The Lonely Sea and the Sky (23 page)

  The plot showed that after six hours and ten minutes of flight I had made good 464 miles. I looked ahead for rays from the sun that I needed to check the distance flown for sure, but I could see none. I flew into a rain squall, and the heavy drops, striking my forehead, stung like hail. The squall only lasted about a mile, and on breaking through it I spotted a patch of wintry sunlight lying away to the right. I swung off course to the north and set off through spits of rain to chase the sun-patch. The seaplane was now plugging dead into wind, yet the sun-patch which had appeared close enough at the start seemed to keep its distance. Afraid of the gap's closing before I reached it, I opened the throttle, and sat tense waiting for an explosion from the propeller flying to bits, followed by a runaway roar from the motor. When this did not happen, I gradually relaxed. The sun-patch did not seem any closer. Suddenly I realised why – on looking down I saw that the sun-patch was racing over the waves against the wind just as fast as the seaplane was flying. But I must have that sun. I pushed the throttle wide open. Several times I had a glimpse of the sun at the edge of the cloud, and at last I thought I was in position, and turned sharply to take the sight broadside on. But as I lifted the sextant, the shadows raced over the plane, and on again. Angry, I turned sharply, and set off again at full speed. Nothing else seemed to matter. I adjusted the sextant to what I estimated would be the right angle, and held it ready. I put the nose down, the speed rising until there was a shrill note in the rigging wires. I turned with a vertical bank, and got a single shot while still in the turn, pulling the seaplane out of its sideways dive just above the sea. The next moment I was in dull rain. I levelled off and flew on westwards. I was four and a half minutes late with my sun sight, but I made an allowance for the time difference, and compared the result with my pre-calculations for 5 p.m. It put the position 21 miles short of the turn-off point.

  What trust could I put in that last miserable sketchy sun-shot? But there was no more sun. Fifteen minutes after the observation, I reckoned that I had reached the turn-off point. I turned, and headed SSW, changing course by nearly seventy degrees.

  The clouds were steadily darkening and lowering. The seaplane was scudding over the rising, roughening sea, at a great pace, with the wind now nearly astern. A drift of fifteen degrees to port showed how the wind had increased. Fewer clouds were spilling rain, and that seemed an added threat. I stared at every dark, low-lying cloud on the horizon, each of which might be hiding the island, and I continually searched the stormy ceiling for a glimpse of the sun. At last I gave up hope of seeing the sun again. Immediately, as if it had been waiting for me to do that, it showed through a break in the clouds, dead ahead, and sun-rays slanted down. I opened the throttle and raced for it, leaning forward. I got three good sights while crossing the column of sunlight. I computed this observation entirely afresh, making heavy weather of it, my brain dopey with strain or fatigue. The result put the island dead ahead. I grasped the result slowly, and then my mood changed violently. I was puffed up with confidence and exultation. I closed the sextant and stowed it away with the other instruments. I looked at the sea, with the crests torn off in showers of spray. The drift had increased to twenty degrees – a 40-mile wind! With this rapid change in wind force, and the whole sky menacing, what was I running into? Six hours forty minutes. Where was the island? Had I, after all, miscalculated? I bitterly regretted my rubber boat.

  Time seemed to go so slowly that I had to stare hard at the clock to convince myself that it had not stopped. All at once I got fed up with worrying, and I was stretching out my hand for something to eat when distinct, clean-cut land showed ahead and a few degrees to the left, a dagger of grey rock thrust through the surface. A hot flood of triumph and excitement swept through me. I could have smashed things with excitement. Then, good God! There was an enormous black bulk of land right alongside me. I stared astounded. It was little Lord Howe Island emerging from a dense squall cloud. It looked as big as Australia it was so close. What I had spotted was a rock off the south end of it.

  I swung round and headed for the middle of the island. I recalled the warning of the Admiralty Sailing Directions that ships passing within a mile and a half of Lord Howe Island in a north-wester ran the risk of being dismasted by violent squalls of wind. I fastened the safety-belt, a weary effort. The island close up was quite different from my imaginary picture of it: it looked huge with two black trunks of mountains rising straight from the sea into a heavy roll of dark clouds. Above the lines of surf at the base were solidly packed palm-trees, and above them, almost sheer bare rock disappeared in the cloud. Only the lagoon was as I had pictured it, a stretch of bright colours, with patches of startling white sand on the bottom. I started circling to choose the best spot for alighting, but with a whizz, the seaplane was suddenly hurled downwards at the lagoon. Cameras, sextant, protractors, pencils, chart, everything flurried round my head like a whirl of leaves. Only the safety-belt held me in the seat as I clutched frantically at the control-stick and instrument board. The seaplane fetched up with a bump that jarred me back into the seat. I dived straight down to the surface, taking only a glimpse at the water ahead for obstructions. The height of the waves showed me that there was depth enough, yet at the last moment I jibbed because I could see the lagoon bottom so clearly that I thought that there was no water there at all. The thought of another bump brought me to my senses in a fraction of a second, and I closed the throttle. The seaplane alighted like a duck, and at once began drifting astern at a great pace. I scrambled out of the cockpit and freed the anchor from the tangle of gear in the front cockpit, heaved it overboard. The line wrenched at my arms and nearly tugged me overboard. I clung to the float strut with one hand with the line scouring through my other hand, until I could get a turn round the mooring ring. The anchor ripped and jerked along the lagoon bottom. The flight of 575 miles had taken me seven hours and forty minutes and I had one hour and forty minutes petrol left.

