I thought that my only problem would be to climb high enough to slip over a saddle; I thought the Gipsy Moth would struggle up to 5,000 feet, possibly flounder up to 6,000 feet, but certainly no higher. I fastened my safety belt and climbed steadily. I crossed a saddle with plenty of height to spare, but instead of the plain I expected to find on the other side, I could see nothing but mountains and cloud in every direction. I was in a long, narrow-gutted ravine with a mountain torrent below, and ahead was a black-hearted rain-cloud, blocking my path. I hesitated but didn't want to turn back. If I went round to the north of the prohibited area out to sea, I should have had to alight and get more petrol first. Under the cloud, I could see a stretch of the riverbed, with some rocky half forested sides, which looked a bright watery green. This showed, I thought, that it must be clear of cloud on the other side. I decided to risk sacrificing my height, closed the throttle and dived under the cloud. I came out on the other side in a precipitous gorge with a turbulent torrent below, and completely sealed off with cloud 2,000 feet above my head. What awaited me I could not tell, because the gorge made a sharp turn to the right and I could see only a bleak V-section of mountain facing me.
The seaplane whizzed up and down as it was buffeted by different air currents. I turned the big bend to find myself in another reach of ravine, completely filled by a thunderstorm. I hated the implacable Japanese officialdom that had forced me into this. It was as dark as twilight, and the rocks were black, with wisps of steam rising here and there. Each flash of lightning lit everything brilliantly, but afterwards it seemed darker still. The black cloud was not raining, and I sacrificed yet more height and flew under it. I cleared the storm and flew round a bend to find myself in another gorge. This seemed completely blocked. Ahead of me a dense foggy white cloud, wedged between the sides near the bottom with an opaque curtain of rain, in which the river faded and disappeared. I felt paralysed with fright; I was trapped, because I had no hope of flying blind in a narrow gorge. I could not decide what to do; I began to turn, but hesitated because I was afraid, and I swung back on course again. But to go on seemed certain death; I had to turn, and I whirred round in a vertically banked turn. A picture of the whole ravine was sharply etched on my brain, with every tree standing out clearly, the falls and boulders in the river, the strange brighter green up the sides, the cloud ceiling overhead, and a little branch valley coming in from the north. That 'little branch valley', or side gully, seemed to offer chance, so I turned again vertically banked, and climbed at full throttle. When I reached the gully it was clear, but sloped up to the clouds. I kept the seaplane climbing as steeply as possible at full throttle. Then, close under the cloud ceiling stretched across the top, I got a clear view far to the north, as though looking through a narrow slit. It showed me my escape. It led straight through the middle of the forbidden area, but I felt 'to hell with the Japanese and their forbidden area', it seemed a minor hazard compared with the rocks of the gorge. But as I went on, a saddle opened up on my left, and through it I saw a flooded plain. I turned sharply again, and shot through. As soon as I was safe I felt exhausted. I flew straight over the middle of Taihoku, the capital, towards Tamsui, on one side of a wide river, full of mud-banks. I flew low down, and hundreds of Japanese children in school grounds stopped playing and stared up at me with a sea of brown faces.
I was astonished to see a lot of Japanese flags, spiky red suns on a white field, and flying along the stone-faced riverbank I saw that it was crowded with people. Then I spotted three launches in the river, each flying a Japanese flag and full of white-uniformed officials. Somehow the thought of a ceremonious Japanese welcome had never occurred to me. I circled the water, and alighted outside one of the launches. There was a strong current, and the seaplane at once began drifting seawards.
