The Lost Flying Boat (24 page)

Thinking of her took me away from the activity around. The landscape was no longer inspiring. A feeling of vulnerability replaced the sense of adventure. Questions cracked the structure of our group. My sending of false signals had disordered the edifice, so that from now on I could only live as the moments came, which didn't seem like living at all.

‘Adcock! Come out of that ten-foot hole!' He pointed at the theodolite telescope, and then along the line of its bearing. Parallel to a turn of the coast, and a thousand yards southwest, was a short ridge of black rock, green and yellow vegetation at the summit. A watercourse beyond streaked down the re-entrant and ran into the sea. ‘It's on that rise.'

I was to station myself there with the surveyor's pole, and find the line of the bearing according to Bennett's signals, which Bull would observe through binoculars. It sounded a plain enough routine, and I set off over the rocks and moss with the pole on my shoulder, cheerful now that I had a task which needed a good eye and some activity. The wind from the port quarter did not let me hear myself whistling. The sun was as high as it would get that day. Bennett worked against the storm, having a good idea from where it might come. I'd have felt safer if any of us could know where danger from men was likely to appear – who were perhaps a worse part of Nature's wrath.

The ridge, separated from the main line of the mountains, lost itself for a while in the general undulations, and I maintained track by counting the paces, releasing one digit from a clenched hand every hundred, knowing I would be more or less there when both hands were open. I kept my steps as even as possible, and though many fell short and I zigzagged to avoid large rocks, I realized the eminence was under my feet when the land sloped down before me and I could see the hidden section of the watercourse.

The hill was four hundred feet high, sea nearly a mile away. Bennett and Rose were waving their arms. Appleyard sat by the dinghy like a statue, as if marooned until death. Our flying boat heaved on the water: if the roaming seaplane came close it would soon find how spiky she was. Bull focused the binoculars. ‘They want you to go to the right.'

I hoisted the pole so that they could mark me, and moved ten paces.

‘A bit more.'

I walked twenty.

He laughed. ‘They're having fits. You're to go back.'

I went, two by two.

‘Stop!'

The wind whistled, and pushed hard, but I kept the pole vertical. ‘Now what?'

‘Left,' he said. ‘But creep. None of your bloody two-step, or they'll have your guts for garters.'

I took half a pace.

‘Stop again. You're spot on – I think.'

I scooped a circle in the mossy ground, and stabbed the pole in. Bull grinned at my useless work. ‘They want you to move to the right.'

The hole I dug filled with water. A cold wind beat on my jacket. If this was summer, I preferred Singapore. He put down the field glasses and hammered the stave which, though bolstered with rocks, nothing would make firm. ‘You'd better sit on top.'

‘You're not my bloody oppoe,' I told him.

We carried stones, and though the first hundredweight displaced water, even on a hilltop, we gradually erected a pyramid.

‘They're giving the thumbs-up. Rose is making semaphore signals. Flag-wagging isn't up my street.'

I preferred lamp-work, but was able to read semaphore slowly, which was all right because Rose couldn't send quickly. Arms outstretched meant R. The left at one o'clock said E. The same over the head, and the right at ten o'clock signified T. ‘V' of the arms added U to the word that was coming. Two arms fully horizontal again denoted R. And both at the inverted ‘V' position ended the word with N.

‘Return,' I said to Bull.

‘Where to?'

B was indicated, so I sent C to say I'd got the message.

‘Return to B. They want us back with them.'

He marvelled. ‘Communication's a wonderful thing. No chance of a quiet skive with a bod like you in the party.'

Being downhill, the way back was quicker. Bull's leather soles sent him skidding on the moss, legs flailing so that he resembled a figure of matchsticks stuck in an impeded potato, except that a spud couldn't yell such foul language. He tried a cat walk after the first come-uppance. All was well, till he imagined no more spills likely and hastened his pace a little, smiling at the success of each careful footstep. Then cozened into optimism, down he flashed, no vegetation to grab, rolling like a baby and bumped like a kitten. When he struck his elbow on a rock and was in real pain he forgot to curse. The hillside was made of black lard, and he was shod in roller skates. He ended more out of breath going down than he had after the climb.

