The Lost Flying Boat

by Alan Silltoe

  A thirteen-minute run on a bearing of 135 degrees from Elijah Cove took us by claw-like capes to where we turned south-south-easterly along narrowing straits. Headphones on a longer lead allowed me to see outside. Bennett announced action stations for Appleyard, Armatage and Bull, and I wondered why guns must be manned against such desolation, until recalling my inconclusive radio contacts at dawn.

  Belly rolls of grey and white cloud hugged fjords that snaked their massive ways inland and seemed to vanish underground. Mist lifting from an island peak showed a glacier: snow lit by a gleam almost immediately doused. The plane turned ninety degrees on a southerly heading, and descended for its five-minute leg along Rhodes Bay. Cliffs with huge boulders at their feet glittered after a deluge of rain, and glacial water spread into a shallow bight.

  It was impossible to tell one element from another, and I returned to search the band of hope on the radio, thinking that even to contact an enemy would be better than hearing no one. But when clipped morse spoke our signal letters, I let the magic eye wink on. Sweat melted as I got his zone of silence, the goniometer indicating him well to the southwest, where we hoped he was steaming towards the position given in our false report. I informed Bennett. The ship’s call decreased in strength as the mountains faded his signals. Bennett laughed at the success of his ruse, then ordered me to close down the radio.

  The boat was held steady while Nash took a back-bearing on Hallet Island. He subtracted 49 degrees magnetic variation, and passed it to the skipper, who centred the plane for the narrows leading to the Tucker Straits. Granite slabs shelved up fifteen hundred feet along both shores, and funnelled us towards the spectacular slopes of Mount Sinai. So formidable on the journey in its fight against storm clouds, the Aldebaran now felt like reinforced cardboard, and I expected to break through the floor when the cliff struck, feet following head to suffocation under water.

  We went over brown tentacles of kelp, weaving along the sleeve of the fjord and unable to see out of it. The interior of the plane seemed to darken as Bennett coaxed our hundred-foot wingspan to where it looked impossible to get through, and instead of crumbling like cardboard the old kite was urged into a forty-degree turn. I noted gulls’ nests built into the cliffs, the channel about to close forever. But Bennett flew as if he had all the space in the world, and my fear was subdued by a sudden and total confidence.

  Nash came from the rear turret, and ambled up the ladder bearing the hand compass like an Olympic torch. Our way widened to an ample stretch of water, but one which seemed without exit, whose walls would cut us off from the rest of the world. We went to our stations. Veering to starboard, there were neither markers nor buoys to line up on. Rocks dotted the surface, the water calm in its protected state. We must get down without damage, or never lift off again. ‘Don’t make me cry,’ said Nash. ‘We’ve enough tools on board to rebuild the bloody thing if it prangs.’

  Wilcox was going through the landing procedure with Bennett, free of his cough. Full flap and throttle back. There was no circuit, just a straight-in approach along the middle of the mile-wide water. Among the alien minefield, Bennett quipped. No rocks or snags. Going down. The channel widened. No side slip.

  A wind struck beam on, rippling the water. There was one direction for landing. To try the opposite would set us among the whizz-bangs. ‘Must have been there when the sub came in with its gold,’ Nash added. ‘But the sub went out by the back door, through which the fuel ship will come to us.’

  ‘Can’t see any door.’

  ‘Nobody ever can.’ He pointed: ‘It’s in the fold of that cliff, I expect.’

  Use what run you need. Not too slow. Ease back. No side slip. A touch of power on the inners. Everyone held breath, as if giving more to Wilcox whose lungs were working over the intercom, said Bull, like a bilge pump on a sinking ship. Engines and water roared. A scrape tickled my feet, but getting down so soon was too much to hope for. A glance outside, and we were taxi-ing, full flap, inner engines cut, lost in a cloud of spray tracking along the surface.

  Bennett kept her moving towards a patch of sand where the anchor might grip. Getting out would be no problem, said Nash. ‘I’ve no intention of going for a Burton. Not on this bloody operation, anyway. We’d cut loose if need be.’ A slight swell developed. There were black rocks under the surface, but Bennett had an eye for sand where a stream pushed its grit into the fjord, a bay for protection from swell and storms. The engines idled. A smell of fresh snow and wet slate rushed from high ground, and jackets were fastened. I pulled in the deepest breath of my life.

