The Lost Flying Boat

1

Nash stayed on boat-watch with Wilcox and Armatage, and kept us covered from the mid-upper in case Bennett’s party of Appleyard, Bull, Rose and myself were sniped at as we rowed ashore in one of the dinghies. The shelving beach of black and yellow sand was peculiar to stand on, as if the surface was covered with grains of rubber. Solid land did not seem as firm as I had imagined it when airborne, and I felt as uneasy as if I had just stepped out of a prison. My joke about D Day found no takers.

The steep slope to our left ended at a huge black cliff, while the rock-strewn land to the right, gentle at first, gathered itself sharply into the cleft of a watercourse. After the yellowing green of sparse vegetation, the sandy beach gave way to pumice and basalt. Only occasional groups of whalers and shipwrecked sailors had ever stayed on such terrain. No settled society had made a go of it, which was strange considering the world’s turmoil, and the fact that the island provided coal and cabbage, fish and fowl in fair quantity. But I suppose that basic sustenance wasn’t enough when contact with the rest of the world was lacking.

Bennett paced senselessly along the sand, occasionally stopping to kick at the gravel. He lifted his flying-booted foot up and down, as if exercising because of the cold wind, but I suppose he wanted to confirm that he stood on the island he had dreamed about for years. I wondered how his expectations tallied with reality, but they seemed to match neatly enough, judging by his expression. He picked up gravel and threw it down, then lifted a piece of rock and looked at it so intently I couldn’t tell whether he would kiss or eat it.

We pulled the dinghy up the beach and unloaded a rifle, primus stove, food, spades, two surveyor’s poles and the theodolite with its tripod. Bull examined the re-entrant through binoculars. ‘I hope we don’t have to scramble up that.’ Low cloud brought a north-east drizzle, and we shivered around the tarpaulin sheet as if the stores it covered would give warmth. Surf bumped against the beach, and Bennett, in his grit-kicking demoniac progress, was beyond recall in the rising wind, cap on, back hunched and – the only encouraging sign – jacket collar turned up for warmth. Every minute or two he ranged in a wider circle, then shook his head and went on.

The world was empty of voices till Appleyard said: ‘It might take him days. Pity there’s nothing to get a fire going with.’

Rose up to now had seemed oblivious to all of us: ‘You want a coal fire in a lovely grate, do you?’

‘Your bloody voice grates.’

‘You’d like to turn the dinghy upside down and make a hut out of it, and get it snug inside and play castaways till some nice sailing ship comes by for the rescue? Wouldn’t we all?’

Appleyard sat on a slab of rock, but the surface was running with water, so he leapt upright as if nipped by a crab. He looked away from Rose, unable for the moment to face the terrible scar. I regretted their antagonism, yet it was a comforting reminder of human warmth still among us, stuck as we were in the raw air which seemed to peel off the emotional protection we had known in the flying boat. I wanted to be back on board and listening to my radio. Rose was irritated at having to undo his flying jacket to reach pipe and tobacco.

‘You’ll never get it lit,’ Appleyard grinned.

A pair of giant petrels came over the water, and separated when they got close. As they swept low on either side of our party and went by, I noted the downturning bill and scavenging eye, and the flash of white along the body between head and tail. They circled back on dark brown wings, flying lower on their hunt for food, scissor-beaks set for us. I wielded a surveying pole, but they went odoriferously by, wings clicking into a thermal lift at sensing we were dangerous. When they alighted behind some tussocks up the watercourse, Appleyard let off the safety catch of the rifle: ‘I ought to get something tasty for the pot.’

‘Shoot, and you’ll be for the pot – for the big chop, in fact.’ Rose lit his pipe. ‘It’ll make so much clatter that everybody for a hundred miles will be on our necks. And that’s not what the skipper wants, believe you me.’

‘It’s too much of a stinker, anyway,’ said Bull. ‘It walks on water, so it stinks.’

‘What have we got a rifle for, then?’

‘In case somebody comes up on us.’ He fastened his clothes against the wind. ‘I knew we had a sea-cook among the crew, but not a poacher.’

‘I’m supposed to look after our bellies. We can’t live out of tins forever.’

I observed Bennett’s interminable booting at the sand. An insane person would have given up by now.

Rose spoke with the pipe in his mouth, a line of smoke from his injured face. ‘He was always one for taking his time about things. Straight through the flak on our flying bombrack. He never wavered.’

‘None of us did,’ said Appleyard. ‘We were with him.’

‘All the way,’ said Bull. ‘That’s why we won. It was all or nothing.’

Where the beach turned north, Bennett fell on his knees, and bent over to scrape at the gravel with both hands. The wind took his shout out of our direction, but I picked it up like a wireless signal half murdered by atmospherics. Two skuas cried their way by, eyeing us hungrily. ‘He wants us to go to him.’

Rose ordered Bull and myself forward. We crunched over the gravel, the effort sweating and winding us as if we hadn’t walked for years. Bennett looked up when we stopped halfway. ‘What the hell are you crawling for? Run!’

Quickening the pace, we got off the beach and went through mossy grass and a sort of dirty brown plant. Our boots slopped into the pools between, so we returned to the gravel which at least was dry.

He laid his cap on the ground and pointed to a ring of steel by his feet. A circle of sand had been cleared from the few inches of unmistakable fixture. He scraped mould and rust from the rim of the wide calibre pipe with his penknife, like discovering traces of a factory on the moon. He stroked the edges without looking: ‘Bull, go to the dinghy and bring a surveying pole. Adcock – you stay here.’

He pulled off his silk scarf to wipe sweat and rain from his face. He was so pale I thought he was cast in lime, and not of the slow sort. His hand shook as he lit a white cigar with the third match, holding a cupped flame close till a whiff of smoke for a moment civilized the air. ‘This is the first point of the base line. I allowed us a day, and we find it an hour after touching the beach.’ He stood, and rested his boot on the circumference of the pipe, but gently in case it was pushed under and never found again. ‘The other point is three hundred metres away at 109 degrees. A piece of cake, Sparks. We’re in luck.’

Frozen and foot-soaked, I was glad to hear it. He bellowed again into my ear. ‘When Bull comes back, slot the pole into this pipe. Get it absolutely upright, then fix it firm with rocks and sand. Do you understand?’

At three hundred pounds a month, plus an unspecified amount of bonus yet to come, I had no thought of neglecting to do exactly as I was told.

‘When the two points are flagged up, and the theodolite gets the cross-bearings, we’ll be right on target.’

He set off with head down, counting paces at such a rate he almost beat Bull to the dinghy. A wall of mist moved upwater as if pushed from behind by a mob. The flying boat off shore was soon covered, as was the dinghy on the beach, and Bennett in his rapid walk towards it.

If silence was trapped under my feet I need only move to release noise. Reason told me to do so and go back to the others, but I wanted to be alone. Every action needed a decision, so I did nothing, and unwittingly obeyed instinct. A circle of gravelly sand was visible, and the half-buried pipe in which the surveying post would be fixed. If I walked, and kept the hiss of water to my left, that shape and area would remain behind. Not to move would leave me with a known pattern of gravel and moss within whose misty circumference I was safe. Familiarity induces a comfort which prescribes its own duty – that it shall not be glibly abandoned.

Should weather come from glacial heights to rampage in earnest, I might follow the beach back to the others, but in the meantime I was a target marker, and until the ten-foot pole was fixed in place I would not leave, in case gravel, water and natural subsidence covered it again.

There was the sound of birds, and the noise of cascading water, and the crunch of boots as I walked a tight circle around the embedded pipe to keep warm.

2

Only a fool, on an uninhabited island, would take it for granted that he was alone, and to pass the time till the mist cleared and Bull came back I played a mental tactical game, using the disintegrating aspect of the island’s map as a board, a picture-map as splashed out as if someone had thrown a coconut full speed at a watermelon. Bull, seeing the map on Bennett’s table, had likened it to a patch of vomit on Saturday night outside a pub.

For tokens I had the Aldebaran, the ship I had contacted, and the vessel which was to meet us at our anchorage with high octane fuel. Manoeuvres became a game of dodge-and-run in numerous places of concealment. Throws of dice concerned bad weather, or colliding head-on while getting closer to the buried gold which I, naturally, was the first to find.

Another factor in the game came without any wanting, and caused a shudder which sent me more cold for the moment than climate ever could. Intuition placed Shottermill as a vital counter among the players. He stood before me, and in one move dominated the board. The question as to why a ship was waiting could be answered only by him. I hadn’t realized – perhaps because I had not been sufficiently alone to meditate with advantage – that he was playing his hand for more than one side. Bennett thought it beneath his dignity to distrust a mere chandler who sold rotten cigars, but at least I hoped – the notion made me colder still – he had kept Shottermill away from any information as to where our landing place would be. He knew little more than that we were going to the Kerguelen Islands, and when. Bennett’s caution was only fully operational when he was actually flying. On the ground he was easier to deceive. No wonder Shottermill was worried by a wireless operator being carried, who could give early warning of anything heard.

My eyes were closed but I was wide awake, hearing boots on gravel when the wind had lessened its howl, and the snort of an old man about to talk. At a shuffling in the mist I looked for the rifle I had not brought. I must have been heard leaping to my feet.

A hawking and honking reverberated, but I was afraid to make myself harder to find in case I never got back to the same place. I stood close to the pipe to prevent its being noticed and saw, as I started to sweat with fear, a penguin with head high and breast gleaming, even in the mist. I ran until it fell back trumpeting, and then with its loitering mate walked off with flappers going as if I was too disgusting an object to contend with. Their cries had so many echoes, I thought there were dozens, but the grumbling diminished and I settled to guarding our home-made trigonometrical point.

A ration of chocolate revived me in the clammy damp. I supposed Wilcox on the Aldebaran to be running an engine to check the oil pressure, but the sound was far off, and too light in tone. Distortion caused by the configuration of the land couldn’t tell me from which direction it came, and as much as I cared to disbelieve my ears, I knew the sound to be that of an aeroplane above the blanket of mist which still concealed our flying boat.

From the southwest it sawed unevenly as if buffeted by currents stronger than the wind which pushed against me. The mist was no longer thick, only molecules hiding the light. Others also had an aircraft, though it was obviously single-engined and could not have flown to the island as ours had. The plane, however, was looking for us, suggesting that this was to be no unmolested treasure search, and my heart beat fast as I realized how much our fragile flying boat was in danger.

I doubted my ears. Perhaps the noise was from a motorboat, searching for us nonetheless, exploring inlets on the off-chance of finding our base. In this glacial hiding place any engine could sound like that of an aeroplane, distorting itself into whatever meaning the imagination concocted.

The sewing-machine purr diminished, having given up the search. Then, distinct and lower, it returned to hem another frayed edge of the sky, a tinny rattle of disappointment yet sounding as if determined to have a more serious go some other time. Its persistent motor noise finally departed.

I went back to my tactical game. The ship that my signals had sent to the southern part of the island had catapulted its seaplane to explore the northern side which was, after all, only twenty minutes’ flying time away. Bad weather would keep us hidden for a while, but good weather would reveal us sooner or later, though perhaps not before we were airborne and carrying the loot. The game was still open for all contestants, and I wondered if anyone would finally win. I was plagued by Shottermill’s features, but decided he was not in the game at all. Then it seemed obvious that he was.

Bull came out of the mist with the pole on his shoulder. ‘How’s the forgotten army?’

The plane was like a bee in my ear, dying but never dead. The dropped pole struck my boot. ‘If you damage it’ –angry, yet glad to see him – ‘the skipper will push you out of the hatch from ten thousand feet.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time he’s done such a thing.’

I slotted the pole into place, telling him to hold it upright so that I could pack gravel around. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s that sort. Do anybody in who stood in his way.’

I made as neat a mound as could be done without tape, ruler and scalpel. He patted the structure as if it were his own work. ‘You don’t need a war to make that sort.’

I took the offered cigarette. ‘What does make ’em?’

‘You’re born like it.’

It was time to get back to the dinghy. ‘Did you hear that plane?’

‘What plane?’

‘One of those funny bird things with two wings and an engine that goes phut-phut and travels in the sky.’

My sarcasm made no impression. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, and as if recollecting an event from stone-ages ago: ‘It’s gone, though, hasn’t it?’

With my back to the damp air I felt the mist dispersing, pressure higher on my left. The increasing wind played a peculiar chanson, its booming voice coming down the mountain and channelled into a flute as it hit the fjord, which acted like an everfilling bagpipe and sent a banshee wail through to my bones. Our white flying boat was half a mile away against a mountain background, on blue water so clear its replica wavered into the deeps. Such beauty made it seem fragile, and I felt an affection close to love because it was the only vehicle which would take us back to civilization. The sun illuminated its fluted hull and port float which, though of different sizes, were waterdynamic twins, graceful lines meeting at the stems but with shadow between. Three propeller blades in each nacelle had 1200 horse power behind them, four units joined by the leading edge.

The slightly ponderous fuselage, with its line of portholes retreating under the wing, was eighty-five feet from nose to tail, where the rear turret was angled high above the water. If the flying boat was on shore its height would have been nearly thirty feet, and it was no wonder that, once you were inside its body, everything outside lost significance. The last obscuring mist withdrew. The flying boat would take us back to a world in which I at any rate had no option but to belong. I would have to make sure, however, that what Shottermill might have told them had not been enough.

3

Cool air in the sunshine steamed our clothes as we walked over moss and sank into pools at each step. The dark shape of a bird hedge-hopped rocks in front, a skua with a four-foot wingspan wafting the air, whose eyes in a wicked head gazed like the blades of twin axes.

‘I’d trade my right arm for the pop-gun,’ Bull said as the bird came round again but swept wide towards the cliffs. ‘I’m not used to having animals fly at me.’ We struggled through potholes of black slush, boots and trousers saturated. If I were stranded like Robinson Crusoe, how long would it be before I got myself to the highest cliff and dropped off in despair? Skuas would pick out my lights before I touched bottom. It was no life for a death. Not a tree in sight. No tools, matches, gunpowder, the flying boat gone to pieces, and little to pick from its equipment. Crusoe did well, but I wanted our work done, and to quit the island.

Appleyard’s cartridge-belt sagged around his middle. He stood by the upturned boat with the gun crooked as if he were a gamekeeper ready to plug the guts of stealthy marauders. ‘You should have peppered those birds,’ Bull told him.

‘What birds?’

‘Or salted ’em. I thought the buggers would peck us to bits.’

‘Rose told me I was only to shoot people.’ He leaned the gun, and took off a glove to scratch his nose. ‘Nash is in the mid-upper, ready to spray the hills. Or the sky, come to that. We take no chances. Good job it was foggy when that plane went over. The skipper wouldn’t even let us speak. We had to stand as if on parade. Nash would have got him though, if he’d come down for a proper dekko.’

Bull opened the theodolite box as if hoping to find food. ‘They’re looking for us, right enough.’ He closed the lid on the delicate instrument inside.

‘Bound to find us with a seaplane,’ Appleyard said, ‘sooner or later.’ In the distance Bennett and Rose slotted the second surveying pole in place.

‘He hasn’t found anything yet,’ said Bull. ‘Only the indications. And there’s nothing priceless about them. We’ll need to stand on the loot before we know we’ve earned our pay. I’d rather have a bottle of whisky than a handful of gold. Feels like ten years since I had a drink.’

‘If you don’t keep off it,’ said Appleyard, ‘you’ll see two kites instead of one.’

‘And hit neither,’ I said.

‘You should have shot them gannets, all the same,’ Bull complained.

‘Skuas,’ I said.

‘That mountain’s about a one-in-two gradient.’ Bull lifted his legs high as if chary of stepping in the unavoidable mud. ‘A walk to the knocking-shop every night of the week just wasn’t good enough training to shin up that.’

‘You should have stayed on board if you don’t like it out of doors,’ Appleyard said. ‘Before the war I used to run up Kinder Scout like a jackrabbit.’

‘Life was a piece of cake ten years ago,’ said Bull.

The slope was less steep where the watercourse descended. Maybe what we were looking for was in that direction, but whichever way, the clock would turn against us if the seaplane spotted us in daylight.

Rose was breathless when he came back from working with Bennett. ‘Bring the theodolite. Skipper wants to sight the angles.’

I humped the twenty-pound box onto my shoulder, and Bull carried the tripod which weighed almost as much. Rose turned from his path-finder’s position in front. ‘Don’t drop your load, Sparks, or you’ll have to go all the way back to Blighty to steal another from the stores.’

The distance was less to Bennett’s second station, though far enough on puddled terrain. I looked intently at the moss to make sure I didn’t step into an unexpected hole. ‘Mind you,’ Rose said, ‘I think a box sextant would have done just as well, and you could have carried that in a haversack.’

Bull reshouldered the weighty tripod, and told him to embark on a course of action which, Rose realized before turning to me, was all the nastier for being suggested among such superb scenery. It was uncalled for, and best ignored, and hard to say whether he was being serious till he went on: ‘It’s a pity we have to be so super-accurate to get anywhere or find anything. Takes the sport out of life. I lost something when I became a navigator, Adcock.’

I felt pain at his baleful tone. ‘Maybe you gained something as well.’

‘Not very much. As we get older we lose more than we gain, however much we change.’

‘I don’t like to think so.’

‘No one does,’ he said. ‘We’re the end of the line.’

‘Speak for yourself. I’m not a fish on the end of any line.’ Even while I spoke I had a strong impression I was wrong and that Rose, detecting my lack of conviction, knew why there was no need to answer.

I changed pressure to another shoulder, for in spite of my padded jacket the box had a fine time grinding the bone. Bennett’s voice came on the strengthening wind. ‘Pull your bloody fingers out. Come on! We’ll have the fog back soon.’

Gravel had worked into my left boot, and grated the skin off my heel. Hurry was impossible if I was to avoid dropping the theodolite and spoiling its accuracy. Cloud covered the mountaintops. Rose said that the peak to the north – though Bull cursed him for a schoolmaster – was over two thousand feet. Skuas stayed high, enraged that we had invaded their territory, making a noise as if calling for reinforcements to drive us away.

Bennett worked his computations on a small drawing board and, having fixed the length of the base line and its angle, took the surveyor’s pole from the pipe and set up the tripod, gauging the perpendicular with a plumb line from the box. He and Rose then clamped the theodolite onto the base plate.

We stood aside while they aligned on the pole which I had installed, and then set the sights according to the bearing which Bennett extrapolated from his notes. I wondered whether the German hadn’t scribbled a few jottings in order to play a joke on anyone foolish enough to be taken in. Perhaps he had buried a mine which, at the greedy touch of an exploring spade, would blow any treasure-seekers into pieces-of-eight and back again.

Bull and I smoked in silence while the drill of checking for collimation went on. Sundry technical terms floated away on the wind, and I wondered what surprises the other party had for rendering our efforts null. They had no directions for getting at the treasure, but maybe there was more than one vessel to bottle up the Aldebaran once they located us. I mulled on our plight, supposing such thoughts to be better than brooding about Anne and why we had left each other – as for some reason I began to do, convinced by now that the separation had been good for us both.

Thinking of her took me away from the activity around. The landscape was no longer inspiring. A feeling of vulnerability replaced the sense of adventure. Questions cracked the structure of our group. My sending of false signals had disordered the edifice, so that from now on I could only live as the moments came, which didn’t seem like living at all.

‘Adcock! Come out of that ten-foot hole!’ He pointed at the theodolite telescope, and then along the line of its bearing. Parallel to a turn of the coast, and a thousand yards southwest, was a short ridge of black rock, green and yellow vegetation at the summit. A watercourse beyond streaked down the re-entrant and ran into the sea. ‘It’s on that rise.’

I was to station myself there with the surveyor’s pole, and find the line of the bearing according to Bennett’s signals, which Bull would observe through binoculars. It sounded a plain enough routine, and I set off over the rocks and moss with the pole on my shoulder, cheerful now that I had a task which needed a good eye and some activity. The wind from the port quarter did not let me hear myself whistling. The sun was as high as it would get that day. Bennett worked against the storm, having a good idea from where it might come. I’d have felt safer if any of us could know where danger from men was likely to appear – who were perhaps a worse part of Nature’s wrath.

