The Time Pirate (8 page)

Nick laughed. “I know that feeling! So. We're going to fire her up now?”

“Lord, no, boy, we've got to lubricate her first!”

“How do we do that?”

“Well, first of all, we make sure the magnetos are disconnected. If they weren't, and she happened to catch, we'd be chopped to pieces.”

Gunner climbed halfway up the ladder and pulled out the two twin knobs that were the magneto switches, mounted on the fuselage just outside the cockpit.

“Ready to go, lad. All you have to do is take hold of the propeller and turn it very slowly. A few times in one direction, a few times in the other, and then repeat the whole thing three or four times. Got it?”

“Aye. But what does that do?” Nick asked, grimacing. Turning the prop was surprisingly difficult. Nick supposed that was because the whole engine spun with the propeller.

“Don't you worry, boy, it gets easier.”

“How?”

“Castor oil gets spread around inside. Gets the pistons moving up and down inside the cylinders. Spreads all that oil around in there. Once she's fully lubricated, we'll put some petrol in that tank and give it a shot.”

“Today?” Nick asked, his heart pounding.

“Give that prop a few more spins, and we'll see how she feels.”

Gunner took two jerricans of petrol and poured them into the Camel's fuel tank.

“Now you're talking, Gunner,” Nick said, a flash of excitement in his bright blue eyes. He spun the prop three more times in a clockwise direction and three more times counterclockwise.

“Getting a little easier?” Gunner asked.

“A lot easier,” Nick said, relieved. It was tiring work.

“All right, then,” Gunner said, mounting the ladder and climbing into the cockpit, “let's say our prayers and light her up!”

Gunner settled down inside the new wicker chair. The nose-up angle at which the aircraft sat on the ground meant he could see nothing in front of him except the blue sky through the barn doors. He had to lean out over the side to see Nick.

“Give me a minute, boy,” he said, putting his feet on the rudder pedals and his right hand on the control stick. He moved the stick from side to side and saw the ailerons move up and down at his command. With his left hand, he touched the throttle control and the trim lever. He tried something called the blip switch, which instantly killed the motor, and everything seemed in good working order.

“Ready, Nick? Stand to the left side where I can see you.”

“Aye-aye, sir!” Nick said, repositioning himself.

“You remember the starting drill we rehearsed.”

“Remember it? I can say it in my sleep.”

And then a dialogue began, with Nick asking questions and Gunner answering.

“Ready to start, sir?” Nick shouted.

“Ready to start.”

“Fuel on, switches off, throttle closed?”

“Fuel is on, switches are off, throttle is closed.”

“Sucking in, sir,” Nick said. He reached up and pulled the propeller blade down, repeating the action three times. This drew fuel into the cylinders.

“Throttle set?” Nick cried out. His excitement was building so fast he could barely contain himself.

Gunner moved the throttle lever forward half an inch and said, “Throttle set.”

“Contact!” Nick cried.

Gunner reached out and flicked the two magneto switches.

“Contact!”

Once again, Nick swung the propeller, pulling down with all his might but this time jumping back with alacrity immediately afterward.

The engine fired and the propeller began turning. There was an explosive sound from the big Bentley engine, a roar and a snort, and the propeller quickly gained speed until it was a blur. The sputtering, barking, roaring engine filled the barn with various noises, all of them deafening. The smell of burning castor oil was sweet perfume.

Nick, who'd tripped over a rake jumping backward, had landed on his bum on the hay-strewn dirt floor. He looked up to see Gunner leaning out over the cockpit and smiling down at him, giving him the thumbs up. Laughing, Nick jumped up
and ran to the ladder. He climbed up and put his arms round his old friend and hugged him tightly.

“You're a genius, is what you are, sir! An absolute, bona fide genius! Nobody else could have done what you've done in the last two weeks, Gunner, nobody!”

“We'll let her warm up a bit. You'll need to do that every time.”

The engine note rose and fell as Gunner eased the throttle forward a few times, causing masses of smoke to pour forth from the exhaust ports, and then he reached forward and turned the magneto switches off and on again in turn as a safety check. Then, a few minutes later, he hit the kill switch.

The sudden silence was startling.

“It's late, Nick, and your mum will be wondering where you are. I'd get along back to the lighthouse, I was you.”

Nick looked at his watch. He was very, very late.

“I'll go. How about you? It's been a long day.”

“I want to finish her up tonight. Get her painted so when you bring your dad, she'll look just like the last time he saw her.”

“The sketches I drew are on top of that barrel. Have you got paint?”

“Don't use paint. I just add different pigments to the clear dope and brush it on the same way. Sides of the fuselage are olive drab, underbody is buff-colored, and the cockpit sides will be fire-engine red. Sound good?”

“Sounds beautiful.”

“It'll take a couple of days for the dope and paint to dry out. What would be a good time to bring your father round?”

“Sunday morning, right after church? We always take the mule and cart, and I'll just tell him there's something I want him to see up here.”

“She'll be ready, Nick. Like she just rolled off the production line. Go get yerself some sleep. We've been hard at her for over two weeks now.”

“I don't think I'll sleep much tonight,” Nick said, dropping down to the ground. “I'll keep hearing that roar when the motor turns over.”

“That you will, lad.”

“Gunner? I don't want you to take this the wrong way. But I was thinking . . . before Dad takes her up, do you think it might be a good idea to have Commander Hobbes go over her? Make sure she's airworthy?”

“Already spoken to him, Nick. He's coming round as soon as the paint's dry. Plans to do a complete inspection. And take her up for a shakedown flight. No worries about your dad.”

