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Title: Round the Bend
Author: Shute, Nevil [Norway, Nevil Shute] (1899-1960)
Date of first publication: 1951
Date first posted: 5 January 2018
Date last updated: 5 January 2018
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1495

This ebook was produced by David T. Jones, Mary Meehan,
Al Haines, Mark Akrigg & the Online Distributed Proofreading
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






ROUND THE BEND

by Nevil Shute




     In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I would
     have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

     ST. JOHN. 14.2.






ACKNOWLEDGMENT


Thanks are due to Mrs. Flecker for permission to reprint lines from _The
Collected Poems of James Elroy Flecker_, _The Golden Journey to
Samarkand_, and _Hassan_; also to Dr. John Masefield, O.M., and The
Society of Authors for similar permission in respect of quotations from
his works.




ROUND THE BEND




CHAPTER 1

    Some men of noble stock were made, some glory in the murder blade,
    Some praise a Science or an Art, but I like honourable Trade!

    JAMES ELROY FLECKER


I came into aviation the hard way. I was never in the R.A.F., and my
parents hadn't got fifteen hundred pounds to spend on pilot training for
me at a flying school. My father was, and is, a crane driver at
Southampton docks, and I am one of seven children, five boys and two
girls. I went to the council school like all the other kids in our
street, and then when I left school dad got me a job in a garage out on
the Portsmouth Road. That was in 1929.

I stayed there for about three years and got to know a bit about cars.
Then, early in the summer, Sir Alan Cobham came to Southampton with his
flying circus, NATIONAL AVIATION DAY, he called it. He operated in a big
way, because he had about fifteen aeroplanes, Avros and Moths and a
glider and an Autogiro, and a Lincock for stunting displays, and a big
old Handley Page airliner for mass joy-riding, and a new thing called an
Airspeed Ferry. My, that was a grand turnout to watch.

I knew from the first day that to be with that circus was the job for
me. He was at Hamble for three days, and I was out at the field each day
from early in the morning till dark. The chaps fuelling and cleaning
down the aircraft let me help them, coiling down a hose or fetching an
oil drum for them to stand on; when there was nothing else that wanted
doing I went round the enclosures picking up the waste paper that the
crowd had left behind and taking it away to burn in a corner of the
field. It was fun just doing that, because of the aeroplanes.

I got the sack from the garage on the second day.

On the evening of their last day, I went to the foreman of the ground
crew and asked him for a job. He said I was too young, and they were
full up anyway. He said that he was sorry.

I went home all down in the dumps that night. I must say, Dad and Mum
were good. They didn't lay in to me for getting the sack from the
garage, although they might well have done. I'd told them airily that I
was going to get a job with the circus, and when I went home I suppose
they saw by my face I hadn't got it. They were ever so nice; Ma opened a
small tin of salmon for tea to make a bit of a treat for me. The show
was going on to Portsmouth, twenty miles away, and when I told them I
was going over there next day, all Dad said was, "That's right. Keep
trying."

I went to Portsmouth on an early bus and I was out at the airport long
before the first machines flew in, helping the ground crew to put up the
first enclosures round the edges of the aerodrome. The foreman scratched
his head when he saw me, but they were always shorthanded so they didn't
turn me off. He must have said something to Sir Alan, though, because
while I was holding a post straight for another chap to hammer into the
ground, Sir Alan himself came up behind me.

"Who are you?" he asked. "I thought we'd left you behind at Hamble."

"My name's Tom Cutter," I said.

"Well, what are you doing here, Tom?"

"Helping to get this post in, sir," I said. I was a bit shy at being
talked to by a knight.

"Haven't you got a job?"

"Got the sack day before yesterday," I said. It sounded bad, but I
didn't know what else to say.

"Is that because you spent so much time out here with us?"

"I suppose so," I said reluctantly.

He snorted. "Well, don't be such a young fool. Go back and ask to be
taken on again. There's no work for you here. What was the job?"

"I was in a garage, sir. I can't go back. They took on another boy."

"Well, we can't take you on here. We're full up. I've got hundreds of
boys writing to me for jobs every day, hundreds and hundreds. I've got
no jobs to give."

"Mr. Dixon told me that there wasn't any job," I said. "I just thought
that if I came over while I'm doing nothing, I could help, picking up
the paper and that."

He stared at me so long in silence that I felt quite awkward. I know now
what a good answer that was. "I'm blowed if I know," he said at last,
and turned away. I couldn't make head or tail of that.

I went on all that morning helping put up the enclosures, and when
dinner time came round the foreman said I'd better go and get my dinner
in the mess tent with the rest of the men. It was good of him, because
being out of work I hadn't got any money to chuck around. I went and
helped park the cars in the car park when they started to come in for
the afternoon show, and then I watched the show again. They had stunt
displays, and wing walking, and a parachute descent, and a pretty girl
flying a glider. They had a public address loudspeaker system rigged up,
and the announcer stood up once and said that Sir Alan Cobham had
offered to let any pilot of the last war try his hand at flying again. A
pilot dressed up as an old tramp came out of the crowd and did a bit of
clowning with the announcer, and tripped over his umbrella and fell
flat, and got into an Avro back to front and took it off the ground
facing the tail, holding his hat on, waving his umbrella, and shouting
blue murder, and went into the best bit of crazy flying ever seen in
England, bellowing all the time to be told how to land it as he went
crabbing down the enclosures three feet up, and the announcer bellowing
back to him. My, that was fun! They finished up with a Gretna Green
elopement of a couple in a terrible old Model T Ford, with father
chasing after them all over the aerodrome in a Moth and bombing them
with little paper bags of flour and rolls of toilet paper. I'd seen it
all before, but I could have watched that show for ever. I'd go and see
it again, even now.

I went and helped unpark the cars and get them away after the show. Sir
Alan had been flying the Handley Page himself most of the afternoon,
joy-riding, taking up twenty-five passengers at a time. He handed over
to another pilot at about five o'clock and came through the car park to
his caravan for his tea. He was always in a hurry, but never in too much
of a hurry to notice the humblest detail of his big concern, and he
checked when he saw me.

"You still here?" he asked.

"I been helping park the cars and that," I said.

"Oh. Get any tips?"

"Three and six," I said.

"Fair enough. Want to earn five bob?"

I grinned and nodded.

"I'll give you five bob if you'd like to do the girl in Gretna Green
this evening. Think you can do it?"

"Oh, aye," I said. "I can do that all right. Thank you, Sir."

I was young, of course, and I'd got a fresh, pink and white face in
those days, so I could make up as a girl quite well. All I had to do was
to dress up in the most terrible women's clothes and drive about on the
aerodrome in the old Ford, trying to get out of the way of the Moth. The
Ford was driven by a boy about my own age, Connie Shaklin. Connie was
short for Constantine; he was a cheerful, yellow-skinned young chap with
straight black hair who put me in the way of things. He was dressed up
as a young farmer in a sort of smock and we did the turn together; we
never turned that Ford over, but we came bloody near it sometimes. It
was good fun; we wheeled and skidded the thing all over the aerodrome,
shrieking and hugging and kissing while the Moth dived on us and bombed
us. The show ended, of course, with my skirt getting pulled off and me
running off the field in a pair of red flannel knickers, covered in
flour and with streamers of toilet paper all over me, while the crowd
laughed fit to burst.

I got the five bob and Sir Alan himself said I'd done very well. That
was the first money that I ever made in aviation.

I made eight and six that day in all, and when I got home I'd got four
and twopence left, clear profit, after paying for my bus fares and my
tea. I showed it to Dad and Mum and told them I was going over to the
show again.

Next day they let me do the Gretna Green girl in both performances, and
gave me ten bob for the two. For the rest of the day I picked up paper
and carried things about for the ground engineers; there was always
something to work at. Then I helped in the car park again and got some
more tips, and when I went back home that night Dad said I was getting
my nose in.

The show moved on to Winchester and I followed it there, but after that
it was going to Newbury and that was too far for me to go over every
day. I asked the foreman about a job again then, and he said he'd speak
to Sir Alan for me. Next day was a Saturday and Dad was off in the
afternoon, so I got him to come over in case they said I was too young
again. Sir Alan saw Dad for a minute and said I was a smart boy, but if
I came I'd have to be laid off in the winter. Dad said he thought it was
best for me to do what I was keen on, and we'd take our chance about the
winter. When we got on to the bus that night to go back home I'd got my
job in the air circus, four quid a week, which was more than I'd been
getting in the garage.

Thinking back over my life, I know of two or three times when I've been
just perfectly, radiantly happy. That was one of them.

I went all over England, Scotland, and Wales with the show that summer,
from Falmouth to Inverness, from Kings Lynn to Swansea. I did labouring
work and Gretna Green, and helped with the aeroplanes whenever I got a
chance. That was mostly when some passenger had been sick on the floor.
From that I got to washing off the dirty oil with a bucket of paraffin
and cleaning down generally, and by the time the season ended I'd picked
up quite a bit of knowledge about those particular aeroplanes, just by
keeping my ears open and working on them whenever I got the chance.

I got laid off when the show packed up for the winter, but Mr. Dixon
said that I could come along next year if I wanted, and if I turned up
or wrote in the first week of April there'd be a job for me. Sir Alan
himself came round on the last evening and shook hands with us all and
thanked us, and when he came to me he asked what I was going to do.

I said, "I'll get a job of some sort for the winter and come back again
next year, if that's all right."

"Mr. Dixon tells me that you want to be a ground engineer," he said.

"That's right, sir," I replied. "I was going to go to evening classes in
the winter."

"Fine," he said. "If you do that, bring along some kind of a report with
you next spring. If it's a good one, I'll see you get a bit more to do
with the aeroplanes."

I went back home, and I got a job with a coal merchant, going round with
the driver of one of those chariot coal carts drawn by a horse,
delivering coal at the houses. It was all right as a job because it
didn't tire your mind, and I got off sharp at five every evening with
plenty of time to clean up and have tea and go out to my classes at the
Southampton Polytechnic.

I did mathematics and mechanics and engineering workshop that winter,
and it kept me pretty busy. On top of that I read two technical books
about aeroplanes that I got out of the library, and understood about a
quarter of them. When the spring came round I got a good report, and I
took it along with me in April when I went to Littlehampton to join up
with the circus again. I showed it to Mr. Dixon and he showed it to Sir
Alan, and he sent for me and asked me if I'd like to be an apprentice
with the ground engineers. That meant I'd be working on the aeroplanes
all the time. My, I was pleased, and so were Dad and Mum when I wrote
home. I liked humping the coal all right, but it wasn't half as much fun
as working on an aeroplane.

Being an apprentice didn't mean that I did anything very difficult upon
the aeroplanes. I still had the job of cleaning out the cabins and
washing off the oil from fuselages and wings, but there were also
sparking plugs to be cleaned and filters to be checked, and as time went
on I got to working with the ground engineers more and more. I still did
the Gretna Green girl with Connie twice each day although I had begun to
shave, and this brings me to Connie.

When I joined the show the first year, it never struck me that there was
anything unusual about Connie. After all, the whole show was a bit
unusual from start to finish, and Connie was a part of it; the fact that
he looked strange was just another one among a mass of new, strange
things. He looked a bit foreign. He was about my age, but taller and
rather thin. He had straight black hair and a yellowish tinge to his
skin; in spite of that he had firm, well cut features. He was a
good-looking, striking chap. He was a darned good friend to me, right
from the first.

Once one of the pilots, irritated over something that Connie had or
hadn't done, said, "Where's that bloody Chink?" It was a surprise to me
at the time, but when he said that I thought of the Chinese laundry at
the corner of our street at home, and I could see what he meant. Connie
was much taller than either of the two men in the laundry and he'd got a
leaner look about his face, but he did look a bit Chinese, when you came
to think of it. Still, that didn't mean a thing to me; Connie was just
like any other boy except that he knew a good bit more than most of my
other friends.

He was an apprentice like me, but he'd started a bit higher on the
ladder; he'd been to a good school. Sir Alan had had some trouble at
Penang on his first pioneering flight out to Australia, and Connie's
father had helped him, I think; that's how Connie came to be an
apprentice in the air circus. Connie and I became very close friends,
perhaps because our backgrounds were so different. Our Gretna Green turn
brought us very close together in more senses than one; we were always
thinking up new gags for it, most of which Sir Alan stopped us doing
after the first time because he said they were too rude.

Again, that second summer we went all over the British Isles, staying a
day in each place and giving two shows each day. There was never a whole
day off; in an air circus like that you take your week-ends in the
winter. We were improvising all the time to keep the aircraft in the
air; we had plenty of tools and good materials to work with, but all the
work had to be done out in the open field. It was a grand training for
an engineer, because in each emergency you had to work out quick what
was the best way to tackle it with the facilities at your disposal. I've
changed an engine many a time in the lee of a haystack, by lashing up a
sheerlegs of scaffold poles over the nose of the machine and borrowing
the farmer's tractor to pull the wire rope, like a crane.

It's not quite true to say that we had no time off, however. We often
stayed at the same place over the week-end. We had the afternoon and
evening shows on Sunday as usual, but there was never very much to do on
Sunday morning. Connie sometimes used to go to church, but Connie was
unusual; I can't remember that anybody else did.

I knew more about church than most boys in our street, because until my
voice broke I was a choir boy at St. John's. I never talked about it on
the circus because it sounds a bit sissy to say you've been a choir boy,
but I was. I wouldn't have been, but for Mum. She said that if I'd got a
good voice it was my duty to use it, and she made me go. I never got
anything for it but the outing to the Isle of Wight each summer, and
when my voice broke I got out of it. If I'd been working in Southampton
Mum would have made me join up as a tenor when my voice steadied down,
but the air circus got me out of that, of course. It wasn't worth doing
just for the winter months.

The thing that interested me in Connie's church-going was that he just
went to any old church there was. He went to the nearest, whether it was
Anglican or Methodist or Presbyterian or Roman Catholic. He went to a
synagogue one time, at Wolverhampton. If it was raining or if we'd had
too much beer on Saturday night he wouldn't go at all, but if it was a
nice fine morning and nothing particular to do, he'd ask somebody where
the nearest church was and go to it.

I asked him once if it was all right, just going into any church like
that. He grinned and said, "Blowed if I know. I've never been chucked
out."

"I'd be scared of doing the wrong thing," I remarked. "However do you
know what to do in a synagogue?"

"Just sit at the back and watch what other people do," he said. "If they
start doing anything comic, like going up to the altar or anything like
that, I just sit still and watch."

"Don't they mind you doing that?"

"I don't think so. A Roman Catholic priest came up one time as I was
going out and asked me who I was. I told him I was just looking, like in
a shop. He didn't mind a bit."

He collected churches, like another boy might collect cigarette cards or
matchbox covers. The gem of his collection was at Woking, where he found
a mosque to go to. He had a bit of a job getting to that one because the
big day at a mosque is on a Friday, but he was a very good apprentice
and a hard worker, so the foreman let him go.

Once, I remember, I asked Connie what he really was, Church of England,
or Presbyterian, or what. "Blowed if I know," he said. "I was born in
Penang and my father was a Buddhist. But he died four years ago, and
then we came to England. I was Church of England at school."

I stared at him. "Where's Penang?"

"Just by Malaya," he told me. "But we don't live there now. Mother
brought us to England when my father died. She was born in Irkutsk, so
she's Greek Orthodox."

Connie knew an awful lot more than me, of course, and I didn't want to
go on looking stupid, so I let Irkutsk go. The Greek part stayed in my
mind, and I remember months afterwards looking at a map of Greece in the
Public Library, trying to find Irkutsk where Connie's mother had been
born. But all that came later; at the time I only asked him, "Is your
mum in England now?"

He shook his head. "She's in California, at a place called San Diego,
with my sister. Mother got married again."

It was quite outside my range, of course: California was somewhere
abroad where they made Syrup of Figs. "Oh..." I said vaguely.

I was young, of course, and I was loaded down with new experiences.
Until I joined the circus I'd never been more than five miles from my
own street in Southampton, and I'd got an awful lot to learn. I must
have seemed slow at times, because it wasn't till that second season was
half over that I realised what being an apprentice meant. It meant that
I'd got a regular job, that I wasn't going to be laid off in the winter,
like I had before. Connie and I were going to spend the winter at
Littlehampton working on the aeroplanes, overhauling them for their
certificates of airworthiness so they'd be all ready for the spring.

The circus ran for four years and that was the end; the last season
wasn't so good as the first three had been, and it looked as if the
public were getting a bit tired of it. Sir Alan packed it up, and went
on with his development work on refuelling aeroplanes in flight. He was
very good with us apprentices. He went to a great deal of trouble to
find us jobs in other places in the aircraft industry. He got me a fine
apprenticeship with Airservice Ltd. at Morden aerodrome, just south of
London, overhauling and repairing aeroplanes in a big way in a grand,
modern shop. I owe a great deal to Sir Alan over that.

I had to say good-bye to Connie then. Like me, he wanted to go on and
take his ground engineer's tickets, but neither of us could do that till
we were twenty-one years old. He was going out to California to his
mother; he told me that there were aircraft factories out there in San
Diego and he wanted to get into one of those. I was very sorry to part
from Connie, because we'd been together for three and a half years and
had a lot of fun; although he knew such a lot more than I did, he was
never stuck up about it. Being with him in those early years was very
good for me. We said we'd keep in touch by writing, and of course we
never did.

I went to Airservice in the autumn of 1935, and I stayed with them for
ten years. It was a good firm to work for, and I got on well. I got my A
and C certificates for the maintenance of engines and airframes as soon
as I was old enough, in 1936, and I got the B and D certificates for
complete overhauls in 1938; by that time I was earning over ten pounds a
week, including overtime. I didn't spend it on girls, and I didn't spend
much of it on beer. I spent it mostly on flying. The firm had a scheme
that gave cheap flying instruction to its staff, and I took my first
private pilot's "A" licence in 1937. By the middle of the war, when
pilots were short and regulations lax, I was test flying the Tiger Moths
we had rebuilt after a crash as a regular thing. I used to finish the
inspection in the shop and then just take it out and fly it. It saved
such a lot of time and bother looking for a test pilot.

I stayed a civilian all the war, working at my normal job of repairing
crashed aircraft. I was put in charge of a repair section in 1940 and
got to foreman's rank. In 1943 the firm had to strengthen the repair
side of their branch in Egypt, and they asked me if I'd go out there for
a bit. I was twenty-eight years old, and up till then I'd never been out
of England. Of course I said I'd go.

It was on account of that I married Beryl Cousins.

I've not said much about girls up till now because, to tell the truth, I
never had a lot to do with them till then. I was so stuck into my job
and so keen on aeroplanes and flying that girls passed me by, or I
passed them by, whichever way you look at it. Till I got my B and D
tickets I was working at classes three or four evenings every week; then
when I'd got them, and might have had time to look around a bit and have
a bit of fun, the war came. That meant that I was working overtime every
night till eight o'clock and sometimes later than that, which sort of
limits the time that a chap has to look around and pick himself a girl.
Maybe when it's like that he's apt to pick the first that comes along.

I lodged in a suburban road at Morden and Beryl lived two doors up the
road from me, and worked in the stores at Airservice Ltd. She was a sort
of clerk there, working on the inwards and the outwards files. She was a
slight, pale girl with ash-blonde hair. We used to walk to work together
in the mornings. We got to having lunch together and tea if she was
working late, all in the works canteen, and Saturdays I'd take her to
the pictures, or we'd go dancing at a Palais. After six months of that
we came to the conclusion that we were in love, and we'd get married
when the work let up a bit. We didn't realise we both loved something
better than each other. I was in love with aeroplanes, and she was in
love with love.

I heard about this job one morning, and when they said they wanted me to
go out to Egypt they said it would be for two years and I'd have to go
in about three weeks' time. I met Beryl at our usual table for lunch
with other people all round us in the works canteen, so I said to her,
"Eat up quick. I've got something to tell you, but not here."

We walked out on the grass up the aerodrome hedge when we'd finished; it
was September, and a lovely sunny day. I told her all about it as we
walked along by the scrap dump of wrecked airframes and engines, and she
said, "Oh Tom! Have you really got to go?"

I hadn't got to, but I wasn't going to miss that chance. "They put it to
me pretty firm," I said. "You don't get much choice, these days."

She turned to me, and her eyes were full of tears. "I thought we were
going to get married about Christmas. That's what we said."

I was a bloody fool, of course, but one does these things. I couldn't
bear to see her cry. I took both her hands in mine. "I know," I said.
"What say if we get married now, before I go?"

She said softly, "Oh Tom! Do you want us to be married?"

I wasn't really sure I did, but I was twenty-eight and I'd never got
that far with any girl before. I said, "Do I want to!" and took her in
my arms and kissed her.

After a bit we got to thinking about ways and means. There wasn't time
for doing it the regular way with banns called in church and all that.
We should have to do it with a special licence, and I found out pretty
soon that Beryl knew all about those. Girls study things of that sort
more than men. I wouldn't be able to set her up in a house in the time
we'd got, and she didn't want to leave her job at Airservice because if
she did, and didn't have a baby, she'd only have got directed into
something else since it was wartime. So we fixed that we'd get married
as soon as we could and she'd go on working just the same, and living
with her people.

We went and saw her dad and mum that evening and told them all about it.
They were pleased all right, because I was making good money and I think
they felt that I was likely to get on. Next day was Friday, and I asked
for the day off and took Beryl down to Southampton and introduced her to
my folks, and ten days after that we got married at a registrar's
office.

We got a week at Southsea for our honeymoon; it was a fine September
that year so that although there wasn't much to do we could sit on the
front and look at the ships going in and out of Portsmouth harbour, and
the Bostons and the Spitfires going out on strikes. I think Beryl was
happy, and if I was thinking of the work more than a man ought to do
upon his honeymoon, well, it was wartime and the flying schools were
waiting for the Tiger Moths I mended, to train pilots. Beryl
understood--at least, I think she did.

Looking back upon it now, it must have been a poor sort of a honeymoon.
It was wartime in England, and everything was short. There was complete
darkness at night, of course, there on the coast, and the cafes and the
dance halls and the picture houses were full of men and girls in
uniform; a civilian didn't get much priority. You couldn't get down to
the beach to bathe except in one little place because of the
anti-invasion barbed wire and tank obstacles and land mines, and there
weren't any motor coach tours or steamer trips or concert parties on the
beach, or anything like that. This was all normal to us because that's
the way things were in England then, and we didn't grieve over what we
couldn't have, but when I think about the sort of honeymoon I could have
given her if it had been in peacetime, I feel a bit sore. It might have
made a difference.

It was better for me than for Beryl. I had Egypt ahead of me. I was
going out to an important job in a warm, spacious country, into all the
glamour of a successful war in North Africa. There would be luxury in
Cairo, and sunshine on the desert, and the Pyramids, and the Nile, and
travel to our various outstations in Africa and Persia and Iraq. For me,
this week in Southsea was the last of the drab misery of war in England.
Ahead of Beryl was a long, indefinite vista of it, cold and monotonous
in the same job, and lonely with me away. We neither of us thought about
it like that--or, if I thought of it, I didn't talk about it. But that's
the way it was.

We didn't look ahead. I can't remember that we ever discussed where we
were going to live after the war, or anything like that. It didn't seem
to be much good, with things as they were. The war had been going on for
four years; for four years we had been directed where to work and we
were getting out of the way of thinking about our future for ourselves.
This job in Egypt was to be for two years, and after that I should come
back to wartime England, so we thought, and it would be the same except
that everything would be scarcer and more difficult than ever. We never
looked ahead to think about the peace, that I remember.

I was flown to Egypt by B.O.A.C. It wasn't possible for Beryl to come
and see me off because the time and place of departure were secret. The
best that she could do was to come down with me to Morden Underground
station late one afternoon as I carried my suitcase down from the digs.
We walked silent together down the suburban streets; on that last walk
we didn't seem to have anything left to say to each other. Maybe she was
only realising then what the separation was going to mean. She hadn't
got a lot of imagination.

By the entrance to the station we stopped and looked at each other. It
was raining a bit, and the red buses starting and stopping at the halt
just by us made a great clatter with their diesels. I put down my
suitcase and took her hands. "Well, girl," I said, "this is it."

She was pretty down in the mouth. "Write to me a lot, Tom," she said.
"I'll be ever so lost without you."

"Cheer up," I said. "I'll write as soon as ever I get there, but don't
get worried if you don't hear for a while. If they're sending letters
round the Cape it might take anything up to six weeks."

"I won't be able to sleep till I hear."

I grinned. "Bet you do. Tuck a bolster in beside you and make believe
I'm there, and you'll sleep all right."

She smiled, though she was very near to tears. "Now stop it..."

I took her in my arms. It didn't matter that there were people all
around at the bus stop; you saw this every hour of every day, with
people going off on draft. "It's only for two years, girl," I said
softly. "It'll soon be gone."

"It sounds like as if it was for ever," she said miserably.

There was no sense in prolonging the agony; it was only making things
more difficult for her, and we'd said all that there was to say. We
kissed, and kissed again, and then I said, "I'll have to go now, girl.
Look after yourself."

She released me. "You look after yourself. Cheer-oh, Tom." She was
crying now in earnest.

I squeezed her hand clumsily. "Cheer up, girl. It's not for so long."
And with that I turned and picked the suitcase up and left her, and went
and got my ticket. I looked back over the turnstile and she was there
waving good-bye to me with tears running down her face, and I waved back
to her, and then I had to turn round and go down to the train.

I went in a Liberator, squashed in with about twenty others in the rear
fuselage. We took off at about ten o'clock that night from an aerodrome
somewhere in the south; we didn't know what aerodrome it was, nor where
we were going to. We flew on for about eight hours, and then in the dawn
we landed. We couldn't see anything out of the aeroplane, and when we
got out on to the tarmac we found that we were in a sandy sort of place
with palm trees and white houses. They told us it was Tripoli.

We weren't allowed outside the aerodrome; they gave us breakfast in a
tent while the Liberator was refuelled, and we took off again for Cairo.
We landed at Almaza in the middle of the day and it was good and hot; I
had English clothes on, and I envied the chaps working on the aircraft
in just a pair of shorts and no shirt. I got passed through the various
formalities, and then I went and reported to the manager of Airservice
Ltd. on the aerodrome.

That two years was a fine experience for me. I was in charge of airframe
repairs and general maintenance. I lived in a small hotel about a mile
from the airport, and I had my office at the back of the hangar. We
operated a large number of aircraft all over the Near East and
North-East Africa, and I was responsible for keeping them in the air,
all except engine overhauls, which were the business of another chap. If
a Rapide ran off the runway and bent its undercarriage at Luxor or at
Lydda, the responsibility for getting it into the air again was mine. If
it was a simple and straightforward repair I would send one of my ground
engineers to it by air or truck, but if it was a difficult or
complicated job I would go myself and see the work put in hand the way I
wanted it. We had an old Hornet two-seater that I used to go in if the
journey was anything less than five hundred miles, but there was always
a difficulty about finding a pilot who could spare the time, and after a
while the firm agreed that I should fly myself about in this thing. It
wasn't worth much if I crashed it, and I didn't want any flying pay or
insurance.

On these repair jobs, flying myself or being flown by a pilot, I
travelled very widely in the last two years of the war. I went to Beirut
and Baghdad and Aleppo and Nicosia, and down south as far as Khartoum
and Addis Ababa. I got to know about Syrian and Iraqi and Egyptian
aircraft hands, what they could do and what they couldn't, what days
they had to take off for their religion or their festivals, and why. I
tried to learn about all that. It's no good going round and saying that
those boys are just a lot of monkeys, that they aren't reliable and you
can't use them. You can use them all right if you take the trouble to
learn about them, and if you do that you'll find the work is liable to
come out a good deal cheaper, because their wages are much less.

I got some experience of negotiating with officials, too. That was a
type of job I'd never done before. Whenever parts for a repair had to be
taken into Syria or Lebanon or Iraq there were Customs duties to be paid
or talked out of; in the usual way I'd get to Aleppo or some place like
that and find that the repair parts I'd sent up had got stuck in a
bonded warehouse, the Government were asking for a hundred and fifty
pounds before they would release them, and the ground engineer had got
angry and had insulted the Minister for Air. There was nobody to
straighten all that out but me, and I got into the way of taking it
easy, going to drink a cup of coffee with the Minister, saying what a
happy little town it was and how my wife would like it if we came to
live there, and sending over a big bouquet of flowers for the Minister's
wife. I'd usually get the parts next day without any trouble at all, and
nothing to pay. The most I ever had to do was to fix up a joy-ride for
the Minister's children when the aircraft was flying again.

I used to write to Beryl regularly once a week wherever I was, telling
her as much about what I'd been doing as I thought would pass the
censor. She used to write to me, but not so often. It was once a week at
first, but then it got a bit irregular and sometimes I wouldn't hear
anything for three weeks, and then two letters would come together,
written within a couple of days of each other. She never seemed to have
much to say, but that was natural because life in England was all just
the same. Often most of a letter was about some film she'd seen.

There was one of those long gaps in her letters, nearly a month, about
October 1944, when I'd been out in Egypt just a year. Air mail was
coming through all right. I got a bit angry, because I'd written
regularly myself and I didn't see why she couldn't find time to write to
me, so I sent her a sharp one. Nothing happened for a bit, and then
about ten days later I got a letter from her dad.

It read:

     "DEAR TOM,

     "We've been having trouble here, I'm sorry to say, and Beryl wants
     me to write and tell you before she writes herself, and her Ma and
     I think that's best too. It's been very dull for her since you went
     away, and she went up to the West End some time ago and got in with
     some Polish officers, very nice and well behaved, she says. She
     took to going about with one of them, a Captain Wysock, and the
     long and the short of it is, Tom, she's going to have a baby in
     January.

     "I know this will be a great blow to you, and I can't tell you how
     sorry we all are. Captain Wysock has been down to see us and we had
     a long talk. He was heartbroken about you, but we talked it all out
     and we thought that it would be best if there was a divorce and he
     was to marry Beryl; they are very much in love and that is what
     they want. Beryl will be writing to you in a day or so, but we
     thought I had better write and tell you first.

     "Captain Wysock comes of a very high-born family. His father is a
     Count and has big estates near a place called Jabinka and a town
     house in Warsaw. He has been very generous to Beryl, and we feel
     that as things have turned out a divorce would be the fairest thing
     all round, and I hope you will think so too.

     "Beryl wants me to say she sends you her love, and we all send our
     sympathy in what must be a shock to you. But I am sure that it will
     all be for the best.

     "Your affectionate father-in-law,

     "ALBERT COUSINS."

I was at Damascus when this letter came to Cairo, and I didn't get it
till I got back to Egypt a few days later. By that time the letter from
Beryl had just come in, so I got them both together. That one read:

     "DARLING TOM,

     "I saw Dad's letter before he sent it off and I have waited a bit
     before I wrote so as you should get his first. I don't know what
     you must be thinking, Tom, and believe me I wouldn't have had
     things happen like this for the world. It's such a mix up. But I'm
     sure the best way to get it straight now is for you to divorce me.
     I couldn't come back and live with you again not after what has
     happened, not even if you wanted me which I suppose you don't, not
     now. Feodor and I are very much in love and we want to get married,
     so if you divorce me that will be best and you'll be free to look
     for someone else. I'm so terribly sorry it's turned out like this.
     I never thought a thing like this would ever happen to me.

     "I wish you could meet Feodor, Tom--he's such a dear. His family is
     terribly rich with a big castle in the country and everything; I do
     hope they'll approve of me. He hasn't seen them since the war
     began, but he knows they're all right. After the war, when we're
     married, we're going there to live. He's given me the most lovely
     engagement ring, diamonds and emeralds, but first of all we've got
     to get the divorce.

     "Don't be miserable about all this, Tom. I know it's all for the
     best.

     "Your loving,

     "BERYL."

I was up to the eyes in work at that time. I read these letters through
with my mind half occupied with the problems of getting enough aircraft
serviceable to maintain our scheduled services, and they were just
another thing to me. It was like when you're counting on an aircraft
being finished for the morning flight to Khartoum, and an engineer comes
up at six o'clock in the evening and tells you he needs a right-hand
contact breaker and they've only got left-hand ones in the store and
they've been telephoning all round and there aren't any right-hand ones
in Cairo. Beryl and her boy friend, in my mind, took their turn in the
queue with all my other worries, and must wait for attention till I got
the decks cleared a bit. At the same time, I was sick and angry when I
got these letters, because there'd been a lot of this sort of thing
going on in England. Somebody once told me that ten per cent of the
wives of men serving overseas had been unfaithful to them. Now I was in
with that ten per cent.

In the brief moments that I had to think about my own affairs that day I
wondered how in hell she expected me to set about a divorce in a foreign
country like Egypt, in the middle of all my work, in war time. And then
I wondered if they were all mad to go believing such a transparent, cock
and bull story as this Polish soldier had told them, about his father
being a Count, and huge estates, and all that. It was a crazy, miserable
business that they'd written out to plague me with; the only thing to do
was to put it out of my mind and get on with the work.

I had to go to Luxor next day, where a young fool of a pilot had run one
of our Ansons into the tail of a Dakota of Transport Command. I had to
clear up the accumulation of paper work on my desk before going off
again in the morning; I worked on late that night. It was after ten
o'clock when I had time for my own affairs and I was dead tired, but I
had to write to Beryl because I should be away for another two or three
days. I got the letters out and read them through, and I was bitterly
angry once again that they should plague me so.

I pulled a sheet of paper to me, and I wrote:

     "DARLING GIRL,

     "I got your letter and your Dad's together when I got back here
     after being away for a few days. I won't say what I think because
     you probably know that, but I'll say this. I think you must be
     bloody well daft, all the lot of you.

     "First of all, I'll bet you a hundred quid to a sausage that this
     Polish officer's father isn't a Count and that he hasn't got any
     estates and that the ring he gave you is either stolen or phoney.
     For God's sake snap out of it and act like a grown up woman, and
     tell your Dad to do that too. You've been sucked in and fallen for
     the oldest story in the world, my girl. That's what's happened to
     you.

     "Now about this divorce you want. I don't know how in hell you
     expect me to get you a divorce from here even if I wanted to, and
     I've not made up my mind about that yet. What do you think this
     is--the Court of Chancery, with lawyers going round in wigs and
     gowns and that? I'll tell you what it is. It's a bloody hot, dirty,
     dusty aerodrome, no fans and blinding sun, and grit all over my
     desk. I've come five hundred miles from one just like it today, and
     I'm going off to another like it tomorrow. There's no English
     lawyers here and no English law. If it's a divorce you're thinking
     of, you'll have to wait till I get back to England in a year from
     now, and then I'll see if I'm prepared to give it you. Some of you
     girls seem to think you can get a divorce just by putting a penny
     in the slot.

     "You think this over a bit more, and then write and tell me how
     you're going on. If I was in England now we'd soon find out if this
     Polish officer is a Count or not, and you'd find out what the end
     of a strap feels like, my girl. I'm not at all sure that you'd find
     out what a divorce feels like. You can't just pick up being married
     and put it down, like that. You think it over a bit more.

     "Ever your loving husband,

     "TOM."

Considering this letter, it seems to me that I said everything that was
in my mind, except that I still loved her. I didn't think to tell her
about that. Perhaps I thought she knew.

Nothing much happened then. She didn't write again, and nor did I. I was
very sore about this Polish officer, and till that was all cleaned up I
hadn't got much to say to her. If I'd been in England I'd have cleaned
it up fast enough. I did sit down once or twice to write, but I never
finished a letter. I could never think of anything to say that wouldn't
be pleading with her for our marriage, and I was damned if I'd do that.

I had an arrangement to send her money through the bank, deducted from
my salary when it was paid in, and this went on as usual; she still took
my fifteen pounds a month in spite of her Polish Count with his large
estates. I was content to leave the matter so. I was far too busy in
those Cairo years of war to bother about any other girl. I used to
wonder sometimes if I was married or not, and how it was all going on,
and then I'd put it out of my mind. Time enough to start and sort out
that one when I got home. I think I felt that so long as she went on
taking my money there was nothing that couldn't be ironed out when
finally we got together.

The end of the German war came, and the end of the Japanese war, but
there was still a vast amount of transport needed in the Near East, and
I had to serve my full time out. It wasn't till the middle of November
1945 that I finally got a date for my air passage home, and then I wrote
to her quite shortly and told her I was coming and I'd come and see her
at her dad's house as soon as I landed in England, probably on the
Tuesday of the following week.

I landed in England on the day I'd said, and went up to London on the
airline bus. It was pretty late in the afternoon when we got in to Town,
and I decided to stay in London that night rather than go down to Morden
there and then; I didn't want to have to stay in the same house if this
Polish officer was living with her or anything like that. I took my bag
to a hotel I knew about just off the Euston Road, that wasn't too
expensive, and I got a room there.

I went out and walked about the streets after my tea, down Tottenham
Court Road to Cambridge Circus and to Piccadilly. The V-bombs had made a
good bit of blitz damage since I was there, but London seemed much the
same as ever. I was the one who was different. When I left England I
hadn't been too sure of myself; I was good enough on the bench or in the
hangar, but it always seemed to me that other people knew much more
about the world and business than I did. Coming back after my two years
in the East, I felt self-confident. I knew that I could hold my job
alongside anyone, and teach them a thing or two besides. When I worked
in England I was just Tom Cutter in Airservice Ltd. When I left Cairo
I'd been Mr. Cutter to everybody for a long time, from the managing
director down.

I was looking forward to meeting Beryl again, and I wasn't much worried
about this Pole. I reckoned I could sort out that one without too much
trouble. She couldn't be married to him, and now that the war was over
he'd be going back to his own country. The baby might be a problem, but
I don't think I really held that much against her. I was still fond of
Beryl and quite prepared to make the best of things and fall in love
with her again. There wasn't any other girl.

I went down by Underground after breakfast next morning and got out at
Morden station and walked up through the streets to her home. It was a
fine morning for the end of November, with a pale, wintry sort of sun. I
was still in light clothes and a raincoat only, and I remember walking
quick, because it was chilly. I went in at the little front garden gate
and knocked on the front door, and her young brother came and opened it.

"Morning, Fred," I said. "Remember me?"

He hesitated, and I looked at him more closely; it was almost as if he
had been crying. And then he said, "Oh--yes. How are you, Tom?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Beryl in?"

"Wait a mo'," he said. "I'll go and tell Mum." And with that he turned
and fairly scuttled off into the kitchen at the back of the house.

I waited at the door. It was bound to be a bit awkward for them, but I
didn't care; I hadn't made the awkwardness. I could hear a lot of
whispering going on in the kitchen and then her mother came out to me,
wiping her hands nervously upon her apron. And when I saw her face I
knew that she'd been crying, too, and for the first time I felt fear of
what was coming.

"Morning, Tom," she said hesitantly. "You didn't get our letter?"

I shook my head. "No."

She opened the door of the sitting-room. "Come in here." She led the way
in. "I wish Father was here to tell you, but he's just stepped out."

"What is it?" I asked her. I think I knew by that time what it was.

"It's Beryl," she said. The tears began to trickle down her cheeks. "She
did it with the oven, with the gas, some time in the middle of the night
when we was all asleep."

She was weeping unrestrainedly now. "Her dad told her it'ld be all
right," she sobbed. "We all told her. But she was terribly afraid of
meeting you."




CHAPTER 2

    --And I was but a dog, and a mad one to despise
        The gold of her hair, and the grey of her eyes.

    JOHN MASEFIELD


There wasn't any Count, of course, and there weren't any estates at
Jabinka or anywhere else. Captain Wysock had disappeared one day, and
her dad had gone up to London to the Polish Embassy after a time to ask
about him. He found that he had been drafted out to Italy. He had been a
waiter at a hotel in Warsaw before the war, and he'd got a wife and
family out there. They never heard any more of him. The ring was genuine
enough, and was worth about sixty quid. I often wonder where that came
from.

He beat it soon after the baby was born, in February or March. Her dad
wanted to write and tell me, but Beryl wouldn't let him. I think she was
too proud to want to come crawling back to me as soon as he'd left her
flat. She told her people straight to let her affairs alone; she'd sort
them out in time the way she wanted to. So they shut up, and probably
that was the best thing.

They told me that they thought that in a general sort of way she'd been
looking forward to me coming home, although she didn't tell them much.
When my letter came, however, saying that I'd be home in a week, they
said she seemed to go all to pieces. First she wanted to go away and not
meet me, and then there wasn't anywhere convenient for her to go to, and
then she said she'd have to meet me some time so she'd better get it
over. They said she didn't know what to do. She wasn't sleeping much,
they thought. She'd come down to breakfast one day and say she'd made
up her mind to go away, and then by dinner time, they said, she seemed
to have forgotten about that and was wondering if the butcher would put
by a sheep's heart for them, because she said I was always partial to
heart for dinner if it was on the menu at the canteen.

They said that she was much calmer on the last day, sort of quiet-like,
and they went to bed quite happy about her. They never heard anything in
the night. The baby slept in her room, of course, and at about six in
the morning they heard it crying, which was normal, but as she didn't
get up and attend to it her ma got up after a bit and went in, and she
wasn't in her room, and she hadn't been to bed. Her ma called her dad
and went downstairs, and when they opened the door the kitchen was full
of gas. Her dad held his breath and dashed in and turned it off at the
oven, and opened the back door and got out into the garden, and then
they had to wait a quarter of an hour before they could get in to her.
Her dad went down the road to the call box and telephoned the police.

She had put a cushion in the oven and put her head on that, and lain
down to die. She had a copy of _The Picturegoer_ in her hand, open at an
article about Anna Neagle and Michael Wilding, the great lovers.

There was no letter, or anything like that.

Her father was inclined to be apologetic to me. "I dunno if we should
have written to tell you, after he went off," he said. "At the time it
seemed the best thing to let time go by a bit, like. We knew you'd be
home before so long, and we thought things 'ld settle down...."

To comfort him I said, "I couldn't have done much, if I'd known." And
while I said it, of course, I knew that I was lying. I could have done
one thing. I could have written and told her that I loved her.

They had the inquest the day after I arrived, and I went to that with
her dad and mum. Her dad had to give evidence about our marriage and
this Captain Wysock, and the baby, and me coming home, and how he found
her. The coroner asked me if I'd written to her lately, and I said no,
and told him about the first letter when I said I wasn't going to
divorce her till she'd thought it over a bit longer. The doctor gave
formal evidence about the cause of death, and then the coroner summed it
all up.

"We have here one of those unfortunate cases for which the war is
largely responsible," he said. "The evidence is perfectly clear. The
deceased woman was unfaithful to her husband during his absence
overseas, and gave birth to a child born out of wedlock. She was
deserted by her lover, himself a married man, so that in any event no
divorce and marriage with her lover would have been possible. Her
husband seems to have behaved with commendable restraint and wrote
nothing to her which would have led her to take her life, and her family
appear to have treated her with sympathy and understanding. The deceased
appears to have been the victim of her own conscience, and as the time
for the return of her husband drew near she became mentally upset. I
find that the deceased committed suicide while the balance of her mind
was temporarily deranged."

He turned to us with fishlike, stupid eyes blinking behind his
spectacles. "I must express my sympathy with the husband and the parents
of the deceased woman." With her dad and mum I said, "Thank you, sir,"
mechanically, and as I did so indignation rose in me that such a fool
should be a coroner. Because I killed her, slowly, like a chap might do
with small doses of arsenic over a period of years. I started killing
her when I married her without giving her a home.

A bit was said about the baby, and a woman, a police court missionary or
somebody like that, came up and talked about it to her dad and mum. They
wanted to keep it and bring it up as a grandchild, which of course it
was, and that seemed the best thing to do. Then the inquest was over,
and we went back for the funeral which happened in the afternoon.

I left her parents at the cemetery when it was all over; they wanted me
to go back home with them for tea, but I said I had to get down to
Southampton that night. I hadn't, but I had got to be alone. I went
back to my cheap hotel near Euston station, and went up into the bare,
white bedroom, and sat down on the bed. I must have sat there for two
hours or more, just staring at the wall ahead of me.

You can only do a thing for the first time once, and that goes for
falling in love. You may do it over and over again afterwards, but it's
never the same. When you chuck away what's given to you that first time,
it's chucked away for good. I started chucking it away when I married
Beryl and went off to Egypt, leaving her alone.

You can be very, very cruel just by acting with restraint, and everyone
will say what a good chap you are.

You can kill somebody just by doing nothing, and be complimented at the
inquest.

You can be absolutely right all through. And what you'll get for it is a
memory of happiness that might have been, if you had acted a bit kinder.

I might have dozed a bit that night--I don't know. I know that I heard
every hour strike from a church clock outside my room.

I had to go and report to the Company next day, and that, of course, was
at Morden, just by her house. I had to go down again to the same
Underground station, and there were the same red buses rattling the same
diesel engines at the bus stop by the entrance where we had said
good-bye. She had said, "I'll be terribly lost without you." She had
been.

I stood staring at the place by the Metroland poster where I had stood
holding her in my arms, stood there in a daze. I had told her that it
was only for two years. She had said miserably, "It sounds like as if it
was for ever." It had been.

