by Nevil Shute
‘You mean, take the door right off?’ he asked. ‘I wouldn’t fall out, would I?’
The question was a reasonable one, because the door comprised practically the entire side of the cabin; in that little aeroplane it was an enormous hole. ‘You wouldn’t fall out,’ I said. ‘You’re strapped in with your safety belt. But I’m afraid it may be cold for you.’
‘I don’t mind that …’ He looked up at me. ‘Now we’ve started on this thing we’d better see it through. Most of my equipment’s in that suitcase, so I can’t do much here. We’ll have to be quick, though, won’t we? Because of the weather?’
I nodded. ‘I’ll get the machine refuelled right away.’ I turned and spoke to Monkhouse, and then I asked him, ‘Is there anything to eat here? I’ve had no breakfast.’ I was hungry, cold, and getting very tired. I had been up all night, and I had done a lot of flying since I had slept last.
‘There’s my sandwiches for lunch,’ he said. ‘Over on the bench there, with a thermos of coffee. You can have those.’ I protested a little, but he said, ‘I’ll go and get some more when you’ve taken off.’
I offered to share his lunch with the doctor, but he refused; the vicar’s wife had given him breakfast before we started. I stood by the bench eating mutton sandwiches and drinking coffee from the thermos, thinking what an awful fool I was. I, the great airline captain, the self-acclaimed expert who had barged in to take charge of this affair, and put up a black right away. Even Billy Monkhouse, ground engineer in a pipsqueak show like this, even he had known the fundamental fact I had forgotten in my arrogance and pride.
Tired as I was, the only thing now was to go on with it. Johnnie Pascoe would have had a doctor with him now but for my ignorance. The food and the hot coffee were putting new life into me, and I braced myself. I could repair the damage I had done. If we got off at once, we could still beat the weather down to the Lewis River, though I might have a sticky time getting back.
It took about ten minutes to fill up the aircraft with about fifteen gallons of petrol from the old, hand-operated pump, and to put in a gallon of oil. Then we got in again. I saw that the doctor’s safety belt was properly done up, for there was little else now to retain him in the cabin in bumpy conditions. ‘I feel a bit like the young man on the flying trapeze,’ he said.
‘Quite happy?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘I’ll be able to get out all right this time.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’ I nodded to the ground engineer and he swung the prop. I ran her up a bit and tested the magnetos, and then taxied out on to the aerodrome with a boy on each wing strut and turned her into wind for the take off.
I lifted my eyes to look around after my pre-flight check, and saw a car drive in off the road and up to the hangar. It crossed my mind that it might possibly be Dr Parkinson who was supposed to be flying up to us in the Proctor, and I paused for a moment, watching. Then I saw it was a taxi by the sign over the windscreen, and the door opened and a woman got out. Billy Monkhouse could deal with her, I thought, and I nodded to the boys, opened up the throttle, and took off.
It was bad in the air, very turbulent, the cloud ceiling down to about twelve hundred with a clammy coldness of approaching rain. With virtually no side to our cabin the grey wisps seemed to come right into the aircraft, and perhaps they did, for the map grew soggy in my hands. I had to deviate towards the coast much more than previously, and as we went the cloud forced us lower and lower. By the time we got to Trial Harbour I was flying down the coast at about seven hundred feet in the increasing murk. I knew then that it would be touch and go if we could get up to the tiny airstrip at the Lewis River, which was five hundred and thirty feet above sea level. If we did, there would be nothing to spare.
I found the entrance to Macquarie Harbour, crossed it to the south shore, and flew round Cape Sorell, the top of which was in the cloud. I checked the time, and did a bit of navigation, working with one hand upon the map upon my knee. It was another sixty-eight miles to the Lewis River, and we were making good about eighty-seven miles an hour over the ground. I calculated in my head. If we were doing ninety we would have forty-five minutes to go, but it was three per cent slower, so call it forty-seven minutes. I pencilled the time upon my map off Cape Sorell and the E.T.A. Lewis River, and went on, keeping the coast in sight upon my left. Ten minutes later it began to rain.