Remembering how fast the water had rushed into my float at Aparri I felt flustered. 'I must anchor in shallow water,' I shouted. The officials in the launches chattered among themselves, and when I repeated my shout, they seemed undecided. The current carried me over a mud-bank where the water seemed fairly shallow, and I thought that I had better anchor there in case the seaplane sank quickly. I extracted and rigged my anchor, which seemed to excite the officials. There were cries from them, and they talked rapidly among themselves. No one understood my need for shallow water, and although the sight of my anchor was obviously upsetting them, I let it go, and it held with a strong tide rip at the rope and floats. A launch of officials came up, and a man on board began introducing them to me one by one, as if I was holding a levee. One can lead a rational, orderly existence for month after month, but suddenly a fantastic ridiculous situation may occur which upsets all one's values and seems simply incredible. This was it. While official after official stood up in the launch, was introduced in English I could not understand, and bowed three times with most punctilious ceremony, I was in a fever of impatience at the thought of my float filling under me. Already I could feel the float losing its buoyancy. To make the scene more farcical, the Japanese were all dressed in spotless whites with smart uniform caps, and I must have looked like a disreputable tramp; from head to foot I was filthy with smears of Aparri mud and grease. My kapok life jacket, which never had an elegant shape at the best of times, bulged with cord and rags in the pockets; my soft rubber shoes were dirty and shapeless; my shirt was dirty and without a collar; my hair and beard were tousled, and my fingernails showed rims of black mud. But once the introductions had started I could not interrupt: a nation trained to hara-kiri (I thought) would expect me to continue bowing if the float disappeared under my feet. I seethed with suppressed fret as a second launchful of introductions was completed. As soon as I could I shouted again that I must get the seaplane into shallow water before it sank.
'You will tie up to mooring arranged for you, yes?' asked the English-speaking Japanese.
'My plane is sinking, my plane is sinking,' and so on, time after time.
'The Customs officer will come to your seaplane now.'
'I tell you that I am sinking.' I could feel the float under my feet steadily losing buoyancy. A third crowded launch arrived, and this one had the British Consul, Ovens, on board. Again I had to wait for the introductions to end before I cried out to Ovens, 'My seaplane is sinking.'
Ovens was a tall Englishman in a tropical suit of yellow-tinted white and a pith helmet. He had a long chin, a clipped moustache and scanty hair. He had difficulty in raising his voice loud enough to be heard, and he looked self-conscious, even sheepish. Everything about me and my seaplane was very unfortunate for him, and he seemed quite unable to grasp that I needed help urgently. He said the Customs man wanted to inspect my seaplane, and that I had better let him. I said it was ridiculous to insist on this immediately when it could be done just as well after I had been towed into shallow water. This caused a long discussion, which ended in his saying he thought it would be advisable for me to let the Customs official board the seaplane there. I said, 'Then they must send a sampan; that launch will only smash up the plane.'
In due course a sampan arrived, sculled by a small Japanese in a sailor suit, with a whistle cord and a round unpeaked cap with ribbons streaming from the back. He manoeuvred his flat-bottomed sampan with great skill, using a scull like Father Time's scythe attached to a blade at the stern. When the Japanese came alongside I gave them my journey logbook, sealed camera, double-barrelled pistol and ammunition. 'My seaplane has a hole in the bottom, you understand, and is sinking, sinking. I must get it ashore at once.' There was another long discussion, and then the interpreter said, 'They will inspect your baggage now.'
'They can inspect my baggage when my seaplane is on shore and not before,' I said desperately. 'I tell you my seaplane is sinking.' After another long conference, they threw me a line from the launch, and towed the seaplane to a mooring above the pier. A worse situation could not be imagined; the current was so strong that the launch could barely make headway against it, and any mistake would mean my plane's being
swept right into the piles of the pier. When they reached the mooring the float upon which I was standing went under water. I jumped across to the other float, and shouted to the launch to tow the seaplane to the beach immediately. They could not, or would not, understand; I could not land until the quarantine officer had been on board. A fourth launch arrived, with another Englishman on board. He was McKay, the Shell representative. When I told him what was wrong he understood at once, and tried to explain to the Japanese. Ten of them talked together very rapidly. At last I burst out to the Shell man, 'For God's sake, throw me a line yourself, man, and tow me in. I tell you the seaplane is going to sink at any moment.' He looked scared, 'No, no. I couldn't do that.' However, he redoubled his efforts with the Japanese, and his soft, almost timid, manner with them, was successful; the launch towed me in close to the mud shore, a line was thrown and the seaplane secured in shallow water. McKay undertook to have the seaplane carried ashore on bamboo poles. He gave me complete confidence, and he put the operation in hand while I surrendered to the Japanese officials. First, I was shepherded through the crowd to the Customs House, to a long bare wooden table with wine glasses and a bottle of port on it. Standing round, they drank a toast to the foreign aviator. Then they got down to the real business of the meeting. Why had I not alighted at Karenko where I was supposed to? What route had I followed from Aparri? What was the horsepower of my engine? They surrounded me, hissing these questions and many others at the interpreter, not just two or three times each question, but dozens of times. One of the most repeated was, 'At what hour had I left Aparri?' I could seldom remember details about time immediately after a flight, and said, 'Five or six hours ago.' This really stirred them up.
