by Max Hennessy
‘Keep the pump going, Alix,’ he said quickly.
‘It is going. It’s been going all the time. It’s never stopped.’
The words came in gasps and his eyes flickered across the needles. The smell of petrol was suddenly becoming overpowering.
‘I’ll pump,’ he said. ‘Take the controls.’
As they changed jobs, he worked the pump furiously for a while and the engine picked up again. Clearly it was being starved of fuel and what he had suspected was obviously true. The wing tanks were being emptied faster than they were managing to fill them.
As he worked, he managed to lift the floorboards with his right hand. There seemed to be several inches of fuel beneath his feet and he reached into his pocket for a screwdriver and jabbed it downwards through the plywood floor. He waited for the petrol to drain away, but it didn’t appear to diminish and he realised then that with every movement of the pump he heard a strong hissing sound over the engine that told him that the faster he pumped, the faster he was causing it to leak.
‘It’s in the line to the wing tanks,’ he said. ‘We’re pumping it away.’
He looked at Alix, his heart heavy. With every stroke, they were wasting fuel.
‘We’ve got to consider putting her down if we see a ship, Alix,’ he said bluntly.
It was a hard thing to say, after all they had endured, and he saw the spasm of misery cross her face. Then she got control of herself again and nodded. ‘You’re the boss,’ she said.
‘Keep on course,’ he said. ‘I’ll try not to waste too much petrol. I daren’t stop pumping to find the leak, but I’ll try.’
Unfastening his seat belt and half-turning in his seat, he traced the fuel flow from the pump to the wing, but the leak appeared to be underneath his seat somewhere and he brought up his hand with fingers moist with the precious liquid.
As he looked at it, he remembered what the Wright engineer had said when they’d first discussed using a Viking pump. ‘I’d always rather have fuel leads where I can see ’em,’ he’d announced. ‘Especially over the sea.’
The words seemed to have a cryptic quality now and Ira peered forward, praying that somewhere ahead, among the islands the cloud shadows formed, he would see something that was real.
Ahead of them now a layer of stratus lay, flat and heavy across their path. Could it be Ireland? Cloud often formed along the coast where the air temperature changed, and his eyes narrowed as he stared. Could he detect something beneath it, something that was darker and more solid than the ephemeral islands they’d seen constantly since daylight that were nothing more than shadows?
He was aware of a terrible desolation as he stared across the empty miles of the sea. They were now beyond the sight and beyond the awareness of human beings, and if they had to put down here, alone, in the sea, they were probably also beyond help. Fear crowded in at the knowledge of the enormous emptiness. There had been many times before when he’d been in danger, but none of them seemed now as terrifying as this awful aloneness.
Then he realised that Alix’s hand was on his arm and she was pointing. ‘Ira!’ Her voice was high and thin with excitement. ‘Ships!’
His eyes swung in the direction she pointed, and he was aware of an immediate lifting of the spirits. Heading out towards them was a small vessel, and beyond it another and still another.
* * *
The ships were beneath them now, trawlers of some sort, small vessels with a funnel set towards the stern. Then beyond them, almost unbelievably clear as it emerged into the sunshine from a patch of shadow, they saw the black and white lines of a passenger liner, heading east, its quarter towards them.
Their eyes met and through the strain he saw that Alix was smiling. He was just trying to make up his mind whether to take a chance and head for the land that must now be near when the engine began to bark, shaking the whole machine as it spluttered and coughed, and he made up his mind at once.
‘Make for the big ship, Alix,’ he said. ‘They’ll have wireless and they’re heading for Europe.’
As the nose turned, the engine spluttered again. Ira pumped more quickly and even as the hiss of escaping fuel increased, the engine caught again. The leak was obviously growing worse and they had no option now but to play for safety.
He drew a deep breath. ‘I’ll take her,’ he said. ‘Keep pumping as long as the engine fires.’
