The pilot, a Great War veteran who knew that he should have died like most of his mates and believed that every day was one extra, was quite pleased with having discovered a new route through the Owen Stanley Mountains. He had found a series of inter-connecting passes, none higher than six thousand feet, and thought that it might be possible to push a road through; he sent his chart to the Administration office for future investigation.
They loaded the plane carefully, strapping down each sack of rice individually, tying the chest of tea into the rear of the old bomb hold, placing the cardboard cartons of bully and fish in a wedged together row. The box of medicine bottles was sat on a cushion next to the tobacco and chewing stuff; they spent a little time and roped it tightly to the stringers behind the pilot’s seat, against the two emergency kits. The plan was to bring in flour and more rice when they had built a dry storage hut.
They would take off at dawn, behind four other departures scheduled for the day. Each plane cruised at a different speed so they would arrive separately; none would depart Bulolo before nine o’clock, or so they had said.
The Vimy would expect to be back in Lae well before noon and the pilot would spend the rest of the day servicing his engines, checking and tweaking and greasing everything he could reach without actually stripping them down.
In the event they decided not to bother with a storage hut – supplies were so short that nothing stayed in stock. Jacky took first choice of their load and in exchange organised the sale of the remainder, to his own mates first, naturally. The last stick of liquorice and bar of toffee was gone by ten o’clock. All transactions were credit, booked against gold shipped to the assay offices.
It occurred to George that he could get very rich and quickly by abstracting a handful of dust from each bag and replacing it with sand, downgrading the purity at the assay from, say, ninety percent to eighty-five. It would be wholly undetectable, but eventually people would notice that his results always came in that little bit lower than other shippers’ – there would be talk even if police action was impossible.
Honest dealing was profitable enough – straight commission amounted to not less than a hundred pounds a month, often a lot more. He felt rich and bought clothes for his Maria and learned to play cards and developed a taste for cigars. Luckily he soon discovered that he had inherited his father’s weak head for hard liquor and he left the whisky bottle alone. He became well-known in Lae’s small population, liked by most people as carefree but harmless, loved by the poker players for his conviction that it was profitable to draw to a straight.
He flew on most trips and gained a familiarity with the old plane and her engines; he learned the basics of cross-country navigation, sticking his head far out over the side to identify the few landmarks on the chart and gradually coming to recognise his own. Two of the rivers they crossed had easily spotted doglegs in them and there was a bald hill some ten miles short of the Bulolo strip which helped to place them. They had no radio, but neither did the strips at Bulolo or Lae.
Bob the Bull-Artist, the pilot, knew that any man could fly – it came naturally, easily, and he insisted on handing the controls over to George.
“Look, cobber, even bloody sparrows can fly, and you’re brighter than a shite-hawk, ain’t you?”
George thought he might be, but he was no pilot. He could ride competently and drive a car; he had paddled a cranky old canoe around the reefs for years, but in a cockpit he was stiff, heavy-handed, booting the rudder-bar and hauling on the stick, forever over-correcting. A few hours and he gave up any ambition to become a bush pilot, running his own line up into the Highlands. He would have to be content to buy a plane and hire a flier and take a second- hand role in the air haulage trade.
The old plane was two hours away from a major overhaul; the engines would have to be pulled out and stripped down, the fuselage and wings and wires thoroughly checked, a process that would ground her for a week if there was nothing substantially wrong. If they had to order parts up from the South then she might be down for two months.
Mick thought that another round trip to Bulolo would bring her too close to the limit. Bob argued that the time was arbitrary, that the difference between eighty hours and eighty hours and thirty minutes was meaningless. It was a trivial enough matter and George pointed out that they had just heard there was another outbreak of dysentery up on the fields and that the miners needed medicines and water-purifying tablets urgently and the big Junkers was not flying that week. The weather was not too bad, most mornings clear, the afternoons and evenings wet; they could get in and out with reasonable safety and some of the miners and labourers would die for sure if they did not receive more medicines.
