The Lonely Sea and the Sky (24 page)

  'You ought to finish the job thoroughly now you've started it,' said Kirby. 'You ought to polish those valve seatings, and decarbonise the cylinder heads.'

  'They won't hurt now if left for a few days,' I said.

  'All right, then give them to me, and I'll do them.' He went off, carrying a sack full of pistons and valves. I went to buy some tobacco, irritated at being made to feel a slovenly workman. I could not buy any tobacco, because there would be no more until the steamer returned from Sydney in a month's time.

  After starting off across the Tasman by aeroplane with such a flourish, the idea of creeping in to Sydney in a miserable steamer was humiliating. I felt that I would rather sail the rest of the way in a dinghy; it would not matter how long it took, or how I finished the passage, if only I could finish it as I had started – solo. In the middle of the night I was suddenly >woken up by the thought, 'Why not rebuild the seaplane here?'

  It seemed impossible but in the morning, on my way to the cargo shed, I thought, 'Some people say that there is no such thing as an impossibility.' I started to inspect the relics afresh.

  There had not been room in the shed for the fuselage, and it stood forlornly on the grass with the rudder occasionally flapping in the wind. It looked naked, stripped of its wings, motor and fittings. I went over it carefully. The plywood covering the fuselage was tacked and glued to the framework. This plywood was thin enough to break in your fingers, and the strength of the whole depended on the plywood keeping the framework rigid. If salt water had destroyed the glue, the plane might as well be made of cardboard. As far as I could tell, by pricking it with the point of my knife, the glue was unweakened. Perhaps the careful varnishing and enamelling of the fuselage at Auckland had kept the water out of the wood. The plywood was somewhat cracked where I had climbed up it to the tail, but otherwise it seemed all right.

  Then I turned to the fuselage itself. It was built like a latticed tower, and the four corner pieces, the longerons, were only inch­square lengths of spruce. These were all-important, because both the lower wings and all the float struts were secured to the bottom longerons, and as two of the middle fittings joining the float struts to them were torn in half, I feared that the frail wood must certainly be smashed. I climbed into the cockpit, and scraped away the silt. To my amazement I could find no sign of a break, though they were bruised – no doubt badly enough for an AID inspector to condemn them, but fortunately I would be acting for him on Lord Howe Island, and would be able to pass the longerons on his behalf. I decided that the fuselage could be used again, if every bolt, wire, fitting and tube were removed, cleaned of rust and salt and repainted.

  Looking at the motor from a different viewpoint, I thought that we had got at it in time, and that it might be made to work again. That night I said to Phil Dignam, 'I believe I could make that seaplane fly again. It's a big job, and I should need some new gear.'

  'What sort of gear?'

  'I should need a new revolution indicator, an oil gauge, an air-speed indicator, a clock and the two magnetos. I should want four new wings and a pair of ailerons, and some new struts, bracing wires and fittings.'

  'What about the money?'

  'That is a hurdle; I haven't thought out that one yet.'

  During the night I was woken up by an idea. Why not extract the spars from the broken wings, and send them to the mainland? The new wings could be built on to them and that should mean a big saving. It seemed a stupid idea, not worth waking up for, because the spars were sure to be fractured at the roots. But when I went up to the boat shed in the morning, I found every spar intact.

  On the way back I met Kirby. He was about twenty-nine, my own age, and had been on the mainland for a time as a salesman. When I was selling land, I remembered that I could never sell to anyone with reddish hair. He asked me what I was going to do, and I told him I was going to try to rebuild the seaplane on the island, sending the spars to Sydney for the wings to be rebuilt there.

  'Don't be feeble, man! Why not rebuild the wings yourself?' He had a rather throaty, slightly nasal voice.

  'Hopeless,' I said. 'Obviously you can have no idea how intricate the inside of a wing is. There must be 4,000 different pieces of wood in those wings, a lot of them only half as thick as a pencil, and they all have to be tacked and glued in exactly the right place. There's the fabric covering to be sewn on, not to mention half a dozen coats of dope. There are no tools here, and no place to work in.' I walked off. The truth was that I myself knew nothing of wing building. Presently I was back in the boat shed, where I stripped each wing and re-examined it. I studied those wings for hours. Coming away I met another man, called Gower Wilson.