'The telegram said you left Aparri yesterday.'
'I can't help what the telegram says.'
'You flew over Basco at 11.05 today, the telegram says. Is that so?'
'I dare say.'
'You left Aparri yesterday; you flew over Basco today. Where were you in the interval?'
'At Aparri, I suppose, since I left Aparri today, and not yesterday.'
'At what hour did you leave Aparri?'
They asked it twenty times, with a different selection of silly questions in between. It seemed incredibly stupid, because in the first place, had I spent the night photographing fortifications in south Formosa, the last thing I should do would be to lie about the time I left Aparri, which could easily be checked. Secondly, if there were anything worth spying on, surely there would have been a guard there capable of detecting the presence of an aeroplane.
Then they started on my route through the mountains. I became uneasy. Had they been leading up to this all the time? I said I had flown as straight as I could across the island as ordered, and I stuck to this right through. I had resented their having pushed me into the mountains so unnecessarily, and as the questioning went on for hour after hour, and seemed to be developing into a 'third degree' interrogation, I hardened up inside. In fact, the very minute of my leaving Aparri was marked on the chart and staring me in the eye, but by then I would not say it, and I stuck to my 'five or six hours'. I felt that they were repeating this same question endlessly, to make me break down and confess that I had been spying. A sort of cold rage took me, childish, perhaps, but I had had a gruelling day, apart from the 500-mile flight. Next time they asked me what the horsepower of my motor was, after I had been repeating 100 h.p. until I was sick of it, I replied '20 h.p.' for a change. Then I said 25, and every time they asked me I added 5 horsepower, curious to see how high I would get. Actually, the horsepower varied with the revolutions, minimum 20 and maximum 100. Presently I began pulling their legs and making poor jokes. In the end they handed me over to Ovens, who took me home; he told me I had done a very risky thing in making fun of the Japanese, but they had made me bloody minded.
McKay came up to tell me about the float. The drain plug had been fastened to a plate. Screws used to fix the plate to the hull had not drawn tight, and when the float was in the water, the water pressed the plate away from the hull and rushed in. As soon as the float came out of the water, the water inside pressed the plate against the hull and stopped the leak. The mystery was solved. I asked McKay if he could get it mended for me, and he said he could, but that he would have to use steel, as he had no duralumin. I asked him to go ahead, and said that I would have to leave tomorrow because of the typhoon. Ovens said he knew nothing of any typhoon and went off for a forecast. It said, 'No low pressure in the neighbourhood of Formosa or Shanghai. Fine weather expected between them.'
'That typhoon,' I thought, 'must be a myth. How could Father Selga have known about it in July without the Japanese knowing anything about it on 5 August?' So I decided to stay at Tamsui another day.
CHAPTER 20
EN ROUTE FOR CHINA
In the morning Ovens motored me to Taihoku where I had been 'commanded' to meet the Governor-General. At his palace we were ushered into a high room with a row of pillars down the middle, the walls hung with long black tapestries. The Governor sat at a square table, and watched me for a long time without the least sign of any feeling. After a long silence he spoke without taking his eyes off me, and the interpreter said, 'His Excellency says that he is pleased you reached his country of Formosa with success.' I also waited before answering, 'You will please thank His Excellency for the honour he does me?'
