Marazan (28 page)

We got no report from Hartland. Later we discovered that the seaplane turned inland in the neighbourhood of Boscastle and never went near Hartland at all. We should have done better to have planted more posts inland; as it was, it was the ones along the Exeter-Barnstaple road that really pulled us through. At about a quarter to five one of them rang up from a point a few miles south of Barnstaple.

The seaplane had passed about a mile to the north of him, he said. He had seen it clearly. It was flying high, but when questioned he could not say how high. We pressed him for a rough guess, and extracted from him the opinion that it was about as high as a cloud on a fine day.

I edged down towards Taunton, and began searching the horizon and the ground for any sign of the seaplane creeping slowly over the fields. It was a heart-breaking task. The light was fairly good by this time, but the detail of the ground, the pattern of the fields and woods
and hedges confused the eye. I could see nothing of the machine. Time slipped by, and still there was no sign. I was getting thoroughly worried when the subaltern spoke through the telephones into my ear.

‘We can hear an aeroplane here,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure that it isn’t you. Where are you now?’

I leaned forward and spoke into the mouthpiece strapped to my chest. ‘I’m about three miles south of Watchet,’ I said. ‘I’ll throttle my engine—see if you hear the note change. It’ll take a minute or two before you hear it, remember.’ I pulled the throttle back and put the machine on the glide. ‘I’ve throttled down now. I’m making practically no noise at all.’

‘Right you are,’ he replied. ‘Now wait while we listen.’

I sat up and looked anxiously all round ahead of me. Without my engine I was losing height rapidly, at the rate of about a thousand feet a minute. I kept glancing at the slow movement of the second hand of my wristwatch. When a minute and a half had gone by I leaned forward and spoke again.

‘What’s happening now?’

‘The noise is still continuous.’

‘It’s probably the seaplane. I’ll give it half a minute more for luck before I switch on my engine. Go on listening.’

We sank lower and lower. At about nine thousand feet I tried again.

‘What does it sound like now?’

‘The noise is still quite continuous. I think it must be the seaplane—can’t be anything else. I’ve got all the men out looking for it, but we haven’t seen it yet. It sounds as if it was to the south of us.’

I opened my throttle, shoved the nose of the machine down, and went full out for Taunton, losing height as
I went. I was half-way there and doing a hundred and forty miles an hour at six thousand when the subaltern spoke again.

‘Captain Stenning. Can you hear what I am saying?’ He spoke very distinctly. ‘We’ve sighted the seaplane. Your man saw her first. She’s about three miles due south of us now.’

‘Keep her in sight,’ I said. ‘I’m going to come right over you. Be ready to give me a compass bearing of her when I’m directly above you. What height is she?’

There was a pause. ‘Your man says she’s about four thousand feet up.’

I shoved my nose down a bit more and raced full out for Taunton. I had revised my ideas about height. I should be coming up on the seaplane from behind; in that position I should be less conspicuous if I were below her, hidden by her own tail and with a dark background of fields. Moreover, it would be easier for me to pick her up if she were silhouetted against the sky. I kept in touch with the ground, and passed over the tent at about a thousand feet.

As I drew near they gave me a course and a distance—south-east by east about six miles. I swung the machine round on to the course and went full out along that line, heading for Yeovil.

The voice of the subaltern spoke clearly into my ear. ‘Turn about ten degrees more to your left,’ he said distinctly. ‘You are aiming behind her.’

I swung round a little, and then suddenly I saw the seaplane clearly outlined against the sky.

‘Right you are,’ I said. ‘I’ve got her now.’

She was two or three thousand feet above me and several miles ahead; I was creeping up on her fast. To reduce my speed I climbed a little and finally took up a station a couple of miles behind her and fifteen hundred
feet below; I knew that in that position I would be practically invisible from her. While I was getting into position I thanked the Sapper for his help and told him to tell the Bournemouth Broadcasting Station that I was trying to get in touch with them. We had arranged that several stations in the south should be standing by, and we had an inspector at most of them.

