by Carol Baxter
She thought about returning to Cuba. She started to turn. Stopped. Dithered. It was easier to keep on flying.
Onwards the Bullet droned. At the four-hour mark, a rush of panic ran through her when she realised she could have travelled all the way from Cuba to Miami and back again in the hours she’d been flying. Where was she? She peered around her again. Nothing breached the sky’s desolate grey except for the massing clouds. Nothing ploughed through the white-capped waters. She felt very alone.
She pulled back her joystick and climbed to 7000 feet, hoping the altitude would offer a glimpse of more distant land. All she could see were more storm clouds scowling at the heaving ocean.
She tapped her compass, feeling increasingly uncertain about its accuracy. If it wasn’t working, where was she? She checked her maps. She was obviously flying over a huge body of water, so there were only two options: the Gulf of Mexico to the west of Cuba or the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Whichever it was, the large expanses of blueness on her map indicated that more miles of sea lay between her and landfall than she had fuel left in her rapidly emptying tanks.
A feeling of despair enveloped her. She thought about diving to her death to end the torment. For a moment, she dropped the Bullet’s nose towards the whitecaps. Then that stubborn streak of optimism that had always driven her into the sky reminded her that while she had fuel, she had hope. She decided to trust her compass and keep flying in the same direction.
Minutes ticked by—agonisingly slowly when she looked towards the empty horizon, frighteningly fast when she thought about the engine guzzling her remaining fuel. Unless she found a landing place soon, her engine would cut out and her plane would fall from the sky.
Then she spotted it. A line in the distant ocean. She had flown over enough water stretches to recognise it: the demarcation zone between the deep turquoise ocean water and the lighter greenish waters that surround land formations. She looked at her chart. In the Florida Bay area, it noted, ‘Water three to six feet deep around the tip of Florida.’ That’s where she must be.
She spotted two small sailboats at anchor. Dropping so low she almost skimmed the wave-tops, she flew around them, shouting, ‘Which way to Miami?’ The dark-skinned occupants looked at her blankly, then turned to each other with the internationally recognisable shrug of incomprehension. When they looked back at her, they waved, as if she had merely tossed them a greeting, as if she was exhibiting the human desire to connect that afflicts strangers encountering each other in the middle of nowhere.
Dismissing this effort to get her bearings as futile, she continued on the same compass course. Another interminable hour passed. Then she saw land.
Minutes passed before she could compose herself enough to think about anything other than that she would live.
She looked at her map and compared it with the approaching terrain. The wide curve of coastline resembled the tip of Florida. She didn’t know why it had taken her so many hours to get there but, according to her maps, that’s where she must be.
Hugging the shoreline, she followed its southern curve. A lush greenness lay beneath her, a dense covering of palm trees and sinuous vines and thick tropical undergrowth partly submerged in swamps and lakes. It looked like the Florida landscape. She looked around trying to spot any of the Florida Keys to help plot her map position, but she couldn’t see any of them. She looked for signs of civilisation—people, buildings, roads—but couldn’t see any of those either. She kept glancing down at her map, then out of her cockpit windows looking for any distinctive matching features. There was nothing. It was strange indeed.
She flew for another ninety minutes, following the southern curve until it turned into the eastern coastline, then following that coastline northwards, as if it would take her to Miami. She had been in the air for nearly seven hours by this time and her battles with the elements had consumed far more fuel than normal weather conditions. Her fuel tanks were critically low. She had to find somewhere to land soon or her plane would do it for her.
Spotting thatched cottages set in a small clearing, she circled the village looking for a suitable landing place. Nothing was obvious. She circled again and again. After her fourth attempt she admitted to herself that her luck was out.
She crawled along the coastline for another ten minutes. The voracious tropical plants snaked down to the water’s edge, leaving no open areas suitable for landing. Any moment now her engine would splutter as her tanks surrendered the last drops. She decided to return to the village and find somewhere to land. At least there, if the landing was a disaster, someone might come to her rescue.
She scanned the beach near the village. The swaying trees showed that the tide was into the wind so she couldn’t use the beach as a runway. She peered out each of her windows, hoping to spot somewhere suitable. Bad options. Worse options. It looked like her only choice was to pancake in. She told herself that the one advantage of empty fuel tanks was the reduced risk of fire in the event of a crash.
Coming in from the sea, she turned her plane towards the coastline. Drawing on every ounce of her remaining courage, she pointed the nose towards a section of treeless undergrowth above the sandy waterline. With almost full power on, she stalled the aircraft. Then she pancaked onto the sand and into the thickly entwined vegetation.
The Bullet’s forward progression stopped suddenly, as if she had thumped into an invisible wall. The plane’s continued momentum forced the tail up . . . and up. If it kept rising, it would somersault over its nose. She clung to the cockpit and willed it down.
Just before the tail reached the critical ninety-degree angle, the momentum eased. The plane slammed down onto the spongy undergrowth and settled there.
She checked herself, barely able to believe she was on the ground and uninjured. Climbing out of the cockpit, she looked around her at the verdant lushness, which exuded the sickly sweet smell of tropical fruit and decay.
