Wings above the Diamantina b-3

by Arthur W. Upfield

  He was sure, too, that John Kane had recognized the Coolibah utility if not its driver. At the moment Bony had seen him, the man was smiling. The detective wrenched at the steering wheel and shot off the main road and up the east turn-off. A few seconds, later they stopped before the office. Ordering Sikes to follow him, Bony jumped for the veranda, found the office door locked, and then shouted to his companion to join him in the assault on it.

  The door crashed inward at the impact of their combined weight, and the detective sprang to the government telephone. He rang, waited. He rang again, and waited another quarter-minute. Then he opened the box of the machine and found that the batteries had been removed.

  “Bring in Gurner’s telephone,” he ordered sharply. “Hurry, and take care not to upset the batteries in it. Understand?”

  “Too right!” shouted Sikes, and leaped for the door.

  It was quicker to transfer the wires from one instrument to another than to change the batteries, and within three minutes, with Sikes holding the hotel instrument in his arms, Bony heard the cool voice of the postmaster’s wife, who had taken over the duties of Miss Saunders.

  “Police-station, please,” he requested quickly.

  A further thirty seconds of anxious waiting followed, and then came the voice of Constable Lovitt.

  “Ah, Lovitt! This is Inspector Bonaparte. Where is Sergeant Cox?”

  “He’s gone out to Windy Creek, Inspector.”

  “Listen carefully then. I want you to act immediately. Get astride that motor-cycle of yours and take the track to Tintanoo. Ride like the devil. You will meet John Kane on the road, for he has just left Tintanoo. If you do not meet him before you reach the Coolibah junction track make sure that he has not turned and gone to Coolibah. If he has, get after him! If he has not, then you must block the road with fallen timber in order to stop him. You are to arrest him. Have you got all that clearly?”

  “Yes, sir. On what charge is he to be arrested?”

  “On the charge of having stolen Captain Loveacre’s aeroplane.”

  Lovitt whistled. Then he said:

  “Special precautions, Inspector?”

  “Yes, certainly! Hold him until I reach you. Don’t waste a moment! It is vital that you reach the road junction before he does.”

  Bony rang off. His blue eyes were gleaming. The time for action had come, and he was thrilling like a racehorse going to the starting-post. The removal of the telephone batteries had been the grounds for his present action, and before he looked inside the second telephone instrument, that communicating with the river homesteads, he knew that the batteries in it would be missing, too. Above this second machine was a card bearing the names ofhomesteads, and opposite that of Coolibah was printed:“Three short rings.”

  Within half a minute Gurner’s instrument was attached to the wires of the second telephone, and within thirty more seconds the detective sighed with relief on hearing Elizabeth’s voice.

  “Ask Dr Knowles to speak to me, please, Miss Nettlefold. Hurry. The matter is urgent. Yes, yes! No questions now. Dr Knowles, please.”

  Then Knowles was asking the reason for the summons.

  “Where is Nettlefold?” demanded Bony, and, on being told that the cattleman was out on the run, he groaned. “Listen, Doctor! I have reason to believe that John Kane is making for Coolibah to do that patient of yours a mischief. I have just got in touch with Lovitt. I have ordered him to ride his motor-cycle to meet Kane, who has just left Tintanoo, and to arrest him. I hope that Lovitt will reach the road junction before Kane does, but there is the possibility of Kane’s getting there first. Nettlefold being away with the car complicates matters. What’s that? Ted Sharp is there with his runabout! Now let me think. Wait a moment. Yes! I’ll take a chance with Ted Sharp. Drive with him towards the road junction, say about two miles, and there block the road with trees to stop Kane’s car. If he gets ahead of Lovitt, bail him up and hold him until Lovitt arrives. On no account let him pass! I am uneasy about Ted Sharp. I hope unjustifiably; but you must use your discretion. Take a gun. Kane might attempt to use one. Will you go at once?”

  “You can depend on us, Bony. And you can depend on Sharp, too, I think,” Knowles said quietly and without bothering to ask time-wasting questions. “We will go at once. We’ll take care of Kane.”

  “Good man! Kane is in his Bentley, and I have not a ghost of a chance of overhauling him. Now get away. And thank you!”

