"AFRICA FLIGHT"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1940, Page 12

"AFRICA FLIGHT"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

By

VAL GEILGUD.

(Author of “Announcer's Holiday," "Beyond Dover,” Etc.

CHAPTER X. It was the morning of the third day after The Star' of the East had left Timbucloo on the second —and vital — lap of the trip, that disaster fell upon the expedition. It fell with a suddenness altogether unexpected. Indeed, to most of its members the very imagination of a mishap had dwindled almost to nothing. Until that moment, everything had been the plainest of plain sailing. The lap to Timbuctoo had been covered in record time. The party given in honour of the adventurers by the French residents had been in the best hospitable tradition of the great Republic.

The first excitement of a literal bird’s-eye view of the greatest desert in the word had worn off. With the exception of the Professor, busy with his notebook, Otto Flesch, busy with his photographic apparatus, and Larrimore. who was in the act of taking over the controls from Nigel Kerr —the party was in varying stages of somnolence. The sky in which the plane swam so effortlessly was an inverted bowl of burning blue, visibilty limited only by the horizon. The vast sandy expanse below gave the curious effect of a seashore over which the tide has just gone out, being strangely patterned with rough circles and squares. And as far as the eye could reach there was no sign of life; not a tree, not a hut, not even a miniature pyramid to tell that man once lived upon the earth. Here indeed Was that formless void in which creation began. But there is an inevitable monotony about even unspeakable grandeur or limitless space, when indefinitely produced. And so Antony Sothern slept with his mouth open, and Carol dozed, half dreaming of Lord’s and- Ascot and Henley, and Janet Manson played patience as unconcernedly as if she had been in Queen’s Gate or Cheltenham

Carol, woken out of her day-dream-ing by the first lurch, experienced that sickening tightening of every muscle which is the preliminary to the extreme of physical fear, when she looked out of the window and saw one of the great propellers, which should have been revolving furiously, hanging perfectly motionless in the crystalline air. Flesch’s camera clattered to the floor. Janet Manson’s patience cards cascaded over her knees. Sothern clutched at the table in front of him. muttering ‘What the ——-?” at the sight of Nigel Kerr’s white face in the doorway leading to the pilot’s cabin. Only Hubert Manson seemed altogether unmoved and went on scribbling undecipherable notes with a deplorably blunt pencil . . “Sit still, all of you,” said Nigel Kerr hoarsely. “We’ll get down all right.” The limitless expanse of flat desert ceased to be without form and void. It revealed itself amazingly quickly as full of hollows and dunes and unsuspected pecularities. The sky receded absurdly. The earth whirled up at an oddly tilted angle. The aeroplane lurched again more violently. Nigel Kerr was flung sideways off his feet and cried out sharply. Carol had a glimpse of Larrimore, tense, sweating, violently occupied, as the door swung. There was a hideous burst of noise as Larriwhipped the last engine into action once more for the final business of landing. There was a slight jar, a sound of cracking from the rear of the machine. The landscape ceased of a sudden to stream past the windows. They were down and nobody seemed to have been damaged! The personnel of the expedition began to sort out their jumbled belongings, and scramble to their feet. Now that it was over they realised with distaste that their knees were inclined to shake, and that their faces were unwholesomely whitish .. . “Dear me,” said Hubert Manson, looking up from his notebook, "we seem to have landed.”

Antony Sothern giggled. Then he turned away, feeling very sick. It is not good for a promising product of Oxford University to realise very suddenly that he has felt physically afraid. His upbringing has not helped him adequately to cope with the result. Thon Larrimore appeared from the pilot’s cockpit, looking rather grim.

"Sorry, Mrs Manson,” he said, but I’m afraid there’s a job for you. Poor Kerr’s damaged his ankle, I’m afraid." “Rupert!” said Carol.

His complete disregard of her at that moment did not please the girl at all. “You might give your aunt a hand,” he suggested. “This wasn’t part of our plans, was it, Larrimore” enquired Hubert Manson.

"It'was not. I may add that we’ve had the devil's luck, aided, by some goodish piloting on my part, that we didn't all break our necks. I don't know what's got the darned machine! I must get out and see. By the same token, what's happened to Saunders?” Saunders —Hubert Manson's manservant—had been in the rear compartment of the plane. Saunders answered the query in person; a solid person of 50 or so, with the unmistakable look of an old soldier about him, a leathery face and admirable grey eyes. “I think sir,” he said quietly, emerging through the door that connected the two parts of the machine, "that you ought to have a look at our stern. We seemed to have bumped something as we landed.” "Heck!" said Larrimore.