4

‘What did you find to talk about?' He glared on his way by. ‘There's too much dawdling and gassing. We want
speed
in this operation.'

Rose packed the theodolite and handed it to me. No time had been lost, and Bennett's hurry, though understandable, was futile. Heaps of cloud inched from the sky, giving total coverage up the fjord and on the opposite shore. Bull fancied he caught a whiff of frying sausages from the flying boat, and complained that he was starving. We had more important things on our plate than food, said Rose. ‘If we aren't on target in the next half hour we'll be staggering around in the mist for days.'

I held the theodolite in my arms like a wounded bird that had to be kept alive. The white flying boat was pressed between black water and the sky's ebony ceiling. While Bennett and Rose set up the theodolite on the end of the base line, Bull and I ascended the hill carrying a spade and pole each. Accustomed to the terrain, and though the skin on my heel was worn away, the thousand yards seemed little distance. A flight of skuas threatened, as if they guarded some secret at the summit and were warning of the fate which would befall any who solved it. They dive-bombed, coming at low-level with prominent wings and avaricious beaks. Bull swung his heart-shaped spade. ‘Looks as if they mean business.'

They lost interest halfway and soared towards the beach. The triangulation, given bearings and distances, was a matter of alignment on the surveyor's poles. Providing the theodolite was accurate, all should fall into place.

The summit was familiar, but weather changed the view. Bennett wanted to get the treasure while the mist held off, but once found, the same concealment would be an advantage. If God was on Bennett's side – and nothing had so far happened to suggest that he was not – there was no more perfect scheme.

We aligned our poles on their separate bearings and walked forward along them until we met. That would be the spot on which to dig. The difficulty was to place ourselves on the exact bearing from the two ends of the base line. Bull unstrapped his binoculars. ‘They're having a bit of an argy-bargy. The skipper's tearing a strip off poor old Rose.'

I was as interested in helping to solve the problem of intersection as I had been in plotting decoy signals from the flying boat. Trying to create order out of confusion made me feel like a gambler. Every act – from a minor diversion to a matter of life and death – involved risk. Conscience had no say. My element had been found, and a safe life was impossible to imagine.

The flying boat bobbed on the water, white chops around the hull. Wind stung like clouds of flying pepper and brought tears from Bull's eyes when he lowered the field glasses. ‘You've got to shift.'

‘Which way?' I stood by the centre pole.

‘Left. No. What the hell are they on with? Right, I think. Yes, smartly to the right.'

I didn't know whether the continual roar came from wind, or walls of water breaking at cliffs beyond the headland. We had a better view of the flying boat than Bennett got from below, and it was nearer the shore than a few minutes ago.

‘Back a bit,' Bull said.

The flying boat was about to be pounded to aluminium and plywood, while Nash, Wilcox and Armatage ate themselves senseless in the galley, or yarned by the bunks over a quiet smoke.

‘Another pace to the right.'

We had no world but the flying boat, and the rocks were a row of rotten yet still strong teeth waiting to bite. Appleyard was waving for help, but no one could see. The roar of the wind choked my shout.

‘Right on the market place!' Bull was keen. ‘Stay till we fix it.' If I ran into the wilds there would be the problem of rediscovering that hallowed spot, and the hurry of recouping time lost. I wanted to abandon the post which I had a duty to maintain, but could not do so even to save my own life. I refused to follow instinct in order to see what happened. Instinct and sense might well be in agreement, but if I ‘did the right thing' I would deny myself the excitement of wondering whether or not I would survive if I ‘did the wrong thing'.

I stayed, and with Bull's help made a neat bench mark on the spot under which we assumed the gold to be. But the part of me that had been decisively overridden nevertheless pictured what it would be like to flee down the immediate slope and turn left up the water-course, scrambling out of sight before anyone could shout or shoot. With such a good start, I would reach the two thousand foot summit a free man. The thickening mist would cover me.