I must have known that it was pretty hopeless then, but I went on. It was my fault that Johnnie Pascoe hadn’t got the doctor with him, and there was always the faint chance that the rain might stop and the clouds break when we got to the Lewis River. We went on down the coast with visibility less than a mile, and as we went the cloud forced us lower till we were flying at about two hundred feet well out to sea, the coast just visible on our port hand. It was a desolate, deserted coast fringed with black reefs that had a very heavy surf breaking upon them, shooting up in places almost a hundred feet high. If our motor had packed up in that place our chances of survival would have been absolutely nil.
It was raining all the way from Cape Sorell. The water ran off the windscreen on the doctor’s side and blew from the edge straight into his lap. In ten minutes he was soaked, but there was nothing we could do about it. We went on, trying to check each river mouth and identify it as we passed. On the west coast of Tasmania, however, the maps are very inaccurate because nobody lives there; we soon lost track of where we were and had to go on till we had run our time.
When we were on our estimated time of arrival we had been flying for an hour and forty-three minutes. We should be a little faster going back, I thought, but the margin on our fuel was short and we had no more than ten minutes in which to find the strip and land the doctor. I approached the coast in the murk well throttled back. It was featureless, fairly low, but the cloud ceiling was only about four hundred feet. There was no sign of any river mouth. I turned right and flew along the coast, getting a bearing of its run; south of the Lewis River it turned sharply east, but here we were still flying on a course of about 16°. We were probably still to the north of it, and I went on southwards, one eye on my watch. Things were getting terribly tight for us.
It began to rain harder than ever, and the visibility grew worse. I had stopped talking to the doctor, and he to me. The cliffs got higher till their tops were in the cloud; I sat tense and anxious. Then they dipped down, and there was a river entrance between black reefs boiling with surf. It didn’t look a bit like the entrance to the Lewis River as I had seen it about three hours before, but it probably was the same, seen from a different viewpoint, under different circumstances. If that were so, the doctor was now within a couple of miles of Johnnie Pascoe.
I flew across the river entrance at a safe distance in case there was a headland sticking out in front of us, and then I turned back and flew across it somewhat closer in. I pulled the little data sheet of the airstrip out of my pocket, that the controller at Essendon had given me. It showed the river entrance. It was probably the same, but it was hard to say. If it were, the course from the entrance to the airstrip would be about 110°.
Over the sea the cloud ceiling was now about three hundred feet. It might be a little higher over the land, I thought; there is usually a hundred feet or so of clear in weather like that. It’s only in a calm that the cloud descends on to the ground in the form of fog. I turned westwards and flew out to sea for a couple of miles on the reciprocal course, and then turned in again and flew towards the coast on 110°, climbing into the murk till I could only just see the sea.
The first rocks passed beneath us and I sat tense, ready for anything. We came to the cliff and crossed it, and now button grass was very close beneath my wheels. There was no clear air, or if there was, I was not game to try and find it. With my heart in my mouth I thrust the throttle hard forward, eased back on the stick, and climbed up into the murk. I sat waiting for the crash till the altimeter showed seven hundred feet. Then I relaxed and put her in a slow turn to the right to find the sea
again, flying completely blind between the hills.
I said to the doctor, ‘I’m afraid this is no good, Alec. I think we’re right over the Lewis River, but we shan’t be able to make it.’
He said, ‘If there was a beach, perhaps I could get out on that.’
‘I haven’t seen one,’ I replied. He didn’t know what he was suggesting, although, as a Tasmanian, perhaps he did. If so, he was just brave and that’s all about it. I couldn’t have guaranteed my position within ten miles; we might be playing about over some other river, not the Lewis River at all. If I found a level patch where I could put him out as I had tried to on the airstrip, I should be leaving him stranded in quite uninhabited country in the worst weather with no provisions or equipment at all. That wasn’t practical.