The ridge, separated from the main line of the mountains, lost itself for a while in the general undulations, and I maintained track by counting the paces, releasing one digit from a clenched hand every hundred, knowing I would be more or less there when both hands were open. I kept my steps as even as possible, and though many fell short and I zigzagged to avoid large rocks, I realized the eminence was under my feet when the land sloped down before me and I could see the hidden section of the watercourse.

The hill was four hundred feet high, sea nearly a mile away. Bennett and Rose were waving their arms. Appleyard sat by the dinghy like a statue, as if marooned until death. Our flying boat heaved on the water: if the roaming seaplane came close it would soon find how spiky she was. Bull focused the binoculars. ‘They want you to go to the right.’

I hoisted the pole so that they could mark me, and moved ten paces.

‘A bit more.’

I walked twenty.

He laughed. ‘They’re having fits. You’re to go back.’

I went, two by two.

‘Stop!’

The wind whistled, and pushed hard, but I kept the pole vertical. ‘Now what?’

‘Left,’ he said. ‘But creep. None of your bloody two-step, or they’ll have your guts for garters.’

I took half a pace.

‘Stop again. You’re spot on – I think.’

I scooped a circle in the mossy ground, and stabbed the pole in. Bull grinned at my useless work. ‘They want you to move to the right.’

The hole I dug filled with water. A cold wind beat on my jacket. If this was summer, I preferred Singapore. He put down the field glasses and hammered the stave which, though bolstered with rocks, nothing would make firm. ‘You’d better sit on top.’

‘You’re not my bloody oppoe,’ I told him.

We carried stones, and though the first hundredweight displaced water, even on a hilltop, we gradually erected a pyramid.

‘They’re giving the thumbs-up. Rose is making semaphore signals. Flag-wagging isn’t up my street.’

I preferred lamp-work, but was able to read semaphore slowly, which was all right because Rose couldn’t send quickly. Arms outstretched meant R. The left at one o’clock said E. The same over the head, and the right at ten o’clock signified T. ‘V’ of the arms added U to the word that was coming. Two arms fully horizontal again denoted R. And both at the inverted ‘V’ position ended the word with N.

‘Return,’ I said to Bull.

‘Where to?’

B was indicated, so I sent C to say I’d got the message.

‘Return to B. They want us back with them.’

He marvelled. ‘Communication’s a wonderful thing. No chance of a quiet skive with a bod like you in the party.’

Being downhill, the way back was quicker. Bull’s leather soles sent him skidding on the moss, legs flailing so that he resembled a figure of matchsticks stuck in an impeded potato, except that a spud couldn’t yell such foul language. He tried a cat walk after the first come-uppance. All was well, till he imagined no more spills likely and hastened his pace a little, smiling at the success of each careful footstep. Then cozened into optimism, down he flashed, no vegetation to grab, rolling like a baby and bumped like a kitten. When he struck his elbow on a rock and was in real pain he forgot to curse. The hillside was made of black lard, and he was shod in roller skates. He ended more out of breath going down than he had after the climb.

4

‘What did you find to talk about?’ He glared on his way by. ‘There’s too much dawdling and gassing. We want speed in this operation.’

Rose packed the theodolite and handed it to me. No time had been lost, and Bennett’s hurry, though understandable, was futile. Heaps of cloud inched from the sky, giving total coverage up the fjord and on the opposite shore. Bull fancied he caught a whiff of frying sausages from the flying boat, and complained that he was starving. We had more important things on our plate than food, said Rose. ‘If we aren’t on target in the next half hour we’ll be staggering around in the mist for days.’

I held the theodolite in my arms like a wounded bird that had to be kept alive. The white flying boat was pressed between black water and the sky’s ebony ceiling. While Bennett and Rose set up the theodolite on the end of the base line, Bull and I ascended the hill carrying a spade and pole each. Accustomed to the terrain, and though the skin on my heel was worn away, the thousand yards seemed little distance. A flight of skuas threatened, as if they guarded some secret at the summit and were warning of the fate which would befall any who solved it. They dive-bombed, coming at low-level with prominent wings and avaricious beaks. Bull swung his heart-shaped spade. ‘Looks as if they mean business.’

They lost interest halfway and soared towards the beach. The triangulation, given bearings and distances, was a matter of alignment on the surveyor’s poles. Providing the theodolite was accurate, all should fall into place.

The summit was familiar, but weather changed the view. Bennett wanted to get the treasure while the mist held off, but once found, the same concealment would be an advantage. If God was on Bennett’s side – and nothing had so far happened to suggest that he was not – there was no more perfect scheme.

We aligned our poles on their separate bearings and walked forward along them until we met. That would be the spot on which to dig. The difficulty was to place ourselves on the exact bearing from the two ends of the base line. Bull unstrapped his binoculars. ‘They’re having a bit of an argy-bargy. The skipper’s tearing a strip off poor old Rose.’

I was as interested in helping to solve the problem of intersection as I had been in plotting decoy signals from the flying boat. Trying to create order out of confusion made me feel like a gambler. Every act – from a minor diversion to a matter of life and death – involved risk. Conscience had no say. My element had been found, and a safe life was impossible to imagine.

The flying boat bobbed on the water, white chops around the hull. Wind stung like clouds of flying pepper and brought tears from Bull’s eyes when he lowered the field glasses. ‘You’ve got to shift.’

‘Which way?’ I stood by the centre pole.

‘Left. No. What the hell are they on with? Right, I think. Yes, smartly to the right.’

I didn’t know whether the continual roar came from wind, or walls of water breaking at cliffs beyond the headland. We had a better view of the flying boat than Bennett got from below, and it was nearer the shore than a few minutes ago.

‘Back a bit,’ Bull said.

The flying boat was about to be pounded to aluminium and plywood, while Nash, Wilcox and Armatage ate themselves senseless in the galley, or yarned by the bunks over a quiet smoke.

‘Another pace to the right.’

We had no world but the flying boat, and the rocks were a row of rotten yet still strong teeth waiting to bite. Appleyard was waving for help, but no one could see. The roar of the wind choked my shout.

‘Right on the market place!’ Bull was keen. ‘Stay till we fix it.’ If I ran into the wilds there would be the problem of rediscovering that hallowed spot, and the hurry of recouping time lost. I wanted to abandon the post which I had a duty to maintain, but could not do so even to save my own life. I refused to follow instinct in order to see what happened. Instinct and sense might well be in agreement, but if I ‘did the right thing’ I would deny myself the excitement of wondering whether or not I would survive if I ‘did the wrong thing’.

I stayed, and with Bull’s help made a neat bench mark on the spot under which we assumed the gold to be. But the part of me that had been decisively overridden nevertheless pictured what it would be like to flee down the immediate slope and turn left up the water-course, scrambling out of sight before anyone could shout or shoot. With such a good start, I would reach the two thousand foot summit a free man. The thickening mist would cover me.

I was diverted by Bennett who, aware of the flying boat’s difficulties, ran to that part of the beach where Appleyard guarded the dinghy. His small figure appeared to move slowly, till flurries of rain took much of the clarity away. It seemed a bad sign that the skipper should run to try and save the flying boat. The hull was glancing against the rocks. Even if Bennett had been able to help I would not have expected him to run. It did not matter that I had sent out my own false radio signals. I wouldn’t have run myself, and maybe that’s why I was alarmed at him doing so. He only discovered what we on the hilltop knew, that on such terrain you couldn’t run. He fell, and lay still. ‘He’s kissing the earth.’

Bull’s voice came out of the wind noise. ‘There ain’t much else he can do. Maybe you and me should do the same, Sparks – pray that the Aldebaran doesn’t go to bits.’

I would witness the disaster standing up. Nash, Wilcox and Armatage wouldn’t get ashore if the boat broke in pieces. They were some way from the rocks, though how close or far was hard to say. The obscuring rain flung itself against our faces like needles of ice. Distances deceived. The wall across the fjord seemed as if it could be touched, yet the flying boat in turmoil by the shore was out of sight. Bennett winged his arms to where he had last seen it.

We turned our collars up and crouched over the point we had been sent to mark. My hands covered my ears and met on the top of my head. If the flying boat disappeared we would be staked out in the wind till we died – or were spotted and rescued, which was unlikely. I brought my hands down. Rain penetrated. The gorge of the straits was blocked to the east by a dark wall advancing towards our cove like a cork being pushed home to bottle us up. I imagined the splintering of the thin hull.

I needed to know the worst, but the loud wind created silence. My ears craved to hear the tinny noise of disaster, as at my radio I had extracted the faint squeak of a vital message, except that now our lives depended on it. No wind could hide the sound of the flying boat’s rending contest with rocks and gravel, and neither did it have the power to negate an irritated drone which came first from the mountains, then from another direction, and again out of the sky as if its own peculiar accelerating roar was being bounced slow-motion between the clouds.

I knew what it was, but Bull shouted first. ‘They’ve started the engines to keep it off shore.’

‘Let’s hope they can.’

He didn’t hear. ‘Good lads! Hold tight! Get it away!’ or some such words, to judge by the way he jumped up and down.

Unable to see, our ears were attuned even more to the engine, and we became part of the struggle in the cove. The wind moaned as if signalling the death-rattle from the four-stroke throat. But the engines roared around us, ears and eyelids shivering as they overcame the bang of the wind. I almost expected to see the portly flank of the flying boat go by on take-off.

It was hard to stay still, but to pace in circles to the wind’s screech, and the engines that fought marvellously against it, might be to lose the position we had worked so hard to find. Bull did not feel the same obligation, and there was no response to my call. I shouted full strength but hardly heard my voice – only the rattle of it in my head. Visibility wasn’t more than a few yards, and I supposed he had descended the hill to find a better view through the mist.

The engines cut, but I continued to hear them. Either better times had come or the worst had taken place. How long ago they had stopped I couldn’t know, and I fought to stay calm, seeing no one and hearing only the cosmic shutterbang of the gale. I sat and imagined Bull lost, never to return, that Bennett, Appleyard and Rose had been drowned trying to reach the flying boat in the dinghy, and that those on board had gone down with the ship. But my face was wet from rain not tears.

I might have assumed that the engines had been cut because the flying boat had found a secure anchorage, and that those on shore were sitting out the storm before coming up the hill to me. All was well in the world. I talked to Bennett as if our small globe of visibility had enough warmth to keep us alive. The only time I could attempt communication was when he was not present, and so I took to pieces the reasons for coming here, and put them back together in a way that suggested we had made a futile journey, but to show also that I had understood our motives sufficiently to remember them for the future.

It didn’t wash. The rain did that. I felt like a stump of wood being worn away. He said: ‘You don’t talk to me, erk. I do the talking, if I care to. And what have I to say to a superannuated Backtune who wasn’t even on active service when he got his Dear John letter? On this stunt we not only do our jobs, but that little bit extra as well. The Aldebaran needs you, don’t forget. Remember also that the skipper takes an interest in your work.’

There was little either of us could say. I was pulled into a trance. If I had not been acting as marker for the gold I would have walked to keep myself warm, but having given my word I was obliged to stay no matter how numb I became. I didn’t think about the possibility of death approaching as quickly as Appleyard said later that it might. Having sent the false signals made it obvious that I would now do as ordered. If I had not sent them I might have weakened, abandoned my position under the excuse of survival, and lost the location of the treasure, so that refinding it after the storm – the guide poles having been swept away by the wind – would have left us no time to get the gold up before we were discovered by those who wanted it for themselves. An unpleasant course of action was always seen as crucial.

But the matter went deeper than doing what was obviously my duty. I would have stayed in any case, acceptance being composed of pride, tradition, greed, honour and a desire to explore my nature to the utmost. There was nothing more attractive to me at that time. I thought of fate as the unbreakable spider’s web, but did not know whether by being drawn to it I was the spider or the victim. In my imaginary conversation I told Bennett none of this.

I sat on the ground and dozed. The lack of visibility was a sort of darkness, within whose protection I grew less cold.

5

If Bennett had been authorized to recommend any of his crew for medals, or to be mentioned in despatches, he would surely have honoured Nash for saving the headquarters of the expedition. It was not that he had been uninterested in the fact of our superbly winged vessel being poised for a fatal collision with the shore, but that he had got his priorities right. With one good man on board, and four prime engines, he felt no concern for the flying boat. He exercised fine tuning over his tactics, Rose said to me later. It was his strategy that had been out of control from the beginning.

He sheltered under cover of the dinghy, for to try reaching us on the hill in such a tempest would have risked his party being scattered and perhaps lost. They stayed together till the wind died sufficiently for him to take a compass bearing and follow Rose and Appleyard up the hillside, keeping them in line-ahead.

In the dream I banged my shoulder against a crenellated wall forty feet high and fell towards the ditch, pursued by half-bird and half-flying boat, nature’s work and man’s which, within the dreamscape, seemed absolute reality. A blow at the shoulder caused me to topple as if hollow, the dream sliced through. Appleyard thought I might be dead, but Rose knew better. Bennett’s demand as to where Bull had gone came above the rattle of the wind.

I reached for the mound of stones and sat up, angry because unable to continue falling into the moat below the crenellations. After a trumpet call the wall would descend on me, and I would sleep forever after an endless drop not of my making.

Bennett kicked around the area as if spoiling an invisible sandcastle before the tide came in. ‘I asked where Bull was.’

‘Gone for a walk.’ I spoke three times before he understood. They had brought food and coffee from the dinghy, and the quick meal opened my eyes. Bull could be miles up the mountain. Perhaps he had fallen. He was bound to be lost. He didn’t need defending. Anyone with sense would have done the same. ‘He couldn’t stay put, and freeze to death.’

‘He’ll be court-martialled for dereliction of duty.’

Appleyard worked as if excavating a slit trench for protection against artillery. He considered the air bracing – as I had a few hours ago. ‘No worse than a summer’s stroll in the Lake District.’

‘He deserves to be shot.’ Bennett laughed, but I didn’t like his humour.

Maybe the bearings had been inaccurate. Perhaps they were false. The exploration was shallow, and there was no sign. I wondered whether I had moved without being aware. The soft and peaty soil was striated by occasional gravel. When Appleyard’s spade struck, Bennett took it from him and dug furiously, then gave the loosened boulder a kick to burst any toes.

Rose and I had a turn, keeping our backs to the flurries of rain and sleet. Bennett gazed into the mire and listened to every tap of the spades. We could see further down the slope, and while I wanted the sky to clear sufficiently for a search party to go up the mountain, the others hoped that the mist would stay so that we could dig in safety. The low rampart shielded an area three yards square and a foot deep. I enjoyed the work, in spite of the ache to limbs and spine, and the heat on my palms preceding blisters. The depth of our excavation increased. ‘Anyone from a distance might think we’re digging our graves.’

Appleyard told me to shut up and get-bloody-on with it. His spade met a hard object, but he pushed with his boot as if it were a temporary aberration in the composition of the soil. Bennett, on the edge of our visibility, was engrossed in the uncertainties of the weather. I also reached solid metal. ‘Something here, Skipper.’

My feelings were out of contact with reality. The boxes or tins could have been filled with stones for all I cared. Unable to appreciate the great moment, we were exhausted and silent, but continued our slow-motion poking about the soil as more rectangular shapes became apparent. Bennett strolled over from the gloom, and saw how we were getting on. I lacked enthusiasm, but my memory was good, both qualities uppermost at the sight of him in muddy soil pulling boxes which weighed nearly sixty pounds. He drew one to the edge of the diggings as if it were a celluloid replica, and we gathered around like keen types as he hammered at rust-encrusted bolts and lifted a lid.

The inside was lined with oilcloth. He took off his gloves for the occasion, hands looking more delicate and pink than during the unrolling of a chart, or when at the controls of the Aldebaran. He scooped up dull coins, and we were treated to the unforgettable sound of gold tumbling against gold, which I had never heard before and have not heard since.

Soil and treasure produced a peculiar smell, a mixture of metal and mushrooms. The gold was not ours, nor any Bennett’s till it was transported to where the share-out would take place. Nevertheless, I think we all wanted to dip into the mess of pottage, and perhaps one of us, unwilling to miss a unique experience, would have done so if we hadn’t heard, in the declining wind, the echo of a full-throated scream.

It was uncalled for, an intrusion at the wrong moment, causing more irritation than alarm. None of us moved, perhaps for as long as half a minute, to hear if the cry came again. My direction-finding ears got a fair bearing, and I stood up to point the way. ‘It came from the watercourse.’

Bird cries filtered through the mist. ‘We’ll go and get him,’ Appleyard said.

‘Your work is here,’ Bennett said coolly, ‘not searching for a fool who should have stayed at his post.’

I knew how cold the body could be, as ice went to my stomach and seemed to freeze it solid. But I felt incapable of a long hike up the mountains. ‘He’s injured. We can’t let him die.’

‘He’s had it already.’ Bennett was adamant. ‘If we go off searching for him we’ll be lost in no time – or fall down some precipice.’ The day’s rain sent enormous falls of water rushing to the sea. When the wind dropped, the sound of the torrent was unmistakable. ‘I’m responsible for holding this expedition together, and it’s already split between here and the ship, so I can’t send another two of you into this kind of countryside. If I had twice the crew, I wouldn’t sanction it without fair weather. To look for Bull now – even if it was him we heard – is to risk a real cock-up.’

I’ll never know if he was right, yet he sounded reasonable. We got back to work and, still in daylight, stacked forty boxes like so many bricks on solid ground.

6

We huddled, eating, smoking, swigging whisky from Bennett’s flask, and hoping that the moment to begin our donkey-work would never come. We were to get the gold down to the beach, but in the meantime the last daylight was drawn from the sky like bleach out of a bottle encrusted by the detritus of a wasteland: clouds of swarf, rolls of gunmetal, wisps of green mould, puffs of damp blue, the strangest ochre-coloured sunset I ever saw from a pure-air part of the world. ‘God is up to some funny stuff.’

Rose shielded his eyes. ‘Isn’t He always?’

Appleyard spat. ‘You shouldn’t take His name in vain.’

With darkness the mist drew back. Bennett put a large torch into my hand and looked into the luminous gradations of his prismatic compass. ‘Face the same direction, and when you find the signal-button get in touch with Nash on the flight deck. Tell him to come ashore in the second dinghy with Armatage. Make it as short as you can. We want no interception.’

I held a steady light on the downhill bearing and sent a series of AAAs. Bennett paced behind. ‘Keep on. They’ll see it.’

I lifted my eyes. ‘There’s a star in the sky.’

He had faith, and everything to gain by persistence. ‘We want foul weather. The fouler the better.’

I thought of Bull, dead or dying on the hillside, and hoped for the good of us all that he was alive. After a further string of AAAs the steady white flash of an answer came, and I sent slowly so that Wilcox or Nash could interpret with ease. ‘O K ERE STOP NASH AND ARM CUM SHORE THEN WAIT OK?’

QSL showed that Nash had worked it out and would comply.

‘Send a second signal.’ Bennett spoke as if we were in station headquarters, and I had a full-scale wireless section to look after his traffic. ‘Tell them to beam on us every five minutes.’

Rose was to stay on the hill with the torch and guide us back, while the occasional flash from the flying boat would enable us to locate our beachhead on the way down. Bennett had spent so many weeks working out the drill that he didn’t have to think. He had netted the landscape with pre-computed vertical and horizontal triangles, devising an intricate movement and communications procedure. It was hard to think that slide rule or compass would lead him astray, though with so many stitches in the fabric it was also difficult to see how the pattern could hold.

Nash was as clumsy with a signal lamp as I would have been in a four-Browning turret – but he was effective. The opening and closing lights fused into letters, then words, and the second message was received and understood.