It was there that she had stood waving me good-bye.

I turned away, and walked up the main road through the shopping part
before turning off up Aerodrome Lane to the works. And now I was scared
stiff that I'd meet her dad or mum out doing the shopping, or some of
her family. I don't know why it was, but I was afraid to meet them, and
I knew as I walked up to the works that I could never work in that place
again. I'd never have the courage to walk round those streets as we had
walked together, or go to the picture house that we had used, or lunch
in the works canteen where we had lunched.

The managing director, Mr. Norman Evans, he was very nice to me. I think
he must have heard about my trouble, because when I said that I'd been
back two days and I'd had personal things to see to first, he said
quickly, "I know, Cutter. Things get a bit tangled up when one's away
for a long time. I'm very sorry indeed." And then he went on to talk
about the work, so that I didn't have to answer.

The business was all upset, of course, because it had been expanded
greatly in the war years with war orders, and now those had come to an
end and it was having to contract again. It's easy enough to expand an
aviation business, but it's bloody difficult to get it back to what it
was before. Mr. Evans couldn't have been nicer. "I want to tell you how
much I appreciate the job you did in Egypt," he said. "We've got to make
a lot of changes now. What I want you to do is to take over the whole of
our repair and servicing side in the British Isles--here, and at Bristol
and at Belfast."

It was a first-class job, of course, as good as any I could hope to get.
I was only thirty-one years old. "The main office would be here, sir, I
suppose?" I asked. "I'd do most of the work from here, and travel to
Bristol and Belfast?"

"That's right," he said. "I thought you might take over Mr. Holden's old
office. I'll have that room next to it divided into two, and you can
have your secretary in there unless you want her in the room with you."
Then he went on to talk about the salary, which was good, and as we
talked I knew that it would never work. Unless I came to work each day
by helicopter I'd have to use the same streets and the same Underground
and the same passages and roads about the works that I had walked with
Beryl.

I said presently, "I've got a month's leave due to me, sir. Can I take
that now?"

"That's right," he said. He glanced at the calendar. "Oh well, that
takes us up to Christmas. Suppose we say you'll start immediately after
that."

I thanked him, and agreed, and then he took me for a walk around the
works and we talked about the layout of the place, and what parts we
would shut down or use as stores, and how the rest of it should be
reorganised. I had only half my mind on the job. At every corner there
was some new place I had forgotten about where I had walked and talked
with Beryl in the lunch hour. When finally Mr. Evans asked me to stay
and lunch in the canteen I couldn't take it any longer, and I said that
if he'd excuse me I'd get off down to my home in Southampton that
afternoon.

As I walked down to the Underground, looking furtively around in case
there were some of the Cousins family about, I knew it was impossible. I
couldn't go back there to work. I'd have been off my rocker in a
fortnight.

I got my bag and paid my bill at the hotel, and went to Waterloo and
caught a train down to Southampton. I got there in the late afternoon,
and took a bus to the gas works, and walked home from there. Our street,
between the gas works and the docks, hadn't suffered much in the blitz;
old Mrs. Tickle's house had gone, and Mrs. Tickle with it, but that was
the only damage actually in our street, and that had been done before I
went to Egypt.

I was surprised at how small it all looked now. I knew it was dirty,
because you can't keep houses clean between the gasworks and the docks,
but I had not realised till then how small the houses were, how small
and mean the shops. As I got near our house I could see that an upstairs
window was broken and shut up with windowlite tacked over the frame;
they had written to tell me about that, done by a flying bomb that fell
into Montgomery Street in July 1944. I thought that while I was home I'd
build up the frame and get a bit of glass and do that for them, even if
it was the landlord's job.

I went in at the street door that opened straight into the living-room
and there was Ma laying the table for tea; it was getting on for five
o'clock when Dad would be knocking off at the docks. I put my suitcase
down. "I'm back, Ma," I said quietly.

She said, "Oh Tom! You're looking so brown!" And when she'd kissed me
she said, "We know about poor Beryl, Tom. We're all ever so sorry."

"How did you get to know?" I asked.

"Mrs. Cousins wrote and told us," she replied. "There was a bit about it
in the paper, too. It's been a sad homecoming for you, boy."

"That's right," I said heavily. "Nothing to be done about it now,
though, and the least said the better." She took the hint and she must
have dropped a word to Dad, because they never bothered me with
questions.

We had plenty of other things to talk about, though, specially when Dad
came home. I'd written to them regularly while I was away, and they'd
got young Ted's school atlas and marked on it all the places that I'd
been to, and it made a sort of spider's web all over the Near East. I
had some photographs that I'd collected from time to time, and after
we'd done the washing up I got these out and showed them and told them
all about it, and my sister Joyce came in with her husband, Joe Morton,
who kept the greengrocer's shop in Allenby Street just round the corner,
and he brought a couple of bottles of beer in, and I sat talking and
telling them about it all till nearly ten o'clock.

When they had gone and Dad and I were sitting with a final cigarette
before the fire, and Ted and Ma had gone up to bed, Dad said to me,
"What comes next, boy?"

"I don't know." I told him about the job I had been offered that
morning, and I told him something about my great unwillingness to go
back to Morden. He asked, "What's the pay like?"

"Nine hundred a year," I told him.

He opened his eyes. "That's twice what I get. Three times what I ever
got before the war. You're getting on in the world, boy."

"I know," I said. "It's a good job and I'd be a bloody fool to turn it
down. But it's no good working in a place that's going to send you round
the bend."

"You're looking tired," he said. "You'll feel different when you've had
a bit of a rest. How long leave have you got?"

"They're giving me a month," I told him. "Till after Christmas. I
haven't had a day off since I went out to Egypt."

He said in wonder, "I never had more'n a week's holiday in all my life.
Are they paying you?"

"My Cairo pay goes on till the end of December," I said.

"Do you spend it all?"

I shook my head. "I've got a good bit saved up." I hesitated. "I was
saving up for furniture."

Ted was the only one of the family still living at home; he was just
eighteen and due to go off for his military service pretty soon. He
worked for a firm of contractors and Dad had had him taught to drive, so
he was all set to be a truck driver. We had three bedrooms in that
house; when I was a boy it had been Dad and Mum upstairs in one room and
the girls in the other, and for us boys there was a room downstairs
built out behind the scullery in the garden. It was a good big room, and
it had need to be because four of us had slept together there when I was
a boy, in two beds. Ted had got the girls' room upstairs, and Dad and
Mum had titivated up the big old room for me, colourwashed it and all
when they heard I was coming home; they'd gone to a lot of trouble over
it, working at it over the week-end. I slept there that night, comforted
a bit by memories of childhood, and although I stayed awake some time, I
did sleep.

I went out early next day and got a chisel and a brass-backed saw, and
started on that window. I worked on it all that day and the next and got
it finished and glazed for them, with a coat of white lead paint. I did
a lot of odd jobs round the house in the next few days, and got an
electric water heater and installed it over the sink in the scullery for
Ma. While I worked at these things, I was making up my mind what I was
going to do. By the end of the first day, I think I knew what it was to
be.

I took a bus one day and went out to the airport at Eastleigh. There's a
firm there, Kennington's, who do quite a big business in overhauling
and servicing aircraft; I had thought once or twice of putting in for a
job with them. Now I went to the sales side, to a young chap called
Warren that I knew slightly, and asked if he knew where I could get a
Fox-Moth.

The Fox-Moth is a de Havilland type, obsolete now; it was produced about
1933. It has a little cabin for the passengers and an open cockpit for
the pilot, and an engine of a hundred and thirty horsepower. Mine
cruised at about ninety miles an hour. It would carry the pilot and two
passengers comfortably, or four passengers if they were very little
ones, and there was a good long runway to take off on with the overload.
The type hasn't been in production for a long time and there weren't
many of them left, but Warren said he thought he knew of one in
Leicester, dismantled and unused for years, and wanting a lot of work
done on it. We got on the telephone from his office, and found that it
was there all right, and about to be put out on the scrap heap.

I went to Leicester next day and bought it with a second-hand engine for
a hundred and twenty pounds, and arranged for it to be sent down to
Eastleigh on a truck. That's how I started in the air transport
business.

I was headed for the Persian Gulf. I'd been to Abadan and Basra and
Kuweit and as far down as Bahrein for a night, and I'd seen conditions
there. I had an idea that a chap with a little aeroplane for charter,
that could land on any decent bit of desert, might do all right for
himself. There's no way to get about that country except by plane or
car, and travelling by car on those sand tracks is no fun at all. There
was nobody doing charter work in that part that I knew of. I had a hunch
that if I went there with a Fox-Moth I might make a living. Anyway, it
would be something different; if I lost my money I'd always got my trade
to fall back on.

Kenningtons were very helpful. I made a deal with them to pay for
overheads and for any labour that I used, and when the Fox-Moth came
they put it in a corner of a hangar and let me get on with the work
myself, with a boy to help me; they knew I hadn't got much money. The
plane wasn't in too bad condition. I got it all stripped down and had
the Air Registration Board inspector to agree what wanted doing, and by
Christmas time I'd got the airframe finished all except the final
spraying. I was working on it by half-past seven every morning, and I
never left till eight o'clock at night; I hadn't got much time to spare,
because with every day my money was running out.

I wrote to Mr. Evans at Morden about the middle of December, turning in
my job. I told him that it was for personal reasons, that I didn't want
to come back there, and that I was going to do something totally
different for a change. He wrote me a very nice letter telling me to let
them know if ever I wanted to come back into the repair business, and
with that I felt I had something behind me to fall back on.

I finished the engine and got it through a test run on the bench about
the end of the first week in January, and got it installed in the
aircraft a couple of days after that. I made a test flight on January
12th, and there was nothing then to do but the final spray-painting and
lettering, and make the arrangements for my journey to the Gulf.

Ma was good to me while I was working out at Eastleigh on the Fox-Moth.
I used to go out there on a bicycle to save money, six miles each way,
and sometimes I wouldn't be home till nearly ten o'clock at night.
Whatever time I came home there would be something hot for me in the
oven, and a kettle boiling ready for my tea, and a bit of cheese or cake
to eat after. Once while I was eating my supper, Ma said,

"How long will you be away for this time, Tom?"

I grinned at her. "Three months," I said. "I'll be broke by that time,
and home looking for a job."

She was knitting, and she went on for a minute. "I don't think so," she
said quietly. "I don't think you'll go broke."

"Lots of people do go broke," I said, "and doing less daft things than
this I'm playing at."

"I don't think you will," she repeated.

I grinned at her again. "Well, I've never starved in the winter yet."

"No, and I don't think you will."

She knitted on in silence for a time. "This place Bahrein where you're
going to," she said. "What sort of place is it? How will you be living?"

"It's a fair-sized town," I said. "An Arab town, of course. There are
some white people living there--the R.A.F., and the chaps in the
Government. And then, inland there are sort of special towns like Awali
run by the Bahrein Petroleum Company, where a lot of British and
Canadian engineers live with their families."

"Will you live there?"

I shook my head. "I think there's an Arab hotel in the town. I'll
probably be there, at first at any rate."

"Will there be any white girls there?" she asked.

I knew what she was getting at, of course. "Not one," I said. "There
might be some W.A.A.F.s with the Air Force, but I wouldn't get a look in
there."

"Try and find someone, Tom," she said quietly. "I know you don't feel
like it now, and maybe that's right. But I would like to see you settled
comfortable in a nice home, with a nice girl and some children. Don't
give all of your life to your work."

"Blowed if I know where I'll find the nice home, but it won't be in
Bahrein," I said. "Nor the nice girl, either. But I'll bear it in mind,
Ma."

"That's right," she said. "Just keep it in your mind. I do want to see
you settled and comfortable, like your Dad and I have been."

Ma never wanted anything better than she'd got. She knew it was a lousy
little house, of course, but it was home and near Dad's work, and there
she had lived all her married life, and had her children, and watched
them grow up and get out into the world. She never wanted anything
better; she had a happiness quite independent of the quality of her
house. It's convenient for Dad's work and she's accustomed to it. She'll
never move.

I finished off the Fox-Moth a few days after that, and she really didn't
look so bad, with a new aluminium spray all over her and green
registration letters, and a broad green line running backwards down the
fuselage from the prop. I had had the cabin seats re-upholstered, too,
and replaced the scratched perspex in the windows, so that by the time
I'd done with her she looked almost new.

Dad and Mum came out to see her when she was finished, one Sunday, and I
took them up for a joy-ride over Southampton. Then I was ready to start.

It was a bad time of year to fly from England, and the Fox-Moth was a
very little aeroplane, with no blind flying instruments, or radio, or
anything like that. On the day I wanted to start, Monday the 21st, there
was a dense fog and it would have been crazy to leave the ground even if
the airport officers had let me, which they wouldn't. Next day was
better. Ma came out with me to Eastleigh to see me off. I got the
aircraft out and ran the engine to warm her up, and got my stuff through
Customs, and went and made my flight plan at the Control. Then I was
ready to get in and go.

"This is it, Mum," I said. "I'll be back in a year or so."

She kissed me. "Good-bye, Tom," she said. "Look after yourself, and
don't go killing yourself or anything of that."

"I won't do that, Mum," I said smiling. One always thinks, of course,
those things can't happen to me.

"Don't forget what I was telling you, about finding a nice girl."

"I won't. Good-bye, Mum."

"Good-bye, son."

I swung the little propeller, and the engine fired, and I went round and
got into the cockpit, clumsy in my leather coat. Then I waved to Mum and
taxied forward, and the Control gave me a green light and I moved to the
end of the runway and took off from England.

I'm not going to say much about that trip out to Bahrein; there was
nothing to make it interesting but my own inexperience and the
inadequacy of the aircraft for so long a journey. I could fly the thing
all right, but my total flying experience was only about five hundred
hours and I didn't know a lot about navigation, when I started. I knew a
bit more by the time I reached the Persian Gulf.

I had to land a good many times for fuel on the way. The extreme range
of the Fox-Moth was only about three hundred and fifty miles; later on I
fitted an extra tank. I went by way of Dinard, and across France to
Cannes, landing at Tours and Lyon. From there I went to Pisa and Rome
and Brindisi and Araxos and Athens, and from there to Rhodes and Cyprus.
I rested a day there and did a quick run round the engine, and went on
by way of Damascus to a place called H.3 in the middle of the desert;
then to Baghdad, Basra, Kuweit, and so to Bahrein. It took me eight days
of trundling along at ninety miles an hour, and I was tired when I got
there.

I landed one evening on the big R.A.F. and civil aerodrome on Muharraq
Island. There was a hangar there, and the place is an R.A.F. station,
but there were no service aircraft stationed there at that time. Several
used to come through every week, and at that time the B.O.A.C.
flying-boats called there, as well as several foreign lines.

It was a lovely, summery evening as I taxied to the hangar after
landing, just like a warm day in June in England. It had been very cold
over most of the route, until I got south of Baghdad, and then it had
begun to warm up. A couple of R.A.F. flying officers strolled out to the
machine as I switched off in front of the hangar, and I got out of the
cockpit to talk to them.

"Come far?" one asked.

"Eastleigh," I said.

They raised eyebrows and grinned. "How long did it take you?"

"I left England last Tuesday," I said. "Eight days."

"Going on to India?"

"No," I said. "I was thinking of staying here a bit, and see if I can
pick up a bit of charter work."

We talked about it for a time, and then I left them and went up to the
Control Tower to report. When I got back to the machine the officers
had got some airmen and we pushed the Fox-Moth into the hangar and got
my stuff out of the cabin. As we did so one of the young officers that I
later came to know as Mr. Allen said, "Pity you weren't here yesterday."

"Why's that?" I asked.

"Party of three engineers going down to Muscat. They're consulting on a
new water supply or something. They came in by B.O.A.C. from England. If
you'd been here you might have got a job."

"What happened to them?" I asked.

"Went on down to Sharjah in a chartered dhow. They left this morning."

"How far is it to Sharjah?"

"About four hundred miles. I wouldn't like to do that in a dhow. It'll
take them three or four days."

"How far on is it to Muscat?"

"About two hundred and fifty miles. They were going to charter a truck
to take them from Sharjah to Muscat."

I said, "Is there any fuel at Muscat?"

Allen nodded. "We keep a small party there. There's a strip there, and
there's hundred-octane fuel."

This was too rich and rare a fuel for my common little engine, but I
could mix it with motor car petrol. I said, "Can I get a telegram to
Sharjah offering this Fox for charter to them?"

"I should think so. They'll probably send it from the Control Tower if
you ask them nicely, over the R/T. They're always talking to Sharjah.
It's more reliable than the land telegraph line. That's always falling
down."

I got the name of the leader of the party from him, and the rest house
where they would stay in Sharjah, and went back to the Control Tower.
The Control officer knew all about this party, and advised me to wire
them care of the Political Agent. I sent off a message detailing the
accommodation and range of my Fox-Moth and offering it for charter for
eight pounds an hour from Bahrein.

I had a bit of luck then, because one of the wireless operators, Dick
Reed, spoke up and asked me where I was going to stay. He lived in a
house in Muharraq town just outside the aerodrome with all the other
operators; they ran it as a chummery, and they had a spare room,
normally occupied by a chap who was on leave. They offered this to me
and I moved in there that night and messed with the radio crowd.

At the aerodrome, they made me a member of the sergeants' mess, which
meant that I could go in there at any time for lunch, or for tea if I
was working late. That was a great help, in those early months.

I spent next day working on the aircraft to get it overhauled and fit
for work after the flight out from England, and in typing out circular
letters, five copies at a time, to send out to the eighteen or twenty
possible employers of a charter aircraft in the Persian Gulf. I got a
job next day, to take two engineers from Awali up to Kuweit for a
conference, leaving early in the morning and coming back at night. They
paid my eight pounds an hour without blinking, and the job went off all
right, so by the end of the day I was fifty-six pounds in pocket and
everyone seemed satisfied, specially me. My eight pounds an hour worked
out at about two bob a mile, but we had travelled six hundred miles in
seven hours flying time.

Next, a reply to my Sharjah wire came in, ordering me down to Sharjah at
once. Three days in an Arab dhow had made my eight pounds an hour seem
cheap to the water engineers, even though I couldn't carry the party in
one load but had to ferry them everywhere in two trips. I took them down
to Muscat and stayed with them for a week. In all I was away from
Bahrein for ten days, and I got back at the end of the job with
thirty-eight hours of flying done for them, and a cheque for three
hundred and four pounds in my pocket.

That's the way it went on all the time. The Persian Gulf is full of
industry--new oilfields being laid out, wells being sunk, pipelines
being laid, new docks and harbours being built all over the place. There
are no roads outside the towns and no railways, and no coasting
steamers and few motor-boats. The country is full of engineers to whom
time is money, and there are always people wanting to get about in a
hurry. The country is mostly sand desert, good for landing a small
aeroplane when you have learned the different look of hard and soft sand
from the air, and I was right up to the neck in work from the day I got
there. Most of the oil companies had their own aircraft, but there was
plenty of work left over for me.

I have been asked sometimes what led me to the Persian Gulf, what
instinct told me that I could build up a business there. It's really
perfectly simple. If you go to the hottest and most uncomfortable place
on the map you'll find there's not a lot of competition; in my
experience most British pilots would rather go bankrupt than get prickly
heat. If you can find, as I did, a place where there's a lot of business
for a modest charter operator, that's also hot and uncomfortable--well,
it's money for jam. Only, of course, you can't afford to pay the wages
of a European staff.

To start with, I had no staff at all. For the first two months I did
everything myself, serviced the aircraft, washed it down, did the
correspondence on my typewriter in the evening, kept the accounts, sent
out the bills, and--easiest of all--flew the thing. Presently it got a
bit too much, and I got in help for the washing down. I got an Arab boy
about fifteen years old called Tarik and paid him twenty rupees a month,
about thirty bob, at which he was highly delighted. I taught him to wash
and clean the aircraft while I worked upon the engine, and when he
wasn't doing that he was running errands for me to the souk--the market.
He wasn't fully employed in those early days, of course, but it was
useful to have somebody to help with the refuelling.

It was three months before anyone woke up to the fact that I wasn't
licensed to carry passengers for hire or reward. I only had a private
pilot's licence. An A.R.B. inspector turned up from Egypt one day,
travelling around to see what was going on in civil aviation in the
Persian Gulf, and told me that I was breaking the law every time I went
up. I knew that, of course, but I hoped that nobody else did.

He was quite nice about it. I told him that next day I had to take Mr.
Cassidy and Mr. Hogaarts of the Arabia-Sumatran Petroleum Company from
Abu Ali to Kuweit, and if I didn't turn up they'd be stuck at Abu Ali,
and after some hesitation he agreed that I should make this one trip.
While we were talking the telephone went, and it was Johnson of the
Bahrein Petroleum Company wanting to book me for the following Thursday
to take a couple of his chaps down to Dubai. I knew Johnson well, and I
never believe in hiding things up, so I told him I was with a bloke who
said I couldn't carry passengers for hire because I'd only got an "A"
licence.

"For Christ's sake," he said. "Let me have a talk to him." I handed over
the receiver, and he talked to the inspector, saying that they couldn't
do without me and all that sort of thing. The upshot of it was that it
was agreed that I should do that one trip also, and by next morning the
inspector had thought it over and said that he would recommend that I
should be granted a provisional "B" licence.

The point of this argument was that I could get a "B" licence without
much difficulty on the basis of the experience I had, but I could only
go through the examinations for it in England, and I was in the Persian
Gulf. I couldn't have got it when I left England; I wasn't good enough.
I knew that I could keep them talking for some months and in the
meantime I could go on operating, and after that I might well find
myself in England.

By that time, it was dawning on me that I should have to make a quick
trip back to England before long to buy another aeroplane. There was far
more work than I could cope with. I was flying four or five hours
practically every day, and maintaining the aircraft and doing the
correspondence for the rest of the time. At that I was only tackling the
fringe of the job. It wasn't only taking engineers about the country,
though I could have used a six-passenger machine on that to supplement
the Fox-Moth. There was machinery to be taken out to places in the
desert, drilling machinery to be fetched in for reconditioning, spare
parts for trucks and bulldozers--all sorts of things, some of them
requiring really large aircraft. Nobody was doing more than scratch the
surface of the work that was offering, and over and above the lot of it
there were things like the transport of pilgrims to Jiddah and transport
of food to relieve the perennial famines in the Hadramaut.

If I didn't nip in and get myself established, someone else would come
along and do it over my head.

On Bahrein aerodrome the local R.A.F. and civil air staff began to get
quite interested in me. It was obvious at the end of the three months
that, licence or not, I was on to a good thing and I was doing pretty
well. British N.C.O.s with the R.A.F. used to come along and watch me
working with young Tarik, and suggest that they were due to be
demobilised in a few months and what about a job? I never engaged one of
them. I knew from my own experience the wages that you have to pay
British engineers in the East, and I knew that if once I started on that
sort of wage bill I'd be bust in no time. Moreover, I didn't need them.
I had all the ground engineer's licences myself. Young Tarik, brown
though he might be, was keen and quite intelligent, and I reckoned that
with two or three more like him I could service several aircraft myself.

It was about that time that Gujar Singh turned up.

Gujar Singh was a young Sikh, who worked as a cashier in the Bank of
Asia. He might have been twenty-six or twenty-eight years old at that
time, and he was the fiercest thing I had ever seen. Being a good Sikh
he never cut his hair, and he had a great black beard that stuck out
forward from his chin in a manner that would have frightened any gunman
trying to hold up the bank into a fit. When I got to know him better,
and travelled with him, I found that he slept every night with a bandage
round his head to make this beard grow fiercely outwards from his face.
He wore European clothes and was usually dressed in a neat, light grey
tropical suit, but he always wore a turban. Beneath this turban there
was long black hair that reached down to his waist, coiled round his
head out of sight and fastened with a comb. He wore a plain iron bangle
on his wrist, and beneath his jacket he wore a ceremonial dagger belted
round his waist. He didn't smoke or drink, because of his religion.

Gujar Singh was always pleasant when I met him in the bank; he was a
smiling, soft-spoken, friendly young man in spite of his fierce
appearance. He was reserved and discreet; he was evidently interested in
me and in my business, but he never asked questions. Once he did ask me
what the weather had been like the day before, when I had been down to
Yas Island or somewhere, and afterwards the remark stuck in my mind,
because it had been a thundery sort of day and something in the words he
used were well informed for a bank clerk. He seemed to speak my
language.

My whole life at that time centred round my work. If I had had more time
I think I should have been very lonely. I lived with the four radio
operators but I wasn't one of them, and I was never one for lying on the
charpoy reading or sleeping, as they did in their spare time. The memory
of Beryl was never very far from my mind; whenever I had leisure I was
moody and depressed, so that it's a good thing in a way that I had
little leisure. I must have been bad company in the chummery. Perhaps it
was this moodiness and loneliness that made me interested in the Sikh
cashier at the bank, and when next I went there I asked him where he
learned to speak such very good English.

He smiled. "I was educated in Lahore," he said. "I went to Lahore
College. But apart from that, my father was a captain in the Army. We
often spoke English at home."

"I wish I could speak Arabic as well as you speak English," I said.
"It'ld make things a lot easier. Were you in the Indian Army in the
war?"

He smiled again. "I was in the Royal Indian Air Force. I did about three
hundred hours on Hurricanes."

I struck up quite a friendship with Gujar after that. He told me all
about his squadron and what they had done in the Burmese war against
Japan; he showed me his pilot's log book one day and I found that he'd
done about four hundred and fifty hours in all, with only one minor
crash upon a Tiger Moth in the early days of his training. He was deeply
interested in my venture, not only because it had to do with flying, but
because it was apparent from the bank account that it was very
profitable.

He came down to the aerodrome several times in the evenings after that,
and I found that he was quite willing to take his coat off and give me a
hand with the maintenance. Once a man has had to do with aeroplanes it
gets into the blood, whether he is Western or Asiatic, and Gujar Singh
used to potter about with me from time to time cleaning the filters and
draining the sumps and checking the tyre pressures of the Fox-Moth.
Presently, one evening in the hangar, he asked me to remember him if
ever I wanted another pilot.

The thought had been in my mind for a week or two. I had been at Bahrein
about four months when that happened, and clearly if I got another
aeroplane I'd have to have another pilot. This gentle, ferocious-looking
Sikh was certainly a possibility. I said,

"What about the bank, Gujar? You want to think a bit before giving up a
steady job like that. I may go bust at any time."

He smiled. "It may be a breach of confidence, but of necessity I know
the balance of your account, what it was when you came here and what it
is now. I am prepared to take the chance."

I liked Gujar. He was modest and careful. It did not seem to me that he
was likely to crash an aircraft. I knew nothing of him as a navigator,
or how steady he would be in an emergency. But in these things one has
to trust one's judgment, and my whole instinct now was to give this a
trial.

"Tell me," I said. "Are you married? I don't want to pry into your
affairs, but I'd like to know that."

"I am married," he said. "My wife is a Sikh also. I have three children.
I live at the north-west side of the souk."

I knew that part. It was in a part of the town where only Asiatics live,
a part where there are no made roads, just alleys between the houses.
Probably he lived in one room, or at the most in two.

"How much money would you want?" I asked.

"I will tell you," he said. "At the bank I am paid two hundred and fifty
rupees a month, and I can increase that by ten rupees a month for every
year of service." He smiled. "Our needs are less than yours, and we are
quite comfortable on that. I would come to fly for you for the same
money as I am getting at the bank, but if you should take on another
pilot under me I should expect promotion."

That was fair enough, of course. I always have to translate rupees into
English money in my mind, because most of the aircraft costs and
contracts are in terms of sterling. Two hundred and fifty rupees a
month, which he was getting in the bank, was about two hundred and
twenty pounds a year, less than the wage of a farm labourer in England.
On that he was quite happy with a wife and three children. If I were to
get an English pilot out from England to fill this job I should have to
pay at least a thousand a year, more than four times the wage that Gujar
Singh wanted. The balance would pay for a good many minor crashes if my
judgment proved to be wrong. But I didn't think it was.

"Look, Gujar," I said. "We'd both better think this over for a bit.
Until I've got another aeroplane I don't want another pilot. It'll be
three months or so before the thing becomes acute. But I'll certainly
bear it in mind."

"That is all I want," he said. "Just keep it in your mind. I would
rather work for you than continue to work in the bank. What sort of
aeroplane do you think that you will buy?"

"There's a new thing just out called a Basing Airtruck," I said. "That's
what we want out here. High wing, two of these engines, and a great big
cabin for a ton of freight. I've got the specification in my room, if
you'd like to come in and see it."

I had a good many talks with Gujar after that, and I confirmed the good
opinion I had formed of him. His knowledge of aircraft wasn't very deep,
but then it didn't have to be. He hadn't got a licence of any sort, of
course, but I had little doubt that he could get a "B" licence in the
lowest category, making it legal for him to carry passengers in the
Fox-Moth.

That spring the Air Ministry sent an R.A.F. Tiger Moth to Bahrein, an
old instructional type that was used for _ab initio_ training in the
war. They were evidently getting worried that morale would suffer if
flying officers were stationed there indefinitely with nothing to fly,
and a large R.A.F. aerodrome with no aeroplanes at all looks rather odd
to foreigners. The Tiger Moth is a small open two-seater with dual
control, and for a time this thing was in the air all day, mostly
inverted. When the rush for it subsided a bit, I asked the C.O. if one
of the officers might give Gujar a run round in it and check up on his
flying for me. It wasn't strictly according to King's Regulations, of
course, but I have always found the R.A.F. to be quite helpful, and
Allen and Gujar went off and did circuits and bumps in this thing for an
hour one evening while I watched the landings from the shade of the
hangar. When they came in, Allen told me he was all right. Gujar was as
pleased as a dog with two tails.

That evening I told him he could give his notice in to the bank and
start as soon as he liked.

I had his licence to negotiate then. I had been given a provisional "B"
licence for myself which had to be renewed each month, and was only
given on the understanding that I went to England very soon to take it
properly. I started in to battle then for another provisional licence
for Gujar Singh so that he could carry on in the Fox-Moth while I was in
England. Officialdom came back at once and asked who was going to
maintain the Fox-Moth and sign it out while I was in England, and I
threw back the ball that Flight Sergeant Harrison had "A" and "C" ground
engineer's licences and would do it in the evenings. Officialdom replied
that Flight Sergeant Harrison was licensed for Dakotas, it was true, but
not for a Fox-Moth, and I replied that surely to God if he could sign
for a Dakota he could sign for a pipsqueak thing like a Fox-Moth. So it
went on.

Presently it came out that Gujar Singh was an Indian subject, and we
found that he could get a "B" licence with the greatest of ease in
Karachi. There was a York of R.A.F. Transport Command going through to
Mauripur the week that he joined me, and the C.O. very kindly gave him a
passage in that. He was back three days later in a Dakota of Orient
Airways that was going through to Baghdad, and he had a brand new "B"
licence, valid for six months. I wished I was an Indian.

The way was clear then for me to go to England. I sent Gujar off in the
Fox-Moth for a couple of charter trips and he came back all right from
those; I turned over the books to him and told him to do the best he
could with the business while I was away, and transferred most of the
cash in the account to London. When I'd left sufficient for him to carry
on with safely in my absence, I found that I'd got two thousand two
hundred pounds to transfer--not bad for six months work with one little
aeroplane. But I'd had to work for it.

I left Bahrein six months and two days after I landed there. I got a
cheap ride as far as Rome on a Norwegian Skymaster that had taken a load
of Italian emigrants to Australia and was on its way back to pick up
another lot. There was nothing going to England from Rome except regular
services which would have charged me the full fare, so I took a
second-class ticket by rail. It took me longer to get from Rome to
London than it had to get from Bahrein to Rome, and when finally I got
out of the train at Victoria station I was thankful that, if all went
well, I should be going out by air in a week or two.

I got on the Underground and went to the same hotel near Euston that I
always stayed at because it was cheap. I had written to Basing Aircraft
from Bahrein on my cheap note-paper, and they had sent me out details of
the Airtruck. I rang up their sales manager, a Mr. Harry Ford, first
thing next morning and said that I was coming down to see them right
away. He told me a train and said he'd send a car to meet me. I drove
from Basingstoke station to the works behind a chauffeur like a lord,
the first time I'd ever been to an aircraft works like that. It felt
very odd.

Harry Ford was quite a decent chap, but I could see he didn't quite know
what to make of me. He'd been in aviation a long time; I knew of him,
though I had never met him. I think he knew a little about me. He gave
me a cigarette, and then he said:

"We got your letters, Mr. Cutter. What did you think of the stuff about
the Airtruck we sent you?"

"Looks all right, for what I'm doing," I said. "I'd like to have a look
at one in the shop."

"We'll go out in a moment," he replied. "There are just one or two
things I'd like to clear up first. What's the name of your Company?"

"I haven't got a Company," I said. "There's nobody in this but me."

He was a little taken aback, I think. "You mean, you're trading as an
individual?"

"That's right."

"You're doing charter work?"

"That's right," I said. "I've got a Fox-Moth, but I want something a bit
bigger now."

"Just one Fox-Moth?" He was smiling, but in quite a nice sort of way.

"Just one Fox-Moth," I said firmly. "Maybe you'd think more of me if I'd
got fifty thousand pounds of other people's money, and a dozen disposals
Haltons, and a staff of three hundred, and a Company, and a thumping
loss. As it is, I've got just one Fox-Moth and a thumping profit. Show
you my accounts if you like."

"Have you got them here?"

I pulled the envelope from my pocket, and unfolded the various papers:
the accounts certified by the Iraqi accountant in Bahrein up to three
days before I left, together with the complete schedule of the jobs I'd
done, the hours flown on each, and the payments received to balance with
the income side of the accounts. "I'm showing you these," I said,
"because I want to buy an Airtruck if it's the aeroplane I think it is,
and I've not got enough money to pay for it."

"Fine," he said. "I wish some of my other clients came to the point so
quickly."

He ran his eye over my papers, and I saw his eyebrows rise once or
twice. He did not take more than a couple of minutes over it; it was
clear that he was very well accustomed to this sort of thing. "On the
face of it, that's a very good showing, Mr. Cutter," he said. "I don't
suppose many Fox-Moth operators can show profits like that."

"I don't suppose many Fox-Moth operators work as hard I've worked," I
said.

"You do all the maintenance yourself, as well as the piloting and the
business?"

"That's right."

"I see." He thought for a minute. "I take it that if you bought an
Airtruck you would want credit."

I nodded. "I'd want a hire-purchase agreement, over a year."

"Could you find anyone to guarantee your payments?"

"No," I said firmly. "I've got no rich friends. I've got the record
there of what I do, and that shows I can keep up the payments. If we
can't do business for an Airtruck upon those terms I'll have to go
elsewhere, and buy a cheaper aeroplane."

"I see." He took up the papers. "We'll go outside and you can have a
look at an Airtruck, and talk to our test pilots, Mr. Cutter. They'll be
interested to hear about your operations in the Persian Gulf. While
we're doing that, would you mind if our secretary has a look at these
figures of yours?"

"Not a bit," I said, "so long as they're kept confidential. I wouldn't
want any other operator to see them."

He left me for a time and took my papers out of the room with him; when
he came back we went out to see the Airtruck. He took me through the
works; there were a lot of Airtrucks there on an assembly line, and
there were two or three new ones in the flight hangar, unsold. They
could give delivery at once. If I'd been able to pay cash I'd have got
one at a discount off list price, I'm sure.

I spent a couple of hours going over the machine from nose to tail, and
had a short flight in one with a test pilot. When I had finished, I knew
that that was the machine I wanted for the Gulf. It had a big, wide
cabin with low loading, high wing which would keep the cabin cool upon
the ground in the tropical sun, and full blind flying instruments. With
the addition of a small V.H.F. radio set it made an aeroplane that would
take a ton of load anywhere, and very cheaply. I knew that I could make
money with that out in the Gulf, and I knew that I could learn to fly it
without much difficulty. I was very pleased, although I did my best not
to show it.

We went back to the office to talk turkey. Harry Ford got the secretary
to come along to his office, a lean Scotsman called Taverner. He had
been through my figures and gave the papers back to me, and then we
talked about a hire-purchase deal.

"How much could you pay in the way of a deposit, Mr. Cutter?" the
secretary asked.

"A thousand pounds," I said.

"That's only twenty per cent of the cost of the aircraft. From the
profits you show, you should be able to do better than that."

"I've got to keep some liquid capital in the business," I said. "The
cost of flying out the Airtruck to Bahrein is one thing. I don't think I
can do more than that."

"Mm. I think that leaves too much for your business to carry. Ye can't
pay off four thousand pounds in a year."

"Why not? You see what I can make with just a Fox-Moth."

"Aye," Mr. Taverner said. "Ye've done very well, but you won't go on
like that. You're paying no insurance, for a start. Maybe that's wise
with just the Fox-Moth, and in any case, you've got away with it. But if
we give you credit terms upon this Airtruck, you'll have to insure it
with a policy that we approve. That's a bit off your profits."

He paused. "But the big difference is going to be, that from now on
you've got to employ pilots and ground engineers. Up till now you've
been doing everything yourself, and you've made close on two thousand
five hundred pounds profit in six months. But you've taken no pay
yourself. I'll guess that you've been working like a horse, and you've
been making money at the rate of five thousand a year, and maybe you're
worth it. But it's going to be different from now on."

He turned to Ford. "What will he have to pay a pilot, working from
Bahrein?"

"A thousand to twelve hundred."

"And a ground engineer?"

"About eight hundred."

The secretary turned to me. "Ye've got to have staff now, Mr. Cutter,
with two aeroplanes, and that's going to alter the whole picture. Put in
the wages of yourself at fifteen hundred and a pilot at twelve hundred,
and a ground engineer at eight hundred, and there's three thousand five
hundred pounds added to your overhead expenses right away. I'm not
saying that there'll be no profit left, but I doubt, I doubt very much,
if you can pay off four thousand pounds on an Airtruck within a year on
the work you'll do with it. It does not seem possible to me, or in two
years either." He paused. "Ye'll not get the utilisation with the larger
aeroplane that you get with your Fox-Moth."

"I agree," said Ford. "All operators find the same thing. When you're
operating just one aeroplane, a charter service can look very promising.
Directly you have to start in and employ a staff, the whole thing alters
and the costs go leaping up. I've seen it happen over and over again."

There was a pause.

"That may be," I said. "This thing of mine is different."

They smiled. "In what way?" Ford asked.

"If other operators go on the way you say, they must all be bloody well
daft," I said. "I can't afford to go paying pilots twelve hundred a
year. I've got a pilot flying the Fox-Moth for me now while I'm away, a
darned good pilot, running the business side as well. Do you know what
I'm paying him?"

"What?"

"Two hundred and fifty rupees a month," I said. "That's two hundred and
twenty pounds a year."

They stared at me. "With flying pay?"

I laughed shortly. "No. Two hundred and twenty pounds a year, flat," I
paused. "I've got a boy of sixteen cleaning down the aircraft. He'll
work up and be a ground engineer one day. Do you know what he gets?
Thirty bob a month." I snorted. "I'm not surprised that charter
operators go broke right and left if they pay the wages that you say."

They sat staring at me. Then Ford said, "Are these natives?"

"That's right," I said. "The pilot's a Sikh. The boy's an Arab."

"Oh. Would you propose that this native pilot should fly the Airtruck?"

"I don't see why not."

"We'd have to think about that one, if you're going to want credit terms
on the sale. We should have an interest in the machine."

"Think all you like," I said, "so long as you do it quick. This Sikh
I've got is an ex-officer of the Royal Indian Air Force, and he's done
over three hundred hours on Hurricanes without an accident, much of it
operational flying. If your Airtruck's so bloody difficult to fly that
he's not safe on it, I don't know that we can go any further."

Ford laughed. "You know I don't mean that. Anybody could fly an
Airtruck. The proposal to employ a native pilot is a bit of a novelty,
you know."

I shrugged my shoulders. "You've got to go on the record. If he's got a
record of safe flying and if he's got a 'B' licence, that's good enough
for me."

"I suppose so. If the business grows, would you propose to employ more
than one?"

"I'll answer that in six months' time," I said. "If Gujar Singh is the
success I think he will be, he'll be the chief pilot, under me. In that
case, any other pilots I take on may very well be Sikhs. I don't see
that there'd be any place in a set-up like that for British pilots at a
thousand a year."

Taverner asked, "What about the ground staff? Would you use Asiatic
ground engineers for your maintenance?"

"I don't know," I said frankly. "That's much more difficult than the
pilots. I'm fully licensed as a ground engineer myself, 'A', 'B', 'C',
and 'D'. I can use Asiatic labour for a time, under my supervision. Then
we'll have to see. But I think by the time I need them Asiatics will
turn up. I had some working under me in Egypt during the war. They were
all right."

Harry Ford laughed. "You're planning an air service staffed entirely by
Wogs!"

I was a bit angry at that. "I call them Asiatics," I replied. "If you
want to sell an Airtruck you can quit calling my staff Wogs."

"No offence meant, Mr. Cutter," he said. "One uses these slang
phrases... I take it that the point you're making is that by the use of
native staff you can reduce your overheads to the point when you can
bear the hire-purchase cost of eighty per cent of an Airtruck spread
over a year."

I nodded. "That's right. I can pay off the aircraft in a year, and still
make money." I thought for a moment. "I don't want you to think that a
native staff is solely a question of money," I said slowly. "If I extend
my operations, it will be in the direction of India, not towards Europe.
Europe's crowded out with charter operators already, all going broke
together. There's more scope for charter work as you go east. If I
develop eastwards, then by using Asiatic pilots and ground engineers
exclusively, I shall be using the people of the countries that I want to
do business with. That's bound to make things easier."

Taverner chipped in then, and we went over my prospective overheads in
the light of the payments I would have to make for Asiatic staff, and
the sum naturally came out a good bit better. They left me then to go
off and have a talk about it by themselves, and when they came back they
said, fifteen hundred down and the machine was mine. I stuck my heels
in and refused to pay a penny more than twelve hundred, and when I left
the works that evening the machine was mine for delivery in about ten
days, subject to the completion of all the formalities.

I went to Southampton that night, and got home at about nine o'clock.
There was no telephone at home, of course; I'd sent a telegram from the
works to say that I was coming, but it was nearly six o'clock when I
telephoned it and after delivery hours, so Ma hadn't got it. I walked in
at the street door and put my bag down. Ma was in the scullery, and when
she heard the door go she called out, "That you, Alf?" She thought it
was Dad.

I said, "It's me, Ma--Tom!" She came rushing out and put her arms round
me and kissed me, and ticked me off for not letting them know which day
I was coming. And then she said, "My, Tom, you do look brown. How long
have you got at home?"

"Only a week or two," I said. "I'm getting a bigger aeroplane, and
flying out again as soon as it's ready."

"Not bust yet?" she asked.

"Not quite," I said. "Where's Dad?"

"He stepped out to the 'Lion' for his game of darts," she said. "He
should be back now, any minute."

"Mind if I go down there and fetch him, Ma?"

She nodded. "He'll like you to meet his friends, Bert Topp and Harry
Burke, and Chandler. Don't be more'n a quarter of an hour, Tom. I'll
start getting supper now."

I went down to the pub, and there was Dad playing darts with Harry
Burke. I said, "How do, Dad," and he said, "How do, Tom," and I told him
I'd been home, and he told the barman to give me a pint, and went on
with his game. The barman said, "Been out in the sun?" and I said,
"Persian Gulf," and he said, "Uh-huh," and I sat and watched Dad going
for the double at the finish of the game. It was just as if I'd never
been away at all, as if Bahrein and Gujar Singh, and Sharjah, and Yas
Island were places and people I'd read about in a book.

I walked home with Dad when he'd finished the game, and told him
something about what I'd been doing on the way. Back home when we sat
down to the light supper that they had before going to bed, Ma asked me,
"What's it like out where you're working, Tom? What does it all look
like?" She paused. "Is it all palm trees and dates and that?"

"Not in the country," I said. "Nothing grows outside the towns, because
of the water. There's no water at all. The land is desert--great flat
stretches of sandy sort of earth, with maybe rocky hills or mountains
here and there. All yellow and dried up under the sun. You get groves of
date palms and greenery outside Bahrein and outside most towns, where
they irrigate with water from wells."

Dad said, "Sounds a bad sort of country."

"I rather like it, Dad," I said. "It gets hold of you, after a bit. It's
good for people--you don't get any of the pansy boys out there. It can
be lovely when you're flying, too. Some places and in some lights, the
desert goes a sort of rosy pink, all over, and then if you're flying up
a coast the sea can be a brilliant emerald green, or else a brilliant
blue, with a strip of white surf all along the edge like a girl's slip
showing."

"Ever had a forced landing in it and got stranded?" Dad asked.

I shook my head. "Not yet, and I don't want one. I had to put down once
because of a sand storm, and sit it out in the cabin for five or six
hours; then it got better and I took off and went on. I always take a
petrol can of water in the aircraft."

Ma said, "My..."