  Without troubling to remove Gurner’s telephone instrument, Bony shouted to Bill Sikes, and together they ran out to the utility. Crying to Shuteye to get aboard, Bony started the engine, and they were away, roaring down the steep incline to the river channels.

  “Shuteye!” he shouted, and then when Shuteye replied: “Open my suitcase and give me my pistol.”

  The utility roared up the first of the channel banks, and Shuteye handed the pistol round the hood to Bill Sikes, who passed it to Bony. Bony put the weapon on the seat beside him, and shouted to Shuteye to stand up and keep a lookout forward above the hood for Kane’s Bentley. There was the possibility that beyond one of the river channel banks, lying concealed, John Kane awaited them to fire a fusillade, of bullets. He could do that easily enough; he could destroy them and yet remain safe himself behind an earthwork.

  Suddenly Bony jammed brakes, bringing the utility to a screaming halt on the narrow summit of a bank. Down in the channel beyond them was slipping southward a body of brown water. It was the beginning of a great flood of water that had fallen over the Diamantina water-shed from the recent storm.

  “Go back! Turn round, Bony! It’s a flood!” cried Bill Sikes.

  Actuated by the same impulse, they left the car and were joined by the excited Shuteye. They saw the water stretching north and south in that channel that was, perhaps, fifty feet in width, water cutting them off from the eastern side of the Diamantina. It came sweeping round a northern bend, carrying sticks and rubbish, rippleless, in aspect solid, probably as yet only a foot deep.

  Beyond them the coolibah trees shut from sight the distant sand-dunes bordering the east side of the river. Bony turned to the runabout, jumped up into the truck body and then climbed to the hood top. From this position he could see the eastern sand-dunes, and he estimated them to be one and a half miles distant at the nearest.

  One and a half miles of channels rapidly flooding to bar them from the eastern sand-dunes, and some eight miles of them lying westward to the high ground at Tintanoo! Why had not the doctor reported the coming of this flood? Had he known? Had Kane, for some reason, deliberately kept the Coolibah people ignorant of its coming? But now was no time to cogitate. Soon they would be like mice floating on a wood chip in a bucket of water. Already in the deeper channel they had crossed, the flood water must be increasing.

  It was too late to turn back-evenwere he so minded. Were they west of the river the flood would cut them off from Coolibah for weeks. Even minus the urgency of getting Illawalli to Coolibah, their only chance of life was to push forward to the nearest side of the river-east-push onon foot, because the utility would certainly be stopped in that deepening channel.

  “Come on, Bony!” the blacks shouted in unison. “Quick! Water coming down behind!”

  The detective glanced to his rear. A line of debris was being rolled over and over down the channel last crossed, and beyond it the sunlight gleamed onrunnelled water. The debris line passed them, travelling faster than a man could run.

  Bony shook his head, and jumped to the ground.

  “We would never get back to the west side,” he advised his companions. “We have to get Illawalli and ourselves to the east side, which roughly is a mile and a half distant. Bill, unstrap the water-bag.”

  Shuteye laughed, faintly hysterical.

  “Wot for we want water?” he asked. “Plenty water in the ole Diamantina now.”

  “We must try to revive Illawalli. We cannot carry him far,” Bony said sharply.

  Shuteye and he dragged th
e inert form from the utility, and Bony, snatching the water-bag from Bill Sikes, poured a stream of cold water on the face of the heavily-breathing aboriginal chief. A bony black hand feebly attempted to ward off the stream. Black eyes opened-to be blinded with water. The sunken mouth opened-to be filled with water. The gaunt figure then struggled to rise, and was assisted by the detective and Sikes.

  “Who you?”Illawalli asked the latter.

  On turning to see who held him on his other side, his narrowed, lethargic eyes opened to their fullest extent.

  “Bony!” he gasped.“Goo’ ole Bony! Ough! I bin feel, crook. Plenty too much booze.”

  “Listen, Illawalli,” Bony urged earnestly. “We are caught by a big flood. We have to wade and swim to reach high land, do you understand? Wake up! Do you hear me! Wake up!”

  “Too right! Ough! I’m crook.”