We started, and pressure on my ankles due to humping a half hundredweight metal box made the stint with the theodolite seem like a carefree brush with a football. Bennett, as became his rank, carried nothing, his job being to locate the dinghy and the reinforcements from the flying boat. He frequently stopped to make sure no one spun headlong on the slow descent, or wandered off track with such precious cargo. If I vanished and was picked up by a whaler in six months I’d be richer by twelve thousand pounds. Invest that, and I would live modestly without working for the rest of my life. The haul for Bennett and his backers was a quarter of a million, and the cost of getting it, including the hire of the fuel steamer, could not be above thirty thousand. The well lit picture of a happy share-out in a Hong Kong or Singapore hotel was hard to credit as I stumbled in waterlogged clothes behind Bennett’s shadowy back, which now and again stooped as – counting the paces – he consulted the compass to keep us in the right direction.

A reassuring light winked off-shore. Low clouds held their rain, and the sharp air was sweet. I had forgotten what it was like to move without being breathless. Wandering unladen over such landscape might be pleasant. But like a pack animal I dwelt on nothing, determined that never again would I indulge in such work.

Forty boxes would mean twenty trips uphill and down. The Duke of York’s army would have nothing on us. Even if reinforcements doubled the number of hard shoulders, ten trips would still be needed, which would take fifteen miles of humpbacked walking. Soldiers or mountaineers had done as much, and the daunting prospect was forgotten when a light flickered and we heard Nash’s voice at the beach. ‘You’ve got it?’

Bennett nodded. ‘All we do is fetch it down, and tuck it up on board before daylight.’

‘Not at this rate you won’t. Where’s Bull?’

‘He went missing.’

‘In this place? Couldn’t you stop him?’

‘He just wandered off.’

I took a few seconds to realize who Bennett meant when he said: ‘The wireless operator stayed at his post.’

Nash peered into the darkness. ‘We’d better get going. How far is it?’

Bennett told him. ‘One man will stay here, to guide us in.’

Nash waved his arm. ‘To hell with that, Skipper. The quicker it’s down, the better.’ He lashed a switched-on torch to a surveying pole stuck in the sand. ‘What’s the angle? We can beam on this. Don’t need a man to hold it. The battery will last. The more of us at work the sooner we get back on board to a bucket of cocoa and a ham sandwich!’

We set off towards Rose’s intermittent light on the hilltop. When Armatage stumbled, Nash told him to move sharp or he’d get a boot at his arse. I expected a barney, but Armatage grumbled at the slippery ground and went forward.

At the summit Nash took the torch and matched a similar beacon to the one at the beach, which was so dim that only his rear-gunner’s eyes could see it. ‘You can hump your share like the rest of us,’ he said to Rose. ‘It’ll keep you warm.’

When we picked up our loads he said: ‘Put the buggers down again. I haven’t run a building site for nothing. We need a few labourers from Lincolnshire on this stunt. If I promised a bonus they’d have this lot down the hill in ten minutes. See what I do, then follow me. We’ll adapt our tactics to the terrain. But be careful not to bust any of the boxes or there’ll be a few slit throats for the birds to fly into.’ He turned. ‘Eh, Skipper? If you feel inclined, Mr Bennett, you can join the party as well.’

‘I’ll stay with the boxes. They shouldn’t be left unguarded.’

‘As you say, sir, but Wilcox has the mid-upper guns trained on the beach in case of funny business.’ He took two boxes by their handles and, walking almost at ground level, like a truncated dwarf, slid them over the turf and set off downhill. The heavy metal moved as if on ice, not keeping a straight course, yet heading towards the lighted dinghy. Appleyard followed, then Armatage, brought up by Rose, and rearguarded by me, so that we had ten boxes in motion at the same time.

Not five yards apart, we were covered in mud. Curving around boulders created a splash-track that shot moss and black liquid up our arms – which met spray coming from boots dug in to prevent overturning. Halfway, we were close enough to hear Appleyard say: ‘On our next job I’ll bring a couple of mud-sledges, and fifty black huskies!’

Nash enjoyed being the foreman. ‘Your time-sheets are going to look pretty before the night’s out.’ Stooped and moving, only the hard work stopped it being comical. We were his dog-team, but didn’t mind because he also was in harness. Bennett sat on the hill to guard the fast diminishing cargo. Now that the gold was found he had lost interest. The quest was over – so we thought. All we had to do was depart from the place and collect our wages. Bennett had brought us here, but Nash, it seemed to me, would get us back.

7

If our energy came from the sight of the gold, we were spending freely. None stinted his basic resource, and in three hours the boxes were at the beach. While Nash and Bennett discussed the best way of getting the cargo on board, we ate what was left of the rations.

The flying boat rose and fell. Wind played in the aerials, moaning above the slop of water on the beach. There was a smell of seaweed, half burnt vegetables, bird droppings and fish, odours coming and going between prolonged alcoholic gusts of sweet air. The sense of adventure was almost carnal, a sentimental attachment which was nevertheless profound and lasting. Standing in the open, tired and splashed with mud, on an island in a part of the world which did not seem connected to any other, the feeling was wholly a part of me because the wind and the smells said so, as also did whatever hazards were brewing before the light of day came on.

Waves lapped their creamy phosphorus over black shingle, and our pale flying boat dominated the cove. I was as far from home and what had made me as it was possible to get and yet be on earth. It was where I had always wanted to be, though whether I would learn anything of the half of myself that had got me here was doubtful. I only knew that whenever I took one step to alter my life, Fate took two. Now it had taken three, and I was lost in more ways than one, and if I couldn’t make the effort to care it was because I did not think there was anything on earth that could do me harm.

We put out our cigarettes, and Rose who hammered his pipe against the heel of his boot swore as the stem flew away from the bowl. Being in the second boat, he could have sat for another ten minutes. ‘It was a present from my mother. I’ve a spare one in my kit, but I get nervous if I don’t have a reserve.’

‘Why not try to fix it?’ Appleyard, thinking it important that our navigator be consoled, found the two pieces. ‘I’ll have a go later.’

Nash shouted, as the icy water struck up to his waist. Armatage went head first, legs waving till Nash put a hand on his back. ‘Dive in, for God’s sake. It ain’t a concrete mixer. Do you think your mother’s going to come out of bed and pull you on board?’

He steadied the motions of the dinghy so that Bennett could get on. Armatage fixed the oars in the rowlocks, then caught hold of a spare oar and pushed from the shore into the calm water of the fjord. Nash’s voice carried over the water. ‘Hold the bloody thing still!’

Appleyard dragged boxes to the water’s edge so that they could be lifted as soon as Nash returned. A light from the flying boat was set to guide us. I was roused by the click of rowlocks and, down from my dream on the hilltop, ran into the water and caught the rope, pulling till I heard the hull scraping.

Four boxes made the boat unwieldy once we were on the water, but I pulled hard at the oars, spraying Nash at the tiller. Our eyes were used to the darkness, and the flying boat was close inshore. Craving sleep, I wished for the labour to be over. ‘I’ll take it on the next trip,’ Nash said. ‘Can you manage the tiller?’

I nodded. ‘The palms of my hands are giving me jip.’

‘Just keep on. We’ll beat ’em yet!’

Night and day had been pulled from the passage of time. There was neither. We were nowhere, attached only to the passing moments. ‘Do we look for Bull, or not?’

I had forgotten the question by the time he replied. ‘After this effort,’ he said, ‘we’ve got to have sleep. We’ll be no good without it. And to look for Bull we also need daylight, and fair weather. Then we’ll see what can be done. Go a bit to port. I’ll square it with the Skipper.’

The starboard float was suspended in the darkness and, feeling that the rig might fall, I rowed quickly under it. Nash told me to steady-on, and make for the hatchway. Water chopped against us, but we reached the side. Wilcox threw a rope. ‘Another mud-pie gang!’

We tied close, and I set a box up on my shoulder. Bennett looked out from the promised land of the flying boat, from which wafted the warm smell of fuel and stale food. I wanted nothing more than to get in and sleep. Any surface would do. ‘Keep it close, Mr Nash,’ the skipper called. ‘Keep that dinghy in. No space between.’

The weight came from my shoulder. Nash hoisted the second box. ‘Wakey-wakey, Sparks! Let’s have the third.’

I struggled to lift, but the box was pulled from me by Armatage when about to slip into the water. Nash told me it wasn’t necessary to heave them onto my shoulder. If I used both hands and levered as far as my knees, the handles could be reached from the hatchway. ‘It’s also safer. You won’t get a hernia.’

We pushed off to let Rose’s dinghy unload. Exhaustion had seemed so final that I was unprepared for a return of energy. After the first load it became, as Nash said, a piece of cake. Knowing the distance helped. Technique improved. He was right. At unloading I would bend my knee and ledge a box on it so that Armatage could reach from the more stable platform of the flying boat.

We dreaded a rough sea, the snapping of a rope, and the slipping of a heavy box into the dark sandwich of water between dinghy and fuselage. So I was careful. Every plunge of the oars while rowing was like dipping pens in ink to skim us through the shine of water. The blend of hurry and absolute attention carried us from the hatchway and around the rear of the port float which, looming above, served as a circuit marker, giving the second dinghy a clear way in.

Nash worked the oars and I steered for the light on the beach. My back was to the flying boat, his view of it blocked by me as he moved us in unruffled transmission over the water. Out of a half dream came a yell and a splash which brought me back into consciousness. The responding shout from Appleyard caused me to wonder what had gone wrong, but I blocked speculation so as to make the run-in to shore. ‘Something’s happened. Do we turn?’

‘Keep on. We’ve got work to do.’ His pace didn’t alter, but he was out of breath. ‘We’ll know soon enough.’ Distance muffled the noise of shouting as I leapt onto the beach with the rope in my hand.

The pile of boxes diminished. I set the last of our load in the boat, my feet swollen from wading. ‘We’ll take some getting dry.’

‘Sea water’s good, unless you swallow the stuff.’ He went ashore for his customary piss, and when the boxes lay like dominoes on the bottom of the dinghy I placed myself at the oars.

‘Push off.’ And felt the gentle lift as we were waterborne. ‘You’ll make a sailor yet.’

‘Does Davy Jones want me that badly?’

‘You’re lucky if somebody does. My wife left me when I went to jail, and none of my family would talk to me anymore. They loved me during the war. I’m best out of it.’ I rowed more quickly. ‘That’s the way of the world,’ he said. ‘But take it easy. You’ll get there, soon enough.’

‘They may need help.’

‘You’ll be no good if you knacker yourself.’

It was easier to hurry when exhausted. But our passage took longer than usual. We neared the float. ‘What’s wrong?’

Wilcox had gone overboard.

‘He slipped, and let go of the rope,’ Armatage shouted. ‘But the box was all right.’

‘You’d better give him a cup of the hot stuff,’ Nash called. ‘This water’s too cold for a midnight dip.’

‘And where’s Appleyard?’

‘In the drink, looking for Wilcox.’

My clothes felt like tissue paper in the wind. Rose’s dinghy came round by the nose. ‘We tried to get him out.’ There was an explosion of water from which a hand and head surfaced between the side and Rose’s boat. Nash leapt on board and stretched his arms out of the hatch, while I nudged the dinghy so as to push Appleyard close. While the rest looked on, silence during the actual lift was more awesome than any activity. The body seemed waterlogged, a dead weight. But he was alive, a hand moving across his marbled face as Nash rolled him like a carpet till there was no danger of him tipping back into the drink.

Bennett came out of his room. ‘Why have we stopped work?’

‘One man missing, believed drowned.’ Nash didn’t look up. ‘Wilcox, the flight engineer. Another man half dead searching for him. Appleyard, the gunner.’

Bennett looked as if such an event wasn’t worth his attention, the lines of his gaunt face set hard by the fact that, whatever it cost, nothing was going to stop him being rich. But in the dim light of the door his mouth was twisted by uncertainty – which a further touch of callousness put right. ‘I rely on you to keep everybody working.’

Neither the sea nor the basaltic lava of the mountainside would give up their dead. I stood in the dinghy, balancing to stay upright. Above were the birds, and below voracious fish. In between were castaways. ‘The wireless operator and Mr Rose will get the next lot in, sir.’ There was a wheedling in Nash’s tone, but from diplomacy rather than nature. ‘I’ll look after Appleyard. Armatage can unload the boat when it comes back.’

I waited for an order from one or the other.

‘Both boats are needed to finish the job.’

Nash’s tone, from being respectful, turned comradely. ‘Can’t do it, Skipper. We can’t afford to lose Appleyard. But I promise to get everything in before daylight.’

Rose and I would have to ferry another five loads, instead of three. It was easier said than done. ‘I’ll take care of him,’ Bennett said, ‘and stow the boxes when they come aboard.’

The raw wind blasted us. Even the cry of the birds would have been company. Nash looked up from his patient. ‘Oh yes, I know you will.’

His sarcasm made a clear picture of Bennett pushing the half-conscious man back into the water. I couldn’t believe it, but knew that Nash thought it more than likely.

In the lighted hatchway I saw Bennett’s revolver touching Nash’s temple. ‘Get back to your boat, or this will be the one trip you won’t come back from.’

The face that turned to him was green with a sickness that had nothing to do with fear of death. Confidence had been broken. The fight between sense and power was back, but Nash could not give in easily to either, though when he spoke his lips had become thinner. He tried to camouflage the revelation with a smile. ‘The sound of the shot will travel for miles, Skipper, and may be heard by those who are looking for us. If I go for a Burton, so may Appleyard. That’ll make four off the ration strength. You’ll be short-handed when trouble starts. I can’t believe you want that.’

I lacked the comforting hump of the Smith and Wesson under my jacket. If Nash was killed, the rest of the gold would stay ashore, buried by seaweed and birdshit till God Almighty claimed it for his own. I pulled the dinghy close, ready to leap aboard.

The gun was aimed at my face, and the chances were small that in the next few seconds I would continue to feel miserable and exhausted. I did not care whether I lived or died when Nash missed his chance to knock Bennett down.

‘I’ll tell you what’ – his voice was as friendly and familiar as during a discussion at the Driftwood Hotel – ‘I’ll get Appleyard on his feet, and when the boat comes back make up two crews again. We’ll finish stowing those boxes before you can turn round.’

Bennett nodded curtly, and walked to his room. Rose and I each took an oar so as to get away quickly. Beyond the float he moved to the tiller. ‘What did you make of that?’

I was pulling too hard to talk.

‘We’ll have to lock him up,’ he said.

‘Nash knows how to deal with him. If we go for Bennett, he’ll be on his side, believe you me.’

We landed, and began loading. ‘I’ll have cramp in my fingers forever,’ he said. ‘I might not be able to work my slide rule or sextant with sufficient dexterity to find our way.’

The oars seemed bigger with every trip. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be able to tap my morse key, either.’

‘Wilcox just slipped into the drink. Came up twice, and none of us could get him, though it looked easy enough. When he went down for the third time Appleyard dived in. The whole thing happened in slow motion. He was our copilot.’

I asked Rose if he could fly the plane.

‘Me? No more than you can. And I know you can’t.’

‘You’d better not think of doing anything to Bennett, then.’

‘That’s all very well, as far as it goes. But it might be our turn next.’

‘How is he going to get the kite back on his own?’

‘He’ll have Nash. Nash got his wings. He went right through to OTU, then was grounded for something or other. He remustered as a gunner.’

‘He never said anything to me about it.’

‘Why should he?’

Armatage was at the flying boat. ‘He’s as right as rain. Wants to get back on the job already, but Nash won’t let him.’

I lifted the first box. ‘And the skipper?’

He winked. ‘All jolly and bright.’

When we were empty Nash got into my boat. ‘I’ll row both ways, Sparks. Give you a break. I’m for finishing the job quick.’

So were we all. Zest was apparent, with the end in sight. The second dinghy was a few yards behind. Halfway to the shore he said: ‘If there’s any further argy-bargy between me and the skipper, you keep out of it, see?’

I nodded.

‘I’ll take care of him. I’ve known him a sight longer than you, and we’ve been through a fair bit together.’

‘If you want it that way.’

‘It’s the only way it’ll work’ With the mooring rope over his shoulder he leapt onto the beach. He worked quickly, passing the boxes to me, and we were away before the others landed. He rowed our last trip as well. We made the boat fast and, once on board, I stayed close to the hatchway, my dissociation from the world complete. But when Rose came I lifted the final boxes from Armatage, and while stacking them Bennett said: ‘I’ll see you get a campaign medal for this, Sparks – which is more than we poor aircrew got from the war!’

Appleyard volunteered for guard in the mid-upper, and Bennett sat on the flight deck. After a hot drink we slept – as they say – in our own footprints.

8

Easier said than done. Sometimes in sleep I go under and die, don’t remember dreams growing out of bedrock. I’d like to know what’s there, but my faculties have hooks that won’t grapple. I belong to another world so absolutely that during the time of contact I do not exist. What I endure while in that world is impossible to know. Or so I understand. I woke after an hour as if called up by radio even though the set was switched off.

Where Rose’s head pressed on the chart table, a tideline of sweat stained his pre-computed altitude curves. He breathed evenly and, without waking, though his eyes opened for a second, turned his head to lay the scarred cheek down. Perhaps he dreamed someone was trying to kill him. On the other hand, maybe while sleeping he was at peace.

Bennett, enthroned at the controls, sat up stiffly but fast asleep. Darkness beyond the canopy was thick with ground-level cloud in which anything could move without being seen. Whatever happened would be to our disadvantage. Appleyard slept in the mid-upper. The boat rocked unattended, hatches battened, tanks almost empty. Wilcox wouldn’t work his knobs and levers, or cough unspoken thoughts into the intercom – or play slot-machines anymore. We were also a gunner short, but did it matter with a ton of gold on board? The metal meant no more to me than a cargo of cement or wheat. Bennett was part-owner and skipper, but we were merely employees of the carriers.

The atmosphere was eerie. I put down the button of my radio and waited for the magic eye to dawn. Atmospherics drowned everything in the hour before daylight. Mountains closed in on the medium frequency and limited our range. Fragmentary weather reports on short wave bounced from too far to be of use. I switched off and stepped down the ladder, circumventing Armatage who was curled up like a baby. Nash snored in the bunk, bare toes pointing in the air. Mugs and plates were everywhere, tea towels spread, a box of apples going rotten. I lit the primus and put the huge kettle on. The smell of carbolic made me hungry when I used a handful of water to wash my face. I rifled the biscuit tin, and sat drinking coffee at the table.

‘I thought you’d died.’ Armatage woke me two hours later. ‘You didn’t even hear me shouting when I dropped a plate. I wouldn’t mind being twenty-five again!’

‘You never will be,’ said Nash, ‘and that’s a fact.’

Intensive sleep had oven-dried my clothes. Daylight air billowed in. Nash stripped to his underpants by the hatchway, did half a dozen knee-bends, then lowered a canvas bucket and emptied water over himself. He shook and danced, shot the contents of his nose into the drink and wiped the final sleep from his eyes with the corner of a towel. A corpse edged between the dinghy and the hull. The shoulders went under. One arm ended at gnawed and mangled flesh. However it had been trapped, the motion of the rope and bucket caused its release. Perhaps Wilcox had fought himself to death in the kelp. Nash got a boat hook under the belt and we heaved to get him out, except Armatage who went chalk-white and sat at the bottom of the ladder with his face turned away.

The open eyes looked up, as if the possibility of seeing horizontally would elude him for ever and he was doomed to view only the blank sky. The corpse stank of seawater as a cat’s fur stinks of rain.

Bennett took off his cap, and pulled at his dry springy hair – unlike Wilcox’s which was short and pasted to the skull like a dummy’s. ‘We must give him a decent burial.’

It would be kinder to fasten an anchor and let him go overboard, Nash said. He would sink to the bottom and stay put. ‘Wouldn’t mind such a resting place myself.’

But Bennett found a canvas sack where the towing pennant was stored, and Appleyard stitched the body in. We lowered our cargo into the dinghy with as much care as if we had charge of Lord Nelson himself. Nash stayed on watch, and we rowed ashore.

I had hoped never to leave the flying boat again, but was learning to respect the unexpected. Its homely confines were settled sparely on the water when I glanced round. We hauled at ropes through the mire, sledging the body uphill. So much for our day of rest. Wilcox hadn’t weighed more than seven stone, and though the mailbag slid well enough, we went slowly up the gradient, Bennett in front with a book under his arm, cap on and appearing taller than any of us at reaching higher ground first.