He adjusted the stabiliser to combat the increasing tail heaviness, the engine firing in fits and starts. The awareness of failure that lay heavily on his heart as he fought to keep the Dixie’s nose up was relieved only by the knowledge that it hadn’t come from any lack of effort on their part. They need not reproach themselves, because the attempt had probably been doomed from the start by the twisted litigation of the Hughesden Company. Even against the odds, they’d come within an ace of succeeding and he was conscious that his bitterness was tempered with a certain amount of pride.
‘Get the Very pistol out, Alix,’ he said. ‘And when you fire it, make sure they see it.’
They were losing height rapidly now as the engine poppled and spluttered and they lost speed; and with the increasing tail-heaviness, he had to keep the stick well forward to avoid stalling. By this time there was no sign of the fishing vessels that had indicated that land was not far away, but the big ship was just ahead of them now and they were directly in front of its port bow.
Alix was struggling to open the window, and suddenly, while he was still keeping his eye on the ship, she snatched at his arm.
‘Ira!’ Her voice cracked with excitement. ‘Look! Look!’
In their efforts to keep the ship in sight, they had taken their gaze off the horizon and as his eyes followed her pointing finger, he saw a purple-grey shadow beyond the port wing tip just emerging from the bank of scrappy cloud.
Alix’s eyes met his, excited and moist with tears of happiness. ‘It is, it is,’ she was shouting. ‘This time it is!’
He stared in the direction of her finger, hardly able to believe his eyes, but there was no mistaking the clean line of a coast jutting out towards them and the veil of cloud hugging the shoreline.
He stared at the ship below them, faced with a decision that was as agonising as any he’d ever had to make. Below them, there was safety. To port of them was their goal, though in trying to reach it they could easily fail and die in doing so. He glanced at the altimeter. The needle hung uncertainly at 4,000 feet.
‘I’m going for the land,’ he said abruptly and, giving him a quick smile, she slotted the Very pistol back into its rack.
‘Pump, Alix,’ he said, putting the machine in a bank to port. ‘Give it all you’ve got. Never mind how much we waste. There ought to be enough left to carry us that far.’
With the pump squeaking and hissing behind him, he held the turn until the nose of the machine pointed towards the land, keeping the bank shallow so as not to lose any precious height. As he straightened out, the engine faltered and picked up again, then they were heading towards safety, with the Whirlwind putting out full power whenever it wasn’t starved of fuel.
Ira’s hands were sweating as he stared towards the distant coastline. The distance between them and safety seemed to have grown no less and from their height and the visibility he guessed they were sixty to seventy miles away. He knew instinctively from the feel of the aircraft under his hands that it would take all his skill to hold it in the air that long.
The engine jerked, coughed and faltered again and his heart died within him, then, as he worked the throttle he heard the pump’s thump and squeak increase in tempo as Alix bent over it, and he caught the hiss of escaping fuel growing louder. But the sick and halting engine picked up again, firing spasmodically, and his eyes flickered instinctively across the pressure and temperature gauges. The temperatures were building up, he noticed, and the pressures were falling and they were barely holding altitude as power came and went.
The engine vibrated, cut and caught again, and he tried to
claw upwards for a little more height, then it spluttered and stopped and he had to drop the nose again to a gliding angle, only to pull the stick back once more as it caught again.
The minutes dragged by, each one slow-moving and agonising, his heart stopping each time the engine cut, his breathing halted until it caught again. They were still flying but they were moving forward now at a crippled speed that was barely enough to keep them airborne.
‘How’s it going?’ he called over his shoulder, hardly daring to take his eyes off the horizon as the aeroplane trembled on the point of stalling.
‘Keep her flying,’ Alix panted. ‘I’m OK. How far now?’
‘It looks just the same, but it can’t be.’
He glanced round. The sea was empty again now. The big ship was miles off their starboard wing, heading east towards safety, its look-outs with their eyes on other points by this time. If they came down now, they’d never be seen. Their chance of rescue was gone, and he began to study the sea below for a sign of scattered fishing boats from the harbours that lay just ahead of them.
