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‘After you with the old tribal customs!’ exclaimed the Birmingham man, slapping his hands together and making succulent smacking noises in his cheek. He dug Soames in the ribs. ‘Ever tried a bit of the old tribal customs?’ He lowered his voice confidentially. ‘I had an Arab bint once during the last war. Talk about strong! She got her legs wrapped round me and dug her heels in the small of my back like a human nutcracker. Scared me stiff at first, it did – I was only a youngster in those days.’
‘Quite,’ agreed Soames, feeling enthusiasm was required of him. The Birmingham man was goaded into fresh revelations, so that Wally Brewer and Timpleton leant over to catch what he was saying.
‘I knew a good thing when I found it,’ the engineer boasted. ‘Ah! I was back round there again next evening. “Dig your heels in again, missis,” I said. And she did. Strewth! We’ll be okay if they’re like that in this Umbalathorp, I tell you. She was a nice little bit, that Arab bint. They shave off their pubic hairs before marriage, you know.’
This anthropological detail reminded Brewer of something he had heard.
‘A lot of these African women slap goat dung on it to improve the sensation,’ he said. ‘It’s like using curry powder with meat.’
It was Timpleton’s turn to chip in.
‘You haven’t lived till you’ve had an Italian girl,’ he said.
‘Japanese,’ Brewer contradicted firmly. ‘Japanese. Nothing like a little Jap girl – up to all the tricks, they are, taught about it from the nursery. When we set up that computer in Yokohama last year …’ He guffawed to show that the sentence could not be completed in words, not even over the wilds of Africa.
‘Just let us loose in Umbalathorp, that’s all I say,’ Timpleton remarked.
Soames said nothing. He could not casually reveal his sexual experiences in this way – not that he had ever felt anything so exotic as an Arabian heel grip in the small of his back. Obviously it was time he asserted himself.
Ignoring the chatter of the other men, he fell into a reverie. Now or never, presumably, was his chance to break the bonds of his confounded reserve, to leap free from the constraints of a cold temperament and climate. On this trip he would prove himself a man or die in the attempt.
Sexual fantasies surged through his mind. Massive thighs opened up before him, pair after pair, like doors down a Versailles corridor. Soames went through them all, unruffled, laughingly denigrating his own prowess. The tenth woman, who could speak a little English, cried aloud for mercy.
‘Mercy!’ exclaimed fantasy-Soames. ‘My good woman, this is only a dress rehearsal.’
‘But I cannot exhaust you. You are a Casanova among men.’
‘Nonsense, chicken. It’s just – well, I’m a branch of a lusty family.’
‘Branch, sir? This thing, it is more like a trunk!’
‘It happens to be a prominent feature in the Noyes family, that’s all.’ And as he left, tossing a few dollars negligently to the bowing and awe-struck proprietress, he called over one shoulder. ‘Try and find some fresh girls for me tomorrow night, madame – something with a little fire in it.’
The madame was weeping, trying to give him his money back.
‘Please do not come here again, sir,’ she pleaded. ‘You wear out all my best girls.’
But the girls were protesting to her, begging to be allowed to lie with Soames just once more.
‘All a beautiful dream,’ Soames told himself, sighing heavily.
He glanced out of the window to see if there was any break in the tousled green carpet beneath them. The plane was lurching in rather an un-English manner as if investigating a new way of coping with turbulence. This might have been either because they were flying over a range of mountains or because half of one wing was trying to detach itself from the plane.
This latter phenomenon riveted Soames’ attention. He no longer felt capable of joining in the small talk about him, which had now turned to the possibilities of hunting in Goya. Instead, he gazed sickly at the wing. It was making the leisurely flapping movements of an old pterodactyl; a girder inside the leading edge must have snapped even as Soames looked, for the flapping became abruptly more pronounced. The pterodactyl had sighted food.
Soames was petrified – not by fear but by a less wholesome emotion. He was the son of a doggedly timid father and an assertive mother, and the war between his parents had been perpetuated in him. Now the urge to stand up and do something useful was quenched by a conflicting urge which said to him, ‘Think what a fool you would look if you walked through into the pilot’s cabin, tapped him on the shoulder and announced “one wing’s coming off, pilot” – and he turned round and said, “Yes, I know; mind your own business”.’
The Birmingham man and Wally Brewer were discussing the rival attractions of football and game-hunting with Deal Jimpo. Ted Timpleton stared whitely ahead like an actor whose lines had gone from him for the night – the first night. The sedate flapping of the wing had changed now, changed into an angry shaking, as if the cargo plane were an animal just waking to the hideous injustice of having to carry humans in its digestive tract.