The path had been worn already by transporting the gold, and in an hour we reached our former diggings. Bennett manoeuvred a stone as if worrying a football, to the point from which the most central box had been taken. With spades and entrenching tools we shovelled sufficiently to demarcate an oblong hole. The displaced soil eased our job of getting the grave deep enough. Armatage wiped his sweat with a handkerchief. ‘He might have picked a better place to die.’

Rose picked up an earthworm, and dropped it. ‘Who can choose?’

‘I don’t suppose his next of kin will come with flowers.’ Appleyard’s shoulders were level with the surface, and only one man could work at a time. When Bennett signalled, he climbed over the parapet. We stood facing the skipper, hats in hands, senses blunted by geological layer-cakes at all points but for the slit of water on which the plane floated. ‘We shan’t do well without him,’ Appleyard said. ‘He was one of the best.’

Bennett nodded. ‘No more talking. And throw those cigarettes down.’ I expected him to remind us that we were on parade. All he needed to complete the scene was a gatling gun and a pack of natives coming up the hill to dispute our claim. He paced the flattened surface of the ridge, and perused his slim book to decide what portions should be read. I anticipated a few mumbled words, though dragging Wilcox’s body to this spot obviously called for something more.

‘After the war I lost touch with him, and went to a lot of trouble to find him. I finally reached him through his mother, who told me he’d had tuberculosis, and had just left a sanatorium. I didn’t know he’d walked out without being cured. When I told him our plans, he produced a certificate to say he was fit for work. Where he got it I don’t know, but there seemed no reason to believe it wasn’t genuine. He was dead keen to come, and I was just as keen to have him. By the time I found out that he’d been given only a short time to live it was too late for me to replace him with anyone else. It was hard to believe he wouldn’t last the trip, and I’m sure he would if it hadn’t been for the accident.

‘He wasn’t your ordinary everyday knobs-and-levers merchant. Not Wilcox. During the war we went through some hair-raising moments, as you know – except Mr Ad-cock – but we were part of a team, of which Wilcox was the perfect member. He would never hold back from doing more than his bit. We were all or nothing, and we came out with everything. On the other hand, we should never forget those who didn’t come out, who gave more than everything. But when we said goodbye at the end of the war none of us knew we’d meet again, and come to a place like this. Nor did I know that when we did, Wilcox would be killed in action. There were dozens of times when he could have gone, which leads me to wonder at the reason why God chooses the time and how He decides the place.’

He turned a few pages of the book. ‘Blessed be the Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who formed you in judgement, who nourished and sustained you in judgement, who brought death on you in judgement, who knoweth the number of you all in judgement, and will hereafter restore you to life in judgement. May David Samuel Wilcox come to this place in peace.’

In spite of such grand words, I felt he believed nothing of what he was reading, till in one pause came the faintest smile, a moment perhaps when he sensed the biting relevance of his text, suggesting that this ritual of getting Wilcox to such a burial spot was an attempt to work something human back into himself. Why else would he have done it? I recognized his peculiar smile as a mark of pain, which spread into every fibre of his body and soul.

‘He that dwelleth in the shelter of the Most High abideth under the shadow of the Almighty. I say of the Lord. He is my refuge and my fortress. Thou favourest man with knowledge, and teachest mortals understanding. Forgive us, O our Father, for we have sinned; pardon us, O our King, for we have transgressed. Look upon our affliction and plead our cause, and redeem us speedily for Thy name’s sake. Vouchsafe a perfect healing to all our wounds.’

Appleyard wept.

‘As for man, his days are as grass; as the flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.’

Heads down, we saw a world of grit and ash. Whoever cannot weep is damned because he will not. But I couldn’t. Stinging wind made tears. I felt the power of desolation, in a country I had never known. The most unreal comes to be the most real, a truth apparent as I listened to the Ninetieth Psalm and the whine of the uprising gale behind each line. Death drummed us into a silence that was not bitter, but neutral. The only good was that the words of the Book rooted us in a common past, and held promise of a common future, provided we could get out with no more dead.

‘Lay him to rest. He’s better off than we are.’

‘God gave him a Blighty one,’ Appleyard murmured. Unable to deny it, I rolled the body to one side. We drew the rope under the middle, them steadied the sack down.

Bennett set his cap on and stuffed the book inside his jacket. ‘Put plenty of stones on top.’

We made a cairn on the hump of ground so that the location was unmistakable – which was what Bennett wanted. ‘A trig point,’ said Rose. ‘Let’s hope all of us get one.’

Beyond the reverse slope a stream descended from the re-entrant. A cloud of birds wheeled clockwise above rushing water near the beach. We were close enough for the crying skuas to overlap the sky and investigate us. Distaste blighted Bennett’s expression when he lowered the field-glasses from what he had seen.

Out of its wide circuit a skua came close. We avoided its scything beak. Black eyes glittered, swooping on a wide span of wing with proprietary rage, a flash of white near each tip. Armatage hurled his spade like a javelin. ‘I’d like to twist its bloody neck.’

‘Our necks would be bloody if it had half the chance,’ Appleyard said. I saw no advantage in such a fray. To know when to stop is vital. A step forward due to curiosity, or because you move without realizing, makes you a plaything of some force which is beyond explanation.

Bennett was halfway down. Other predatory outriders of the feast swirled about. Probably a seal, said Rose. There’s no animal protection society in these parts. I never liked birds. Nothing’s safe from them. Our voices became crazed as we advanced in line with spades and entrenching tools. ‘It may be king of the air,’ said Appleyard, ‘but if the bugger comes close, it’s had it.’

They wheeled in pairs, riled that we would compete at their feed. I felt the wind of one sweep by, and swung at another coming near. Appleyard sicked them with salvoes of gravel, and stung the most daring which, unsuspecting, got it full against the head, swerving not to come back. There were a dozen by the river, and we fought off those which would not move. Armatage enjoyed the skirmishing. ‘They’re bloody game birds!’

I ran to unseat the last pair. What they had been dining on was scattered by the water, red flesh on black gravel. A bar of rock held gobbets at its rim, but most had been pulled ashore – cloth, a hat, a familiar boot, and pieces of kit as if thrown by some St Vitus-stricken murderer, discernible because soaked blood made them like wads of flesh.

At another rush of air I cut with the spade, striking the head as a beak swept by. It crashed and flapped, and tried to run. The sight of Bull’s eyeless decapitation settled by green flies sent me chopping at the wings, cries mixing with the flash of nearby water, till I was pulled from my mad hacking.

I wanted to be alone, block off their gloating and congratulations, to slaughter what other birds came close. Bennett’s command from his own world had no effect. He stood to one side while Armatage wrapped the wallet in his scarf.

We would go back along the beach rather than over Wilcox Hill. Across a headland, thousands of white-chested penguins moved like the surface of a lake with indistinguishable shores. A pigeon-coop smell came on the breeze. Fate was intent on us dying like flies at the end of summer – till nothing was left but an oil stain on a sea without end. Rose said we should deposit Bull’s remains in the same grave as Wilcox. Bennett told him they could stay where they were. It was no more than he deserved for having deserted his post. We had work to do. And common graves were bad omens.

9

Bad luck, I muttered on our way back to the dinghy, till the others, realizing that anguish shared is anguish doubled, asked me to belt-up. How much bad luck can you have when two people die for no good reason? ‘Maybe we’ll have more.’ Rose walked along the beach with me. ‘And that’ll be worse.’

I wanted to outpace him, but he kept up. ‘We’ll batten the hatches and have some respite against the island, even if the kite sinks under us, or falls from the clouds when we take off.’

‘Respite!’ he shouted, burned by the word. A lone bird lifted from a rock as if to take a bite out of the sky. No birds can penetrate the flying boat, or compete once we get into the air. We’re impervious to their evil eye. Bennett laughed at such logic. I was close, but he wouldn’t respond. Appleyard pressed my arm. ‘Hold off, or he’ll kill you. He’s no more responsible for what he does than you are for what happens to you. Shake yourself back into one piece.’

Rocks and tussocks were alive. When I turned, a king penguin, out from the rookery, wondered who I was. His white breast blocked my way. I stood bemused, then stepped aside at the smell. The others laughed as it waddled away grumbling.

I went in the second dinghy with Appleyard. ‘Row hard. Pull your guts out. It’s the only thing to do.’ The air was soft, no breeze. Each oar met its own image as it touched water, the boat sliding along the surface of a mirror. ‘Accidents happen, Sparks. You see a good many down the pit. And you never get used to them. There’s little you can do. That was a nasty one back there, though. Can’t say I’ve seen anything as bad. But such pictures rub off. Like those transfers we used to put on our arms as kids, that we thought would stay forever. Everything goes, sooner than you think. You don’t even know it’s worn off, and that’s the truth. I thought I’d had my chips this morning when I went into the drink after Wilcox, but I feel bang-on now.’

Back at my wireless, half the day had gone. The Heaviside Layer was a band of spinning water, and I was a babe new born with a deafening overdose as I sensed a storm towards the prevailing wind. I told Bennett that weather could hit us within the hour.

He poured a glass of brandy, which I drank straight off. ‘Shouldn’t bother us, in this anchorage. A few ups and downs. It might blow itself out before it gets here. Or change its mind at the last minute. Such things have been known.’

‘We’ll be carrying less weight back. Of the human sort, anyway.’ He pressed a clutch of fingers at his forehead, and on taking them away looked relaxed. Two men were dead, but the gold was aboard. What else mattered? ‘Stop worrying. Bull and Wilcox were careless. Luckily they only harmed themselves. I’m sorry, believe you me, but we can’t let their deaths interfere with our purpose.’ He pointed to a chair. ‘I’ve got more radio gen for you.’

‘Will we be able to take off with so much weight, and more than a full load of fuel?’ I couldn’t let the topic alone.

His left eye was bloodshot, and his smile became a scowl. ‘Has Rose been talking? A good navigator – who’s losing his grip. He’s been tainted by four years of civvy life.’

I sat down. ‘So have we all. But he got us here.’

‘Too true. And he’ll get us back. We’re a team, Sparks, and I need you all, because a hundred things can go wrong – though there’s no reason why they should. The task is straightforward, but the execution is complicated. There’s no mystery. When the goods are delivered we’ll set up a pay parade, and everyone will be on a first class boat back to Blighty. Or you can hitch the flying boat service – if you still have the stomach for it!’

I topped up the next glass with water. ‘I suppose you wanted Wilcox’s grave to be visible for miles, as a decoy? The seaplane looking for us yesterday was after the site of the gold diggings. And now they might assume that’s where it is.’

He laughed. ‘Any ruse in a storm. You’re right, Sparks. A man after my own heart. They may think we haven’t got the stuff out, and concentrate on that spot rather than on us. Wilcox wouldn’t mind. With a bit of luck, such as bad visibility for another fifteen hours, we’ll be up and away.’

‘And if the weather clears?’

‘We shoot our way out of trouble. Take off on a wing and a prayer, if need be. But that’s speculation. I’ve no time for it. Our fuel ship should now be near the northwest corner of the island, at 48 45 South and 69 15 East. The schedule was worked out three months ago. It’s a single deck 600-tonner built in 1928, 145 feet long, manned by the captain, two mates, chief engineer, nine sailors and a radio operator. It’s carrying the best aviation juice money can buy. The master will bring it through the bay at 4 knots, on a zig-zag course for 24 nautical miles, and then he’ll do 2 knots for 96 minutes while negotiating the tricky bits – before picking us up on his radar. It’s the smartest piece of navigation in uncharted waters without a pilot as any captain who’s lost his ticket is ever likely to undertake.’

‘What’s the ship called?’

‘My memory seems to have gone for a Burton.’

‘Where’s it registered?’

He gave that Dambuster smile. ‘Where hasn’t it been registered? The last name painted on its stern was the Difda. Not much of a star, but we’ll call it that, shall we?’

Dizzy from the brandy, I pressed my eyes back into alertness with such force I thought they would stay stuck to the plates of my cranium forever. When they shook loose I looked at him. ‘Do you want me to give him a call?’

‘This is what you’ll do: send the letter K every hour on the half hour, on 425 kilocycles. If you don’t hear the answering letter L, tap it out again after five minutes. But if there’s no response don’t bother for 55 minutes. Carry on till you get something back. But no call signs. Nothing except that single letter. When you finally get an L in answer to your K, send nothing for another hour. Then send K again, and wait for the answering L. When you get the first response, let me know. And tell me, on the hour, when the other answers come.’

‘What if I don’t hear anything?’

He gripped my shoulder. ‘We’re in trouble. But we’ll talk about that if it happens.’

10

There was a while to go before the half hour struck, but I knew that the bell had gonged for Bennett. The barren world had a more human aspect than the wilderness in him. I felt dead in his presence, and alive out of it. I did not expect him to tear his hair or cover himself with ashes about Bull and Wilcox. We were beyond that. No deaths could interfere with a dream that had turned real. It was easy to understand. The presence of an alien metal aboard the flying boat infected us all. I glanced at the boxes as if each held human remains, musing that a few more dead would make no difference as far as Bennett was concerned.

Rose bent over his chart, working out a course for Perth.

‘Do we have the petrol?’

‘We will.’ He closed his dividers. ‘Though without Wilcox to work his fruit machines we’ll be lucky. And that old wind god will have to blow hard at our tail.’

From the astrodome I looked east to the steep-sided channel in which we had landed. Like a fly in a bottle, could we get out? A kelp patch lay under the southern cliffs. Where the throat widened, the waters were mined. The north-south channel which we could use for take-off was hidden by a headland. Mist swirled along the water. Bays, capes, glaciers and mountains were weather-pots continually boiling. When a squall peppered the glass I got back to my radio and listened so intently for that bit of short-long-short-short squeaking that I heard it coming when it wasn’t there. Would I recognize the sounds if they suddenly turned up? I sent the letter K five minutes later, but at no answer leaping back I stayed by the set as if my sanity was bolstered by the glowing button of its magic eye.

The mist protected us but, after an hour, showed us up for miles. The starboard float, suspended from the wing, was the last man-made object between us and India. Mist turned into rain. I put out my hand to feel the patter. No one could speak without being heard. A cough or heavy breath was audible. The world beyond my earphones was a tap of footsteps on aluminium ladders, a spanner falling, a garbled song, the call of seabirds, a clatter of tins from the galley. Water slopped and gurgled at the hull. The peace was accentuated because I no longer felt unsteady underfoot.

Damp air swept through open hatchways, and Nash at the draught called for wood to be put in the hole. Appleyard threw a cigarette end into the water. ‘When the weather clears we’ll be spotted because of this cloud of birds. They’ll do for us yet, if we’re not careful. They’re like flies over a dead cat, a beacon that can be seen for miles.’ He claimed to distinguish between cries of skuas, penguins, petrels and seals. He would guess at their distance, saying that while some were across the water, other sounds carried from far off.

I felt a pang of desire for sight of the sun as I went to my radio for the next schedule, wondering how high one need go to reach blue without limit. I wanted to be airborne and away from this sub-Antarctic envelope. Checking the time with Rose, and hoping I was spot-on frequency, I sent the letter K. Perhaps the other man was not listening, or our signals lacked strength to cross the void. The laws of power and distance were inexorably fixed, and maligning the operator of the Difda for laxity had no effect. Maybe the 600-tonner was swamped already – the SS Maelstrom with its berserking crew caught in the switchback of the Roaring Forties. Perhaps it was a postage-stamp picture of Bennett’s imagination and didn’t exist at all. Nothing seemed real or possible in this world of the anchored flying boat.

Then I heard a callsign loud and clear, which I read but did not recognize for what it was. The volume startled me, each beat scraping my eardrums with brash familiarity. The sender requested that I get in touch with him. My false call sign from what seemed years ago had come home to roost. He had sensed I was listening, as if my transmitter created sounds I didn’t know about. I was checking the leads when he called again, confident and close – but how close I could not know. A bearing put him due south, while the Difda coming to refuel us should be northwest.

He seemed to know where I was, or at least that I was there, and I fought not to rap the key and make contact. Radio silence was a negative weapon, but our one salvation. I waited for him to come on again, but heard nothing, so closed down and told Bennett of the rogue transmitter.

Out of the hatchway, Appleyard in the dinghy held a rod over the water. Two fish were already flapping in the bottom. He made a motion of silence, pulled another into the air and took the hook from its mouth. ‘I thought we needed fresh grub. The water’s full of them.’

‘You’d better emigrate.’

‘I wouldn’t starve, and that’s a fact.’

He threw his cigarette-end towards the float. ‘I found this gear in the survival box. No point not using it.’

I asked where the other dinghy was.

‘Armatage slipped ashore with a butcher’s knife to get some meat. That was hours ago, but Nash gave permission. We’ll have fish and fowl for breakfast.’ He gutted the fish with his black-handled service knife, and slopped the pieces overboard. A bird flew between the struts of the float and gobbled them, then returned to its perch to wait for more.

‘I hope he comes back.’

He laughed. ‘Armatage will be all right.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘After he left the mob he worked on trawlers around Iceland. Coalmining’s a picnic compared to that job. And this one’s a Sunday School outing. Bennett contacted him at Hull when he was at a loose end, so he was all gung-ho for this operation. He’d come back out of hell itself, though I expect you’d see the scorch marks. Not that there’s anywhere he can go on shore, unless he finds a nice cosy settlement with a few women and a barrel of whisky inside. Armatage was pissed on every op we went on, and nobody knew where he got the booze. Out of the bloody compass, I expect. Didn’t stop him doing his work, though. He was a gunner we could rely on.’

He recognized the noise in the sky sooner than I did and, netting his fish, leapt back inside and trod on my foot as he went by. ‘Action stations! Get moving!’

The pilot of the plane was scared to come below the mist and risk hitting shore or water. They’d obviously studied the chart and noticed that the area was good for concealment. Nash took the rear turret, and Appleyard climbed to the mid-upper.’ ‘No gun to fire without good cause,’ said Bennett. Clutching his computer like a packet of sandwiches during an air raid, Rose came down the ladder and went to the front turret.

The high-pitched engine seemed directly overhead, but there was another at a greater height going back and forth above the northern side of the fjord. Bennett was on the flight deck, and I tuned my receiver for any signals. Perhaps they were hoping to pick up some from me. Nash’s voice came over the intercom:

‘Can’t see ’em, Skip.’

‘They can’t see us, that’s why,’ growled Appleyard.

‘Shut up, and look,’ said Rose.

‘No talking,’ Bennett ordered. Would their radar pick up the Difda steaming towards us in the next fjord? ‘They don’t have it,’ I was told.

When the time came I didn’t send my one-letter call sign in case the Difda returned the contact and gave the game away.

‘We’re up shit’s creek,’ said Nash.

‘Without a paddle,’ Appleyard added.

‘Pack it in,’ Bennett called.

The engine roared as the plane flew above the water. ‘Bloody good altimeter,’ said Rose. ‘Can’t be more than a hundred feet.’

After two more runs the engine noises diminished, and went silent.

‘Be dark soon.’

‘I hope so.’

Bennett ordered stand-down. Appleyard imitated the wail of an all-clear over the intercom, then went to the galley and lay out fish in the big pan. ‘They must have got our number.’

‘And we’ve got theirs,’ Nash put in.

‘They won’t be back tonight.’

But we knew that they’d be back sometime. Such certainty was better left unsaid, and there was nothing at which a crew were more adept.

Because food was abundant, it was assumed that the more we consumed the lighter our load would be on takeoff. Nash as our quartermaster supplied plenty to cook: steak, potatoes, sausages and beans, to be eaten by whoever had the appetite. Bread was baked in the oven. Appleyard produced loaves. They were old hands at good living in the confines of a flying boat. From the ice chest he took tomatoes, and a cucumber which he cut so thinly that the monogram on the knife-blade was visible through each slice.

Bennett complained that the place stank like a black market restaurant. Tea and coffee were brewed in urns. The Elsan worked overtime, though Nash walked onto a dinghy and hung unashamedly over the side. After two days of hard work we ate much. A friendly routine fixed the domestic workings of our community.

