The existence of each crew member had to be individually acknowledged. Bennett talked to Rose about routes and possible wind vectors, cloud ceilings and departure times, such a parley between pilot and navigator being long and involved. With the flight-engineer he broached engine performances and miles per gallon: how long the flying boat could stay in the air on a given quantity of fuel. Nash, as supercargo in charge of supplies and their loading, had to go over details of tool-stowage and survival rations, in case an accident should keep us on sub-Antarctic terrain, or if the flying boat alighted far from land and we had to wait for rescue by a passing ship. Distances were vast, and emptiness complete. Precautions had to be taken.
Away from air or sea lanes, the trip was exploratory, which was why we would collect a year’s pay for a bare two months. The earth would turn sixty-one times on its axis and if, as the Bible says, life is seventy years long, what difference will it make whether the pole-axe falls at seventy years and four months or seventy years and two months? The contract was indeed generous, and whoever devised such terms put high value on sixty-one days, or 1,464 hours or 87,840 minutes. And which of the 5,270,400 seconds would justify the payment of what all of us took to be danger money? Sixty-one days sounded more sober as a period of employment, less perilous yet demanding a full sense of responsibility while living through the heaviest that were obviously yet to come.
And beyond the end of two full moons there was nothing. A medieval sailor thought he might fall off the world. So would I when our time ran out. Visibility had closed in regarding the future, allowing me to see no more than a day ahead in those two months which might contain the moment of my death. It was better to be blind and unfeeling than think too far in front, though after Bennett had said what he expected by way of duty I was able to see a picture of the flying boat lifting, and setting course towards Kerguelen.
‘I tried to get eleven in the crew,’ he said, ‘but I was over-ruled in the matter and told to manage with eight. A hendecker – that is to say, eleven – would have given us an extra pilot, navigator, and wireless operator. To keep awake for twenty hours is asking a lot.’
Having done fourteen-hour watches, I told him I could cope, at which he said that no doubt all of us would do our duty. He sat so that he could stretch his legs and rest both feet on a corner of his desk. His worn face showed the battered spirit of a man at the end of a journey from which he had barely escaped with life and sanity, rather than the commander of an expedition about to depart and whose purpose none of us could understand. Perhaps the burden weighed so heavily on him because he was not so clear about it himself.
The deeply fixed lines down his face hadn’t been so obvious ten days ago. I waited, thinking he would never talk again, wondering whether I ought not to go out of the room. On the table was a fold-out stand of photographs, with a woman in the middle panel and a child on either side. She was dark-haired, with delicately lidded eyes and a sad smile, and a hand at her face as if to stop her long hair obscuring it. The children were ten or twelve years old, a boy and a girl on whom Bennett also gazed, though I don’t think he saw them as clearly as he wanted to.
‘I suppose now the gunners have arrived we’ll be taking off, Skipper?’
He reached for a pencil, spoke after a while, turning the leaves of a springbound notebook. ‘They’re my old crew right enough, but I get to thinking they’re here to make sure we don’t go north instead of east. They had a stopover in London, which may have put a different picture into their minds.’
‘Why should we want to go north instead of east?’
He gripped the notebook to prevent his hands trembling. ‘We might. Then again, we might not. After Kerguelen, no radio stations en route. Nothing but empty sea. At Freemantle the owners’ representatives are waiting. We hand over the cargo we picked up. That’s the picture. All arranged and agreed to, and the gunners are on board from take-off to see that we follow the plan and that none of it goes according to my wayward geographical proclivities. Our orders must coincide, Adcock.’
I lit a cigarette, wondering what the hell he meant. ‘Don’t you want the trip to go right?’ – speaking not because I wanted to, or even out of any particular interest in his puzzling talk, but because my senses told me that it was expected. I was never one to recognize the crucial moment when it was obscured by a morass of deception. I should have demanded that he cut the crap and tell me what the stunt was all about.
But he floated back unchallenged into the great Bennett silence, leaving me to mull on the fact that he had only wished for a double crew on the flight deck so that we would then outnumber the gunners. With a single crew, working every minute and fighting to keep awake, the gunners would have no difficulty in keeping us under observation. ‘Perhaps they were sent to protect us from something else,’ I suggested.
He wanted to find out whether I was wholly on his side. If so, then it was five against three, supposing we could count on Nash; but if not, he would be lumbered with the problem of having only four of us to four of them.
‘Both,’ he answered. ‘How far can you reach with the 1154 transmitter, Adcock?’
No distance could be guaranteed. Depended on your luck. One night I worked a Lancastrian from fifteen hundred miles away. His signals were faint but audible. I brought him right across the Dutch East Indies.
‘And if we get up to eighteen thousand feet?’
Flukes were possible, sometimes prevalent, mostly out of the question. I didn’t like giving figures. He craved them, however. ‘Let’s say, five hundred during the day, and twelve hundred at night. I’ll do what I can.’
He wanted to buy something, and demanded that I sell, so I did in order to give him ease of mind. I could have been right, after all. But there seemed something lunatic about the conversation: he’d been familiar with my transmitter for ten years and knew exactly what it could and could not do. He threw the pad and pencil on the table and rubbed his hands. ‘That’s all I need. I don’t want you to be God and promise me the earth. You’ll have the usual three frequencies, unless I tell you otherwise.’ I took out my notebook, though knowing them well. ‘Listen on 500 as much as practicable, except when I put you on 6500 during the day and 3805 as soon as it gets dark. But as far as the gunners are concerned, you’ll be on 500. They’re very particular about safety. Some bloody clot said that the Sparks should always be listening out on 500. But there’ll be no sending, Adcock. Keep your claws away from that tapper, unless and until I say so; but listen all the time and take down anything interesting. Swivel the knob every few minutes and let me know of anything else. Get what bearings you can with the loop aerial to help with the navigation. Leave the half-convergency business to Rose. He’s used to that.’
I was uneasy about not being able to send. Every operator likes a bit of tap-chat with passing ships or planes, or with shore stations.
‘I’ll tell you when it’s necessary. If you send, and somebody gets a bearing on us, it could put us in peril. You understand, Adcock?’
‘Why is that?’
‘Take my word for it. There may be some rum types roaming around the area we’re going to. You never can tell. So no sending. We want to spend our hard earned money on Pleasure Island, not Devil’s Island, don’t we?’
I agreed that we did.
‘You’re our ears, our intelligence section. So listen, and keep your hands off that key. With you bloody operators it’s like playing with yourself, but resist it. Everything you hear is important. Whatever little squeak comes into your ken, I want to know about it.’
The assignment was peculiar, yet such orders had more excitement than orthodox instructions. I was about to ask for how long they would apply, when he said: ‘I assume that I have your absolute trust, Adcock?’