Breaking at last from his trance, Soames stood up. As he did so, the loudspeaker in the cabin broke into life and the pilot’s voice said harshly, ‘I’m going down for an emergency landing. We’ve developed a fault. Strap on your safety belts and sit tight, all of you. No need to panic.’
‘What the hell’s the matter?’ the Birmingham man asked. ‘Do you think we ought to see if we can give him a hand, Mr Noyes?’
‘We’re going to crash!’ Timpleton said, standing up. ‘My wife warned me …’
‘Sit down at once, and do as the pilot says,’ Deal Jimpo said, loudly and firmly.
Both Timpleton and Noyes, rather to the latter’s annoyance, at once obeyed the command.
‘Bugger that, I’m going to see if I can help the pilot,’ the Birmingham man said, running forward and disappearing through the connecting door into the cabin. They were diving now, the turbulent green lurching up uninvitingly to meet them, the plane bucking as it set its nose down. A small suitcase of the Princeling’s shot out of a luggage rack and scuttled down the gangway after the Birmingham man.
‘Oh my God,’ Timpleton said. ‘Now we’re for it, Mr Noyes.’
‘N-nonsense,’ Soames replied with an attempt at a joke, ‘the pilot knows the Apostle is too valuable a cargo to damage.’
Long afterwards, he recalled with surprise how loudly Deal Jimpo and Wally Brewer laughed at his remark; and even in the face of what might conceivably be death-in-a-veil, he found himself resolving to try and make more jokes in future. Then Wally caught his eye, winked broadly to indicate that this was for the abject Timpleton’s amusement, and began to sing ‘Abide With Me’.
The noise in the cabin was so deafening that they could scarcely hear him. The earth which from the serenity of a few thousand feet up had looked as smooth and inviting as an electric blanket, now revealed itself in its true colours: a savage, Jurassic world of broken hill and valley, loaded with rivers and trees. Space in which to land was absolutely nonexistent. Uneasily, queasily, Soames tensed himself for the fatal shock. Just through the window, the wing was a giant fist shaken at him. It sounded like a madman’s banging on shutters.
Now they seemed to be clipping the tree tops. Startled giraffes broke through a tiny clearing and galloped beneath them. The suitcase was shuffling its way back up the gangway.
Four passengers with dry, open mouths sat clutching seat-backs. Their flight was so bumpy they might have been leaping from tree top to tree top. Wally Brewer’s oil-coated hair flapped up and down on his head.
‘We’re going too fast,’ Soames whispered.
Abruptly the jungle stopped. A sea of grass rushed beneath them. The plane dropped towards it. Now they staggered in for a landing, forest fringing them on either side, more rising up like a wave a mile ahead. It had to be now or never.
Their wheels touched the ground. A mighty hissing, a boiling sea of grass-noise, rose round them. And in that instant the loose wing struck the flowing earth.
With a crescendo of noise, the plane was flung round off its course, pitched back into the air, hurled on to one shoulder.
Timpleton screamed and somersaulted across the gangway. He had not buckled his safety belt properly.
A mighty mvule, outrageous, irresistible, spread out its branches to them. Foliage slashed across their windows. With a last heave, the body of the plane struck something solid. Everything in the universe rattled.
Maniac sound, maniac silence.
Chapter Two (#ub094c41d-8dec-5246-976c-ade47befc427)
‘… whoever seeks abroad …’
The men and dwarfs seemed to be carrying an ocean liner, which was made of rubber and only semi-inflated, so that it flopped about as they dragged it up Everest.
Soames jerked out of his dream and opened one eye.
‘Yes, I’m inside the liner,’ he thought. ‘It’s clear to me now. It’s not made of rubber; it’s made of grey plastic and filled with special grey air …’
His mind cleared. He squeezed his eyes, opened them both, took a deep breath, roused, remembered.
He was still strapped in his seat. He was lying on his back, for the plane had come to rest with its nose high in the air, standing like a tower among a tangle of branches.
All Soames could do for some while was stare stupidly straight above him at the pilot’s door, some feet over his head. He was exceedingly cold. It occurred to him that the grey light was the light of early dawn. They had crashed at about six, or perhaps an hour before sunset; he had been unconscious for some twelve hours. He was too numb to attempt to check this observation by lifting his arm and looking at his wrist watch.
Instead, he turned his attention to the other passengers. Over to his right lay Wally Brewer, in a position much like Soames’ own, except that his head was twisted backwards in such a ghastly fashion as to make it obvious even to Soames – a tyro in such matters – that his neck was broken and he was dead. The grey light, filtering through the leaves, pressed against the windows, lingered complacently on Wally’s staring eyes.
There was no sign of Ted Timpleton.
Twisting himself round with an effort, Soames looked backwards and down to where Deal Jimpo Landor had sat. There was no sign of him either.