‘Smells like Friday,’ said Rose. ‘Where’s Armatage?’

‘The bastard’s overstayed his pass,’ said Nash. ‘I told him not to take more than an hour or two. I’ll ram the bloody Pole Star down his throat when he gets back.’

‘Jankers, at least.’ Appleyard set pieces of lemon on a plate of fish: ‘Life must go on’ – and took it to Bennett’s room.

‘And then we were five.’

Nash turned on me. ‘It’s a piss-poor show, all the same. Far too serious for levity!’

I spun the coffee tap. ‘You’ve lost your sense of humour.’

He sat by the table to eat. ‘I never had any.’

‘No chips?’ said Rose.

Appleyard came back. ‘You’ve had ’em. I’m not frying tonight, but if you’ve got any complaints, tell ’em to the orderly officer.’

11

On time, I tapped my signal, and the responding letter almost pierced my ears.

When I told them on my way to the skipper’s room, Appleyard gave the V-sign. ‘If we’re up the creek, at least we have a paddle.’

‘We’ll drink a bottle of steam to it,’ Nash said.

Bennett’s voice stayed so leaden at the news that I felt halfway between obsolescence and being surplus to requirements. Then a flicker of relief crossed his lips as he whitened a cigar between his palms. ‘I suppose you realize that in this world it’s every man for himself?’

Before he could roll the chart away, I noticed a line joining our present position to Negombo in Ceylon. ‘I expect it is.’

‘The world’s gone bang, Sparks. No freedom left. Even when you harm no one, you can’t do what you like.’

I wondered whether things had ever been that way. I had also thought we were going to Perth, not Ceylon.

‘I trust this aeroplane to fly, and the radio to get the news I’m waiting for. It’s the technical stuff that keeps us going. Otherwise, watch out for the devil.’

‘What devil?’

He drank off his glass of white wine. ‘The devil who tells us what to do – and expects us to do it. The world’s full of them, and you’ve got to stop that type from making contact with your own devil.’ He tapped his chest, but not over the heart. ‘When they meet, it’s mayhem. So be on your guard – like I am. They create slavery – the greatest evil of all. Piss on that kind of devil, Sparks. It’s the only way to put him out. I’ve fought him all my life, but in this flying boat I’m as free as I’ll ever be.’ He was quiet for a while, then: ‘God is on the side of those who try to be free of anyone but Him.’

I suppose I contributed to his freedom by not reminding him that it was usually acquired at the expense of somebody else. I needed a tot of Nash’s brandy to pin my eyelids back.

He waved a fly off the table. ‘Keep contact with the ship.’

‘I will.’

‘Every hour.’ He looked around the small room, as if surprised at its reality. ‘Is Armatage back?’

‘Not yet.’

His grimace was a positive reaction. ‘The flying boat isn’t large enough to accommodate a guardroom, but he won’t just get a strip torn off him. He’s deserted while on active service.’

I should have walked out. ‘He’s only been gone three hours.’

‘Four.’ He sweated as if starting to rot. ‘Have you ever seen an execution?’

He knew the devil intimately, and I was listening to him. ‘I can’t see that I’m going to.’

‘You may well, before this trip is out. There’s no discipline. Without it we won’t survive.’

I laughed. ‘Is it that bad?’

His eyes maintained a steadiness that was without life. ‘It is. And I can’t have that. You’d better get back on watch.’

I wondered whether I shouldn’t send an SOS, and not care who heard as long as he was put somewhere safe. This engine-house of precision was no longer where I wanted to be. It was as if chaos and order had declared on each other the war to end wars, and I was being crushed in between, and fed into a darkness out of which I could not possibly return. I went down the steps to the galley.

‘I suppose the news made him happy?’ said Nash, trying to complete a crossword puzzle he’d started three weeks ago.

‘He asked if Armatage was back. I said he wasn’t, but would be soon. It’s best if he stays away. Bennett intends to kill him.’

Appleyard gripped the plate, while he ate with the other hand. ‘He’ll kill nobody.’

The skipper was under a strain, Nash said, and who could blame him? I’ve only two more clues left. It was bound to show. He was surprised at me repeating what I had been told in confidence, but I argued that Bennett wouldn’t have spilled anything that he expected to be kept secret. Nash agreed, and said I should attach no importance to it. Bennett had been known in the squadron for practical jokes. That’s a fact, said Appleyard. He would say things just to observe the reaction.

‘Apart from that,’ Nash went on, and I wondered why he was going on at such length, ‘he might not be feeling all that well. Can you imagine the pressure this trip puts him under? You can rely on him doing the right thing as far as his job is concerned, which is fair enough when you think of where we are. Bennett’s only fault is his talent for organizing forlorn hopes. He could set up an asylum tea party on the far side of the moon and bring everybody back without a scratch! Only Bennett could have done this job, believe you me. You’ve got to play God a bit to pull this thing off. Stands to reason. He used to be a shade like that in the old days, but it never got out of hand. Nor will it now. Anyway, we’ll be off in the morning, and twenty-four hours later we’ll make a landfall and be our old selves again. I can’t bloody wait, I can tell you.’

Appleyard lit a cigarette. ‘I don’t believe anything I can’t see, and I wouldn’t mind seeing a good football match right now.’

‘Like when Charlton beat Burnley, you mean?’ Rose came down from his exertions at the navigation table.

‘They needed extra bloody time, though, didn’t they?’ He only ever lost his temper in arguments about football.

‘They rubbed their noses in the shit, all the same.’

‘I’d prefer a good boxing match.’ Nash filled in the penultimate answer.

I left them talking. On Rose’s desk courses were drawn, and dead reckonings calculated, to get us to Perth, and I thought what a shame to have worked so much for nothing. No doubt people were waiting there to take over the gold, but Bennett, with his especial flair, had probably organized a stunt to keep it for himself. He could no more vanish and live like a millionaire in a place of his choosing than a pools winner who had been interviewed by all the papers. And if he did give the slip to those who had put up the money to get the gold from this godforsaken ashcan of the earth, they would surely not rest until they had it back, and killed one by one those who had helped him to – as they would suppose – steal it. Yet I found his audacity exhilarating, knowing that we had no option but to relish the same mad dream.

Armatage was missing, and I wondered if he had contacted those who were so anxious to locate us that they had equipped themselves with seaplanes. Was he in league with Shottermill? In which case even the innocent scheme of going to Perth would be perilous, never mind that of making for Ceylon. Bennett perhaps assumed that Armatage had climbed above the mist and signalled the planes, reason enough to think that he should die. The reward for Armatage would be far bigger than that promised by Bennett – and with a safe exit guaranteed. Now that Bull and Wilcox were dead, we were unable to go out and bring him back.

Though Bennett might be a more than competent captain, he knew little about people as human beings, otherwise how could he imagine that another member of our crew would betray us? Armatage had gone too far on his foraging, and stayed longer than he should. In such visibility he might have overshot the flying boat on his way back from the shore. Nothing more than that.

As soon as I let my next K sign loose, the letter L sprang onto its back, and both went off into the ether like grasshoppers mating, a perfect meeting that led me to disregard all misgivings and feel glad to be a member of the Aldebaran’s crew.

12

They were determined to find us.

‘Who can blame them?’ asked Nash. We did not question who or what controlled the weather, which had so far been on our side. There would have been no point. Such a force was beyond discovery. ‘We’ll shoot ’em out of the sky.’ He rubbed his large hands together, as if he’d only come for the fireworks.

‘They’ll have a go at doing the same to us.’

‘And see the gold sink to the bottom of the sea?’

Rose looked up from writing on small sheets of blue paper. ‘Time is getting short, that’s all I know.’

No one took him up on that fact, so he went back to his letter, as if to be finished before the post left at six o’clock. The complicated form of the land was also in our favour, and as for who had made that, none of us cared to speculate. To say we couldn’t care less to each other was as far as we’d go.

‘Do you know what the skipper used to say?’ Nash mused.

‘Tell me.’

‘He used to say: “Anything’s possible that’s happened.”’

A grunt of scepticism came from Rose.

‘That’s why he don’t say much now,’ said Appleyard.

‘He doesn’t need to,’ said Nash. ‘You can only say so much. Anyway, we know it all.’

‘I don’t know about that.’ Appleyard passed around tea and sandwiches. ‘He said a lot more in the old days, and we liked it better, if I remember.’

‘He did a lot more, as well,’ said Nash.

Rose scooped up his closely-written letter and threw it in the trash bin. ‘He’d take us through the Valley of the Shadow, and we, being other ranks, non-substantive anyway, had perforce to follow. They referred to him as “Jack Flak”.’

‘They called him other things,’ said Nash. ‘But for my part I never worried till it was necessary. By then you were walking on stilts and trying to stay alive!’

Time was also short for our pursuers, who could not decide which nook to comb. But they were persistent, and had plenty of fuel. Even before the whine of their engines, Bennett ordered Appleyard to the mid-upper, Nash to the tail and Rose to the front guns. Headphones got the buzz of swift aircraft out of my ears. Perhaps they’d return through the sunset, alight nearby and shoot their way on board while we were empty of fuel. Every minute of life was a God-given bonus, and the fact that nothing in my past seemed important more than paid for any danger I might be in.

A blackening cape blocked our view into the next stretch of water, like a prison-grille never to lift. Above, streaks of blood poured between bands of luminous green, letting in wind that scattered the mist. ‘Pray for half an hour of good visibility tomorrow.’ We told Nash we would do our best.

Fishes ruffling the water, and a few birds overflying. All I wanted to see was Armatage rowing from the shore, dinghy awash with brains, heart, tongue and liver of a leopard seal slain with his knobkerrie. We hoped our trackers weren’t adept at night-flying. In their place, Bennett would have been. Some light was bound to show while refuelling from the Difda. Nor did I like to think of any disruption to our tricky performance of getting airborne with over three thousand gallons of fuel on board.

A further letter K from me was responded to by ‘1/2’ – meaning a half hour to go before sighting. Passing the message to Bennett, I supposed that our signals, however brief, were being monitored, thus giving unmistakable confirmation of our presence in one of the island’s indentations. Effective radio silence was impossible on either side, for they too had revealed themselves.

Bennett said I would have to take an occasional turn at the knobs-and-levers now that we had lost Wilcox, and proceeded to instruct me in the duties of flight engineer. He produced papers and manuals and, after explaining a diagram of the fuel system – amended in red to include the tanks installed for extra long range – showed me the relevant gauges on the panel, the fuel pressure warning lights and oil temperature gauges, as well as items that I only half understood, and would not be able to remember. I was left with the Pilot’s and Flight Engineer’s Notes, and various other dog-eared publications, and told to gen up between now and morning. If anything puzzled me, I had only to ask. ‘Nash could do the job, but he’s likely to be more use as a gunner.’

I wondered whether such a flying boat had ever been flown by so few, and found it hard to believe that Wilcox could be effectively replaced.

13

When our supply ship moved around the headland as if lit up for VE Day Bennett ordered turrets to be manned. Darkness wasn’t down, and we could see each other without lights: whoever skippered the Difda must have thought his navigational feat in threading the fjord in such visibility deserved a campaign ribbon – and clasp. ‘Call the bloody fool up on the flashbox and ask him to show essential lights only – with my compliments. If he doesn’t pour water on ’em, we’ve had it. Sight on the bridge – if you can find it. I’ve never seen such a rotten old bucket.’

She had two masts, flagless rigging culled from a rubbish yard on the Medway, and funnel salvaged from a factory boiler after an air raid. All of us commented on such a random assembly of spare parts. Yet she had survived her journey and brought our juice. She seemed little bigger than the flying boat, but the distance was deceptive, and her size increased as she rolled on her way in calm water towards us.

I clicked Ks till the answering flash came, feeling a spillage of tension as soon as my fingers were still. Bennett was split between gratitude that the relief ship had arrived, and being ready to meet any treachery by having our machine guns sighted on her decks, as if he expected to see an Oerlikon spit shells, or boats rowed towards us by cutlass-toting jailbirds commanded by Long John Silver.

Acknowledgements from the Difda were prompt between each word. The signalman began his message with a light twice as powerful as my twelve-volt twinkle, proving by speed and rhythm that he was also a founder member of the Best Bent Wire brigade – acid test words which, if got through without a mistake, show that the ink on your ticket is not only dry but has long ago turned brown with age.

‘What does he say?’

‘He’ll comply – and sends his greetings.’

‘Tell ’em to anchor as close as need be for transfer of fuel.’

‘CLOSE IN FOR FUEL FEED,’ I sent.

Back came: ‘WE KNOW OUR JOB.’

‘What was that, Sparks?’

‘They’ll do it.’

‘What’s he saying now?’

‘The captain’s coming over to say hello as soon as they’ve anchored.’

‘Tell him he’s welcome.’

He flashed back thanks – TKS printed on my mind before reason separated each letter. I pictured a bearded old captain standing by the operator, a hook in place of his left hand, perhaps a corrugated cap whose crown had been worn through by his bald head, an obviously fierce gaze, and certainly a stubby pipe fouling the air but keeping his insides primrose-fresh. He gauged their way perfectly along the water, maintaining an exact position in mid-channel.

‘He knows how to take no chances.’ There was admiration in Bennett’s tone. The manoeuvres needed no passing of texts, so the operator flash-chatted gossip meant for us alone: ‘ONE OF YOUR BLOKES SIGNED ON.’

Bennett talked refuelling procedures with Nash at the top of the ladder, and neither saw me sweat:

‘NAME?’

‘SMITH.’

I sent back the wireless operator’s laugh, and he responded with: ‘NNNPD’ – meaning ‘no names no pack drill’. I pelted him with another laugh.

‘PICKED HIM UP FROM WATER.’

Must have rowed miles. Bennett stood by my shoulder, but the man was sending too fast for him to read. ‘What’s he saying?’

‘Only chatting, Skipper.’

‘Watch the plain language. Just tell them to get a move on.’

‘PROCEED SOONEST POSSIBLE.’ Then, as if repeating the message: ‘KEEP HIM STOP DEAD IF HE COMES HERE.’

‘DEAD ALREADY – DRUNK. DA DA DI DI DI DI DA DA.’

I laughed back, and imagined the blow-up if Bennett discovered Armatage to be nearer than was supposed – after his deft transfer of allegiance.

They took care not to foul our moorings, and Bennett considered them close enough at two hundred yards. From the ship’s bulk, exaggerated in new-born darkness, a message announced that Captain Ellis, the master, was on his way over. ‘DONT CROSS HIM OR HE WILL KNIFE YOU – LAUGH LAUGH.’

I visualized the shaking of hands as he stepped on board, one chief meeting another. The two men with him stayed in their boat, as if for a quick getaway. Going to the top of the steps I saw a small sandy-haired man of about forty wearing rimless glasses and smoking a cigarette, carrying an attaché case with initials on the side that were not his own. He looked around our domain. ‘Nice little world you’ve got. Bit like the inside of a cardboard giant. How many crew?’

Bennett told him.

His laugh was forced, and dry. ‘A one-watch ship, eh? Show me over the place. It’s my first time on a thing like this.’ He was an agile ladder-climber, and I moved out of his track so that Bennett could explain the flight deck panels. He drew his finger across the chart table, as if it were covered in dust, and glanced at my radio place as if I weren’t sitting there. ‘How is your survey work?’

‘All we need is the fuel to get back.’

He descended the ladder. ‘My chaps’ll get it on by midnight. When I promise ’em a bonus they work like blacks.’ His face was bland, but his hands twitched. ‘I heard a plane nosing about this afternoon, so I want to be at sea by dawn. I’d get shot of the place as well, if I were you. I think you have rivals in your line of business.’

Bennett wasn’t made for talk, so Ellis had to provide his own, which seemed no hardship. ‘Funny thing but, do you know, we have a stowaway on board. God knows where he came from. Maybe a castaway. Took him on this afternoon. He was well fed and decently dressed.’

‘A castaway?’

‘Must have been. All he needed was drink. He’s drunk now, in fact. No sense in him – like Europe after the war.’

Nash was close by, and we both wanted to throttle him. He stopped, as if remembering. ‘He’s a Norwegian – came off one of their whalers. That’s all I got out of him, before my chief engineer put a keg of booze in his paws. Took ticket of leave, I suppose. Funny things happen, south of the Line.’

I looked out of the porthole, as if uninterested. Bennett’s frame unclenched. But he must have known. ‘Which reminds me,’ Ellis said, ‘maybe we should take a glass before we set to. I usually have a drop about this time.’

Bennett’s room was out of range. Engines vibrated from the nearby ship that seemed to own the fjord. The bridge was vacant, and I supposed the signaller was back in his cabin with a plate of supper. Nash came to the flight deck. ‘You heard what Captain Windbag said?’

‘Sure.’

‘And what did Wankers-doom with the magic flashlight say?’

‘The same. He’s over there, as pissed as a newt. They’ll keep it quiet, though.’

‘I hope he knows he’s left us in the lurch. I’d like to break his neck, but we can’t risk a shindy. Bennett’d want a drumhead court martial, and we haven’t got time.’

I’d have been a fool to keep such forebodings to myself. ‘Maybe Armatage sensed something.’

‘Don’t talk tripe. He just got the wind up.’

‘I thought blokes like him never did.’

‘You’re not worth much if you don’t. None of us were sworn in,’ he said by way of apology. ‘Not properly, anyway. Not this time.’

He didn’t want to go on, and neither did I.

Captain Ellis was merrier than when he stepped aboard, and less loquacious. Also, his briefcase weighed more. He shook Bennett’s hand, and passed the money to the man in the boat, advising him not to drop it if he valued his next hundred years’ pay. I watched them leave for their rusting but trusty ship, sharply visible against the side of the fjord.

So many tanks were filled that nothing less than a flying bowser would take to the air. For a few hours Rose and I were, as Appleyard said, superfluous to requirements. Barrels were derricked two by two over the side and brought across in a lifeboat whose motor smoked like a matelot’s briar. I went to the galley to make coffee, but Nash pushed me from the stove saying did I want to blow them all to kingdom come? I felt slightly less stupid when he laid into Appleyard who had pulled out a box of matches to light up between consignments. Nash raged that he had nothing but lunatics for a crew and, taking no chances, went into the rest room where Rose was lying on the bunk making smoke-rings from his repaired pipe.

On the flight deck I was hoping to get in touch with Armatage, to find out why he had committed an act which filled me with awe. To abandon what you had pledged to serve was to lose a world and go into the wilderness. Must one be sworn in before doing one’s duty? Couldn’t one live without taking an oath? It was imaginable, but frightening, and my feeling for him was of pity rather than condemnation.

There was no movement on board the Difda. All interest was on traffic between ship and flying boat. Perhaps Armatage was not drunk. Maybe Captain Ellis needed an extra man for his crew, which was why he had connived in keeping him there. He had rendered us more vulnerable than we cared to believe. With three people less, our flying boat seemed forlorn, so I sat at my receiver to imagine I was among company.

The mild antics of atmospherics on 500 kilocycles separated me from the surrounding industry. Then my call sign thumped all speculation aside, came as loud as if emitted from the nearby ship. My hand went forward to respond. I refrained. It was dangerous to doze. I might send without thinking. Someone kept a listening watch, and tapped my call sign in the hope that I would give myself away.

He called again. Please do, I said. Just as the postman always knocks twice, so a telegraphist will tap his request two or three times in the hope of getting through. By his bearing I could tell that their ship was coming north.

Bennett counted barrels by the hatchway as they swung over. I informed him of what I knew, and returned to my wireless. Those who listened so diligently for me could not know what happened on the four megacycle band where the fast steely morse of coded messages passed between Royal Navy ships to the north. On short wave such signals could be hundreds, even thousands of miles distant. I was tempted to retune and get in touch, resisting only because my signals might bleed onto the frequency of the other ship and give our presence away. If they already suspected where we were I had nothing to lose, but to introduce a new element into the equation might mean the end of our flying boat and its cargo of gold. I was beginning to believe that we were surrounded by enemies, and that they were closing in.

Bennett would decide what was to be done. I switched off the set, and slept with my head resting on the desk.

