The Lonely Sea and the Sky (37 page)

  'Fish with many arm,' Hayashi waved his arms about in the air. Octopus! I thought it was like tough rubber. The girl seemed delighted with all this, and even Hayashi's look of a harassed father was occasionally lightened by a lukewarm smile. The last two dishes were eel and little cylinders of rice wrapped in seaweed, which were delicious.

  After this the policeman and Hayashi started cross-examining me again, with their unfailing politeness, of course. After repeating several times all the old questions about where I had crossed the hills etc., they wanted to know where my next halt was. I asked for my chart. (I could not help thinking that dressing me in a kimono did effectively detach me from my clothes with my pocket books, as well as my logs and papers.) I measured off the distance of my next day's flight, and said that I would alight at Kochi. 'But it is not permit to go to Kochi.' 'Oh, but it is; I have permission.'

  I hunted through my papers and produced a letter from the British Consul-General saying that the Japanese permitted me to alight at Kochi. I might have saved myself the trouble; the police had instructions that I was not to approach Japan anywhere between Kagoshima and Tokyo, except for one place, Katsuura.

  At last I was allowed to go to bed. I found it hard to stifle my yawns but Hayashi, I thought, had stood up remarkably well to the ordeal of five hours of nearly continuous questioning. I followed the lovely little Japanese maiden up the stairs into a bedroom. A faint rustle made me turn round – the policeman was fanning himself at my elbow. The walls of my room were all thin sliding panels; I slid one to find a Japanese couple asleep in the middle of the floor in another room. My room had a bed in it which the Japanese no doubt thought a prize exhibit of occidental furniture, a hideous cumbersome old-fashioned double bedstead with brass knobs. But I slept in it well enough. Next morning when I awoke, I groaned. I wished that I could rest for a day, but what chance would I have of rest? The Japanese would never believe that I could be subject to fatigue, they would be doubly suspicious, and every official in the district would come in smiling to hiss questions at me. How I longed for an uninhabited island, or uninhabited sea.

  However, on looking out of the window, I found that it was a glorious still day of late summer, the smoke from one or two tall chimneys too lazy to rise. The sun shed an air of serenity on everything. To be flying round the world on such a day was the perfect adventure. After my camera and pistol had been ceremoniously returned to me, and the thirteen cartridges solemnly counted into my hand one by one, the seaplane was brought in to the beach for me to refuel it. The sunlight was balm; the water sparkled, the wavelets lapped the beach, and gently rolled the shingle. I felt happily lazy as I filled up with tin after tin of petrol.

  On leaving land, I had a 300-mile sea flight in front of me. I felt soothed and contented to be out of sight of land. The Pacific Ocean was friendly, and I skimmed the surface to be close to it. It seemed to give me strength. Life was grand; flying had become an art, and that morning I felt that I was master of it.

  When I reached the mainland again I flew into a patch of dark windy weather, and in it came upon a rusty old tub of a steamer wallowing in the seas. She was the
Bellerophon
of Liverpool, and she seemed like a close friend in those foreign seas. The log line ran out a considerable distance from the high stern before it entered the water and the seaplane, coming round the stern steeply banked, nearly caught it with the lower wing. I saw it only just in time, for I was watching the ship's cook in his white cap who had stepped on to the stern and was waving a frying-pan at me.

  I flew round a headland, and began looking for Katsuura. It had not been on my chart; but the policeman had marked it in, telling me that it was a small fishing town, with a natural harbour. The whole coast seemed to be honeycombed with natural harbours, but at the spot marked on my map, I found a perfect harbour and town, an ideal place for a seaplane, but I thought it strange that I could see no sign of any launches. So I decided to fly on farther before coming down, and it was as well, because the policeman had marked a spot 6 miles south of the real Katsuura. There was no mistaking the launch party when I got there for one man was waving a small flag at me, and another an umbrella.

  Katsuura was a beautiful place like a partly submerged crater on the edge of the coast with the ocean entering through a gap at the south end, and a jagged rim of precipitous rock separating the harbour from the open sea. I came down in an inlet like a fjord adjoining the harbour.

