The Complete Flying Officer X Stories (12 page)

Again there was silence, and again he felt the tension running through the plane. He was aware of their chances and almost aware, now, of what Davidson was going to say.

“One more try, boys. Sing out if you see anything. If not, it's down in the drink.”

He sat very still. They were losing a little height. His stomach felt sour and he remembered that he could not swim.

For some reason he never thought of it again. His thoughts were scattered by Davidson's voice.

“Does anyone see what I see? Isn't that a light? About two points to starboard.”

He looked out; there was nothing he could see.

“I'm going down to have a look-see,” Davidson said. “It is a light.”

As they were going down he looked out again, but again he could see nothing. Then he heard Davidson speaking to Carmichael.

“Hack the fuselage door off, Joe. This looks like a lightship. If it is we're as good as home. Tell me when you're ready and I'll put her down.”

He sat very still, hearing the sound of hatchet blows as Carmichael struck at the fuselage. He felt colder, and then knew that it must be because Carmichael had finished and that there was a gap where the door had been.
He heard again the deep, slow Canadian accent of Carmichael's voice, saying: “O.K., skipper, all set,” and then the remote, flat English voice of Davidson in reply:

“All right, get the dinghy ready. All three of you. Get ready and heave it out when I put her down.”

Helping Joe and Hargreaves and Johnson with the dinghy, he was no longer aware of fear. He was slung sideways across the aircraft. The dinghy seemed very large and he wondered how they would get it out. This troubled him until he felt the plane roaring down in the darkness, and it continued to trouble him for a second after the plane had hit the water with a great crash that knocked him back against the fuselage. He did not remember getting up. Something was wrong with his left wrist, and he thought of his watch. It was a good watch, a navigational watch, given him by his father on a birthday. The next moment he knew that the dinghy had gone and he knew that he had helped, somehow, to push it out. Carmichael had also gone. The sea was rocking the aircraft violently to and fro, breaking water against his knees and feet. A second later he stretched out his hands and felt nothing before him but the open space in the fuselage where the door had been.

He knew then that it must be his turn to go. He heard Carmichael's voice calling from what seemed a great distance out of the darkness and the rain. He did not know what he was calling. It was all confused, he did not answer, but a second later he stretched out his hands blindly and went down on his belly into the sea.

When he came up again it was to find himself thinking of the girl in the biscuit-coloured hat and how much that day he had liked the sea, opaque and green and smooth on the pieces of sea-washed glass he had picked up on the shore. It flashed through his mind that this was part of the final imagery that comes with drowning, and he struggled wildly to keep his face above water.

He could hear again the voice of Carmichael, shouting, but the shock of sea-water struck like ice on his breast and throat, so that he could not shout in answer. The sea was very rough. It heaved him upward and then down again with sweeps of slow and violent motion. It tossed him about in this way until he realised at last that these slow, barbaric waves were really keeping him up, that the Mae West was working, and that he was sinking away no longer.

From the constancy of Carmichael's shouts he felt that Carmichael must have seized, and was probably on, the dinghy. But he was not prepared for the shout: “She's upside down!” and then a moment or two later two voices yelling his name.

“Johnny! Can you hear us? Can you hear us now?”

He let out a great yell in answer, but sea-water broke down his throat and for a moment suffocated him, bearing him down and under the trough of a wave. He came up sick and struggling, spitting water, frightened. His boots were very heavy now under the water, and it seemed
as if he were being sucked continually down. He tried to wave his arms above his head, but one arm had no response. It filled him suddenly with violent pain.

“O.K., Johnny, O.K., O.K.,” Carmichael said.

He could not speak. He knew that his arm was broken. He felt Carmichael's hands painfully clutching his one free hand. He remembered for no reason at all that Carmichael had been a pitcher for a baseball team in Montreal and he felt the hands move down until they clutched his wrist, holding him so strongly that it was almost a pain.

