I knew what it was, but Bull shouted first. ‘They’ve started the engines to keep it off shore.’
‘Let’s hope they can.’
He didn’t hear. ‘Good lads! Hold tight! Get it away!’ or some such words, to judge by the way he jumped up and down.
Unable to see, our ears were attuned even more to the engine, and we became part of the struggle in the cove. The wind moaned as if signalling the death-rattle from the four-stroke throat. But the engines roared around us, ears and eyelids shivering as they overcame the bang of the wind. I almost expected to see the portly flank of the flying boat go by on take-off.
It was hard to stay still, but to pace in circles to the wind’s screech, and the engines that fought marvellously against it, might be to lose the position we had worked so hard to find. Bull did not feel the same obligation, and there was no response to my call. I shouted full strength but hardly heard my voice – only the rattle of it in my head. Visibility wasn’t more than a few yards, and I supposed he had descended the hill to find a better view through the mist.
The engines cut, but I continued to hear them. Either better times had come or the worst had taken place. How long ago they had stopped I couldn’t know, and I fought to stay calm, seeing no one and hearing only the cosmic shutterbang of the gale. I sat and imagined Bull lost, never to return, that Bennett, Appleyard and Rose had been drowned trying to reach the flying boat in the dinghy, and that those on board had gone down with the ship. But my face was wet from rain not tears.
I might have assumed that the engines had been cut because the flying boat had found a secure anchorage, and that those on shore were sitting out the storm before coming up the hill to me. All was well in the world. I talked to Bennett as if our small globe of visibility had enough warmth to keep us alive. The only time I could attempt communication was when he was not present, and so I took to pieces the reasons for coming here, and put them back together in a way that suggested we had made a futile journey, but to show also that I had understood our motives sufficiently to remember them for the future.
It didn’t wash. The rain did that. I felt like a stump of wood being worn away. He said: ‘You don’t talk to me, erk. I do the talking, if I care to. And what have I to say to a superannuated Backtune who wasn’t even on active service when he got his Dear John letter? On this stunt we not only do our jobs, but that little bit extra as well. The Aldebaran needs you, don’t forget. Remember also that the skipper takes an interest in your work.’
There was little either of us could say. I was pulled into a trance. If I had not been acting as marker for the gold I would have walked to keep myself warm, but having given my word I was obliged to stay no matter how numb I became. I didn’t think about the possibility of death approaching as quickly as Appleyard said later that it might. Having sent the false signals made it obvious that I would now do as ordered. If I had not sent them I might have weakened, abandoned my position under the excuse of survival, and lost the location of the treasure, so that refinding it after the storm – the guide poles having been swept away by the wind – would have left us no time to get the gold up before we were discovered by those who wanted it for themselves. An unpleasant course of action was always seen as crucial.
But the matter went deeper than doing what was obviously my duty. I would have stayed in any case, acceptance being composed of pride, tradition, greed, honour and a desire to explore my nature to the utmost. There was nothing more attractive to me at that time. I thought of fate as the unbreakable spider’s web, but did not know whether by being drawn to it I was the spider or the victim. In my imaginary conversation I told Bennett none of this.
I sat on the ground and dozed. The lack of visibility was a sort of darkness, within whose protection I grew less cold.
5
If Bennett had been authorized to recommend any of his crew for medals, or to be mentioned in despatches, he would surely have honoured Nash for saving the headquarters of the expedition. It was not that he had been uninterested in the fact of our superbly winged vessel being poised for a fatal collision with the shore, but that he had got his priorities right. With one good man on board, and four prime engines, he felt no concern for the flying boat. He exercised fine tuning over his tactics, Rose said to me later. It was his strategy that had been out of control from the beginning.
He sheltered under cover of the dinghy, for to try reaching us on the hill in such a tempest would have risked his party being scattered and perhaps lost. They stayed together till the wind died sufficiently for him to take a compass bearing and follow Rose and Appleyard up the hillside, keeping them in line-ahead.
In the dream I banged my shoulder against a crenellated wall forty feet high and fell towards the ditch, pursued by half-bird and half-flying boat, nature’s work and man’s which, within the dreamscape, seemed absolute reality. A blow at the shoulder caused me to topple as if hollow, the dream sliced through. Appleyard thought I might be dead, but Rose knew better. Bennett’s demand as to where Bull had gone came above the rattle of the wind.
I reached for the mound of stones and sat up, angry because unable to continue falling into the moat below the crenellations. After a trumpet call the wall would descend on me, and I would sleep forever after an endless drop not of my making.
Bennett kicked around the area as if spoiling an invisible sandcastle before the tide came in. ‘I asked where Bull was.’
‘Gone for a walk.’ I spoke three times before he understood. They had brought food and coffee from the dinghy, and the quick meal opened my eyes. Bull could be miles up the mountain. Perhaps he had fallen. He was bound to be lost. He didn’t need defending. Anyone with sense would have done the same. ‘He couldn’t stay put, and freeze to death.’
‘He’ll be court-martialled for dereliction of duty.’
Appleyard worked as if excavating a slit trench for protection against artillery. He considered the air bracing – as I had a few hours ago. ‘No worse than a summer’s stroll in the Lake District.’
‘He deserves to be shot.’ Bennett laughed, but I didn’t like his humour.
Maybe the bearings had been inaccurate. Perhaps they were false. The exploration was shallow, and there was no sign. I wondered whether I had moved without being aware. The soft and peaty soil was striated by occasional gravel. When Appleyard’s spade struck, Bennett took it from him and dug furiously, then gave the loosened boulder a kick to burst any toes.
Rose and I had a turn, keeping our backs to the flurries of rain and sleet. Bennett gazed into the mire and listened to every tap of the spades. We could see further down the slope, and while I wanted the sky to clear sufficiently for a search party to go up the mountain, the others hoped that the mist would stay so that we could dig in safety. The low rampart shielded an area three yards square and a foot deep. I enjoyed the work, in spite of the ache to limbs and spine, and the heat on my palms preceding blisters. The depth of our excavation increased. ‘Anyone from a distance might think we’re digging our graves.’
Appleyard told me to shut up and get-bloody-on with it. His spade met a hard object, but he pushed with his boot as if it were a temporary aberration in the composition of the soil. Bennett, on the edge of our visibility, was engrossed in the uncertainties of the weather. I also reached solid metal. ‘Something here, Skipper.’