16
The milky white of the sky was the kind from which visions came. We went through the air as if all sails were spread, but the ribs of actual green water raced each other towards land, while we were the umpire-clipper left behind. I remarked that I didn’t yet have my airlegs, otherwise I would not have noticed when the boat lost its smooth ride and seemed to strike solid but invisible rocks underfoot, but Nash, the stubbled flesh slack at his cheeks, said every tremor registered because you were never up long enough to become deadened.
The following wind which had given a satisfactory groundspeed had saved much fuel, but such luck was too good and now, instead of the prevailing westerly on which Bennett had depended, the wind backed sufficient to clip our speed by almost thirty knots. When Rose had adjusted his airplot I reflected that the change of wind had worked to the advantage of the false message Bennett had induced me to send. I had transmitted almost at sea-level when the smoke flare was released to confirm the new bent of the wind, which helped the authenticity of my morse as coming from a surface ship, and the uncertain power of our signals coincided with the supposedly intervening mountains and coastlines. Another advantage was that when our enemy (the only word I could use), believing the message to be genuine, went full steam ahead for that gold-taking vessel on the south side of the island, he would sensibly avoid the old whaling settlements on the east in case they were inhabited, and sail down the west coast instead, in which case there could be a danger of his seeing the Aldebaran approach from the west. But because the change of wind made us an hour late, there would be less chance of this.
Now that the time for my own false signal came, I wanted him to believe I was on a ship much further away, and that I was not the same person who had condescended to give him a position report twenty minutes ago. This illusion was helped by us being back at five thousand feet. Unlike his ham-fisted music, I rattled away in my own sharp style, giving him world enough and time for all the bearings he liked – though I wondered whether he had had sufficient wireless direction-finding experience to take the opportunity. His requests to make myself known – QRZ? QRA? QTH? – had been brash, the blade of his morse cutting sharply through the layer-cake of atmospherics, and so well pumped as to be almost aggressive.
Now that it was my turn, I knew that any attempt to match him would create suspicion, so I merely kept my signals healthy and distinct. No distance to travel, the flutey chirping came off a conveyor belt set into motion by my hand on the key, and I sent as if my only object was, out of courtesy and safety, to contact whoever was in the area.
A line of sun from between rolls of cloud marked my receiver. When he thanked me for my reply, I requested a weather report from his area, since I would be passing to the north on my way to Hobart. He told me to wait, meaning he had gone outside to cook one up, or was consulting with others as to whether or not I should have one. If he didn’t send any gen, my suspicions that he was not friendly would be confirmed – something he would want to avoid. But if he was not well-intentioned the report would be false, or at least unhelpful. He would reason, in the latter case, that since we were, as I had indicated, two or three days distant, it wouldn’t matter if it was false or not, because weather changes so rapidly in this part of the world that we would never be able to accuse him of having lied. He could not know that we were in a flying boat, and barely an hour away.
While he was sending I got a rough bearing – though in the phase of minimum signal I missed the temperature – and afterwards jotted down: = WIND WEST 35 KTS ............... VISIBILITY 10 CLOUD 2/10 AT 8000 SEA FRESH = + There was no certainty that close to the island the weather wasn’t spinning around in circles, but from where we were visibility was half of what he said, and the cloud base four instead of eight thousand feet. His wind direction was the opposite to the one we had ascertained with the smoke flare. But what proved beyond doubt that he was lying was that the latitude and longitude he gave in no way tallied with the bearing I had taken – as approximate as it had been under the circumstances.
My work was done. I had him taped. He would not call me for a while, and I would not be calling him. Who had used who was hard to say, but I was beyond caring, and went to the bunks where I slept as one who had no interest in the future. The scarred side of Rose’s face pushed me into sleep of a kind, and kept me away from billows of snow, but guilt with good reason weighed on me like a sack of bloody offal. I felt as if I had given up my soul.
17
We came through a three dimensional archipelago of cloud and sighted the jagged basalt of northern Kerguelen. From four thousand feet and twenty miles away, the black rock, three parts surrounded by turbulent water, acknowledged the accuracy of Rose’s navigation. We cheered. Bennett had existed by the minute to get this view, keeping his impatience in check before entering the flying boat for a long grind over the water area of Mother Earth.
We had ten minutes to look at the black cone over whose summit course would be altered towards the Tucker Straits. I had visualized Mount Oben, on the thick paper chart, as rising to a seventeen-hundred foot peak above the three-sided blue sea, witnessing a benign image when confronted by hachures surrounding a dot. I got the coast right, and the hilly configuration more or less correct, but the elements were missing, and the black rock of desolation only came alive at the impact of reality.
Rose showed no pride at his navigational success, but Nash came up to tap him on the back: ‘Bang-on! A bloody good show, Nav!’ No more than a flicker passed Bennett’s lips. His determination had driven luck before him like an explorer his dog team over the snow. From the moment he sighted Mount Oben he orientated himself by every islet and feature that he had studied four years on the chart. There were slight variations, but the view was tormented into conformity, and he hardly counted the nine main capes before turning into the allotted fjord. As each passed under the hull he felt as if he had taken part in creating the splashed shape of this island by the fact of his own birth, which he was revisiting after decades of painful absence. Mine, all mine. We weren’t meant to hear, his voice fainter over the intercom than the normal drone of instructions.
Ebony cliffs stood in yellowish vegetation along the starboard shore. Dark sand formed a moustache on either side of Elijah Cove, and shadows of brown kelp swayed in the water. The wind was feeling its way around the compass. Lines of foam streaked up the cliffs like desert religionists in white robes intent on making everyone in the world the same as themselves.
The plane bucked, and grated on its descent between rocks sticking out of the water like blunt pencils. I listened on 500 kc/s, setting the needle at the bottom left of the yellow semicircle, the volume two thirds over in spite of static, the filter button down, and the green eye glowing steadily because nothing came.
A thirteen-minute run on a bearing of 135 degrees from Elijah Cove took us by claw-like capes to where we turned south-south-easterly along narrowing straits. Headphones on a longer lead allowed me to see outside. Bennett announced action stations for Appleyard, Armatage and Bull, and I wondered why guns must be manned against such desolation, until recalling my inconclusive radio contacts at dawn.
Belly rolls of grey and white cloud hugged fjords that snaked their massive ways inland and seemed to vanish underground. Mist lifting from an island peak showed a glacier: snow lit by a gleam almost immediately doused. The plane turned ninety degrees on a southerly heading, and descended for its five-minute leg along Rhodes Bay. Cliffs with huge boulders at their feet glittered after a deluge of rain, and glacial water spread into a shallow bight.