“Can you bear up?” Carmichael said. “Johnny, try bearing up. It's O.K., Johnny. We're here, on the dinghy. Hargreaves is here. Johnson's here. It's O.K., Johnny. Can you heave? Where's your other arm?”

“I think it's bust,” he said.

He tried heaving himself upward. He tried again, helped by Carmichael's hands, but something each time drew the dinghy away. He tried again and then again. Each time the same thing happened, and once or twice the sea, breaking on the dinghy, hit him in the face, blinding him.

He knew suddenly what was wrong. It was not only his arm but his belt. Each time he heaved upward, the belt caught under the dinghy and pushed it away. In spite of knowing it he heaved again and all at once felt very tired, feeling that only Carmichael's hands were between this tiredness and instant surrender. This painful heaving and sudden tiredness were repeated. They went on
for some time. He heard Carmichael's voice continually and once or twice the sea hit him again, blinding him, and once, blinded badly, he wanted to wipe his face with his hands.

Suddenly Carmichael was talking again. “Can you hang on? If I can get my knee on something I'll get leverage. I'll pull you up. Can you hang on?”

Before he could answer the sea hit him again. The wave seemed to split his contact with Carmichael. It momentarily cut away his hands. For an instant it was as if he were in a bad and terrifying dream, falling through space.

Then Carmichael was holding him again. “I got you now, Johnny. I'm kneeling on Dicky. Your belt ought to clear now. If you try hard it ought to clear first time.”

The sea swung him away. As he came back, the belt did not hit the dinghy so violently. He was kept almost clear. Then the sea swung him away again. On this sudden wave of buoyancy he realised that it was now, or perhaps never, that he must pull himself back. He clenched his hand violently; and then suddenly, before he was ready, and very lightly as if he were a child, the force of the new wave and the strength of Carmichael's hand threw him on the dinghy, face down.

He wanted to lie there for a long time. He lay for only a second, and then got up. He felt the water heaving in his boots and the salt sickness of it in his stomach. He did not feel at all calm, but was terrified for an instant by the shock of being safe.

“There was a light,” he said. “That's why he came down here. That's why he came down. There was a light.”

He looked round at the sea as he spoke. Sea and darkness were one, unbroken except where waves struck the edge of the dinghy with spits of faintly phosphorescent foam. It had ceased raining now, but the wind was very strong and cold, and up above lay the old unbroken ten tenths cloud. There was not even a star that could have been mistaken for a light. He knew that perhaps there never had been.

He went into a slight stupor brought on by pain and the icy sea-water. He came out of it to find himself furiously bailing water from the dinghy with one hand. He noticed that the rest were bailing with their caps. He had lost his cap. His one hand made a nerveless cup that might have been stone for all the feeling that was in it now.

The sea had a rhythmical and awful surge that threw the dinghy too lightly up the glassy arcs of oncoming waves and then too steeply over the crest into the trough beyond. Each time they came down into a trough, the dinghy shipped a lot of water. Each time they baled frenziedly, sometimes throwing the water over one another. His good hand remained dead. He still did not feel the water with it, but he felt it on his face, sharp as if the spray were splintered and frozen glass. Then whenever they came to the crest of a wave there was a split second when they could look for a light. “Hell, there should be a light,” he thought. “He saw one. He shouted it out. That's why he came down”; but each time the sea beyond
the crest of the new wave remained utterly dark as before.

“What the hell,” he said. “There should be a light! There
was
a light.”

“All right, kid,” Carmichael said. “There'll be one.”

He knew then that he was excited. He tried not to be excited. For a long time he didn't speak, but his mind remained excited. He felt drunk with the motion of pain and the water and sick with the saltness of the water. There were moments when he ceased bailing and held his one hand strengthlessly at his side, tired out, wanting to give up. He did not know how he kept going after a time or how they kept the water from swamping the dinghy. Looking down, he saw the eight feet of himself and the rest in the well of the dinghy, and he did not know which were his own feet and which were theirs.