14

Nash and Appleyard reeked like leaking faglighters. We all did, said Rose. Whether we had worked or not. One spark, and the expedition would vanish. For a while anyone looking on would have thought we had swallowed a half bottle of whisky each, such were our high spirits as we larked about.

But a breeze cleared the air. Nash’s body flashed under the wingtip as he swam in circles, and he stuck up two fingers at Appleyard’s: ‘Come back! We don’t want to lose you as well!’

He pulled himself in and splashed us with cold water, then searched his kitbag for dry clothes because we were expected to spruce up for departure. I put on a clean shirt and shaved, and used half a tin of blacking on my shoes. Appleyard dipped his dental plate in the sea, and slotted it back with a shiver.

I was stationed on the flight deck with the signal lamp.

‘Tell them thank you,’ Bennett said. ‘And wish them good luck.’

I sent in full as their anchors rattled up.

‘SAME TO U,’ their operator replied. ‘WILL LOOK AFTER YOUR BLOKE.’

‘Look after who?’

I cursed his slow sending. Perhaps he hadn’t slept for days. ‘I asked him to remember me to a friend of mine.’

There were times when Bennett, able to do every crew member’s job, did not make things easier for himself or the rest of us. I moved aside, out of his bloodshot gaze. He pulled the lamp away. ‘Unofficial plain language is forbidden.’

Impossible to say what he suspected. His sensibility was sufficiently acute for him to know, and if he did, something stopped him taking action. ‘From now on, send only messages that originate from me.’ He thrust the lamp back. ‘Is that clear?’

Once around Black Cape, the fuel ship would be seen no more. I wanted to be with Armatage, looking back at our immobile crate that would stay behind as a decoy in the fulsome visibility of dawn.

Fuel cocks were checked and fuel contents gauges registered as full. The priming pumps were in working order, and the oil system was OK’d by Nash and Bennett. The galley was sufficiently aired to light a stove for supper, and Appleyard used the last eggs to make omelettes. We sat at table, hatches battened against the cold. Whisky was poured into steaming tea, so we drank to our take-off in the morning. I couldn’t envisage the event but neither, if turned out, could anyone else, and we finished our meal in silence.

Nash and Appleyard were rewarded with four hours’ sleep for their labour of refuelling, so the nightwatch was split between Rose doing the first stint and me the second. During my two hours free I envied those who weren’t kept awake by the nagging of anxiety. Nash, our mainstay, lay at peace, hands clasped behind his head, his pruning-saw snore forming a duet with Bennett’s tread around his small room. Appleyard kipped by the stove, under a blanket which he’d acquired during his recruit training and had never been without.

I could cut off from the sounds of people by turning on my radio, an extension of the senses which connected me to the spheres. I wanted to be in both worlds at once: one with ordinary life, and also float through the atmospherics of the heavens. But the two would not exist together, and I could only blunder from one to the other until such time as I found a way of combining the attractions of both.

As in everything, one had to make a choice. But those I had so far made had taken refuge behind the phrase ‘I couldn’t care less’, because to care would demand too much energy, too much thought, too much consideration for others, too much anxiety about our fate, thus creating unnecessary (and unwanted) disturbance. To gather wisdom from those experiences in which I had been forced by fate to take part, and to combine that wisdom with speculation and intelligence gathered from the ether, were two areas of the same necessity. Craving both, I could deny neither one nor the other, though for the moment I couldn’t put up with Bennett’s obsessive footfall or Nash’s grinding snores.

I trod soundlessly to the flight deck, passing boxes covered in tarpaulin and well lashed down so that none would move when airborne. Rose at the controls was so still that I thought he too was asleep, until a finger by the throttle-levers twitched. I sat on the arm of the other seat. ‘What were you thinking about, before I came up?’

Such a question couldn’t bring a serious reply, but he answered with a weariness that lack of sleep alone hadn’t given. ‘I was meditating on the benefits of a new face.’

The unexpected response had nothing to do with our plight. ‘What the hell for?’

‘I’d like to get rid of the personality that gave it to me.’

Anger was pushed out by curiosity. ‘We’d all like to do that.’

‘You’ll be telling me I have to live with it next.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But I’m not sure I want to.’

‘You don’t have much choice.’

‘I think you’re wrong. Can man make something as perfect and beautiful as a flying boat, and not have choice?’ His emotion surprised me. He pushed the throttle lever of the port inner slightly forward, then drew it back again. ‘I’ve known since I was born that I could end it whenever I liked. But there’s nothing more calculated to make one live forever! I suppose it helped me to survive all those ops over Germany.’

‘What about the rest of the crew?’

‘They were lucky, perhaps. Skilful, to a certain extent. That we were brave goes without saying. So were those who didn’t come back.’

It was hard to talk sense in the gloom. ‘Fate decides everything, I suppose.’

‘If you let it.’

‘There’s no option.’

After a silence he said: ‘Oh yes, there is.’

It was useless to deny it. ‘You’ll feel different once we’re airborne.’

He shifted in his seat. ‘When I’m in England, wherever I am, I feel that if I stretch my arms I’ll touch walls. It’s comforting. But here, even inside the flying boat, there are neither walls nor limits. I don’t like it.’

‘That’s just what makes me glad to be here.’

He wasn’t interested. ‘It’s a long night. Low cloud, not much visibility, no stars to guide us. Like life itself.’

‘You’ll see plenty of stars on the way to Colombo. Good fixes all the way.’

Was it a mistake? It depends on what you believe. Fate may be cruel, but he who blames it must be guilty of something, a thought which justified what I had said. In the dim light I watched his various grimaces registering the fact that I had blurted out the truth when I mentioned Colombo.

Or some such place, I was about to add. But I had too much respect. To make good with false words was unworthy, by which I meant to imply that it would have been less worthy of myself. That second more distant pucker of his face wanted me to admit that I had made a mistake, but any half-hearted statement would not be acceptable. My paralysis lasted until speaking would do no good, and it was too late in any case. When he had waited too long to feel any benefit, and his features had settled into the permanent expression of a disappointed child, I said: ‘At least it looked like Colombo.’

His flicker of gratitude was broken by a bitter smile, which seemed unconnected to my error of saying we were going to Colombo when he had assumed that we would set course for Perth. I should have kept my mouth shut, but it wasn’t me who had spoken – or so I could not but assume. There was something pathetic in his anguish. Nothing could justify it, and anger with myself turned to annoyance at Rose being upset because he thought that such common knowledge among the lesser grades of the crew had not been passed to him first. I could not say that my information was only a faint line seen before Bennett had time to get the chart out of my sight. The glimpse was enough to show, however, that between Kerguelen and Perth no track was drawn at all.

‘How do you know it’s Colombo?’ The fight to ask this took time, and by not volunteering the gen, and forcing the effort out of him, I had at last done what was right.

‘No one knows except you and me.’

He leaned over the chart table, as if to read a description of how his life had been wasted. ‘Nash must.’

‘I don’t see why. But does it matter?’

He didn’t answer. I was to wish he had. In the gap before responding lay the waste of his life – and its loss. The two hour watch was up. ‘I’m going to find a place to sleep,’ he said. ‘We’re a pretty clapped-out lot, aren’t we?’

‘Depends which way you look at it.’

‘The last of the many, if you ask me.’ He scribbled calculations, erased them, wrote a couple of lines, then threw the pencil down. I thought he was making too much fuss and was glad when my turn for watch came because, though tired, and not knowing when I would sleep again, the radio waves would keep me alert.

15

Every few minutes I detached myself from the ambrosia of static and walked to the flight deck, hardly able to imagine the cold flying boat coming to life and getting us beyond the surrounding wall of night and rock. I was cheered by the magic eye of the Marconi, and knew that inevitably the darkness would lift and my watch reach its end. I felt some trepidation, for when it did, with a ton of gold and such a quantity of fuel, we would need limitless visibility and the longest run for take-off that a flying boat ever had. At supper we agreed that only Bennett could get the Aldebaran airborne. ‘A good captain never reflects on danger until he is right near it,’ said Nash. We needed luck, however, and who in the history of the world had as much as they needed? The bold prospered, the just progressed, the skilful succeeded, but now and again someone fell from on high because his luck ran out, no matter what qualities he had.

On my way to the wireless I examined Rose’s chart, and saw that his sharp pencil had written: ‘Not enough petrol for Colombo. God no longer with us.’

I laughed at such effrontery, wondering how long it was since God had been with anyone, never mind us. It seemed to me you had to be with Him, not Him with you. Rose didn’t think so, and I hoped his madness wasn’t catching. Was Bennett passing his insanity onto him via me, and was Rose, in sensing this, trying to push it back down my throat? Of course we had enough fuel for Colombo, if Bennett said so.

Perhaps the night was eating into my soul because it was the last through which I would live. I did not believe it. We were a cohesive crew, whether or not we had attempted one operation too many. Those bombing trips in the war had been undertaken from different motives and in another spirit, but what happened to one ricocheted through all, to test the strength of our mutual dependence. We were a pilot, navigator, wireless operator and two gunners, a competent team to work the plane on its final leg to safety. Wherever we set out for did not matter, and I couldn’t believe that Bennett would take risks with treasure that had already cost so much blood. To cut things fine was another matter. We had all done that a time or two in our lives.

I dozed, twiddled at the receiver and smoked a cigarette, walked to the galley and back, looked through the astrodome and saw one star above the gully in which we were stranded. Otherwise, I listened on the common frequency of distress and waited for the dawn. Though at peace, there was no understanding.

The naval operators swapped the strength of their signals, but on my own low frequency no one called. Whoever the other ship was, why did it observe radio silence? Silence was more ominous than a manifestation of sound. To the ear it was a lack, but a positive one, and had qualities which sound could never know about. With sound you had a clue to what was going on. Silence, though it kept you guessing, was a tactical weapon which could be used with double the effect of sound. All the same, silence worried me more than noise.

I kept my personal belongings in a hold-all by the radio, feet sometimes resting on it while at work. The Smith and Wesson was wrapped in underwear and spare clothes, and should Bennett call me to a duty that would transcend the rules of human behaviour – as it were – the gun might be of use. The body of the flying boat was cold, and after a premonitory pre-dawn shiver I reached to take out the gun. Having been much thrown about since beginning the trip, and rummaged in for changes of clothes, the bag was not in a tidy state. Allowed only one piece of luggage, it was also large, and wondering why the pistol was not there, I heard an ear-splitting clap of noise in the distance which sounded like a salvo of anti-aircraft fire in the war.

Meteorologically, nothing surprised me. On the line of the Antarctic Convergence two antipathetic systems produced weather quick to change and impossible to predict. A summer thunderstorm, at whatever part of the day, caused no surprise. Those with more experience believed it to be no such thing and, as I wondered why the revolver I had packed so carefully was missing, several more echoing clouts erupted which could be nothing less than cannonfire.

‘Somebody’s hitting the flak,’ Nash shouted. I fumbled in my kit, unable to imagine what was happening till I heard the awesome rhythm of an SOS coming out of the earphones.

Appleyard, with the reflection that some poor sod was getting it over Hamburg, levered himself into the mid-upper in the hope that the view might explain where the gunfire was coming from. The clack and follow-up along the fjord and over the heights was like trains leaving a station and going in different directions across the sky. There was six-tenths cloud at 4000 feet, and visibility was good for take-off. A floorcloth of cloud was about to wipe the ridgeline of the mountains clean.

My hand shook as I wrote. The operator was separating the SOS letters instead of running the dots and dashes together, indicating that he had not sent one before, and probably not heard one, either. ‘SHIP FIRED AT STOP SHOTS ACROSS BOWS STOP BUT NOT STOPPING STOP POSITION 4901 SOUTH 6910 EAST WAIT WAIT WAIT’ – a sense of humour to the end.

A fast modern steamer came out of the dawn and ordered the Difda by lamp to heave-to and accept a boarding party. Captain Ellis told his flash-man to send something he wouldn’t dare say in front of his mother, and the operator added a few unprintabilities of his own, which puzzled the other ship whose signaller didn’t understand that kind of English.

I tore the sheet from the pad and took it to Bennett in his room. He shaved before a mirror, insistent to the end, in spite of the gunfire, on being the smart captain, while the Difda, having kept her part of the bargain, was being pounded to ashes in the next fjord. ‘I should at least tell him we’re getting the message, Skipper.’

‘You’ll do no such thing. He’s being attacked because it’s thought he has the gold on board. They don’t know about us. They have their suspicions, but won’t know for certain unless you do something bloody silly.’ He laughed at how the play was working to our advantage. His luck could not have been better if he had planned everything with God Almighty. There is no one more cynical than he who is always lucky – at least so he seems to those who get in his way. That he never thinks himself merely fortunate is part of his cynicism. ‘Isn’t there anything we can do for them?’

When he wiped his face a fleck of soap fell across the dead dragonfly not yet removed. ‘We have neither bombs nor depth charges. They’ve got an 88-millimetre by the sound of it, not to mention a couple of seaplanes. You should be glad we’ve got the Difda as a decoy. While it’s being dealt with we’ll up anchor and away. When they find that the Difda has no gold they’ll come for us with greed and murder in their hearts. It’s time to get weaving.’

I too wanted the scheme to work, and caught his smile of satisfaction in the mirror as he ringed his neck with collar and tie. His expression said that each move had been planned. While knowing that Fate could not work eternally in anyone’s favour, he may well have sat down months ago and plotted as far forward as possible. Optimism and hard work made each event come to pass, and so drew me as much under his spell as the rest of the crew.

But I refused to believe in him, and maintained a small area of freedom by telling my fellow operator on the Difda that he was being heard. If Bennett and all of us paid the price of my disobedience, or stupidity, or integrity, it was because my actions were as much out of my control as Bennett’s were out of his.

I continued to search my hold-all, and had to conclude that the revolver was missing, which meant that if Bennett told me to account for my actions (in the same way that Armatage might have been ordered to say his prayers before the promised execution) I would be defenceless. Perhaps Armatage had taken the pistol, in which case he would be able to look after himself, a solacing thought as I worked at my radio to receive what details I could of the Difda’s tribulation.

Bennett did not think to ask why the ship continued sending, otherwise he might have guessed that it was because I encouraged the operator to do so. In any case, did he really expect me to put a bit of cardboard between the contacts of the key? My occasional letter R was not a long enough exposure for our direction to be fixed, and the Difda was not sending for my benefit alone, but to any other ship which might hear and go to his assistance.

‘STRUCK AMIDSHIPS STOP MAKING FOR COVE 485930 SOUTH STOP BOARDING PARTY ON WAY STOP GUN FIRING FROM DECK TWO SEAPLANES ALSO ON DECK STOP WAIT WAIT WAIT.’ Then came the request: ‘DO SOMETHING STOP GET GOING.’

I felt a kind of triumph at handing the message to Bennett. That I listen and send nothing in return was the cry of someone who still relied on chance to protect him. The drill of departure left no flexibility of manoeuvre. Seaplanes would reconnoitre for whatever vessel acknowledged each message from the Difda. If Bennett’s luck held and the attacker, assuming the Difda to be the only ship in the area, ceased all W/T listening – hearing neither their pleas for help nor my responses – they would only look for us on finding no gold on the fuel ship, by which time it would be too late because we would be away.

I handed in the message. ‘Who are they?’

He let the paper drop. ‘A rival company. They want the stuff too. Who wouldn’t? I thought we would beat them to it by a few days. But you can’t win every leg on the chart.’

‘You knew we’d bump into them?’

‘I supposed there was a chance.’

‘It seems we’re trapped.’

He was grey at the face. ‘I wouldn’t say so. The sum of the probability of errors has usually managed to avoid the fickle finger of fate – at least in my experience. So get back to your box of tricks, and leave the cogitations to me.’

The pennant showed little wind, and the sky had the markings of a fine morning. We had a sufficient stretch of water to get airborne, despite our perilous overload, but the latter part of our long runway ended in a minefield. To avoid this by going around the headland into the western fjord for take-off, where there were no mines, would bring us against the armed ship still in the process of persuading the Difda to heave-to. We would be blown to pieces by mines or blasted by shell-fire. Either way would mean an enormous fireball when several thousand gallons of high octane spirit exploded. And yet the enemy would not fire once it was realized that we carried the gold. Again, Bennett had them nailed, but we had to get airborne because if they caught us on the water they would force us into surrender. Five of us would be no match for them, and the gold would be theirs. Fate’s finger was never more fickle than at that moment.

Bennett called from the top of the steps that he wanted to see Rose for a navigation briefing. The dinghy had been hauled aboard, and I helped Nash rope it down. Sweat poured from him after the effort. He wiped his chest with a rag and stood up to reach his shirt which lay across one of the boxes. ‘I haven’t seen him, sir.’

‘Then where the devil is he?’

‘He was in the tail, at stand-to.’

‘Get him.’ He went back into his room.

There was no crawling on your belly to reach a thimble-sized turret – as at the end of a bomber. The flying boat had a cat-walk and you could go in comfort. The door was half open, Rose slumped over the guns inside. Sleep was our only escape, and I hesitated to wake him. The strain of going out on a limb, forever forward and with no prospect of return, had shagged us utterly. All the same, I reached forward and gripped his shoulder.

An inch of tongue protruded from between his teeth. He fell to one side and grinned at me. Getting the turret door open, I pulled him free. The Smith and Wesson clattered. Accustomed to pinpointing the stars, he had made no mistake in finding his heart. I felt more dead for a few moments than he could ever be. The vast scar which we thought he had learned to live with looked as if he had merely slept awhile with his face against the corrugations of a heavily embroidered cushion. In another half hour, if he had been alive, all marks would have disappeared.

An explosion of cannonfire must have hidden the sound of his last star sight. The heavenly body came down to the horizon. Flak got him, I told myself. He’s been killed in action as we all might be, so shed no tears while there’s work to be done. Who wants a memorial service that you can’t take part in? I put the gun, wet with Rose’s blood, into my jacket and made my way back to the flight deck.

16

Bennett reasoned – if you could call it that – that the dead were dead. Fair enough. Old times would not return. If you mourned the dead by letting them disrupt your life, new and better days would never come. Even so, Nash said, I thought the skipper had had it when I told him. He asked for an apple, but there were none left. He had to chew on something else. Shouted he was surrounded by desertion, treachery and incompetence – as he lit a cigar. There would be a Court of Enquiry when we got back. Count on it. He would notify all concerned, taking care to record illegal absences, accidental deaths, deficiencies in property, oaths taken and not kept. Separate courts would be convened to account for sub-headings yet to be defined. Nothing would be left out to prevent the court from putting together the true state of affairs. If I didn’t know the skipper, said Nash, I’d have thought he was off his rocker.

In the meantime, Mr Nash, there’s work to be done. The late navigator perished in the highest traditions of the Service. Bring his effects to me so that I can put them in a special box. As soon as practicable the next of kin of those men lost must be informed, and you may be sure I shall write proper letters of condolence, explaining how they died doing their duty while on active service. As there is no time to inter Flying Officer Rose on land we shall do it now, since we have to shed unnecessary cargo in order to get away. Find a weight to help him under the water.

It was action stations, and we prepared to cast off. A message was halfway through when I got back to the radio: … ‘HEMMED IN COVE STOP LIFEBOAT HIT STOP YOUR CHAP KILLED SLEEPING IN STOP TWO OTHERS DOWN WAIT WAIT WAIT.’

Bennett carried out pre-flight checks: controls free and fuel cocks off while the exactors were bled. Should I tell him about Armatage? He’s had it, Skipper. A shell struck the lifeboat and gave their ship a coat of paint. He couldn’t escape the net of God Almighty. Nor would I talk to Nash, or let lack of moral fibre take me over.

Vibrations from the port outer brought back life, and a willingness to do the utmost. Not to question showed pure health: stiff upper lip and press on regardless. The sound of propellers beating the air beyond the portholes set us breathing freely in our separate corners. The starboard outer roared its music up as if to push the cliffs further apart and reach the rest of the world so that even the deaf would hear. Bennett signalled Nash in the bows to slip our moorings. Outers and inners were run up in pairs, and we moved from the shore.

‘BOARDING PARTY ON US STOP SHIP GOING SOUTH TO YOU.’