I was diverted by Bennett who, aware of the flying boat's difficulties, ran to that part of the beach where Appleyard guarded the dinghy. His small figure appeared to move slowly, till flurries of rain took much of the clarity away. It seemed a bad sign that the skipper should run to try and save the flying boat. The hull was glancing against the rocks. Even if Bennett had been able to help I would not have expected him to run. It did not matter that I had sent out my own false radio signals. I wouldn't have run myself, and maybe that's why I was alarmed at him doing so. He only discovered what we on the hilltop knew, that on such terrain you couldn't run. He fell, and lay still. ‘He's kissing the earth.'

Bull's voice came out of the wind noise. ‘There ain't much else he can do. Maybe you and me should do the same, Sparks – pray that the
Aldebaran
doesn't go to bits.'

I would witness the disaster standing up. Nash, Wilcox and Armatage wouldn't get ashore if the boat broke in pieces. They were some way from the rocks, though how close or far was hard to say. The obscuring rain flung itself against our faces like needles of ice. Distances deceived. The wall across the fjord seemed as if it could be touched, yet the flying boat in turmoil by the shore was out of sight. Bennett winged his arms to where he had last seen it.

We turned our collars up and crouched over the point we had been sent to mark. My hands covered my ears and met on the top of my head. If the flying boat disappeared we would be staked out in the wind till we died – or were spotted and rescued, which was unlikely. I brought my hands down. Rain penetrated. The gorge of the straits was blocked to the east by a dark wall advancing towards our cove like a cork being pushed home to bottle us up. I imagined the splintering of the thin hull.

I needed to know the worst, but the loud wind created silence. My ears craved to hear the tinny noise of disaster, as at my radio I had extracted the faint squeak of a vital message, except that now our lives depended on it. No wind could hide the sound of the flying boat's rending contest with rocks and gravel, and neither did it have the power to negate an irritated drone which came first from the mountains, then from another direction, and again out of the sky as if its own peculiar accelerating roar was being bounced slow-motion between the clouds.

I knew what it was, but Bull shouted first. ‘They've started the engines to keep it off shore.'

‘Let's hope they can.'

He didn't hear. ‘Good lads! Hold tight! Get it away!' or some such words, to judge by the way he jumped up and down.

Unable to see, our ears were attuned even more to the engine, and we became part of the struggle in the cove. The wind moaned as if signalling the death-rattle from the four-stroke throat. But the engines roared around us, ears and eyelids shivering as they overcame the bang of the wind. I almost expected to see the portly flank of the flying boat go by on take-off.

It was hard to stay still, but to pace in circles to the wind's screech, and the engines that fought marvellously against it, might be to lose the position we had worked so hard to find. Bull did not feel the same obligation, and there was no response to my call. I shouted full strength but hardly heard my voice – only the rattle of it in my head. Visibility wasn't more than a few yards, and I supposed he had descended the hill to find a better view through the mist.

The engines cut, but I continued to hear them. Either better times had come or the worst had taken place. How long ago they had stopped I couldn't know, and I fought to stay calm, seeing no one and hearing only the cosmic shutterbang of the gale. I sat and imagined Bull lost, never to return, that Bennett, Appleyard and Rose had been drowned trying to reach the flying boat in the dinghy, and that those on board had gone down with the ship. But my face was wet from rain not tears.

I might have assumed that the engines had been cut because the flying boat had found a secure anchorage, and that those on shore were sitting out the storm before coming up the hill to me. All was well in the world. I talked to Bennett as if our small globe of visibility had enough warmth to keep us alive. The only time I could attempt communication was when he was not present, and so I took to pieces the reasons for coming here, and put them back together in a way that suggested we had made a futile journey, but to show also that I had understood our motives sufficiently to remember them for the future.

It didn't wash. The rain did that. I felt like a stump of wood being worn away. He said: ‘
You
don't talk to me, erk. I do the talking, if I care to. And what have I to say to a superannuated Backtune who wasn't even on active service when he got his Dear John letter? On this stunt we not only do our jobs, but that little bit extra as well. The
Aldebaran
needs you, don't forget. Remember also that the skipper takes an interest in your work.'