Coming out of periods of stupor, he would hear Carmichael talking. The deep Canadian voice was slow and steady. It attracted him. He found himself listening simply to the sound and the steadiness of it, regardless of words. It had the quality of Carmichael's hands; it was calm and steadfast.

It occurred to him soon that the voice had another quality. It was like the bailing of the water; it never stopped. He heard Carmichael talking of ball games in Montreal; the way the crowd ragged you and how you took no notice and how it was all part of the game; and then how he was injured in the game one summer and for two months couldn't play and how he went up into Quebec province for the fishing. It was hot weather and
he would fish mostly in the late evenings, often by moonlight. The lake trout were big and strong and sometimes a fish took you an hour to get it in. Sometimes at weekends he went back to Quebec and he would eat steaks, as thick, he said, as a volume of Dickens and rich with onions and butter. They were lovely with cold light beer, and the whole thing set you back about two dollars and a half.

“Good, eh, Johnny?” he would say. “You ought to come over there some day.”

All this time they baled furiously. There was no break in the clouds, and the wind was so strong that it sometimes swivelled the dinghy round like a toy.

How long this went on he did not know. But a long time later Carmichael suddenly stopped talking and then as suddenly began again.

“Hey, Johnny boy, there's your light.”

He was startled and he looked up wildly, not seeing anything.

“Not that way, boy. Back of you. Over there.”

He turned his head stiffly. There behind him he could see the dim cream edge of daylight above the line of the sea.

“That's the light we want,” Carmichael said. “It don't go out in a hurry either.”

The colour of daylight was deeper, like pale butter, when he looked over his shoulder again. He remembered then that it was late summer. He thought that now, perhaps, it would be three o'clock.

As the daylight grew stronger, changing from cream and yellow to a cool grey bronze, he saw for the first time the barbaric quality of the sea. He saw the faces of Carmichael and Hargreaves and Johnson. They were grey-yellow with weariness and touched at the lips and ears and under the eyes with blue.

He was very thirsty. He could feel a thin caking of salt on his lips. He tried to lick his lips with his tongue, but it was very painful. There was no moisture on his tongue and only the taste of salt, very harsh and bitter, in his mouth. His arm was swollen and he was sick with pain.

“Take it easy a minute, kid,” Carmichael said. “We'll bale in turns. You watch out for a ship or a kite or anything you can see. I'll tell you when it's your turn.”

He sat on the edge of the dinghy and stared at the horizon and the sky. Both were empty. He rubbed the salt out of his eyes and then closed them for a moment, worn out.

“Watch out,” Carmichael said. “We're in the Channel. We know that. There should be ships and there should be aircraft. Keep watching.”

He kept watching. His eyes were painful with salt and only half-open. Now and then the sea hit the dinghy and broke right over it, but he did not care. For some reason he did not think of listening, but suddenly he shut his eyes and after a moment or two he heard a sound. It was rather like the sound of the sea beating gently on sand and he remembered again the day when he had seen the
girl in the biscuit-coloured hat and how it was summer and how much he had liked the sea. That day the sea had beaten on the shore with the same low sound.

As the sound increased he suddenly opened his eyes. He felt for a moment that he was crazy, and then he began shouting.

“It's a plane! It's a bloody plane! It's a plane, I tell you, it's a plane.”

“Sit down,” Carmichael said.

The dinghy was rocking violently. The faces of all four men were upturned, grey-yellow in the stronger light.

“There she is!” he shouted. “There she is!”

The plane was coming over from the north-east, at about five thousand. He began to wave his hands. She seemed to be coming straight above them. Hargreaves and Johnson and then Carmichael also began to wave. They all waved frantically and Hargreaves shouted: “It's a Hudson, boys. Wave like raving hallelujah! It's a Hudson.”

The plane came over quite fast and very steady, flying straight. It looked the colour of iron except for the bright rings of the markings in the dull sea-light of the early morning. It flew on quite straight and they were still waving frantically with their hands and caps long after it had ceased looking like a far-off gull in the sky.

He came out of the shock of this disappointment to realise that Carmichael was holding him in the dinghy with one arm.