There was no sign of life, however, nothing beyond the scattered gulls low over the surface of the water, and he stared ahead again, certain in his mind that the land was nearer but unable to recognise the fact.
Alix glanced up. ‘How far, Ira?’ she asked again.
He didn’t bother to reply, his attention absorbed in the fight to retain height. Below them the sea was rough and he knew it would be dangerous to put the Dixie down in it. He turned his eyes to the land again. It was undoubtedly nearer now, and the outlines were clearer, the mountains sharper and the line of cloud merely scattered groups of puff-balls. He could see the outline of hills now, then he caught sight of a small fishing boat beneath them, heading out to sea. Here was another chance of safety if he chose to take it, but he deliberately ignored it, holding the nose of the machine up, stretching out the last yard of flight and the last spoonful of petrol.
The stink in the cabin now was appalling, and glancing down he could see petrol sloshing round his feet, and as he glanced over his shoulder towards Alix, he saw her shoulders jerk and realised she was quietly gagging behind him, her stomach revolted by the fumes.
She lifted streaming eyes in a sweating weary face. ‘Keep her flying,’ she choked. ‘Isn’t there anything we can throw out to lessen the weight?’
He managed a twisted smile. ‘We threw it all out before we took off,’ he reminded her.
The machine was staggering closer and closer to the land still, houses on the shore plain now along a boulder-strewn coast, and he snatched at the map, trying to identify their landfall. He hadn’t time to dwell on it, however, as the engine spluttered and demanded his attention. Then he saw more fishing vessels, hugging the coastline, and a strip of sea shining metallically just behind the hills, and realised that what lay ahead of them was not the mainland but a large island just off the coast.
‘It’s probably Dursey,’ he said, staring at the land and comparing it with the map across his knees. ‘The mountains and the bay correspond. But the town there doesn’t fit.’
Alix managed a tired smile. ‘Whatever it is,’ she said, ‘it’s Europe.’
The Dixie was only floating forward now, its height varying constantly as power came and went, but the land was only close ahead of them by this time, with barren islands to the north and green slopes lying against the side of low corrugated hills. Ira searched the map again. They weren’t high enough now, however, to see the outline of the mainland clearly and the mountain tips were actually higher than they were, old, bleak and barren, while below them the water grew closer and closer to their wheels in a narrow circled bay, dotted with rocky islets.
He was holding the machine in a fine point of balance in a speed just above stalling, but they were still losing height. Alix, twisted stiffly in her seat to pump, was beating her clenched left fist softly against her knee, and he realised her mouth was moving as she prayed silently for them to reach the land just ahead, willing them almost every inch of the way.
‘We’ll do it,’ she panted. ‘Just!’
He jerked his head forward at a brown sail on the ruffled surface of the water. ‘There’s a fishing boat down there,’ he said. ‘If we ditch now, they can fetch us out.’
The hills ahead looked the colour of bilberry juice and he could see a huddle of houses round a makeshift pier jutting out over a collection of loose boulders, then they slipped over one of the tiny islands, a mass of tangled thorn trees, mountain ash, hazel bushes, ferns and briars, and a few loose-stone walls that looked as though they were falling down with neglect.
The large island had grown close enough now for them to feel certain of success and he was still trying to identify their landfall when the engine spluttered again. Alix’s head clucked down at once and the pump’s squeak increased in tempo and the smell of petrol grew stronger, but just as Ira was beginning to look for a suitable field into which to put the machine down, the engine spluttered and finally died.
He had grown so used to it picking up again after each faltering cough, it came as a shock to realise that at last it wasn’t going to. This time it had finally halted, and after windmilling for a few turns the propeller jerked and stopped in its circle, and all they could hear was the soft rustling of the air past the skin of their fragile machine. The silence after the roar filled their ears with menace, and the shock took away their breath as if they’d been plunged into an icy pool.
