AFRICA FLIGHT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23124, 24 August 1938, Page 23

AFRICA FLIGHT

CHAPTER Xll.—(Continued)

" Have you over been thirsty in your life, Carol? 1 very much doubt it. J expect you've been glad of a drink now and then. That's quite different. I've been thirsty in Central America —I know something about it —the way your tongue swells till your mouth is full of nothing else —tho way your head begins to go—the utter lack of self-control, the complete animalism and beastliness of it—" " Rupert, don't, please." " Oh, I don't want to pilo on the ag on y. Carol dear. But perhaps you can see now why I'm in no mood to appreciate any sort of attitudinising over this jam we're in. Hove you. You may bo going to die. Like that. That's all I can see just now." She slid a hand over his lips. " Even if wo do die," she whispered, " we shall be together." " And you think that'll help?" "Yes. I do.". " It won't make it—hurt any less, you know." " But it will," Carol insisted. " 1 know it will!" Larrimore caught her into his arms. "You're rather a marvellous person, Carol." " I tell you, that as long as we're together, nothing else matters in all the world I'' He kissed her very gently. " Bless you, my darling. You're very sweet. But there's another thing you've got to face. We may not bo able to be together." " What do you mean, Rupert?" He unclasped her arms from his neck and stood up. "Just what i say, dear. I've some calculations to mako with tho maps. It all depends if I can work out where we are with any sort of certainty; exactly how much water we've got left, and how the rest of you are prepared to face up to the general situation. You see, if we can keep our heads—" He stopped as Hubert Manson appeared at the door, peering behind his bjg spectacles like some singular insect. " My wife tells me, Larrimore," said Hubert Manson, " that you think the situation is serious." " About as serious as it can be," replied Larrimore gravely. " I want your help, sir, if you don't mind." "Of course, of course," said the professor absently. " Anything I can do—3'ou know that stone we struck with our—er undercarriage?" " Well?" "That was really an astonishing piece of luck you know, Larrimore." " Luck!" The professor apparently did not appreciate, or simply ignored the irony. "As a scientist," lie went on deliberately, "I'm bound to deprecate the intervention of blind chance, but I admit that this time I'm grateful." " Did you say—grateful, uncle?" asked Carol, wide-eyed. For a moment she feared that Hubert Manson had got a touch of the sun after all. He nodded happily. " Yes —it goes a long way toward proving my point about the lost caravan route from the North to Djebal Mir. You remember I bored you with the theory that night at dinner in London. The inscription on that stone proves pretty conclusively that I was dead figlit. Do voii want me in the cockpit, Larrimore?" And murmuring contentedly to himself of Aramaic inscriptions, Hubert Manson wandered forward into the pilot's cabin. Larrimore turned to follow him, and realised that Carol was laughing softly to him. The sound increased, became harsh and toneless, unmistakably hysterical. " Stop it, Carol!" he snapped. "Stop thnt—at" once.'""' The parade-ground rasp in his voice acted on the girl's frayed nerves like a douche of cold water. She stopped laughing, and smiled at him shakily. I'm sorry, Rupert," she said quietl}'. But when Larrimore in his turn had disappeared into the pilot's cockpit, and she _ was alone, Carol dropped into a chair and sat very still for a few minutes, her head buried in her hands. She was, after all, very young. And to the very young the reality of the imminence of death is almost incredible—and in proportion intolerable /in its ghastliness. When Janet Manson, in search of her husband, came back to the 'plane about five minutes later, she found her niece smoking a cigarette with a valiant pretence of general unconcern. Janet Manson frowned. " How you can bear to smoke in this heat," she said, " I can't imagine." The girl blew smoke provocatively through her nostrils. " I didn't realise £hat I was smoking," she said carelessly. "Do you want me to believe that for once you were thinking seriously about something?" inquired her aunt. Carol sat up angrily. " Why do you always try to bidly me?" she demanded "Even as ;i kid you used to scare the life out of me!" Janet Mas,on recoiled before the unexpectedness of this attack. "I don't mean to bully you," she said. "But modern young women exasperate me. You're so feckless!" "Have I ever done you any harm?" the girl went on. "No," said her aunt. "It's yourself that you harm —and I happen to be