They wanted to know if I'd got anyone to help me, and I told them about
Gujar Singh and Tarik. It was difficult, of course, to make them
understand, however hard I was trying, however much they wanted to. Dad
said,

"Like niggers, I suppose they'd be?"

I shook my head. "No, not like niggers. Gujar Singh's an Indian."

"Lascars are Indians, I think," Dad said. He only knew the types he'd
seen about the docks, of course.

"That's right," I said. "But this is a different sort of Indian. A
better sort than lascars, more of an Army officer type." I went on to
describe what Gujar looked like, but I don't know that a description of
him really helped me in describing what I had come to feel: that our
minds ran on similar tracks.

Ma said, "They'd be heathens, I suppose?"

The question worried me a bit, because I wanted her to like them. I
wanted her to understand. "I don't know," I said slowly. "Both of them
believe in God--just one God, not a lot of Gods. I suppose you'd call
them heathens. They don't believe in Jesus Christ as God--the Moslems
think He was a prophet, just like Moses. But I must say, they seem to
say their prayers very regular, which is more'n we do."

Ma was trying her best. "They don't go to church, I suppose?" she asked.
"Just have heathen temples, like?"

"They've got their own places where they go to pray," I said. "Friday is
the big day, like our Sunday, when they all go to the mosque. Most
businesses shut up shop on Friday, and the offices and the banks shut on
Friday, too. We don't work on Fridays, but we work on Sundays. They're
very particular about Fridays, and then, of course, they're always at
their prayers. I told young Tarik after the first day, I said, You do
your praying in the lunch hour and after we knock off, lad--not in the
time I pay you for. A chap in the radio set-up put me wise to that one.
They'll swing it on you if you let them. But then, on your side, you've
got to be reasonable and fix the hours of work so they can get their
praying in."

"Do you mean they go off to the mosque on a working day?" Dad asked.

I shook my head. "They can do it on any quiet little bit of ground, it
seems. A Moslem has to say his prayers five times a day. What young
Tarik does, he goes out on a little bit of flat ground just beside the
hangar and he faces west, about in the direction of Mecca. That's their
holy city, where they go for pilgrimages. He takes off his shoes and
stands up straight, and puts both hands up to his ears, and prays. Then
he stands with his arms folded in front of him and prays. Then he bends
forwards with both hands on his knees, and prays. Then he goes down on
hands on knees and puts his head on the ground, and prays. Then he sits
down for a bit and thinks about it all, and then he starts in and goes
through it all again. He goes on like that for about ten minutes, like
doing physical jerks. Only you can't laugh about it, Dad, when you see
them at it. They take it all so serious, just like us in church. It
means a lot to them."

"Five times a day they go through all that?"

"That's right," I said. "Young Tarik's hours are sort of fluid, 'cause
there's only just him there at present. He's supposed to start at seven
in the morning, and I must say he's usually there on time. He works till
nine, and then gets a break for a cup of tea or a bit to eat, and
prayers. Starts again at nine-thirty and works till twelve, and gets an
hour then for his dinner and prayers. Works from one to four-thirty, and
knocks off for prayers. That makes an eight-hour day. If he works over,
then I give him a bit more at the end of the month."

Ma said, "Seems like they're not heathens at all, if they say their
prayers that much."

"They're not Christians, Ma," I said. "But honestly, I don't think you
could call them heathens, either. They believe in God all right."

Dad asked about the aeroplanes, and I told him about the Airtruck, and
got out a picture of it from my case to show him. He asked how much it
cost, and I told him, and then I told him about the money that I'd made,
and that was all going back into the business. Dad and Ma were so
pleased, it was just fine; they thought far more of my little success,
and took more pleasure in it, than ever I did. It was worth that six
months of heat and work and sweat and fright, to see the pleasure they
got out of it.

They asked what I was going to do and how long I could stay, and I told
them that I'd have to go for a week to Air Service Training Ltd. at
Hamble and get a radio operator's licence; that was only six miles out
of Southampton, so I could live at home and go out on the bus each day.

Young Ted had gone off to do his military service so Dad and Ma were all
alone at home. Ma asked where I'd like to sleep, upstairs or down, and I
said down in the big room where we'd all slept together as kids. I lay
there for a while that night thinking of all sorts of things, of the
Airtruck, of my radio licence, of Bahrein and the Persian Gulf country,
of the last time I came to sleep there in the misery of Beryl's death.
If Beryl had lived, my life would have been a very different one, I
knew. She wouldn't have fitted in at Bahrein, and she'd have hated it.
But then, I'd never have got out there if she'd lived.

I got up with Dad and Ma next morning and had breakfast at seven with
Dad before he went off to the docks. I hung around then and helped Ma
with the washing up, because there was no point in getting out to Hamble
before ten. As we were drying the dishes Ma said, "Ted brought ever such
a nice girl home last week-end, Tom. Lily Clarke, her name is. Her folks
live at Fareham. Father's a petty officer in the Navy."

"Starting young," I said.

"Mm. Met her at a dance. I don't know if there's anything in it."

"Better wait till he gets through his service and in a proper job," I
said. "Besides, he's only just nineteen."

"Your pa was only twenty when we got married, Tom. I had Elsie when I
was nineteen."

I grinned at her. "Ought to be ashamed of yourself, Ma, and Dad too."

"Well, I don't know. It worked out all right with us. I often wish you'd
married young, Tom, but you were always so stuck into your books."

"I know," I said quietly. "I got around to it too late."

"There's always another chance. You didn't meet anybody out there?"

I shook my head, smiling a little. "It's not that sort of a place, Ma.
You get more snowstorms in the Persian Gulf than unmarried white
girls."

She sighed. "I wish you didn't have to work in a place like that. Will
you ever come back and work in England, Tom?"

"I expect I will some day," I replied. "The trouble is, I rather like it
in the East. I'd like to go further if I get a chance, into India and
Burma, and on past those."

"Well anyway," she said, "it's not as if you had to be out there for
ever. Being in the air business, you do seem to be able to get home now
and then."

She kept on trying, Ma did. I went out that day and fixed up my course
at Air Service Training, and got them to start me off next day on
account of the urgency. Two nights later I came back to tea about six,
and there was a girl in to tea with Ma, Doris Waters, daughter of old
Waters the plumber. She was a pretty kid and quite intelligent, about
twenty-two or twenty-three years old; she taught in a school. If I'd
been different to what I was, things might have been different, too. But
I wasn't, and they weren't. I was sorry for Ma.

With all the examinations for the radio operator's licence and the "B"
licence, and the renewal of my ground engineer's licences, I was busy in
a maze of paper work for the next three weeks. I had to go three times
to London, and then in the middle of it all the August Bank Holiday came
and everything stopped dead for about four days. I finally got away from
England in the Airtruck on August the 22nd having been in England nearly
a month. Dad and Mum came out to see the machine, as they had done
before with the Fox-Moth. But this was a bigger and a better aircraft
altogether. I had about three hundredweight of spares and tools with me,
and quite a bit of luggage, and it made a little heap in one corner of
the big cabin that you'd hardly notice.

The Airtruck was faster than the Fox-Moth, and better equipped, and so
much easier to fly. Having two engines I took the sea crossing from
Cannes to Rome direct, and then over the top of the Appenines through
cloud to Brindisi instead of going round the coast. Short cuts like that
made a lot of difference to the time, and with the greater range of the
Airtruck I didn't have to land so often for fuel. I got to Bahrein in
five days from England, and as I turned down-wind on the circuit I saw
the Fox-Moth standing in front of the hangar, and Gujar Singh and Tarik
standing by it looking up at the Airtruck and waving to me. They hadn't
broken the Fox, which took a load off my mind. As I came in to the
runway on the final and put her down, I felt like it was coming home
again. The wide, bare, sandy field under the blazing sun, the blue sea
beside, the shimmer from the tarmac, the white houses with their
wind-towers--these were the things that pleased me; this was where I
wanted to be.

Gujar and Tarik came up to the machine as I switched off in front of the
hangar, and they opened the door, and came in to greet me as I sat quiet
in the cockpit for a few minutes, tired after a long day of flying from
Damascus via Baghdad and Basra, writing up the journey log book on my
knee. They were very much impressed with the Airtruck. "There will be a
great deal of work to be done with this," said Gujar, "once the oil
companies get to know that it is here."

I found that evening that he had done quite well in my absence with the
Fox-Moth. He had had a job to do most days, and the bank account, which
was two hundred pounds when I went away, was now over seven hundred.
There were a good few bills outstanding because I hadn't left him power
to draw cheques, but so far as I could see he had made a profit of over
three hundred pounds in the month or so that I had been away. I was very
pleased with that, and I told him so. It meant that I could go away on
jobs myself without the feeling that everything was going to collapse.

I got Evans of the Arabia-Sumatran Petroleum Company to come down and
have a look at the new machine next day, with one or two from the other
companies. The response was good, and by the end of a week the Airtruck
was going hard every day. Spare parts for motor transport was one of our
big, constant loads. The oil companies have a great number of trucks in
various parts of the Arabian deserts in connection with the oil wells
and pipe lines and docks. These trucks give continuous trouble; however
ruggedly they may be built a country that has no roads and a lot of sand
is hard on things mechanical. We could fly in spare back axles, wheels
complete with tyres, drums of oil, or engine parts to stranded trucks,
and it's extraordinary how many stranded trucks there are. Apart from
that, we took surveying parties and all their gear about the place
continuously, and cases of tinned foods--all sorts of stuff. From time
to time we took quite big loads of people, employees going in and out of
some inaccessible place; I had no seats for the Airtruck and took them
sitting or squatting on the floor. Presently, of course, the inevitable
official popped up and told me that was illegal because they all ought
to have a safety belt.

After a time I decided I should have to have another aeroplane. Gujar
Singh was used to flying the Airtruck by that time, though I did most of
the work on it myself and let him fly the Fox-Moth. Now things were
piling up on us. There was still far more work than we could tackle, and
the Fox-Moth was due for its annual overhaul for the Certificate of
Airworthiness. I had engaged an Iraqi ground engineer with "A" and "C"
licences called Selim, but I didn't trust him much and anyway he wasn't
licensed for complete overhauls; I should have to do that myself. I
wanted another Airtruck, and that meant another pilot.

I was up to date with my payments on the first Airtruck, and had about
two thousand pounds profit again in hand. I wrote to Harry Ford and told
him how I stood and sent him the accounts, and said, what about another
Airtruck on the Never-Never? I think they must have had a lot of trouble
selling them, because he wrote back at once and said, come and get it.
It wasn't very suitable for ordinary charter operators, perhaps, but it
fitted my work like a glove.

I had a talk with Gujar Singh about another pilot then. He didn't
himself know of another Sikh pilot. In ten days' time, however, we had
to take a load to Karachi, a trip which I proposed to do myself in the
Airtruck. He suggested that he should come with me; he knew Karachi very
well, of course. We went together and stayed for a couple of days. At
the end of that time we found quite a good pilot called Arjan Singh,
with another big black beard and another iron bangle just like Gujar;
he had been instructing on Harvards at Bangalore in the war and had done
a bit of time on Dominies. I took him on and put up Gujar's salary to
three hundred rupees, and we all went back to Bahrein together. I
started Arjan on the Fox-Moth and turned over the Airtruck to Gujar, and
went back to England in a chartered Halton that had taken a ship's
propeller shaft out to Singapore and was on its way back with a load of
silk goods.

I was only home about four days that time, because the second Airtruck
was all ready and waiting for me on Basingstoke Aerodrome. In fact there
were eleven of them standing in a row, unsold; I kicked myself that I'd
got to have credit and so had to pay full price. However, it was better
to have it so than to get outside money in; I wanted to keep the show in
my own hands. I still wasn't a company, and I didn't see any reason why
I should become one, for the time being. There's no income tax in
Bahrein.

I stayed three of the four days with Dad and Ma as usual, and took them
up for a joy-ride in the Airtruck. Then I was off again back to Bahrein.
I was getting to know the route by that time, and I was a much better
pilot than when I went out first with the Fox-Moth.

When I got back to Bahrein I started in to put the business on a proper
basis. With the two Airtrucks flying all day long and the Fox in for
overhaul for its Certificate of Airworthiness, I had to take on a good
bit more staff. I got another ground engineer, an Egyptian who'd been
with me at Almaza, and two more Arab boys under Tarik, who was shaping
quite well; these boys worked as loaders when we wanted labour.
Sometimes we parachuted loads down instead of landing if the ground was
bad, especially to stranded trucks, and these boys went along then in
the aircraft to put the stuff out of the door frame; for those jobs we
flew without the door.

I had to start an office going, too. I found a young Bengali clerk
called Dunu who could work a typewriter and keep books; he came from
Calcutta and was working in a shipping office in the town. I managed to
lease a disused hutment from the R.A.F. on a strictly temporary basis,
and I set the office up in that.

From that time onward my own work began to change. I had to spend more
time on the ground, because I was the only ground engineer in the show
who was licensed for aircraft overhauls; I couldn't be away all day
piloting while a machine was in for its annual overhaul, and with three
machines coming up for annual overhaul in turn it was clear that I
should have to spend a lot more time in the hangar. Having to do that, I
was able to attend more to the book-keeping and costs, and it was about
that time I set to work to get the prices down. It had been all very
well to charge a high figure for my transport in the early days, but I
knew that if I went on doing that the oil companies would start to kick,
and either get their own aircraft or else, much worse, encourage someone
else to start up at Bahrein in competition with me. Within a month of my
return with the second Airtruck I cut my own prices by twenty-five per
cent, and let them all know what I'd done, and why I'd done it.

I still did all of what one might describe as the pioneering flying.
Whenever we had to make a landing at a place we hadn't used before, I
used to take the machine myself if possible, sometimes with Gujar or
Arjan with me in the machine so that they could see it and get the gen.
That was the position some months after I got back to Bahrein, at the
end of November, when Evans of the Arabia-Sumatran rang me up and asked
if I could quote for taking a load of fifteen hundred pounds of
scientific instruments and one passenger from Bahrein to Diento, in
Sumatra, where they had another refinery.

Diento is in the south of Sumatra, about four hundred miles south of
Singapore, not very far from Batavia in Java. It was by far the longest
haul that had come my way, and I regarded it as something of a
compliment and as a sign of confidence in me that they had asked me to
quote. It meant a flight of about five thousand miles all through the
East, across India and Burma, through Siam and down Malaya, into Sumatra
and past Palembang to this place Diento. I knew I could do it in an
Airtruck and I was determined to go myself, of course, for an important
job like that. I had a lot of difficulty with the quotation, though.

The trouble was in finding a return load. If I charged him for the
double journey the figure came out so high that it frightened me; I
wanted to do the job very badly, but I wasn't going to do it and lose
money. In the end I took my figures to him and put the cards on the
table. I told him he would have to guarantee payment for the return
journey to Bahrein, and I suggested he should put his Sumatran
organisation to work to find me a return load either from their own
requirements or else from Batavia; in that case we would set off
anything that we could get for the return load against his invoice, with
appropriate mileage adjustments if the return load was to a destination
off my direct return route. We thrashed out an agreement on these lines.
He told me that he would send a copy out to their office in Batavia and
I should probably receive instructions in Diento to go on there for
whatever freight load they could get together for me.

I started almost immediately, in the new Airtruck. I'm not going to say
much about that first hurried journey through the East; this isn't a
travel book. It took me a week to get to Diento, flying seven or eight
hours every day and servicing the aircraft in what was left of the day.
We got good weather all through India and Burma, but we struck a lot of
monsoon rain in what they call the Inter-Tropical Front as we went
through Malaya; it got to be fair weather again by the time we reached
Diento.

I never saw anything of all these countries, hardly, on that trip. I was
working all the time when the machine was on the ground, and it was dark
each night by the time we could drive in from the aerodrome to a hotel.
I got just tantalising glimpses of brown men and pretty Chinese girls in
flowered pyjamas, enough to make me realise what I was missing.

Diento was a huge refinery town of over twenty thousand employees, many
of them Dutch. It had a good airstrip, and I put down there about midday
after flying in from Palembang. The strip wasn't much different from
any other aerodrome in any part of the world, but the grass was a bit
darker in colour. The cars and trucks and roads were all the same. It's
a funny thing about the tropics, I have found. You go expecting
everything to be quite different, and there's so much that's the same.

My passenger was a young Dutch-American scientist; he knew all about
Diento, because he'd been there before. They sent a truck down for the
laboratory gear, and his boss came down to meet him in a car. We waited
to see the stuff unloaded and safely in the truck, and then I went up
with them in the car to the refinery offices. That was a big place. It
stretched for miles out into the bush and along the bank of a river,
rows and rows of storage tanks, and pipes and cylindrical towers and all
sorts of things. Full-sized ocean-going tankers came into Diento to take
the oil away to ports all over the world.

As I expected, in the office they had instructions to send me to
Batavia, about a hundred and fifty miles further on; they thought there
was a small return load waiting for me there, but they didn't know what
it was. I would have gone back to the aerodrome and got off there and
then, but the Dutchmen wouldn't hear of it. They insisted that I stay
the night and have a party with them and relax, and after all that
flying I was quite glad to. They had a club by the riverside and they
gave me a fine bedroom in that. There was a swimming pool and pretty
girls out of the offices in it, and a concert and a dance after dinner,
all by the riverside with sampans going past, and lights over the water,
and flying foxes wheeling overhead in the velvety darkness, and a huge
tropical full moon. I drank more Bols than I wanted to, but they were so
kind and so pleased to see a strange face, one couldn't refuse. I got
rather tight, but so did everyone. A good party.

They sent me down to the aerodrome next morning in a car. I made a check
over the machine, cleaned filters, drained sumps, swept out the cabin,
and refuelled. Finally I took off at about ten-thirty for the short
flight down to Batavia across the Sunda straits, and found the
aerodrome, and came on to the circuit behind a Constellation of the
K.L.M. The Dutch pilots were all speaking English on the radio to their
own control tower, which seemed odd to me. It certainly made everything
very easy, because I couldn't speak a word of Dutch.

I landed and taxied to the parking position, and locked up the machine
and went to the Control and Customs for the necessary clearances. It all
took a long time because Java was in an uproar with a full-scale war
going on against the Indonesian republicans, and there were military
officers in all the offices wanting to see every sort of document. The
K.L.M. people had been warned to expect me and were very helpful, and
got me through the various offices as quickly as anyone could, and laid
on transport for me, and took me into town to the Nederland Hotel.

The hotel was crowded out with military, and the best that they could do
for me was a dormitory room with three other beds in it, and other
chaps' gear lying round all over the place. I was used to that sort of
thing; we'd had it at several other places on the way. I dumped my stuff
on an empty bed and saw the room boy, and went down to the dining-room
for lunch. I had been warned by the K.L.M. chap that most offices took a
siesta in that hot place after the midday meal; a suitable time to get
to the Arabia-Sumatran office would be between three and four. I took
the tip, and went up after lunch for an hour on the charpoy myself.

There was another chap in the room now, lying stretched out on the bed
under his mosquito net, naked but for a short pair of trunks. I couldn't
see him very clearly through the net. I said conventionally, "I hope
none of this stuff's in your way."

He turned and looked at me, and then he sat up and lifted the side of
the net to see me better. I stood there gaping at him for a moment in
surprise.

It was Connie Shaklin.




CHAPTER 3

    We travel not for trafficking alone:
      By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
    For lust of knowing what should not be known
      We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

    JAMES ELROY FLECKER


It was thirteen years since I had seen Connie and a lot had happened in
that time, but I knew him at once. I said, "Connie Shaklin! You remember
me--on Cobham's Circus? Tom Cutter."

He pushed back the net, got out, and shook me by the hand. He was leaner
than I remembered him, especially in the face. In some ways he looked
more Chinese than ever, but alongside a Chinese you could see he wasn't
one. He was too tall, too aquiline. His Russian mother was responsible
for that. He was a striking-looking man; he reminded me of something,
but for a time I couldn't think of what it was.

He said, "Tom! What are you doing now? Last time I heard was years ago.
You were still at Airservice then."

I offered him a cigarette, but he said he didn't smoke. I lit one and
sat down on the charpoy. "I left them last year," I said. "I'm on my own
now."

"Still in aircraft?"

"Yes. I'm operating in the Persian Gulf. I came down here on a charter
job."

I was terribly glad to see Connie again. He was a part of my youth, part
of the fine time you have before you have to take responsibilities.
Presently, as you go through your life, you undertake so many duties
that you haven't time for making new, close friendships any more; you've
got too much to do. For the remainder of your life you have to make do
with the friends you gathered in in your short youth, and for me,
Connie was about the only one I ever had. I started getting serious
pretty early in my life, I suppose.

I told him all about my charter service in the Gulf as I stripped my few
clothes off and stretched out on the bed. In return he told me what he
had been doing. From Cobham's Circus he had gone to California; he had
got a job with the Lockheed Company in their service and repair
department, and he had stayed with them for six years or so. Then the
war had come, in 1939. He was a British subject, of course, and England
was at war; he felt it was his duty to serve, although he had queer
ideas about fighting, and so he went north over the border to Edmonton
and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force as an engine fitter.

"Were you in aircrew?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I think that it is wrong to kill," he said simply.
"I told them that, when I volunteered for the R.C.A.F. I told them also
that if one could not kill in time of war, one ought to work very hard.
I had the American ground engineer's certificates, of course, for
Lockheed and Pratt and Whitney stuff, and they were glad to have me for
a fitter on the ground."

He had spent the whole of the war in Canada working at various
aerodromes in connection with the Empire training scheme and, later, on
some cold-weather research projects at Trenton. He had sat for the
Canadian ground engineer's licences at the end of the war and had got
the lot without difficulty, and at the beginning of 1946 he had gone out
to Bangkok and had worked for a time as a ground engineer with Siamese
Airways.

I opened my eyes at that. Siamese Airways is the national air line of
Siam and, I thought, staffed exclusively by Asiatics. "What on earth
made you go there?" I asked.

"Karma," he said, smiling. I didn't understand him, but his old magic
was upon me once again and I didn't interrupt; he knew so much more than
I did. "I went back home to San Diego for a few months and worked at the
Flying Club, but I couldn't settle there. I didn't really like America,
and I wanted to know more, much more, about the Lord Gautama and the
Four Noble Truths. I wanted to hear people talk about the Buddhist faith
who really knew something--not the sort of people you find in Los
Angeles. And presently I found I had to go to Bangkok to find out about
all that. There was no alternative except the bughouse."

I grinned. This was the same old Connie, different to anybody else that
I had ever met. He had been good for me when I was a callow and an
ignorant youth; he was good for me now. I said, "Were you able to get
into Siamese Airways?" And then I said, perhaps a little thoughtlessly,
"I thought they were all Asiatics."

He smiled. "Well, what do you call me?"

"You're British," I said, wondering.

"I was born in Penang," he replied. "My father was a full Chinese. My
mother was a Russian who got out in 1917, at the time of the Revolution.
I speak Cantonese, and a little Mandarin. I spell my name in two parts
now that I'm out here, Shak Lin, like my father did. I'm an Asiatic."

"Not a proper one," I said loyally.

He grinned. "Proper enough to get a job with Siamese Airways. I think
they were very glad to get me; I got to Bangkok just as they were
starting up. They bought a lot of disposals Dakotas and had them
converted in Hong Kong. I was with them up till about four months ago."

"What are you doing now?" I asked.

He said, "I'm with Dwight Schafter."

"Who's Dwight Schafter?"

"Don't you know about him?"

I shook my head. "No."

"He's a gun-runner," said Connie. "He flies arms in to the Indonesian
Republicans, or he did. The Dutch have got him now, here in Batavia."

"You're working for him?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm muggered," I said in wonder.

As we lay there on our beds in the hot afternoon he told me about Dwight
Schafter. Dwight was an American, a soldier of fortune by profession.
Wherever there is trouble in the world the Dwights of all nations
foregather. There are not very many of them, thirty or forty perhaps,
and they are all supremely competent men because the others have been
killed.

Dwight had spent some years in Central and South America, and he had
flown for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He had been flying for the
Chinese against the Japanese in 1938 and 1939, and he had come into the
United States Army Air Force via Major Chennault's Flying Tigers. He
delivered two or three disposals B.25s from America to the warring
Israelites in Palestine just after the war, but by the middle of 1946 he
was back in the East, flying loads of sub-machine-guns from the
Philippines to Indonesia for the benefit of brown men fighting the
Dutch.

At that time there was considerable sympathy in South-East Asia for the
Indonesians in their struggle against the Dutch. In Indo-China the
Viet-Minh forces were engaged in a similar rebellion against French
rule. In Siam there was sympathy with the Asiatics in both cases, though
it would probably be quite wrong to suggest that the Siamese Government
connived at gun-running. It would probably be quite right to say that
when strange freight aircraft turned up at Don Muang aerodrome outside
Bangkok with thin stories of journeys to improbable places, the Siamese
Government saw no reason to initiate officious and unnecessary
investigations.

Dwight Schafter was a small, quick, dark-haired man from Indiana. He
turned up at Don Muang one day flying a brand-new Cornell Carrier. The
Carrier was a great big American freight aeroplane in the same class as
the British Plymouth Tramp; it was powered by two Pratt and Whitney
engines of about seventeen hundred horsepower each, and it was very
completely equipped. It cost about two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in the States; quite an aeroplane.

Dwight Schafter said that he was starting an air service with it from
Saigon in Indo-China to Manila in the Philippines. He did not explain
what he intended to carry between these cities in this expensive
freight aircraft, and no one bothered to ask him. He was known at Don
Muang. He had a Dakota which turned up from time to time for servicing
by Siamese Airways, and he had always paid his bills with cash on the
nail, usually small cubical gold ingots, of which he seemed to have an
inexhaustible supply.

He wanted the Carrier serviced with a routine engine check. He said that
there were no licensed ground engineers in Saigon, which at that time
may or may not have been true; conditions in Indo-China were certainly
very disturbed. In any case, he brought the aircraft into Don Muang to
be checked over, and Connie Shaklin was put on the job with two Chinese
ground engineers to help him. There was about two days' work to be done.

When Connie told me this, I had not, at that time, seen him at work. I
can now say that he was the most thorough and careful engineer that I
have ever met. He was quick enough in doing a job, but he would never
take the slightest thing on chance; in consequence he added to his work
far more than another man would have thought necessary. Dwight Schafter
was clearly very much impressed, because on the evening of the second
day, when they were in the cockpit together at the conclusion of an
engine test run, he said:

"Say, Shak Lin, why don't you leave this outfit, 'n come and work for
me? I'll need somebody like you to help me run this baby." He caressed
the bakelite control wheel of the Carrier.

Connie stared out over the wide brown stretches of the airfield, glowing
golden in the evening light, to the dim blue line of the hills up the
north. "Where are you based?" he asked. "Where would the job be?"

"I run from the Philippines to Saigon," said Schafter carefully. "But
the job's not there. I've got a private strip way out in the country,
where we do the maintenance. It's very quiet there, of course--no
Europeans nearer than a hundred miles. But that won't worry you, because
you speak Chinese."

"I speak Canton," said Connie. "Does that go at your strip?"

He nodded. "The people that you'd come in contact with understand
Canton. Not the peasants, but you wouldn't have to worry about those."
He paused. "It's very isolated, but the job will probably be over in six
months. Give you eight hundred American dollars a month, and
transportation back here to Bangkok."

Eight hundred dollars a month is at the rate of 2,500 a year, a high
wage for a ground engineer even in the East. In all his later life, I
never knew Connie to take the least interest in money. He always earned
a good salary because he was first-class at his job, but he lived on the
Asiatic standard. I know that he had no money at the time of his death;
I think he gave it all away. While he worked for me he preferred to be
paid in cash each month. I don't think he had a bank account at all.

It certainly wasn't for money, then, that he left Siamese Airways and
went to work for Dwight Schafter. I know now that he had been in close
touch with the ecclesiastics of Buddhism while he was working in
Bangkok, and he spoke once of his horoscope. My own belief is that he
felt the need to go out into the wilderness for a few months, to get
away from the crowd for a time to meditate on what he had learned of
Buddhism. That is a possible explanation, and it certainly fits in with
the life that Dwight Schafter offered him, a time of long periods of
inactivity while Dwight was away flying, with only Asiatics for his
company, upon the abandoned airstrip at Damrey Phong.

He had no illusions about the job. "I maintain aircraft," he said, there
in the beautifully finished cockpit of the Carrier, with the long rows
of black-faced instruments in front of him below the windscreen. "I take
no part in wars. I would not fly with you to any foreign country to
deliver any load."

"You don't have to do that," said Schafter, looking at him curiously. "I
don't want you for an aircrew. I've got a C.47 and I've got this baby,
and I guess there's plenty for you to do keeping those two in the air.
I want somebody that I can trust to stay back at the strip and keep the
maintenance of the one ship going while I'm away with the other. I think
I can trust you. What do you say?"

He said, yes. He left Siamese Airways a week later. Dwight Schafter
reappeared at Don Muang in a Dakota with a brown man called Monsieur
Seriot as his co-pilot, and Connie got into it with his small luggage,
contained in an old parachute pack and a tool chest. The Dakota cleared
for Prachaub in Siam and flew towards the sea and down the coast of
Cambodia into Indo-China. Two hours later they landed on the strip at
Damrey Phong.

Damrey Phong lies on the river Kos about fifteen miles from the coast.
It is about a hundred miles from the Siamese border, and about a hundred
and eighty miles as the crow flies from Saigon. It is a small Asiatic
village of palm thatch houses, the homes of a purely rural community.
Superimposed on this was the civilisation of the airstrip, built for
strategic purposes during the war. There were two houses built of wood
in European style, and a store building; there had been a hangar, but
the roof had fallen in with neglect and the remains of the wooden
building were rapidly disintegrating. There was a wharf to which small
coasting motor vessels could come up the river, and here there was a
petrol store with a good stock of fuel and oil in drums. The Cornell
Carrier was parked beside the strip.

The place was in territory held by the Viet-Minh forces in rebellion
against the French, and the pattern of the operations was soon explained
to Connie. The loads carried up till that time had been exclusively
trench mortars, sub-machine-guns, and small arms. They came from
somewhere in the Philippines, he thought the island of Negros. The
Dakota would fly there across the China Sea once every two or three
days, a flight of twelve or thirteen hundred miles. It would return to
Damrey Phong loaded with these arms, all of which were ex-American Army
weapons, mostly in poor condition owing to neglect since the war.
Consignments of ammunition arrived in the same way from time to time.

About half of these weapons and ammunition were sold to the Viet-Minh
forces, but the supply was greater than they could pay for or
recondition. The loads not required remained in the Dakota while it was
refuelled, and it then took off again for some destination in Indonesia.
This flight was made direct, but the empty Dakota frequently returned to
the home airstrip via Bangkok to pick up any stores or spare parts that
might be required.

Connie gathered that it was a very profitable trade.

Whoever financed it, indeed, found it so profitable that he was able to
plough back profits into the business. Wherever the arms came from,
there was larger stuff than sub-machine-guns going for scrap price.
There were anti-tank guns, bazookas, and seventy-five-millimetre field
guns, and ammunition for them, too, neglected and rusty maybe, but still
capable of being put to use. These guns were worth their weight in
silver to the Indonesians, and since the gold and silver mines of
Bencoolen and Madoen were both in rebel hands, there was little
difficulty in paying for them in negotiable currency. The Cornell
Carrier was just the aircraft for the job.

"Six journeys, and this baby will be paid for," said Dwight Schafter.
"After that, it's all clear profit." When Connie got to Damrey Phong the
Carrier had already made two trips, and was loaded and fuelled, ready to
start on a third.

Connie settled down at this out-of-the-way tropical village quite
happily. He had two indifferent engineers under him, one a Burmese lad,
and one a Chinese from Hong Kong. They messed together in one of the
European-style houses where these two engineers lived with two girls of
the village serving as their wives, simple and attractive girls who did
the cooking and housework for them, and who volunteered at once to bring
along a selection of their friends for Connie to choose from. There was
genuine kindness and good feeling behind the offer as well as the desire
to ease the housework caused by a third man, but he refused and chose an
older woman as his servant. He had not come to Damrey Phong for a
domestic life.

Dwight Schafter and his co-pilot, Seriot, lived in the other house upon
the strip, each with a local girl. These girls had an easy time, because
their lords were hardly ever there. There was no other aircrew; Schafter
and his brown co-pilot flew every trip together, alternately in the
Dakota and the Carrier. They were superb as a crew. They flew
practically every day, long, difficult journeys with no meteorological
reports except what they could glean by listening to the scheduled radio
weather forecasts from Singapore, Hong Kong, Manila, and Bangkok; they
were very cunning at that. There were no ground aids to guide them on
their way in the dark night; they always flew the last stages by night.
Alone they had to make their landfall on dark, inaccurately mapped
coasts, alone they had to find the secret airstrips where a few
flickering flares of paraffin laid on the grass served as the sole help
to them for putting down these large, heavily loaded aircraft. Over all
was the continual danger of detection, and a quick burst of tracer into
them from some defending fighter, unseen and unsuspected, that would end
it all. They must have been men of iron, for they came and went over and
over again, and showed no sign of any mental stress. It was a job to
them like any other job, except that it was an exceptionally good one.

In the thirteen weeks that Connie was with them at Damrey Phong the
Carrier made eleven or twelve trips to Indonesia, loaded with two field
guns every time. They kept no records or log books, and Connie could not
recollect exactly how many journeys each machine had made. Between the
Carrier journeys the Dakota flew in field-gun ammunition and small arms,
about the same number of trips. It took the Indonesians about that time
to recondition the first guns. They got them into action against the
Dutch Army after about two months, and raised a hornet's nest for Dwight
Schafter.

The Dutch were no fools, and they knew fairly well where all these arms
were coming from. The trouble was that at that time they controlled only
small areas of Java and Sumatra round about the larger towns, and it was
fairly easy for a resolute pilot coming in by night to land upon an
Indonesian airstrip to discharge his load. The Dutch Air Force pilots
were ready and valiant in flying on night fighter patrols, but sheer
bravery cannot replace the technical equipment necessary for a
successful interception, and at that time they hadn't got it. A number
of Dutch Mustangs were lost on these night fighter patrols; the pilots,
if they survived, were executed immediately by the Republicans, who
fought their war according to an Eastern code. For a time the loss of
aircraft and pilots was more serious to the Dutch than the continued
landing of small arms, and the night patrols became infrequent.

When artillery appeared in rebel hands, the defence was galvanised
again. Coincident with the increased activity, a few airborne radar
equipments came to hand in Batavia, and these were fitted hurriedly in
the B.25s. For the first time the Dutch Air Force had a reasonable
chance of intercepting Dwight Schafter on his night flights, and this,
of course, was quite unknown to him. They saw him on the radar screen as
he was going away one night, the first night they had used it
operationally, but on that occasion they were unable to get within
fifteen miles of him. They now knew his route, however, and they kept
machines from Palembang continuously in the air from then on during the
hours of darkness. On the fifth night he came again in the Dakota, and
they got him.

It was his habit to fly from Damrey Phong southwards and parallel with
the east coast of Malaya and about a hundred miles off-shore, checking
his course by wireless bearings from the broadcasting stations of
Bangkok and Singapore. He flew on on his course to Jogjokarta, the rebel
headquarters in Java, passing somewhat to the east of the island of
Banka, and it was here that the Dutch fighter first made contact with
him. The pilot was under orders not to shoot the intruder down into the
sea as it was necessary to get evidence, and so he held the Dakota in
his radar and followed about three miles behind for an hour and a
quarter till Dwight Schafter crossed the north coast of Java a hundred
miles or so to the east of Batavia, making his usual landfall at a
distinctive turn of the coast north of Tjerebon. There the Mitchell
closed up on him, and shot him down upon the foothills of Mount Tjareme.

Schafter and Seriot were quite prepared for such a thing to happen; it
was one of the occupational hazards of their way of life. The first
thing that they knew was a long burst of tracer fire into the port wing.
The engine stopped with a rending jerk that shook the machine through;
it may have fallen out. Fire broke out immediately from the pierced
petrol tanks.

They had their drill for this contingency all worked out. Both flew in
parachute harness. Escape was by the door at the aft end of the cabin,
and the cabin was always loaded, with an avenue down the middle to
provide a clear run. Seriot was flying the aircraft at the time and
Schafter was at the navigator's table. Schafter plucked him by the arm
and nodded, and then turned and ran aft to snap on his parachute and
jettison the door. The brown man at the wheel counted ten slowly,
trimming the aircraft as he counted; then he left his seat and ran down
the fuselage after his captain, snapped on his parachute, and followed
Schafter into the black void below. The Dakota went on for a few seconds
burning fiercely, then it fell over in a spiral dive and went down in a
shapeless mass of flame. The ammunition started going off before it hit
the ground, and for a time made an interesting display upon the forest
slopes.

Seriot reached the ground uninjured, landing in some paddy-fields on the
edge of the forest. Schafter had bad luck; he fell on the tree-tops,
which checked him, and his parachute collapsed. He was perhaps fifty
feet from the ground. The top branches broke beneath his weight after a
moment and he fell through the branches to the forest floor, clutching
at every branch as he fell. Finally he dropped helplessly from a height
of about twenty feet and fell across a root. He broke his thigh in two
places.

That was the end of it for him. That part of Java is fairly well
populated and villagers found him before dawn; then the Dutch, moving
quickly in trucks, threw a cordon round the district and picked him up
without much difficulty. Seriot put on native clothes supplied by the
villagers and attempted to get through to Jogjokarta, but the Dutch were
too clever and he was arrested a day later.

Schafter was now in hospital in Batavia; when he was well enough to
appear in court he would be tried and sentenced. Seriot was in jail in
Batavia, awaiting trial, but as he was an employee he would not be tried
before his captain.

News of this disaster came to Connie Shaklin at Damrey Phong within
twelve hours, by way of broadcast news from Singapore and from Bangkok.
He had the Carrier at Damrey, and he was working on it when the news
came in. He had a short talk with his two engineers. Clearly the party
was over, and all that there was left for them to do was to wind it up
and disperse. The only real problem was, what should become of the
Cornell Carrier, an aeroplane which only a short time before had cost
nearly seventy thousand pounds, and was presumably worth about that
figure still.

In Dwight Schafter's absence, Connie was responsible at Damrey, and he
took his responsibilities seriously. He paid the month's wages out of
money that had been left with him by Schafter, and went to Bangkok,
travelling by fishing vessel up the coast. It took him about four days.
In Bangkok he went to the Dutch Embassy and explained the position, well
aware that they could not proceed against him upon Siamese territory. He
said that there were stocks of fuel, tools, and spares for the Dakota at
their base in Indo-China and he wanted instructions from Dwight Schafter
as to the disposal of these assets, which were the property of this
American citizen. He did not tell them anything about the Carrier.

His request added one more headache to the many head-aches that Dwight
Schafter had given the Dutch. It was impossible for them to be too
high-handed with the donors of Marshall Aid, and the United States
consul had already intervened to ensure that this criminal awaiting
trial should be imprisoned with all the amenities proper to an American
citizen. The question of his assets upon foreign territory was quite
outside the jurisdiction of the Dutch. In Java they cogitated over it
for twenty-four hours and then decided not to irritate the State
Department any further. They instructed their Ambassador to give Shak
Lin a visa for a visit to Batavia to interview his boss in hospital, and
promised that he would be allowed a safe conduct to depart out of Dutch
territory at will. To make assurance doubly sure, Connie Shaklin went to
the American Embassy in Bangkok and told them all about it before flying
down to Batavia.

He arrived at the Nederland Hotel the day before I did. When I found him
lying on his bed after lunch, he was thinking over his interview in
hospital that morning.

By the time he had told me all this it was three o'clock, and time for
me to go to the Arabia-Sumatran office to find out about my return load
for the Airtruck. They knew all about me. They had found a load of radio
apparatus that had to get back to Holland in quick time for a rebuild; I
was to take this back as far as Bahrein and arrangements would be made
to get it on to Holland from there. It would be ready for loading into
the Airtruck next morning.

I went back to the Nederland Hotel. Connie was in the room still, lying
on his bed. I had been thinking as I walked back through the palm-lined
streets by the canal. "Look, Connie," I said. "I've got a proposition to
put to you. Let's go downstairs and have a drink, out in the cool." The
sun was going down, and it was getting cooler out in the open than it
was in the bedroom.

"Okay," he said. "I've got one for you."

He put his shirt and trousers on, and came downstairs with me to the
open piazza in front of the hotel, with all the little tables under
sunshades. He wore a pair of khaki drill trousers and a white shirt open
at the neck, and sandals. As we turned the corner of the stair I saw his
face in profile, lean, Eastern, and ascetic, and I knew what he reminded
me of. He looked like a priest.

He wouldn't touch anything alcoholic, so I ordered fresh lime squash for
us both. "Look, Connie," I said, "this is what I had in mind. My show
at Bahrein is growing, and the ground side's getting a bit out of hand.
I've been looking after that myself so far, with two Asiatics A-and-Cs
to help me. God knows how it's all going on up there now. Probably not
so good. Would you like to come and work for me as chief engineer? I
need somebody like you."

"I'm still working for Dwight Schafter," he said. "I've got his Carrier
to look after."

"He can't go on employing you for long," I said. "From what you tell me
he'll get a prison sentence as soon as he comes out of hospital."

He nodded. "Yes, he will go to prison, probably for years. But that
doesn't mean that he won't want to employ me. He's made enough money to
employ a dozen people while he serves his sentence, and still be a
wealthy man when he comes out. The Dutch can't touch his money. That's
not here." He paused. "If he wants me to stay on and serve his interests
while he is in prison, I will do so. I would like to come and work for
you in Bahrein, Tom. I could help you with your Asiatic engineers and
labour. But until Dwight Schafter comes out of prison I will stay with
him."

I took a drink of my lime squash and lit a cigarette. It was no good
saying that Dwight Schafter was a mercenary soldier of fortune, about to
be sentenced very rightly on a criminal offence, that he had been
gun-running for the money there was in it, that he richly deserved all
he got. That was the Western way of looking at things, but they seem
different to Asiatic eyes. Connie probably liked and respected the man,
probably regarded him as one who risked his life and liberty to help
millions of Asiatics in their struggle for freedom. When liberty was
lost, Connie would not abandon Dwight Schafter.

I sat there smoking for a time in silence, looking out over the canal to
the white buildings on the other side.

"What's going to happen to the Carrier, Connie?" I asked at last.

"I said I had a proposition for you," he replied. "Shall I make it
now?"

I glanced at him and nodded.

"I think you should take over that Carrier and fly it to Bahrein and
operate it there," he said.

Frankly, that thought had never entered my head, although I suppose it
might have done. The Carrier was a real aeroplane compared with the
small stuff I was operating. I measured my resources in hundreds of
pounds at that time, but the Carrier cost more than sixty thousand. It
was so far beyond my capabilities that I had never bothered even to
consider the economics of operating a thing like that. But now that
Connie mentioned it, I knew at once that in the Persian Gulf that
aeroplane would pay. It could carry a big truck. It could carry five
tons of machinery. It could carry a fair-sized boat, or about ninety
pilgrims at a time over Arabia to Jiddah for their pilgrimage to Mecca.
It was a logical extension of the business I was doing.

"I couldn't pay for it," I said. "I've not got the money. And what makes
you think that Schafter would want to part with it?"

"What else can he do? If he leaves it on the field at Damrey Phong some
war lord will turn up before long and take it, and probably crash it. If
he has it flown down here, the Dutch will take it from him. If he has it
flown back to America, his own Government may take it from him to
appease the Dutch. There are not many things that he can do with that
aeroplane, if he wants ever to see his money again. But one of the first
things he must do is to find somebody to fly it away out of this area to
some other part of the world altogether, and preferably into the British
Empire, where the laws of property are clearly framed and easy to
understand. I think if you could use it, he would charter it to you,
provided you would take it to Bahrein and operate it there."

He paused. "If you did that, I would ask Schafter if I might go with it,
and work for you. I think he would agree to that, because that aeroplane
is by far the greatest of the responsibilities that I now have for him.
I think that he would want me to stay with it."

We talked this over for half an hour, and the more I thought of it the
more I liked the idea. I wanted Connie to come and take over the
maintenance of my little fleet, and he wouldn't come unless I took the
Carrier too. Well, I was willing enough provided that I didn't have to
pay for this large aeroplane; anybody would have been. And the way he
put it, my fairy godmother was going to give it to me free.

He got up presently and hailed a rickshaw, and went off in it to the
hospital to see Dwight Schafter again before the nurses packed him up
for the night. I sat on in front of the hotel in the cool of the
evening, smoking and resting, with the fatigue oozing out of me. I was
tired. It was very, very good to have found Connie again. It was like
seeing a bit of light at the end of a tunnel.

He came back presently, and found me sitting in the same place. He
dropped down into the same chair beside me. "I told Dwight about you and
your business at Bahrein," he said. "I said that you would take the
Carrier on charter if it was available, and I would go with it to
maintain it. He will think it over during the night. He wants you to go
and see him early in the morning, before you leave."

I nodded. "You'll come along?"

