An Old Captivity by Nevil Shute Page B

workmanlike,” said Lockwood at last. He stared at the array of instruments before the pilot, at the grey boxes of the wireless by his elbow.
    “It’s a good machine,” said Ross. “I never saw a better one for the job.”
    The girl stared round the cabin, and said nothing. It seemed to her like sitting in the engine-room of a ship, or on the footplate of a locomotive. So far as she had thought about it at all, she had imagined that the aeroplane would be like a saloon car, or like a first-class carriage in a railwaytrain. She had never travelled on an air line, but she knew that they were like that. This was very different. She would have to sit upon a little air cushion with a bare metal tank containing a hundred and fifty gallons of petrol at her elbow, already smelling strongly, filling the cabin with its tang. Everything she touched was bare metal, new and shining, slightly oily, and rather smelly. Clustered around the pilot’s seat immediately in front of her there was a vast array of dials and little handles, forty or fifty little things, perhaps. She did not know the name, or the function, or the purpose of one of them.
    For the first time she began to realise what this expedition meant to her. She was stepping from the world she knew into a world of different values. For the first time she appreciated the weight of what her uncle had said to her in Oxford. On this trip she would be adverse to its success; she knew nothing of what had to be done, or how it could be achieved.
    “It all looks very nice,” she said at last, a little weakly.
    Ross settled them in their seats, and saw that they were comfortable. Then he had the machine pushed to the head of the slipway. She started with a hand inertia starter; he had chosen that method rather than risk exhaustion of the batteries by electric starting. With run-down batteries they would have inefficient wireless; with inefficient wireless they might be in danger.
    He knelt upon the pilot’s seat awkwardly in the confined space, fitted the crank and began grinding away at the flywheel. By the time it was spinning sweat was pouring off him, that hot summer afternoon. The girl sat and watched him labouring at the crank, almost on top of her; she had not imagined it would be like this. The hum of the flywheel rose to a high whine; the pilot stopped cranking suddenly, pulled a little handle on the instrument board. The propeller in front of her started to revolve, the engine burst into life, and the airscrew was lost to sight. The pilot took out the crank and stowed it behind his seat, wiping his forehead.
    He smiled at her. “I shan’t be sorry when we get up North,” he said.
    “It looks terribly hot work.”
    Lockwood said: “You must teach me how to do that. I could give you a hand turning that thing, anyway.”
    “It’s not so bad,” said Ross. “Take it easily, and it goes all right.”
    He slipped into his seat, and sat for a few minutes warming up his engine. He showed them the oil pressure and temperature gauges, and explained what he was doing. The don was able to follow what he said; the girl sat watching the little needles move under the glasses without understanding. She sat silent, feeling rather lost.
    The pilot signalled to the ground crew and the seaplane was eased down the slipway. She took the water and floated for a few minutes while the men in waders cleared the beaching trolley; then Ross opened his throttle a little and moved out over the water. Lockwood was in the seat beside him, watching his movements with interest, asking a question now and then. Behind him the girl sat stiff and rigid, worried and alert.
    Presently Ross turned the machine into the wind pointing down Southampton Water, and peered around in all directions. Then he glanced back over his shoulder at the girl. “All right, Miss Lockwood?”
    She moistened her lips. “I’m quite ready.”
    He smiled. “I’m going to take her off now. Just sit relaxed in your