very fond of you." Carol crushed out her cigarette. "I wish," she said, "that hurting people you are fond of for their own good didn't strike me as being disagreeably funny—but it does." Janet Manson's thin lips tightened. "My dear," she said slowly, "the favourito mannerism of your generation is to call 'funny' anything that interferes however slightly _ with your personal wishes or convenience." Carol longed to retort that all she wished for at the moment was to bo left alone. But she thought of Larrimorc, and managed to control the impulse. . "Has Mr. Larrimore decided what we've got to do?" asked Janet Manson. Carol jerked her head toward the closed door of the cockpit. "He and uncle are in there now," she said, "using maps and a compass and pro-; tractors, and capable masculine brains., Doesn't it madden you to be a woman,j Aunt Janet?" . , ~ , , l "Sometimes, certainly," agreed her aunt dryly, "but X don't think this hap-; pens to be one of the times. What is it,j Herr Flesch?" . , i" The little German, panting, and mopping his forehead, was standing in the doorway. . Nigel Kerr, it seemed, was showing i symptoms of being considerably worse I than had been feared. He was'tossing I about in a restless sleep induced by a j strong sedative injection, and muttering Carol Manson's name continually in his delirium: ... Carol was only too glad to seize the opportunity to break away from the nervous irritation of the conversation

with her aunt. "I'll send Saunders for you if I need you," she said. "He probably only wants to hold my hand." Janet Manson looked for once a little undecided. The German hastened 1o reassure her. "It is only reaction from shock, Mrs. Manson. Kerr will get over it." Janet Manson succeeded in forcing a smile.

(COPYRIGHT)

By VAL GIELGUD Author of " Announcer's Holiday," " Beyond Dover, etc.

A atory of high courage and adventure with a golden thread of love in its fabric.

haps he was not yet quite ready . . . "I don't want anything special," said Antony Sothern coolly, "except that I feel that we ought to begin to do something active. I'm pretty sure you feel the same thing, Larrimore. So I'm curious—that's all." Larrimore smiled with his lips, but not at all with his eyes. "I was just getting the professor here to do the necessary preliminary lirainwork," he said. Hubert Manson —like the proverbial Elder Oyster—shook his head, as if implying that when it came to a matter of practical calculation, lie had few advantages over Rupert Larrimore. "Preliminary!" repeated Sothern. "May I ask to what?" "You may," said Larrimore ironically. "It's simply this. In my view the betting is heavily qgainst our being found where we are. We're miles oil' the course 'we were supposed to be flying. The water we have left is more than limited. And young Kerr's injury, leaving other tilings aside, stops us from making a march of it as a party " "Did you say —march?" Sothern cut iu sharply. "Just that, Sothern. Unless the prolessor and 1 are badly out in our reckoning of position, there should bo a French post within three days' travelling—so long as the marchers are fit, and always supposing that the marchers don't hit a sandstorm." Sothern hit his lip. "Iu short," added Hubert Manson, "someone must make the march to j liiing the rest of us help, Antony."

"Precisely," Larrimore agreed. "Two must go, with just enough to enable f.lie rest to hang on for a week — {hough they'll be on very short commons. Hut- it's our only chance." Antony Sothern looked out at the sleek glowing beauty of the desert, then jerked his head back to faco Larrimore's steady eyes. (To be continued dally.) . j