The Sapper said that my mechanic wanted to speak to me before they shut down, and in a minute I heard him on the phone.

‘Is that Captain Stenning? It’s me speaking—Adams, sir. You come quite close here—we seen you swing round and go after them a fair treat. Don’t forget that what I told you, about not running her too slow. It’s the perishing oil they give us—all right in the winter. Keep her going and she won’t give you no trouble. You give them blighters ’ell, sir. That’s right, you give them ’ell.’

With that as a valediction I switched off; soon afterwards I picked up Bournemouth and spoke for a little to the superintendent there. We passed directly over Somerton and began to follow the railway in the direction of Frome. It was pretty obvious by that time that we were making for Salisbury Plain; indeed, I had been privately of that opinion all along. There was really nowhere else that could give the secrecy in landing that they would require. I felt this so strongly that I made the Bournemouth people switch me through to Salisbury by a land line, and spoke for a few minutes to the superintendent there. He told me that he had motors and police in readiness at Salisbury and at Devizes, and that the Air Force were standing by with a couple of machines at Upavon.

We passed over Bruton. I was sure from the steady course that the seaplane was keeping that I hadn’t been
spotted. I had done everything that I could to ensure them a warm reception; my only duty now was to keep Bournemouth informed of the course that we were heading. I had leisure now to study the seaplane more closely; suddenly I realised what she was, and why she had seemed vaguely familiar.

She was the old
Chipmunk
. She was the only one of her sort, built to the order of a wealthy young coal merchant just after the war. I don’t know who it was who first called her the
Chipmunk
—her owner repudiated the name vigorously. (He called her
Queen of the Clouds
, and had it painted on the fuselage.) There was something about her tubby lines that suggested a chipmunk, and it was as the
Chipmunk
that she was universally known. She was very slow. For five years she had been entered for every King’s Cup race, ambling round the course at a speed that defied the most benevolent efforts of the handicappers. I knew that she had been sold, and I knew to whom she had been sold—a young chap called Bulse who described himself as a stockbroker. He was always about at Croydon. It was the
Chipmunk
all right. She had suffered a sea change; her wheels and under-carriage had been removed and floats substituted, probably with wheels incorporated to make her into an amphibian. But there was no doubt about her.

I passed this information on to the superintendent at Bournemouth, who forwarded it to the Yard. That gave us one good line to put us in touch with the organisation in England, at any rate.

We followed the railway as far as Bruton, but here we left it as it trended a little to the north, and took a course that would carry us a little to the south of Warminster. I got pretty busy with the wireless again. Before us I could see the great rolling deserted stretches of the Plain. I knew that the
Chipmunk
might be landing any time now.

We passed a mile or so south of Warminster. Directly we were past the town the
Chipmunk
changed direction and headed a little more to the north. I watched her intently, half afraid that they had spotted me. Then as I watched I saw her tail cock up and her nose go down into a glide, and she began to lose height. She was going down to land.

I became furiously busy on the wireless. Everything was ready; I had only to tell them the exact point of landing. I kept my eyes fixed on the
Chipmunk
as she slipped rapidly down on to the Plain, and turned away from her, in order that they should not see my machine till they were actually on the ground. I turned almost at right-angles and watched her as she landed beyond my wingtip, and all the time I was telling Salisbury about it. Then I saw her touch the Plain, run along, and come to rest.

Within half a minute I had given Salisbury the map reference, and the first part of my job was done. I knew now that the police were on the way.

I was then at about a thousand feet and two miles to the east of the
Chipmunk
, now stationary upon the grass. I reeled in my aerial, swung the machine round towards her, and put my nose down to go and have a look-see.

The machine had landed about three miles south-west of the little village of Imber. There was a road that ran from Imber to Warminster across the plain, and there were three touring cars halted together on this road at the point nearest to the machine. The
Chipmunk
was stationary on the grass about two hundred and fifty yards from the road. As I got closer I saw that there was a ditch running across the plain that had evidently prevented the pilot from landing in a more convenient position for the cars, or from taxi-ing towards them.