I passed the chit to Bennett who, involved in the complications of take-off, relayed the info over the intercom. Nash responded from the tail, blood still wet. ‘Who forgot to swab the turret, then?’

Bennett was calm. ‘We’ll turn the cape, and take off as they come towards us.’

‘Mind their gun, Skipper.’

‘Will do.’

‘As we pass over their heads we’ll rake their decks.’

‘Good show, Nash.’

‘We’ve been in hotter spots, Skipper.’

‘You there, Appleyard?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘See what you can do from the front turret.’

‘I’ll shoot ’em with shit.’

‘Sparks?’

‘Skipper?’

‘What’s going on?’

Atmospherics raged like the noise of a forest fire. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Roger-dodger.’

‘Hi-di-hi,’ said Nash.

‘Ho-di-ho,’ Bennett said.

We taxied towards the water-runway of the straits. The Difda operator sent: ‘NOTHING TO BE DONE STOP CHEERIO QRU QRT.’ I tapped ‘GOOD LUCK’ – thinking it deserved to be our turn next but hoping for no such downfall. He pounded SOS three times, then screwed his key onto a continuous note so that anyone with a mind for rescue could home in on the bearing. After a few seconds his penny-whistle stopped.

The tail banged into a trough as we picked up speed. An odd chop shook the aircraft, and the subtle but deadly winds of dawn were set for a rampage. Bennett slowed his taxi-ing, and I felt a steady washboard grating under the hull. A blade of weak sun lit the nose of the south-pointing promontory. The water was speckled white towards our turning point, faint breakers creaming both shores. The low hill where we had buried Wilcox was outlined.

Maybe Bennett waved goodbye. ‘What news, Sparks?’

We turned to starboard, under the lee of the cape. ‘Sounds like they got aboard and signed him off. Smashed his gear. They’re coming for us.’

‘Press on remorseless,’ Nash said.

‘Remorseless it is.’

A pale grey glacier rose between the flanks of two basaltic mountains, a broken expanse of other glaciers beyond, in places pink, and merging into a semicircle of cloud. Crevasses, ice ridges, solidified waterfalls stretched to the south as far as we could see. ‘Better than the view from Boston Stump,’ Nash said. ‘It was worth coming this far for!’

The sea was calm, straits widening. Engines on full power muffled the bang and drowned the whistling shell which preceded a waterspout in front. The earphone-lead enabled me to look out and see a ship coming from behind an indentation of the western coast.

‘Two miles,’ Appleyard said, ‘and it ain’t made of cardboard.’

‘Nor is that 88-millimetre screwed on the deck,’ Nash told him. ‘And I’ve just got the last clue.’

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Perseverance – it must be.’

‘Congratulations,’ said Bennett. ‘We’re back on form.’

Another shell exploded so close that a wall of water swept the canopy. ‘Third one has it, Skipper.’

I was flung at the navigating table while Bennett did as tight a circle as he dared without smashing the port float, the hull in a cloud of shooting spray. I grabbed the radio handle as if to wrench it from the fitting.

‘They should be put on a charge for dumb insolence,’ said Appleyard. ‘They’re trying to drown us.’

‘Kilroy was here,’ said Nash. A shell exploded to port. ‘Give ’em the figure of eight, Skipper. We can take it.’

‘Get on your radio, Sparks, and tell them that if we go up in flames, everything on board will sink to the bottom.’

He turned to starboard, and another half circle took us so close we could no longer be seen by the ship’s gunners. Bennett hurled back up the straits, and when he drew level with our old mooring place and saw the way clear for five miles ahead, let all engines have full throttle and began moving for take-off.

During these manoeuvres it had been impossible to send his signal, but when on the straight I was about to do so he told me to scrub it.

‘Prepare for take-off.’

‘Minefield starts at four thousand yards,’ said Nash.

‘Give or take the odd furlong,’ Appleyard added.

‘Fact noted,’ Bennett said.

‘Is our new address to be Carnage Cottage, then, or the “Old Bull and Bush”?’

Rather than give up the gold, he would kill us and send it to the bottom. Morse from the Nemesis (or whatever name the other ship had) was fast, but so faulty in rhythm that it was difficult to tell dots from dashes, though the message was unmistakable. ‘WE HAVE YOU CORNERED STOP SURRENDER HEAVE TO.’

They knew we were hellbent for a minefield, but I told them to get stuffed as we flogged up speed – tactically flexible, and versatile unto death.

‘Salt water for breakfast,’ Nash said.

‘On toast,’ laughed Appleyard.

Expecting flak from above and below, we trusted Bennett to get us clear. He saw no reason not to proceed, and sped by the cliffs. But there was no lift, meaning we’d get through the minefield only to crash into the hill blocking the end of the channel. The same text from the Nemesis was repeated, demanding capitulation. They imagined us skulking behind the headland, contemplating the damage they had caused, and debating what to do next while we adjusted our reading glasses. ‘We’ll get up,’ said Nash. ‘We aren’t in a bloody railway carriage, and that’s a fact.’

We seemed to be travelling between the sleeve of the cliffs forever, pounding forward too slowly for our ominous weight. There was little wind to help. No one spoke. For better or worse, Bennett’s fight was ours and we left him to it, sat tight and prayed to get airborne without suddenly ceasing to exist. I looked out of the porthole to see, if only for a second, the nipple or big apple of a mine that would demob us for good and take us into a dream impossible to wake from. Supposition as to life after death watered my fear while we went through a zone marked on the chart as dangerous, and I wondered whether they were as thickly sown as eyes in a plate of sago, or as thinly as balls on a wet-day bowling green.

The Nemesis wouldn’t follow, and that was certain, but with a long-range gun it didn’t need to, though the dilemma of boarding was for them to crack. Their ship had not yet turned the final headland to watch either our spectacular fireball demise, or see us wiggle our tail as we lifted into the wide blue yonder. Bennett was too much locked in his fight to wonder about the seaplanes. Every rivet spar and panel vibrated as if, should we put on another knot of speed, we’d come to pieces.

The shakes diminished, but the hull scraped against the carborundum wheel of the water which seemed intent on grinding us down to the extinction of a wafer. In spite of the universal thrust, our boat was dead if it couldn’t lift – and so were we. Disintegration beamed on us, but a hummed tune came through the intercom and while I mulled on an end to our history, I recognized words which I joined in though only under my breath so as not to break our luck. Why that song rang out I’ll never know, nor who was the instigator, but in that couple of minutes I loved it for melting the wax of menace from us all.

Perhaps it was a case of spiritual buffoonery carried to its greatest extent, considering our crucial situation, but the words took me out of this perilous fjord and back to the palm-beach coast of Malaya where our staging post had been, and I heard again Peter Dawson’s voice booming from a loudspeaker nailed halfway up a tree, singing ‘The Road to Mandalay’. And now we were mocking it blind with tears in our eyes, but singing all the same as if it were a hymn.

‘On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flying fishes play …’

and we were one of those fishes, about to lift off for longer than any flier of the deep sea could, which no one in the history of the world would be able to gainsay, our great flying boat ascending, its twin along the surface of the blue water accompanying as if to see us safe into the air, when we would say goodbye because we’d no longer be either visible or necessary to each other, and so slide apart. We sang as if China really was across the bay, and Bennett would get us there and beyond to a safety of his own devising.

The test-bed roar of four engines increased the distance between the port float and the water. A white bird spun from the windscreen. ‘Per ardua ad astra,’ Nash muttered, and the intercom almost went u/s with laughter.

The hull banged, destroying hope for a second, but the float lifted and the cliffs changed aspect, turned brown, then green, then opened out into sloping rocky hills, till underneath was a peace which meant contact with water had been lost. Ahead was a spur of black mountain, avoided by a quarter turn to port.

Bennett’s voice came: ‘Log the time for QAD, Sparks.’

‘Roger-dodger.’

Heading into daylight, we were safe. On land was danger, but with four engines bearing us through the air, though overloaded with fuel and gold, the worst was over.

‘They wanted us to surrender,’ I said.

‘Cheeky devils,’ Appleyard laughed. ‘I hope you told ’em what to do.’

‘Radio silence. And no bad language.’

‘Pity,’ Nash put in.

‘Keep it that way.’

Gaining height by inches. Kelp patched the narrowest point of the straits. An expanding funnel of land showed our route to the open sea. We were flying, all weight fallen from us, and waiting for it to go from the boat.

‘We’ll be so high the earth’ll be a tennis ball,’ Appleyard said.

‘But who’ll have the bat?’

‘Crawl down into your apple-pie bed and die,’ said Nash.

‘063 magnetic,’ said Bennett. ‘Until we’re in the clear at 48 south 70 east. Log that as well, Sparks. Wind westerly, ten to fifteen. Bring the computer. When we’re on automatic I’ll work things out.’

I tore a sheet from Rose’s log, noting the time and initial course. The island that divided us from the pursuing ship was two thousand feet high, so we were not visible. Nor when they turned the headland would they see any sign. They might search all indentations before realizing we had taken off, and then what could they do?

‘They’re not as daft as you think,’ said Nash. ‘But then, neither are we.’

17

We would reach base with fuel to spare, Bennett claimed, and our cargo intact. Rational and hopeful, he had worked his doubts out of existence. But logic said that while each mile lessened the weight of fuel to be carried, every gallon spent increased the possibility of not getting where we wanted to go. Rose had been right. We might as well be heading into space. The situation was that of a man humping food on his back through an area where no supplies were available. He would eat much and frequently in order to generate the energy to carry such heavy cargo. The more he ate the lighter his load would become, and he would need to eat less in order to transport what remained. But when all food had gone and he had not yet reached terrain where more was at hand, he would die of starvation. So the flying boat on running out of fuel would crash into the sea. Even if we had a little in reserve, a few failures of navigation would still cause a shortfall.

The track of the Aldebaran clipped the eastern dagger-point of Howe Island at a height of little more than a thousand feet, our gentle climb due as much to conserving fuel as to the weight being hauled. We go for the Equator, Bennett said, and keep travelling, and if we can’t reach Ceylon because of fickle winds we’ll beg, borrow or steal petrol – or even buy if the price is right! – from Diego Garcia, only 350 miles off our track.

He had studied the matter well, but Diego Garcia, the first outpost of civilization, was a dot on the ocean, and even if he worked the stars as competently as Rose (Nash insisted he could do it better), it would be a feat to locate the place, whether occupied at the controls or not. Instead of a thermal back-up at the tail, side winds would nudge us here and there, and difficulties in making the required track would adversely affect our fuel supply. If we weren’t forced to ditch a hundred miles short of our objective, 3270 miles away, we’d be lucky to alight with a pint in each engine. Shipping routes lessened the danger of drowning, but the sea was unlikely to develop woolly arms into which we could safely alight.

Radio would help little if star sights were impossible, bearings only useful when confirmed from other sources. It was the same old tale, I said. The first wireless beacon was on Mauritius, 1200 miles off our track. Then Diego Garcia would give bearings either to home in on or provide lateral fixes till I contacted HF DF at Negombo in Ceylon on 6500 kilocycles. The latter part of the trip would be safer in this respect, though how we would feel after twenty-eight hours on our Flying Dutchman was hard to imagine.

Blood had a smell, and that was a fact. The gun under my table was still tacky. With five rounds in the chamber I could persuade Bennett to make for Freemantle. The distance was a thousand miles less, and we would have the wind pushing from behind. But I couldn’t hold the gun at his temple for ten hours, beyond which he would have no option but to carry on. Nash and Appleyard, what’s more, had absolute faith in his ability to get us non-stop to Timbuctoo if he said he could – grumble as they might at his eccentricities. Against all three I was helpless. And then my duty was braced by a call from our pursuers, loud signals proving that we were not yet out of their reach.

‘PZX DE WXYZ = RETURN TO TAKE OFF POSITION = +’

I passed the chit, and Bennett decided there would be no acknowledgement. I thought it would be best to ask for terms, having done well enough to secure peace with honour. I preferred to live rather than perish in trying to save the gold for Bennett’s own use. And to fly on meant that, either way, destruction was certain. But to make clandestine contact would have been my last act. I was as chained to my position as a machinegunner in the Great War, for though my loyalty was not to Bennett and his gold, nor even to us as a crew, I felt much affection for this aircraft flying over the sea, with its engines, ailerons, guiding rudder, and all other parts. I viewed it as from outside, ascending slowly with sunlight occasionally flooding the canopy and shining on Bennett as if he had been fixed in his position during the plane’s construction and launched at the controls. Whether it would have been possible to see him as an ordinary person like the rest of us I do not know, for perhaps I thought that if I succeeded in doing so I would not be able to defend any of us against him should the time ever come.

The same view of the Aldebaran that I envisaged was in reality obtained by a seaplane on the starboard quarter. Nash regretted that there were no dark nimbus-cupboards immediately available in which to play hide-and-seek. ‘Watch that Dornier before he gets under our belly.’

‘I’ll have him, Skipper,’ Appleyard said as it veered away.

The plane came back and flew level, fixed at our speed, and kept its distance so cleverly that we seemed to have spawned a satellite. Another hung onto our tail, but at a greater distance. The crew of two in tandem, canopies back, were clearly seen. The rear man flashed a lamp.

‘Read it, Sparks.’

‘Will do.’

Nash got the message over the intercom. ‘We’re out of range.’

‘Hold them till we hit cloud.’

The message was repeated. ‘TURN OR WE DESTROY YOU.’

‘What kind of English is that? said Nash.

‘Sounds like Fu Manchu,’ said Appleyard. ‘Tell ’em to go to hell.’

Bennett surprised me. ‘Ask what’s the matter.’

‘“Going to a dance, send three-and-fourpence,”’ said Nash. ‘I don’t mind a fighter plane. All’s fair in love and war. But it’s the flak I can’t stand. Getting too old for it.’

My morse could not have been easy to read. The lamp was almost too heavy to hold. The second seaplane to starboard also winked its light across the blue, a message impossible to misread. At 2000 feet we were climbing, but like a flying barn compared to their nimble craft.

‘Watch ’em, Nash. They’ll try and nudge us in the opposite direction.’

‘You take the bastard to port,’ Appleyard said. ‘And I’ll sic the other.’

‘Can’t throw the old flying boat around like a Spitfire this time, Skipper.’

‘Straight and level does it. Press on regardless.’

Nash laughed. ‘Did we ever do anything else?’

The message was always the same. I wanted to send ‘Per ardua ad astra’ in morse, something I’d never thought of doing while wearing the uniform. We could no more turn than if we were in a railway train. The refuge of cloud got no closer. They lacked the range to follow us far, but we were only a hundred miles north of the island, its black humps still close.

At getting no sense the seaplanes broke station, zoomed up steeply and ahead. What did the sky look like to them? They saw a victim, prime and squat, a lumbering tortoise sent for their enjoyment, with all the heavens a playpen. The scene gave me the horrors, until an order came from Nash. ‘Sit in the mid-upper, Sparks, and see what you can do.’

Hindsight mellows, time distorts, so how can the reality be grasped as it was in the act? Only first impressions count. Sickness in the guts fled when I moved. I saw little. Nash waited till the plane was a few hundred yards away, then opened up. The attack came from astern. They thought we had put coloured sticks in the turrets instead of Brownings. ‘Otherwise how could they be so daft?’ Appleyard called. We spoke to ourselves. The plane lifted, smoke like shite-hawk feathers rippling the sky. A pale belly sheered up the side of our tailplane, a full view of two floats before slipping to starboard and down to the sea.

‘One gone,’ said Nash. ‘But there’s the other, so don’t put your finger back in yet.’ Was it bagatelle or skittles? Don’t ask, said Bennett. The sky was empty, and not my turn to have a go, and a sense of solitude made me sweat. My hands shook, eyes wanting to close. There was something in my eye, but was it fear? The plane came at speed. Time slowed so that he was in my sights as he weaved side on in an attempt to unstitch us from stem to stern. My heart crashed into him as I fired the two guns.

‘Cut the bad language.’

Appleyard tried, and the plane slid out of his sights. I sent another burst. He fell away early, not mad enough to die.

‘Hold your fire,’ said Nash. ‘I’ll get the gold-lover.’

He came from the north, a quarter turn to put his gunner in line. ‘I see him,’ said Appleyard. ‘And would you believe it? He’s blue-eyed, blond and wearing a yellow scarf.’

‘Don’t care if he’s in his underpants,’ said Nash. Bullets ripped the fuselage. They were throwing pebbles. I didn’t know where they struck, but hoped the radio wasn’t hit. I tasted ashy rage at the thought. Blowing bubbles, said Nash. Spite will get you nowhere. As the plane wheeled the length of the flying boat he fired from side-on. The plane continued south.

‘Going home with a cat up his arse,’ Nash mumbled.

Bennett kept his unflinching course. ‘Call the roll.’

‘OK, Skipper. You all right?’

‘Nose shipped a few.’

‘Sparks?’

‘Sir!’

‘Salute when you speak to me!’

‘Hi-di-hi!’

‘Ho-di-ho!’

There was a pause while levity sank away.

‘Appleyard?’

Nash sounded weary: ‘After action I’m knackered. Like an orgy – done in, for ever and ever, though it’s nothing a good kip or a fried egg won’t cure. Have a dekko, Sparks, there’s a good lad.’

I knocked on all protuberances. The plane roared steadily, gaining height, but only by the mile. Take ten years before we need oxygen, but I felt light-headed at the thought that we had seen the last of the Nemesis and its bluebottle-seaplanes. Well, don’t be so sure. Life’s full of nasty surprises. They must have been discouraged, anyhow, by one down and the other damaged. I wanted to return to my wireless in case I learned something new.

Appleyard’s turret was spattered with holes, and a mess of blood poured from his stomach. I was fixed by a paralysis that would enable me to remember, and then tell about it. He began screaming that he didn’t want to die, and because I couldn’t save him, I willed him to.

Nash opened a field dressing. To staunch the flow, he said, would be like trying to patch a burst dam with a postage stamp. Which might be something you can do in Holland, he added, his face flour-white, the lines deeply accentuated, but not here.

18

The reek of petrol and oil seemed to put up the temperature. Haggard from turning the nose-gunner’s body into the sea, Nash said that one of the tanks might have sprung a leak. That last raking did damage. It was certain, however, that Bennett’s high octane optimism hadn’t yet started to spill out. Perhaps it was better so, because in the end only his press-on-regardless spirit might save us.

I clung to the refuge of my wireless station. The magic-eye would be the last glowing item before we went into the dark. Unless I could contract to homunculus proportions, assume salamander-like properties, take on the role of a phoenix and get between the valves of the transmitter, it would be a dark I would never come out of. As long as I didn’t think of it I was not afraid, yet I resented being unable to dwell on matters for that reason.

Everything seemed so certain that I felt as if I were on a conveyor belt, but such thoughts insisted on being cold shouldered by my fingers flicking the various switches in spite of myself and to no real purpose, though my ears were listening for any tinkle of hope. The seaplanes must have radioed their base ship, for the wireless operator on board sent a message which he knew I must receive. ‘TELL CAPTAIN PROCEEDS SHARED BETWEEN YOUR FORCE AND WE STOP SAFE CONDUCT GUARANTEED TO YOUR GALLANT CREW STOP TERMS HONOURABLY KEPT IF YOU RETURN.’

‘Gee,’ said Nash, ‘let’s throw the oboe out of the window and contact the consul!’

I passed the half-full bottle of whisky. ‘Calm down. Have a drink.’

He imitated Tommy Handley’s side-kick to perfection. ‘Don’t mind if I do!’

‘Sing a song of sixpence,’ Bennett chimed in, ‘and let’s live forever.’ Knowing our kite to be damaged, the Nemesis was steaming north in the hope of being close when we came down. Our lives in danger, we would send an SOS with the ditching position conveniently attached. If the Aldebaran sank and the gold with it, and we were picked up by them from our dinghy, we would be killed. That much was implicit in their telegram. Bennett read the signal and said nothing, his mood like a yo-yo.