"He's as likely to got over it as any of tho rest of us, I imagine," she murmured. Otto Flesch regarded her shrewdly from behind his glasses. "So you are frightened, Mrs. Manson? You do not look frightened." "I may as well admit it. I'm terrified. Or why should my hands bo so cold in this heat?" "You disguise your fears admirably, if I may say so," said tho German with a little bow. "My dear Herr Flesch, people brought up as 1 was have not been taught how to express a violent emotion like fear. We look perfectly ordinary—and feel perfectly sick. That is what you foreigners call British imperturbability, isn't it?" Otto Flesch's fat face creased with an agreeable smile. "I should like to help you, if I could," he said. "You have all been most kind to me—" "You aro not frightened yourself, Herr Flesch?" "Not particularly. Tho War seems a very long time ago now, does it not, Mrs. Manson? People have forgotten. But men like your servant, Saunders, and I; we have not forgotten. Wo were both in the salient at Ypres in '17 —on opposite sides, trying our hardest to kill each other. Which now seems a trifle absurd, nicht wahr 1 For weeks we lived, and slept, and ate, in mud up to our knees. Wo lay out at night on patrol and watched tho semi-circle of fire riving the darkness. We found our clothes sticky with our friends' blood and brains, I was very much afraid then, though I was a young man, and strong. That is way 1 think I am now not afraid —yet." Janet Manson looked away through the window at the horribly brilliant shifting light flickering over the desert. "I am ashamed of myself," she said briskly. "I feel hotter already." Whoreupon Otto Flesch surprised her. "I hoped that might be the result," he said. At which moment Saunders walked in to say that Kerr had calmed down immediately upon Carol's entry into the tent. He was, apparently, now holding one of her hands hard, sleeping, and grinning in his sleep. But this apparently did not amuse Janet Manson. "I'm not at all sure," she said, "that that young man isn't considerably cleverer than we gave him credit for. If he's asleep he won't notice whose hand he's holding, so he may as well have mine. If he isn't asleep he doesn't deserve a hand to hold at all." She left the 'plane hurriedly, leaving the two ex-soldiers to exchange amused glances, that held in them a considerable degree of admiration. "And what is your opinion of this trouble we're in, Saunders?" asked Flesch at last, in his precise English. The servant walked to the door of the 'plane, spat deliberately, out on to the sand, turned round, and winked one eye ponderously. "I try not to think," he said. "I found out in the War the best thing to do. Trust your officer, and do what you're told —pretty quick!" The German observed that was all right if the officer was a good officer. "Well, you can take it from me, this Mr. Larrimore's a good officer," said Saunders stubbornly. "And what he says goes in this outfit." "Certainly a fine pilot." "And that's not all, Mister Flesch. And if you know what Mr. Larrimore isn't, just take a look at that Sothern bloke, by way of contrast —" Ho broke off, for Flesch had made a queer, violent gesture. Behind Saunders, Antony Sothern was standing at the top of the little flight of steps leading to the door of the 'plane. His eyes narrowed, and there was a queor flush on his cheeks. "Saunders!" "Yes sir." "Go and ask the professor and Mr. Larrimore if I can have a word with them, please." "Yes, sir." Saunders went through into the pilot's cockpit, and Sothern swung round on Flesch. "I don't want to appear fussy," he said, "hut I'd be glad if you wouldn't discuss my character with a servant behind my back." Flesch spread out his hands apologetically. "Not that 1 care," Sothern went on harshly. "We've other things to talk about. It's about time the super-efficient Mr. Larrimore came to a conclusion or two. Perhaps I haven't learned how to look on that kind of efficiency with patience. I don't mind Larrimore being strong —but Gad! How I loathe his not being silent!" Flesch said nothing. The door into the pilot's cabin opened, and Larrimore peered out. "What's the trouble?" he asked impatiently. Sothern did not reply directly to Larrimore's question, and both Hubert Manson, looking over the latter's shoulder, and Otto Flesch became suddenly and acutely aware of the intense and personal antagonism between tho two men. Sothern straightened his tall figure, stiffening all over. Flesch, with that sensitiveness to atmosphere which is ono of the peculiar properties of his race, felt that the younger man was, as it were, tightening every muscle in readiness for a conflict which might easily take physical form at short notice. But perhaps Sothern altered his mind —perhaps he was daunted by Larrimore's complete lack of reaction—per-