He wondered how the pilot and the Birmingham man had fared, but there seemed no possible way of getting up to them in the forward compartment. As he stared rather dreamily upwards, the communicating door opened slightly and a head was poked into the cabin; it wore the flamboyant bushwacker hat the Birmingham man had deemed appropriate for the journey.
Soames was about to shout out to him when he recalled he did not know the man’s name (Duncan? Dobson? Hobson? Hobhouse?); again absurd inhibitions overcame him and silenced him. And now the head turned, allowing Soames a glimpse of gleaming teeth and a hairy shoulder.
Just for a startled second, horror invaded Soames. Was the Birmingham man a werewolf? Had the crash released lycanthropic tendencies in him?
Then a grinning chimpanzee, still wearing the bushwacker hat, launched itself into the cabin, swinging down from seat to seat with all the trained abandon of a Palladium act.
‘Shoo!’ Soames said with appropriate force.
Startled, the chimpanzee shed its headgear and beat a retreat back into the pilot’s compartment.
Thoroughly roused, Soames undid his safety belt and set about climbing out of the wrecked plane.
He swung down the seats in a clumsy imitation of the chimpanzee and reached the door, which had been broken open by the force of the crash. Looking out, he found himself some forty feet above ground level. The plane was standing on its tail against a giant tree whose damaged branches seemed to extend like broken tusks all round the fuselage, piercing it in some places.
Unexpected elation coursed through Soames. He was alive! He was romantically in the mysterious heart of Africa. Life was suddenly something worth a hearty cheer. He took a grateful breath of morning air, and found it smelt much like eggs and bacon.
There was no exit for him this way. He jumped down on to what had been the rear wall of the cabin and lowered himself through the door, now hanging open, into the rear of the plane.
Passing the little galley and toilets, he climbed down through another open door into the cargo hold. Here, all the crates containing the component parts of the Apostle Mk II looked still to be in position and unharmed; thanks to careful packing, they had not budged an inch. Working his way carefully down them, Soames reached the cargo hatch. It gaped open, and a steel ladder extended from it down some fifteen feet to the ground.
Descending the ladder, pushing through twigs and leaves, Soames could see that the crumpled expanse of tail plane acted as a pedestal for the wreck. He reached ground and there, a few feet away, Ted Timpleton, sleeves rolled up, was frying eggs and bacon over a stove.
Directly he saw Soames, he came running up, throwing out his arms and clutching Soames’ hands.
‘Oh, Soames,’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, how good it is to see you! Oh, what a ruddy relief; I quite thought you had had your lot. You’ve not a clue how terrible it felt here – the only white man …’
With Soames’ anger that this little man should have crept out of the plane without, apparently, attempting to help any of his fellows, went a detached interest in the sudden use of his own Christian name, with all the camaraderie in the face of danger it implied; then these sensations were banished by a more urgent one which rose conquering from the pit of the stomach.
‘Is breakfast ready?’ Soames asked.
In the frying pan, deliciously, joyously, six eggs sparkled and wallowed like suns in the lively fat; close by, waiting to welcome them when they were cooked, stood two plates already loaded with crisp bacon and gleaming rounds of potatoes. A groan escaped Soames’ lips.
Even as he wondered if Timpleton had been intending to eat all this glorious food himself, Soames caught sight of Deal Jimpo propped with his back against the bole of a tree a few feet away. The young negro was covered by a rug; his eyes were closed, he breathed heavily.
‘I had a dickens of a job getting His Highness out of the plane,’ Timpleton said. ‘Nearly broke my back. Of course, it was dark when I came to, and that didn’t make things any easier. He was already conscious and groaning like a boat. I got to him and brought him down here somehow. Then I fixed his leg up in splints. He’s broken it badly. Funny a big chap like that should get his leg smashed up and here’s these eggs with their shells not even cracked.’
‘You did jolly well, Ted,’ Soames said warmly.
‘I don’t know. I was in the Navy in the war.’ The word of praise embarrassed him. He gestured awkwardly at the sleeping man and said, ‘We’ll wake old Jimpo up now and give him a plate of grub. He’ll feel twice the man. I got some coffee out the galley, too.’
He squatted by the stove, slightly smiling, a little wiry Londoner turning grey above the ears, conscious of Soames’ eager looks. Producing a third plate he put the eggs, now done to a turn, two on each plate and shovelled bacon and potato beside them until the plates were equally loaded. He produced knives and forks from a box and handed a pair to Soames.
‘Eating irons coming up,’ he exclaimed. ‘Blast! Forgot the salt! We’ll have to rough it this time. I can’t climb back up there again till I’ve had my grub.’
‘Quite,’ agreed Soames, and before Timpleton could get over to the sleeping man he had begun the attack on his plate.