  The island coastline, with scores of inlets, bays and zigzagging fjords would make it impossible for anyone to find us. Bennett summed up our situation after he stopped engines. He was laughing. So were we all. I thought he would do a dance of triumph. We heard our voices again, and laughed at the fact that we were shouting. Even if they suspect we’re here it’ll take weeks to find us, by which time we’ll be away. He told Nash to let go the anchor, then passed an uncapped whisky flask to Wilcox, who doubled up from coughing and was unable to drink. So the rest of us had a stab at it.

  Nash saw the heap of steel chain diminish into six fathoms. We drifted, and wondered whether the anchor had bitten. The shore receded. Anxiety was tangible as to whether the chain would snap, or the anchor drag. ‘At this stage,’ Nash said, ‘there’s no difference between mishap and catastrophe.’

  With a slight tug, the boat was secure, and only then did I say to myself that we were safe.

  PART THREE

  1

  Nash stayed on boat-watch with Wilcox and Armatage, and kept us covered from the mid-upper in case Bennett’s party of Appleyard, Bull, Rose and myself were sniped at as we rowed ashore in one of the dinghies. The shelving beach of black and yellow sand was peculiar to stand on, as if the surface was covered with grains of rubber. Solid land did not seem as firm as I had imagined it when airborne, and I felt as uneasy as if I had just stepped out of a prison. My joke about D Day found no takers.

  The steep slope to our left ended at a huge black cliff, while the rock-strewn land to the right, gentle at first, gathered itself sharply into the cleft of a watercourse. After the yellowing green of sparse vegetation, the sandy beach gave way to pumice and basalt. Only occasional groups of whalers and shipwrecked sailors had ever stayed on such terrain. No settled society had made a go of it, which was strange considering the world’s turmoil, and the fact that the island provided coal and cabbage, fish and fowl in fair quantity. But I suppose that basic sustenance wasn’t enough when contact with the rest of the world was lacking.

  Bennett paced senselessly along the sand, occasionally stopping to kick at the gravel. He lifted his flying-booted foot up and down, as if exercising because of the cold wind, but I suppose he wanted to confirm that he stood on the island he had dreamed about for years. I wondered how his expectations tallied with reality, but they seemed to match neatly enough, judging by his expression. He picked up gravel and threw it down, then lifted a piece of rock and looked at it so intently I couldn’t tell whether he would kiss or eat it.

  We pulled the dinghy up the beach and unloaded a rifle, primus stove, food, spades, two surveyor’s poles and the theodolite with its tripod. Bull examined the re-entrant through binoculars. ‘I hope we don’t have to scramble up that.’ Low cloud brought a north-east drizzle, and we shivered around the tarpaulin sheet as if the stores it covered would give warmth. Surf bumped against the beach, and Bennett, in his grit-kicking demoniac progress, was beyond recall in the rising wind, cap on, back hunched and – the only encouraging sign – jacket collar turned up for warmth. Every minute or two he ranged in a wider circle, then shook his head and went on.

  The world was empty of voices till Appleyard said: ‘It might take him days. Pity there’s nothing to get a fire going with.’

  Rose up to now had seemed oblivious to all of us: ‘You want a coal fire in a lovely grate, do you?’

  ‘Your bloody voice grates.�
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  ‘You’d like to turn the dinghy upside down and make a hut out of it, and get it snug inside and play castaways till some nice sailing ship comes by for the rescue? Wouldn’t we all?’

  Appleyard sat on a slab of rock, but the surface was running with water, so he leapt upright as if nipped by a crab. He looked away from Rose, unable for the moment to face the terrible scar. I regretted their antagonism, yet it was a comforting reminder of human warmth still among us, stuck as we were in the raw air which seemed to peel off the emotional protection we had known in the flying boat. I wanted to be back on board and listening to my radio. Rose was irritated at having to undo his flying jacket to reach pipe and tobacco.

  ‘You’ll never get it lit,’ Appleyard grinned.