  The launches came after me and detached a sampan to approach me. The man with the umbrella had lived in the United States for twenty years, and spoke an English which I could understand most of the time. His name was Suzuki, and he was most efficient. He invited me to stay with him, and I gratefully accepted. Suzuki's wife cooked us a meal on a little brazier, and after dinner he dressed me in a kimono and a pair of wooden sandals – I attracted too much attention in European clothes, he said – and I clogged down the street with him to be shown the town. Suzuki wanted me to fly him to Tokyo next day but I refused; I told him that if there was a crash the person in the front cockpit was almost sure to be killed, though the man behind often escaped, and that I would not take the responsibility of putting him in front.

  In the morning, the launch picked up my anchor and towed the seaplane through the gap to the inlet adjoining the harbour.

  'Will you make circles round the town?' shouted Suzuki, 'the peoples would like to see your aeroplane.'

  The seaplane smacked the swell tops, and was soon off. I headed through the gap between the inlet and the harbour, still low over the water gathering speed. I decided to circle the village, as Suzuki had asked, but I could not do so without more height, so I reckoned to fly on through the north gap in the harbour rim to gain the necessary height outside, and then to return and circle: all the way across the harbour the seaplane was gathering speed; I preferred to gain speed rather than height until I was flying fast enough to make manoeuvring easy. When I was between the highest point of the rock peak on the outer rim of the harbour and the hill behind the township, I pulled back the control-stick, and the seaplane began to climb sharply. I was looking at the township below me on my left, thinking what a pretty sight it was with the cluster of roofs at the base of the hill and the sunshine strong on the green harbour water beneath me, when there was a dreadful shock, and I felt a terrific impact.

  My sight was a blank. Slowly, a small aperture cleared, a hole for sight, and through it, far away, I saw a patch of bright green scrub on a hillside. But it was a long way off, like a tiny glimpse seen through a red telescope. Now it was a round sight, half of sparkling water and half of rooftops, straight before me. I was diving at it vertically, already doing 90mph. I remember thinking, 'Well, this is the end,' and feeling intense loneliness, a vague sense of loss – of life, of friends. Then, 'I'd better try for the water,' I was vaguely aware of lifeless controls, but suddenly all fear was gone.

  The next thing I knew was a brightness above me and in front of me. On the way down I was so certain that I would be killed that when I came to and saw the brightness I thought it was a spiritual experience, and that I was in Heaven. Dozens of hands were clutching at me. Next time I came round I had a glimpse through dull red of people pressing round, of a man bending over me with his back close. There was a dreadful pain. Someone was stitching me up, and sometimes I counted the stitches. From the pain I had a terrible fear that I was a eunuch, and then I felt that there was nothing to live for, gave up resisting the pain and slid into unconsciousness. Presently I was back again and once more counting stitches, in, across, out. I was groaning with pain, felt that I was behaving badly, and was angry. After the man had finished he gave me morphia. At nightfall I was still alive. When I came to I was concerned only with one thing and terribly afraid. I dared not ask what state I was in. Presently a faint humour stirred, and when I spoke I wondered if my voice was squeaky.

  Suzuki had stayed by me all night, and in the morning he came over to me.

  'Suzuki, my eye – about my eye—'

  'The doctor say he think you save that.'

  Then I came to the only question that mattered to me at that moment; was I a eunuch?

  'He say he think you save everything.'

  That was one of the greatest moments of my life, and I put everything I could into the effort to get well again quickly. Now I wanted to know what had happened, for I had absolutely no idea of what had hit me or what I had hit.

  What had happened was this: there were seven steel telephone wires stretched from the highest point on the outer rim of the harbour to the top of the hill behind the township. This was a long span, of perhaps half a mile. It is almost impossible to spot wires in the air when moving fast towards them, and the longer their span the less chance there is of seeing them. In this case I had no information that the wires were there, and I had no thought of wires so high up right across the harbour. I had flown straight into those wires. They had stopped the seaplane in flight, and catapulted it back. One or more of the float struts or booms had been cut through. The seaplane was shot back until the wires were at full stretch, and then the wires, hooked up behind the cut boom and struts, catapulted the seaplane forward again. Next, the wires cut through all the booms, struts and rigging stays of one float. It was cut away in mid-air, and fell apart from the seaplane. I think that this must have occurred when the seaplane was stopped again, after being catapulted forward. Then it somersaulted, and shot straight to the ground. I must have been already badly bashed, and I wonder if my attempt to deflect the seaplane into the water had any effect. Whether I was responsible or not, the seaplane was deflected, and hit the sloping wall at the edge of the harbour. It piled up at the foot of the wall.