They loaded that afternoon, checked all they could, knowing that the careless died too easily on the New Guinea Side. There was no place for luck and initiative – only cautious young men saw middle-age in those skies.
“Remember what they say, Bob. ‘There’s old fliers, and there’s bold fliers, but there ain’t many old, bold fliers’.”
“Ah, she’ll be right, Mick. The bloody Red Baron didn’t quite get round to killin’ me, so I reckon I’m fireproof!”
They took off into the wind at dawn and turned out over the Markham Valley, engines at full throttle to climb at a painful three hundred feet a minute, nose pointing up for more than a quarter of an hour before they levelled off at about five thousand feet and then banked slowly onto their track across the foothills. The air was never still and they bumped and slid and crabbed their way slowly north and west.
“Wind’s higher today, George. Bit of cloud over the far mountains, too. No worry, it’s open in front of us.”
“I never heard that you flew against Richtofen, Bob?”
“Met his Circus a dozen times, George, and got a couple of ‘em, too. They took down half the bloody squadron between ‘em. Came up against him, personally like, just the once, and I was lucky, he’d downed two mates already and can’t have had many left up the spout. He got onto my tail after a couple of tries and ran out of the readies to finish me. Put a dozen holes in the arse-end and couldn’t complete the job. Pure luck, mate, if he’d got to me first instead of last then there’s no way I’d be here today!”
George nodded thoughtfully – flying fighter planes was no game for a sensible man.
They reached the strip on the hillside at Bulolo, both peering anxiously to discover anyone else landing or about to take off. The shape of the valley meant that they could not circle the strip as a warning, they simply had to commit themselves to a landing. There was a board at Lae and every pilot intending to fly had to put his name up on the previous evening; any man who forgot found himself refused permission to fly again, one of the very few rules that was actually enforced.
Two Fords, both from the big mining company, and a small Douglas had taken off before them and they could see all three on the ground, so it could be assumed to be safe. Bob took them in, a text-book touchdown and slow run uphill, using their landing speed to take them as far up as possible and make it easier for the boys to position them for take-off.
The labourers were grey-faced and shaking, the dysentery going through every one of them. They grabbed at the medicine bottle George opened and handed across, sucking desperately at the kaolin and morphine mixture.
Jacky walked slowly up to them and took delivery of four cartons of a dozen quart bottles; he was drawn and very pale.
“Will the man with the three-speed arsehole please fit mud-flaps!”
“I don’t expect they find that funny, Bob!”
“No sense of humour, these blokes, none at all. It’s all this gold grabbin’ does it – destroys their appreciation of the lighter side of life!”
“You know, mate,” George said. “They’re right – you are full of shit!”
“Doin’ better on it than these blokes!”
Bob roared at his own wit and went to look at his engines, checking the lubrication level.
“Got a load of water tablets as well, Jacky. Take what you need.”
“Ain’t been producing that much gold these last few days, George, only got a few ounces to ‘and.”
“Bugger it, mate – write it down and we’ll square up later on in the year.”
No more was said and Ned stood by with his notebook and pen as other miners helped themselves from the hold. Money could always wait and was not so important on occasions like this. They would remember… most of them. Those who forgot would be reminded by their own mates; those who died would be buried.
George took a few ounces of dust, tagged the bags with the miner’s name, tied them down in the hold. Inside an hour he was watching the boys as they swung the tail round and hauled the biplane backwards to the very end of the strip, pointing downhill to the cliff edge.
“Ready, Bob?”
“She’s right, mate. Want to take her out?”
“Not bloody likely! I can give her a try later, when we’ve got a bit more room!”
Bob laughed and ran the engines up to full, throttled back to idle.
“Port’s running rough. I ought to take a look at her.”
George glanced at the sky, the clouds building behind them.
“If we ain’t out in an hour then we ain’t going today.”
“And we’ll get the quickshits too. This place stinks!”