He shook his head. "It will be better if you talk your business with him
alone. I am a technical man. I am not interested in money matters."

"Okay," I said. "One little thing, though. Did you tell him I could fly
it?"

"You can fly it," he replied.

"It's ten times heavier than anything I've ever flown before, ten
times," I said. "I don't want there to be any misunderstanding about
that. What happens if I crash it?"

"You can talk about that with Schafter," he replied. "But I know this,
that you will fly it, and you will not crash it."

I glanced at him, but he was quite serious. He spoke almost as if it was
a prophecy. "Oh, you know that, do you?" I replied. "More than I do. I'm
used to flying things that I land with my arse down on the ground, not
twenty feet up in the air. Still, I don't mind having a stab at it if
nobody else minds."

"You will have no difficulty," he said. "It is just like any other
aeroplane. They are easier to fly as they get bigger, provided you are
not afraid of them. And you will not be afraid."

I grinned. "It's a long time since I've been afraid of an aeroplane."

I went to see Dwight Schafter early next morning. He was in a good ward
in a normal hospital; the ward sister was a Dutchwoman, the nurses
Javanese girls. The only thing that marked him as a prisoner was a
sentry on the door of the ward, a Dutch soldier in American battledress,
armed with a rifle. He let me pass to see his prisoner without any
question, which relieved me; I had thought that I might have to get all
sorts of permits.

I sat down by Schafter's bed and told him who I was, and he came to the
point at once. "Shak Lin said you were here," he said. "He told me about
you. Said you wanted to charter my Carrier."

"I can use it," I said. "But I can't pay much for it. If I'm to take it
to my operating base--that's Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf--it's going to
cost me six hundred pounds in fuel and oil and landing fees to get it
there, as a start. That's got to be recovered out of profits before I
can pay you anything at all for the hire."

"Bolony," he said. "Fuel will cost you nothing. There's over twelve tons
of hundred-octane fuel in the store at Damrey Phong right now. You can
fill her up before you start and take five tons with you in the cabin.
That'll get you there. If you don't take it, someone else will. There's
oil there, too. The rest is chicken feed."

"Maybe it's chicken feed to you," I said. "It's not to me. I've got to
fly another pilot out to Bangkok to take over the machine I'm flying
now. I suppose his fare is chicken feed, too."

"That Carrier's worth five thousand bucks a month in charter fees," he
said.

"You'd better find someone who can pay that much, then," I replied. "I
can't. I'm operating in a small way. You'd better offer it to Pan
American."

"All right, wise guy," he said. "What's your angle on it?"

We started in then, and in a quarter of an hour we had thrashed out what
I still think was equitable in the circumstances. I was to take the
machine to Bahrein with any fuel and spares from Damrey that I could
carry in it, with Connie Shaklin as my engineer. I was to hold it
insured as soon as it reached Bahrein; insurance from Damrey was hardly
practical. I was to charter it at the rate of a dollar a month for three
months or three hundred hours flying time after reaching Bahrein,
whichever was the least. In that three months Schafter's attorney in
Indianapolis would make contact with me at Bahrein and I would deal with
him if I wanted to buy it, or charter it further, or surrender it to
him. The machine was not to be flown into Dutch or U.S. territory.

"Jesus," he said. "I wish some guy had given me a deal like this when I
was young. I wouldn't have needed to go flying guns."

"It's fair enough," I said.

"Maybe. But you're a darned lucky guy all the same."

I left the hospital, and went to the Arabia-Sumatran office, and
borrowed a typist, and had copies of our draft charter agreement made,
and took them back to the hospital for him to sign. We talked for some
time about the flying qualities of the machine; he already knew from
Connie that I had no large aeroplane experience. He was more phlegmatic
about that than I had thought he would be; from something he said I knew
that Connie had given me a good character. "I bring her in about a
hundred knots," he said. "Hundred and ten if it's full load or very
rough. Take it easy, and you'll find her quite all right. You'll have
Shak Lin with you as flight engineer?"

"That's right," I said. "He'll be with me."

He turned and glanced at me from the bed. "Say," he said. "You've known
that guy a long time, haven't you?"

"We started off together as boys in the same air circus," I said. "I
haven't seen him since those days."

"Oh.... Well, he's a good engineer. And he's one you can really
trust. You see the way he's come down here to find out what I wanted
done. But--say, he's a queer sort of a guy in other ways, isn't he?"

"I don't know," I said. "I only met him yesterday. What sort of ways?"

"He's got some mighty strange ideas for an engineer," said Schafter.
"It's a thing you ought to know about, since you're taking him on. About
religion, and all that."

I nodded slowly. Connie always had been one for going to odd churches,
and he had the look of a priest. It was a pity. "Does it affect his
work?" I asked.

"I'll say it does. It makes his work a whole lot better."

I glanced at this American gun-runner in enquiry. It wasn't quite the
answer that I had expected.

"I've been away a lot of the time," he said. "I don't know all of what's
been going on at Damrey Phong. He's got a statue of a Buddha set up in a
little sort of a pagoda just by where we park the aircraft. One of these
painted clay Buddhas, you know, like you see in the villages. He has a
sort of a prayer meeting there each day before they start work on the
machines, and after they knock off."

I blinked at him.

"That's right. He runs a sort of Buddhist prayer meeting, all in Chinese
or Siamese or something. He's got both the other engineers coming to it,
and the local labour, and the girls--they come along, too. See them all
kneeling down in front of this Buddha with flowers in their hands,
saying their prayers, every morning. Then up they get, and straight off
to start work on the machines. And the same thing, as soon as they knock
off. Down they go on their knees before that painted image, and pray for
about ten minutes. Then off they go."

"Is that usual with ground staff in this part of the world?" I asked.

"I'll say it's not. I've never seen it done before."

"Did Shak Lin start it, then?"

"I think he did. I think he must have done."

"Did you ask him why he did it?"

"I never had much time," he said. "I've always been flying. I did say
something once, and all he said was something like, men worked better if
they prayed." He grinned. "Just like a preacher back in Indiana. But I
will say this, those boys at Damrey Phong did a good job for me. Most
Asiatic engineers, you know--you just can't trust a thing they do. They
mean all right, but they're not responsible. Well, these boys weren't
like that. They'd look you right in the eye and tell you when they'd
done a job on the aircraft that wasn't quite so hot. Like using copper
wire for locking instead of steel because they were out of steel wire,
or putting gasket cement on an old washer to make it tight because there
weren't any new ones. Things like that. They'd just come and tell you.
Like as if they were as good as you, and weren't afraid of being bawled
out." He paused. "I never knew Asiatic engineers like that before," he
said. "It's always been the other way." He glanced at me. "Pack of
lying, crawling rats, mostly. You know."

I knew it only too well. "I don't know the East," I said. "I worked in
Egypt in the war, but this is my first time out here. I've never met an
Asiatic engineer I'd like to trust. Except Shaklin, of course, and he's
really British."

"I'll be interested to hear how you made out with him one day," said
Schafter. "Maybe there's something in this religion business after all.
I wouldn't know." He hesitated. "My co-pilot--he's an Asiatic, he used
to go to these prayer meetings in front of the Buddha, regular. See him
kneeling there with all the others, with a gladiola blossom in his
hands. Funny, to see a pilot doing that..."

I smiled. "You didn't go yourself?"

"I did once," he said unexpectedly. "The morning we were taking off in
the C.47 for this last trip here." He hesitated. "I guess I was kind of
worried, or I wouldn't have done a thing like that. I reckoned that the
artillery must be in action by that time and the Dutchmen, they'd be
hopping mad, 'n we might meet more opposition than we'd had till then.
And when I came out of the John that morning there was nobody around, no
girls or anyone, and there they all were praying at the Buddha. So I
didn't want to be snooty, see? I went and picked a flower and knelt down
with them, too. I couldn't understand what Shak Lin and the rest were
saying, and I got to thinking about the white wooden church at home with
all the cars parked outside, and the minister preaching, and the sun
coming in through the stained glass, back home in Shelbyville where I
was raised, in Indiana." He paused. "I guess it does you good to have a
quiet time to think, like that, before you take off on a dicey trip."

I would have liked to have stayed and talked to him longer, but my load
would be arriving at the airport, and I had to get off that day. I said
good-bye to him, and left the hospital, and went back to the hotel and
paid the bill and picked up Connie and drove out to Kermajoran. Two
hours later we were in the air in the Airtruck, on our way north to
Palembang.

We stayed there for the night. I sent a cable to Gujar Singh in Bahrein
telling him to drop everything and come by airline to Bangkok at once to
meet us there, and told him to cable me care of the Flying Control at
Don Muang to say when he would arrive. Next day we made an early start
and got to Songkhla in the south of Siam after landing to refuel at
Singapore and at Kuantan. We landed at Bangkok about midday next day.

I saw very little of Connie in the two days that we waited at Bangkok
for Gujar Singh. I had a room at the Trocadero Hotel, but he wouldn't
stay there with me. He said that he had Asiatic friends who wanted to
put him up, and I found later that he was staying in a Buddhist
monastery just by the Wat Cheng pagoda. He came along to the hotel each
morning and evening to find out the form and when I wanted him; then he
would go off and I wouldn't see him again. I got a guide to take me
round some of the pagodas, the loveliest sort of churches that I ever
saw in all my life. I sent a lot of picture postcards of them to Dad
and Mum, back home in Southampton, between the gasworks and the docks. I
wanted to make them understand, if possible.

While I was waiting in Bangkok I made a few enquiries about the
formalities of flying in and out of Indo-China from Siam. At that time
there was no very settled government in Saigon, and the French, who were
in power by virtue of their army, probably had no idea that Dwight
Schafter's Cornell Carrier was in the country at all. It seemed somewhat
superfluous in those circumstances to seek for a permission to take it
out of Indo-China, but if I did not do that, could I bring it into Siam
without getting it taken from me by the Siamese?

I mentioned this worry to Connie when he came to see me on the morning
of the second day. He went, I think, to the Siamese Airways manager at
Don Muang, and together they went to some department of the Government
about it. Dwight Schafter's prestige amongst the Asiatics was high, and
the Siamese would put no obstacle in Connie's way as the agent of Dwight
Schafter in the disposal of his assets. By the time Gujar Singh arrived,
Connie was able to assure us that we had leave to fly in and out of Don
Muang with no questions asked. For the sake of the record, when we left
for Indo-China in the Airtruck we cleared for Hua Hin, a Siamese seaside
resort about a hundred miles to the south.

I unloaded my cargo of radio apparatus for Holland from the Airtruck
before taking off and left it in the bonded store at Don Muang; if
anything should happen to the Airtruck in Indo-China, I didn't want to
lose the cargo. I took off from Don Muang early one morning with Connie
and Gujar squatting on their bags behind me in the empty cabin. Three
hours later I was coming in to land upon the strip at Damrey Phong.

That strip was very beautiful. There was a mountain about two thousand
feet high just to the north of it which made things a bit awkward on the
circuit, but this mountain was covered in flowering trees, the Flame of
the Forest, and these trees were all in bloom, so that the side of the
mountain was covered with orange-red splashes on the jungle green. The
little atap village was just by the strip, and there were flowers
everywhere, bougainvillaea and hibiscus and frangipani all over the
houses and the little streets. Beyond the village was the river, and a
flat plain with hills again in the blue distance beyond. It was a quiet,
happy, beautiful little place. Nothing had ever happened there before
the airstrip came, and now that Dwight Schafter had passed on, probably
nothing would ever happen there again.

The Cornell Carrier was parked just off the middle of the strip by the
two European houses. I put the Airtruck down and taxied to park her by
the Carrier; as I did so men and women came streaming from the village.
I swung the Airtruck quickly into the parking position and stopped the
propellers in case the natives came crowding round, but they formed a
sort of circle round the aircraft at a safe distance, waiting for us to
get out.

I turned in my seat, and said to Connie, "It's a pretty little place."

He smiled. "I am glad to see the Carrier still here. I was worried that
some war lord might have gone off with it."

We got out of the machine, and he introduced us to his two mechanics, U
Myin, the Burmese lad, and Chai Tai Foong, the Chinese from Hong Kong. U
Myin spoke no English and seemed a bit dumb generally, but Tai Foong
could make himself understood in English and seemed brighter all round.

We went at once to have a look at the Carrier. The people parted to let
us through; they were mostly men and children, some of the men very old.
Such young women as were there were, I think, the mistresses or
housekeepers of the engineers. Relations were evidently very good with
these people. They paid little attention to me or to Gujar, but when
Connie spoke to any of them, or even when he turned his head, they
touched the right hand to the forehead and bowed to him.

The Carrier was in very good order. She was only four or five months
old, of course, and she had only done about three hundred hours
flying--nothing in the life of a machine like that. In the cabin, or
hold, where the load was carried, she had had rough usage, but
externally the paint was hardly scratched, and in the pilot's cockpit
everything looked new. She had been very carefully maintained by Connie
and his boys; in the cockpit everything was spotlessly clean, the
windscreens newly polished, the safety belts folded neatly across each
seat as if for an inspection. I was amazed that fortune should have
brought so fine an aeroplane into my hands. The only thing now
was--could I fly her?

She was only half full of fuel, which suited me for a first solo. We had
a meal of rice and little side dishes of curried fish and chillies,
served by the girls in the house of the two engineers, and then Connie
and I went out to the Carrier to try my luck. We spent about an hour on
the machine together, mostly in the cockpit, till I knew all the
controls by heart. Then, with Connie by my side in the co-pilot's seat,
I started up the engines, ran her warm and ran them up to power for the
engine check. Then I throttled back to idling and eased the brakes, and
taxied out on to the strip.

A queer thought came to me then as I taxied down to the far end, in that
lovely place. I leaned over to Connie by my side in the wide cockpit.
"We've come a long way since we used to drive that Ford in Gretna Green,
in Cobham's Circus," I said. I had not sat beside him since, that I
could recollect.

He smiled. "Those were good days."

I turned the machine at the end and the strip lay stretched out before
us; there was little or no wind. I was in no hurry. I sat there for a
few minutes doing the final cockpit check and getting comfortable; then
when I was ready to go I raised my head and had a good look round. About
half the people, including Gujar Singh and the two engineers, were
standing watching under the shade of the wing of the Airtruck, but the
rest were kneeling in front of the Buddha on his throne under a little
palm thatch roof. It was all very bright and colourful upon that
aerodrome.

I said to Connie, "What are they doing there? Praying?"

"Yes," he said.

"For me, that I'm not going to make a muck of this?"

He laughed. "For us both. Probably more for me than for you."

"Well," I said, "it's nice to know somebody cares." And with that I
pushed the throttles open and we took off down the strip.

As Connie had said, she handled just like any other aeroplane, except
that she had better manners than most. I climbed her slowly straight out
over the sea to about five thousand feet, then turned and came back over
Damrey Phong. I played about with her up there for twenty minutes till I
had the feel of her with engines on or throttled, flaps up or down, and
then I brought her down and did a circuit and made a long approach. The
landing went all right; the undercarriage was so good it didn't seem to
matter how you put her down. I took her off again; in all I did four
landings on her without incident. When I taxied in beside the Airtruck I
was very pleased with myself. I could fly that thing.

Fuelling at Damrey Phong was quite a business. The petrol was in
forty-gallon drums in a store down by the river, and these drums had to
be rolled up by hand to the machine, a distance of about half a mile. We
needed about six hundred gallons to put into the Carrier, and about
twenty-five more drums to load into the cabin to be taken with us on the
flight. There was a small portable motor pump to lift the fuel from the
drums twenty feet up into the wing tanks, but even with this help the
work was severe and lengthy. Damrey Phong, though healthy, is a humid
place, and we were all sweating in torrents before long.

We could not get it done that evening. As the sun went down I told
Connie to knock off the men; we would finish in the morning. I had an
idea that he would want some daylight for his worshipping before the
Buddha, and we couldn't go on working after dark, anyway. I walked
across to the house that had been occupied by Dwight Schafter and his
co-pilot Seriot, which was where I was to sleep, and threw off my wet
shirt and trousers, and stood under the kerosene-tin shower, and put on
dry clothes.

When I came out, it was evening. There was still a golden sunlight on
the big hill by the strip, but overhead the sky was getting blue, and
the light was going. I had guessed correctly about Connie. He was
standing in front and to one side of the Buddha, and all the people were
kneeling in front of it, with flowers in their hands, as Dwight Schafter
had said.

I strolled up closer to see what was going on. I could not understand
what he was saying, but it was clear that he was leading them in prayer.
One phrase of four words was continually repeated, as in a litany.
Connie would say a sentence or two, facing the statue, and the rest of
them would then repeat this phrase with him, very reverently.

It was with something of a shock that I saw Gujar Singh kneeling there
amongst them, his turban on his head, a flower in his hands beneath his
great black beard. I was the only one who was not praying, the only one
from the West in Damrey Phong.

Perhaps, like Dwight Schafter, I didn't want to be snooty. Perhaps it
was that I couldn't bear to be left out. It couldn't do any harm, in any
case. I went forward and went down upon my knees in the last row; I
couldn't understand what it was all about, but that didn't seem to
matter. There was an Asiatic by me, a coolie who had been rolling
barrels all the afternoon; he had a sheaf of gladiola blossoms in his
hand. Quietly he parted them, and gave me two to hold.

Beryl had put her head in the gas oven because I had been proud, and
righteous in the eyes of other people, and unkind. That had set my life
upon the course that in the end had brought me to this place, far from
Southampton docks and my own people, worshipping with natives in an
Eastern village. Beryl had died because I was proud and unkind. How many
other people should I kill like that before I died too?

Presently I realised that Connie was speaking in English. He had not
altered his posture or his tone, but he was saying, "It is written in
the Dhammapada, 'You yourself must make the effort. Buddhas only show
the way. Cut down the love of self as one cuts the lotus in the autumn.
Give yourself to following the Path of Peace.'" And then he repeated,
and the others with him, the phrase that I had noticed before, Om Mani
Padme Hum.

I stayed there on my knees with them till it was nearly dark.




CHAPTER 4

    O spiritual pilgrim rise: the night has grown her single horn:
    The voices of the souls unborn are half a-dream with Paradise.

    JAMES ELROY FLECKER


We got the loading finished next morning and got the fuel drums lashed
down in the cabin. I had no intention of flying the Carrier by night
till I was more used to her, and so we made the first day's stage to
Bangkok only. We had to stop there anyway, to load the cargo that I had
left there back into the Airtruck.

On Connie's advice I engaged Chai Tai Foong to come with us to join the
staff at Bahrein; he was a good lad who spoke a little English, and he
knew the Carrier. The other one, U Myin, I had no place for, but I
offered him a passage in the Carrier to Rangoon, where we should land
after Bangkok. I didn't quite know how Gujar would get on in foreign
countries and I meant to stay with him as far as Calcutta, where he
would be on his own ground. After that I would leave him and go ahead,
because the Carrier was much faster than the Airtruck and had a much
greater range.

We had a meal at midday, and got off for Bangkok after lunch. It was
affecting in a way, because the people of the village were so deeply
grieved to see Connie go. He had his service at the Buddha in the
morning before starting work and most of the village turned up for it,
women as well as men; there must have been over two hundred people there
on the strip. It only lasted about ten minutes. The people hung about
the strip all day. They paid no attention to the rest of us, but their
eyes followed Connie everywhere. A curious thing was that three monks
turned up in yellow robes, with shaven heads and bare feet. They made
the same obeisance to him that the villagers made, touching their
fingers to the forehead and bowing low. This seemed odd to me, but I was
sorting out the maps with Gujar at the time and didn't take much notice
of what they were doing. The trouble was that we had only one set of
maps for the two aircraft, which made things a bit tricky. We couldn't
fly in company, because the Airtruck cruised at a hundred miles an hour
and the Carrier at a hundred and fifty. At the cruising speed of the
Airtruck the Carrier would have been just about falling out of the air.

There was quite a good assortment of spares for the Carrier in Dwight
Schafter's house, and several valuable bits of ground equipment--towing
bars, hydraulic jacks, and all that sort of thing. In all there was over
a ton of stuff. We put this in the Airtruck for the flight to Bangkok as
the Carrier was loaded to the limit, meaning to transfer it at Don Muang
when the Carrier had used up some of her fuel load. In this way we
managed to take with us everything of importance that Dwight Schafter
had at Damrey Phong except about four tons of petrol; that we had to
leave in the store for the benefit of whoever came along.

We taxied down to the end of the strip together and took off in turn,
Gujar Singh first in the Airtruck with the two engineers; I followed in
the Carrier with Connie by my side. I turned after taking off and
followed Gujar round upon a left-hand circuit before getting upon
course, and having raised the flaps and throttled back the boost and set
the revs I glanced out of the window at the strip on my left side. The
whole village seemed to be standing by the Buddha looking up at us; they
were not waving. They were just standing there motionless and sad,
watching us as we flew away.

We flew past Gujar Singh and waved at him, and went on on a compass
course that would bring us to the Menam river between Bangkok and the
sea. I had given our one map to Gujar, having made a few extracts from
it on a sheet of paper. The Carrier had an automatic pilot, and at our
sector height and on our course I put this in and sat for ten minutes
watching that it was working all right. Then Connie and I left our seats
and went to the wireless, and found Bangkok broadcasting station, and
took a series of bearings on it to check our course. In the course of an
hour the bearings gradually crept round from 319 degrees to 357 degrees
magnetic, which should have brought us to the river, and when we got to
that point and stood up to look out of the windscreen, there was the
river. It was as easy as that. We landed at Don Muang about an hour
ahead of Gujar Singh. The Siamese Control officers knew the Carrier
well; they were most tactful, and asked no questions.

We transferred the loads next morning and took off about midday for
Rangoon, flying by the Three Pagodas Pass and the line of the Burma-Siam
railway made in the war with the labour of Asiatics and prisoners of war
at a vast cost in human life. Again we got to Rangoon an hour or so
before Gujar, plodding along behind us at a hundred miles an hour. I was
able to raise some more maps at Mingadon airport; we stayed the night in
the hostel there and said good-bye to U Myin and went on at dawn next
day. That day we landed to refuel the Airtruck at Chittagong after
flying up the coast of Arakan, and took off in the early afternoon for
Calcutta.

At Calcutta I left Gujar to follow on behind at the best speed he could
make, and went ahead with Connie in the Carrier. We made one long hop to
Karachi in the day, flying right over India at about ten thousand feet,
stayed there the night, and left next morning for Bahrein direct. We got
there in the early afternoon and circled the familiar airport in our new
large aircraft. There was the other Airtruck parked outside, and Arjan
Singh with the ground staff standing looking up at this strange freight
aircraft that was coming in to land. They didn't know it was a new
addition to the fleet.

In the next few weeks I had a lot of work. I reorganised the ground
staff and put Connie in charge of all maintenance. I wanted to get Gujar
Singh on to flying the Carrier as soon as possible, but I was resolved
that he should do a hundred hours on it with me as co-pilot before
taking it on alone. With two of us off nearly every day in the Carrier,
because there was a lot of business for it from the start, it was
urgently necessary for us to get another pilot. By that time I was
getting letters in almost every mail from British pilots wanting a job,
but I was getting on all right with Asiatics at a quarter the salary and
probably harder working. I got an Iraqi called Hosein who had been an
officer in the Iraqi Air Force; he could fly twin-engined stuff and so
Gujar put him on the Airtruck right away. I now had four aircraft all
going hard, and so I found I had to get another boy clerk and more
labourers. It was getting to be quite a business.

There was work for the Carrier, more work than we could handle, from the
first day. For the first time we had an aircraft in the Persian Gulf
that was really designed to carry heavy commercial loads; we could take
a motor pump out four hundred miles into the desert, or a
concrete-mixer, or a truck. We could fetch a crashed aircraft from
Sharjah or Kuweit and take it to Egypt in a few hours for repair, and we
did that more than once, returning with loads of cases of machinery or
engineering stores. There was all manner of work for a big freight
aircraft, we discovered, in the Persian Gulf, and it showed no sign
whatsoever of getting any less.

In Batavia, Dwight Schafter came up for trial by the Dutch, and got
three years imprisonment; his co-pilot Seriot got twelve months. I wrote
to Schafter about that time saying that the Carrier was safe and earning
its keep, and I should be willing to negotiate with his attorney to buy
it at my own price by instalments over a period. So far as I could see,
the thing would have paid its cost in about two years; if I could spread
the instalment payments over that time I should get it without having to
put down any capital at all. Dwight Schafter, I felt, wouldn't need the
money till he'd done his sentence; it might well be that he would agree
to such a scheme.

In the hangar, Connie got the organisation into order in a very short
time. I had increased the staff by the Chinese, Chai Tai Foong, that we
had brought from Damrey Phong and by another Iraqi, so that I now had
Connie, four licensed engineers, and five engineering labourers, the
latter all Arabs from Bahrein. I had suggested to Connie that I should
get him into the radio operators' chummery with me, but he wouldn't have
it. "I am an Asiatic," he said. "It would lead to difficulties."

"I don't see why it should. You're only technically an Asiatic, after
all."

He smiled. "Perhaps. But I should prefer to live in the souk. I must
learn Arabic now, and anyway, I shall feel freer there."

He had a great ability to learn languages, I was to discover; three
months seemed to be quite enough for him to become fluent in any Eastern
language. "All right," I said. "I don't want to press you to live on the
station. Where are you staying now?"

"Gujar Singh has found me a room near his place," he said. "A room in
the house of an Arab merchant who sells silks. I shall be all right
there."

"It's a good long way from the hangar," I said. "What will you do--walk
it?"

He grinned. "Do what Gujar Singh does--get a bicycle." My chief pilot
came to work each day on an old rusty lady's bicycle, his black beard
flowing fiercely in the breeze.

All this expansion made a considerable stir on Bahrein aerodrome.
Practically every month I had to go to the R.A.F. and ask if I could
lease another building. Although in theory I was making money hand over
fist, there was never any of it in evidence; it all went back into
aeroplanes and tools and spares--into various capital accounts. I should
have been hard put to it to find the money to erect the simplest wooden
hut, but fortunately there were plenty of empty buildings belonging to
the R.A.F. that had been put up in the war and had been empty ever
since. The accountant officer was very helpful; whenever I wanted a new
store or office he could usually produce something, although on a very
short-term lease. I was lucky in the officers I had to deal with,
perhaps; certainly without the help and encouragement of the R.A.F. I'd
never have been able to build up the business in those early years.

I had no time, of course, for any social intercourse, nor could I have
kept my end up in such matters. I got my education at the fitter's
bench, not at a university. The Persian Gulf states are advised by a
British Resident, Sir William Faulkner, who lives at the Residency in
Bahrein with Secretaries and whatnot from the Foreign Office; I saw
these people sometimes as they came and went in aircraft at the
aerodrome, but I never spoke to any of them for years. I never did any
work for them because my business was freight alone. I've never put a
passenger seat into an aeroplane unless its weight was charged for, or
employed a stewardess, and I hope I never shall. I went into that
business to make money, not to lose it, and my sort of aircraft weren't
the sort to carry diplomats about the place.

I went on living at the radio operators' chummery and in the sergeants'
mess.

I got to know some of the young officers quite well, however. When they
went on leave I could often give them a free ride to India or to Egypt
if they didn't mind sitting on their luggage with the load in an
unheated and unsoundproofed cabin, and I was always glad to help them in
this way, as they helped me. A lot of them had nothing much to do, and
they were keen on aeroplanes. I did far more flying at Bahrein in those
post-war years than ever the R.A.F. did, and these boys used to come
down to the hangar sometimes and just sit around and watch. Some of them
got to know as much of what was going on in my crowd as I did myself, or
a bit more.

Flight Lieutenant Allen came into my office once for something or
other--I forget what it was. As he turned to go he grinned and said,
"How's old Harpic getting on?"

"Who do you call Harpic?" I enquired. It was a new one to me.

"Sorry," he said. "Mr. Shaklin. Your chief engineer."

"Doing all right," I replied. "Why do you call him that?"

"He's clean round the bend."

"He's a bloody good engineer," I said. "He's brisking up the other boys.
I'm getting the maintenance properly done now that I've given up trying
to run everything myself."

"He talks religion to them all the time."

"Well, what of it?" I said. "Do some of you young muggers good if you
thought about your immortal souls a bit."

"You can't maintain aircraft with the Koran in one hand and a spanner in
the other. Or can you?"

"Course you can," I said. "He's doing it. Who told you, anyway?" Because
I knew that anything of that sort that was going on in my hangar went on
in Arabic. I was starting to understand a bit of Arabic myself by that
time, but I was pretty sure that Flight Lieutenant Allen didn't know a
word.

"The barman in the mess was telling us. It's getting talked about all
over the town. They say that if you want religion you can go and listen
to the Imam in the mosque or you can go and listen to old Harpic in the
hangar."

I grinned. "Do you a bit of good to go to either." He went away, and I
sat on at the bare table that I used as a desk, listening to the
typewriter in the next room, slightly uneasy. Connie was getting talked
about, it seemed. I should know more of what was going on.

I knew it happened mostly in the afternoon, in the last hour of work
before they knocked off for the afternoon prayer. I went down to the
hangar that afternoon and got into the cockpit of the Fox-Moth with a
pencil and a note-book; I had intended for some time to fit a blind
flying panel in the instrument board and I wanted to scheme it out. But
that wasn't really the reason that I went.

Standing beside the Fox was the first Airtruck, and Connie was doing a
top overhaul on the port engine. He had a working platform rigged up by
the engine of a couple of planks on trestles, and he was up on this
thing with a ground engineer and one of the Arab boys. Most of the rest
of the staff seemed to have arranged their work to get within earshot;
they were all doing something, but they were listening at the same
time. Up on his platform working on the engine Connie was talking to
them.

He was speaking partly in English and partly in Arabic, which he could
already speak much better than I could. "We are a peculiar people," he
was saying, "we who care for aeroplanes. For common men it is enough to
pray five times in each day, as the Imam dictates and as is ordained in
the Koran. But we are different, we engineers. We are called to a higher
task than common men, and Allah will require much more from us than
that." He paused, and said to the man working with him, "Got a
five-sixteenth box there? Thanks. Now hold it, just like that."

They worked on for a time in silence. "You have heard from the Imam of
the journey that the Prophet of God made, when he was roused from sleep
by the angel Gabriel who mounted him upon the horse with eagle's wings,
Al Borak. You know how he passed by the Three Temptations and traversed
the Seven Heavens till he came to the House of Adoration and the
Presence of God. God then gave to the Prophet the main doctrines of the
Faith, and ordained that prayers should be said by the faithful each
day." He paused, and slipped the nuts collected in his hand into an old
cigarette tin. "Now, draw her off gently. Wait a minute--the gasket's
sticking on this side." They disengaged the cylinder head, and passed it
down carefully from hand to hand to the ground.

Connie straightened up. "How many times were prayers to be said each
day?"

There was a momentary silence. Then two or three said at once, "Fifty
times." And someone added, "--Teacher." I noted that for thinking over
later on. This thing was going deeper than I knew about.

"That is correct," said Connie. "Fifty times. I see you all don't know
this story, or you have forgotten it, and yet of all men you should know
it. Do you not know that when the Prophet descended from the Presence he
met Moses?" One or two of the men nodded. "Moses asked how many times
God had required the people to pray, and Mahomet said, fifty times. And
Moses told him that it was impracticable, that he had tried it with the
Children of Israel and he had never succeeded in getting anybody to pray
fifty times a day. He said that the Prophet should go back to God and
humbly beg that this number of prayers each day should be reduced.
Mahomet did so, and on coming from the Presence he met Moses again, and
told him that the number was reduced to forty prayers a day. 'That is
still too much,' said Moses. 'The people will not pray so many times.
You must go back and ask Him to reduce it further.'" He paused. "Let's
have that No. 2 cranked cylinder head spanner."

Presently he went on, "Urged by Moses, it is written that the Prophet
went back and back to God until the number of prayers was reduced to
five each day. And still Moses said, 'Do you think you can exact five
prayers a day from your people? By Allah, I have been through this with
the Children of Israel, and it cannot be done. Go back and ask Him to
reduce it yet again.' But the Prophet said, 'No, I will not go back. I
have asked His indulgence already until I am ashamed. My people are not
Israelites, and they shall worship Him five times a day.' That is the
reason why every Believer has to say his prayers to God five times each
day."

He spoke again to the other engineer about the cranked spanners, and
then decided to loosen a part of the induction manifold to get at the
nuts. He went on, "That is the story that you know and have been taught
as true Believers, only some of you seem to have forgotten it. But you
will see that five prayers is the minimum; the number was brought down
to be within the power of the unlettered, common man--a camel driver, or
a shepherd. But we are not like that, we engineers. We are men of
understanding and of education, on whom is laid responsibility that men
may travel in these aeroplanes as safely as if they were sitting by the
well in the cool of the evening. We are not men like camel drivers or
shepherds, and God will demand much more from us than from them. From
men like us, the full tally of fifty prayers a day will be demanded.
Five of them must be made in public or in private, according to the way
you know, but this is the bare minimum for all men. From men like you
another forty-five prayers are demanded. I will tell you about them."

They detached a part of the induction manifold and passed it down to the
ground, and started to slack off the nuts of the next cylinder head.
"Forty-five prayers a day may seem a lot to you," he said in Arabic.
"They did to Moses. Yet forty-five more prayers a day was the
commandment of God, and God is All-Seeing, and All-Knowing, and
All-Merciful; He would not command that you should do more than you can
perform. Men who work as you do upon aeroplanes can pray to God
forty-five times a day quite easily, and I will tell you how."

He straightened up upon the trestle and looked down on them, spanner in
hand. He was wearing a soiled khaki shirt and khaki shorts; he wore old
oil-stained shoes with socks rolled round about his ankles. Beads of
sweat were making little glistening streaks upon his face in the heat of
the hangar, and the shirt clung to his back in dark, wet patches. His
hands and forearms were stained and streaked with oil from the engine,
mixed with sweat.

"I inspect some of the work you do upon these engines and these
aeroplanes," he said. "God, the All-Seeing and All-Knowing, He inspects
it all. You come to me and say, 'I have replaced this manifold and the
job is finished.' I come to look at it to see if there is any fault, and
I see everything in place. I look at the nuts, and I see the locking
wires correctly turned the right way to prevent the nuts unscrewing, and
that is all that I can see. I cannot see if the nuts are screwed only
finger-tight; I cannot see if you have put a lever on the spanner and
strained them up so tight that the bolts are just about to fail in
tension. These things are hidden from me, but nothing is hidden from the
All-Seeing Eye of God."

He paused. "God, the All-Knowing, knows if you have done well or ill,"
he said quietly. "If you ask Him humbly in prayer to tell you, He will
tell you if you have done well or ill; in that way you will have a
chance to do the job again, and try to do it better. Or you can come to
me and say, Help me to do this work, because I cannot do it right. God
is All-Merciful, and He will not hold bad work against you if He sees
you striving to do right. So I say this to you."

He paused again. "With every piece of work you do, with every nut you
tighten down, with every filter that you clean or every tappet that you
set, pause at each stage and turn to Mecca, and fold your hands, and
humbly ask the All-Seeing God to put into your heart the knowledge
whether the work that you have done has been good or ill. Then you are
to stand for half a minute with your eyes cast down, thinking of God and
of the job, and God will put into your heart the knowledge of good or
ill. So if the work is good you may proceed in peace, and if it is ill
you may do it over again, or come to me and I will help you to do well
before God."

He turned back to the engine. "If you do this," he said, "you will soon
find that you are praying to God forty-five times a day or more, as He
directed the Prophet in the first instance. Moses and Mahomet were quite
right to get the tally reduced, because the people of that day were
nomads and camel drivers. But you are educated men doing the most
skilled work in all the world, and so much closer to God. God will
require more of you than of common men; you are worth more than many
camel drivers, because men look to you to see how good work should be
done. And now I tell you, good work can be done only with the help and
power of the All-Knowing God."

It was only then that I noticed what young Tarik was doing. He had got
out a penny exercise book, bought in the souk or stolen from a school,
and he was writing busily in it with a pencil, using the workbench as a
desk. He was obviously having difficulty in keeping up and I would have
given a good deal for a look at the book; I didn't know that Tarik could
write. But equally obviously, he was doing his best to write down
everything that Connie said. I wondered when I saw him how long he had
been doing it.

It was five o'clock presently, and time for the men to knock off. Those
who were Moslems, which meant most of the men working in the hangar,
went out to the little patch of ground beside the hangar and turned to
Mecca and commenced their afternoon _Rakats_. I had noticed a couple of
days before that they had fallen into the habit of doing this together
in a little crowd or congregation, and I was surprised to see some of
the Arab servants from the R.A.F. camp join them. One of these I thought
I recognised as the barman in the officers' mess, though I had only seen
him once or twice and I couldn't be sure.

Connie did not join them in their devotional postures. He went with them
and knelt in prayer a little way apart from them, facing to Mecca as
they did, but kneeling all the time. I guessed that this was because he
was not a Moslem, and for the first time I wondered what he was.

I must say, I was rather impressed. In aircraft work of the somewhat
pioneering sort that I was doing you have to be adaptable. When a new
situation arises without precedent, you have to go to first principles
and make the precedent yourself, and this religious turn that my
maintenance crew were taking was just one of those things. I had chosen
to staff my enterprise entirely with Asiatics. Having done that with my
eyes open, I could not expect to run the non-essential parts of my
business wholly in the European way; there must be tolerance on my part,
and I must adapt my way of doing things to suit their ways of life. You
can run a workshop in the Western style with time clocks and job cards
and rate-fixers and premium bonus schemes, but to make a success of that
you've got to have some people from the West to work in it, and I myself
was the only one in the party. Or, you can run it in the Eastern way,
and that's not necessarily a bad, or inefficient, or a slovenly way.
Connie had introduced into my shop a form of discipline that was quite
new to me, but the proof of the pudding, after all, was in the eating,
and I was coming to the conclusion that the results were pretty good.
The aeroplanes were being well maintained.

Dwight Schafter had commented on that when I had met him in the hospital
in Batavia; he had said that Asiatic engineers who worked with Connie
became confident and responsible people. My own experience was tending
in the same direction and I began to watch the work that went on very
closely. I must say I was very pleased indeed, so pleased that I
mentioned it to Gujar Singh one day to get his views.

Gujar and I had flown the Carrier to a place called El Hazil in the
Arabian desert about halfway between Kuweit and Egypt, with a load of
machinery for the pipe line. El Hazil at that time was little more than
a sand airstrip, three wooden huts, and half a dozen tents, with a
Bedouin encampment in the middle distance. It was nearly dark when the
unloading was finished and there was some stuff to go back to Bahrein
that was coming in to the strip in the morning, so we stayed there for
the night, sleeping on camp beds in the cabin of the aircraft, as we
often did.

We had supper with the engineers in their mess hut, and strolled over to
the aircraft presently, smoking in the cool of the night. It was very
quiet in the desert; the dark blue sky was sown with millions of bright
stars. I said to Gujar, "How do you think things are going in the hangar
now?"

He said, "I think very well."

I nodded. "I think so, too." We walked on for a few paces. "I think Shak
Lin is very good with them," I said at last. I had fallen into the habit
of using his Asiatic name when speaking to an Asiatic. "I'm just a
little worried about all this religion. I suppose that's quite all
right?"

He smiled. "I do not think you have anything to worry about. I think it
is a very good thing."

I hesitated. "One of the R.A.F. officers--Flight Lieutenant Allen--was
saying the other day that he's getting talked about, in the souk. Do you
think that's true?"

He said, "There is talk in the souk about him."

"Not going to make any trouble, is it?" I had in mind vague stories of
religious riots and that sort of thing.

"I don't think so," he said. "You know that he is great friends with the
Imam?"

"I didn't know that."

"Oh yes," he told me. "They have long talks together, very frequently."

That was something, anyway; if the Imam knew what was going on in the
hangar it was unlikely that there would be trouble with the orthodox
Moslems. "What is he, Gujar?" I asked. "Is he a Moslem?"

He smiled. "He is not a Moslem. When I met him first I thought he was a
Buddhist, at Damrey Phong. Now I don't know what he is."

I glanced at him. "I saw you praying with him there before the Buddha. I
thought you were a Sikh."

He laughed. "I saw you, too, Mr. Cutter. I thought you were a
Christian."

"Oh, well..." And then I stopped, a bit embarrassed. I was about to say
that that was different, and then it seemed to me to be a bit silly to
say that. I didn't know what to say. It was infinitely quiet and blue
and peaceful in the desert night.

"Perhaps," said my chief pilot presently, "he is just an ordinary man
like you and I, who has the power to make men see the advantage of
turning to God. As you have power to make men see the advantage of
sending new tracks for a bulldozer by air."

It seemed a funny sort of way to look at things. "Maybe," I said
vaguely. "The part that concerns me, of course, is the maintenance, and
I'm bound to say I think that's going a lot better since he came."

"I think it will do so," Gujar said. We strolled on together for a while
in silence. Presently he said, "People get into such bad habits when
they start to learn the techniques of the West."

"Bad habits?" I said.

He struggled to express himself in English. "I am not trying to be rude.
You English and Americans have your own way of life, which is different
to ours. I know you have your own codes of behaviour which are based
upon the Christian religion, and very good they are. But you are not
religious people, as we understand it in the Asiatic countries. Few of
you pray to God in public or in private even once a week." He paused.
"But God, and prayer to God, is necessary to us."

"When one of our boys starts to learn an English or American technique
like the maintenance of aircraft," he said, "he learns from men who are
materialistic in their way of life. He learns that science is the ruling
force in the world, that every effect has a certain cause. Only when men
are old and wise can they begin to see the Power of God even behind
these things of science, and our young men are neither old nor wise.
They see that railways run and ships steam and aeroplanes fly without
the help of God. So they abandon God and turn to science, and then,
because religion is necessary to us, they are bewildered."

He smiled. "I know what English pilots say about Asiatic ground
engineers," he said. "I myself prefer to fly an aircraft serviced by a
British engineer. With God taken from their way of life, our engineers
become slovenly and irresponsible; they need a British or an American
foreman who can check their work all the time if the aircraft are to be
safe to fly. I think that Shak Lin understands this very well. He is
showing your men that God is with them in the hangar, and making them
turn to God for help in doing their work well. He is giving back to them
the thing that has been taken from their lives. I think that you may
find that in a year's time your ground engineers are as good or better
than any English engineer." He laughed. "If that happens, you will have
a maintenance staff that is unique in Asia, in more ways than one."

We went to bed soon after that. I let him go first, because in the cabin
of the Carrier there was no privacy, and he had a lot to do with combing
his long black hair, bandaging up his beard, and saying his prayers,
that did not seem to be any concern of mine. I stood outside leaning
against the tail of the aircraft, thinking about what he had said. I was
starting to get an uneasy feeling that there was more in this business
than operating the aircraft and cutting the costs and charging enough to
show a decent profit. There were things going on that I didn't really
understand, and though they seemed to be beneficent, I found them
worrying.

They did not become less worrying as time went on. The three months
nominal hire of the Carrier came to an end and left me, of course, with
a very substantial profit on its operation, for it was flying several
hours every day. I had engaged in a protracted three-cornered
negotiation to buy it in instalments, conducted by means of letters and
cables to Dwight Schafter in prison in Batavia and to his attorney in
Indianapolis. It wasn't an easy deal because they wanted dollars for it,
and I could only pay in blocked sterling; however, they weren't in any
position to sell it in America while it was his property, which gave me
some advantage. We finally settled on a price of twenty-four thousand
pounds for it, to be paid in equal instalments of a thousand pounds a
month. At that it was a cheap aeroplane, and I was very well pleased.

In the hangar, after a month or two, there was a tendency for casual
Arabs to drift in and sit about around the machines, especially in the
afternoon when Connie was in the habit of talking to the men in the last
hour of the day. Apparently these people came from Muharraq and even
across the causeway from Bahrein for the sole purpose of listening to
what was going on in the hangar and saying their prayers with the party
afterwards. The aerodrome was an R.A.F. station and there was a guard on
the road, but so many Arabs were employed about the camp that there was
never any difficulty about getting in. There was the obvious danger that
tools would be stolen, and apart from that the people were a nuisance to
the work.

I had a talk with Connie about it in the office one day. "We'll have to
keep them out," I said. "I don't want to be unreasonable, but we can't
have all these bodies round the aircraft."

He nodded. "I quite agree. I'll get a notice put up on a board, in
Arabic. Then we'll string a cord across the mouth of the hangar, and
have one of the labourers on guard. But I'm afraid they'll probably come
all the same. You won't mind if they come and sit outside the hangar,
behind the rope?"

"I don't mind what they do so long as they don't come into the hangar,"
I said. "What do they come for?"

"The engineers have been talking about the prayers we have after work,"
he said. "The people come to join in those."

"They walk all the way from Bahrein to say their prayers outside our
hangar?"

"Yes," he said. "It's a bit of a novelty for them, you see."

"Well, it's all right with me," I told him, "so long as we keep them out
of the hangar. I don't want the tools stolen."

He said, "Oh, they wouldn't do that."

"Says you."