I started to let down towards the sea when I judged that it was safe, watching the altimeter. ‘I’m going back,’ I said. ‘Back to Buxton. We’ll have to wait until this weather moderates again.’
We came out at about a hundred and fifty feet over a black, rough sea and started flying northwards. We were going a bit quicker, but the visibility was worse than ever, and it was raining harder. I could only see a few hundred yards; I went on for ten minutes keeping the coast in sight on my right hand, seen dimly through the rain.
Then it suddenly loomed up dead ahead of us; we seemed to be flying straight into a cliff. I flung the machine round in a violent turn to port, and we missed it by about a hundred feet. We were so close that I could see the mutton birds on the rocks; I even fancied I could see their little eyes and their claws. It was as near as that. I steadied on a course westwards, straight out to sea, and pulled out the map. ‘That was Penguin Head,’ I said as calmly as I could.
If we went on following the coast like that we should be dead before we got to Buxton. We had practically no fuel for deviations, but they would have to be made. A course of 315° for eighty-six minutes would take us clear of all dangers and would land us ten miles out to sea off the mouth of the Arthur River, with Buxton about sixty miles away downwind to the north-east and all low country in between. I explained the position to the doctor and showed him what I was going to do, and then I started in to fly my compass course about a hundred feet up over the sea.
We were pretty cold and miserable by the time I made my turn, nearly an hour and a half later, and I was getting very worried indeed about the fuel. However, in a few minutes we passed over the beach and went on across an undulating country. The clouds were rather higher here than they had been further south, and we could fly at about seven hundred feet most of the way. We went on at a good speed over the ground, but now the gauge was jumping on the zero stop again. I said to the doctor, ‘Tell me if you see anything you recognise.’
I decided to give it another five minutes, and glanced at my watch. There was still a light rain falling, but we could see more than a mile ahead. At four minutes we came to a weatherboard farmhouse, white-painted. It stood in flat paddocks, and it had a few trees round it as a windbreak. I could probably land here, and when I realised that, I knew that I wanted very much to be down safely on the ground. A line of poles ran from it to a road; I looked again, and saw another set of poles; it was on the telephone. I went into a turn and said to the doctor, ‘Do you know that place?’
He said, ‘I’m not sure, but it looks rather like Jeff Duncan’s property. If it is, they’re patients of mine.’
‘How far would that be from the aerodrome?’
‘I should think about twelve miles.’
The needle of the gauge was solid on the zero stop. ‘I’m going to put down there,’ I said.
There was a little plume of wood smoke from the kitchen chimney, which was a help, and a paddock of ten or fifteen acres downwind from the house; the trees would make a shelter for the aircraft on the ground. I dropped off height and turned low over it; there were some sheep there but the surface looked all right. I picked a clear patch between the sheep and brought her in and put her down, thankful to be out of the air. Some people came running out of the house as I taxied slowly forward to the shelter of the trees, the doctor got out and went to one wing strut, a young lad to the other, and we got her into shelter and tied her down to a harrow and a disc plough.
It was Jeff Duncan’s farm all right, and they all knew the doctor. He was soaked to the skin, and stiff with cold, and trembling. We all went into the kitchen and stood by the wood stove; they gave him dry clothes to wear and hot whisky and lemon to drink. I drank tea because there was more flying to do, and rang up Billy Monkhouse at the aerodrome and asked him to bring over a jerrican of petrol. He told me that the Proctor had arrived and Dr Parkinson had gone in with his pilot to the police station to speak upon the radio. I told him to call in on them on his way out with the petrol and tell them that, again, I hadn’t been able to land the doctor.
When I got back to the kitchen after speaking on the telephone I found the doctor standing by the stove; they had opened up the front of it and stoked it up with wood so that it made a warm blaze. He had his second whisky with hot lemon in his hand, half consumed, and he was looking a great deal better than he had a quarter of an hour before.
He said, ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t manage it, Captain. The weather wasn’t very good, was it?’