  I was relieved to see a launch coming. A second followed, and they began circling the plane. Men and women aboard stared as if a Dodo had arrived. I kept on bellowing, 'Where's the best place to moor?'; they kept on waving handkerchiefs, pointing cameras and shouting things. There was one man I began to concentrate on; his voice was loud enough to be heard above the others; he was thickset and powerful looking, and did not get excited. It was agreed that I should moor in the boat pool, a deeper hole in the shallow lagoon, and I asked him to tow me there. 'Why not move across under power?' he asked. I explained that the seaplane would be blown over if I tried to taxi across that wind. He said nothing, but picked up my anchor line, and began towing aslant the wind. I was depressed and fearful of mooring out in this rough weather, but there was nothing else that I could do. I moored with a stout rope to two great anchors, and the launch took me shore. As I arrived at a little wooden jetty, night had fallen. I had got in none too soon, though, curiously, I had never once during the flight been afraid of the risk of being caught by dark. P. J. Dignam, in charge of my petrol, was waiting for me. He asked me what time I left Norfolk Island and a string of other questions. I could not remember when I left Norfolk Island, and later I did not remember snapping at him, 'Don't ask so many questions!' which he declared I did. I had been hard at it since dawn and had seldom worked under greater mental strain. Dignam invited me to stay at his house.

  I slept fitfully, waking to blasts of wind furiously flogging the treetops. At about 6 o'clock the most violent squall of all brought me wide awake; I expected the roof of the house to be stripped off. I lay in the dark for a while longer, and then got up to dress feeling as if my bones had been weary for a week. I went to call young Dignam, but found him already awake. I asked him to take me to the seaplane, and we moved off under a heavy grey sky before dawn. At the edge of the trees the stretch of water lay between the steep black hill and us. 'Isn't that where we moored the plane?' I asked him. 'Yes!'

  'I don't see her,' I said. We walked on. 'Ah, there she is!' I said, but not yet certain. A little closer, I added, 'She looks queer to me.'

  'She looks queer to me too,' said Dignam.

  I could not make out why, but day was breaking fast. 'Sunk!' I said, though not yet believing it myself. At last we could see only too clearly; the tail of the seaplane was slanting above the surface, like a big fish diving into the water.

  We dragged out a boat and rowed across. The entire seaplane, except the tail and the float ends, was under water.

There seemed nothing to do except to have breakfast. We went back to the house, and Mrs Dignam, whom everyone called 'Auntie', produced a delicious feast of salmon and kumeras (sweet potatoes).

  'How is the seaplane, Captin?' she asked. 'Done for?'

  'Completely, except for the floats,' I said, unable to decide which tasted better, the fish or the kumeras.

  'Oh, dear, dear, dear! What a shame! And I did so want to see it rise from the water. Have some more fish, Captin?'

  After breakfast young Dignam rallied a salvage party. I coaxed myself to turn out only by promising myself a week's sleep afterwards. Everyone else seemed keen, though, and three launches put off to the wreck. For the next hour or two I balanced precariously on the bottom of the fuselage, fixing rope to various bits of it. Sometimes I was waist-deep in the water, while gusts of wind spat rain and spray into my face. The seaplane was now bumping upside down on the bottom, and I wanted to right it by pulling the tail over the nose. This seemed a simple thing to do, and I crawled up the bottom of the fuselage on hands and knees to secure a rope to the tail. But every time a pair of launches took the strain of the rope, the tail slewed round to one side or the other, and refused to come up. We paid out a long warp to the side of the hill to get a steadier pull on the tail, but still it refused to come up, and swivelled round in an exasperating way. In the end, a stout rope broke with the pull; it was a mystery how the seaplane could stand such a strain without breaking in half: the fuselage was only a three-ply skin, covering a slender frame of which the thickest piece was only a square inch of spruce. It was a miracle of engineering design.

  We changed our tactics, and towed the seaplane by the tail, bumping and dragging it along the bottom, as far inshore as we could. We left it there, until we could get at it at low water. When we returned, it lay on greenish, slippery mud. The wings looked crushed and mangled. About thirty people, a quarter of the island's total population, were splashing through the shallow water round the seaplane. They included three handsomely-built girls in shorts, and all together formed the most amazingly efficient and enthusiastic salvage team. I had expected men who had never seen an aeroplane before to be bamboozled when asked to unscrew rigging-wire turn-buckles, or wing-root bolts, or to slack off control-cables, or airspeed indicator tubes. But it was the quickest and slickest salvage job I have ever conducted. One stream of people carried pieces to the shore, while another came back for more. The seaplane was dismantled in twenty minutes, and I was the only person who lost anything – some shackle­pins that I pocketed before realising that there was a hole in my borrowed pair of shorts. We rolled the fuselage, stripped of its wings, on to its side, and then righted it, with the floats sitting on the mud. One party led this round the shore to the jetty, while the rest of us dumped all the bits and pieces in an old boat shed under a great old banyan tree. I went round to the jetty to dismantle the motor, thinking that parts of it ought to fetch something, if salvaged quickly before the salt water ate into the aluminium.

  That night Phil Dignam asked me, 'What are you going to do about the plane, Skipper?'

  'Salvage everything saleable, I suppose, and wait till the steamer calls.'

  I had a feeling of resignation about the wreck that was suspiciously like relief, for the seaplane had not been in a fit state for the final hop to the mainland. Next morning I went up to the cargo shed, where two men named Kirby and Keith helped me to dismantle the motor. The zest with which they attacked the engine was astonishing. There were no motor-cars on the island, and the only tools were those for one or two roughish launch motors. We managed everything until we reached the crank-case. The propeller boss had to be drawn off the shaft before the crank-case could come away, and this required a special tool, which we lacked. Kirby walked off, and came back with a gadget he had made himself, of two iron strips and some long bolts. With this he drew off the propeller boss, and freed the crank-case. A gallon or two of Pacific Ocean ran out of the crank-case. I said 'I vote we knock off now, and the rest can be left until tomorrow.'