On my way to the set I looked at the port inner. There was a haze around the exhaust which is sometimes seen in hot weather. The shimmer attracted me when I hadn’t expected to see anything at all. I was wary of pointing it out to Bennett. To tell him he should stop hoping was not worth the risk of a bullet. His face showed no threat, but his fixed pose daunted me. By his stillness he seemed to be in touch with more than either I or Nash could imagine. It was a mistake to think so. He wasn’t. If he didn’t wish for information he would have to be force-fed. But I was wrong. As a pilot he had more senses than a cat in a snake pit. ‘Sparks, get down to the panel and read me the oil temperature gauges, and the oil pressure gauges. Also the fuel contents gauges while you’re about it. Routine stuff.’

We were near the woolly corrugations at five thousand feet, but no longer climbing. Because none of us should lack information on our plight, I copied the readings for Nash as well.

Bennett waved me away. ‘Read them again in ten minutes.’

The same gunmetal glaze from the starboard inner tallied with the figures. Oil pressure was low in both engines. The angle between our longitudinal heading and the ceiling of cloud increased. Divergence was subtle, but we were going down. Nash sat on the bunk, and when I showed him the signal from the ship, and the engine data, he said: ‘The old man won’t turn back. He’ll ditch first.’

‘Isn’t that the last thing we want?’ I leaned against the bulkhead. The plane was no safer than a packing case. ‘We’ll keep half the loot if we turn. Otherwise we get nothing.’

‘Don’t believe that signal. They’d kill us on sight. We’ve given ’em too much stick.’

He gave a bitter smile of resignation, the sort of expression that must have been on his lips when he heard his prison sentence. Under Bennett’s rule he had become mortally pliable. Then I saw a flicker of his former self. ‘The only way to maintain height is to lighten the load. If we get as far as the shipping lanes and then come down we might be rescued.’

I felt the blow of defeat. The cardboard world was coming to an end. ‘Tell that to Bennett.’ There was bitterness in my smile too. ‘He’ll chuck us off, rather than the gold.’

‘He’s in no condition to do any such thing. There’s nothing to throw out that weighs so much.’

‘What about the guns?’

‘They’ll go last of all. And it would take too long.’

The blockage in the oil feed pipe had righted itself. We were flying level. Renewed hope was the measure of our desperation. We drew another tot of whisky. When I got back to the radio, the operator from the ship was repeating his message. To maintain silence seemed senseless, so I tapped sufficient to indicate that I had received and understood his text, and added that they could go to hell, because we were taking the gold to Shottermill as prearranged. Let them chew on that, and Shottermill bite the bullet if ever they got to him. In the meantime I told them to wait, wait, wait – till the crack of doom – as we must surely wait to find out whether we had any chance of getting beyond their range. That their signals were diminishing was due as much to the passing of time as to increase of distance. But at more than a hundred knots we had no difficulty leaving their orbit behind. To use a flying boat had been a fine ploy, though whether it had been good enough we didn’t know.

Checking the gauges, there was a vibration underfoot, as if the fuselage was trying to explain its sickness. Too much cargo had been put on, and a substance was not getting freely through to the engines. The life force was failing. Endurance was one thing, but the weight of dreams was another. Perhaps Bennett, in his central position, was not aware of our tonnage grinding against the sky. Calmness in the midst of adversity had become a serenity which he did not want to lose even to save himself. After getting the aircraft off the water he had settled into a brittle senility of purpose. He threw the ship’s message down, and smiled because the figures from the engineer’s panel had not altered in ten minutes. His expression said that he would prove us wrong.

19

The sea was roughened by a breeze from the west. Airborne for two hours, we were out of the influence of the island. In the good conditions just after dawn there seemed more life on short wave. Even on low there was traffic between ships, though most was faint and indecipherable.

It was impossible to ignore the flow from the inner engines, or not to take note of the fact that the third reading of the fuel gauges showed a fall in pressure. Nash in the galley had seen the fumes. ‘If the Skipper doesn’t feather those props the engines will either catch fire or disintegrate.’ The circular spirit-cap of the primus was about to burn itself dry. ‘Or the whole caboodle will go up in smoke. I wouldn’t forget where your parachute is if I was you.’

He pumped a flame under the kettle. ‘I never thought there was much future in such things. But don’t worry. It may not come to it. Bennett once brought a Lanc back from Germany on one engine and half a wing. Or near enough. We’re still in the Queen Mary compared to that.’

He heaped six dessert spoons into the large pot as if we still had a full crew. The aroma of brewing tea came even through the smell of fuel and, connected to some comfortable past, seemed to promise a future. Who cared about danger anymore? Reality slotted to a lower level of my mind.

Nash swore but did not flinch when the vibration of the plane threw drops of scalding water across his hand. ‘I wouldn’t worry, Sparks. Bennett’ll get us back to base.’

I was angry at his assumption that I was afraid, and slopped a third of the tea out of my mug ascending the ladder to the wireless. Nash followed with two mugs hooked on one hand and spilled none. He sat in the co-pilot’s seat and, with the controls on automatic, he and Bennett looked at the sea, and at the clouds they could not reach, as if they had only to stare long enough for land to appear a few miles to starboard.

I stayed tuned to the distress and general calling frequency, both for what I might hear, and to send our lifesaving message should the emergency come. Nash appeared uninterested in our common peril. Anxiety made it hard to devise a policy of salvation. He and Bennett were paralysed by optimism, or an ancient friendship difficult to break. I saw no alternative but to wait until that instant when we had to decide how to save ourselves.

Daytime atmospherics were in full sway, but an SOS had a habit of getting through. The Cape Town to Australia shipping route began 300 miles north of Kerguelen, and we had done almost that distance. There was no need yet to send an SOS, but I stayed alert for the sign of another ship. Every hour they would listen for fifteen minutes in case any vessel was in distress. I might try 8280 or 6040 for more long distance rescue, not in the hope of being reached in time, but so that there would be a record of our final plunge. The necessity of an SOS seemed a long way off. To send it not only admitted defeat, but would pull us into defeat even sooner – when it might not otherwise come at all. It was easy to be infected by the optimism of Nash and the skipper.

I put a hand towards my transmitter, fearing it would work loose from the mounting and fall forward. Thus the juddering of the airframe pulled me from my only refuge. Tea drops straddled the logbook like a stick of bomb-bursts. I steadied it and, gripping my morse key, managed to drink. With earphones around my neck I looked out, and saw the propeller of the inner port engine come to a stop, the distorted metal like a wave of greeting that had gone wrong.

Bennett emerged from his torpor. A hand went to the throttles, and he switched off the starboard inner for fear it would explode and scatter bits into the sea. This righted our slide-and-bump across the sky, and the two engines seemed tinnier and further away. He pushed the two outers onto full throttle so as to maintain speed, and prevent us skimming like a stone into the sea.

Nash noted all readings on the panel, the most significant being those from the air speed indicator and the altimeter. Bennett had set the barometric pressure at take-off, which made our height fairly accurate, but such a load on low power meant that the only solution was to shed some weight.

I stood behind, phone-lead trailing. Neither spoke. Each minute was another victory. Nash glanced at the altimeter like a fox at the horizon with the hounds behind. The hand spoke an inevitable descent, the arm of a failing clock coming back to the zero of the ground.

I could hear the sky, ions shifting in millions and making their own peculiar noise. The subtle river formed and unformed, a world to which I belonged. One morse signal would shaft a path through, man-made like a sword. They had no option but to give way for such rocket-pulses. None came. I searched and waited. The sensible course was to send a CQ call and contact whoever heard. If Bennett knew that a ship was close perhaps he would ditch within its radius.

The sea was a sheet of steel taken from a fire after the last heat had gone, ragged and corrugated, with pieces of blue clinker still attached. At three thousand feet, Bennett fought for every inch of height. ‘I can call a ship, in case we go down.’

Nash waved me angrily away. Bennett was cool. ‘Radio silence, Adcock. We’ve got to hang on to those boxes. You’re too young to know what they mean. A life without worries means freedom. Now I’ve got it. You lack the imagination to know what it signifies. As for you, Nash, I’ll buy you a fish-and-chip shop! You deserve no less.’

Bennett – Nash between them made a star, Rose once said. And Bennett spoke as if much humour lay behind his words. We knew how right he was. Nash and I laughed. So did the skipper. As the Aldebaran whined and rattled on its northward way we laughed till the tears splashed at our faces. Bennett didn’t believe it. There was more to it than that, his sombre face said. Beyond the gleam of riches was the challenge of getting our cargo – any cargo – to a destination. But that wasn’t entirely the case, either, and Nash was to prove it. I was making up stories which had no truth, a sign of moral depravity in the face of death.

His amiability came as a surprise, and I felt guilty of having doubted that we would reach dry land. Confidence came back. We weren’t losing height. Our airspeed increased. The outer engines, on full boost, seemed fit to run forever. ‘Believe you me,’ said Bennett when we stopped laughing, ‘as soon as I’ve disposed of what’s in those boxes, you’ll have a fair packet coming to you. I don’t forget good service.’

Nash said: ‘I realize that, Skipper, but those boxes will have to go overboard, all the same.’

The altimeter showed below three thousand feet. Nash was right, Bennett wrong. The simple values came uppermost at last. A ton in weight would keep us longer in the air, but a minute at a time was all we had a right to. Bennett pulled a whitened cigar from his jacket pocket and put it between his teeth. In his agitation he moved it from left to right like a piece of stick.

Nash glanced at me. I put my hand to where the revolver lay, unashamed of the value we had put on our lives. Bennett sweated with the effort of flying the plane. When he reached for his lighter, the hand on my gun tightened. He smoked for a minute or so. ‘All right, Mr Nash, open the hatch. Prepare to jettison cargo.’

I stood aside to let him by, a feeling of relief mixed with irritation. An operator on some ship not far off bounced his signals to all stations, whiling away his hours of boredom. Never so glad to hear that beautiful sparking rhythm, I tapped my call sign and the wireless operators’ laugh, and he replied with ‘Best bent wire’, and we played on the ether as joyfully as two dolphins sporting on the surface of a warm sea. I requested his QTH. He asked for mine. To respond was illegal, for no signal should go from ship or plane without the captain’s permission, but I looked at Rose’s chart and decided that our position was close to 42 00 South 71 30 East.

The controls were on automatic pilot and, suddenly remembering, I rattled down the steps, though for no reason – or so I thought – except that a feeling of dread swamped me as one rung after another resounded under my feet.

20

The hatch had gone into the sea. Nash stood in the patch of sky, ready to slide the first box out. We seemed to be gliding, without engines. My ears played tricks. A sunbeam like a scalpel – I almost felt its warmth – lay as if to cut my sleeve.

I pushed Bennett, half turned from me, doing what I did as if not yet born. The gap between each action was timeless because there were too many factors to measure. But not everyone has the opportunity of looking back, and so they go blind into action and never recover their sight.

The same with Bennett. His revolver fired during the lapse between the hand going forward and making contact with the cloth of his coat. I hardly saw the gun, perhaps not at all. Certain details will never become clear. I didn’t need to. My life passed in that moment from one authority to another, as if the ultimate word came back and told me what to do, taking thought out of responsibility and leaving me only with action.

Nash’s face, normally placid, showing a man to be relied on, with plenty of practical knowledge, a good share of courage, a temper lost only in the presence of fools, but flawed by being loyal at the wrong time and to unsuitable people, was a portrait of horror as the death-mist closed in. A hand went to his jacket where the bullet had left a zone of ragged flesh. Crimson liquid spurted from between his spread fingers. He swayed before I could reach him, and fell through.

I clutched the ladder so that my turn would not come, determined to prevent it as my finger eased down on the trigger. The rush of engine noise came back to clothe the senses – though there was little enough of what might have been there in the first place. He knelt, as if waiting for the sword of knighthood to tap him on both shoulders. I felt as if I had shot into myself, and almost wished I had, wanting to separate every minute of my life to find out what had led to it.

His hands searched the floor, felt the shape of each box like a blind man. He pulled the one nearest the door to safety, though with such steady flight it was in no danger of falling out. The universal clock never stopped ticking. He put on his cap, and when he stood I fired again. He brushed a hand across his face as if a bee had stung, and gave a grimace, almost a smile, of agony and surprise. I could not meet his eyes as he pushed by, but looked at the sea passing far below.

My foot caught the box that Nash failed to heave into the blue. I scraped my fingernails in sliding it over, fearful of being pulled out. The lid opened, and a stream of gold like a bird’s wing swung towards the water, lighting its grey track. I wanted to leap after it, but the action would not come. Boxes that broke went down in an arc of sunlight, darkening as they disappeared. Those that stayed intact spun like a depth charge, but made no visible splash as they hit the curving waves. I forgot where I was. My soul was in contact with happiness. I was in danger of being caught in the slipstream but, agile and confident, knew I could not go. At the end of such labour, reality rushed back, and I moaned so loud that I heard myself even above the noise of the engines – the reverse of waking from a bad dream.

The work wasted my spirit to the marrow. I expected to be engulfed as the flying boat touched water, but the loss of weight reduced our rate of descent. How Bennett climbed to the flight deck I’ll never know. I felt no surprise. He sat at the control column, staring towards the horizon. The altimeter read five hundred feet when I looked over his shoulder. He spoke.

‘What did you say, Skipper?’

‘We’re going in.’ The face below his cap-peak was carved in white marble, lips showing dissatisfaction at the state of affairs for which, his expression said, he blamed himself. His hand came to me, and I felt pressure from the ice-cold palm. The exhaustion from sending the boxes to oblivion made me afraid of the dark. His smile wrenched out of me a spirit that I never got back.

His voice was weak but clear when he said something about the fire-tender pinnace standing by. ‘Take care, Sparks. Emergency landing.’

I put on my safety belt. Determined to make the best touch-down of his life, he controlled the plane so as to meet gently the swell of an empty sea. My mind registered dreams rather than impressions. I could be dead immediately, but couldn’t have cared less. While holding their fearful chaos at bay, I knew that fate would have me in its power forever.

‘We tried,’ Bennett said.

There was one enormous bang after another, as if a giant hammered the hull with his fist, demanding to be let in. A rush of water streamed by. I thought we were already underneath, the Aldebaran like a hand fitting into a glove of water. The starboard engine cut, and when the floor came up my head struck against the clickstops of the transmitter. The port engine stopped, and we spun around. I thought the blood which poured was water as I rolled towards the ladder, an electrical shock pulsing through my arm.

One acts, or is acted upon. The will takes over when life is in danger. The threat from natural forces releases a natural force for combat. If the odds are too great, you succumb. If not, you have the chance to survive. No time to question who decides, and afterwards there does not seem to have been anyone else there but you.

I pulled myself to the bridge. Bennett had struck the windscreen and smashed it. I dragged his body over the controls, cold salt water giving back energy. I laid him between the navigation table and my wireless position, the sound of gurgling sea beyond the canopy and down by the hatch. The flying boat was a hulk, and I let myself down the ladder to the last box of coins. The boat lifted and slid in the swell, and I vomited from the rhythm and the intense reek of petrol until my stomach seemed about to detach from its moorings. I drank water, and spewed that too. When I was empty I felt glad that at least part of me would go down with the boat.

Strength came back, and in my madness (hard to think of it as anything else) I hauled the box along the deck, step by step to Bennett’s body. I opened the box with a fire-axe, and scattered coins till his uniform was speckled. Then I closed his eyes, so that he would go down like a hero.

A strut of the port float buckled. The galley was flooding when I went for a canister of water, and diligently foraged for tins of food. My work was without thought. I laughed at such feeble precautions while throwing food in. In an untended ocean life could not go on. Being alone, there would be no casting lots to decide who would be eaten in order that others could survive. But I wanted to get as far from the flying boat as I could, a great weariness leaving me only enough energy to follow those who had preceded me.

Wing tip uncovered, bones of structure visible, float lopsided, the flying boat settled into its bed of water, and I got into the dinghy.

21

The tailplane passed overhead. Pushing away from the carcase I felt like the last man on earth, with no prospect of meeting anyone, and obsessed by the fact that there was nothing to live for.

The same grey ceiling covered the sky. Wind numbed me, in spite of hard work on a heavy sea. But I was not rowing as strenuously as I imagined. The Aldebaran subsided, seen as the swell took me high to show a white tangle and the upstanding blade of its tail. When the dinghy next lifted onto a crest there was only watery space. The wind never stopped, so I huddled under tarpaulin. Being cold, the dark comforted me. I had left my watch, and didn’t know the time. The covering let in light, so I felt the difference between night and day.

I ate when hungry, and having eaten threw off the tarpaulin to look about. The heave of water and the wind that talked in a foreign language became normal life. I didn’t care when food and water were finished.

The survival kit contained materials for a spinnaker sail. When hoisted, the tone of the wind changed. It would take three months to reach Australia. If I drifted from shipping lanes I would fall in with the icy seas of Antarctica.

With a length of rope I threaded the tarpaulin through rings that circled the dinghy, making a cover as far as the mast. I looked out from under during the day. A single-engined fighter came from above the cloud-base and made so fast towards me that if I had not retreated to the furthest side of the dinghy the space between my eyes would have been blasted by the propeller. The noise stretched my eardrums to bursting. When the plane left off shooting up my boat the sound of the sea became an amiable melody until, shipping so much water, I baled out for fear of becoming swamped.

My clothes were never dry. I fed on hard biscuit and what was in the tins. When the food was finished there would be nothing to worry about except the torment of dying. Lack of fibre was preceded by lack of moral fibre. I drank the water. There was no use delaying death.

A solitary black Pathfinder at five hundred feet was followed by so many four-engined bombers that the sky was full. Where did they come from? I counted more than four thousand. They went over the horizon. The noise deafened, then faded. Where had they gone? I wept without shame.

I went into and out of sleep, into hope and then despair, became raving, and then calm. I measured time by the minute, then willingly slept through appalling dreams to avoid the desolation, so that a whole day would go by.

Sometimes my sleep had no dreams. I drifted, and did not know where I went. Dreams waited to torment me in daylight. The sun was so menacing I imagined it, instead of rising, as if about to crawl along the surface of the sea towards me. At dawn I saw the Aldebaran. How could it have taken off when I had seen it sink? All parts intact, its beautiful form flew just above the sea, belly glistening in the sun. I waved, and shouted for help. Those on board could hardly miss me. I prayed that the captain would alight to pick me up. Its portholes were black spots. Propellors were feathered, each set of triple blades stark in the air. But it moved as if the engines worked on full power. There was a rush and whistle as the aero-boat gained height, banked onto a reverse course, then came by again, Bennett’s skeleton at the controls.

I leapt into the water. An icy blast wiped the flying boat from my eyes. The dinghy was a hundred yards away. I swam happily. The sky was empty. When I decided to stop swimming my arms would not obey. I shouted an order, but from the crest of a wave was thrown against the dinghy. I clung to the side, then pushed myself away.

I lay exhausted under the tarpaulin. Hands pressed my ears to keep out the roar of engines, the crackle of atmospherics, the insistent signals of morse which I’d hoped never to hear again, and speech in no language that I could understand, and bird-cries, and the barking of dogs. Even the grave-like hiss of the sea was held at bay, every sound muted as I stayed under cover and closed my eyes knowing that communication – the purpose of my life – had got me nowhere.

Light filtered in. Drinking water had gone, the last container finished. Dreams killed thirst, but when no dreams came I chewed biscuit, and held back my vomit for fear of entrails roaring out of my mouth. Read the omens. I slept in a black cone, drifted to the narrowest end. Engine noise increased, though I would not look. Kerosene smelled above the drumming. The dream was endless.

A broad, bearded man, wearing a duffelcoat, a woollen hat and fur-lined boots, and holding a boathook took over my vision. ‘We nearly ran you down. Don’t you have any lights? Good job we didn’t pass you in the dark, mate.’

The black cliff had a ladder up the side. The journey was over, though I went on living. How I did so would not make a story. God drives a hard bargain. You live a dream, then have to pay for it, though with death in the offing no one loses.

They said I was talking funny as they hauled me on deck. But I laughed, knowing that nothing else would happen in my life worth recording. Even though I was alive, I had gone down with the flying boat.