He had managed to claw upwards again with the last burst of power but with the drag of the motionless propeller, their speed had dropped again and he had to put the nose down to a steeper angle to avoid stalling, the engine silent with the silence of death.
There was no time now to consider where they might put the machine down, only to go through the motions of putting her down safely, and Ira decided to chance landing her with the wind behind him. As his eyes roved ahead, flying by feel, he noticed instinctively the painted surface of the motionless propeller was worn right through in places so that he could see the laminations of the wood. The inside of the blades and the whole front of the machine looked as though they’d been struck by a cloud of hurled stones, and it was only then that he realised how violent had been the storm they’d passed through during the night.
His ears still seeming to hear the metallic roar of the dead engine, he was aware that Alix had pulled herself upright in her seat and was sitting rigidly alongside him, her face white with strain and exhaustion, her lips pale to the point of disappearance, her fists so tightly clenched her knuckles shone white. He sensed her watching him as he struggled, and he knew that her expression was a mixture of anger and deep disappointment.
‘Finish,’ he heard her say.
They were only just above the water now, stretching their glide out to the last inch until it was impossible to hold the plane off any longer.
‘Hold tight,’ he said abruptly. ‘We’re going in. We’ll not make the shore.’
They were among a fresh group of islets now, mere humps in the water, when the wheels whipped the top off a wave, and he eased back on the stick, trying to force the last few feet of flight from the aeroplane, then, as another wave came towards them, he wrenched back the stick, heaving the nose up. They heard a slap like a clap of giant hands as the nose dipped, then the wheels, digging into the waves, acted as a brake, and they were slammed heavily against the dashboard and water spurted in at them through the doors.
* * *
Half-dazed from a blow on the temple, Ira flung himself at the door. The weight of the sea held it shut, and as he burst it open a great gout of water hit him in the face and blinded him. He fell into the sea, and as he came to the surface he saw the machine floating above him, its tail lifting gently, the elevators sagging, the rudder flapping idly as it moved, and he reached out a hand to cling to it for support.
There was no sign of Alix and for a moment he thought she’d been trapped inside the cabin. He was just on the poi
nt of diving down when her head appeared, her hair plastered across her face, and through its black strands he saw blood on her forehead. Her eyes were wild and afraid and she was gasping with a hoarse croaking sound as she fought for breath.
Beyond her he saw a fishing boat with a brown sail lurching towards them, its bows plunging into the waves. Thankfully he started to work his way towards her round the half-submerged starboard wing with its lifting aileron, but he was hampered by his heavy clothing and there was nothing to grip hold of and the water kept hitting him in the face and shocking him with its saltiness.
The Dixie was floating with its tail and port wing in the air, swinging gently and, with that great expanse of fabric catching the wind, still moving steadily through the water towards the east like a ship under sail.
Fighting his way round was difficult but he reached Alix at last as she hung on to the port strut with one tense white hand, fighting to keep a grip against the waves that snatched at the heavy flying suit and threatened to sweep her away. One arm hooked round the strut, he tried to push her towards the wing, but her arms were numb from the cold water, and as she fought to climb on to it she gave him a desperate look and shook her head, her eyes frantic.
‘Hang on,’ he spluttered. ‘Just hang on!’
He fought his way to the wing, dragging himself face down across it, but it was slippery and its movement was violent enough to make it difficult, and the water was breathtakingly cold, deadening his senses so that his fingers were numb as he grabbed for Alix’s collar and heaved her up to lie across the edge of the wing. ‘Let me go, Ira,’ she whispered. ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t mind. Save yourself.’
He brushed the hair from his eyes and spat sea water. ‘Don’t talk nonsense.’
She seemed to have lost her courage and he realised she was dazed. Then he saw that the blood was welling up under her hair, and realised she must have struck her forehead much harder than he’d thought against the windscreen when they’d hit the sea.