His Excellency grunted and there was another long silence before he spoke again. In this manner the conversation had not got very far at the end of a quarter of an hour, but my opinion of the Governor changed. Although both his eyes and features remained completely blank of expression I seemed to become aware of his thoughts. I do not think they were complimentary, though I believe he had a feeling of bored weariness with his office and faintly envied me my bit of fun and freedom. At the end, there was a bad moment when the interpreter said, 'His Excellency desires to know the horsepower of your motor,' and I only just managed to suppress a laugh before I answered, 'You will tell His Excellency that the horsepower of my motor is 80' – that being the figure I had now reached with five horsepower rises. His Excellency clapped his hands and a bottle of sweet champagne suddenly arrived, of which a single glass was formally drunk.
Ovens then took me to the Chinese Consul to whom the British Ambassador at Peking had cabled his permission for me to visit China. The amiable Chinese asked me where I proposed touching the Chinese coast, and when I replied 'Funingfu' he warned me not on any account to have a forced landing or alight anywhere along the section of coast north of it. It was infested with pirates, and every man there was apparently a potential pirate of a valuable-looking seaplane with only one man to guard it.
The rest of that day was a holiday. I discovered at last why my finger had been hurting and irritating so much; the stitched up flesh had healed but a piece of fingernail had grown inside it, and could not get out. I cut open a gap for it with a razor blade. Next morning Ovens hummed and hawed about the work he ought to do and said that he could not come down to the seaplane. In the end I persuaded him to come. The seaplane still rested on empty petrol cases in the mud, and after I had refuelled and stowed my gear, police officials ceremoniously returned me my camera and my thirteen cartridges, solemnly counting them into my hand one by one. I was then led to a kitchen table planted in the mud on which stood the same twelve wine glasses as before (Ovens told me that they were his, borrowed for the occasion). Across the wide muddy river the sunburnt mountainside rose abruptly; the river flowed a few yards from our feet. Iron stakes had been driven into the mud with a dirty rope stretched between them to keep a square patch select, and here we stood round the table in the hazy sunlight, drinking port wine. I felt friendly towards my inquisitors. A squad of coolies lifted the seaplane by means of bamboo poles under the floats. The foreman snatched off one coolie's conical straw hat which threatened to puncture a wing, and then, sounding their cries like a lot of human swans, the coolies sloshed over the mud and set down their load in th
e water. They were a good-humoured, easy-going, practical lot, I think Formosans and not Japanese. Several were holding the floats when I started the engine, and the slipstream catching one of the enormous round hats sent it bowling over the mud, which drew a roar of applause from the onlookers. The owner of the hat was laughing as much as anybody. The current was running fast the same way as the breeze, and I could not get off. One of the launches came up and an official, picking up a rope, offered me a tow to the sea. I would have preferred to drift down, but could not refuse his kindly offer. A mile short of the bar we entered a small tide rip, where the broken water was ideal. I shouted and cast off the rope, and at that moment there came a waft of sea breeze. I started the engine, jumped in, and opened right up at one stroke. The Gipsy Moth rose from the waves easily, and I swept round in a wide arc and flew up-river. I saluted the Ovenses waving on their flat roof, then dived to the water and saluted each launch as I flashed past. I could see belches of white steam at the sirens of the ships and steam launches as I passed, but could hear no noise above the roar of my own engine.
That day the sun was behind me; I had overtaken it, so to speak, and I was leaving it to the south. I was soon out of sight of land, and the sea, which used to give me a cold feeling, was now like an old friend, restful and soothing. A hundred miles from Formosa I flew over the first Chinese territory, a small island 45 miles from the mainland called Tung Yung. I shot past the lighthouse, where five Chinese stood intent on something in a small walled-in yard at the foot of the lamp buildings. As I drew alongside they broke out a red and black Chinese flag at the foot of the mast. The sight of that bunting warmed me, and I regretted having no flag of my own to return their salute. The best I could do was to dip my wings.
The Lonely Sea and the Sky Page 25