"They wouldn't. All they want to do is to come here and pray. They
wouldn't steal things from a mosque. I should be very much surprised if
we lost anything."

"You mean, they come to our hangar as a mosque?"

"In a way."

"Well, I dunno," I said, a little at a loss. "Anyway, let's keep them
out."

"I'll see to that." He got up to go, and then he said, "My mother died
last week."

He had never mentioned his family to me at all; he was a queer, solitary
man. "I say, I'm sorry about that," I said. "I'm very sorry indeed,
Connie. Was that in San Diego?"

He nodded. "These things have to happen," he said quietly. "She had been
ill for several months. My sister had been looking after her."

"I'm very sorry," I repeated. And then I said, "You've got just the one
sister, haven't you?"

He nodded. "She lived with my mother."

"Not married?"

"No."

One has to try and help one's staff when they are in trouble, and I had
known Connie since I was a boy. "What's she going to do?" I asked. "Does
she work there?"

He nodded. "She's got quite a good job. She's a secretary with an
American export firm--Collins and Sequoia Inc. She speaks and writes
Chinese, you see."

"Shorthand typist?"

He nodded.

"Too bad you've got to live on opposite sides of the world," I said. "If
she'd like to join you here, I'll give her a try-out in the office for a
couple of months. No hard words if she doesn't suit, though, and the job
comes to an end after two months." I had never had a shorthand typist,
and though the Babu clerk was good up to a point, the correspondence was
always on top of us. A semi-Asiatic girl might be the answer.

He said, "That's good of you, Tom. I don't know that she'd fit in here,
but I'll certainly write and put it to her."

I nodded. "Do that, Connie. I'd like to help if I can. And I'm damn
sorry about your mother. I really am."

The rope across the mouth of the hangar and the notice in Arabic did the
trick all right. Most afternoons people used to collect outside the
hangar at about four o'clock; they would squat down on their heels in
the shade beside the rope and look at what was going on inside, and
listen to what they could. On some afternoons there were as many as
twenty of them, mostly elderly men. They were quite orderly and never
made any trouble. For Moslems there is extra virtue in prayer as a
congregation, and these chaps used to sit around until the engineers
knocked off, and then they would all go together to the bit of vacant
land beside the hangar and do their _Rakats_ in a group, Connie kneeling
a little way apart. The Chinese, Chai Tai Foong, took to coming to the
prayer meeting after a bit; he was not a Moslem and he knelt apart
behind Connie.

I used to keep an eye on what went on in the hangar in the afternoons
because it all seemed a bit difficult to me; however much work I had on
my desk on the days when I wasn't flying, I usually took a stroll down
to the hangar about that time. I did this one afternoon about a month
after the rope went up and found a big new Hudson saloon parked just by
the rope and four very well-dressed Arabs squatting by the rope a little
apart from the crowd, looking at what was going on inside. One of these
men was very old. I knew him and one of the others by sight; it was the
Sheikh Abd el Kadir and his Wazir, Hussein.

There is a great big barren island by Bahrein which is the Sheikhdom of
Khulal. It's practically all desert, with a few tiny hamlets scattered
round the coasts where fishermen and pearl divers live. The place is
about a hundred miles long and fifty or sixty across, but it is quite
waterless and uninhabited in the middle. I suppose there may be six or
seven thousand Arabs in the whole Sheikhdom, about three thousand of
whom live on the east coast in the one place that can be called a town,
the capital, Baraka. There is an airstrip there marked out upon the
desert with small cairns of stones painted white, and in Baraka, Sheikh
Abd el Kadir had his palace, about a hundred miles as the crow flies
from Bahrein.

Khulal produces a little dried fish, a few pearls of poor quality, a
negligible quantity of dates, and a vast amount of crude oil. The
Arabia-Sumatran Company have a field of oil wells near the south-west
corner of the island and a refinery at a place on the west side called
Habban; there is a pier here to which the tankers come, and a town of
modern, standardised houses where about a thousand Europeans live. They
pay a royalty to the Sheikh for every barrel of his oil they take away,
and I had heard various opinions of his income from this source. Some
said he had an income of a million pounds a year, but others said that
it was nothing like so much as that, not more than three hundred
thousand. Whatever his financial position was, the old man had
sufficient for his daily needs, considering that he paid no taxes
whatsoever. He lived quite modestly in a small palace just outside
Baraka, white and rococo, and surrounded by a grove of date palms. I had
flown a new Packard to him in the Carrier a month or two before, and had
met the Prime Minister, Hussein. Now there they all were, sitting
gravely before the rope that kept them out of the hangar, trying to hear
what was going on inside.

I didn't quite know what to do, but I walked up to them and smiled at
Hussein, who got up from the ground to meet me. The others looked up and
rose too, even the old Sheikh. I said, "This is a great honour, Mr.
Hussein. The rope wasn't meant to keep _you_ out."

He smiled, and bowed, and then, speaking in Arabic, he introduced me to
the Sheikh, who bowed to me. I said in my halting Arabic, "So many
people come to hear what Shak Lin says to the engineers that we have had
to put this rope, or the men could not work. But if you want to hear
more, will you not come inside?"

The old man replied, but he was very old and he mumbled so that with my
poor knowledge of Arabic I couldn't understand him. I said, "Forgive me,
I speak Arabic so badly," which was one phrase that I knew by heart.

Hussein said in English, "The Sheikh wishes very greatly to hear the
Teacher, but he is rather deaf. It is very kind of you." I lifted the
rope for them, and the four men moved majestically across the floor of
the hangar, their long white skirts swishing with every step.

I could not take any part in their devotions or in their relations with
Shak Lin. He was doing something with one of the engineers on the
bench--checking the gap of a contact breaker, I think. I crossed to him
and said, "Connie, this is the Sheikh of Khulal and his party. I've told
them they can come into the hangar any time. Is that all right with
you?"

He looked up. "I can deal with them."

"All right, then. I'll leave them with you." I took him forward with me
and introduced him to the old Sheikh in my halting Arabic, and they
bowed to each other, and then I said that I had a great deal of work
waiting for me in my office, and went away. I felt at the time that it
was cowardice, but it was a situation that I really couldn't cope with
at all. When I looked out after the men had knocked off, there was the
Sheikh and his party outside the hangar with the rest of them, going
through the _Rakats_, but a little to one side of the crowd. Later they
got into the Hudson and drove off.

They didn't come to the aerodrome again, that I know of, but Connie used
to go to them, usually on Friday, which is the Moslem day of prayer. He
made these visits to Baraka at irregular intervals, sometimes once a
month and sometimes at less frequent intervals than that. Baraka,
although only a hundred miles away, is pretty inaccessible; there is no
post or telegraph service, and no regular boat service or land
transport. I always knew when he was going there because he came and
booked the Fox-Moth and got one of the pilots to fly him over; he never
learned to pilot a machine himself. I used to charge him the full rate
for these trips, less ten per cent.

We went on steadily for some months after that, building up the
business. I got a Proctor, a single-engined four-seat aircraft, cheap in
Egypt as a replacement for the Fox-Moth, which was really much too slow
and too short in range for the work we put it to in the Persian Gulf. We
kept the Fox-Moth in commission for short trips about Bahrein, and the
two Airtrucks were working steadily, but the bulk of the turnover, of
course, was done by the Carrier. I charged sixty pounds an hour for the
Carrier, which came to about a penny for every pound weight carried a
hundred miles, and at that the machine was working practically to
capacity all over the Persian Gulf and far beyond. In those months I
took on another Sikh pilot, a chap called Kahan Singh.

I still did the longest trips upon the Carrier myself, though Gujar
normally now flew it as chief pilot, with one of the others with him as
co-pilot. We got a big job for the Carrier one day, to fly to Burma. The
Arabia-Sumatran Oil Company had interests in the oilfields at Yenanyaung
in central Burma and had a load of machinery to send there from Bahrein;
the return load was to be a number of the European staff coming home on
leave. These men were to ride home as far as Bahrein in the Carrier, and
would go on to England or to Holland by the normal airlines.

I took the Carrier upon this trip myself, with Arjan Singh; I wanted to
see how Arjan carried on before approving him as the chief pilot of the
Carrier in Gujar's absence. I used this as a training flight, in fact,
and sat in the co-pilot's seat all the way, making Arjan act as captain
of the aircraft as well as doing all the navigation and the radio. I
only helped him when it was physically impossible for him to be doing
two jobs at the same time. I made him do all the formalities upon the
ground--the manifests, the Customs clearances, the immigration
formalities, the flight plans--everything. He got on all right, of
course; he had, in fact, a good many more hours flying experience than I
had myself, and on more types. But one likes to be certain, and he
didn't know the route beyond Calcutta.

While cruising across Baluchistan and India upon this journey, in the
long hours of sitting relatively idle in the co-pilot's seat while Arjan
Singh did all the work, I had leisure to consider my business as a
whole. The various oil companies in the Persian Gulf were growing
accustomed to the use of a large freight aircraft in their daily work,
and I was offering the service to them at an economic rate. It would not
have paid them, individually, to keep such a large machine as a Carrier
for their private use, but amongst the lot of them there was more than
enough work for one such aeroplane. Much more. It was this aspect of the
matter that was worrying me a bit. On this journey to Burma I was taking
the Carrier away from the Gulf for a week; in that week the heavy air
transport business would be at a standstill. Having accustomed them to
the advantages of heavy air transport I could not expect them to
tolerate that for long. I might have to get another large aeroplane, or
there would be competition cropping up.

Moreover, this journey to Yenanyaung was only to be the first of many.
The Arabia-Sumatran people had made that fairly clear to me. They had
these interests in Burma, and they had their big establishment at Diento
in Sumatra, which I had visited in the Airtruck. In addition, they were
starting to develop an oil field on the East Alligator River, about a
hundred and fifty miles to the east of Darwin, in North Australia. These
four oil centres formed a chain stretching from the Persian Gulf to
Australia. Before the days of air transport each of these centres would
have been equipped with the necessary scientific staff and laboratory
and field scientific equipment for it to function entirely as a separate
entity. With air transport, it was now becoming possible for the
Arabia-Sumatran Company to transfer scientists and their equipment
quickly and readily from one oil field to another, and this they were
doing in an increasing degree. There were obvious economic advantages to
them in doing so, and they were quite prepared to use my organisation
for the transport job. It meant, however, that if one large aeroplane
was to be cruising most of its time between Australia and the Persian
Gulf, I should have to have another for the day-to-day business at
Bahrein.

To buy another Cornell Carrier would be out of the question; I should
never get an allocation of the dollars. It would have to be a British
aeroplane, and the Plymouth Tramp was the obvious British counterpart.
The Tramp was about the same size as the Carrier and had certain
advantages in easy loading; I knew that I could use a Tramp very
profitably if I could add one to my fleet. The trouble was the purely
mechanical business of paying for it, always a bug-bear.

A new Tramp cost about fifty-five thousand pounds, and of course I
hadn't got a hope of raising such a sum. It was too much to expect that
I should find another gun-runner operator of a Tramp on his way to
prison, and though I could try for a second-hand Tramp I very much
doubted if there were any on the market. I wasn't sure what sort of a
reception I should get from the Plymouth Aircraft Company if I went
along as an individual, Tom Cutter, with very little money to put down
upon the table, and asked for an expensive aeroplane upon hire-purchase
terms without any guarantees or backing whatsoever. The Plymouth
Aircraft Company were a very large and powerful concern, full of the
most important work, with no need to scratch for orders or to provide
finance for small operators wanting to use their products. I had a
notion that I should be shown the door pretty quick if I went to their
sales department with the only sort of proposition I could offer.

All these matters occupied my mind as I sat idly in the co-pilot's seat
from Bahrein to Rangoon. We left about midday one day and made Karachi
in one hop, making a night landing there at about seven o'clock. We
slept at the airport and flew on early next day across India to
Calcutta, and on the morning of the third day we flew to Rangoon down
the coast of Arakan and crossing the Arakan Yoma south of the island of
Ramree. We landed at Mingadon airport about midday.

That day was a Saturday and there was trouble at Rangoon because all the
Government's civil servants were on strike. This included the Customs
officers, and Mingadon airport was in confusion. The police were very
active and there were two other charter aircraft full of freight parked
under a police guard when we got there, delayed until the Customs
officers resumed work and could clear them. Passenger aircraft were
allowed to function normally; it was the freight that they were
interested in. The Control officer explained the position to me quite
politely; I must park my aircraft under guard alongside the other two.
They hoped to make arrangements to clear them all on Monday.

When travelling in the East one has to keep one's temper and take things
as they come. I parked the aircraft where they said and locked it up,
and rang up the Arabia-Sumatran office in Rangoon, twelve miles away.
They said that one of their staff would come straight out to the
aerodrome, and asked if we wanted hotel accommodation in Rangoon. I said
I'd rather stay out at the aerodrome; I never like sleeping very far
from the aircraft in a foreign country.

The representative of the oil company in Rangoon, a Scotsman called
Macrae, turned up three-quarters of an hour later in a Chevrolet and
found Arjan Singh and me at lunch in the airport restaurant. He was a
pleasant young chap. He apologised to us for the delay and promised to
report on the demurrage to the Bahrein office, because this affected the
charter fee. He said that he had ascertained from the Customs that all
aircraft would be cleared on Monday morning. In the meantime he would be
delighted to show us Rangoon. He quite understood that we preferred to
sleep at the aerodrome near the aircraft, but would we dine at his home
that night if he sent a car for us? And then tomorrow, Sunday, he would
take us to the Shwe Dagon pagoda and show us that.

It really was very good of him. I told him that we had some work to do
on the machine that afternoon, but we would be delighted to dine with
him that evening. He went away then, and we fetched our small luggage
from the aircraft and took it to the aerodrome rest house. Then we
refuelled the Carrier and looked for a small oil leak on the starboard
engine and put that right. I used the last of the locking wire in the
tool kit on that job. While Arjan was polishing the windscreens, putting
away the maps, and making all tidy in the cockpit, I strolled over to
the hangar that housed the aircraft of the Burmese National Airways to
see if they could let me have a hank of locking wire from their stores.

One of the first men that I saw in the hangar was U Myin, the Burmese
boy who had been with Dwight Schafter and Connie at Damrey Phong. He was
working on the port engine of a Dove. He recognised me at once, and he
was very pleased to see me. He seemed more upstanding and competent to
look at than I had remembered him, but he had very little more English
at his command than he had had then. He understood technical words, of
course, and when he understood I wanted locking wire he left his job and
took me up to the office of the chief engineer, Moung Bah Too.

Moung Bah Too was a friendly and smiling young Burmese who spoke perfect
English. He listened to what U Myin had to say to him in Burmese, and
then said to him in English, "Of course." He turned to me. "I think we
have eighteen gauge and twenty-two gauge wire. Eighteen gauge? All
right." To U Myin he said, "Go to the storekeeper and ask him for about
a pound of eighteen gauge galvanised iron wire, and bring it back here."

The boy went off, and Bah Too offered me a cigarette. "It's really very
kind of you," I said. "It's not fair to come in and want supplies like
this. I hope that I'll be able to do something for you in the Persian
Gulf one day."

He smiled, and we talked about our operations and compared notes for a
few minutes. Presently I said, "How's U Myin getting on?"

"Oh, he is very good," his chief said. "A very good engineer. He is
reliable; you can trust that work is well done if he says it is all
right."

"I'm glad to hear that," I said. "I'd have taken him on myself when
Dwight Schafter packed up, but for the fact that he couldn't speak much
English. At that time I was running the ground engineers myself, so all
the people I took on had to know English fairly well."

He nodded. "I think he was very well trained when he was with Schafter,"
he said. "You have a chief engineer, have you not--a Chinese called Shak
Lin?"

"Yes," I said. "He was with Schafter, too. He's not exactly a Chinese,
though. He's a British subject born in Penang, of a Chinese father and a
Russian mother. He went to school in England."

"Is that so!" There was keen interest now upon the wide, intelligent
brown face before me. "I had often wondered who he was."

"You've heard of him, then?"

"Oh yes, I have heard of him many times. U Myin talks to me and to the
other engineers about him constantly, in the workshop, about his methods
of teaching and inspection. In Bangkok, too, they talk of him a great
deal, with Siamese Airways. I have two or three engineers from Bangkok
working for me now."

I had not thought that Connie would be so well known, yet it was
reasonable enough, because he was a man to be remembered, and the
aviation world was small.

"He is religious, is he not?" There was no mistaking the interest that
Moung Bah Too was showing.

"Yes," I said. "He's very religious."

"Tell me, what religion does he teach? Is he a Buddhist, do you know?"

It was the same question that I had asked myself several times before.
"I don't know what he is," I said. "I don't think he's a Buddhist
because he talks about God. You don't do that, do you?" He shook his
head. "He's certainly not a Moslem, although he talks a lot about God to
the Moslems in the hangar at Bahrein. I shouldn't say he's much of a
Christian. I'm afraid I can't tell you what he is."

"I have heard it said," Bah Too observed, "that he has the power to make
men of any religion bring that religion to their daily work upon the
aircraft, and the results are very good."

"I think that's fair enough," I said slowly. "I should think that's the
best definition that you'd get of what he does."

"It is very, very interesting," he said earnestly. "I am not religious
myself. When U Myin and two other men came one day to this office and
asked if they might set up that Buddha that you see in the hangar----" I
had not noticed it, "--I did not know what to say. In England, in the de
Havilland Technical School where I served for five years, you do not put
a Cross up in the hangar, and I run this hangar in the way that I was
taught." My heart warmed to this little brown man, whose problems had
been so very similar to my own. He laughed. "I did not know what to do,"
he said. "In the end I told them that they might put it up, but no time
was to be spent in prayer in working hours."

It might have been myself, telling somebody about my own difficulties in
Bahrein. "What have the results been like?" I asked. "Does it help the
work?"

"It is very good," he said seriously. "It is a very good thing. They
pray before and after each shift, for five minutes or less than that.
They say a few verses from the Payehtgyee, our litany of praise, and
then they say a prayer that Shak Lin taught U Myin in Damrey Phong,
about the aircraft, that Right Thinking is indicated in Right Work, and
Right Work in Right Thinking, because both are one. By his teaching,
Right Meditation, which leads to Nirvana, is only attained by the
exercise of Right Work. No man cumbered with error in the Work can reach
the state of Right Meditation, which is the approach to what you would
call Heaven. I do not know if you are used to these ideas, but I can
tell you this. Since U Myin introduced them to my hangar, the standard
of maintenance of the aircraft has improved enormously."

I nodded. "I've had the same experience," I said. "I'm a Christian
myself, of course, but most of the ground staff at Bahrein are Moslems.
Shak Lin teaches them the same sort of thing in my hangar, but
conforming to the Moslem code, so it's all a bit different. But as
regards the results, I must say they're very good indeed. My people have
got more responsible since he took over the hangar than ever they were
under me."

He nodded. "It is the same here. I think this new teaching is a very
good thing." He smiled. "The only complaint I have is that it is
spreading. Most of our engineers now join in the prayers before the
Buddha in the hangar. The transport drivers have been coming along, too.
That is all right for our own transport drivers, but lately all sorts of
other people have been coming to the hangar to pray with the
engineers--transport drivers from the other companies, and from the
petrol companies, and even taxi-drivers--they have been coming in. I
cannot have all these people coming into the hangar. I do not quite know
what to do about it."

"I had to put a rope up," I said. I told him what had been going on in
Bahrein and we compared notes for a few minutes. Then U Myin came back
with the locking wire. His chief took it and gave it to me, and I asked
how much I should pay for it, and he smiled and said that he was glad to
be able to help. I thanked him. During this U Myin was standing by the
door, although Bah Too had indicated that he could go, but now he said
laboriously,

"Mr. Cutter, he stay two, three days?"

"Till Monday, anyway," I said. "I can't get Customs clearance until
then, because of this strike."

He said, "English pongyi..." but then his English broke down, and he
turned to Bah Too, and began speaking in Burmese. His chief listened to
him, nodding now and then, occasionally putting in a question. Presently
he turned to me.

"He says that one of our monks living just outside Rangoon is an
Englishman," he told me. "He is a very holy man. He has been a Buddhist
monk, a pongyi we call them, for over thirty years. He is a very old man
now, and he will not live for very much longer. His name is U Set Tahn.
He has heard about Shak Lin. This boy wants to take you to see this
monk, in order that you may tell him more about Shak Lin. Would you like
to do that?"

"I don't mind a bit," I said. "I've got nothing much to do tomorrow, so
far as I know."

U Myin understood English much better than he could speak it, because I
saw his face light up when I said that, and I wondered what I was
letting myself in for. Bah Too said, "It would probably be a great
kindness if you can spare the time."

I got out a pencil and an old envelope and wrote the name down on the
back of it, with Bah Too's help, U Set Tahn. "That is a Burmese name, of
course," he said. "It means, Mr. Rainbow." He spoke to the boy, but
neither of them knew what the old man's English name had been.

I fixed up to meet U Myin at the office of the air line in Rangoon at
three o'clock on the following afternoon and they gave me the address,
in Montgomery Street, near the Sulei Pagoda Road.

I drove into Rangoon that evening dressed in a clean suit of whites to
dine with the Macraes, with Arjan Singh with me in a neat grey suit and
a red and gold embroidered turban, looking like a robber baron in full
dress. They had an English couple to meet us, and we had a very Surbiton
sort of a dinner party; but for Arjan and the two boys who served us we
might have been thousands of miles away from the East. They were very
kind and hospitable people, keeping up the English way of life
meticulously, far from home. I asked them if they knew this English
pongyi, U Set Tahn. Macrae had vaguely heard at some time that there was
such a person, but it was news to the rest of the party that any
Englishman in Rangoon was living as a Buddhist monk, and there was a
marked indication that he was letting down the side by doing so. I
didn't pursue the subject, beyond saying that I had promised to go and
visit him the next afternoon. Nobody offered to come with me.

Arjan Singh had made a date for Sunday with a country-man of his own, a
Sikh pilot of Indian National Airways that he had met during the war in
the Royal Indian Air Force. I drove into Rangoon on Sunday morning, a
long, interesting drive past lakes bordered by flame trees, very
beautiful. The Macraes took me round the Shwe Dagon pagoda in our
stockinged feet, and I marvelled. Then we went back to their house and
changed our socks and had a drink, and went down to the Strand Hotel for
them to have lunch with me. Then they left me, very kindly putting their
car and driver at my disposal for the afternoon, and I went out to meet
U Myin.

I picked him up at the air line office, and we drove out together
northwards from Rangoon. He knew where the old man lived, and gave the
driver the instructions in Burmese. We went out about six or seven
miles, past the lakes, and came to a country district where the good
class suburban bungalows standing in their gardens were merging into
farm land and the palm thatch houses on posts of the poorer Burmese
peasants. Here we drove down a side road and stopped the car and got
out. A little-used footpath led through the scrub up on to a small hill
with a few palms rising above the lower trees on top. "This way to
ashram," U Myin said. "English pongyi live here."

He led the way, and I followed him up the path past a farm-house; in
this place that was wholly in the East I was queerly reminded of
Cornwall, for there little farms lie close beneath small hills in just
the same way. We went up the hill between the bushes and came to a small
palm thatch house on top, shaded by the palm trees, all rather tumble
down and decaying. We stood by this and called up to it, because like
all these houses it stood on posts and the floor was five or six feet
from the ground, reached by a rough ladder. A very old man came to the
door and looked down on us.

His head and face were shaven clean, and he wore only the coarse yellow
robe of a monk. He listened to U Myin for a minute, and then said,
"Good afternoon. It is very kind of you to come to visit me. Will you
come up?"

We climbed up into the house. It had an inner and an outer room, all
very poor. In the inner room there was a bed with a mosquito net, in the
outer room a broken deck-chair, a wooden stool, a table with a few
tattered books upon it, and little else. The old man made me take the
deck-chair and he sat upon the stool; U Myin squatted on the floor
beside us.

I knew enough about the East, of course, not to approach the subject of
my visit directly. I had all afternoon and evening to spare, and it was
for him to raise the subject of Shak Lin when he wanted to. I said that
I was passing through Rangoon and had heard that he was living there,
and had come to visit him to see if there was anything that I could do
for him, or bring to him from other countries. I explained that my
aircraft were likely to be passing through Rangoon fairly frequently.

He was a pleasant, and a matter-of-fact old man, whose manner contrasted
oddly with his way of life. He told me that he had few needs, but under
a little pressure he confessed that he wanted one thing, a British
Admiralty Nautical Almanac. Astrology enters largely into Buddhist
religious life, and he was hampered in his studies of the World to Come
by the fact that his Nautical Almanac was out of date and he could not
forecast the positions of the stars and planets upon any given day. I
promised to get him that, and we talked of unimportant things for over
an hour before he raised the subject of Shak Lin.

The old man had been a Colonel Maurice Spencer in the Royal Army Service
Corps in the First World War, and had come to India after that for the
prosaic job of organising a service of lorries in Bengal. Within two
years he had become a Buddhist and had achieved a small circle of Indian
Buddhist friends in Calcutta, where he must have been a great grief to
the English official and business community. Presently his friends told
him that they were going out as monks to walk through Bengal villages
for a month, and they proposed that as some leave was due to him he
should put on the red robe, red for Buddhist priests in India, and get a
begging bowl, and come with them. It had been as simple as that.

He had come back from that walk, settled up his Western affairs, and had
put on the Buddhist robe again for good. He had walked on foot across
India and down into Ceylon, eating only what the pious put into his bowl
as he walked through the village, silent, every morning. I asked what
happened if they didn't put anything in, and he said that that had never
happened. There was always more than he could eat. Each day he would
walk on to the next village and sit talking with the elders under the
village tree, giving what advice to them in local problems that he
could, helping spiritually where he was able. One by one they would slip
away to bed till he was left alone beneath the tree in the night; he was
too holy a man to share their houses. When all were gone, he said, he
would hunt about for somewhere to sleep himself. If there was a temple
he would wrap his robe around him, and curl up and go to sleep in a
corner of that, but you had to be careful of the snakes, which sought
the warmth of a body on the cold stone floor. If there was no temple, he
would go out into the country and find a haystack, or else go to sleep
in the lee of a hedge. He had never come to any harm in many years of
this life, though he had had fever often enough. He had walked across
India and down into Ceylon, and all over Ceylon, and back up India and
into Burma, in the course of ten or twelve years. He had come to rest
there on the outskirts of Rangoon and had found this place, where the
people had built the ashram, or small monastery, for him. When it needed
repair or rebuilding, the villagers would make a day of it in a gang,
and rebuild it for him. He had three or four small boys that he called
his disciples; they came to him each morning and together they all
walked out through the district for an hour or so with begging bowls
held before them, eyes cast down, never looking to the left or the
right, never speaking. The people brought out food and filled their
bowls. They would return and eat, and for the rest of the day he would
instruct the boys in reading and writing the Buddhist scriptures in the
Pali script. At evening the boys went back to their homes.

I asked if he had ever been back to England, and he said, once, in 1936,
but he found the world set upon the wrong course and was glad to return
to his quiet ashram on the outskirts of Rangoon. I asked him what he
wore in England, and he said, "Well, that's a damn-fool question. Do you
think I walk down Piccadilly looking like this?" One could ask him
anything.

A monk, he told me in explanation of his poverty, may possess only a few
articles--the robe, the bowl, the drinking cup, the spectacles if he
needs them, the sunshade, the needle, the fan with which he shields his
eyes from the sight of women. As he was a friendly and a candid old man
I asked about his mosquito net and his deck-chair, to which he replied
that they were weaknesses of the flesh that he could not do without,
which meant that he was not a very good man. There seemed to be no
answer to that one.

Presently, as we sat talking easily about these things, he turned the
conversation to Shak Lin. "U Myin has told me that you have a man
working for you, a remarkable man," he said.

"He told me that you wanted to know about him," I replied. "He's my
chief engineer. His name is Shak Lin."

"And he is remarkable?"

I hesitated. "Probably not, to you. In England, people would say that he
was mad. I say that he's a fine engineer, who makes men reliable by
bringing religion to their daily work. You can take it any way you
like."

He nodded and sat in thought for a minute, stooping to scratch a brown
and rather dirty leg with a lean, skinny hand. His legs and feet were
covered in old scars. "I had heard of that," he said. "U Myin has given
me some information, but several people have been talking to me about
him."

"Have they?"

"Indeed they have. He made a great impression on the monks in Bangkok.
An Arab merchant from Aden came here to Rangoon a month or two ago and
told one of my religious friends about the teaching that was going on in
Bahrein. A Parsee from Karachi told us the same story. And then came U
Myin who had actually been taught by this man, and who was teaching
others at the airport out at Mingadon, as one of his disciples. And now
you come, who know more than anyone, perhaps."

"Well," I said. "What can I tell you, father? I'm not a very religious
man myself, but I'll tell you anything I can."

He said, "Do you know where he was born?"

It was a question that I was not prepared for. "No, I don't," I said. "I
think it was in Penang, but I can't say for certain. His father was
Chinese and a British subject, I think. Shak Lin himself is certainly
British. His mother was a Russian."

He looked up quickly. "A Russian? From what part of Russia?"

A vague memory of the idle chatter of boys in Cobham's air circus
stirred my mind. "I seem to remember that she came from Irkutsk."

He got up from the stool and went to the table with the books on it. He
had a tattered school atlas there, a little cheap thing such as children
use in a council school. He stood there fingering it with fingers that
trembled a little, a bowed old man with bare legs and feet, in this
coarse, blanket-like yellow robe thrown over one shoulder, leaving the
other skinny shoulder bare. He stood staring at the map of Asia for a
time, and then closed the book and put it down.

He came back to me, and sat down on the stool again. "Do you know the
date of his birth, and the hour?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I'm afraid not, father. I don't even know how old he
is. I've always supposed he was about the same age as myself. I think he
is, within a year or so."

"How old are you?" he asked.

"I'm thirty-three."

"So you were born in the year 1915?"

"That's right," I said.

He sat in silence for a long time after that. I shot a glance or two at
him after a time. His head was shaking in the way that very old people
do; it seemed to me that he was getting very tired. I had been with him
for something like an hour and a half. I glanced at U Myin, and in his
return look it seemed that he agreed with me; it was time we went away.

I broke the silence presently, after at least ten minutes. "Father," I
said, "I think it's time we went home now, and left you to rest. I'll
come again one day, if I may. And I'll send the Nautical Almanac as soon
as I can get one out from England."

"Stay for a minute," he said. "I have things to tell you."

He sat in silence again, and I waited.

At last he said, "I know that you are not a religious man. I will put
what I have to tell you in words as simple as I can make them. Men are
weak, and sinful, and foolish creatures. When they are given something
that is beautiful and good they can recognise it and they venerate it,
but gradually they spoil it. Infinite wisdom, infinite purity, and
infinite holiness cannot be passed from hand to hand by mortal men down
through the ages without being spoiled. Errors and absurdities creep in
and mar the perfect vision. All the religions of the world have become
debased. According to the present code of this religion I may not take
life, yet I may eat meat if somebody else kills it and puts the cooked
meat in my bowl. You Christians have similar absurdities; you have a
curious ceremony in which you eat your God. The Moslems fast, which is a
stupid thing to do, and they give far too much thought to the outward
forms of prayer and pilgrimage."

He paused. "Every religion in the world requires to be refreshed from
time to time by a new Teacher. Gautama, Mahomet, Jesus--these are some
of the great Teachers of the past, who have refreshed men's minds and by
their lives and their example brought men back to Truth. We are very far
from the truth now, far enough here, even farther in the West. Belsen
and Buchenwald exceeded any horrors of the war here in the East. But we
are all in this together, wandering, far, far from the Truth."

He raised his head. "This thing is beyond the power of ordinary men to
put right," he said. "We must look for the new Teacher. One day the
Power that rules the Universe will send us a new Teacher, who will lead
us back to Truth and help us to regain the Way. There have been four
Buddhas in the history of this world, of whom Gautama was the last. One
day a fifth will come to aid us, if we will attend to Him. Here in Burma
we earnestly await His coming, for He is the Hope of the World."

I sat silent while he rambled on. He was putting into words things that
I had resolutely kept in the background of my mind, in little cups that
I hoped might pass from me.

"We know a little of the Teacher from our sacred learning, based upon
the movements of the Celestial Universe," he said. "We know that He is
very near to us in time. We think He is already born. We think that His
birthplace is somewhere in that corner of the continent of Asia where
Tibet and Russia and China meet. We think that He will be of a mixed
eastern and western stock. We think that this man is the Saviour of the
World."

I moistened my lips. "Do you know where He is going to teach, father?"

"That has not been revealed," he said. "The only certain fact we know is
that His ministry will last for four years and twenty-three days."

He was silent again, and when I looked at him he was sitting with his
eyes closed, perhaps in some kind of a trance, perhaps asleep. I glanced
at U Myin and got his agreement; we got up to go. The old man never
stirred. I waited for a minute, but there seemed to be no point in
staying any longer or disturbing him, and after a time we climbed down
the ladder and went back to the car.




CHAPTER 5

    Oh, Threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
    One thing alone is certain, that Life flies:
      One thing is certain, and the rest is lies:
    The flower that once has blown for ever dies.

    EDWARD FITZGERALD: _Rubaiyat_ of Omar Khayyam


I got back to Bahrein about four days after that, after taking my load
up to Yenanyaung. I landed back at our base with eighteen passengers
from the Burma oil field late one evening. I went into the office before
going to the chummery and found, as I had suspected, that we had had to
turn away or to postpone a number of important transport jobs for the
various oil companies, due to the fact that the Carrier had been absent
from the district for nine days. Clearly, I couldn't go on doing
business in that way.

I had a talk about it to Connie and Gujar Singh in my office next day.
Ours was a personal business, and all the decisions and responsibilities
were mine, but I had got into the way of talking things over informally
with my chief pilot and my chief engineer whenever difficult decisions
had to be made. I had them in now, and told them how we were placed.

"We can't go on like this," I said. "We've brought this business into
being by offering air transport to the oil companies, and now they're
offering more business than we can cope with. I'm going to try and get
another big aeroplane, and I think it'll have to be a Plymouth Tramp.
We'd never get the dollars for another Carrier, even if we'd got the
sterling, which we haven't."

We talked about the Tramp for a time. They both liked the idea; indeed,
Gujar Singh said roundly that he'd rather have a Tramp for our business
than another Carrier. Connie was in favour of a Tramp, but concerned at
the diversity of spares that we would have to carry for another
aircraft of another type. There was a great deal in what he said;
already we were operating five aircraft of four different types, and if
we got a Tramp we should have six aircraft of five types.

"I'll see if I can sell that Fox and get another Proctor," I said. "That
makes it a bit better."

A Tramp it would have to be, and I told them then about my money
difficulty. "There's nothing wrong with the business," I said. "But all
the profits are taken for the time being by the instalments that I'm
paying on the Carrier. All of our profit's going into that, till May
next year. The most that I can raise in cash at present is about five
thousand pounds, and that's less than ten per cent of the cost of a
Tramp. I don't believe the Plymouth people would let us have a Tramp for
that."

Gujar never forgot his banking experience, and he was quite useful at
times like this. "You have sufficient assets for a considerable loan,"
he said. "I do not think the Bank here would advance much because
aviation enterprises are not quite their business. But they would
certify whatever was required to an industrial bank in London. You have
a very good name in Bahrein."

We talked about that for a time. It meant a trip to England, but that
was necessary in any case for the negotiations about the Plymouth Tramp;
I did not then know what amount of capital I needed. What Gujar said was
probably quite right, but the idea of going trailing round from office
to office in the City of London trying to find somebody to lend me fifty
thousand pounds or so at some crippling interest rate was not one that I
relished. From the point of view of the business it was wrong, utterly
wrong from start to finish. Inevitably it meant a big mortgage or
debenture held by some stranger, Gentile or Jew, whose interests would
be purely financial and possibly divergent from my own, who would have
to be consulted whenever I took a chance, who would have to be argued
with when things went wrong. Not a happy outlook, and it worried me a
lot. I didn't see what else I could do, however.

I pointed out these disadvantages to them. "If I boob on this one it'll
mean the finish of the business," I said. "I'm not taking any bouquets
for what we've done up to date. We've done it all together. But there's
one basic factor that's been at the bottom of our success, and that is
that the man who controls the money has been working out here on the
job--that's me. If the money control had been by an accountant in a
London office, we'd have been bust long before this. And that's just
what may happen to us, if we don't look out."

They saw that point, and we broke up the meeting with nothing decided on
the financial point. I hung about at Bahrein for a week although I
should have been in London looking for money. I could not bring myself
to start on what I knew to be a wrong road, and I stuck around at
Bahrein flying the Carrier on local day flights, trying to think of some
better finance, moody and bad-tempered. I had got myself into a jam, and
I couldn't see how to get out of it.

I came in from Ras Mushaab one evening in the Carrier with a three-ton
truck on board with a broken differential for repair. As I passed the
hangar on the circuit before landing I saw a big maroon car outside my
office that looked like the Hudson that Sheikh Abd el Kadir kept in
Bahrein, and I wondered if the old man had taken to coming up to the
hangar again to say his prayers. I landed and taxied in and stopped the
motors, and Connie came forward from the hangar and met me as I got out
of the cabin door.

"Wazir Hussein's waiting in the office to see you," he said.

"Hussein? What does he want?"

He hesitated. "I went over to Baraka on Friday," he said. "I go there
sometimes to pray with Sheikh Abd el Kadir, and to talk to his Imam. I
told them you were thinking of getting another big aircraft."

I stared at him. "Did you tell them that I hadn't got any money to pay
for it?"

He nodded. "I think that Hussein may have come with a proposal."

"For Christ's sake!" I said.

He smiled. "I don't see what's wrong with that. It's local money and
that's better than London money." That was true enough; if it came to a
choice between having an Arab sheikh in the business or a London
accountant who had never been out of England, I'd choose the sheikh.
"There's just one thing," Connie said. "Watch what you say about
interest, if they should offer a loan. They never take interest, you
know. They're very strong against usury. It would be very easy to offend
them by asking what rate of interest they want."

I left him to organise the unloading of the truck from the Carrier, and
walked across to where Hussein was standing by his car outside my
office, a grave, bearded figure in the Arab dress--white headcloth bound
with two black cords, and a long white under-robe with a wide skirt, and
a long coat of a light black linen, gold-embroidered, open down the
front. He wore a plain leather belt with a gold-hilted curved dagger
stuck into it, with a richly chased sheath. He bowed as I came up, and I
said, "I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting, Wazir. Shak Lin says that
you are waiting to see me."

He smiled, and said, "I know how hard you work." He spoke very good
English. Somebody once told me that as a young man he had been at
Cambridge.

We went into the office and sat down together, and I sent the boy to get
coffee from the airport bar. Till it came we talked of general things,
the weather, the state of the date crop, the irrigation schemes that the
Sheikh had in hand around Baraka, the yield from the pearl fishing, and
how the Packard was behaving. Then the coffee came and we sipped it
together; when the boy had left the room, the Wazir said,

"My master, the Sheikh of Khulal, was told by Shak Lin, El Amin, that
you are thinking of buying another large aeroplane."

I nodded. "That is true," and I went on to tell him why I had decided
that I had to have it, that there was more work than we could handle and
that if we didn't do it somebody else would. Two companies both
operating in the same area might split the work so badly that both
would be ruined, whereas if we kept it in our hands the business should
go steadily ahead. "All the profit that we make goes back into the
business," I said. "I take nothing for myself beyond my living
expenses."

He nodded gravely. "My master has been told that you are having to
resort to usurers to find the money for this aeroplane," he said. "I
have explained to him that this is common in England and that no sin is
involved on either side, but he has been very much distressed."

I said, "It's very nice of him to think of us like that. You know the
processes of business in the West, Mr. Hussein. I've got no feeling
about paying interest, provided that it's reasonable. What worries me is
that if I'm not careful this business may become controlled by those who
lend me money, and I think that would be a disaster."

He smiled a little, and said, "All contact with sin is a disaster."
There was a little silence then, and presently he said, "I do not want
to be impertinent, Mr. Cutter. My master has sent me to enquire if you
need money for this aeroplane, as a loan. It seems very undesirable to
him that you should fall into the hands of usurers."

There was another silence while I thought about this magnificent
proposal. "First of all," I said, "will you tell the Sheikh of Khulal
how very deeply touched I am by his consideration. It's true that I'm in
a difficulty, but I've been in difficulties before and got over them." I
paused. "I'm not sure if you realise the scale of the money that is
involved. The price of this aeroplane is fifty-five thousand pounds."
His face did not change, but then, he was an Arab. "Spare parts and
equipment will be needed for it which will cost about another five
thousand--say sixty-five thousand pounds in all. That's about eight
lakhs of rupees. All I have in the bank at present is about five
thousand. With such an aeroplane I can earn sufficient profit to pay off
its cost in three or four years, so that in four years from now I should
hope to be free from debt. But if some bad luck should come to the
business that we cannot foresee, I could never hope to pay back such a
loan from what I can earn upon a salary. No man could do that. If your
master should lend money to me in this way and bad luck comes, another
war or something terrible, that we cannot foresee, I may never be able
to pay him back."

He inclined his head. "I understand that point. I will explain that to
my master."

I said, "This is a personal business, Wazir. I am not a company, and no
person but myself has any share in it. The aeroplanes are all my
personal property." I thought for a minute. "I will get the accountant
to make up an account of my assets to the end of last month, and I will
show that to you. I think the book figure will be able to show that the
aeroplanes and goods that I own are worth about fifteen thousand pounds,
to which should be added the bank credit and the balance of the money
that I am owed in trade, and the money that I owe. I think the total
figure of my assets will be twenty-one or twenty-two thousand pounds,
which would be available towards repayment of this loan if things should
go very wrong. It means that if disaster came there would be a balance
of thirty-five thousand pounds or so which your master would almost
certainly lose. But, as I say, I will have the accountant make a
statement of my assets and give you a copy."

He inclined his head. "It is my duty to guard the interests of my
master, and I shall be glad to see it. I have never known him to be
harsh with a debtor who was unable to pay his debt through no fault of
his own."

I sat in thought for a time. "There's one point I'd better mention," I
said. "It may be that in the next year or two I shall have to form the
business into a number of small companies, one in India, one in
Pakistan, one in Siam, one in Burma, and so on. That may be necessary in
the future, because each country reasonably demands that profits which
are earned in that country shall be retained in that country and spent
in the country. I do not think that this affects the matter because I
shall be the only shareholder, but complications of that nature may
arise as the business grows."

He nodded. "It is an interesting point, but so long as all the property
is owned by you I do not think my master would complain if some of it
was in Siam and could not be transferred. Repayment of the loan should
be made here in Bahrein, if possible."

"Of course," I said. We went on to discuss the details. They were
apparently quite prepared to lend me sixty thousand pounds without
interest, to be repaid over a period of four years at the rate of 1,250
a month. I told him that I would fly over to Baraka with the statement
of my assets on the following Tuesday, and he said that he would have a
document ready for my signature acknowledging the loan, in Arabic and in
English, side by side. Then he got up to go, and I showed him to his
car. He said, "May God protect you," and got in, and drove away.

I walked over to the hangar in a daze. Connie had gone home, probably to
avoid me, but Gujar Singh had just come in in one of the Airtrucks, and
I told him all about it as we walked up and down on the tarmac in the
evening light. He was delighted with the news, of course, and he made
two comments on it that were both shrewd and illuminating.

The first thing he said was, "This puts us on very firm ground with the
Arabia-Sumatran Company."

I blinked in surprise. "How does that come into it?"

He smiled. "Their refinery at Habban. It's all his oil, the refinery is
on his land, and they pay him the royalty. If they started giving air
transport contracts to anybody else, the old Sheikh might lose sixty
thousand pounds. They wouldn't want any trouble with the Sheikh."

It was a point, of course, a sort of discouragement to competition.

The second thing he said was, "Of course, it's a religious matter."

I walked with him in silence for a minute. Then I said, "Shak Lin?"

"Yes. You say he suggested it to them."

I shook my head. The mere idea that Connie would have used his religious
influence with the old Sheikh to induce him to lend me money was
utterly repugnant. "That's absolutely wrong," I said. "Shak Lin could
never have done that." As I spoke, I wondered why I felt so positively
about it. It was inconceivable.

"I don't say that," Gujar said slowly. "I think like you, he is too good
a man. But this is a religious matter, all the same."

I was silent.

"It is too near a gift for it to be otherwise," he said. "You have told
them, and they must have known before, that if things should go wrong
you cannot pay this back. When Sheikh Abd el Kadir dies, he cannot leave
a legacy to you or to me. By Moslem law he can only leave his money to
his family, or he can leave a legacy for a religious purpose--to build a
new mosque, or something like that. They are very strict about such
things. Legacies are governed by _hadith_, based upon the Koran. He
cannot even dispose of his money as he likes within the family; his
children by his concubines share the inheritance equally with his
legitimate family, boys two shares and girls one share. When this old
man is dead he could not possibly leave money to you, and as he is so
near death now, it would be most improper for him to make you a large
gift, or even an unrepayable loan."