  A pair of giant petrels came over the water, and separated when they got close. As they swept low on either side of our party and went by, I noted the downturning bill and scavenging eye, and the flash of white along the body between head and tail. They circled back on dark brown wings, flying lower on their hunt for food, scissor-beaks set for us. I wielded a surveying pole, but they went odoriferously by, wings clicking into a thermal lift at sensing we were dangerous. When they alighted behind some tussocks up the watercourse, Appleyard let off the safety catch of the rifle: ‘I ought to get something tasty for the pot.’

  ‘Shoot, and you’ll be for the pot – for the big chop, in fact.’ Rose lit his pipe. ‘It’ll make so much clatter that everybody for a hundred miles will be on our necks. And that’s not what the skipper wants, believe you me.’

  ‘It’s too much of a stinker, anyway,’ said Bull. ‘It walks on water, so it stinks.’

  ‘What have we got a rifle for, then?’

  ‘In case somebody comes up on us.’ He fastened his clothes against the wind. ‘I knew we had a sea-cook among the crew, but not a poacher.’

  ‘I’m supposed to look after our bellies. We can’t live out of tins forever.’

  I observed Bennett’s interminable booting at the sand. An insane person would have given up by now.

  Rose spoke with the pipe in his mouth, a line of smoke from his injured face. ‘He was always one for taking his time about things. Straight through the flak on our flying bombrack. He never wavered.’

  ‘None of us did,’ said Appleyard. ‘We were with him.’

  ‘All the way,’ said Bull. ‘That’s why we won. It was all or nothing.’

  Where the beach turned north, Bennett fell on his knees, and bent over to scrape at the gravel with both hands. The wind took his shout out of our direction, but I picked it up like a wireless signal half murdered by atmospherics. Two skuas cried their way by, eyeing us hungrily. ‘He wants us to go to him.’

  Rose ordered Bull and myself forward. We crunched over the gravel, the effort sweating and winding us as if we hadn’t walked for years. Bennett looked up when we stopped halfway. ‘What the hell are you crawling for? Run!’

  Quickening the pace, we got off the beach and went through mossy grass and a sort of dirty brown plant. Our boots slopped into the pools between, so we returned to the gravel which at least was dry.

  He laid his cap on the ground and pointed to a ring of steel by his feet. A circle of sand had been cleared from the few inches of unmistakable fixture. He scraped mould and rust from the rim of the wide calibre pipe with his penknife, like discovering traces of a factory on the moon. He stroked the edges without looking: ‘Bull, go to the dinghy and bring a surveying pole. Adcock – you stay here.’

  He pulled off his silk scarf to wipe sweat and rain from his face. He was so pale I thought he was cast in lime, and not of the slow sort. His hand shook as he lit a white cigar with the third match, holding a cupped flame close till a whiff of smoke for a moment civilized the air. ‘This is the first point of the base line. I allowed us a day, and we find it an hour after touching the beach.’ He stood, and rested his boot on the circumference of the pipe, but gently in case it was pushed under and never found again. ‘The other point is three hundred metres away at 109 degrees. A piece of cake, Sparks. We’re in luck.’

  Frozen and foot-soaked, I was glad to hear it. He bellowed again into my ear. ‘When Bull comes back, slot the pole into this pipe. Get it absolutely upright, then fix it firm with rocks and sand. Do you understand?’

  At three hundred pounds a month, plus an unspecified amount of bonus yet to come, I had no thought of neglecting to do exactly as I was told.

  ‘When the two points are flagged up, and the theodolite gets the cross-bearings, we’ll be right on target.’

  He set off with head down, counting paces at such a rate he almost beat Bull to the dinghy. A wall of mist moved upwater as if pushed from behind by a mob. The flying boat off shore was soon covered, as was the dinghy on the beach, and Bennett in his rapid walk towards it.

  If silence was trapped under my feet I need only move to release noise. Reason told me to do so and go back to the others, but I wanted to be alone. Every action needed a decision, so I did nothing, and unwittingly obeyed instinct. A circle of gravelly sand was visible, and the half-buried pipe in which the surveying post would be fixed. If I walked, and kept the hiss of water to my left, that shape and area would remain behind. Not to move would leave me with a known pattern of gravel and moss within whose misty circumference I was safe. Familiarity induces a comfort which prescribes its own duty – that it shall not be glibly abandoned.