I don’t know when they first realised that I was there.
I came on them from the east travelling at a hundred miles an hour or so at a height of about a hundred and fifty feet, and flying erratically as I craned over the side of the cockpit to have a good look. I saw the
Chipmunk
standing on the grass with her engine stopped, and I saw a little crowd of eight or nine men standing beside her, all looking up at me. Then, as I passed over them, my eye travelled on to the three cars on the road, a good two hundred and fifty yards away.

The cars were deserted.

I don’t generally pride myself on rapid headwork, but when I saw that, I crashed my hand down upon my thigh and broke into a burst of laughter as I heaved the machine round in an Immelmann turn and dived straight on to the
Chipmunk
. I saw at once what had happened. All the men in the cars had run over to meet the seaplane when she landed, and there they were, with a good two hundred and fifty yards of open grass between them and their cars. To get away in the cars they had to cross the grass.

‘By God!’ I laughed. ‘
We’ll
show these ruddy Dagoes what’s what!’

I dived for the seaplane with my engine full out and pulled up over her at the last minute, missing her top plane by a few feet. I saw the little crowd shrink close into the shelter of the seaplane as I dived on them, and then I was up and away, and turning round in the cockpit to watch their fright. I was really quite close to them for a moment, and as I swept up over them laughing like hell I caught them looking up at me, and I knew that they had seen me laughing. Then I thought of all that I must mean to them—defeat, imprisonment, ruin, perhaps even death itself. And then I thought of how they must have felt when they saw me laughing at them, and I laughed again.

I should like to be able to record that I took what followed in a serious vein. I can’t say that. There is an elation in the dangerous game of stunting an aeroplane close to the ground that quickly becomes overpowering. I can only remember two sensations clearly during the next ten minutes. The first was that I was laughing almost continuously, and the other was that when I was not laughing I was singing the unexpurgated version of a popular song.

I zoomed up from the
Chipmunk
to a hundred feet or so and swung round towards the cars again, watching them over my shoulder as a cat watches a mouse that she has let free for a moment. I turned again beyond the cars, and hung about there for a little.

In a minute they did what I had expected. They seemed to hold a little consultation, and then three or four of them left the seaplane and began to run across the grass towards the cars.

Instantly I heaved the machine round, shoved open the throttle, thrust her down, and dived on to them, singing lustily all the time:

I was on them then. They were running in a little group. I was barely a foot above the ground when I was fifty yards away, and I flew straight at them like a tornado. I suppose my speed would have been about a hundred and thirty or so. It was tricky work, because I didn’t mean to kill them. For a tiny moment they
stood their ground, thinking to call my bluff. Then they broke and threw themselves sideways on the ground in all directions, and I shot through among them and rocketed up over the seaplane. I skidded round in the quickest and lowest turn I had ever done in all my life, and dived on them again.

They had hardly time to regain their feet before I was on them again, driving straight for the thick of them with my engine roaring and the propeller screaming like a good ’un. One or two of them were still staggering to their feet, very unsteady; I didn’t want to have an accident and began to rise before I reached them. Again they had to throw themselves in all directions, but I was higher this time and missed them by a good three feet, I suppose.

Flesh and blood weren’t made to stand that sort of thing. They broke up, and when I came round for the third time most of them had regained the shelter of the
Chipmunk
. There were two stragglers still in the field, both running for shelter. I chased one of them as he ran as if to catch him in the back with the tip of my port lower plane; he heard the machine screaming after him and looked over his shoulder as the wing bore down upon him. I hope I may never see such a look on a man’s face again. It was only a momentary glimpse; the next instant I had rolled the machine and the wing passed a foot above his head. By the time he had realised he wasn’t killed I was fifty feet up in the air again, and laughing at him over my shoulder.