  Illawalli was violently sick, while they dragged him down the channel bank to the edge of the shallow water. The water was flowing swiftly, but did not reach their knees when they splashed across to the farther dry bank. The old man’s legs were so useless to him that it was necessary almost to carry him up the bank, with Shuteye pushing him behind.

  The next channel was dry as yet, but it was their last dry crossing.

  Strength slowly returned to Illawalli’s skinny legs. The flying helmet was jammed hard down on his white head, the chin-straps flapping on his thin shoulders. The head sagged pitifully. He cried constantly to be allowed to lie down. When crossing a channel in which the water reached their waists, Bony splashed it up into the chief’s face, and this assisted to revive him.

  “Goo’ ole Bony! My father and my mother! My friend! My son!” Between gulps for air he ejaculated these expressions of affection. “That there little white feller, he give me booze, plenty booze. Hesay you come soon, Bony. He say me drink up, and I ole fool. I drink up plenty. I ole fool to drink and drink, but little feller white feller; he don’ want no money, he don’ want nothing. He good feller whitefeller, and I was ole fool. Ough! This feller plenty crook.”

  “You will get better as we go along,” Bony said cheerfully. “Ah-here is where we swim.”

  Wading now was no longer possible. To cross a fifty-yards-wide channel meant being swept down several yards. To cross a channel two hundred yards wide in which the current was stronger meant a crossing at a sharp angle. Fortunately, Coolibah homestead lay many miles to the south, but the farther south the flood swept them so much wider was the crossing.

  The sun poured its heat on them, and to each man was attached a cloud of flies and mosquitoes. To touch a stick on the water was to be bitten or stung by a venomous insect. The banks were giving up their countless insect inhabitants, and these were swarming into the coolibah trees.

  Gradually the effects of alcohol were lifting from Illawalli. Forced exertion and contact with water were lightening the lethargy from the old aboriginal’s brain. That was just as well, for all were rapidly tiring. They could not linger on a dry bank before taking the water of each channel. Before and behind them ranged thecoolibahs -strange, shapeless trees of which not one inch of wood was straight. Already the low-lying channel banks were submerged, bringing two channels together to form a wide, swiftly-moving, brown flood, the submerged channel banks marked only by the line of trees rooted in them. Dry banks became ever more widely separated, and those yet above water were rapidly sinking into the flood like bars of sugar in hot tea.

  “Look, Bony! There’s a car!” shouted Bill Sikes, as they stood in a group on a dry bank, Illawalli now needing but little assistance. On the far side, apparently floating on thewater, was the black top of a car hood. Its passengers were not to be seen. They were not sheltering on the opposite bank or clinging to coolibah trees beyond it.

  Whose car? About a mile of water channels and bank islands lay between it and the distant sand-dunes now to be observed beyond the trees and supporting the turquoise rim of the sky. Bony knew, of course, that there they must be at least a mile south of the road crossing. The car would not have floated down to its present position, and the only inference to be drawn was that its driver had been following a little-usedtrack, or no track at all, to reach the eastern side of the river near Coolibah. Was it John Kane’s Bentley? While his assistants were helping Illawalli, Bony ran along the bank and took to the water above the submerged vehicle. Reaching the hood, he gripped it and worked his way round it. He found that it was facing the east. Not without difficulty, he felt with his feet into the driving seat, discovering nothing to prove that the body of the driver was there. Farther round the hood he managed to stand on the engine bonnet, and again feeling with his feet he established that the radiator mascot was the figure of a swan. It was Kane’s Bentley.

  Experiencing infinite relief, Bony swam on after the others. So Kane had been caught by the flood water just as they had been. He had been going to Coolibah by a short cut, avoiding the mileage via the road junction, and had he reached Coolibah this way he would have been unopposed, because the doctor and Ted Sharp would be two miles away on the road to Golden Dawn.

  The flood was rising with astonishing rapidity. The channel banks were noticeably sinking into the brown water, sliding in vast volume southward to the arid desert of north-eastern South Australia, there to vanish into the earth or to be evaporated by the sun.

  The race for life continued. Illawalli had so far recovered from the effects of his debauch as to be able to manage for himself. The four kept together, the first to climb out on to a channel bank waiting to assist the others. No man showed signs of panic; no man swam ahead in a frantic effort to reach dry land, to save his own life, careless of the fate of his companions.