Suddenly, a group of dark-skinned people swarmed towards her. The shock of their unexpected arrival and their appearance—they didn’t look like Americans—was one jolt too many for her overwrought senses. Images of cannibals feasting on her body flashed through her mind. Then their words filtered through. They were speaking a strangely accented dialect of English.
‘Where am I?’ she asked.
‘Andros Island,’ they said.
She had never heard of it. ‘Who does it belong to?’
‘King George.’
‘Well, I am one of King George’s subjects too!’ she announced happily, as if their political connection was a form of physical protection, as if that one final barrier to her safety had been surmounted.
She discovered that somehow she had been swept east to the Bahamas, the British-occupied archipelago of 700 islands and cays (keys) that act as a barrier between the Florida Strait and the Atlantic Ocean. She had landed near Kemp’s Bay on the largest island. The Bahamas wasn’t marked on her map, which explained why she had thought she was seeing the Florida coastline. She later discovered that it was about 300 miles north-east of Havana and 200 miles south-east of Miami.
The locals were friendly and keen to offer their assistance. She asked if some of the men would help her tie down the plane. She always carried screw pickets and ropes to secure it in blustery conditions. As the tempest continued to rage, she was worried that a strong gust might catch its wings and flip it over, adding more injuries to the damage from the brutal landing.
She directed the men to lie on the plane while she screwed the pickets into the dirt and sand. Then she circled the plane with the ropes and tied them to the pickets. As she did so, her quick inspection revealed that the Bullet would require extensive repairs. Still, so long as the locals didn’t poke and prod it, as had happened previously with the Red Rose, it should be safe enough until she was rescued.
She asked how she could contact America. She needed to advise Bill and her mother and friends of her safety and to alert the authorities so they could recall the inevit
able search parties. The locals said that the island had a telegraph station. Relieved, she asked them to point it out. They told her it was sixteen miles away. When she enquired how to get there, she learnt that there were no automobiles or bicycles or horses in the village—or even roads for that matter. She would have to walk.
One of the men agreed to act as her guide. She collected all her valuable possessions—passport, money, maps—and placed them in her briefcase. Around 4.30 pm, they started their journey.
For the first three miles, they trudged along ivory beaches with sand crunching beneath her shoes. The sun was slipping behind the island to the west, its soft golden rays still lighting their way, but lengthening shadows warned of darkness ahead.
The sandy beaches gave way to long stretches littered with sharp rocks and shingle. They stumbled across the rough terrain and climbed over boulders and recently felled palm trees. The headwind was so strong it was like walking into the invisible force field of a repelling magnet. If she hadn’t been so desperate to contact the outside world, she would have remained in the village until the weather conditions improved.
They continued to push forwards, their bodies bending with the effort, making little headway. Wind gusts whipped her hair across her face, lashing it against her skin like pine needles. Sand slipped inside her shoes, blistering her heels. Soon, each step was agony. Recollecting that she had pliers in her brief case, she sat down and cut the heels from her shoes, hoping it would ease the difficulty of walking across the coarse surfaces.
The sun slipped behind the hills. Before long, darkness engulfed them. Each tree became a huge moving shadow, each boulder a black void. With the gloom came a strange visceral fear that clutched at her insides. It reminded her that she didn’t know the big man who was guiding her, that she couldn’t tell if he was really taking her to the telegraph station or if he would find a suitable spot to steal her money and dispose of her body. Or otherwise. As he continued plodding along in front of her, unthreateningly, she told herself not to be silly. She kept walking in his footsteps.
A headland now blocked their way. In the spears of moonlight that filtered through the clouds and wildly waving trees, the man guided her up the sloping hillside and directed her along the cliff edge. The wind continued to batter them as they lurched along the makeshift path. Below them, the waves, white with froth, surged against the headland.
Fear still had her in its grasp. She was so close to the edge it wouldn’t take much to push her over. Her body would be smashed against the cliff then swept out to sea. The plane could easily be dismantled. No one would ever know what had happened to her.
The man turned towards her. As she stared at him in shock, he pointed to a spot where the cliff had subsided. He said that if she wanted to continue her journey, they would have to get down to the beach. He would lower her over the edge and she was to slide down the rocky slope to the shore below.
She grasped his rough hand and clambered over the edge; then she half-scrambled, half-slid down the twenty-foot slope to the sandy beach. She waited for him to join her.
He directed her around the bottom of another headland. They splashed through shallow water and across rock-pools. On the other side, he helped her climb another cliff. By the time she reached the top she was drenched and filthy, another misery added to her increasing list of woes.
She struggled on. The blisters on her feet burst. Glass-like specks of sand ground into the wounds. She tied a handkerchief around each foot to protect them. Then she stood up and started walking again, putting one foot in front of the other like a mindless robot.
Around midnight, they reached a small habitation, a bar on a beach. Her guide said that it belonged to his brother-in-law and that he would go inside and wake the man.