Nick sighed with relief. His friend Hobbes was an aeronautical engineer and England's top weapons designer. If he said the Camel was airworthy, she was airworthy.

The boy paused a moment, brought his right hand up in a proper naval salute to his old friend. “Thank you, Gunner. Thank you for all you've done, for everything!”

“A joy and a pleasure, Cap,” Gunner said, returning the salute.

Then Nick turned on his heel and ran out into the night, racing down the new-mown field under the jubilant stars.

N
ick yawned, loudly. And just loudly enough so that Mrs. Harmsworth Pettigrew, her broad person and feathered hat occupying a good portion of the pew right in front of McIver family, turned completely around and gave him a decidedly frosty look.

Which caused Nick's mother to give him an even frostier look and a slight poke in the ribs with her sharp elbow. He looked at his sister, who sat primly with her white gloved hands folded in her lap. Suppressing a smile at Nick's rude behavior, she sat staring up at the rotund orator in the pulpit as if he were the most awe-inspiring man in the world, hanging on to his every soporific word.

It was all an act, of course, but then Katie was an exceptionally good actress. Why, just last summer, she'd been able to convince the captain and entire crew of an experimental Nazi U-boat that Nick's Royal Navy friend, Commander Hobbes, was her very own father, the two of them saving their lives and capturing the sub in the process!

“And stop swinging your legs back and forth,” Emily McIver whispered sharply into his ear, “it's a distraction to everyone
around you! Can't you ever be still for one single solitary second?”

It wasn't that Nick found church especially boring, although that was certainly part of it. No, it was that the melodic sound of Reverend Joshua Witherspoon's deep sing-song voice had a strangely powerful, sleep-inducing effect upon him. He'd seen people hypnotized by swinging pocket watches at fairs and such, and he imagined this was what hypnotism would be like. You don't want to go under, but you can't help it.

Stifling another yawn with the back of his hand, Nick looked around at the faces of the other boys in the congregation. Were they equally affected, too? Or was there something wrong with Nick? Some part of his brain that didn't function like a normal boy's when it came to churchgoing?

Church, in the main, was mostly a mystery to him. There were certainly parts he liked about it. He liked the idea of God and his angels up in heaven, the star of Bethlehem, and the flowers and candles on the altar, and, of course, singing three or four hymns every Sunday. At least when a hymn came along, you got to stand up and gaze out the open windows.

“All rise, as we now join in singing Hymn Number 322.”

Sometimes, when the singing started, a stray cow would stick her head inside an opened window and have a good look round at the congregation, noisily chewing her cud. A swarm of angry bees might buzz in on a good day, wreaking havoc before some acolyte shooed them out another window.

Nick, to his everlasting shame, found himself praying for things like that: bees, stray cows appearing; sudden thunderstorms where the doors blew open with a bang and soaked
everyone in the rear pews; a mouse scampering up the center aisle toward the choir. All such things rather than heavenly hosts on high, forgiveness of sins, the things he knew he was
supposed
to be praying for. He much preferred seeing the shortest acolyte standing on his tiptoes, reaching up, always unable to light the highest candle on the altar but trying every Sunday nonetheless.

Some Sundays were more difficult than others. If the sermon was about something Nick was actually interested in, say, sailing men lost at sea, or the coming war with Germany, or a great plague of locusts descended upon the land, well, he could get through that, just to see how it came out at the end. But today's sermon was about raising money for a new rectory, and Nick just knew there'd be no surprise ending this morning:

The plate would come around.

Nick picked up his hymnal just so he could sneak a look at his watch. It was almost ten o'clock. Fifteen more minutes and he'd be free! Gunner would be going over every inch of the Camel, polishing the aluminum cowling until it shone like silver, using furniture wax to make the wooden propeller and wing struts gleam. Ah, if his father only knew what he had in store for him this morning.

Gunner had told Nick the previous evening that he had a little ceremony planned for his father at the barn but would spill no more details no matter how hard Nick pressed him. All Nick knew was that this was going to be the best day of his father's life, and he loved his father more than anything. A true hero. Not just during the war but all his life, every single day.

Suddenly the congregation was singing the recessional, and then everyone was paying their respects to Father Witherspoon at the door, shaking his hand, some of them pausing
to chat no matter how many people were backed up in the aisle behind them. Nick bolted for the side aisle of the church and ran for the rear door, ducking between two rather large maiden aunts who were focused on charming the unmarried minister.

There were a number of mule-and horse-drawn buggies and carts every Sunday, and Nick ran straight for the McIver's rig. He wanted to be up in the driver's seat when his family came out. Their old mule, Glory, was calmly munching grass, and Nick took the reins in his left hand and gave the old hollow-backed mule a twitch to get her attention. His father sometimes let him drive the family home, but this morning he wasn't taking any chances.

Soon enough his family emerged into the sun, made their obeisance to the hypnotic shepherd of the flock, and then wended their way toward their cart.

“You driving, Nick?” Angus McIver said, climbing up onto the front seat beside his son. Katie and his mother climbed into the rear seat, Kate telling her mother she thought today's sermon was one of Witherspoon's best.

“I loved the part about humility and unselfishness,” Kate said brightly. “I think those are two of my most prominent traits, don't you agree, Mother?”

Nick flicked the reins, biting his tongue.

“May I, Dad? Drive today?”

“Of course, but you seemed in an awful hurry to get out here.”

“I've a surprise for you, Father. I thought we might stop for a moment on the way home.”

“Another surprise? I hope it's not like the last one. That soldier in the tree.”