  Seen from the ground, this must have been a most fantastic accident to watch; a seaplane stopped in mid-air, catapulted back, then forward, torn apart in the air, then catapulted vertically down to the ground. I am only sorry that I could not have been on the ground myself to watch it! I wish I knew how long the whole accident had taken, for I should like to know how long was the period during which the scenes, the feeling and thoughts flashed on to my brain. Suzuki's account of things ran like this:

  'You have wonderful good luck. Nobody understands. They rush to pull you out before the fire catches. You must be dead. Great is their wonder to find you still alive. It was terrible a sight. I am nearly sick. Everybodies is so sorry for you. Everybodies prays to God for you. The doctor thinks you do not live for ten, twenty minutes.'

  They decided to send me to Dr. Hama's hospital at Shingu 10 miles away. Suzuki continued, 'All young men carry you to train, very careful. They carry you all way one hour train journey.'

  This crash took the form of the nightmare I had had perhaps fifty times – that my sight went black while I was flying, and left me waiting for the inevitable crash.

  Although I had had a terrific impact with the ground, and could count thirteen broken bones or wounds, I was not seriously hurt. Things like a broken arm and crushed ankle seemed minor troubles. I suppose my damaged back was the worst thing, probably because with the language difficulty the doctor was not aware of it. It was ten years before I was completely recovered from that. Hama was a brilliant doctor; I had a slash in my leg about a foot long, and he used to dress this with some ointment, and I marvelled at how fast it healed.

  The customs of a foreign country, though, can be hard to bear, and sometimes I feared that the Japanese kindness would make me mad. They were immensely sorry about the accident, and sympathetic with the foreign birdman who had come to grief. Thousands came from near and far to visit me. All day they passed through my room at the end of my bed. They walked in, dressed in robes of ceremony, black kimonos, with an unusual black skirt suspended outside by two black bands from the shoulders. Often I would come out of the doze I seemed to drift into against my will, to find them within the doorway or at the end of my bed, bowing silently, or perhaps with a faint hiss of indrawn breath, standing in black silk stockings with the big toes separate. They always carried fans; their straw hats they usually left outside.

  If Suzuki were there he would introduce them to me:

  'This is directors of the ice factory at Katsuura; they pray to God for you, and send you ice every day.' A 2 cwt block of ice would arrive every morning, sometimes with a message in Japanese inside, or a bunch of flowers or some reeds and a fish frozen in. When there was a fish in the ice I waited patiently for it to melt out, hoping every time that it would come to life, but it never did.

  'This is lady who has hotel outside where you fall.'

  'Tell her that next time I hope I shall arrive without messing up the pavement.'

  This was a stock joke always sure to bring down the house.

  'Here is a priest of Buddha; they pray to God for you that you get well soon.'

  Many of the people brought me presents of fruit or fans, dolls, photographs or sake. I always tried to make them a little speech of thanks, but sometimes I am sorry to say that a wild unreasonable mad fury possessed me, and I felt that I was being tortured. Any other personality near me was like a concrete thing, an actual weight pressing on me. Hot fire would rush through my nerves until I was scared of breaking out into violent speech, and I would say, 'Please ask everyone to leave, I am tired and must sleep.' I knew that the people there were sometimes deeply offended. The Japanese could not understand that nerves could be so on edge as to drive a person crazy. Mine were; I sweated in an agony of fear if the nurse dressing my wounds twitched a single hair. I offended them, too, when I asked visitors to leave me alone when I was having my wounds dressed. Some of these wounds were in quaint places and I was at first embarrassed when women and young girls at the end of the bed watched them being dressed. Later I grew used to being watched, as I grew used to other Japanese customs, and to Japanese food.