I wrinkled my brows. "Why is he doing it, then?"

He said, "I think he must have consulted with the Imam and the Majlis,
and made this loan for a religious purpose."

We were getting into deep waters. "To buy me another aeroplane?"

"No. If I may say so, I do not think he cares if you, an Englishman and
a Christian, possess another aeroplane or not. But usury in the business
that employs Shak Lin... that is another matter. To him this hangar
is a very holy place, and you, and I, and everyone who works here down
to Tarik and the babu clerk, we are all touched with holiness. If usury
threatens us, it is a pious and a godly act on his part to step in and
stop it, that the shrine may remain undefiled. He could devote his money
to that purpose."

We walked on in silence. "Do you really think that that's the reason
behind it?" I asked at last.

"I do. I think he has consulted with the Imam and the Majlis before
doing this."

"I see..."

I suppose he saw that I was worried, because after a time he said,
"There is no harm in it, and no reason why you should not take his loan.
I know it is unusual in the West for men to give large sums for a
religious purpose. Perhaps it is more common in my country than in
yours."

"Perhaps it is," I said. "It all wants a bit of thinking about." I left
him soon after that, but I thought about it till the small hours of the
morning in the hot, brilliant night. I had told Gujar Singh the whole
story except two words, which I had kept to myself. Wazir Hussein had
referred to Connie as El Amin. El Amin is Arabic, and it means 'He who
is worthy of trust'. Not a bad name for a chief ground engineer, of
course, except for the fact that it was one of the names of the Prophet.

I got the accountant on the job next day, and the figures came out just
as I had expected. I thought them over for a bit. In a negotiated sale
the business was probably worth more than the book value of the assets,
but if some disaster were to force a sale the aircraft might not realise
the book value. In the accounts I was writing everything off over five
years. I added a note about this to the accounts suggesting an
additional depreciation of twenty-five per cent on the aircraft in the
case of a forced sale, and then I got into the Proctor and went over to
Baraka.

I circled the palace and the Wazir's house before landing, and saw a car
leave for the airstrip; then I landed and parked the aircraft as the car
drove up. I got out and drove to the Wazir's house. Hussein came out to
meet me at the door. It was a two-storeyed house built around a court;
one side of this court was a blank, windowless wall behind which lay the
harem. Hussein had his son and a secretary with him. He greeted me with
a grave courtesy and took me up to a room with a balcony on the first
floor; there was practically no furniture in this room except two
wooden long chairs, a table, and a very beautiful carpet on the floor.

We sat down and he clapped his hands, and an Arab servant came with
coffee. It was delightfully cool in that top room, with a sea breeze
blowing through it. We talked of casual things for a time--the weather
for flying, the design of the house, the condition of the airstrip, and
presently I produced my accounts and explained them to him. "I don't
want to conceal anything from you," I said. "This is the true position
of the business as I understand it at the moment." I paused. "Please ask
anything which may occur to you. I will tell you anything I can."

He asked a little bit about my forward contracts and about my relations
with the Arabia-Sumatran Company, and I told him about the long-range
work which was developing for them, which had made this new large
aircraft necessary. Then he laid the accounts down, and smiled. "I do
not think that there is anything further," he said, smiling. "My master
knows of you as an honest man. The money is at your disposal when you
need it, sixty thousand pounds. Have you a bank in Bahrein?"

"I've got an account with the Bank of Asia," I said. "If you would pay
it into my account there, I should be most grateful. In that case I
shall transfer most of it to a London bank at once and fly to England to
place the order." I paused. "I can only tell you, what I think you know
already, that your help is making things very easy for me."

He said, "That is my master's wish."

He told me that the Sheikh was anxious to meet me, and presently we went
downstairs and walked a hundred yards or so down the lane to the palace.
This was a white house standing in a garden of flower beds and date
palms just outside the town. It was not very large as palaces go; it was
arranged in two storeys around a courtyard and might have had about ten
or twelve large rooms in all. It was in a sort of Moorish style with
fretted wooden sun-shutters at the windows; there was rather a beautiful
little mosque immediately adjacent to it in the garden.

I had been entertained by sheikhs a good many times since I had come to
the Persian Gulf, and there was very little to distinguish this lunch
party from many of the others. The old man met us at the door; he spoke
no English, and I had to do the best I could in Arabic; from time to
time the Wazir helped me by translating when I got stuck. He had a crowd
of about fifteen of his ministers and hangers-on with him, and we sat
around on hard chairs in a circle in an ante-room and made polite
conversation until lunch was ready. Then we went through into the
dining-room or whatever they call it, where the meal was prepared upon a
tablecloth in the middle of the carpet on the floor--a huge pile of rice
on an enormous dish with the best part of a sheep boiled and lying on
top of it, all very greasy. I knew about this, of course, and had
prepared for it by eating nothing that day, and very little the evening
before. One goes into training for an Arab feast.

We sat down on the floor, myself next to the Sheikh, and washed our
hands in the bowls that the negro servants brought round. Then the old
man tore a bit of mutton off the carcase in the middle with his hands
and put it on my plate, and a servant began to hand a multitude of side
dishes to me, curries and mushrooms and truffles and dates in sweet
syrup and Lord knows what. I'm always very bad at eating with my fingers
and I always seem to make more mess upon the carpet than the Arabs do,
but I must say there's a fascination in that sort of a meal. Some of it
was perfectly delicious.

Finally the old man got up, and the servants washed our hands for us,
and we went back into the ante-room for coffee flavoured with cloves. It
was only then that the Sheikh raised the subject that had brought me
there. He said, "The Wazir tells me that your business has been
satisfactorily concluded."

"There only remains for me to express my very deep gratitude for so much
help," I replied. "I say this not only for myself, but for the pilots
and the engineers who work with me."

"It is good that men who bring others to the way of God should not be
perplexed for money," the old man said. And I thought, Gujar Singh was
right. That's what is behind it all.

Presently I took my leave of the Sheikh, and went back with Wazir
Hussein to his house. The Sheikh's eldest son came with us, a young man
called Fahad, and at the Wazir's house we had another cup of coffee and
he produced the loan agreement. This was a document written on parchment
in Arabic and in English, in vertical columns with the two languages
side by side. It only had three clauses and was very simple and
straightforward. Fahad, who spoke good English, explained it to me with
the Wazir, and I signed it there and then, and they gave me a cheque for
sixty thousand pounds. I flew back to Bahrein in the Proctor wondering
when I was going to wake up.

Next day I spent an hour telephoning round to all my clients in the oil
companies to tell them that I was leaving for England to bring out
another large aircraft; I sent a cable to the Plymouth Aircraft Company
ordering a Tramp and saying I would visit them during the following week
to finalise the specification and to pay a deposit, and I sent a cable
to Dad to say that I was coming home. There was a Dakota of Orient
Airways going through to Almaza that day and I got a ride in that, and
from Egypt I flew home by B.O.A.C., which had a spare seat in a
Constellation of the Australian service.

It was more than a year since I had been in England, and it was good to
be back. It was May, and as I travelled down by rail to Southampton I
thought that I had never seen a country look so green and beautiful. I
had forgotten that England was lovely. I sat with my nose glued to the
window in the train, just looking at the varied greens of the fields and
trees and hedges, at the delicate colours of the flowering trees. It was
wonderful.

I went by bus from the station to the gas works, and carried my bag from
there. It was evening, and the tall steelwork of the gas-holders and the
cranked cranes of the docks were all touched with a golden light. I
walked down the familiar streets, through the games of the playing
children, in a dream; this was my own place, and I was home again. The
places I had worked in were all very wonderful and strange, but this was
my town, where I belonged.

I turned into the door of our house and went into the living-room. Ma
was in, as I had known she would be, and Dad wasn't; he was down at the
"Lion" playing darts. Ma came out of the scullery when she heard the
door, and she said, "Tom!" And then she said, "Oh Tom, you're thinner!
Whatever have you been doing with yourself?"

As I kissed her I said, "Am I, Mum?"

She said, "Of course you are! Have you been ill or something?"

I smiled. "Not a day. I'm as fit as a flea."

"Really, Tom?"

"Honest, Mum. I've not been ill at all."

She felt my shoulders. "Well, I dunno. You don't _look_ ill, I must say,
but you must be a stone lighter." She stood back and looked at me.
"You're looking older, too. Have you been working overtime or night
shift?"

"I've been working," I said. "I expect that's it."

"Well, now you've got to stay at home a bit and get rested up," she
said. "How long are you home for now, Tom?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've come home for another aeroplane, but it
may be a month or so before it's ready." In the correspondence they had
said four weeks delivery.

"Well, then," she said, "you'll be able to lie in tomorrow and have a
real rest."

"I've got to catch the seven-thirty-three for Plymouth tomorrow morning,
Mum," I said. "I'll have to have breakfast before Dad."

"Oh Tom! You ought to get some rest. You're looking quite worn out."

"I'm all right," I said.

She told me I was sleeping in the same old room, and I took my bag
through and unpacked it. None of us children were at home with the old
people. Ted had been the last, but he'd gone now. He'd married his Lily
as soon as he got out of the Army and he'd got a job driving a truck for
a builder at Wootton; they had been living with Dad and Mum up till a
week or so before, but now they'd got a council house, because she was
expecting. All the kids were out in the world, and all married and
settled except me.

While I was in the back room, Ma sent young Alfie Lamb from next door
down to the "Lion" to tell Dad I was home, and Dad came back ten minutes
later. Ma got supper for us and we sat and talked till after eleven. I
told them everything I could about the business, all except the
religious part; I left that out because I didn't properly understand it
myself. I didn't tell them about the loan I'd got from Sheikh Abd el
Kadir, either, and they didn't know enough about business to be curious
about where all the money was coming from. They thought I made it, and I
didn't undeceive them.

Once Dad said, "How much money have you got now, Tom?"

"Bloody little," I said, grinning. "I've got about five thousand pounds
in the bank."

Ma said, "That's a _lot_ of money."

Dad said, "He's got more than that, Ma. He's having us on. Just look at
him."

She said, "Tom, how much have you _really_ got?"

"That's all," I said. "I've got some aeroplanes, of course."

"How much are _they_ worth?"

"I'd only be guessing if I told you, Mum," I said seriously. "They stand
me in at about fifteen thousand pounds in the books. If I went bust and
got sold up, they probably wouldn't fetch that much. If I sold the
business as a going concern, with goodwill, they'd probably fetch a bit
more."

Dad said slowly, "So you've made twenty thousand pounds, then, have
you?"

"I suppose so," I said slowly. "It doesn't feel as if I had. I mean, it
just sort of happened."

"How much would twenty thousand pounds bring in if it was invested, Tom?
Say in a row of houses, like it might be these?"

"Oh, I don't know, Dad. Something like seven hundred a year, I should
think."

"Seven hundred a year. You could sell the business and retire and do
nothing for the rest of your life, and still have close on twice as much
as me each week to live on. You've not done bad for yourself, son."

Ma said quietly, "Why don't you do that, Tom, and stay at home, and get
a job in England? You could buy a business with that money, and a good
one, too." She meant a shop, of course.

I said, "It's not so easy to get out as that, Mum. There's a lot of
other things to be considered. I mean, when you start a thing there's
other people get mixed up in it, and you can't let them down. You can't
pick things up and put them down just as you fancy. You've got to see
things through."

"That's right," said Dad. "You've got to think about the other people in
the business. But what your ma says is right, Tom. There's no call for
you to spend your whole life in the Persian Gulf."

Ma started to put the plates together. "You want to look about a bit,
now that you're home," she said. "You want to find yourself a girl and
settle down. That's what you want. We're none of us getting any
younger."

I laughed. "Okay, Ma," I said with mock obedience. "Where shall I start
looking?"

She called from the scullery, "There's two or three nice girls right in
this street would do you very well. You don't have to look far. If they
knew that you'd got twenty thousand pounds we wouldn't be able to get in
or out of the door."

"Well, don't you go telling 'em," I said.

I was up early next morning, and took a few things in my bag, and caught
the seven-thirty-three for Plymouth. It was a slow journey, and I didn't
get there till after dinner. There was the hell of a fine car with a
chauffeur waiting there to meet me, and I was whisked out to the works
just as if I was somebody important, instead of being Tom Cutter from
the sergeants' mess out in Bahrein.

It's an enormous company, of course, employing over twenty thousand
hands in all the various divisions of the business. Like most big
concerns, they were quite brutal about the money. Within the first five
minutes I had to write a cheque for ten thousand pounds before they'd
even talk to me, but when they'd got that in their hands they took me
seriously, and were they good! Whenever any of them quoted a
performance, or gave a price, or a date, you kind of knew that that was
dead right and no bolony. What's more, they put me through the hoop
about my business, to find out what kind of loads I carried or was
likely to carry; they weren't going to have their aeroplane give any
trouble because I was using it wrong. When they heard I carried
bulldozers they pulled out a reinforced floor scheme, when they heard I
aimed to carry pilgrims they pulled out a seating scheme of long, hard
dural benches, very light and easily washed down. When they heard I flew
normally with a crew of two they pulled out a revised crew accommodation
that did away with the radio operator's position and added a hundred and
ten pounds to the payload. It was an education dealing with those
people.

They had machines on the production line coming through and they gave me
twenty-six days delivery, from noon the next day. It was getting towards
evening by that time, and they pushed me their way like as if I was a
little boy. They'd got accommodation for me in their own hotel just by
the works, and they gave me a mass of drawings to study that night. They
arranged a demonstration flight for ten o'clock next morning for me, and
they made it very clear that they expected me to confirm the order then
with another twenty thousand pounds. After that I was to go away and not
bother them any more--they told me the time of my train--for twenty-five
and a half more days. I could come back then, with another twenty-five
thousand pounds, and fly my aeroplane away exactly at noon, unless I
care to stay for lunch. The only thing they didn't make exactly and
precisely clear was if I had to pay for lunch.

I'd never have got anywhere with those people if I hadn't been able to
pay cash down. Their business was, quite simply, to make the best
aircraft in the world--not to lend money.

I didn't have to go back to Southampton by train, as it happened. There
was a Proctor there owned by my old company, Airservice Ltd., that had
come over for some spares. I knew the pilot slightly and he knew me; he
had been out in Cairo for a bit, and I had met him once or twice when I
had taken a load there in the Carrier. He was interested to see me with
the sales people, and he said that Mr. Norman Evans, my old chief, would
be very glad to hear I was in England, and would be sure to want to meet
me. I said I'd be free for the next three weeks and gave him my address;
he wanted the telephone number, but of course he was unlucky. However,
he was genuinely pleased to see me, and we got along so well I touched
him for a lift to Eastleigh; it was a bit out of his way but he said the
firm would be glad to do that for me. So I was home with Dad and Mum
that evening in time for tea, instead of about midnight, as I thought I
would be.

Mum wasn't expecting me so early. When I went into the house there was a
girl there in the kitchen with her, Doris Waters, the schoolteacher that
I'd met when I was home before, daughter of old Waters, the plumber.
They'd got Ted's school atlas spread out on the table that they'd marked
in ink with lines to all the places I had been to, and a lot of picture
postcards that I'd sent home, and some photographs I'd brought back with
me. Mum had been having a grand time, telling this girl all about me.

Ma said as I went in, "Hullo, Tom. Thought you weren't coming home till
late?"

"I got a lift back to Eastleigh," I said. "Evening, Doris."

She smiled, and said, "Good evening, Tom. Your mother's been telling me
about your travels. Haven't you been a long way?"

"You don't have to believe everything Ma says," I said a bit awkwardly.
Doris had filled out since I was home last, got more mature; she must
have been twenty-four years old or so. It was years since I'd spoken to
a young woman like her. She was quiet, and graceful, and pretty; I could
hardly take my eyes off her.

"He's a bad, wicked boy," said Ma. "You can believe that, anyway.
Doesn't write home enough, and when he does he doesn't tell us anything.
We have to wait till he comes home to hear what he's been up to, and
that's only when he wants another aeroplane. When he's got all the
aeroplanes he wants we shan't see or hear from him at all."

The girl said, "Oh Mrs. Cutter, how terrible! He must be a great
disappointment to you." She was grinning.

"Don't you ever get married, Doris," said my mother. "You'll find
children more trouble than they're worth."

"One thing," I said, "is that they're always wanting their tea."

"I don't know there's anything for you," said Ma. "I didn't think you'd
be home, so I only got three kippers; one for your pa, one for Doris,
and one for me. I dunno what you're going to eat, Tom, unless you slip
down to Albert's and see if he's got another one. There was plenty in
the box this morning."

Doris said, "I'll go, Mrs. Cutter."

"No," I said. "I'll go."

"Well, don't start fighting over it," said Ma. So she stayed to clear
the table and put the kettle on, and Doris and I walked down to the
fishmonger's together.

I knew, of course, that Ma hadn't engineered this meeting, although she
was quite capable of it. Doris was in the habit of dropping in to see
Mother once or twice a week; I knew that from Ma's letters. I was glad
of that, because with us kids all out in the world and mostly living in
other places, it must have been a bit lonely for Ma with Dad away all
day, especially now that Ted and Lily had moved out and set up their own
home. I tried to tell Doris something about that as we walked down the
street.

"Nice of you to keep coming in so often to see Ma," I said. "She looks
forward to you coming."

"I like it," she replied. "Your father and mother are such genuine
people, and they're so proud of what their children are all doing.
Specially you."

I walked on for a moment in silence. "Wish I wasn't so far off," I said
at last. "They're neither of them getting any younger."

"I know." She hesitated. "Your mother was really worried last winter,
when your father got that pneumonia."

I stared at her. "When did Dad have pneumonia?"

"Last January. Didn't you know?"

"Not a word. Are you sure?"

"Of course. It was just after Christmas, Tom. He was off work all
January." She had reason to know, because the crisis had come in the
school holidays, and I found out later that she had been in the house
with Mother every day, and sitting up several nights.

I was worried. "Ma told me that he'd had a cold and been off work a
bit," I said. "I didn't think much of it."

She nodded. "She didn't want to worry you. I mean out there, you
couldn't do anything to help."

"Course I could," I said. "The show can get on without me for a bit,
almost any time. I could have been home in thirty-six hours, if there
was any trouble with Dad or Mum like that."

She said, "Flying home? It'ld cost an awful lot. Your father wasn't as
bad as that."

"Not much sense in flying home just for the funeral," I said a bit
shortly. "What happened? Did he go to hospital?"

"They hadn't got a bed," she said. "It was all right at home."

Mum and Dad like our house and they'd never move away from it, but it's
not much of a place to nurse a serious illness in, with no running water
upstairs and the only toilet out in the back yard and shared with the
house next door. "Did they try and get him into a nursing home?" I
asked.

"I don't think so," she said. "It comes a bit expensive, you know."

I said, "For Christ's sake!" I was worth twenty thousand pounds, all
made in about three years. It wasn't real money, of course, to Dad and
Mum. It wasn't very real to me.

"I wish I'd known," I said. "I'd have been home inside two days and got
all that fixed up. There's plenty of money for a nursing home, or
anything they need."

"I'm very glad to know that," she said seriously. "I'll remember it." We
walked along in silence for a bit. I was worried, thinking what a bad
son I had been. "If that happens again, Tom," she said seriously, "would
you like me to send you a cable?"

I turned to her. "I wish you would. But if you do that, send it good and
early, so that I can get home in good time and do something. I've got
all the money in the world to help them if they're sick. Don't wait to
send a cable till they're dying."

She hesitated. "It might mean bringing you home on a wild goose chase,"
she said. "You wouldn't thank me then."

"I would. I'd rather have it that way. I don't get home to see them
enough, anyway. If you cable me like that, I wouldn't hold it against
you if Dad was back at work again when I got home, or Mum out at the
pictures."

"Do you really feel like that about it, Tom?"

"Of course I do. I ought to be home every six months, but I'm not. I
could be, but one gets stuck into things; you get so that you can't bear
to take a holiday. But for a thing like this I'd come home any time.
Will you let me have that cable?"

"I'll do that," she said.

"Full rate," I said. "None of this deferred or night letter nonsense."

She laughed. "All right."

We came to the shop, and I went in and got my kipper, and they wrapped
it up in a bit of newspaper for me, and we turned to stroll home. "How
long are you back for this time, Tom?" she asked.

"Three weeks," I said. I told her about the delivery of the Tramp. "It's
not worth going back to the Persian Gulf and coming out again."

"That'll be nice for your mother," she said. "She loves having you at
home." We walked on in silence. "Will you fly the new aeroplane out to
Bahrein alone?"

I shook my head. "I think I'll get my chief pilot back here two or three
days before. We'll fly it out together."

"Gujar Singh?"

I turned to her in surprise. "Yes. You know about him?"

She smiled. "I think I know all about you that your mother knows, Tom.
You mustn't mind that. She loves to talk."

"I don't mind," I said. I didn't, either. "He's a Sikh. Do you know what
a Sikh looks like?"

She nodded. "I've got a book at the school with a picture of a group of
Sikhs. I brought it home and showed your father and mother. They look
terribly fierce. Your mother was quite frightened."

"Gujar's not fierce," I said. "He comes to work each day on a lady's old
rusty bicycle. I'll introduce you to him when he comes, if you like. But
he's married, so don't get any ideas into your head. Got three children,
too."

She laughed, and then she said something about East being East and West
being West and the twain never meeting. Poetry, I think it was. "That
sounds like bolony to me," I said. "If you fly East and keep on going,
past Rangoon and Bangkok and Manila and Wake Island and Hawaii, you'll
find you're back in the West again, although you're still going East."

"That's only geographical," she said. "What Kipling meant was that the
peoples of the East are so different to us we'll never understand them."

"That's bolony, too," I remarked.

"You're very fond of them, aren't you?"

"I get on all right with most people," I said. "Asiatics are just the
same as anybody else. I've not found them any more different to us than
Spaniards, say, or Czechs."

She was quite unconvinced. "Anyway, I wouldn't want to marry Gujar
Singh," she said a little stiffly. "I think mixed marriages are
horrible."

"So does Gujar Singh," I replied. That put the lid on it, and we walked
the last hundred yards in silence. Dad was home and Ma cooked the
kippers and I told Dad a little bit about my trip and how Norman Evans
wanted to see me and I'd probably go up to London one day for that. Then
we all had tea, and after tea Doris Waters got up to go.

I went with her to the door. "Sorry if I was rude about Gujar," I said.
"He's a friend of mine." I paused. "Like to come to the pictures
tomorrow night?"

She hesitated, wondering, I suppose, if I was quite hygienic. "I'd love
to," she said at last. "I don't know what's on."

"It's all one to me," I said. "I haven't seen a picture for two years."

I fixed up to call for her at her dad's house next evening after school
and take her out; she knew a cafe where we could get fish and chips for
tea. Then she went away and I went back into the house. "I'm taking
Doris to the pictures tomorrow," I told Ma. "I won't be in for tea."

"Well, you might think of a worse way of spending an evening than that,"
said Ma. "Doris is a nice girl, Tom."

"From all I hear she's earned an evening out," I said. "What's this I
hear about pneumonia?"

I spent the next day wiring up the house for power. They had electric
light and a little cooker in the scullery for using when the range
wasn't lit, but it had never entered their heads to have any heat
upstairs in the bedrooms. When Dad had been ill they had bought an oil
stove and had it upstairs in his room, which wasn't so good in a tiny
room when you couldn't open a window. I got a lot of rubber-coated flex
and fittings and a couple of electric stoves, and set to work to wire up
all three bedrooms and the living-room with power points.

Doris and I had a grand time that night. I don't know what it was, but
everything seemed to go right. The picture wasn't a particularly good
one, and I've known better fish and chips, but we enjoyed ourselves. She
wasn't so snooty about the East as she had been the night before; she
asked a lot about it as if she really wanted to know. In turn, she told
me about her school. She had never been out of England, but she had
worked for a time in Leicester during the war, when the schools were
evacuated from Southampton.

As we were walking home from the pictures that evening she asked,

"What are you going to do, Tom? Are you going to stay out in the Persian
Gulf for ever?"

It was May, and England was a very lovely place. It was a question that
I had been asking myself, perhaps subconsciously. "It's where my
business is," I said. "You can't run away from that."

"Is it nice out there?"

"It's all right," I said. "It's not the part of the East I'd choose to
live in, if I had my pick. But there's not much to complain of, really."

"Will you ever come back to live and work in England?"

I walked on for a time in silence. "I'm King of the Castle out there," I
said. "Running my own show. I'd never get to that position here in
England. Not in aviation."

"Does it have to be in aviation?"

"I could run a garage," I said. "That's about the nearest thing to what
I know. A garage, or a haulage contractor's business, or something like
that. I'd be no good at anything else."

She nodded. "I should think you'd run a garage awfully well. Would you
like that, or would it be dull after the East?"

She had put her finger on the point. "It 'ld be dull," I said.
"But--well, there's other things to think of, too. I'd like to be in
England, now that Dad and Mum are getting on. I think one could settle
down all right with a big garage in a little country town, some place
like Romsey or Lyndhurst or Poole. I'd like that all right."

"It would be nice for your father and mother if you ever did that," she
said quietly. "Of all the children, you're the one they think the most
of, you know, Tom."

"Maybe," I said. It was a fact that none of the others seemed to do
much for the old folks. Ted could have put those power points in for
them, but he hadn't thought of it.

We walked on for a time in silence. "Don't you ever get depressed out
there?" she asked presently. "I mean, away from your own sort, with only
black people to talk to?"

"They aren't black," I said patiently. She meant her question kindly
enough. "They're brown, and when you've lived with them a bit you don't
see them as brown people any more. You see them as just people."

She laughed. "You _are_ touchy about them, Tom. But don't you ever get
depressed?"

"It wasn't a riot of fun when I left England," I replied. "I was
depressed when I went out there."

"You mean, about Beryl?"

"That's right," I said.

"That all happened a long time ago," she said quietly. "I don't know the
rights or wrongs of that. I don't suppose anybody knows that except you.
But I know this much: that there's nothing in that old story to make you
spend your life out in the Persian Gulf, away from everyone you know."
And then she said a very queer thing, very shrewd. "I know why you went.
You went to find a sort of hermitage."

I stared at her. "Well, I dunno." I had gone there in a tenth-hand
Fox-Moth because I was out of a job and wanted to make some money. Or,
had I? And then I said, "Perhaps I did."

"I know. But it's time you came back into circulation, Tom. If you stay
there alone much longer you'll go round the bend."

I smiled, and she thought I was laughing at her. She flushed a little.
"I suppose you think that's silly. But people do go funny when they live
isolated from their own sort, out in the Tropics."

"I don't think that's silly," I said. "What you say is right. I've got a
chap working for me now that everybody says is going round the bend."

"I thought you hadn't got any white staff?"

"I haven't. He's an Asiatic."

"I meant, English people."

"I know you did. But a Chinese can be further from his home when he
works in the Persian Gulf than any Englishman, and lonelier."

"Is this a Chinese that you're speaking of, who's going round the bend?"

"Half Chinese and half Russian," I said. "Born in Penang, and so a
British subject just like you and me."

"What's wrong with him?" she asked. "What does he do?"

"He believes in God," I said a little wearily. "He teaches engineers who
work with him to turn to God in everything they do upon the aeroplanes,
and he gets people to believe that that's the sensible way to set about
the job of aircraft maintenance. He's obviously going round the bend.
Everybody says so." And with that my old worries and responsibilities
closed down on me. A month was too long for me to be away from Bahrein.
Anything might be happening in my absence.

"But surely that's not wrong?" she asked.

"I don't know if it's right or wrong," I said. "I only know it's liable
to make a packet of trouble, any time."

We were just at her house, and there wasn't time to tell her any more,
and I didn't want to anyway. It would have been useless to try and make
her understand all that was going on out in Bahrein and further east. I
turned to her. "I've enjoyed this evening," I said. "Like to do it again
one day?"

She smiled. "Of course I would. I'm free most evenings, Tom. Tuesdays I
bring home the essays to correct, but most of the rest are free."

"I'm expecting to have to go to London," I remarked. "There may be a
letter tomorrow. I'll probably be there for a night or two. I'll drop
around one evening when I get back."

She nodded. "Fine. I may be round with your mother. I have enjoyed this,
Tom. It was nice of you to ask me."

I turned away. "Okay," I said. "We'll do it again."

As I had thought, there was a letter from Mr. Norman Evans next morning.
He said that he had heard a lot about my success out in the Persian
Gulf, and he wanted to congratulate me. He went on to say that as they
were operating both in Egypt and in India we ought to get together, as
we'd have a lot in common to talk over. Would I like to lunch with him
at the Royal Aero Club one day? He was free any day that week. Perhaps I
would give him a ring and suggest a day.

I rang him from the call box at the end of our street, and went up to
London a couple of days later with my bag packed for a night or two. I
went to the same economical hotel in Bloomsbury, and left my bag, and
took a brief-case with a few papers in it, and went out to lunch with my
old boss.

He was very glad to see me. I'd never been inside a London club before,
and it was all new to me. We had a drink in the bar, and I was really
glad to be back with him again. One gets kind of attached to people that
you work for, sometimes, and I had always hit it off with Mr. Evans.

He asked how many aircraft I'd got operating, and I didn't mind a bit
telling him that. I'd fixed in my own mind the day before the things I
wasn't going to talk about--contract prices, and things of that
sort--but except for one or two essential bits of business like that I
saw no point in hiding anything up. We had a drink or two and then we
had lunch. I asked him question for question, and he told me all about
his staff and aircraft out in Egypt and in India, most of which I knew
already, and I told him about mine.

Over the coffee he said, "What we've none of us been able to understand,
here at home, is how you managed to work up such a fleet of aircraft on
no capital at all, Cutter. _I_ couldn't have done that. It looks like
black magic to us. I hear you've placed an order for a Plymouth Tramp."

"You keep your ear pretty close to the ground," I said.

"Well, of course. I wish I knew what you use for money."

I smiled; there were some things I didn't mean to tell him. But I could
tell him most of it. "For one thing, I've been very lucky," I replied.
"For another, I probably work at a much bigger margin of profit than you
do. I don't employ any Europeans at all. Not one. None of my aircraft
carry upholstery or sound-proofing. If anybody wants a seat he pays
extra for the weight of it, at standard freight rates. Little things
like that."

"Third class travel for everybody," he said thoughtfully.

"That's right."

"I've been wanting to ask you about staff," he said. "I knew, of course,
that you use only Asiatic pilots and ground engineers. Are you satisfied
with that?"

"Perfectly. We've had no accidents yet, and the maintenance is good. You
can ask the A.R.B."

"It's very, very interesting. How much do you pay a pilot--say for one
of your Airtrucks?"

I grinned. "I'm not telling you."

He laughed. "All right. There's quite a number of people wanting to know
that."

"They may find out if they black their faces and come to Bahrein for a
job," I said. "They'll have their work cut out to find out any other
way."

We sat for some time upstairs with the coffee. "I still don't understand
where you have found the capital," he said. "It's very wonderful, the
amount that you've been able to do. You aren't a company even, are you?"

"I'm just trading as Tom Cutter. It seems to work all right." I did not
want to keep anything from him that I could reasonably divulge. "I'll be
quite frank with you, Mr. Evans. Up till now I've been very lucky with
getting easy hire-purchase terms, for the Airtrucks and the Carrier, so
that I could meet the instalments out of profits. For this new Tramp,
I've got in some new money, as a personal loan. Local money."

He stared at me. "Local money--in Bahrein?"

"That's right."

"And as a personal loan?"

I nodded. "It's a personal business. The aircraft are all my
property--so far as they're paid up."

"I see. You must be getting to be worth quite a bit, if it's all
personal."

"On paper," I said, laughing. "You wouldn't believe the struggle that
it's been to pay the wages and the petrol bill sometimes."

"I would," he said. "I've had some."

Presently he said, "Look, Tom, this is just an idea that's been passing
through my mind in the last month or two. I'm putting it to you without
prejudice and with my fingers crossed and all that." I nodded. "You know
what we do. We operate charter aircraft based here, and in Egypt, and in
Delhi. We've been a bit slow over setting up an organisation in Iraq and
the Persian Gulf, for a variety of reasons. Well, now in a way you've
stolen a march on us and you've done what we should have done ourselves,
and good luck to you. As things are, no competition has developed
between us, and I hope it never will. I always think of you as one of
us. But, geographically, we operate each side of you. If we try to join
up Delhi with Egypt we shall come into competition with you. If you try
to get out and extend your operations either way, you'll come into
competition with us. I've been wondering if we couldn't get together in
some way."

"That's very interesting, Mr. Evans," I said cautiously. "I think I'm
all right as I am, but there's no harm in talking it over."

That began it, and for the next week I was up in London almost all the
time. I edited an edition of my balance sheet for them and gave them
that to chew over, and in return I asked for theirs. Mine was a darn
sight better than theirs was, although my total business was much
smaller. I met Evans again at Morden with an accountant, and then I met
him again in London with his chairman, Sir Roger Sale. I told them early
on that after running my own show I wasn't going to work for anyone, but
that if they cared to make an offer to buy my business as a going
concern I'd be interested to hear it. I told them straight that if I
went on in aviation I was going on as boss of my own show, but I'd
consider a proposal whereby they'd pay me hard cash for the business,
and I'd get out.

I was thinking of the garage, and of Dad and Mum at home, not getting
any younger.

They took a few days to think it over, and I went home. I was troubled
about the whole thing, because I didn't know what I wanted to do. In
three years I'd got further ahead in my own business than I had any
right to expect; I couldn't suppose that I'd go on getting bigger and
bigger at that rate for ever. There was nothing behind me in the way of
finance; if the aeroplanes stopped operating for a month I'd be bust. I
lived from hand to mouth all the time in that business; there was no
cash in it. But it was my own show and I'd made it a success, and out
there people depended on my efforts.

Back at home, Dad and Mum were beginning to depend on me, too, as they
got older. It looked as if Airservice Ltd. would make an offer, and I
had a pretty good idea of what it would be. A garage in a country town
was well within my reach, with a quiet, pleasant life in the south of
England, close to all the places and the people that I knew. I could get
married again with more chance of a success this time, and raise a flock
of kids. And I knew somebody who'd marry me if I put it to her right,
too.

I went around, on the morning I got back, to the garage out at Bitterne
on the Portsmouth road that I had worked in as a boy, and that I had got
the sack from when Cobham's circus came, seventeen years before. Mr.
Collier still ran it, greyer and older than when I had worked for him;
he remembered me, and he had heard I was in aviation in the Persian
Gulf. I asked him how one would set about buying a garage business if
one wanted to, and he produced some copies of a privately issued paper
called the _Garage and Motor Agent_, with a lot of businesses for sale
in it. He lent me half a dozen copies and I fixed up with him to hire a
little ten-year-old Ford to run around in while I was at home.

I went off in this car next day alone, and drove around, thinking. There
was a business at Petersfield for sale, and another one at Arundel, and
one at Fordingbridge, and one at Lymington in the New Forest, on the
Solent. And there was a good big one in Bournemouth.

I got back home on the first evening and parked the car on a bombed site
near our house. Doris Waters was in having tea with Mother. It was a
Friday and there was no school next morning. I said to her, "Like to
come for a joy-ride in my Rolls tomorrow?"

She smiled. "I'd love to do that. Where are you going to?"

"Fordingbridge, Lymington, and Bournemouth," I said.

"Oh, lovely, Tom. Shall I make us up some sandwiches?"

"Not a bad idea," I said. "Make us independent."

Ma asked me, "See anything you fancied today?"

"I saw two," I said. "Trouble is, I don't know if I want a business or
not. Or even if I can pay for it, if I did want it. I'm just looking."

Ma said, "Well, Doris can help you look. Four eyes are better than two."

I ought to have slept well that night, but I didn't. I lay awake hour
after hour in the little back bedroom we had all slept in as boys
together, listening to all the church clocks in Southampton as they
struck the hours, the noise of shunting engines and the clang of trucks
from the goods yard, and the occasional siren from a steamer in the
fairway. I couldn't sleep at all.

A man has a right to get married and have children, and I'd earned the
right to have a wife, both in work and money. A man's got a right to
live in his own place. A man has a right to make his life where he can
look after his dad and mum a bit when they get old. I owed nothing to
the East. If this deal went through I could pay back the sixty thousand
that I'd borrowed from Sheikh Abd el Kadir for the Tramp. Everyone
working for me at Bahrein would go on working for Airservice Ltd., just
as they had for me, except that they might get a bit more money;
Airservice Ltd. paid higher wages than I did. I could get clean out,
injuring nobody, putting nobody out of a job, and I could come back to
my own place with capital to buy a garage with, and settle down.

It was reasonable, and straight, and the obvious thing to do. And I
didn't want to do it.

I lay in bed tossing and turning, trying to reason out why I was such a
bloody fool. It was the glamour of the East, of course. The colour, and
the easy life, and the quick money. These things had got hold of me,
intoxicated me, so that I couldn't break away and come back to a harder,
saner, more humdrum life in England. That was the trouble with me, I
told myself. Now that I'd realised it everything would be all right, and
I could sleep.

That's what I told myself, but it wasn't all right at all. It was no
good kidding myself like that. There wasn't any colour in Bahrein. There
was an awful lot of grey dust, but no pretty girls. There wasn't an easy
life out there, or if there was I hadn't had it. What I had had was hard
work and bad food, prickly heat and sores that wouldn't heal because of
the sweat, and nobody to talk to. If I had made money it had not been
easy money, and it had done me no good whatsoever; in terms of fun or
goods or holidays I'd have been better off working in England on the
bench in some factory at six quid a week. It wasn't true when I tried to
tell myself that the glamour of the East had got hold of me. There isn't
any glamour, or if there is, it hadn't come my way.

I lay sleepless, hour after hour. Somewhere, sometime, I had read a
story about a Spitfire pilot going into a dog-fight with his squadron.
It was near the end of his tour of ops, and he couldn't take it any
longer. The story told how he fiddled with his safety harness as they
dived towards the Jerries, making sure that everything was ready for him
to get out quick, and slid his cockpit cover back a fraction just to
make sure it was free. He knew just what he'd do. He'd carry straight on
in his dive and not attempt to get a Jerry, but just go right through
them. Then, while everybody else was engaged, with no eyes for anything
but the Jerry in his sights or the Jerry on his tail, he'd turn his
Spitfire over and bale out, and nobody would ever know he hadn't been
unlucky. He did that, and got down all right, and the French Resistance
boys got hold of him and hid him, and made a fuss of him as a great
hero. Two days later he shot himself.

I lay awake till dawn with that damn story running through my mind. Then
I slept an hour or so, and then it was time to get up and take Doris for
her day in the country.

She turned up about half-past nine, as pretty as a picture in a white
summer frock with a little fine red and green pattern on it. She had
colour in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. She was carrying a
basket full of lunch, with a white napkin tucked around the top of it.
"Oh Tom, isn't it a heavenly day?" she said when she saw me. "I've been
up since six."

I grinned; her mood was infectious, and all my gloom was rolling away at
the sight of her. "What got you up so early?"

"I've been making your lunch. Tom, you can eat sardines, can't you?"

"I can eat anything," I said. "What have you got?"

"Sardine sandwiches, and brawn sandwiches, and cheese and biscuits and
some little cakes I made last night. I've not got anything to drink
except a thermos of coffee. Are you going to bring some beer?"

"Might as well," I said. "Shall I get some for you?"

"I don't drink it," she said. "I'll have cider."

I went out and down to the "Lion" and in at the back door, and they let
me have the bottles in a bag, because it was out of hours. It was bright
and sunny and fresh out in the street. I went and fetched the old Ford
from the bombed site and drove it up to the door of our house, and got
all the stuff and put it in the back seat. Doris came out and got into
the seat beside me, and Ma stood at the door waving us good-bye, and two
or three of the neighbours were peeking at us round the corner of the
curtain. I let the clutch in and we moved off with a haze of blue,
scorched oil rising up around us in the shabby little saloon.

Doris turned to me, "Oh Tom, this _is_ fun!"

It certainly was a lovely summer morning when we got out on to the
road. We went by Cadnam and over the open heaths of the New Forest, and
we didn't go very fast because the car wouldn't go very fast; it had
been nobody's darling for so many years that about twenty-five was its
safe cruising speed. We couldn't talk much, either, because it kicked up
a pretty fair racket. We just sat and enjoyed the colours of the country
and the warm, tolerant sunshine alternating with cool shade, and we were
happy.

I stopped outside Fordingbridge and showed Doris the advertisement of
the garage in the paper I had with me, and then we drove in to have a
look at it. It was advertised as having a two-bedroomed house, and they
wanted seven thousand for it. When we got to it we found it mostly built
of tin and rather dirty, and the house was nothing much. I went in and
spent about half an hour with the chap looking after it; the owner had
just died and previous to that he had let it run down badly. I didn't
think a lot of it, but it was cheap and in a good position. We got into
the car again, and went on to see the one at Bournemouth.

We stopped for lunch on the way, by a wide river, heavily preserved,
full of enormous trout. There was a waterfall there, a little sort of
weir; we carried our lunch along the river bank to the tumbling water,
and sat down and had it there. As Doris was spreading out the white
napkin for a tablecloth, we saw a kingfisher.

Doris was very positive about the garage that we'd seen at
Fordingbridge. "It's all right," she said, "but it wouldn't do for you.
There's not enough scope there for a man like you, Tom. It's--it's all
too small."

"I'd have a bit of capital left over for building it up," I said. "It's
a possibility, anyway."

She shook her head. "All right for some people, but not for a man like
you."

I grinned. "Fat lot you know about me."

"I can't see you fitting in at Fordingbridge," she said obstinately.
"Not after all that you've been doing. You'd be bored to tears at the
end of a year."

"Give me another of those rock cakes," I said. "They're good." I knew
she had made them herself. She passed them to me, smiling, and I took
one and bit into it. "About Fordingbridge," I said. "You may be right,
but I'm not sure you are. You think I couldn't stick it in a small town.
But I've been living in one for three years."

She stared at me. "Where?"

"Bahrein," I said.

"But that's different, Tom. That's in the East."

"A small town's a small town, wherever it is," I said. "I've got no
feeling against small town life. I rather like it."

She switched the subject. "It's a rotten little house, anyway," she
said. "I'd hate to live in it."

I grinned at her. "I haven't asked you to."

She flushed a little, and I was sorry I'd done that. "I didn't mean it
that way. It's a rotten little house, and you can't make it any better.
You'd have to find another house, and that would take you away from the
business."

"I know what you mean," I said gently. "You're right, too. In a place
like that I think you ought to live on top of the job."

"It's a small-scale business," she said, "and it always will be. But
you're not a small-scale person, Tom."

We sat and smoked a cigarette after lunch, watching the tumbling water
and the birds, and presently we packed up and walked back to the car and
got on the road for Bournemouth.

The Bournemouth business was a good one. It was on the west side of the
town out towards Canford Cliffs, in a very good suburban district. It
was clean and fairly new, on a street corner on a busy main road with a
wide area behind it covered with good houses, all of which would have a
car and many of them two. It had four petrol pumps with a good concrete
pull in, under cover, and a very good machine shop. About ten hands were
regularly employed, and there was a showroom built on to it; they held a
sub-agency for Austins. It was a good prosperous modern business going
for twenty-five thousand pounds because of the death of the owner; the
price seemed a bit on the top side to me. There was no house.

I spent an hour and a half there, and had a long talk with the manager,
a smart young chap who'd been in the R.A.F. He'd had a shot at buying it
himself, but hadn't been able to raise the cash. He said there were one
or two people after it as an investment. He was quite frank, and showed
me everything, but I think he was a bit windy that if I came in I'd turn
him out and run the show myself. He was probably about right there,
because there wouldn't have been room for two of us.

We left that place at about half-past three, and drove down to the sea,
and went into a cafe for a cup of tea and for Doris to tidy herself up
in the ladies' room. She was very much taken with that garage. "It's a
good business, isn't it, Tom?" she asked. "It's all so clean and nice,
and in such a good neighbourhood."

"I should think it's all right," I said.

"Would you have enough money for it?"

"I think so. Yes, I think I should."

She sipped her tea. "I think you'd do awfully well there. It's big
enough to give you plenty of scope."

"Yes," I said. "It's big enough for that."

"What's the matter with it? You don't sound very enthusiastic."

I sat in silence for a minute, looking out of the window at a
sailing-boat tacking up and down the beach. "Well," I said at last,
"it's somebody else's business."

She wrinkled her brows. "But it's for sale. If you bought it, it'ld be
yours, wouldn't it?"

I nodded. "The first thing I'd have to do would be to sack that chap who
showed us round, because I'd want to run it myself. The money's nothing.
It's his business, really. He's worked it up." I paused. "The money's
just what makes it possible for me to pinch his business off him. That's
all the blasted money does."

"What a horrid way to look at it, Tom."

"It's the right way," I said quietly. "It's the truth. It's a good
business, and I'll think about it. But if I go in there that chap goes
out, and he knows it. His staff won't care about that much, either--he's
got a good crowd there. I don't know that I want to start off on the job
like that."

"I see that," she said slowly. "Couldn't you keep him on?"