She sank onto the beach, exhausted. She had been fighting the elements for almost fifteen hours. Her feet were so swollen and sore she didn’t think she could take another step. And she was desperately thirsty. She would give anything for a drink of water.
The men came out with a hurricane lamp. The wind promptly blew it out. They told her to come with them into the shelter. The wind slammed the door shut before she could get there. The men rammed their shoulders against the door and pushed against the built-up sand, making an opening wide enough for her to slip through.
Her host was a dark-skinned man who described himself as a Scotsman. She begged him for a glass of water. He didn’t have any—only Bacardi Rum and Holland’s Gin. She started on the gin, then moved onto the rum. It eased her aches and calmed her frazzled nerves.
The bar proved to be a two-room hut. Her host invited her into the second room to rest. The hut had no lights, so he guided her to the bed.
She lay down and was just dropping off to sleep when she felt a movement by her side. Every fear she had suppressed throughout the horrific day flooded through her again. As her fumbling fingers searched for a match, she wondered what sort of creepy-crawlies were found on Andros Island: snakes? . . . spiders? . . . scorpions?
In the tiny flare of the lit match, she looked around the room. On the bed beside her lay a sleeping baby. Next to the baby lay its mother, her skin so dark she was almost invisible in the gloom. Four children slept on the floor nearby. Calmed by the sight of them, she lay down again and slept.
At dawn, her host brought her a bowl of water and said she could use it for washing. He handed her another item as well: his own toothbrush. Not wishing to hurt his feelings, she thanked him and tucked it—unused—behind the basin. Then she said that she was keen to get going again. She had been gone for nearly twenty-four hours and her family would be fretting.
He explained that to get to the telegraph station she would need to travel a further few miles to the shoreline, then across three miles of water to Mangrove Cay. Andros comprised two large islands and she was on the southern-most. The telegraph station lay on a cay between the islands.
When she tried to walk, her feet were so sore she could barely put them to the ground. Her host lifted her onto the back of a horse and said that his brother-in-law would travel with her to the bight, then return with the horse. It would be up to her to convince a boat owner to take her across the water to Mangrove Cay.
Once they reached the coastline, she looked at the water with dismay. Three miles of storm-tossed sea greeted her. She tentatively asked the locals if anyone would take her across. They looked at the menacing sea, then back at her as if she were mad. Escorting her into a hut, they told her to wait there until the weather improved.
Locals gathered around her, chattering about her, pointing and staring. Hours passed. Increasingly anxious at the thought of lives being risked in search operations—and irritated at being treated as a spectacle—she took out some money and offered it to anyone who was willing to ferry her to the other side. It wasn’t enough for them to risk their lives. She waved around more money . . . and kept adding to the bundle until a couple of men held out their hands.
She knew she was risking her own life and theirs by attempting the crossing. The boat could be swamped. Or the men might head out a short distance, toss her overboard, take her money and say she had fallen overboard. More was at stake, though, than her own life. It had been her decision, her own choice, to fly across the Florida Strait. She could hardly decide now that her own life was more important than those of the men out searching for her.
The boat plunged through the turbulent seas, waves smashing over the sides, drenching her, terrifying her. She told herself she was nearly there, that the message would soon be sent. When they pulled into the shallow waters, she leapt from the boat—and screamed. She had nearly stepped on a stingray. The men laughed at her and then pointed to a path, saying that it would take her to the British Commissioner’s house. Shipping their oars, they turned towards the sea again.
They didn’t tell her it was a three-mile walk. Only the knowledge that she was so close drove her to take step after painful step.
The commissioner, Mr For
syth, looked startled to see her at his tiny colonial outpost. He asked who she was and what she was doing there. It took a while to explain.
After hearing of her trials, he gave her a stiff drink and said that his wife would dress her feet and help her to bed. She told him that her first priority was to send a telegraph message to report that she was safe. That’s when he revealed that his post was a wireless station rather than a telegraph office, and that the radio was out of commission. It had broken down some weeks previously and he hadn’t yet had it repaired, being unable to see much value in these newfangled things. The island had no other means of communication with the outside world.
Wearily, she asked for the location of the nearest telegraph station. He said that it was at Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, which lay on the island of New Providence some fifty miles away by sea. A mail boat usually ran between Andros and Nassau; however, all trips had been cancelled for the past couple of days because of the storm and rough seas. She would be unable to reach the telegraph station until the weather cleared.
Kindhearted Mrs Forsyth brought bowls of disinfectant-laced water and bathed and bandaged her feet, then handed her a nightie and led her to the guest room. Chubbie slid between the cool sheets and slept the sleep of the exhausted.
The following morning, Sunday, another visitor arrived at the commissioner’s house. Only two other Europeans lived on the tiny British outpost and this one happened to be a fellow Australian. He told the Forsyths that he had heard of Chubbie’s sudden arrival and wanted to meet her.
Percy Cavill was his name. He had once been a famous swimmer, the first Australian to win an international race using the Australian Crawl swimming stroke. After his swimming career was over, he had spent the next fifteen years in America teaching this swimming style. Currently, he worked as a boat builder and tarpon-fishing guide in the Bahamas.