  'What are you going to do with the plane?'

  'Rebuild it here.'

  'And get new wings, I suppose?'

  'Oh, no. Rebuild the wings here, too.'

  'Why, what do you know about wing construction? It looked to me pretty intricate and besides there are no tools here, and there's no place to work in. It seems impossible to me.'

  'Oh, that's nothing, I'll just watch how they come apart, and rebuild them the same way.'

  'Well, I must congratulate you on the idea, at any rate.'

  'It's not my idea, damn it, it's Kirby's.'

  I set to work and made up a list of the material and replacements I should need. This made fourteen pages.

  Then began a strange, but strangely happy period of my life. I stayed with the Dignams, and settled into life on the island, fishing, rat-hunting (a rat's tail earned a bounty of 3d), and enjoying being a member of one of the friendliest communities I have ever met. As far as I could see the island was communistic in the Biblical rather than any political sense. Its income was derived from the sale of its produce, which was divided up equally. If anyone did extra work, the money he earned was deducted from his share of the community income. This island income was chiefly derived from selling palm seed of the Kentia palms growing there. The seed from these palms was the only kind that would germinate in cold countries. The island was owned by the New South Wales Government, which took orders for the seed, and instructed the islanders to ship the required number of bags of seed every time the steamer called. I began to find the island the most attractive spot imaginable. The islanders were happy, loveable people, the men interesting and the girls charming; the island itself a paradise. The beach of white coral sand with the piled up line of sea debris marking high-water mark was a romantic spot in the white light of the full moon with the lagoon at hand. Sometimes at night, the beauty would swell one's heart. The still air was pure, and strangely clear.

  All the time I schemed about how to rebuild the seaplane. I had worked out my list of materials, and when the steamer came, sent it off to Sydney. I soon realised that unless I hurried, I should be caught by the gales and storms of late winter, and I gave up the idea of doing all the work myself. I found Roley Wilson, Gower Wilson's brother, and asked him if he would help me. Certainly. How much should I pay him? He would gladly do it for nothing. No, that would not be right; how much would he be paid if he were working for an islander? He replied, 'So much for ordinary work, and then again, so much more if working with a horse.' I said I thought that he should get as much for working with me as with a horse, and away he went. He was a great craftsman, a splendid fellow to work with. Roley started painting the floats. It was tricky work, because an arm inserted up to the shoulder completely filled a manhole, making it impossible to look into the float, so that the painting had to be done by touch. One morning he called to me, 'Hey, Chicko! Just look at the keel of this float! Someone has plugged the crack between the keel and the shell of the float with putty. I can dig it out with my knife.' We thought this was a queer thing for anyone to do, but Roley picked out this putty as well as he could, and painted the seam with extra care to make sure of its being watertight. It was years before I found out that this 'putty' was simply the duralumin shell eaten away by electrolytic action. To think that I had before my eyes the source of such great trouble, and that I did not realise it!

  The
Makambo
returned from Sydney with materials for me, and we began rebuilding the wings. Often I feared that I had taken on too much. Studying a blueprint sent by the Sydney branch of de Havillands, I read that each bay of the wing must be trammelled to fifteen-hundredths of an inch.

  'Roley, what is a trammel?'

  'Trammel?' said Roley. 'Isn't that what a bishop carries when preaching in a cathedral?'

  'I think we shall get into an unholy mess with this blueprint. I think we had better keep one wing intact until we have rebuilt its mate.'

  'That's just what I think, too,' said Roley.