Bob slowly ran the port engine up – it was almost right, no more than an occasional cough.
“Bit of dirt in the line, probably. Nothing to worry about, really. I expect it might clear itself with a few minutes running.”
One of the labourers standing by the chocks suddenly ran for the bush, failed to make it, disgustedly stripped off a soaked laplap and walked splay-legged to the nearest puddle.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! I ain’t stayin’ in this shit-heap! Get the chocks away, George.”
George stood and waved to the men at the wheels, watched as they displayed the ropes on the chocks to show they were clear, gave Bob the go. He listened to the engines, heard nothing amiss, calmed as they climbed smoothly away. It would all be right; nothing would go wrong; it never did; why should it?
They climbed a little and took course for the gap in the ridgeline, the overland route to Lae, faster because they had less climbing to do on the return run. George looked behind them, had a clear view to the north-west where there was a great mass of cloud building high and spreading towards them. They should be able to outrun it, but the wind was far stronger even at a thousand feet.
“No going back, Bob, she’ll be clouded in.”
“Wouldn’t want to land her in this cross-wind on that strip anyway, mate. I’m taking her down, heading direct for the coast.”
Bob pulled the plane to starboard, dropped into a valley with a due easterly heading. It was fairly open and could lead them all the way home, in which case it would be well-worth remembering. George put a line on the chart, probably accurate to about ten miles, enough to find it on another day, with a bit of luck.
Five miles and the valley closed in with a bare mile of warning, low walls of rock east, north and south. They were able to climb and continue east. The sky was now black behind them, the mountains climbing high to the south.
“I reckon the river in that one must have been flowing west. If this is the watershed then the next river ought to be easterly.”
George nodded and pulled his seat harness fully tight; it was uncomfortable, but far safer. He felt behind him, rechecking that the emergency pack was there – rations, water-cans, first-aid box, bush-knife in its sheath. He saw that the pilot’s official hand-gun was in its proper holster, his own unlawful piece under his seat. He swore quietly – too many had died this way, missing on a short trip and never seen again, for even a seventeen year-old to be unconcerned.
They came over a hill top and into a big valley, a good two hundred yards wide, trending a little more to the north than they wanted but the only choice available. They could not climb to the south – the turbulent wind could strip the canvas off the wings and the instruments were too unreliable to fly blind in the clouds, and in any case the peaks were barely charted. Survival meant ground-hugging, crawling along the course of friendly rivers.
Bob throttled back and the port engine coughed in protest; he opened up again and it ran sweetly, but at a ground speed of seventy-five.
“Too bloody fast, but sod-all choice, mate!”
What was a sedate crawl at five thousand feet was an exciting, exhilarating dash at a couple of hundred. George started to enjoy the run, was pulled back to reality by the tension on Bob’s face, by the fingers flexing on the stick as he tried to relax and keep a lightness of touch.
The valley skewed suddenly to the right, closed tight as cliffs rose and the river poured over rapids. They threaded through a narrow gulch, less than ten yards spare on either wingtip, came out on another valley floor, broader and open. They passed low over a tiny village of round huts, introducing the West to a shocked, previously uncontacted clan, the womenfolk howling in their gardens, thundered away grinning at each other.
“Can’t be more than twenty miles from the coast, George – she’ll be in sight inside ten minutes.”
The valley ended in a swampy basin, five or six miles across and with no indication of how or where it drained. Mountainous to the south, stormy to north and west, there was no choice other than to continue east hopefully. There was a ridge rising two thousand or so feet at the edge of the bogs and Bob did not want to try climbing it – they would have to circle up, slowly, and the storm was close behind them now.
“North a couple of miles, Bob, valley!”
Bob followed George’s pointing hand, turned up into the wide, slowly rising grassy dale, a good three miles across and showing open for a way in front of them.
“Just high enough to make good cattle land, George. Get her on the chart, mate!”
