The Warlord of the Air (15 page)

I had a moment of trepidation as I stood there, watching her turn sluggishly in her cables and then, reluctantly, swing back to her original position. She was about six hundred feet long and not an inch of her looked as if it should have been passed as airworthy. I began to climb the mast, hoping that my lateness had not held the ship up.

I got to the top of the mast and entered the cone. From cone to ship there was a narrow gangplank with rope sides. It bent as I set foot on it and began to cross. No special covered gangways for
The Rover,
no reinforced plastic walls so that passengers needn’t see the ground a hundred feet below. A peculiar feeling of satisfaction crept over me. After my initial shock, I was beginning to like the idea of flying in this battered old tramp of the skylanes. She had a certain style and there was nothing fancy about her fixtures. She had something of the aura of the early pioneer ships which Captain Quelch had often reminisced about.

As I reached the circular embarkation platform I was greeted by an airshipman in a dirty pullover. He jerked his thumb towards a short aluminium companionway which wound up from the centre of the platform. “You the new number two, sir? Captain’s expecting you on the bridge.”

I thanked him and climbed the steps to emerge on the bridge. It was deserted but for the short, stocky man in the well-pressed but threadbare uniform of a Merchant Air Service captain. He turned, his blue-grey eyes as steady and as contemplative as ever, one of his black cheroots in his mouth, his grey Imperial jutting as he stepped towards me and shook my hand.

“Glad to have you aboard, Mr. Bastable.”

“Thank you, sir. Glad to be aboard. I’m sorry I’m late, but...”

“I know, they shifted us to make way for that damned Russian freighter. You haven’t delayed us. We’re still giving our registration particulars a lick of paint and our passengers haven’t arrived yet.” He pointed to where a flight of six steps led to a door in the stern of the bridge. “Your cabin’s through there. You mess with Mr. Barry this voyage, but you’ll have your own quarters as soon as we drop the passengers. We don’t often carry many— though we’ve deck passengers coming aboard at Saigon—and your cabin’s the only one suitable. All right?”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Good.”

I hefted my bag.

“Cabin’s on the right,” said Korzeniowski. “Mine’s directly ahead and the passengers’—what will be yours—is on the left. I think Barry’s expecting you. See you in fifteen minutes. Hoping to cast off, then.”

I climbed the companionway and opened the connecting door to find myself in a short passage with the three doors leading off it. The walls were of plain grey colour, chipped and scored. I knocked on the door to my right.

“Enter.”

Inside a tall, thin man with a great shock of red hair was sitting in his underclothes on the unmade bottom bunk. He was pouring himself a generous measure of gin. As I entered he looked up and nodded sociably. “Bastable? I’m Barry. Drink?” He extended the bottle then, as if remembering his manners, offered me the glass.

I smiled. “Bit early for me. I’m on the top bunk, eh?”

“Afraid so. Not what you’re used to, probably, after the
Loch Etive.”

“It suits me.”

“You’ll find a couple of uniforms in the locker, yonder. Marlowe was about your size, luckily. You can stow your other gear there, too. I heard about your fight. Good for you. This is a whole bloody ship of misfits. Not too strong on formal discipline, but we work hard and the skipper’s one of the best.”

“I liked him,” I said. I began to put my gear in the locker and then took out a crumpled uniform. Barry was dragging on his trousers and a jersey.

“One of the best,” he repeated. He finished his drink and carefully put bottle and glass away. “Well, I think I heard the passengers come aboard. We can leave at last. See you on the bridge when we let go.”

As he opened the door to leave I glimpsed the back of one of the passengers entering the opposite cabin. A woman. A woman in a dark, heavy traveling coat. It was odd that Captain Korzeniowski should take on passengers. He didn’t seem the type to welcome groundmen. But then it was likely that
The Rover
was glad to make any extra profit she could. Ships like her ran on a very narrow margin.

A short while later I joined the captain and Mr. Barry on the bridge. Height and steering coxswains were at their controls and the wireless telephone operator was crouched in his cubbyhole in contact with the main traffic building, waiting to be told when we could let slip from our mast.