After coffee, all three of them felt much better. Jimpo, as both the white men had instinctively dropped into the habit of calling him, bore the pain in his leg stoically and assumed command of the party, to Soames’ secret relief.
For the first time, Soames had an inclination to look round. They were at the bottom of a thickly forested slope, among whose branches monkeys chattered. The open ground before them was churned by the crash landing and littered with small branches. Two hundred yards away, forlorn and innocent now, lay the culprit length of wing.
‘One of you must climb to the nose of the aeroplane and see if the two men there are alive,’ Jimpo said. ‘That is first essential.’
‘I will go,’ Soames offered, eager to show his readiness to do anything, for he wanted his two companions to realise as quickly as possible that he was a good chap.
It was not an especially hard climb. Soames took it stage by stage up through the aircraft and, with a final jerk that it would have done his old scoutmaster good to behold, hauled himself up into the pilot’s cabin.
The chimpanzee had vanished. Silence reigned here now. A mighty bough had crashed through the small compartment, shattering the instrument boards and pinning both the pilot and the Birmingham engineer, who had taken the spare second pilot’s seat, beneath it. The Birmingham man’s torso had completely caved in; he lay with his profile turned from Soames, glass frosting his hair. His tongue had been forced out of his mouth like a length of tie. When Soames pulled back the leafy branches, so incongruous in this little, man-made shell, it was to find that the pilot’s skull had been shattered. His face was indistinguishable; a few large blow-flies were inspecting the damage.
Sickened, Soames let the branches sweep back into position. He could do nothing here. Yet he stood there, silent, the air heavy with petrol fumes and sunlight coming in horizontally through the wound in the hull. He was regretting he had not been more genial with the Birmingham man while a chance for geniality existed.
Looking up through the shattered glass, he perceived a face watching him from a branch outside. It was a thin, eroded face, lined with despair, from which peered two hanging-judge eyes; its beak was like a tarnished blade. Even as Soames and the vulture regarded each other, another great bird in its funeral garb came clattering down to take up its perch beside the first. Then they both stared down at the living man without comment. By the time he had disappeared back into the body of the plane, two more friends had joined them; the leader stepped forward and flubbed heavily down into the cabin.
‘This is our best plan,’ Jimpo told them, leaning back against the tree. ‘We cannot be many leagues from my country. That is a fortunate chance, for my leg will allow me to proceed only slowly. Just now I have observed a herd of topi, and from their movements, I suspect there may be water in that direction, through the bushes. We will walk to that water. If it should be a river, it is good for us to make camp there and wait for men to come by in boats. They will take us to my father’s republic.’
‘What you say goes, of course,’ Timpleton said, scratching his neck. ‘It’s your country. But I thought the usual stunt in these situations, from what I’ve read, was to walk to safety. Even if we have to take it slowly, it’s better than just sitting spinelessly by the river waiting for someone to show up.’
‘You have read too many adventure stories, Ted,’ Jimpo said. ‘These jungles are bad and we become quickly lost. We are not Biggles & Co. Best to wait by the river! I will teach you to trap crocodile.’
‘If we set fire to the plane, someone would be bound to see it and come and investigate,’ Soames suggested. ‘We could get all the food out first.’
Something like bad temper flitted across Jimpo’s face.
‘You think I get the computer so near to home and then burn it?’ he asked. ‘That is a silly notion, Soames. Help me to my feet and we will walk to the water.’
They trudged slowly through the waist-high grass. While Soames was in the plane, Timpleton had fashioned a sturdy crutch for Jimpo, with which he was able to proceed without too much discomfort.
The sun was high in the sky and they were sweating profusely by the time they reached the water; by English standards, it was a fair-sized river. The approach to it lay through a thicket of head-high bushes, but on the other bank rose true jungle, dense and unwelcoming. The river itself was deep and flowed so sluggishly it had the appearance of being semi-congealed.
‘This is ideal place,’ Jimpo said. ‘Now I will light fires to scare away the snakes and one of you will go back to the plane to collect the equipment I shall name. It can be dragged back here on the rug with maximum comfort. Which of you likes to go?’
‘Toss you, Soames,’ Timpleton said promptly, producing a coin and laying it on the back of his fist with his other hand over it.
‘I always lose these things,’ said Soames hopelessly. ‘Heads, I suppose,’ and lost. Thus it was he who had the surprise, when he got back, sweating, to the plane wreck, of finding a green bicycle with four-speed, propped against the crumpled tailplane and gleaming in the still sunshine.
‘Who’s there?’ Soames called nervously and then recollecting that this might well be what was French Equatorial Africa, ‘Er – qui est là?’
No answer came to him except the superbly contemptuous twittering of an insect in the long grass. He walked quietly about the wreck and saw nobody. The owner of the bicycle must have climbed up the ladder and entered the cargo hatch.