He wrenched open the outer door of the machine, and sprang out into the sunlight. ‘I believe," said Jane Manson, reappearing from the cockpit, “that we carry some sort of a tent. We'd better take steps to get it rigged. Saunders. Mr Kerr has broken his ankle rather badly "

CHAPTER XI. Some two hours later Antony Sothern was sitting alone in the stranded aeroplane, his forehead unbecomingly furrowed, smoking a cigarette without tasting it at all. Outside the horizon was now blurred with a wavering heat haze. At intervals he could hear grunts, oaths, and small metallic noises from the cockpit, where Rupert Larrimore was tinkering more and more savagely with the machine’s wireless apparatus. All around the careless luxuriance of the sunlight was being infuriatingly squandered by a dispassionate providence. Sothern's fingers went to the, immaculate tie binding his silken collar. He felt somehow choking—

Inside the cockpit, Rupert Larrimore wrenched off his earphones, slung on his coat —he had been working in his shirt sheeves —and turned back into the the interior of the machine. Then he saw Sothern mopping at his forehead with a silk handerchief, and his mouth hardened. "You look hot,” he said. Sothern adjusted his eyeglass. "The professor,” he said affectedly, “would tell you that great heat is characteristic of these latitudes.” Larrimore took no notice of his tone. “How’s young Kerr?" he asked curtly.

Sothern, shrugged his shoulders. ‘Ankle gone all right—and Im afraid he’s damaged inside.” “Don’t you know?” “I'm sorry, Larrimore, but I didn’t take a medical degree. I was quoting Mrs Manson.” , 4 Larrimore managed to keep his term per. “Is the tent up?” “Very nearly. Flesch and Saunders have been marvellously busy about it all. It seems to have been useful to have been in the Great War after all —even on opposite sides!" ’ “You don’t think that you might go and give a hand, Sothern?” The young man grinned. “Frankly, no. I mean well, but I only get in the way.”

Larrimore began to fill a pipe. “Perhaps youre right." he said meditatively. Sothern began to feel a little ashamed of himself.

“You know," he said suddenly, “you must have done a good job to have got us down all right. And we were lucky to have been forward as we were. The stern looks in rather a mess. What actually happened?” “It’s difficult to tell—something almighty -odd, I know that. But we’d have been O.K. if it hadn’t been for that bit of rock tucked away out of sight in the sand. That’s what caught out tail and di'd the damage. The whole back of the plane has concertinaed —to say nothing of two splintered propellers!” But Antony Sothern did not seem especially impressed by the extent of the catastrophe to the "Star of the East.” “Well,” he said coolly, “the Professor’s happier than he’s been all the trip to date. He thinks he’s found hieroglyphics on the stone in question. Mrs Manson only just got him his sunhelmet in time.”

Larrimore lighted his pipe. “I’m glad that someone’s happy,” he said.

‘Oh, I think most of us are, except poor Kerr,” Sothern went on. “Flying tends to become a trifle monotonous, don't you think? And one ought to be able to dine out quite a bit on the story of this smash.”

"Do the others agree?" asked Larrimore, glancing up. “Definitely. Flesch and Saunders are working. Carol is playing the ministering angel to Nigel Kerr, and Mrs Manson is making tea. It might be said that, a good time is being had by all!”

Larrimore jumped up impatiently. “I only hope,” he said, “that you all manage to go on being so happy here." “Meaning, Larrimore?” “We may be here some time—that’s all."

There was a little silence, and Sothern again experiencing that unpleasant tightening sensation about his throat. “It won't take long to fly a relief plane out to us,” he said at last. “It won't,” agreed Larrimore, “once it starts."

Sothern moved irritably in his chair. "I don’t think I’m impressed by this air of slightly sinister mystery,", he said chillingly. “Then,” retorted Larrimore, "you may be impressed by the entirely unmysterious fact that among other things our wireless apparatus has come to grief." "Are you trying to frighten me?” "I hardly thing, Sothern, that that’s necessary.” Sothern flushed.

“But they’re bound to miss our messages. and search for us in time,” ho said without much conviction. "They are—in time," Larrimore agreed. "But there’s a good deal of country between here and Timbuctoo, and we can’t send out any directions. It isn’t as if we'd been flying a regular route.”

“You mean that, we may be in a really serious jam?" ‘l’m still not trying to frighten you. Sothern, but 1 think frankly that it's odds against our coming out of it!” Again that comfortless silence fell between the two men, so oddly contrasted, so mutually antagonistic. And Larrimore was thinking how much less intolerable Sothern would be if his monocle were smashed, his face greased, and his trousers dirty; while Sothern felt certain that Larrimore, cleaned of his sweat and his grime and with his hair brushed, woidd have seemed far less odious. Neither man was prepared as yet to face the reality of the dislike he felt for the other. (To be Continued.)