I looked through the wrap-round window of the bridge at all the fine ships. Our little freighter seemed so out of place here that I would be very glad to get away.

Captain Korzeniowski picked up a speaking tube. “Captain to all engines. Make ready.”

A second later I heard the grumble of the diesels as their engineers began to warm them up.

The order came through from ground control. We could leave.

The captain took his position in the bow and peered down so that he could see the main mooring chains and the gangway. Barry went to the annunciator and stood by with the tube in his hand. The bosun stood half-way down the companionway to the embarkation platform, his body bisected by the deck of the bridge.

“Gangway withdrawn,” said the captain. “Close and seal embarkation doors, bosun.”

The bosun relayed this order to an unseen man below. There were noises, thumps, shouts. Then the bosun’s head appeared on the companionway again. “All ready to slip, sir.”

“Let slip.” The captain straightened his back and drove both hands into the pockets of his jacket, his cheroot clamped between his teeth.

“Let slip below,” said Barry into the tube.

There was a jerk as we were released by the mast.

“All cables free.”

“All cables free, below,” said Barry.

The mooring cables snapped away and we were released into the air.

“Engines full astern.”

Barry adjusted a switch. “All engines full astern.” He was speaking now to the engineers crouched in their outside nacelles, nursing their diesels.

The ship shuddered and bucked slightly as the engines backed her away from the mast.

“Two hundred and fifty feet, height coxswain,” said the captain, still peering through the bow observation port.

“Two hundred and fifty, sir.” The coxswain spun his great metal wheel.

Slowly we crawled into the sky, our bow tilting upward slightly as the elevator coxswain operated his controls, adjusting the tailplanes.

And for the first time I had a sense of loss. I felt I was leaving behind everything I had come to understand about this world of the 1970s, embarking on what for me would be a fresh voyage of discovery. I felt a bit like one of the ancient Elizabethan navigators who had set off to look for the other side of the planet.

Croydon Airpark dropped behind us and we cruised over the fields of Kent towards the coast, gradually rising to a height of a thousand feet, moving at something under fifty miles an hour. The ship responded surprisingly well and I began to realize that there was more to
The Rover
than I had thought. I was learning not to judge an airship by her appearance. Primitive though her controls where, she flew smoothly and steadily and was almost stately in her progress through the sky. Barry, whom I had taken for a drunkard at the end of an unsavoury career, proved an efficient officer and I was to discover he drank heavily only when he was not in the air. I hoped that my stiff manner did not make my fellow officers think me a bit of a prig.

D
uring the first day and night of our journey the passengers failed to emerge from their cabin. This did not strike me as particularly eccentric. They could be suffering from airsickness or perhaps they had no desire to go anywhere. After all, there were no promenade decks or kinemas on
The Rover
. If one wished to walk the length of the ship and see anything but the cargo stacked in semi-darkness, one had to go out onto the outside catwalks and cling to the rails for fear of being blown overboard.

I performed my duties with enthusiasm, if awkwardly at first, anxious to show Captain Korzeniowski that I was keen. I think both the skipper, Barry and the crew understood this and I soon found I was beginning to relax.

By the time we were over the bright blue waters of the Mediterranean and heading for Jerusalem, our first port of call, I had started to get the feel of
The Rover.
She had to be treated gently and with what I can only describe as ‘grace’. Handled in this way, she would do almost anything you asked of her. This may seem sentimental and foolish, but there was a sense of affection on that ship—a sense of humanity which extended to crew and craft alike.

But still I didn’t see the passengers. They took their meals in their cabin and not in the little mess next to the galley where officers and ratings ate. It began to seem that they were shy of being seen, save by Captain Korzeniowski or Mr. Barry, both of whom visited them occasionally.

We had no-one on board who was specifically a navigator or meteorological officer. These duties were shared between the skipper, Barry and myself. The night before we arrived at Jerusalem, I had taken the dog watch and was checking our course against our charts and instruments when the telephone operator wandered in and started up a conversation. At length he said:

“What do you make of our passengers, Bastable?”

