‘On one of our anti-sub patrols,’ Wilcox said, ‘I saw a Gremlin as large as life run onto the navigator’s table, pick up his Dalton computer – Rose was asleep at the time – get out onto the wing, and drop it in the drink. Then he did the same with his sextant – bit of a struggle, that. I’ll never forget the grin on its wicked little face. Stood by the starboard outer, doing a dance on his flippers before he let go. You should have seen Rose when he woke up and found his toys gone.’
The close night air was permeated with tobacco smoke and smells from the galley. ‘I remember,’ said Rose. ‘You lot hid them. What a bunch of jokers!’
When more tea was made there was silence rather than talk. Armatage asked me to take a cup to the skipper. The boat rocked as I went up the steps. Bennett was looking at the flight engineer’s panel. The shadowy light showed haggard features as he turned: ‘There’s no end to the homework.’
He had changed and shaved since the briefing. A dog-tag identity disc hung out from his shirt and clicked against the panel when he moved. That bit of brown bakelite with his name and service number looked ominous. Mine had gone missing – or I had handed it in. I saw a corpse in water, bloated by the power of the sun. The vision went. ‘What if other people are trying to get at this gold, Skipper?’
The grey, granite-like structure of Bennett’s cheeks and forehead tilted into surprise. Aircrew informality did not go as far as questioning operational orders, but I was curious about the danger that might be in store. It would have been unhelpful to ask at the briefing. No one could dispute that he was our captain. Each man to his work, to which all loyalty goes, but to be involved in a shady enterprise, and have even the geographical factors against you, did not make a good basis for employment. As individuals, we needed either the profit or the adventure – the more lucrative in the first case, and the more dangerous in the second, the better. Nor would a combination of both come amiss. Those in for profit would not baulk at excitement, and whoever wanted adventure might well accept money to cushion their return to the humdrum. But it seemed to me that danger could only be exhilarating when right was on your side.
He put his tea down. ‘As far as anybody can tell, no one else knows about the hoard.’
I was determined to say no more.
Do you want the job, or don’t you?
I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything.
It’s not too late to have you taken ashore.
I had spoken once too often.
We’ll manage without you. Plenty of others to put in your place.
‘Maybe it’s already gone,’ I said.
‘Leave the thinking to me, Adcock. If there was a chance that the gold had gone do you think we’d go and look for the bloody stuff? Just sit at your box of tricks and tap out “Best Bent Wire” to the birds on your little toy morse key.’
I should have acted, but it was too late. One can’t walk from a flying boat moored before take-off. The only way out was at the end of the trip, wherever and whenever that would be.
In the galley Nash and Appleyard were checking stores. Bull clutched a pack of playing cards to his chest and slept. The flying boat felt leaden, an ordinary squalid habitation that could not possibly fly; but Bennett and Rose were talking fuel figures with Wilcox, and our piratical galleon of the air was being primed for its task.
Armatage finished cleaning, and was reorganizing the containers of food. ‘Skipper was right when he said we had plenty. Neither a ship nor a pub should run out of grub, as I’ve heard say. And that means a flying boat. Let me tell you, Sparks, there’s nothing we ain’t got on board.’
Instead of asking what he meant, I stacked each piece of washing-up for putting away, noting the different marks and decorative monograms of railway companies, hotels, officers’ messes and restaurants – all crockery in prime condition. The same with the cutlery. ‘It’s a wonder there was any left when the railways were nationalized.’
‘Listen, Tosh, the government’s a big firm.’ He stowed things in the locker. ‘And we know how to make ourselves comfortable. Nothing but the best, that’s what I say.’ He wiped the table and fastened it down, then laid towels across the stoves. ‘If we’re shipwrecked let’s hope we get all this onto dry land. We might have to survive six months, never mind six days.’
Over the two bunks was a row of paperbacks and copies of London Opinion, and hardcovered library books with the coats of arms of various cities half torn away. I put one called The Knapsack into my pocket, in case sleep was hard to come by.
At my receiver I pressed the switch and stared at the glass through which the magic eye filled to the brim with green. How many times had that hypnotic light given me pleasure to watch? Operators were saying goodnight. A Lockheed Lodestar was calling Port Elizabeth. One half of the world in my left ear, and the other in my right, were joined by the brain; and this reading of rhythmical symbols oscillating into words at writing speed never ceased to strike me as magical.
I listened to messages from ship to shore, or from aircraft to earth, none of which concerned us. The transmitter of one ship, asking for a harbour pilot, sounded as if it had been recovered from the sea after accidentally falling overboard, its note farting across fifty kilocycles of frequency. Stations were going off the air as if a slow-moving tidal wave was sweeping the slate clean for take-off in the morning.
PART TWO
1
Rose, having pre-computed the initial course to steer, acted as second pilot during the fraught minutes of take-off. A slight blue-black waterchop grated along the hull as he and Bennett checked the controls. Customs clearance had been given, and the harbour authorities were glad to see us go, because a flying boat was liable to drag its moorings and, being in a place where facilities for such craft hardly existed, could only be a danger to shipping – and itself.
Wilcox primed the engines, and when port and starboard outers were going, Nash and his bowmen-gunners slipped our moorings. Once clear, the inners were started, and hatches closed. I had already taken sycop gen of four-tenths cirro-stratus, visibility ten miles, pressure 29.8, temperature 71, and wind 280 degrees at 25 knots. A depression centred 300 miles southeast presaged a deterioration in the weather as the warm sector was crossed and the front approached.
The noise of four engines scoured our minds to emptiness on that nondescript dawn. We were on the move. No more doubts, and not much thought except for the job in hand. Harbour buildings, shabby like everything else from the glass windscreen of a flying boat, were a row of bad teeth lit by a spark of sun. There was a smell of fresh air and dust from the shore, and a saltier whiff from the sea. An amarillic band across the horizon was broken by a twig of steamer smoke.
We turned to starboard, well clear of shipping, taxied downwind and positioned ourselves between two buoys. The outers were run up, then the inners. Wings and fuselage vibrated, and I gripped the seat to stop my legs shaking like a pair of knick-knacks. All our problems were solved in that there was no turning back. Difficulties would arise, a disaster might occur, but the primary question was no longer valid.