After a few more minutes, he gathered together his papers and strolled back to the aeroplane. ‘You’ll have to swing the propeller,’ he said to the waiting Von Erlangen. ‘I’ll start the ignition and when I shout Contact, give it a good heave.’
Von Erlangen climbed into the plane and stood inside the open door of the cabin. The gun hadn’t left Jack once. ‘Mr Haldean, I do not intend to be left outside the aeroplane. You can swing the propeller. I have seen it done many times.’
‘Just as you like,’ said Jack, getting in to the cockpit and setting the switches.
It had been worth a try but he wasn’t surprised it hadn’t worked. Von Erlangen evidently thought he might fly off and leave him stranded. With the heavily laden plane, there wasn’t a hope. Unfortunately, although Von Erlangen didn’t know that, he evidently knew enough about aircraft to avoid the deadly arc of the propeller.
With the switches trembling on contact, he swung the engine into life and made a jump for the cockpit.
‘You’d better sit down and strap yourself in,’ he shouted back to Von Erlangen in the cabin, raising his voice to carry over the noise of the engine. ‘We’re going to run into bumps.’
‘Bumps?’ yelled Von Erlangen.
‘Bumps,’ shouted Jack, bringing the engine up to full power. ‘Irregular variations in the air. Makes you go up and down. Bumps.’ The plane lurched forwards. ‘Suit yourself,’ he called over the steady thrum of the engines. ‘I don’t mind if you fall out.’ He didn’t know if Von Erlangen had strapped himself in but a glance behind showed him that he’d stepped back from the cabin door.
As the plane taxied away, Arthur and Isabelle came out from their hiding-place. The wheels of the D.H.9 juddered across the sand, faster and faster. ‘I don’t understand it,’ Arthur said, a line creasing his forehead. ‘That’s not the runway we marked out.’ He voice strained in sudden anxiety. ‘What the devil’s he doing? He’ll hit those rocks if he’s not careful.’
Isabelle held her breath as the plane lifted, bumped and lifted again with daylight under the wheels, inches from a long outcrop of rock. She gasped in horror as the D.H.9 brushed its wingtip against the boulders.
They could see Jack struggling to get out of the cockpit. The plane slewed to one side, catherine-wheeled round, then, with a ghastly, lazy motion turned over and over, spinning across the desert on its wings like a rolling cross, before plunging its nose into the sand, engine screaming. There was a sharp, intense noise as if the sky had ripped apart, then flames and black smoke leapt high into the air. Jack was flung out and lay motionless on the sand. With a shattering roar, the aeroplane exploded.
‘Come on!’ shouted Arthur, sprinting faster than he had ever run before. Under a deluge of burning wood, twisted shards of metal and floating scraps of fabric, they got to Jack and taking an arm each, dragged him away. A second explosion blasted them off their feet and hurled them against the cliff. Bruised and shaken, they lay blind, deaf and helpless in a blizzard of whirling shale, sand and debris.
After a long time, Arthur lifted his head. ‘Isabelle, are you all right?’
‘I . . . I think so,’ she said shakily. ‘How about you?’
‘OK.’ He got to his knees, bending down anxiously to Jack.
Jack’s eye’s flickered open. ‘Is he dead?’
Arthur looked at the blazing skeleton of the aeroplane, a black and red outline in the clouds of burning oil. ‘He’s dead, all right.’ The wind shifted, bringing a gust of black smoke that set him coughing. ‘Can you walk?’
‘My leg hurts. I’m sorry. I don’t think I can.’
Isabelle winced as she saw how Jack’s leg had twisted. It was broken for sure. ‘How do you feel, Jack?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Feel?’ With her help, he sat up, looking at the fiery cross that was the remains of the aeroplane. ‘I feel . . . I feel free. At last.’ A faint smile twitched his mouth. ‘And sore.’ He reached for Isabelle’s hand. ‘I’m sorry. It was the only way.’
There was water and food in the cave, left from their stockpile of the night before, but as the day lengthened, Jack’s condition worsened. They bandaged his leg as best they could and used part of their precious water supply to keep him cool but, despite their efforts, his temperature rose and he moved restlessly on his makeshift bed, muttering in delirium.
The sun sank to the west and a thin purple line showed the horizon. The purple line vanished and, under a thick blanket of stars, night fell on the tombs of the Nabateans.
After the heat of the day came the bitter cold, kept only partly at bay by the flames of a camel-thorn fire. Jack, semi-conscious, tossed and groaned. As the night wore on, his temperature subsided, and Isabelle thankfully realized he was drifting in and out of sleep.
Much, much later, when the stars had disappeared beneath the horizon, far above, in the immense black velvet bowl of sky, came a shooting star, and another. Jack, restless and senses on edge, clutched Isabelle’s arm. Jerked back to full wakefulness, she bent her head to listen to him.
‘The stars, Belle, the stars! Can you see them?’
Blearily she looked up at the stars. ‘They’re beautiful, Jack.’ She stroked his forehead, trying to comfort him. ‘Go back to sleep.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t you see? It’s the sun. We’re safe, Belle. We can’t see the sun, but they’re high enough.’ His voice broke. ‘The sun. It’s catching the wings of an aeroplane. It’s the RAF. We’re safe.’
And he rested against her arm.
A Hundred Thousand Dragons Page 27