George tried to triangulate on the peaks he recognised in the distance, pencilled a tentative cross in, looked up as Bob swore and banked frantically, ramming the throttles to emergency power.
Bob had flown in a tightening curve, almost ninety degrees, to find that the valley had ended against a wall of hard old rock that had not been worn down. The wall was lower on the southern side, maybe three hundred feet, a saddle about half a mile away.
Engines screaming they dragged the fixed undercarriage through the topmost leaves of the scattering of trees and staggered over the top into another narrow gorge. The port engine objected to the ill-treatment, ran ragged, missing at erratic intervals.
The ravine began to weave its way through interlocking hills, the bends tighter than Bob fancied and he attempted a gentle climb to go over them. There was a plain in sight, swamps, kunai grass, gum trees all intermingled; a distant grey haze might be the sea.
The port engine stopped – no flames, smoke or sudden bangs, it simply ceased to fire and the plane could no longer climb. It was just possible, but not recommended, to fly on one engine and Bob eased her into the valley, speed as low as possible, just above stalling. They made one bend, crabbed across to a second, had to turn tightly for a third, slipped further and further out to the apex of the curve, brushed the topmost branches of one tree and tucked a wingtip into another, seemed to recover for a moment and then pivoted down and round, nose first into the hillside.
George hung in his straps for a few seconds, dazed, not quite unconscious but unable to move. He could smell fuel, swore and hit the belt release, dropped forward and kicked at his door, fell three feet to the ground. Liquid was dripping close by. He dived back into the cabin, grabbed at the emergency kits, threw them behind him and then ran uphill with the food and water, came back down for the rest, put them onto a section of bare rock.
“Bob! I’m up here!”
He stopped, panting and looked frantically about him – no movement at all. He was panicking, he realised, pulled in a deep breath and forced himself to stand still. He walked down t
o the plane, to the left-hand side, took one glance. There had been another gum tree close to the one they had hit – stunted, little more than a thick stump with a few short boughs. A broken branch had gutted Bob, penetrated the stomach and out between the shoulder-blades; he was horribly, indisputably dead. George was instantly ashamed – he was unhurt but he had done nothing for his mate. A second, slow look said he could have done nothing for him, but even so he had panicked...
He reached across Bob’s body for his pistol – that must not be left for clansmen to find. He debated climbing into the hull to retrieve the gold, but that was unimportant, would simply be weight to carry. He spotted his hat – that would be necessary, walking bare-headed was foolhardy, in the extreme. He stumbled slowly back uphill.
He might be as close as ten miles to the coast, but it might be twenty, and then he would have to walk to Salamaua.
There was biscuit, bully beef and canned beans for two men for four days; he put the lot into the knapsack. He had no guide or reliable map, was inexperienced in this bush – he might need to eat for eight days. The gallon tins of water were shaped to tie over the light groundsheet on top of the pack; they would be heavy and would slow him, but the temperature was at least ninety and the humidity higher still – he dared not be without clean water. Quinine; salt tablets; morphine pills; calamine and surgical alcohol for bites and stings; bandages; eye lotion – sweat and dirt played hell with the eyes; he could leave none of the first-aid kit behind. Two pistols – he debated burying one, but there were known cannibal clans within fifty miles and he was in no mood to risk unknown clans closer to hand. Better to be over-armed than under.
He picked up Bob’s gun, saw that it was a big Colt revolver, a cowboy gun; it was in character. He strapped it butt forward on the left of his belt, in approved fashion, distributed ammunition in his pockets. His own thirty-eight he tucked into the pack.
The mosquitoes hit at the bottom of the slope – they had never dined on whiteskin before, evidently liked the new flavour. George smeared alcohol over his bare skin, knowing that he would be bitten wherever he sweated and exposed new patches. He disciplined himself not to scratch – anything but that, as broken skin would guarantee ulcers within a day and they would rapidly sap his strength. His chances were poor enough already without worsening them unnecessarily.
A Place Called Home (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 2) Page 9
