spoke to her, do you think?”

The other girl stared at her. “Whatever for?”

Mona regretted she had made the suggestion. “Just something I was thinking about,” she said weakly.

Miriam looked at her kindly. “She’s all right,” she said. “She won’t bite your head off.” In her own mind, she had a very good idea what Mona wanted to talk to Miss Hancock about. She wanted to get into the Wrens, and she wanted some help. That was what she had been so excited over earlier in the evening.

“All right,” said Mona, with determination. “I’ll go and try.”

The white-coated waiter came with a tray for three glasses of light sherry for the Wrens. Mona said: “Look, Jimmy, I’ll take that along.”

Miriam said: “Here, what about the bar?”

“Give a hand in the bar, Jimmy. I won’t be a minute.” She took the tray and carried it over to the three Wren officers in the corner. She put the glasses down carefully on the table before them, wiping the foot of each with Jimmy’s napkin, and waited while one of them fumbled in a purse with finger and thumb.

She took the money and said: “Please, is one of you ladies Miss Hancock?”

The middle girl looked up. “I am Miss Hancock,” she said. She spoke with a public-school voice, clearly and very definitely. Mona was a little damped.

She said diffidently: “Do you think I might speak to you alone, please?”

The Wren stared at her with amused astonishment. “Of course you can,” she said at last. She got up from
her chair, saying to the others: “Look after my drink.” She turned to Mona. “Where shall we go?”

There was nowhere they could go privately, except the ladies’ room, and that was probably full. Mona said weakly: “Just anywhere, I suppose.” They moved a little way aside from the other two, watching Second-Officer Hancock with curiosity.

The two girls faced each other. “What is it?” asked the officer.

Mona said: “It’s just something I overheard, Miss Hancock. You know, we hear a lot of talk in the bar here of an evening—this and that, you know. Sometimes you just don’t know what to do for the best, whether to tell anyone or let it go. Or who you ought to tell.”

“What did you hear?”

“It was about a submarine called
Caranx.”

The Wren frowned.
Caranx
was a sore subject at Admiralty House, the source of a great deal of bitterness. “What about
Caranx?”
she asked sharply.

Mona said: “They all said that she’d been sunk by one of our own aeroplanes. But I don’t think that’s right, honest I don’t.”

“There was a Court of Enquiry that went into the whole thing very carefully.”

Mona tossed her head. “Precious fine Court of Enquiry, if you ask me. They never heard what Porky Thomas had to say, nor Mouldy James, neither.”

Miss Hancock was startled and impressed. “Who are they—Porky Thomas and Mouldy James?”

“They’re naval officers what come here of an evening and talk free when they’ve had a beer or two. Off the minesweepers, I think they are—both of ’em.”

“Do they know something about
Caranx?”

Mona hesitated. “All they know is what they saw,” she said at last. “There was another submarine sunk that same afternoon, besides
Caranx.”

The Wren officer fixed her with a cool, level stare. “You’re not making all this up?”

“Honest, I’m not. Porky Thomas saw the oil coming up from the bottom the next morning, and Mouldy James had a cutting from an American paper describing how the second one was sunk, and it was that same day. And then there was the clothes, too.”

“What about the clothes?”

“There was a salvage officer here only last night saying about the Germans carrying our sailors’ clothes in their torpedo-tubes, to shoot out if they was depth-charged. I don’t know his name, but he was off one of the salvage ships.”

“I see.”

Miss Hancock was silent for a minute. Around them the crowd moved and chattered with all the clamour of a bar at nine o’clock at night. She was impressed; the girl seemed to know something. Certainly she knew a great deal more than it was right for any civilian to know in war-time. It would probably turn out that it was all imagination; on the other hand, it was just possible that there was something in it. Miss Hancock had seen and filed the minutes of the Court of Enquiry: she could remember nothing about any other submarine or about clothes being carried in torpedo-tubes, for that matter. She knew very well the bitter feelings that had been raised by the affair of
Caranx
between men overstrained by war. If it were possible to show, even by inference, that
Caranx
might not have been sunk by our own action, the gain in unity would be enormous.