  Being the oldest, Illawalli was the first to tire. Then Bony began to feel the effects of the swim. Shuteye maintained his vigour, while Bill Sikes was to prove a tower of strength.

  At last they reached a narrow ribbon of dry channel bank. The water could be seen eating into it like ink into blotting paper. Behind them no ground was visible at the foot of the lines of coolibah trees.

  Bony was panting for air. Illawalli crouched on the narrowing ribbon of ground. The others turned anxious eyes to the old man and Bony. After a moment ortwo Bony squared himself and gravely addressed Bill Sikes and Shuteye.

  “We have a long swim yet. I want you to understand that Illawalli must be taken to Coolibah as quickly as possible. You have to help him and not bother with me. You have to take him to the white feller doctors at Coolibah. Illawalli, my old friend, you have to put up a big fight. When you reach Coolibah tell them who you are. Tell them that you have come to read the mind of the sick white woman. They will take you to her. You will touch her and read out her mind to the white feller doctors what you see there.”

  The old and marked face melted into a smile.

  “You funny feller, Bony. We go where you go,” Illawalli said.

  “Too right!” agreed Shuteye.

  “Me, too!” added Bill Sikes. “You blow out, Shuteye he help you. Ole Illawalli blow out, me help him. Too right!”

  “Neither of you alone can help Illawalli to reach dry ground. If you don’t do as I say we may all be drowned. No, you both must help Illawalli.”

  “Too much talk,” Illawalli pointed out impressively. “Like white feller, we throw ’way too much time. Water-she get higher and highest and she run fast and fastest. Plenty time corroboree talk afterwards, eh?”

  “Confound you for staunch fellers,” Bony shouted.

  Together they stepped into the water and swam. Careful not to expend energy through fighting the current, they swam steadily.

  There was no cease from effort, no respite during which strength might be recuperated. Bony’s arms now were filled with lead. His thighs were aching with cramp. He was being swept into a tree-top bya strength greater than his own, a tree-top rushing at him with traps set beneath and above the water, fashioned by its gnarled branches.

  He felt a body beside his own-a body that push
ed vigorously. Shuteye cried out:

  “Swim, Bony! Swim, Bony! Go on, swim, Bony!”

  With the low measure of his failing strength, Bony struck out. Cramp! He was getting cramp in his legs. They felt dreadful. If only he could stop movement and rest. What the devil was Shuteye punching him for?

  “Take ’ereasy, Bony,” shouted the fat man from beside him. “Clear water now. On your back! On your back! Ole John Kane, he war perched in tree like a fowl. You hear him screech?”

  Bony obeyed. The clear dome of the restful sky met his weary eyes. His mind was dominated by a strange lethargy. He found that existence was quite pleasant: this drifting, this gentle drifting…

  “Come on, Bony! Give ’era go! Kickum feet!” implored Shuteye. “Go on! You sleep? Kickumfeet!”

  Bony obeyed, finding that the pain had gone, from his legs, but that still the molten lead remained in his bones. Time went on and on. Kick, kick, kick! Always kicking. Why was he always kicking? It was so senseless. He wanted just to rest.

  Quite without a period of transition, his mind became clear. He could hear Shuteye’s rasping breathing, and he felt the swirl of water about him created by Shuteye’s legs. And he knew that Shuteye would not abandon him even to save himself.

  “Let go!” he shouted weakly.

  Turning like an eel, he was swimming beside the gasping Shuteye. Now, so near that their whaleback summits towered above them, a range of sand-dunes, clean of herbage and light red of colour, was sliding northward. Desperately he swam. Someone was yelling, and because it was not Shuteye, he wondered who it could be. Now Shuteye was trying to shout, a gurgle in his voice. Bony was spent. It was now impossible for him to swim. Why swim, anyway? There was neither sense nor reason in swimming when he did not want to. The light went out in a red glare which quickly faded to complete darkness. Someone was still holding him, still punching him. It was not unpleasant, this surcease from action. Then the daylight burst into his open eyes, and he saw the ugly face of Bill Sikes. He smiled at Bill Sikes, and then closed his eyes.