I shrugged. “I don’t make anything of them, Steeton. I’ve only had a glimpse of one of them. A woman.”

“I think they’re refugees,” Steeton said. “The old man says they’re getting off at Brunei.”

“Really. Not the safest spot in the world. Haven’t they had bandit trouble there?”

“Terrorists of some kind. Well-organized, I gather. I heard the Germans and Japanese are backing them. Want some of our colonies, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“There are agreements. They wouldn’t dare.”

Steeton laughed. “You are a bit green, you know, Bastable. There’s trouble brewing all over the East. Nationalism, old man. India, China, South-East Asia. People are getting worried.”

Steeton was a pessimist who relished such prospects. I took everything he said with a pinch of salt.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if our passengers aren’t countrymen of the old man. Polish exiles. Or even Russian anarchists, eh?”

I laughed aloud. “Come off it, Steeton. The skipper would have nothing to do with that sort of thing.”

Steeton shook his head in mock reproof. “Oh dear, oh dear, Bastable. You
are
green. Sorry to have interrupted.” He sauntered out of the bridge. I smiled and dismissed his bantering. He was plainly trying to agitate me. The sort of joke which is often played on ‘new boys’ on board any ship. Still, the passengers did seem anxious to keep themselves to themselves.

N
ext morning we moored at Jerusalem and I changed into my whites before seeing to the cargo, which was mainly boxes of farming machinery being delivered to the Palestinian Jewish immigrants. It was hot and dry and there was some confusion over two boxes which they had been expecting and which hadn’t arrived.

Since I hadn’t joined the ship until the cargo had all been taken on, I sent someone to find the captain. While I waited I bought an English-language newspaper from the boy who was selling them around the airpark. I glanced at it casually. The only real news concerned a bomb explosion at the house of Sir George Brown a few days earlier. Luckily Sir George had been away and a servant had been the sole person slightly hurt. But the papers were understandably upset by the outrage. The words
Freedom for the Colonies
had been scrawled on the wall of the house. The whole thing was plainly the work of fanatics and I wondered what kind of madmen could consider such means worthwhile. There were six or eight photographs of people suspected of being connected with the murder attempt, among them the notorious Count Rudolf von Bek, who had long since been chased out of his Saxon homeland and had, until the bombing, been thought to be in hiding in Italy. Why a nobleman should turn against his own kind and all the ideals of his upbringing, nobody could understand.

Eventually the captain arrived and began to sort out the confusion. I folded the newspaper in my back pocket and continued with my duties.

The ways of Fate are strange indeed. It is hard to understand their workings—and I should know, for I have had enough experience of them, one way or another. What happened next is a fair example.

One of the cargo handlers had left a baling hook in a packing case and, as I moved into the hold, I caught my shirt against it, ripping it right across the back. It wasn’t serious and I carried on with my job until the captain noticed what had happened.

“You’ll get your back sunburned, if you’re not careful,” he said. “You’d better go and change, Mr. Bastable.”

“If you think so, sir.” I let one of our riggers keep an eye on the cargo, went through the main passage between the holds and climbed the companionway up to the bridge and from there to my cabin. It was stinking hot in the little passage and all the doors of the cabins were open. For the first time, I got a clear look at the passengers as I passed. I couldn’t stop and gape at them, though it took a considerable effort of will not to do so. I went into my own cabin and closed the door.

I was shaking as I sat down on the lower bunk and slowly removed the folded newspaper from my pocket. I had seen a man and a woman in the passenger cabin. The woman I had not recognized, but the face of the man was all too familiar. I opened the newspaper and looked again at the photographs of the anarchists wanted in connection with the attempt on Sir George Brown’s life. My brain seething with a hundred different thoughts, I looked hard at one of the photographs. There was no doubt about it. The tall, handsome man I had seen in the cabin was Count Rudolf von Bek, the notorious anarchist and assassin!

Tears came into my eyes as the implications of this revelation dawned on me.

The kindly old airship skipper who had impressed me so much as a man of character and integrity, into whose hands I had so willingly put my fate, was himself at very least a socialist sympathizer!