"I don't know," I said. "It all wants a bit of thinking about. I
couldn't keep him on as boss, which he's been up till now."

We still had one more place to see, in Lymington, and that was on our
way back to Southampton. We left the cafe and got into the little Ford
again, and drove out through Christchurch. Lymington lies about fifteen
or twenty miles to the east of Bournemouth; it is a little town at the
west end of the Solent, on a river near the mouth. It's a great yachting
centre, with the unspoilt country of the New Forest all around. I had
planned our trip to leave this till the last, because I had a hunch from
the advertisement that the Anchor Garage might be what I wanted.

And it was. It was at the end of the town right down on the waterfront.
It wasn't as big as it had been at one time, because in 1943 an ME 109
had come over on a tip-and-run raid and had flattened most of it with a
bomb, and killed about fifteen people on the side. Half of it was still
standing, and the owner had put up a couple of disposal Nissen huts for
machine shop and stores. The same bomb had brought down about six houses
beside the garage; the debris had been cleared away, of course, so that
there was now a big open space right on the waterfront, suitable for
expansion. The garage had two pumps, and a fair amount of car work, but
much of the business before the war had been marine, and motor-boat
engines were very much in evidence in the showroom.

It was owned by an old chap called Summers, who must have been over
seventy. He was a good mechanic himself, and the place was in good order
considering the limitations of the premises, but he was tired and wanted
to sell out and settle his affairs before he died. He told me that he
was leaving everything to his married daughter, but he wanted to leave
it in cash. He was quite willing to stay on and help me if I bought it
till I got the hang of things. He wanted fifteen thousand pounds, and
there was no house.

I spent the best part of a couple of hours there with him. He had bought
one of the house sites, and he thought the others could be got without
great difficulty. He expected a licence to build within twelve months,
but I should have to see the council about that. The bomb had made
possible a project that he had always had in mind, a slipway for
motor-boats in his own premises, but he would have to leave that to
another man to do. He was old now, and wanted to get out.

I didn't say much, except grunt now and then, or ask a question, because
I was afraid of seeming too eager. It was a lovely garage. The one
bombed site he'd bought went through to the main road and had a frontage
there right on a corner, so you could have the pumps and showroom up
there with a good drive in. From that the ground he'd already got ran
down to the original premises on the quay, and alongside that, as I say,
there was vacant land for expansion along the waterfront. There was any
amount of yacht work there, increasing every year as yachting grows in
popularity, and yacht work is good work because it's not so cut price
and people will pay for good-quality workmanship in yachting.

It was Saturday evening, and about seven o'clock by the time that I'd
learned all I had to know. The old man said that several people had been
to see it and were considering it, but I could see that it was rather a
big proposition for the average man looking for a garage. Over and above
the purchase price, a lot of money would need spending on it in the way
of buildings to develop it to what it could be made into, far more than
the War Damage compensation. At the same time, there wasn't much
immediate return for the next year or two, till buildings could be got
up, so that as an investment it wasn't so attractive as some others. I
said I'd think it over for the week-end and if I wanted to go on with it
I'd come over on Monday or Tuesday, and with that I got back in the car
with Doris and drove off.

"It's an awfully pretty place," she shouted above the rattle of the worn
little engine.

I nodded. "We'll find somewhere to stop and have a pint, and talk it
over."

There is a little pub on the edge of an open heath just the other side
of Beaulieu. It was a warm summer evening, and I parked the car on the
grassy sward outside this place, and we went in, and got beer and cider
and bread and cheese, and took them out on to the bench in front,
looking out over the heath. It was very quiet there, and calm, and
peaceful. "That's the place," I said. "That's what I want."

She turned to me, smiling, "Really?"

"It's marvellous," I said. "Didn't you think so?"

"I loved it," she said. "It's so pretty, with the water and the boats
and everything. But there's an awful lot needs doing, Tom."

"That's what's going to make it fun," I said.

She turned to me. "Have you got enough money for it?"

"I've not got any yet," I said. "If Airservice make an offer for my
business I'll hear in the next day or two. If they come through all
right, there ought to be enough."

"There isn't any house," she said.

"I thought of that one," I replied. "There's a lot of building to be
done. I'd like to have a big flat over one bit of the garage, for a
start."

"Oh Tom! Looking out over the water, with the yachts and everything?"

I nodded. "That's what I had in mind."

She said, "A brand-new flat, that one could plan and have everything
just right from the start! You do have lovely ideas."

"I don't see why not," I said. "One's got to live somewhere and that
ground was all housing at one time. I think one 'ld get a permit to do
that all right."

I thought about it for a minute or two, drinking my beer. "Keep a boat,
perhaps," I said. "I'd like to do that. A little sailing yacht that one
could take away for the week-end."

She said, "It sounds just heavenly..."

I sat there staring out over the heath. It was as she said, just
heavenly, too good to be true. I was getting tired, I suppose, at the
end of the day, and I hadn't slept a lot the night before. It was all
within my grasp and I could grab it if I wanted to, and my other life
out in Bahrein could go to hell. In time I'd probably forget all that,
even if it took a year or two to do it.

I put the tankard down. "Let's get going," I said quietly. "Dad and Mum
will be wondering what's happened to us."

I ought to have pulled up somewhere on the way back, in the shade under
a tree in some quiet spot, and given her a kiss or two, and told her
that I loved her. It would have made her day perfect if I'd done that,
and mine too, perhaps. But it's no good getting into things too deep
unless you're sure of yourself; I'd done that once before, with Beryl.
That was how I started killing her, although I didn't see it at the
time. I wasn't going to have that happen to Doris. I still had Bahrein
on my mind, and so I drove straight on, and presently got home and
dropped her at her father's house.

She said, "It's been a lovely day, Tom. Thank you ever so much for
taking me."

I smiled. "I've enjoyed it. I'll let you know how things go on."

I went back to the house, and there was a letter for me from Gujar
Singh, and another one from Connie; they wrote to me every two or three
days to tell me how things were going. I opened Connie's first.

There was not much in it except news that his sister was on her way to
Bahrein; she was coming in an American ship to Alexandria and from Egypt
she would fly. He expected her to arrive in about a week, and said that
he had fixed up accommodation for her in the house that he lived in. I
wondered how a girl from San Diego would react to the conditions in the
souk; it was none of my business, of course, except that I had offered
to give her a trial in the office. He said that one of the ground
engineers, a chap called Salim, had left and had taken a job with Sind
Airways Ltd. in Karachi, and he was looking for another one. I knew that
Salim had worked in Karachi during the war, and I was not surprised that
he had left to go back there. The rest of the letter was about the
routine work going on in the hangar.

Gujar's letter was more serious. After telling me about the flights that
had been made and booked ahead for the next few days, he went on:

     "I think it will be better when you can return. The secretary from
     the Residency, Mr. Connop, came to the office yesterday and asked
     when you would come back, and when I said a fortnight he seemed
     angry. He did not say his business, and went away. In the bazaar
     men are saying that the Resident is angry with you for the loan of
     money from the Sheikh of Khulal because they say that religious
     influence has been used to make that old man lend his money. There
     is much talk about this so that some say that what goes on in our
     hangar is good and comes from God, and others say that it is evil.
     I do not think it would have entered anybody's head that it was
     evil if the English people at the Residency had not been angry, and
     the servants told it in the souk. And now there is a great deal of
     talking going on.

     "Shak Lin has told you that Salim has gone back to Karachi. I think
     he has gone to tell the engineers in Sind Airways our way of doing
     things, but that is nothing to us, because he is gone. Shak Lin is
     looking for another one."

Ma was in the room as I was reading this one. "Bad news, Tom?" she
asked.

"No," I said. "Just business." I was furious over what had happened in
Bahrein. The loan that had been offered by the Sheikh of Khulal was not
of my seeking, nor was it due to any religious trickery on the part of
Connie Shaklin. News of it had got to the Residency as some distorted
rumour, and they had assumed that we had swindled the old Sheikh with a
confidence trick and got away with sixty thousand pounds of his money.
If they believed that, of course, it was their duty to commence
enquiries because it was their job to do what they could to protect the
Arab population from exploitation. They had been ham-handed in the
Residency and had talked in hearing of the servants, and now God knew
what might be stirring in Bahrein. It might end in religious riots,
easily.

I didn't get much sleep that night, either. I lay and tossed upon my bed
all night, wakeful and in a weary, anxious maze. Salim had left and gone
to Sind Airways, in Karachi. I knew Salim; he was one of the most devout
of our ground engineers. Gujar said that he had gone to teach the
engineers of Sind Airways our way of doing things. What way? The
religious way? Gujar could hardly mean anything else. Was Salim, then, a
missionary, spreading a new gospel amongst ground engineers? Was he
starting up a cult of Shak Lin's teaching in Karachi, as U Myin had
started it in Rangoon? What was ahead of us, and where was it all going
to end?

If riots started in Bahrein because of Shak Lin's teaching, how far
would they spread? Would the flame run from Bahrein to Karachi, to
Rangoon, and on to Bangkok in Siam?

I lay unhappy and distressed all night through in our small slum house
in Southampton, between the gas works and the docks. Out in the East the
situation might be getting out of control, and here was I in England,
away from the job and powerless to influence events. There were eight
days to go before the Tramp was ready for delivery.

I got up in the morning, tired and stale. It was Sunday, so we had
breakfast late. Over the meal Dad said, "We've not heard anything about
how you got on yesterday, Tom. See anything you fancied?"

I stared at him; my mind was far away in the Persian Gulf. "Anything I
fancied?"

"Any garages?"

Recollection came flooding back to me, but it all seemed unreal now, and
vastly unimportant. "Oh--garages. We saw one or two, but nothing very
much."

He grunted. "What are you going to do--go on looking?"

I had to get away and be alone, to think things over. "Yes," I said. "I
think I'll go out today and look around a bit more."

Ma said, "Taking Doris again?"

I shook my head. "I'll go alone. I've got a lot of things I've got to
have a think about."

She said no more, and I went out after a time and got the car from the
bombed site and drove down to the central post office. I sent a very
long cable to Gujar Singh from there, two sheets of it. I asked him to
let me know at once by cable if I ought to return; I said I would fly
back immediately if there was any need, and come back again to England a
week later to fetch the Tramp. If everything was quiet and in order in
Bahrein, I said, he should fly to England himself by B.O.A.C. on Friday
arriving on Saturday, and I would meet him at Heath Row. We would go to
Plymouth on Monday morning and take delivery of the Tramp and fly it out
to Bahrein as soon as possible.

I sent this off and went back to the car. I had done the right thing, I
felt, and I had done what was in my power to take control of the events
that I had started, but I was most unhappily aware that I was
vacillating wildly. Twenty-four hours before, I had been driving out
with Doris Waters to look for a garage and an English home, perhaps with
her. Now all that had gone down the wind and was almost forgotten, so
that Dad had had to remind me about it at breakfast, and here I was,
having just sent off a cable committing myself to go back to Bahrein.

It crossed my tired mind that I could go back for a week or two,
perhaps, just to get things straightened up in order to hand over clean
to Airservice Ltd.

I drove north that day, through Winchester and Whitchurch, on the road
to Newbury. I drove on in a dream, not thinking much where I was going
to, not really caring. I got sleepy presently for I had had two bad
nights, and so I pulled into the side of the road somewhere and slept in
the driver's seat a bit, nodding forward on the wheel.

I woke up half an hour later with a bad taste in my mouth, and wondered
where I was, and what the hell I had come there for. There was no sense
in it. I turned the car and drove back south again, and presently I
found a pub and stopped, and went in for a pint and a couple of packets
of biscuits as my lunch. I felt better after that.

By mid-afternoon I was running south and entering the outskirts of
Winchester. I had been a choir boy once, when I was young. When you're
in a bit of trouble I think your mind goes back to childhood, to the
time when you had no responsibilities, when all decisions were made for
you. That's a grand time, that is. I got to thinking of my time in the
choir that Sunday afternoon as I drove into Winchester. I'd got nothing
better to do, and I turned left down the High Street and then right, and
parked by the cathedral.

It was quiet, and dim, and cool in the cathedral. I stood at the end of
the nave vaguely looking round; it was restful, and a good place to
think in. Presently I went into the north aisle and began to walk slowly
up it, looking at all the names of famous people on the walls and on the
floor I walked on, Sir Henry Wilson who was murdered, and Jane Austen.
Maybe they'd had their troubles too, I thought, and like me they'd not
known what to do for the best.

There was an old man in a long black cloak at the end of the aisle. He
came up to me and said quietly, "The service is in the choir this
afternoon, sir. May I show you a seat?" It was on the tip of my tongue
to say I didn't want to go to any service, and then I thought perhaps I
did, and so he took me through the carved screen and put me in a choir
stall of old, carved wood, with more prayer books in front of me than
you could shake a stick at.

There wasn't anything in particular about that service. Good singing, a
hymn or two, an anthem, all in the familiar ritual that I had known as a
boy. I was still tired, and once or twice I nearly fell asleep upon my
knees. Maybe God did that for me. I know it was over and I walked out of
the choir, I was rested and quite calm. I knew what I'd got to do. I'd
got to go back to Bahrein and forget about the garage.

I drove back to Southampton with a mind at ease. It was bad luck on Dad
and Mum and Doris, but it had to be. It was just one of those things. I
parked the car upon the vacant lot and before going home I walked round
to the Waters' house. The old man came to the door himself.

"Evening, Mr. Waters," I said. "Doris in?"

She came to the door behind him, and he went back into the room. "Look,
Doris," I said. "I've got to tell you something. Like to walk down the
street a minute?"

She came out, and we walked together down the road past all the kids
playing. "About that garage business," I said. "It's all off. I'm going
back to Bahrein."

"Oh, Tom! Wouldn't they buy the business?"

"It's not that," I said. "It's something different. Things aren't so
good out there."

"How long will you be gone for?"

"A long time," I said quietly. "When once you start a thing, you've got
to see it through." I turned to her. "You mustn't count upon me coming
back at all."

"I see," she said quietly. "I understand, Tom."

She didn't understand, of course, but her way was the best. "I thought
I'd better let you know," I said a bit awkwardly. "I'll have to be
getting back out there as soon as ever I can."

She smiled. "Then all I can do is wish you luck." She'd got plenty of
guts.

I smiled with her. "Maybe I'll need it." I held out my hand, and she
took it. "Good-bye, Doris. I'm sorry it's turned out like this."

"I'm sorry, too," she said. "Good-bye, Tom."

I walked back to our house, and went down to the "Lion" with Dad and had
a game of darts with him. There's no sense in agonising over what can't
be helped, and it pleased Dad no end to have me in the pub with him. I
only had a few days left to please them in.

Next morning there was a letter for me, from Mr. Norman Evans of
Airservice Ltd. He said they'd had a board meeting and he was pleased to
be able to tell me that they had unanimously resolved to make an offer
for my business. He went on to the details. Broadly speaking, they would
take over the Tramp contract. They could pay sixty-five thousand pounds
for the remainder of the assets at that date. That meant that after
paying back the loan from Sheikh Abd el Kadir I'd have thirty-five
thousand pounds clear profit from the sale of the business.

It was about seven thousand pounds better than I thought they'd go to.
At the end of the letter, Mr. Evans said he hoped that I'd be able to
reconsider my decision to leave aviation. He said that if I should do
so, would I get in touch with him?

I walked down to the telephone box at the corner of our street, and rang
him up at Morden. As I stuck the sixpences and shillings in the slot
while the children gaped at me through the glass, I felt as if I was
signing my own death warrant, and perhaps I was.

He came on the line at last. "This is Cutter," I said. "Mr. Evans, I've
been thinking this thing over, and I'm not selling just yet. I'm in a
bit of trouble out there, and I've got to get back quick. I'm sorry if
I've led you up the garden."




CHAPTER 6

    To Meccah thou hast turned in prayer with aching heart and eyes that
      burn:
    Ah, Hajji, whither wilt thou turn when thou art there, when thou art
      there?

    JAMES ELROY FLECKER


I got a cable from Gujar Singh on Tuesday evening, in reply to mine. He
said that there was no immediate trouble likely to arise in Bahrein,
largely due to the Imam, who had visited the aerodrome and had himself
conducted evening prayer outside the hangar one day; this service had
been attended by about a hundred people from the town. The Liaison
Officer had been up at the aerodrome that afternoon, but had taken no
part in the proceedings. He said that according to the gossip in the
souk the people in the Residency were still very much upset about the
loan. There was no reason why he should not come to England, however,
and he proposed to leave on Friday as arranged.

I met him at Heath Row airport on Saturday evening when he came in on
the Constellation from Australia, and drove him down to Southampton in
the little Ford. Gujar had never been in England, and this was a great
thrill for him; he was amazed at the fertility of the country. "I did
not know it was like this," he said. "I had read about the green grass
and the fields, and seen pictures and the cinema, of course, but even
so, I did not know it was like this."

He created quite a sensation amongst the kids in our street when he got
out of the car. I had no need to apologise to him for our house because
he knew quite well that I was a working man, and my father too, and
anyway the house was probably a better one than the one he lived in in
Bahrein. I took him in and introduced him to Dad and Mum, and fixed him
up in the top bedroom, and then we all had tea together downstairs.

Dad and Mum took to Gujar, as I had thought they would. Once you got
accustomed to the great black beard and the turban Gujar was all right,
and before long he was telling Mum all about his kids. He didn't drink
or smoke, of course, so it was no good taking him down to the "Lion",
and so we sat at home all evening, just talking.

He confirmed that there was no cause for alarm about the doings in
Bahrein, largely due to the statesmanlike action of the Imam. He said
that he had called at the office of the Arabia-Sumatran Company after a
telephone call with Mr. Johnson, and there were developments there. As I
had supposed would happen, they wanted to transfer a load of scientific
equipment and three technicians from Bahrein to their new oil field on
the East Alligator river in the Northern Territory of Australia, and
they wanted a date as soon as possible for the flight. The load totalled
about three tons, so it would have to be either the Carrier or the
Tramp. Gujar had discussed my absence and the Tramp delivery with them,
which they already knew about, and had quoted a date about three weeks
ahead, which would give me about ten days in Bahrein after I got back
before leaving on this journey. Being a flight over new ground, he knew
that I would want to go myself.

I took him for a joy-ride next day in the little Ford, finishing up at
Portsmouth and taking him over the Victory, Nelson's flagship berthed
for ever in her dry-dock in the middle of the dockyard. He was very much
impressed with that.

Next day we went by train to Plymouth. The Tramp was standing ready for
us on the aerodrome, clean and new and shining. With the sales manager
we got into it and inspected it all through, and then, with one of the
test pilots flying it and myself in the co-pilot's seat, we took it off
and flew round a bit. After a landing or two we changed seats, and with
Gujar standing behind us I took it off and landed it a couple of times.
It handled rather better than the Carrier; everything worked and
everything was right. We spent an hour on the ground then checking over
the inventory, and paid the final cheque. Then the machine was mine.

We stayed that night at Plymouth in the firm's hotel, and spent a couple
of hours next morning buttoning and unbuttoning every cowling with the
firm's engineers, getting to know the aircraft intimately. Then we said
good-bye to those efficient people, and took it off, and flew it down to
Eastleigh. We landed there about dinner time, and I took a taxi and went
home and fetched Dad and Mum out to the aerodrome as soon as Dad got
home from work, and showed it to them.

Dad stared up at it in awe. "Bit different from the first one, Tom," he
said. What impressed Ma most, I think, was the toilet in the rear
fuselage. "I declare, it's nicer than what we've got at home..." she
said. I don't think the rest of the machine really registered with her;
it was too big and too complicated for her to take in. "All those clocks
and things in front of you," she said. "However do you get to know what
they all mean?"

While I had been fetching them out, Gujar had had the Tramp refuelled;
she had tankage for twelve hundred gallons, giving her a still-air range
of about two thousand miles. I was taking a small load out with me, a
spare engine for the Proctors and one for the Airtrucks, and a few
airframe spares, and he had got all this stuff loaded in. When we left
her that night and went home with Dad and Mum we were all ready to go.

We got up at four in the morning, and Mum got up and cooked us
breakfast. Then the taxi was there, and it was time to go. I went and
said good-bye to Dad in bed. "Look after yourself," I said. "No more of
that pneumonia," and he said, "Get on with you," and that was our
parting.

I went down and kissed Mum. "Good-bye, Tom," she said. "Don't be so long
away this time." She was crying a little, a thing I never saw Mum do
before, but she was getting old.

"I'll try not to, Mum," I said quietly. "Cheer up. I'll be back before
long." And as I said that, I couldn't help remembering Beryl, because
that was what I'd said to her.

It's bad when you've got to say good-bye.

Thirty-four hours later I put the Tramp down on the runway at Bahrein, a
bit different to that first journey in the Fox-Moth. As I taxied in
towards the hangar all the staff came crowding out to see the new
machine.

Although I was still sick at leaving Mum and home, it was good to be
back.

Connie was there to meet us, of course. I left the clearing up of the
pilot's duties to Gujar Singh, and walked down the length of the vast
cabin and opened the rear door and got out on the hot tarmac. It was
mid-afternoon, late in May, and Bahrein was warming up; the heat hit me
like a blow. "Afternoon, Connie," I said. "Well, here's your baby."

He grinned. "Looks a nice job. Have any trouble on the way out?"

I shook my head. "Not a thing. Just kept going." We moved away and
looked up at the engine nacelles; there were no oil leaks and everything
was factory-clean. "I think she's quite all right."

I turned to him. "How have things been here?"

"Okay," he said. "Mr. Johnson rang up yesterday to ask if we'd be able
to do that flight to Australia. I told him I thought you were on the
way, and that you'd give him a ring as soon as you got in."

I nodded. "I'll ring him this afternoon."

"Which one will you take--this or the Carrier?"

"Carrier ready?"

He nodded. "She's got about two hundred and eighty hours to go before
the engine change, but that's plenty."

"I think I'll take this one," I said slowly. "I'd like to get to know
her. I don't think I'll take the Carrier through the Dutch Indies till
I've got to. You never know."

I strolled into the hangar with him and had a look at the maintenance
that had been going on in my absence. Everything was in apple-pie order,
as I had known it would be. I didn't keep him very long because I knew
he would be wanting to get on to the new machine, and I had a mass of
stuff waiting for me in the office.

"Okay," I said. "Better get that one inside and give her a check over.
There's a sort of family bible of maintenance schedules for her, with
the log books. Gujar knows about it. If you get started on that, I'll be
out as soon as I've had a look in the office."

He hesitated. "My sister arrived the day before yesterday," he said.
"Would you like to see her in the morning?"

I had forgotten about her. "Oh--yes. She'd like a job with us?"

"I think she would. There's nothing for her to do here unless she
works."

"Where's she staying?" I wasn't quite sure how much of an Asiatic this
girl was.

"That's all right," he said. "I've got her a room alongside mine, in the
same house."

I wasn't quite sure how he lived, or where, except that it was somewhere
in the souk near Gujar Singh. "That's all right for her, is it?"

"Oh yes. She won't come to any harm."

If he was satisfied, it was no concern of mine how the girl lived.
"Shorthand typist?"

"Yes."

"Fine," I said. "Tell her to come up tomorrow morning, and I'll give her
a try-out. Two months I said, didn't I?" He nodded. "Well, no hard words
if I boot her out at the end of it."

He grinned. "I've told her that."

"All right. What's her name?"

"Nadezna."

I stared at him. "How much?"

"Nadezna."

"How do you spell it?"

He spelt it out for me. "Nadezna," I said. "That's a new one on me."

"It's a Russian name," he said. "It means Hope."

"Does it! I never knew anyone with a Russian name before."

He smiled. "Well, you know me. Constantine is Russian. Our mother was a
Russian, so we both had Russian names. She met my father at a place
called Barkul; he was a silk merchant from Canton. She'd done something
in Russia and the Tsarist police were after her. She married my father
in Barkul and they went down to Shanghai, and then they emigrated and
got settled down in Penang. I was born in Penang. Old Mutluq bin Aamir
here, the chap whose house I live in--he's a silk merchant and he knew
my father."

"Where's Barkul?" I asked.

He smiled. "Now you're asking something. It's right in the middle of
Asia somewhere, but I don't know where. In Sinkiang, I think. It's
somewhere about a thousand miles north-west of Shanghai."

"I've never heard of it before," I said.

"No. Nor has anybody else."

I turned away. "Well, tell your sister to come up tomorrow morning.
Nadezna. I'll have to write that down."

I went into the office to the babu clerk. He had done his best while I
was away, but there was a great pile of invoices and statements and
A.R.B. notices and Notams and applications for jobs and correspondence
about spares and payments, over a foot high. I shuffled through this
mass of stuff hoping to God this girl was going to be some good, and
then I rang up Johnson of the Arabia-Sumatran.

He said, "Glad to hear you, Cutter. Gujar Singh told you about this
flight we want on the 6th?"

"Oh yes," I said. "We've got all that laid on. I'll go with him myself,
in the new aircraft. When are you coming down to see it, sir?"

"I want to meet you," he said. "There have been some developments; if
this first trip to the East Alligator goes all right, we may want more.
We might even have to have something like a regular service."

"I'd better come and see you," I said. "When shall I come?"

He thought a minute. "I'd like to see your new machine," he said. "I'll
come over late tomorrow afternoon."

I settled down to plough through the pile of papers that had accumulated
for me. When you run a show like mine that's what you have to do; you
fly all day and come into the office tired with the strain, and start
off on the real work. I'd been at it for about half an hour when a car
drove up and parked outside. It was the Liaison Officer, Major Hereward.
He hadn't wasted much time in coming up to see me; I suppose they'd seen
the Tramp flying over on the circuit as I came in to land.

Hereward was an Indian Army officer, or had been at one time. He wasn't
a bad sort, but I'd had very little to do with him. I never got invited
to any of the Residency parties, of course, because only officers go to
those, and I lived with the radio operators and in the sergeants' mess.
I'd spoken to him once or twice upon the tarmac, and he'd always been
quite friendly. I got up as he came in and gave him a chair and a
cigarette.

"What I've come about," he said, "is this loan. I understand that you've
been borrowing money, Cutter, from the Sheikh of Khulal."

"That's right," I said. "You may know the amount."

"Sixty thousand pounds?"

I nodded. "That's right." It struck me that he didn't care about the job
he had to do.

"Well, that's a very large sum of money," he observed.

"It would be to you or me," I said. "It's a very small amount in the
aircraft business. It's the cost of one aeroplane."

"That may be," he replied. "Quite frankly, Mr. Cutter, we don't much
care to see the sheikhs lending their money to buy aeroplanes. We should
very much prefer to see them spending it upon their people, in the
provision of roads, hospitals, schools, and things of that sort. There
are other sources of finance for aircraft projects. But unless the
sheikhs provide the schools and hospitals in their own sheikhdoms,
nobody else will. It's very undesirable that they should lend their
money to enterprises that are of no benefit to their people."

He had a point there, of course, but I didn't see what I could do about
it. "I see what you mean," I said. "This is a local enterprise and we
employ a good many local people. I should have thought local capital was
rather a good thing."

"I'm afraid we don't take that view of it at all up at the Residency,"
he said. "In fact, you employ hardly any truly local people. Half a
dozen labourers at the most. All your skilled employees come here to
work for you from other parts of the East. If you were employing two or
three hundred Arab labourers recruited in the district upon work that
they can do, digging ditches for example, we might take a different view
of this large loan. As it is, I'm afraid we consider it very
undesirable, and in more ways than one."

"I'm sorry about that," I said. I sat in thought for a minute, wondering
how much trouble they intended to make. "This loan wasn't my doing," I
said at last. "I didn't go round asking for it. I had to get in some
more money to do what the oil companies want me to do--I had to get
another large aircraft. The Sheikh of Khulal heard that I was in that
position and sent his Wazir to offer me this money as a loan. That's
what happened."

"Where is the money now?" he asked.

I didn't like that one. "Just outside the hangar," I said evenly. "That
is, unless my chaps have pushed it in."

"You mean, it's been spent upon the aeroplane that you've brought back
from England?"

"That's what it was lent me for," I replied. "Fifty-five thousand pounds
was the cost of that aircraft. I've got about eight thousand pounds'
worth of spares on order for it."

"I see," he said. "How did the Sheikh of Khulal get to hear you needed
money?"

It was no good trying to conceal anything from these people. They
probably knew anyway. "My chief engineer goes over to Khulal sometimes,"
I said. "I think he told them I was having to expand."

"That's Shak Lin?"

For some reason his use of the Chinese version of the name annoyed me,
though I did it often myself. But this was a pretty formal matter, and
Connie was a British subject. "Mr. Shaklin is my chief engineer," I
said.

"Yes. And he goes and talks some bastard form of religion to the old
man."

"I don't know anything about that," I said. "Whatever he does over there
he does in his spare time, on his day off. I know, of course, that Mr.
Shaklin is a religious man. But I've never discussed the Sheikh of
Khulal with him, or him with the Sheikh. You're not suggesting, are you,
that he should have had a permit of some kind before going to see the
Sheikh?"

"No..." he said thoughtfully. "You'd better know the suggestions that
_have_ been made, though, Mr. Cutter. It has been suggested that your
man Shak Lin used his religious influence with the Sheikh of Khulal to
get you a very large loan which would be free of interest under the
Islamic law, whereas for a speculative business such as yours you would
have had to pay large interest charges on a loan obtained from any other
source."

I got up and crossed over to the window and stood looking out. I wasn't
going to answer that one in a hurry; I was too angry.

"That's a nice suggestion," I said at last. "Who thought that one up?"

He said, "It seems rather an obvious deduction from the facts."

"Maybe." The trouble was that it was so very nearly true. It was the
truth told with a twist. "The facts are what you say, of course. I
_have_ saved interest charges. The motive was completely different--the
motive for taking this loan. You can believe that or not, just as you
like."

"It's all very unfortunate," he said. "It lends itself to
misinterpretation."

I swung round from the window; I'd had just about enough of this. "What
do you want me to do?" I asked. "Give back the money?"

He smiled. "I don't suppose you can do that." I could have wiped that
grin off his face with the greatest pleasure, but I didn't do it.

I crossed to the table where my brief-case was, full of the papers I had
brought from England. "I could," I said. "I don't know that I'm going
to. However, I'll show you something." I pulled out the letter from Mr.
Norman Evans and chucked it across the table to him. "That's a cash
offer for this business," I said. "I've just refused it, but I could get
it back again. I could pay back that sixty thousand in a month from now
if I decided to. But I shan't do that just because you and the Resident
have come to the conclusion that I'm a bloody crook."

He took up the letter and began reading it. "That's rather extreme
language," he said mildly.

I didn't answer that, but I stood in silence staring out of the window
as he read the letter. One works and struggles to build something up
over the years, and then an ignorant and suspicious official, full of
his own importance, comes along and tries to knock it down.

He came to the end of the letter and laid it down. "I see," he said.
"You say that you have refused this offer?"

"That's right."

"Why? It seems a very good offer to me."

I crossed to the desk and sat down in my chair, and lit a cigarette.
"I'll tell you why I refused it," I said slowly. "I was going to accept
it first of all, and retire from the Gulf, and take my money and go back
and live in England. Then I heard from my chief pilot that you people
had been raising a packet of trouble out here, over this loan and over
Mr. Shaklin's religious doings. In England, it looked as if you'd
stirred up a hornet's nest here for no reason at all. Well, when I sell
a business, I sell it clean--not with a packet of unknown trouble
hanging round its neck. I called the deal off and I came back here."

"Why do you think that we raised any trouble?"

"I know damn well you did. Everything was quite all right here when I
went away. Then you found out about this loan, and your boys at the
Residency heard you talking and spread it all over the souk. My people
live down there--they know what happened. If the Imam hadn't been such a
good chap you'd have had a holy war or something on your hands."

He coloured a little. "That's a considerable exaggeration," he said
stiffly.

"All right," I said. "Let's leave that. Where do we go from here?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"What do you want me to do?" I asked. "I'm quite willing to co-operate
with you, provided what you want is reasonable."

"Well, Mr. Cutter," he said, "I shall have to go and talk it over with
the Resident. Some rather large issues may arise out of this matter,
concerning the whole future of commercial development in the district.
If anything has to be done, I'll get in touch with you again." He
paused. "In the meantime, may I take it that there will be no more
borrowing money from the sheikhs?"

"You may for the next month," I said. "I've got no further expansion in
mind at the moment."

"Only for a month?"

"I should have thought that was time enough for you to make your mind up
what you want to do," I said. "I'm not going to accept a permanent
restriction of that sort just from you, this afternoon."

That was the end of it, and I went out with him to his car. It was a bit
unfortunate that sunset prayers outside the hangar were just starting
up. I hadn't seen that for a month or so, and it had grown a great deal
in my absence. The waste ground by the hangar had been levelled off over
an area of about a hundred yards by fifty, and marked out with white
stones with a semi-circle in the side towards Mecca. That had been done
since I went away. There were only about twenty of our people from the
hangar, but there were three motor bus loads from the town, and a large
number of miscellaneous Arab bodies from the R.A.F. camp. There must
have been about a hundred and fifty people there in all, all turned to
Mecca and in prayer. About ninety per cent of them were Moslems, doing
their _Rakats_ together. The non-Moslems knelt a little way apart behind
Connie, facing to Mecca like the others, but in silent prayer. Some of
the men who had come up from the town in the buses I knew as merchants
in the souk, and some of them were quite well dressed. A few were in
European clothes.

Major Hereward stood looking at this going on in silence for a minute.
His disapproval was evident, but there didn't seem to be much that I
could do about it. Finally he snorted, got into his car, and drove away
without a word.

It didn't look so good.

When I got to the office at half-past seven next morning, our normal
time for starting work in that hot place, the girl was there waiting for
me. She was in European clothes, a light cotton frock, bare legs, and
white shoes. She had long black hair done up in European style upon her
head, but you could see the Chinese in her as, indeed, you could with
Connie. I think her Russian mother must have been a pretty woman because
Nadezna had good features, and she had a sort of impish cheerfulness
that may have come from the Chinese father.

"Morning," I said. "It's Miss Shaklin?"

"That's right," she said. "My brother told me to stick around here." She
spoke with a slight American intonation.

"Come on in," I said. I led the way into the office and gave her a
chair. "Your brother told me that you'd like a job with us."

She nodded. "That was the general idea."

"Can you take dictation at the rate I'm speaking now?"

"Why, surely, Mr. Cutter. I can take quicker than that."

"I told your brother that I'd give you a try-out for a couple of months
if you came here," I said. "After that, no hard feelings if we part."
She nodded. "What we didn't discuss was what the wage would be. Got any
ideas on that?"

She shook her head. "I just don't know what people pay out here, or what
it costs to live."

"I don't pay San Diego wages."

"I know it."

I sat in silence for a minute. Then I raised my head and smiled at her.
"Why did you come here, Miss Shaklin? It's a pretty dud sort of place,
and rough living for you, I should think."

She smiled. "Well," she said, "it's kind of different to San Diego." She
was silent for a minute. Then she said, "I suppose Connie told you about
Mother dying?" I nodded, and said something or other. "Well after that
there didn't seem to be much sense in brother and sister living right on
opposite sides of the world, and neither of them married, nor likely to
be. So as he was stuck fast here and I was sort of loose in San Diego
after Mother went, I said I'd come out here for a time anyway, and keep
house for him."

I wondered if she had found him living as she had expected, but there
was no sense in starting a discussion of that sort with this girl. I had
troubles of my own to deal with, without digging into hers. I
straightened up at the desk. "Okay, Miss Shaklin," I said. "Now about
the wage. I haven't an idea what a shorthand typist gets here. I don't
suppose there is another one outside the bl--outside the Residency." I
should have to watch the language now, with a girl in the office. "I'll
tell you what I'm going to suggest. The wage of a cashier in the bank
here is two hundred and fifty chips a month. That's supposed to be
enough for a married man with a family, living in this town. I know
that, because Gujar Singh was one before he came to me. That's on the
Indian standard, but then you're a single woman. I'll give you that for
a start, two hundred and fifty rupees a month, and see how it works out.
If it's not enough, come and tell me about it. I don't want to put you
to any real hardship, but I don't pay European wages. I'd be bust in a
fortnight if I did."

She said, "That sounds fair enough, the same rate as a teller. It's good
enough to make a start on, Mr. Cutter. Maybe I won't be here long enough
to feel the pinch."

"Right," I said. "Well, I'll just show you round and then we'll get
started." I took her in and introduced her to the babu clerk and showed
her our one typewriter. She said it looked as if it had come over in the
Ark and spent most of the intervening time up in the snow on Mount
Ararat. I said I'd get her a new one because I knew that there'd be
trouble if I tried to take it from the babu or make them share it; it
was a sort of badge of office to him and a sign of social elevation that
he wrote letters on a typewriter. There were some new Royals in a shop
down in the souk; I'd make Gujar go and buy one for me because he'd get
it cheaper. Then I showed her where the ladies' room was in the airport
building about a quarter of a mile away, and then we got settled down to
the dictation.

I heard no more from Major Hereward, but Johnson of the Arabia-Sumatran
came out to see me that afternoon. The Tramp was in the hangar, and I
took him and showed him that, and we climbed all over it and opened the
big nose doors to show him how a truck was driven into it. It was
absolutely brand-new, of course, and everything was clean and shining
and polished; he was quite impressed. Then we went over to the office
and I sent for cups of coffee from the restaurant; one falls into the
eastern way of doing things.

He told me what he wanted, and it was as I had supposed. This first
flight to Australia was in the nature of a test of a new mode of
operating their vast concern. They were thinking in terms of a much
freer exchange of staff and equipment between their properties in the
Persian Gulf, in Central Burma, in Southern Sumatra, and in North
Australia. They had in mind a regular service once a fortnight linking
up these places if this first flight proved to be a success, and this
trial service would continue for at least six months. It might be, after
that, that it would need to be stepped up to once a week, or else they
might want to run a smaller and more comfortable aircraft for passengers
only on alternate weeks with the freight machine.

We started then and did a little figuring. To run the Carrier or the
Tramp from Bahrein to East Alligator River via the other places was
going to cost them 4,500 for the return trip, so that the fortnightly
service was going to cost them about 120,000 a year. It was a fleabite
to them apparently, but it was the hell of a lot of money to me.

I told him that I could handle it for him, and I convinced him with
facts and figures that I could. I think he wanted to be convinced, and
indeed he said as much. "I'm very glad to hear that you're happy about
the fortnightly service," he said presently. "I should be sorry,
personally, if we had to put the business elsewhere. For one thing, your
quotations have always been lower than anybody else's, and yet you seem
to make your business pay."

"It's the hundred-per-cent Asiatic labour that I use," I said.

He nodded. "It's partly that, and partly your own ability. We like the
use you make of Asiatics. We think you're on the right lines,
politically. I think you'll have fewer difficulties in running a service
for us through Pakistan, India, Burma, and South-East Asia than a wholly
European concern might have."

"I think I will."

"And you're quite happy that this thing won't overstrain your
resources?"

"It's about the limit I can do upon my present capital, Mr. Johnson," I
said frankly. "I shall put the new Tramp on the service and use it for
nothing else. When you decide to start, I shall get another spare engine
and put it in Australia with a couple of engineers; I'll have to have
some staff out at the other end. The utilisation of that Tramp will be
at the rate of 2,100 hours a year. Well, that's reasonable. We can do
that. We may have to send the Carrier occasionally when the Tramp is in
for C. of A. or for an engine change, but that should be all right."

"Your Carrier's pretty well occupied, isn't it?"

"That's so," I replied. "As I say, a contract of this sort would pretty
well fill me up. I can handle it all right, but if any more work comes
in I'll have to get another aircraft--somehow or other."

He smiled quietly. "We shan't be difficult about the schedule. We can
adjust the date of the flights by a day or so to help you, if you give
us plenty of notice. Only our own people are involved. It's not as if it
was a public service."

"That may be a great help," I replied. "We might want that for an engine
change."

"Will you have any difficulty in expanding further, if more work comes
in?"

"Not technically," I replied. "I can get the aircraft and I can get the
staff. Every Asiatic ground engineer in the East seems to want to come
and work here--I don't know why. The only difficulty will be finance."

"You've got a good business," he said. "I shouldn't have thought you'd
have much trouble with finance."

"There's been the hell of a lot of trouble over the last lot," I said
candidly.

"Sheikh Abd el Kadir?"

"That's right. It seems my name stinks round these parts."

He nodded. "I know they aren't pleased at the Residency."

"Do your people object?"

"I don't think so," he said slowly. "I don't think we object at all. We
have to pay the sheikhs these vast sums in royalties for the oil that
lies under their deserts, really huge sums of money that they've done
nothing to earn. If some of that money finds its way back into your
business, I don't think we object at all. It means that part--a small
part--of the money we pay out comes back to do a useful job for us. I
think we rather like it."

He went away quite satisfied, and I went on with my work. I stayed at
Bahrein for about ten days before we took off for Australia, and in that
time I didn't fly at all. There was too much to do upon the ground. The
growth of staff continually made new organisations necessary in the
business; what had been adequate for a staff of two was quite inadequate
for a staff of thirty. The stores were a headache now. I had one or two
long talks with Connie about that; we were having rather a curious
trouble. There was practically no pilfering from the hangar, most
unusual for the East; I could only put that down, uneasily, to the
supposition that the staff regarded our hangar as a holy place. Tools
and materials, however, were continually getting lost; one day there
would suddenly be no quarter drills in store, and next day six or seven
would be found in various drawers or other parts of the hangar. It was
the same with gasket material and taps and dies and things like that.

I worked out a new stores system and put it into force with the help of
Connie and his sister. Nadezna was a great help. She was quiet and
efficient, and she was always there; moreover, she took an interest in
the business and, living with her brother as she did, she could learn
the ropes without having continually to bother me with questions. Like
most girls in an office, she had an aptitude and a liking for routine
work, and she filled a very necessary place in our business. It was
always a burden to me to check invoices, release-notes, and all the many
documents that every aeroplane must have for every part put into it, but
it was no irritation to her to trace out the pedigree of a spare length
of flexible petrol pipe and enter it under the proper reference numbers
in the aircraft log book. She seemed rather to like that sort of job.

I commented on that once, and she said, "I like seeing everything all
entered up and right, and the job properly done. It makes me feel good."

"You're very like your brother," I remarked. "That's what he tells
people in the hangar."

"I know it." She paused, and then she said, "Quite a few people round
these parts seem to be taking an interest in what Connie says in the
hangar."

"Didn't you know about that--when you came here?"

She shook her head. "He always was a bit that way at home, but nobody
ever listened to him. I don't mean that he got up and preached. He never
did that, although there's plenty of people in California who do. No, he
just had ideas. But nobody paid any attention to them, back at home."

"We wouldn't pay any attention to them in England," I remarked. "But
they seem to fit in out here."

She sat in silence for a minute. Then she said, "Have you seen the way
they treat him in the souk?"

I shook my head. "How do they?"

"I don't know. It's like he was a prophet or something. Some of them get
up and do a sort of a salaam when he walks by."

I hadn't heard that one. "There's no harm in that."

"I know. But one or two of them have started doing it to me. Do they do
that when you go walking down the souk?"

"Only beggars. Do they come and beg off you?"

She shook her head. "These are well dressed old men, merchants, you
know, sitting in their shops. Not poor people."

I laughed, because it seemed best to take it as a joke. "I look too
English. Nobody salaams to me unless they want something."

"I wish they didn't do it to me," she said uneasily. "It makes you
wonder what it is that's going on."

I didn't pursue the subject; it seemed better to let things sort
themselves out in their own way. In a sense, I was relieved. The girl
and her brother were a mixture of the East and the West, and when first
I had heard that she was living in the souk I had been a bit troubled.
If respectable old men got up and bowed when she passed it probably
meant that she was perfectly safe down there; it seemed to indicate that
she was already known and respected. So far as it went that was all to
the good, and resolutely I put the matter out of my mind.

We took off for Australia in the Tramp a few days after that, Gujar
Singh and I, with a load of four passengers and about three tons of
technical equipment. We left at dawn and put down in the early afternoon
at Karachi to refuel; after an hour we got going again and spent the
night at Ahmedabad. We refuelled at Calcutta next day and slept at
Rangoon, and on the third day we got to Diento after stops at Singapore
for fuel and Palembang for Customs. On the fourth day we stopped for
fuel at Sourabaya and went on down the island chain of Indonesia, and
then over the Timor Sea to Australia. We put down on the big aerodrome
at Darwin just after dark, and ran our heads straight into a pack of
trouble.

Australia is a white man's country, and nobody could have presented
Gujar Singh as a white man. I found in the first ten minutes that
everyone knew that my aircraft were normally flown and maintained by
Asiatics, and that a strike of the air line staffs, Control officers,
and ground engineers throughout Australia was threatened if my aeroplane
was handled by the Customs or allowed to fly into Australia at all.