  Apart from the riblets of the leading edges and trailing edges, there were ten ribs for each of the four wings. Each of these was made of twenty-one pieces of spruce, no thicker than cardboard. Every piece must be in its right place, glued and tacked there, and the rib must fit tightly to the spars. We plugged away, and slowly the job yielded us its secrets. We acquired skill, and at the end of a week's work we knew something about building an aeroplane. We could plug and glue old screw holes, cut, glue and tack pieces of rib together; fit trailing edges; clean, screw, measure, saw, shave and shape like a pair of old factory hands. Each wing had two main spars, with a metal strut inside the wing between the two spars. It was a surprise to find each of these struts inside the wing full of sea water, although five weeks had already elapsed since the seaplane was wrecked. We finished the woodwork of the first wing and it looked pretty good to me. We painted it all over, every corner, stick and cranny, with waterproof Lionoil. Secondly, it must have a coat of dope-resisting paint, to prevent the cover from sticking to each rib. I had forty gallons of paint, but could not find this one. It was on the invoice so must be there. There was one tin not on the invoice; it was labelled 'Thinners'. So we slapped on a coat of thinners before laying the light brown linen fabric 14 foot by 10 foot on the frame. Should the cover be sewn on tight, or loose? Roley and I disagreed. 'If sewn on tight at the start,' I said, 'the dope would shrink it tighter, and would split it in half.' 'No, sew it on tight,' said Roley. By nightfall we still had not agreed, so we left it draped over the wing skeleton. Next morning I said, 'You know, Roley, you were right, sew it on tight.' 'That's funny,' he said, 'I was just thinking that you were right, and that it ought to go on loose.'

  We split the difference, and next day Minnie offered to do the sewing. She was a generous, warm-hearted creature who helped Auntie once a week, singing away at her work from morning till night. She was like a tall radiant sunflower that looks happily and generously at all comers until a slight touch contrary to its fancy makes it curl up its petals, angry or hurt. With next day's sun she joyfully uncurls them all again. Minnie sewed away in great style, until she came to a corner where I said the fabric must be turned in and sewn with just so many lock-stitches to the inch. Now Minnie was an expert, the island's wizard at converting chiffon, ninon, voile, georgette or what have you to the latest fashion. The fabric, she said, must be sewn with so-and-so stitches to the inch.

  'But, Minnie,' I pleaded, while Roley, I could see in the corner of my eye, was barely suppressing his mirth, 'naturally so many lock­stitches would not be needed for a skirt.'

  But no, my way was wrong, the stitch was wrong, the number of stitches was wrong. At last I said, 'Well, I've got to fly the thing, why not let me have it the way I want, even if it is the wrong way?'

  'Now you've done it,' said Roley as she stalked off. However, with next day's sun she was as cheery as ever. Our tiff of yesterday was quite forgotten – but so was the sewing.

  The curved surgical needles remained stuck in the fabric. I began to think I must have been posted as an impossible boss, and that we should have to do all the sewing ourselves, when Eileen, surprised to hear that we had no seamstress, enrolled on the spot. She was Gower's eldest daughter and what a jewel! She often suggested an improvement to de Havilland's written instructions, and it always turned out to be an improvement. There was a lot of sewing; there was 92 foot of it just around the edges of the wing, and tape had to be sewn over the top and bottom of the forty ribs, each 4½ foot long, with a lock-stitch every 3 inches. During the night, after Eileen had finished sewing the first wing, I suddenly woke up to realise – to be told from within, I would say – that I had forgotten to lock the bracing wires inside the wing bay. Poor Eileen had to take the fabric half off again.

  One morning Roley took me aside. 'Look here, Chicko,' he said, 'I know another girl who would help with the sewing.' 'Who's that?'

  'Ah, ha!' said he. I thought, 'So that's how the wind lies,' but I asked no more questions and he brought her along. Now there were four of us in our island plane factory, and the sheer pleasure of craftsmanship, of using hand and eye, was a revelation to me. It was hard but interesting work, which made one's appetite keen for everything. How craftsmen and artisans are to be envied.

  We were ready to start doping, and life became more strenuous because of the hours I spent thinking at the end of the day's work. With no previous experience, I had to plan every operation in advance. I knew nothing about doping, and it would be serious if I spoiled a fabric wing cover. The wings had to have three coats of red dope, followed by five coats of aluminium dope. Besides a right way to dope and a right consistency of dope to use, the temperature must be 70° F. while the dope was put on. Did that mean it must be 70° all the time while the dope was drying? With winter approaching, it did not often reach 70°, even at midday with the doors closed. In the morning we would watch the thermometers: one read 4° higher than the other, and we promptly discarded the one with the lower reading. As soon as the thermometer reached 70°, coats, brushes, and dope began to fly in all directions.