I shook my head. ‘It wasn’t …’ It seemed to me an understatement.
‘What will we do now? Wait till it gets better and try again?’
I had very nearly killed him twice, at least, that day. ‘Do you want to try again?’ I asked. ‘Dr Parkinson’s in Buxton.’
‘He’d be much better at dealing with a fractured skull than I would,’ he said. ‘He’s had much more experience. But I’d be quite willing to try again, so far as the flying goes.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve got a sort of thing about this now,’ he said. ‘I want to see it through.’
I nodded. ‘So do I. I’ll have to get my head down for a bit, though, before going out again. We’ll find out what the Met has to say, and then go for the next clear patch.’
After a time Billy Monkhouse arrived in his old car. We all went out with him to refuel the machine for me to fly back to the aerodrome. I asked him, ‘Have you heard anything from the Met? Any more breaks coming?’
‘They won’t say,’ he replied. ‘Nothing in sight immediately, anyway. They’ve started a ground party to walk in through Kallista.’
‘I’ll have to get a room at the hotel and get some sleep,’ I told him. ‘Who flew the doctor up from Hobart?’
‘A young chap called Phil Barnes,’ he told me. ‘Assistant instructor at the club – came out of the R.A.A.F. about a year back. He knows the country.’
I nodded. ‘He can carry on while I get some sleep. I suppose I can get into that hotel?’
He rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know that you can. They let four rooms. They’ve got the boss’s mother in one and his wife’s sister and her little girl in another. Then there’s Dr Parkinson and Phil Barnes, each got a room. They turned out the little girl for one of them and put her in her ma’s room.’ He paused. ‘The best thing you can do is to go in Captain Pascoe’s house,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t mind.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Last house out of town before you get to the ‘drome,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right there.’
‘I’ll be all right anywhere, so long as there’s a bed,’ I said.
As soon as she was refuelled I got into the machine to take her off light from that paddock and fly her back to Buxton. The doctor was to go back with the ground engineer in his car. The Duncans herded the ewes over to one side of the paddock and I got into the air and flew back to the aerodrome. I landed just outside the hangar, the boys came and caught the struts, for the wind was still high, and we put her inside. My job was over for the time, and I could rest. Great gusts of rain were blowing across the fields.
I got out of the machine and stood on the damp concrete floor, cold and unhappy. There was no car there, for Billy Monkhouse had tak
en his over to me with the petrol, and he was not back yet. I rang up the police station while I was waiting for him and spoke to the sergeant, and told him the position. He said that the Met report was discouraging. There was no break in sight. Dr Parkinson and his pilot had gone for dinner at the hotel, with the lady.
‘What lady?’ I asked.
‘A lady came just after you took off,’ he said. ‘A Mrs Forbes. Something to do with Captain Pascoe, I think. She flew across to Launceston from Melbourne first thing this morning, and got a taxi here. She’s going to stay at the hotel.’
‘Is she a relation?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know that,’ he said. ‘She might be. I didn’t give her much attention, what with other things.’
I rang off, and soon after that Billy Monkhouse drove up with the doctor. I told him what I had done, and that a woman had arrived. ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘She come just as you were taking off.’
‘Do you know who she is?’
‘She didn’t say. A cousin, perhaps. I dunno.’
There was no point in bothering with her; she couldn’t help us. I said, ‘Show me which is Johnnie’s house. Can I get something to eat at the hotel?’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Not at this time, you can’t. Dinner’ll be off. Mrs Lawrence’ll fix you up something. She does for Captain Pascoe – lives next door. I’ll take you there.’
I got into his little car with the doctor. He said that he would look in at the hotel and see Dr Parkinson, which would save my going into town. I think he saw that I was just about all in from the strain of flying in difficult conditions and the lack of sleep, and indeed I think I actually fell asleep in the three or four minutes that it took us to drive from the hangar to the first house on the edge of the little town, because I know I woke up with a start.