  Should weather come from glacial heights to rampage in earnest, I might follow the beach back to the others, but in the meantime I was a target marker, and until the ten-foot pole was fixed in place I would not leave, in case gravel, water and natural subsidence covered it again.

  There was the sound of birds, and the noise of cascading water, and the crunch of boots as I walked a tight circle around the embedded pipe to keep warm.

  2

  Only a fool, on an uninhabited island, would take it for granted that he was alone, and to pass the time till the mist cleared and Bull came back I played a mental tactical game, using the disintegrating aspect of the island’s map as a board, a picture-map as splashed out as if someone had thrown a coconut full speed at a watermelon. Bull, seeing the map on Bennett’s table, had likened it to a patch of vomit on Saturday night outside a pub.

  For tokens I had the Aldebaran, the ship I had contacted, and the vessel which was to meet us at our anchorage with high octane fuel. Manoeuvres became a game of dodge-and-run in numerous places of concealment. Throws of dice concerned bad weather, or colliding head-on while getting closer to the buried gold which I, naturally, was the first to find.

  Another factor in the game came without any wanting, and caused a shudder which sent me more cold for the moment than climate ever could. Intuition placed Shottermill as a vital counter among the players. He stood before me, and in one move dominated the board. The question as to why a ship was waiting could be answered only by him. I hadn’t realized – perhaps because I had not been sufficiently alone to meditate with advantage – that he was playing his hand for more than one side. Bennett thought it beneath his dignity to distrust a mere chandler who sold rotten cigars, but at least I hoped – the notion made me colder still – he had kept Shottermill away from any information as to where our landing place would be. He knew little more than that we were going to the Kerguelen Islands, and when. Bennett’s caution was only fully operational when he was actually flying. On the ground he was easier to deceive. No wonder Shottermill was worried by a wireless operator being carried, who could give early warning of anything heard.

  My eyes were closed but I was wide awake, hearing boots on gravel when the wind had lessened its howl, and the snort of an old man about to talk. At a shuffling in the mist I looked for the rifle I had not brought. I must have been heard leaping to my feet.

  A hawking and honking reverberated, but I was afraid to make myself harder to find in case I never got back to the same place. I stood close to the pipe to prevent its being noticed and saw, as I started to
sweat with fear, a penguin with head high and breast gleaming, even in the mist. I ran until it fell back trumpeting, and then with its loitering mate walked off with flappers going as if I was too disgusting an object to contend with. Their cries had so many echoes, I thought there were dozens, but the grumbling diminished and I settled to guarding our home-made trigonometrical point.

  A ration of chocolate revived me in the clammy damp. I supposed Wilcox on the Aldebaran to be running an engine to check the oil pressure, but the sound was far off, and too light in tone. Distortion caused by the configuration of the land couldn’t tell me from which direction it came, and as much as I cared to disbelieve my ears, I knew the sound to be that of an aeroplane above the blanket of mist which still concealed our flying boat.

  From the southwest it sawed unevenly as if buffeted by currents stronger than the wind which pushed against me. The mist was no longer thick, only molecules hiding the light. Others also had an aircraft, though it was obviously single-engined and could not have flown to the island as ours had. The plane, however, was looking for us, suggesting that this was to be no unmolested treasure search, and my heart beat fast as I realized how much our fragile flying boat was in danger.

  I doubted my ears. Perhaps the noise was from a motorboat, searching for us nonetheless, exploring inlets on the off-chance of finding our base. In this glacial hiding place any engine could sound like that of an aeroplane, distorting itself into whatever meaning the imagination concocted.

  The sewing-machine purr diminished, having given up the search. Then, distinct and lower, it returned to hem another frayed edge of the sky, a tinny rattle of disappointment yet sounding as if determined to have a more serious go some other time. Its persistent motor noise finally departed.

  I went back to my tactical game. The ship that my signals had sent to the southern part of the island had catapulted its seaplane to explore the northern side which was, after all, only twenty minutes’ flying time away. Bad weather would keep us hidden for a while, but good weather would reveal us sooner or later, though perhaps not before we were airborne and carrying the loot. The game was still open for all contestants, and I wondered if anyone would finally win. I was plagued by Shottermill’s features, but decided he was not in the game at all. Then it seemed obvious that he was.