Pre-occupied as I had been with all my own affairs, I hadn't foreseen
that one. The row broke in the darkness on the tarmac, and it went on
for hours. The Customs refused to clear the goods in the aircraft or, at
first, to pass the passengers through immigration. Somebody said at one
stage that I could have fuel and fly away back to Indonesia with the
load and passengers and all. After an hour and a half of argument they
allowed the four passengers to go into the town to the hotel, but the
machine was placed under a military guard till the morning. At about ten
o'clock they said that I could go down to the hotel, but when I asked
about Gujar they said flatly that no hotel in Darwin would accept him. I
was so angry by that time I said they could take their hotel and treat
it unconventionally, and went off to sleep with Gujar in the cabin of
the Tramp, having sent a radio message to the Arabia-Sumatran Company at
East Alligator River to tell them my predicament.

I found Gujar Singh waiting patiently by the Tramp; he had very wisely
kept in the background while all this was going on. "Look, Gujar," I
said. "I'm very sorry about this. They've got this colour trouble on
their minds here, and we've got to make the best of it." I told him what
had happened, and then I said, "We'll sleep in the machine tonight, and
see what happens in the morning. It looks as though the idea of running
through to the East Alligator River will have to be revised a bit."

He smiled gently. "Don't be upset about it," he said. "This is nothing
new to us."

"I _am_ upset," I answered hotly. "By God I am. I've never heard such
bloody nonsense in all my life."

"My people do things as silly, or sillier than this," he said. It was
just after the British had left India, and Pakistan and India were at
each other's throats and mass deportations of pitiful refugees were
taking place from both countries. "All countries are stupid in these
things," he said. "It does not matter."

"It's economic," I said. "They know that we can under-cut their rates
because we employ Asiatics. I don't believe we've got a hope of
operating in this country."

"There are plenty of other countries," he said philosophically.

"You've said it." I was still very angry. "They can keep this one."

There was no trouble about sleeping in the machine, of course. Darwin is
hot all the year round, and we had no need of coverings. In the rear
fuselage we had the engine covers and the cockpit covers which I had
brought with me in case we had to leave the aircraft parked in monsoon
rain, and these great masses of canvas were quite new and clean. We were
both well accustomed to this sort of thing, and we made beds of this
stuff in the cabin behind the load, and made ourselves comfortable for
the night.

I lay awake for some time, worrying about my business. This regular
fortnightly charter for the Arabia-Sumatran was a very big thing to me;
a steady contract running at the rate of 120,000 a year was not one
that I could afford to let slip through my fingers. At the same time, I
had heard enough about Australian reactions to the flight that evening
to realise that it would be quite impossible to operate my aircraft in
White Australia. My Asiatic pilots and staff were a valuable asset to me
all the way from Bahrein to Timor; they smoothed the way politically for
the free passage of my aircraft and they made it possible for me to
quote low prices for my freights. The last leg of the journey, however,
was impossible for me to operate at all.

Half waking and half sleeping, for I was tired with the strain of four
days' hard flying, I wondered if I could operate to the nearest
extremity of Indonesia, and make arrangements with an Australian air
line for the last leg of the route. Suppose I flew as far as Koepang in
Timor, and transhipped the loads there to an Australian machine with an
Australian crew, which would fly to Koepang from Darwin, pick up the
load, and take it to East Alligator River? To operate like this would
put the costs up, but the cost of the service to the oil company would
still be far less than if the flight all the way from Bahrein were
carried out by a "white" company. And in this way they would keep the
political advantage of running an Asiatic service all the way through
Asia.

I drifted into sleep, thinking about this one.

They allowed Gujar and me to go out of the aerodrome next morning to a
small cafe just outside the gate, but they sent a soldier to stand guard
over us while we were eating our breakfast. I asked him to join us at
the bacon and eggs and after some hesitation he agreed; he was a good,
clean lad, and said a little awkwardly that you had some pretty funny
things to do when you were in the Army.

When we got back to the Control office there was a signal there for me
from the East Alligator River to say that they were sending over a
representative, and at about ten o'clock a Grumman amphibian landed,
carrying a Mr. Fletcher as a passenger.

Mr. Fletcher knew all about us and our way of operating aircraft; indeed
he had been at Bahrein when first I went there with the Fox-Moth, and I
remembered him when I saw him as a passenger that I had carried once or
twice in those early days. Knowing Australia as he now did, he was not
in the least surprised that we had run our heads into a brick wall. His
first concern was to secure the release of his passengers and freight,
but he listened to my proposals to end my service at Timor and make
arrangements in the future for the goods and passengers to be brought
into Australia on an Australian aircraft. After half an hour's talk he
left in a taxi to go into Darwin for a conference with the Administrator
of the Northern Territory, Mr. Walker.

He didn't invite me to go with him, so I stayed up at the aerodrome and
had a long talk with the pilot of the Grumman, a Dutchman called Beebs
who spoke very good English. Beebs knew Australia well, and had flown
the Grumman repeatedly between East Alligator River and Diento in
Sumatra. He thought that the proposal to stop my service in Indonesia
was sound, and he suggested that Maclean Airways at Alice Springs would
probably be the best people with whom to negotiate for bringing the
loads on into Australia; he said they had a Dakota which they used for
freight. With the encouragement of regular work for this Dakota
operating from Darwin, he thought Eddie Maclean would so adjust his
services as to use this aircraft more in the northern part of the
country, and so make it available to me.

As regards the terminal point for my service, he suggested Dilly,
Koepang, or Bali, as these three places all had Customs organisation and
good fuel supplies. He pointed out that Customs would be necessary. He
showed the geography to me on the maps. The island of Timor is half
Dutch Indonesian territory and half Portuguese. Dilly is in the
Portuguese bit and the authorities there were pleasant and easy-going,
and delighted to see Australians or anyone else who came to visit the
colony. Koepang, in Dutch territory at the other end of Timor, was a
military airstrip where civil aircraft were tolerated as a necessary
nuisance. Of the two places he preferred Dilly. The third alternative
was Bali further back along the chain of islands, to the west. Bali, he
said, was a friendly place with very good Dutch officials and very
suitable as my terminal, but it was a good way further back and would
bring up the last leg of the route to be operated by white Australian
aircraft to no less than eleven hundred miles, with a corresponding
increase in the costs.

Mr. Fletcher came back from Darwin presently with his four technicians,
my passengers to Australia. He had settled the business, got his
technicians through the immigration, and secured permission to unload
the cargo from my aircraft; he planned to take the technicians back to
East Alligator with him in the Grumman and to send over a truck for the
three tons of cargo. Unloading the cargo was a headache, because the
labourers at the aerodrome belonged to the wharfies' union and refused
to touch it. With pilots, technicians, and Mr. Fletcher there were eight
of us, however, and we got it out of the aircraft in an hour of sweat in
that hot, humid place, and carried it all to a store.

I had a talk with Beebs and Fletcher then about the future operations of
the service, and we went down to Darwin in a car and had beer and lunch
with Jimmie Corsar, the local agent for Maclean Airways. We told him
what we proposed and found, as I had expected, that he was keen on
getting the business, and saw no difficulties. Beebs and Fletcher left
to go back to the aerodrome to fly to the East Alligator River in the
Grumman with their technicians, and I went with Jimmie Corsar to his
office and wrote a long letter to Eddie Maclean in Alice Springs. Then I
drove back to the aerodrome.

It was four o'clock when I got there, and Gujar had had the Tramp
refuelled and was all ready to go. I think he was tired of Darwin, and I
don't blame him. However, I had decided to go back by way of Dilly, and
the strip at Dilly was right up against hills and with no night-landing
equipment except paraffin flares; I didn't fancy that so much in a
strange place, and anyway, we hadn't got permission to go there. I went
to the Control office and made a signal asking for permission to land,
and arranged to leave at dawn next day. Gujar and I had high tea in the
cafe by the gates and walked round the aerodrome a bit, and then we went
to bed in the cabin of the Tramp as we had done before.

We took off for Dilly about half-past six next morning. We crossed the
Timor Sea to the north end of Timor, skirted the mountains and flew
westwards down the north coast till we came to Dilly, a pretty little
tropical town on a white coral beach with mountains behind, much damaged
by the Japanese. The strip was right up against the town and fairly
short, but we got down without difficulty as we had no load, and taxied
to park outside the hangars.

We stayed in Dilly with the Australian consul for a day. The Governor
and all the Portuguese officials were kind and co-operative, but they
had a regular storm in a teacup vendetta on hand with the Dutch in
Indonesia, and relations were very strained. It seemed that the colony
had one ship, the bottom of which was dying of old age, so they had sent
it for repair to the Dutch naval dockyard at Sourabaya. The Dutch had
estimated a high price for the job, and had demanded that the whole
estimated cost of the repair was to be paid in United States dollars
before they would begin. If there was any change, they would give it
back in dubious Indonesian guilders. The ship was in no condition to go
anywhere else, and in Dilly the Governor was furious. He maintained
communication with Portugal by flying his air mail to Koepang and
sending it to Portugal by the Dutch air line; his angry comments about
the ship stung the Dutch to retaliate by refusing to handle his air
mail. Accordingly he was now flying his mail to Darwin and sending it by
B.O.A.C., and in this far corner of the world there was almost a
complete diplomatic rupture between the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Probably their governments in Europe knew nothing about it.

I liked Dilly, although the strip wasn't very good for the operation of
a large, heavily-laden aircraft; in the heat of the day the take-off
might be dicey. The chance of political trouble, however, was more than
I could face. My aircraft would have to enter and clear Customs whenever
they passed from Indonesia to Timor or vice versa, and if those two were
at each other's throats my aeroplanes might feature as pawns in a
quarrel that was no concern of mine. Regretfully I washed out Dilly, and
took off for Koepang in Dutch Indonesian territory at the other end of
Timor.

Koepang had a good airstrip, but it was ruled entirely by the military
and garrisoned by troops. At that time the Dutch were conducting a
full-scale war against the Indonesians in Java and Sumatra, punctuated
by somewhat dilatory truces and negotiations. I broached my business to
the military commander of the aerodrome, a Colonel Rockel, but when I
told him that my pilots would be Asiatics and I wanted to station
Asiatic ground engineers with a spare engine and stores on the airstrip,
he turned sullen and obstructive. He said that the airstrip was only
nominally a civil one because it was used by the internal services of
K.L.M., and that only the smallest aircraft with limited range ever used
it nowadays for flying to Australia; in consequence there would be
continual difficulties over Customs. He said that he could not agree to
have my Asiatics in the Dutch military zone that he commanded without
reference to his superiors in Batavia, who would probably seek guidance
from the Hague.

This didn't look so good. It was just possible that we might force our
way in there, but there would never be co-operation and there would
always be the risk that we might be turned out of Koepang at any time
for military reasons. The Dutch in Indonesia at that time were troubled
and a little bitter with the world; pursuing a policy that they
sincerely believed to be right, they were badgered by well meant advice
from U.N.O. and infuriated by criticism from India. The civil
administrators seemed to stand this strain better than the soldiers;
after an hour's discussion with Colonel Rockel I could see little future
for my service in Koepang, and we took off at dawn next day for Bali.

Bali was totally different. The strip is a good one on a narrow isthmus
of land between two very beautiful bays; it was long enough for anything
we wanted, with no high ground near it so that you could approach it in
bad weather by flying along the coast at a hundred feet until you got
there. To my delight I saw a very large hangar by the strip with a roof
in good condition; I studied this as we went round on the circuit and
pointed it out to Gujar Singh, who elevated one thumb. We found on
landing that this hangar had been put there by the Japanese Navy during
the war; it was big enough to take a Carrier or a Tramp, but it was
seldom used, and normally was only occupied by the Governor's Auster.

We landed and taxied to the airport building and stopped the engines. A
young Dutchman in clean whites came out to meet us, a cheerful young man
called Voorn. He said he was the airport manager and K.L.M.
representative. He was very pleased to see us, because at that time his
service only came to Bali twice a week and so good a chap found spare
time heavy on his hands. He said there were no military on the
aerodrome, and very few soldiers in Bali at all. He didn't want to see
our passports, and had only a casual interest in our papers; when we
asked about Customs he said that the Customs officer lived in Den Pasar,
the chief town of the island ten miles to the north, and he would invite
him to the hotel for a drink that night.

This looked good, and we went into the airport building and had a fresh
lime squash and broached our business to Mr. Voorn. He saw no
difficulties at all. Bali, he said, was an island run by the Dutch
administration purely for the benefit of the Asiatics living there; it
was a happy and a prosperous place that imported little and exported
less. The balance of payments was made up by what the Dutch in Indonesia
spent when they came to this delightful place on leave. He thought that
there would be no objection at all to the presence of a few Asiatic
engineers upon the aerodrome; in fact, he said, we should probably be
offered a contract to maintain the Governor's Auster. He was interested
in our colour troubles, but assured us that we should find nothing of
that sort in Bali, perhaps because the girls were so attractive and the
people so friendly.

He drove us into the hotel in Den Pasar. I had heard vague stories of
Bali from time to time in my travels about the East; I had not known it
was so beautiful. The island itself was beautiful, a place of palm trees
and rice-fields, and white coral beaches, and a great volcanic mountain
in the middle. The people were peaceable and friendly, and very artistic
so that every beam of every house was carved and ornamented, and stone
carvings were everywhere. I found later that they had a deep religious
sense and spent a good part of their lives, in that good place where
food was easy to come by, in prayers and temple festivals, but their
religion was a form of degenerate Hinduism unworthy of their sincerity.
The women, I found, were normally beautiful and attractive, and they
frequently went naked to the waist, though they were very careful not to
show their legs. The most attractive of them went about in this way in
the home, but when they went out shopping they would usually have a
shawl of some sort to put round themselves if they saw a stranger or
someone they didn't like. I thought Bali was a grand place; so did Gujar
Singh.

We met one or two of the Dutch officials of the administration during
the afternoon, serious, competent people whose one concern was for the
welfare of the people of the island. They went into our proposals with
some care but they raised no obstacles. I think they welcomed the idea
of an Australian aeroplane coming to the island now and then, because at
that time consumer goods were very short in Indonesia, and small things
such as thermos-flasks and electric torches which mean so much in the
East were almost unobtainable. We were taken to call upon the Governor
that evening and received his approval of the proposals; next morning we
had a detailed talk with a Dutchman called Bergen who seemed to be the
second in command, and fixed with him the rentals for the hangar and the
landing fees.

I should have liked to stay in Bali and rest there for a time, but the
demurrage on a Tramp is a heavy charge, and I had to go on. I told
Bergen that I would come out with the first series flight and stay ten
days and go back on the next machine, in order to see the engineers
settled in and the show running smoothly. We went down to the aerodrome
about midday and had a last look round the hangar. Then we took off
again and flew through to Batavia, and spent the night there, and flew
on next morning to Diento to pick up a small return load for Bahrein.

We got back to Bahrein three days later, and I went into a huddle with
Gujar Singh and Connie that evening. "They just won't have us in
Australia," I told Connie. "Too bad, but that's the way it is." And then
I told him about Bali and about Maclean Airways.

"Who do you think of sending out there?" he asked presently.

"What about Chai Tai Foong?" I asked. He was the Chinese ground engineer
who had been with Connie and Dwight Schafter at Damrey Phong; he had
been with us for two years or more, and he had come on a lot. I always
reckoned him in my own mind as second in command upon the ground staff.

He nodded. "He'd be all right. He's got an Arab wife here; I don't know
about that."

It was a point that I had missed when talking to the Dutch
administrators at Bali, whether foreign Asiatic women would be
acceptable. "I shouldn't think there'd be much difficulty," I said
slowly. "I'll write and ask if there'd be any objection. Find out
first, though, if he'll go and if he wants to take her."

I suggested that we should send a young Egyptian called Abdul with Chai
Tai Foong, but Connie said they would quarrel; he preferred a Siamese
that we had with us, whose name was Phinit. That was a better choice as
it turned out; the Siamese are a gentle and artistic people and Phinit
was mentally much closer to the Balinese than Abdul would have been. He
was unmarried, so that complication didn't arise. I left it to Connie to
put the matter to these two and then to bring them in to see me in the
office.

It was dark by the time all that was finished, and I couldn't get hold
of Mr. Johnson at the Arabia-Sumatran office. I had to see him soon to
find out how he reacted to the whole idea of transfer to an Australian
machine at Bali; it might well be that he would wash out the whole thing
and give the contract to a British company with a white staff; the cost
did not mean a great deal to them. I worried over this a lot that night.

As luck would have it, a cable came in that night from Maclean in Alice
Springs. I was in bed in the radio operators' chummery where I still had
my room; the operator on duty saw it was important and sent it over to
me by a boy. In it Maclean gave me his quotation for the return trip of
a Dakota once a fortnight between Bali and East Alligator River. It was
exactly what I wanted; I got up and went over to the office on the
aerodrome, and stayed there for two hours revising my quotations to the
Arabia-Sumatran, cutting everything as close down as I dared. When I'd
finished I still had a figure that was about fifteen per cent lower than
anything my white competitors were likely to quote for the whole journey
from Bahrein to the East Alligator, and I went to bed moderately happy
about the job.

I was over at the office bright and early next morning, and when Nadezna
came in I had the new quotation ready for her to type out. She ran
through it in half an hour and I rang up Mr. Johnson, and by nine
o'clock I was in his office showing him the new figures and telling him
all about it. He had already had a cable from Fletcher at East Alligator
River telling him about the difficulties, and he wasn't at all happy
about changing airlines at Bali; he was afraid, quite reasonably, that
one or other of the aircraft wouldn't be there on time and so his men
and loads would get hung up at Bali.

"There's worse places to be stranded at than Bali," I remarked.

He glanced at me. "I've never been there. I've heard that it's a very
lovely island."

"It is," I said. "It breaks my heart to think you won't see much of
it--not travelling this way." I turned more serious. "You're absolutely
right," I said. "There is a danger of a hold-up there. What I propose
doing, if you go on with this, is to go to Australia and either form a
new white company to do this last leg, or take a financial interest in
Maclean's show--if I can. I'll have to get control of that last leg."

He grunted. "It's just possible that we might operate it ourselves from
the East Alligator River..."

He wouldn't say yes or no to the new scheme at that meeting; he said
that he wanted to talk it over with his colleagues and he'd telephone me
later in the day. I went back to the aerodrome worried and anxious,
wondering if my 120,000 contract had gone down the drain. I roamed
about restless and irritable in and out of the office and the hangar,
unable to settle to anything or attend to anything. I had a miserable
day. So did everybody else in the party.

At about four o'clock in the afternoon Johnson came on the phone. He
said they had decided to try the service in the way that I suggested, in
co-operation with Maclean Airways. He said that I must have escape
clauses to the contract enabling us to get rid of Maclean if he was late
at Bali, and he wanted to see me about that. He wanted to talk to me
again about the possibility that they should operate a Dakota themselves
for the last "white" leg of the journey. He suggested I should come and
see them next morning, and he said they wanted to start the service on a
six months basis with a flight leaving upon Thursday week, in nine days'
time.

I put down the telephone, and I was so relieved I could have wept. It
was all right, after all.

Nadezna had been standing by my desk. She had come in while I was
talking, and was waiting to say something to me.

"Major Hereward is here, waiting to see you," she said. "Shall I bring
him in?"

Even the Liaison Officer couldn't worry me at the moment. "Show him in,"
I said. "Look--slip over to the hangar then and find your brother and
Gujar. Tell them it's all okay--Johnson has accepted the Bali scheme and
Maclean Airways. I'll be over there as soon as I've found out what this
chap wants."

She smiled at me, radiant; perhaps it was my own relief that made her
look like that. "I'm just terribly glad it's all come out all right,"
she said.

"My God," I remarked with feeling. "So am I."

She brought in Major Hereward, and I got up to greet him. "Good
afternoon," I said. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but I had
someone on the phone." I offered him a cigarette, but he refused it.

"I'm afraid that what I've come to tell you may be rather unwelcome, Mr.
Cutter," he said. "It's about your man, Shak Lin. We feel up at the
Residency that the influence that he is building up here is quite
undesirable, and could even be dangerous."

"I see," I said. The sun seemed suddenly to have gone in.

"It's very unwise to play about with religious matters in this country,"
he said seriously. "I've been here twenty-five years, and I know. A new
sect makes a schism, and in this country schisms may break out into an
open riot, any time. I'm afraid we cannot tolerate a British subject who
gains influence in this country by starting a new sect."

"There doesn't seem to be much harm in it," I said dully.

"Well, that's for us to judge, Mr. Cutter. Shak Lin is a British
subject, and you're a British subject, and in this I'm afraid you'll
have to do what we decide."

I was silent.

"You'll have to get rid of him, Cutter," he said, not unkindly. "I'm
very sorry about it, and so is the Resident. But Shak Lin's got to go."




CHAPTER 7

    God be thy guide from camp to camp; God be thy shade from well to well;
    God grant beneath the desert stars thou hear the Prophet's camel bell.

    JAMES ELROY FLECKER


Major Hereward was adamant that Connie had to leave the Persian Gulf. He
said that I could see the Resident if I liked, but it was obvious that
they had made their minds up. He made it pretty clear, too, that if they
had any trouble with me they'd kick me out too. They didn't seem to have
a lot of use for any of us, and yet, I think we'd done a useful job
while we were there. Perhaps it would have been better if I'd gone into
the officers' mess, as I could have done long before. I should have got
invited to the Residency parties then, and got alongside them more.
Perhaps I had stuck too closely to the job.

Using his own words, I told him that what he proposed raised rather
large issues. "Maybe I shall wind the business up," I said. "The chief
engineer is a key man in a thing like this. In any case, I'm not going
to decide anything tonight. I may go to London and talk it over with
your people there. Mr. Shaklin has done nothing but talk a very harmless
and sincere form of religion."

"Not Christian," he said.

"No," I replied. "Not Christian. Does that make a difference?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I can't enter into that. Where British
subjects are concerned, one expects Christianity. However, Mr. Cutter,
there it is. I don't want to upset your business unduly, but I want Shak
Lin out of this district within a fortnight. We can't have him here any
longer than that." He got up to go. I got up with him. "I understand
what you want. I'll think it over, and let you know what I'm going to
do."

He went out and got into his car and drove away. I went back to my chair
and flopped down into it, tired and depressed. Nadezna came back from
the hangar presently, and found me sitting so, staring idly at the pad
in front of me, wondering with a dulled brain what I was going to do.
She said, "They're all very pleased. Gujar was asking if you're going on
the next Bali trip yourself, or if you want Arjan Singh to go with him,
or what."

I could not take in what she was saying. "What's that?" I asked.

She looked at me curiously, and repeated the question. "Arjan--no--I
don't know," I said. "I'll have to think about it."

"Is anything the matter?" she asked.

I shook my head; I wanted time to think about things before spilling
them to anyone. "I'll be going off in a minute. If you've got the
letters I'll sign them now."

I think it was on that day that my business stopped being fun. Up till
then, it had been a game to me. I had made money out of it, it is true,
but this had been a paper profit that I had seen nothing of. I was still
the same Tom Cutter living with the radio operators as I had been when
first I came to Bahrein in the Fox-Moth. I had no more goods, no better
clothes or food than in those days. Figures on white typescript sheets
might say that I was worth thirty thousand pounds or so, and it was just
like any other fiction to me, as unreal as a page in a novel. No
Rolls-Royce had yet come my way; I drove a 1940 Dodge station wagon that
I had bought in the first year. The only difference in my life was that
I had more work even than in those early days, and larger aeroplanes to
play with.

And it had been play. It was a game to all of us in those first years, a
game that we all played together as a team. We had all been of the same
mind, I think; the fun that we had had in working the thing up together
had been the real essence of it. Now, it seemed, the team was to be
broken up, and we should go on one man short. Fun is a delicate flower
that doesn't stand up very well to changes of that sort. You can't play
about with fun. You can kill fun very easily, as easily as you can kill
a wife.

I didn't sleep much that night. Towards morning I gave up the idea of
going to London to argue with the Foreign Office. They would only take
the advice of their officials on the spot; I had no prestige, no
influence or reputation that would weigh against the vagaries of these
foolish people. I was just Tom Cutter, ex-ground engineer, who made too
much money to please civil servants. If I had been Sir Thomas Cutter,
Bart., deep in debt and divorced three times, I might have commanded
some attention in official circles, but as just plain Tom Cutter I
hadn't got a hope.

Connie would have to go to Bali and set up the party there, and Chai Tai
Foong must take command of the ground staff at Bahrein in his place.
Connie and Phinit to Bali. I reached that conclusion towards dawn and
dozed a little then, thinking unhappily of what I had to say to Connie,
and how Gujar Singh would react, and all the rest of the party.

I don't like stalling when there's anything unpleasant to be done. I
walked over to the hangar soon after the men came in at half-past seven,
and called Connie out on to the tarmac. "Look, old boy," I said as soon
as I got him out of earshot of the others. "We're in for trouble, I'm
afraid."

He faced me, smiling gently. He had a wonderful smile that sort of
comforted you. His sister had it a bit, too. "I know," he said. "They
want to get rid of me. That's it, I suppose?"

"You've heard about it, then?"

He nodded. "The Imam came and told me a couple of days ago. That's what
Major Hereward came up about last night?"

"How did the Imam get to know about it?"

He shrugged his shoulders, still smiling. "The bush telegraph works very
well, here in Bahrein. Far better than the Residency know."

"Those bloody fools," I said bitterly. "I've been trying to think of
some way out of this. And I can't think of one."

"Don't let it trouble you," he said. "I know it's going to be a set-back
to the business, but it's no injury to me. It's time that I went on, in
any case. I've been here long enough."

"It's good of you to take it that way," I said. "I don't believe you,
but it's nice of you to say it. I don't believe you meant to make a
change."

"No," he said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't have left you, just as you
wouldn't leave us. But I've done all I can in this place, and I should
go on."

We strolled into the shade of the hangar, for the sun was getting hot
already. "I've been wondering if you'd care to start up Bali for me," I
said. "Let Chai Tai Foong go on here in your place, and you go down to
Bali with Phinit. There's not a lot of work there, I'm afraid, but it's
all I've got to offer."

He smiled again, that wonderful, comforting smile. "I'll go there," he
said. "I'd like to go somewhere for a bit now where there's time to
think things out. Bali is what I should have asked for, if you had
suggested any change before this happened. It's no injury to me to go
there." He paused, and then he said, "There's only one person damaged by
this nonsense."

I glanced at him. "Who's that?"

"You."

"I'm not damaged," I said. "Nothing's happened to me."

"Nothing that you can't ride over," he said, "because you were born a
valiant and courageous man, and you can take hard blows. But you were
going to sell this business, weren't you?"

"I did think of it," I said. "I gave up the idea."

He nodded. "And with it you gave up England, and wealth, and an easy
life in a beautiful place, and love, and the children that you long for.
You gave up all these things, and came back to the Persian Gulf. Why did
you do that?"

I stared at him. "How did you know all this?"

He smiled gently. "You're thinking I've got second sight," he said. "I
haven't. Your mother told Gujar Singh about these things, and he told
me."

I stared out along the tarmac of the runway, already shimmering in oily
waves of heat. "It didn't seem to be a very good idea to sell the
business, after all," I said. "One does what one thinks is for the
best."

"You thought it for the best to give up all the delights of the world,
and come back to this hot, barren place of difficulties and insults," he
observed. "Why did you do that, you hard-headed man? Did you do it for a
penance?"

"I don't know," I said. "If I did, I've got plenty to do penance for."

"So have all men," he replied. "But all men don't do it."

"I don't know that I'm doing it either," I said. "As regards selling the
business, I very nearly did sell it. I only rejected the idea on final
inspection."

"Half a thou too small," he said. "The difference between Right and
Wrong. Half a thou bigger, and it 'ld be Right. As it is, it's Wrong,
and you can't cheat about it." He smiled again. "Too bad when God gives
you the mind of an Inspector, isn't it?"

I laughed. "You'd better get into the hangar if you're going to talk
that sort of stuff."

He smiled. "I shan't talk my beliefs here very much longer. When do you
want me to go?"

"I'm laying on the first flight down to Bali on Thursday week, provided
Maclean Airways can play at such short notice," I told him. "Will you
and Phinit come with me on that? I shall take Arjan as pilot so that he
can learn the route."

He nodded. "I'll tell Phinit."

I stood staring out across the wide expanses of the airfield to the sea,
revolving all the problems in my mind. "There's your sister," I said. "I
suppose she'll go with you."

He glanced at me. "You'd like to keep her here, wouldn't you?"

"That's all right," I said. "I can get along without her."

"No," he said. "I think you'll need her. I think she'd better stay
here."

I hadn't got the heart to combat that one. If Nadezna went with Connie,
as was only fair and reasonable, my office and my works would be
disorganised at the same time. "It's all very well for you to talk like
that," I said. "Nadezna's got a mind of her own. She won't want to stay
here alone, with you in Bali, about five thousand miles away."

"I'll have a talk with her," he said. "You didn't run out on us. I don't
see why she should run out on you."

"Don't force her to stay here if she doesn't want to," I said. "I don't
want anybody in the party who's unwilling."

He smiled. "I think she'll want to stay. I don't think you'll find that
she's unwilling."

We stood in silence for a time, for there was nothing else to say. I
broke it at last. "I think I'd like to get the Carrier's engine change
done before you go," I said. "Give Chai Tai Foong a break when he starts
off. I don't want to land a big job like that on him in the first
month."

He nodded. "I was thinking that, myself. You'll send the pair that's in
her now to Almaza?" We talked about the details of the engine overhaul
for a few minutes, hard, simple facts that were so easy to discuss. Then
I turned to go back to the office.

He strolled a few steps with me. "The Residency want me to go because
they're afraid I may make trouble, I suppose?"

"That's what they said," I replied. "The cock-eyed bloody fools."

"I should never make any trouble," he remarked. "But they will."

I stood for a moment in thought. "Will there be trouble in the souk
because you've been kicked out?"

"Not while I'm here," he said definitely. "But after I have gone, there
may be trouble. Some of them will miss me."

I shrugged my shoulders. "That's just one of those things."

"If there should be any trouble," he said, "see that some fool of an
officer doesn't go and close the aerodrome with an armed guard. They may
want to come up here to say their prayers."

I laughed shortly. "I'll do what I can. But whether I'll get Major
Hereward to see it from that angle, I don't know."

I went back to the office and drafted a long cable to Eddie Maclean
about the Dakota that he was to send to Bali in the following week to
meet us there. I was too worried to settle down to office work, and so I
went out to the tarmac where Hosein was just about to take off in an
Airtruck for El Haura with six lorry wheels fitted with new tyres and
two truck radiators, and put him out of it and flew the machine myself.
It's good to have something physical to do, when you're a bit worried.

I spent the middle of the day with the repair gang at El Haura, and flew
back in the evening with an air compressor set that had got sand where
no sand ought to be. I landed shortly before dark and handed the machine
over to Connie, and went into the office. Nadezna was still there,
waiting for me. She had one or two minor matters for me, notices to
ground engineers and information circulars.

I glanced them over. "Okay," I said to her. "You can get off now. No
need to wait."

She hesitated. "I wanted to see you, Mr. Cutter. I've been talking to my
brother."

"Sit down, then." I dropped into my chair myself. "He's told you about
everything?"

"I think so. He's told me that he's got to go to Bali."

"That's right," I said. "I'm sorry about that, but it's the only thing
to do. You'd like to go with him, I expect, wouldn't you?"

She shook her head. "I'll stay here while you've got a job for me."

"I thought the only reason you came out here was to be with him."

"I know it. And now he's got to move on, when I've only been here a
month. But all the same, I think I'd rather stay here, for a time, at
any rate. If you'll have me."

I smiled at her. "I'll have you all right. But are you sure you wouldn't
rather be with your brother?"

She shook her head. "I've got a job to do here, and I'm getting
interested in it. In Bali I'd have nothing to do at all. It's not as if
I shall be out of touch with Connie, either. There'll be machines going
and coming to Bali all the time from now on, won't there?"

"Oh--yes," I said. "Once a fortnight certainly, and probably more
often."

"If he got ill or anything, could I go to him on one of the trips?"

"Of course. You can get on one of the machines and go and see him any
time you like. The weight won't make any odds."

She smiled. "In that case, I'll stay here."

A point that had been worrying me all through the day while I was flying
came back to my mind. "When your brother goes, where are you going to
live?"

"I'll go on where I am," she said.

"Will that be all right?" I asked uneasily. I suppose after all that
time I still had something of an Englishman's dislike and fear of the
native quarter of an Eastern town.

"Surely," she said gently. "I live in a house owned by a very
respectable old man, Mutluq bin Aamir; he's a silk merchant. He's a
great devotee of Connie, and he knew my father. And Gujar Singh lives
only just across the way."

"You'll be all right there, living alone, after your brother's gone?"

"Of course," she said, smiling a little. "I should never come to any
harm down there."

If she was happy about going on there alone I didn't see that I could
raise any objection; moreover, I didn't know of anywhere else where she
could live any better. I asked her, "How are you for Arabic? Can you get
along without your brother?"

She nodded. "I'm learning it. I can ask for all the ordinary things now,
and anyway, lots of the people know a little English. Really, I shall
be quite all right. You don't have to worry about me."

I couldn't press it any more. "Well, of course, I'll be very glad if you
can stay," I said. I sat in silence for a minute. "It's going to be a
big loss when your brother goes," I said quietly. "Things have gone very
smoothly under him."

"And under you," she said.

"I mean, in the hangar. I've had nothing much to do with the ground
engineers since he came."

"I know," she said. "But under you, he has been able to teach people in
his own way. When Connie started talking his religion over the
fifty-hour schedules and the daily inspections, not everybody would have
allowed it to go on. You must have been very puzzled sometimes."

"Yes," I said. "I was."

"Because you saw virtue in his way of teaching engineers to do their
work you let him go on in his own way, although it was not an English or
an American way. If the results are good, a share in it is yours." She
paused. "His way has spread a long, long way from here, and may spread
further. Engineers worship in the hangar in his way in Rangoon and
Bangkok, in Karachi and in Abadan." She paused again, and then repeated,
"And it may go further."

There was a long silence. "What is this thing, Nadezna?" I asked at
last. "Is it a new religion?"

"What is a religion?"

I was silent. I couldn't answer that one.

"As I see it," she said thoughtfully, "it's a way of life that brings
men to worship through their work, who wouldn't worship in the
old-fashioned way. If that's what a religion is, I suppose this is one.
But does it matter what we call it?"

I shook my head. "The only thing is to accept it, and just see what
happens. After all, there isn't any harm in it."

"No harm at all," she said. "Only a lot of good."

There was a tension in Bahrein in those last days before we left for
Bali. I wrote a note to Major Hereward telling him what I proposed to
do, and I got a short and not unfriendly reply in acknowledgment. I did
not see him again before we left, and nor did Connie. On the Friday
Connie asked for a Proctor to go over to the Sheikh of Khulal at Baraka,
and Gujar flew him over; nothing seemed to happen as a result of that.
Years later Gujar Singh told me that the visit had averted a major clash
between the Sheikh and the Resident, and Johnson of the Arabia-Sumatran
once hinted at the same thing. But at the time I knew nothing of all
that.

There were more worshippers than ever at the sunset prayers outside the
hangar in those last few days. Each evening more bus loads of men
arrived from the souk and the surrounding district; on the last evening
before we took off for Bali there must have been nearly five hundred
people there, including the Imam, who led the _Rakats_. I know I counted
eleven buses parked by the roadside, and some of them had made more than
one journey. Many of these people were what in Bahrein would pass as
intellectuals, grave, white-bearded old men in flowing Arab clothes. But
with them there were men who had to do with things mechanical; every
taxi-driver and every truck-driver in the district must have been there,
and men from the water-works and from the refineries, and from the
electrical power station. We had a failure of the power supply that
night.

There was no demonstration, and no sign of any emotion. They came and
lined up for their prayers outside the hangar with the Imam leading in
the motions of the _Rakats_. They went through it all as I had seen them
do so many times before, only now there were far more of them. None of
them seemed to pay any attention to Connie and the other non-Moslems
kneeling apart, and after it was over they went back to their buses and
got into them; the engines started up and the old vehicles moved off.
There were no speeches, no farewells, no protests or debate. Watching
this from a distance, I was vaguely uneasy. It seemed unnatural that if
they loved him well enough to come out of the town to pray with him,
they should go so quietly. It didn't seem right to me, but then, I
reflected, I knew nothing really about the East.

We loaded up the Tramp before dawn next day. There were eleven great
metal rods that I was told were drills, each about six inches in
diameter and nine feet long, swathed in sacking; these weighed together
about four tons. There were five passengers from the Arabia-Sumatran,
one of whom was getting off in Central Burma and two at Diento; the
other two were going through to the East Alligator River with the
drills. Then there was Arjan Singh as pilot and myself as co-pilot, and
Connie and Phinit travelling with us to Bali. All told, we had a pretty
full load, even for a Tramp.

We took off for Karachi with the first light, and I left everything to
Arjan Singh, only flying the machine myself while he was at the
navigator's table. The route eastwards was becoming a well-worn track to
me by that time, but my pilots had flown it less frequently, and I was
anxious for them to get in the maximum experience. We went up to about
ten thousand feet in dusty air conditions, so that it was difficult to
see the ground or sea except immediately below, and navigated by radio;
we got fixes from Bahrein and Sharjah till we were well past Bandar
Abbas, and soon after that we picked up the broadcasting station at
Karachi and began to home on that, getting a few cross bearings from
Jiwani as we passed.

We began to lose height when we were half an hour out from Karachi. The
dust haze was quite thick and Arjan had to be on the job of piloting the
whole time. To help him I relieved him of the radio work, and picked up
the microphone and called the airport to announce our arrival in their
zone. "Karachi Tower, this is George Able Nan How Victor, from Bahrein.
E.T.A. one one five zero, Zebra. Over."

A high-pitched, Pakistani voice speaking clipped English acknowledged
the call and cleared us into the zone. I laid the microphone down and
told Arjan; I kept the headphones on and the set going, on a listening
watch. And a couple of minutes later they came through again.

"George Able Nan How Victor, this is Karachi Tower," said the Control
officer. His English was not very easy to understand. "Is... on board
your aircraft? Over."

I could not get the missing words, and asked him to repeat. This time he
spoke more clearly and distinctly. "Is Mr. Shak Lin on board your
aircraft?"

"Karachi Tower," I said, "Roger. Shak Lin is on board."

"How Victor, Roger. Thank you. Out."

One cannot ask questions about non-essential matters on the radio, and
it was difficult to understand the Control officer on any but the
standard routine calls. I sat wondering, uneasy, for a few minutes; then
I passed the microphone to Arjan and got out of my seat, and went down
the ladder to the cabin and to Connie, seated behind the load. "Karachi
Tower have just asked if you were on board," I said. "Are they expecting
you?"

He shook his head. "Not that I know of."

"Well," I observed, "they are."

"Somebody must have got on the blower from Bahrein," he said. He meant
the radio telephone that connects the aerodromes all down the eastern
route; the operators are talking to each other all the time.

I nodded. "Thought you'd like to know."

"Thanks."

I went back to the cockpit and slipped into my seat again. Arjan knew
the Karachi district very well, and found the airship hangar without
difficulty in the thick haze, and we got cleared for landing as we
passed down wind, and put down on the one long runway, and taxied to the
Control Tower. As we swung round into wind and stopped the engines, I
saw brown men in overalls running towards us down the tarmac from the
hangars. I pointed them out to Arjan Singh.

He nodded. "I think they know that Shak Lin is with us."

I slipped down into the cabin and went first to the door. When I opened
it, the first man I saw was Salim, the Pakistani ground engineer who had
been with us at Bahrein, and who had left to take a job with Sind
Airways here in Karachi. I said, "Hullo, Salim. How goes it?"

"I am very well, Mr. Cutter, thank you," he replied. "Mr. Cutter, is
Shak Lin with you?"

"He's here," I said. "Do you want to see him?"

"Oh, yes. Many, many people here want to see him."

I got out of the machine. "Don't keep him too long, Salim," I said.
"We've got to go on as soon as we've refuelled. I'm going through to
Ahmedabad today."

"May we have one hour?" he said. There was a considerable crowd behind
him now, brown men in oil-stained overalls, and more were coming up. "It
is important to us, Mr. Cutter. Just one hour."

It would take us most of that time to get refuelled and get the
necessary clearances from the Control. I glanced at my watch. "All
right." My watch was all wrong of course, and I glanced at the airport
clock. And then there was a low murmur from the crowd, and several of
the men touched their foreheads. I turned, and Connie was standing
behind me in the door. I said, "Connie, I want to take off in about an
hour. Let's say three o'clock, local time by that clock. Salim here
wants you."

He nodded. "Okay. I shall be ready."

He got out of the aircraft and went away towards the hangars with Salim
and the crowd, and from the airport building officials in blue uniforms,
Customs officers perhaps, or bus-drivers, came out and went with them,
making a small stream of people down the tarmac in the brilliant sun.

The Shell refuelling truck arrived and Arjan Singh gave them the
instructions, and we left Phinit in charge and went up to the Control
office with the documents and log books. I knew the Controller slightly
from previous visits; he was a lean, brown Pakistani who had been in the
Royal Indian Air Force in the war. His name was Khalil. He smiled when
he saw me and I offered him a cigarette, and we smoked together while
Arjan got on with the job with one of his assistants.

He asked, "You are taking off again at once?"

"In an hour. My chief engineer is with me, Mr. Shak Lin, and they want
to see him in the hangar. Was I speaking to you about him on the R/T?"

"Not to me personally," he said, "but I passed the message. The men down
there, especially those working for Sind Airways, wanted to know very
much if he was coming."

"They know about him here, do they?"

He smiled. "Oh yes, they know about him. We call his method here the New
Maintenance. It seems to be a system which maintains an aeroplane
according to ethical principles, so far as I can understand it. Is that
right?"

"I'm blowed if I know," I said. "My men have all been very devout since
Shak Lin came to work for me, and the maintenance has been first-class.
I've let it go at that."

"That is what the managing director of Sind Airways tells me, that the
men have become devout and the work has greatly improved." He hesitated.
"Some of my staff go down sometimes to the hangar for the sunset
prayers," and though he would not admit it to an infidel like me, I knew
that he was telling me that he was in the habit of going himself. "I
think it is a very good thing."

"I think it is," I said. I left Arjan Singh to get the met. report and
clearances for Ahmedabad, and went down to the restaurant for a quick
meal. There was a chap there called Harrison who had been a pilot in
Almaza during the war; he was working for a small chatter company
operating from Bombay now; I knew him slightly, and went over to talk to
him.

"My word, Cutter," he said, "your G.E.s have started something, haven't
they?"

"I don't interfere with what they do," I said. "If Asiatics like to say
their prayers, it's not for us to try and stop it."

"All going round the bend, if you ask me," he said. "You can't get a
thing done up here until they've said a prayer or two, and now it's
starting in Bombay. I came in yesterday in a Commuter, and she was
missing a bit on the front bank, so I took her into Sind Airways for a
plug change. It was like being in a bloody church."

"Did they do the plug change all right?"

"Oh, they did that. They found one or two cowling cracks, too, that our
lazy muggers down in Bombay hadn't noticed. They're quite a good crowd
in Sind Airways, if it wasn't for all this religious nonsense. I think
they've come on a lot lately."

Connie did not keep me waiting. He came back down the tarmac punctually
at the end of the hour with a crowd of forty or fifty engineers tagging
along behind him as he walked with Salim. There was no ceremony and no
trouble as he got into the machine; he paused in the door and looked
back at them with that wonderful smile he had, and then he was lost to
their view in the cabin. The rest of us got in and shut the door, and
Arjan and I got up into the cockpit, and started up the engines, and
taxied out for the take-off to Ahmedabad.

We stopped there for the night, and took off next day just before dawn,
landing for fuel at Calcutta about midday. Nothing much happened there,
and we took off again for Rangoon after an hour, and flew down the coast
of Arakan past Akyab and Ramree in the evening. Passing Sandoway I went
down into the cabin to talk to Connie.

I squatted down beside him on the load. "I'm night-stopping at
Mingadon," I said. "We shall find U Myin there, probably."

He nodded. "He's with B.N.A."

"He'll want to see you." I paused. "Do you know anything about an old
man called U Set Tahn?"

"The English monk?"

"That's right," I said. "U Myin took me to see him once. If he's alive
still, he'll be very anxious to meet you. I was wondering how this would
be. We're night-stopping tonight at Mingadon and going up to Yenanyaung
tomorrow with this chap who's getting off there, and picking up two more
bodies for Diento. I'm reckoning to be back at Mingadon tomorrow night
and on to Diento next day, fuelling at Penang. Would you like to have a
day off in Rangoon? There's no sense in you coming with us to Yenanyaung
unless you want to."

He said, "I'd like that, if you're sure you won't need me. I'd like to
meet U Set Tahn."

"I shan't need you," I said. "There's quite a bit going on here in your
line; U Myin's introduced a lot of your ideas, from what I can make out.
Have a talk with the chief engineer, Moung Bah Too, if you can manage
it. He's a very good type."

I went back to the cockpit to my job. We cut in over the Arakan Yoma at
a point just south of Sandoway and made for Rangoon across the Irrawaddy
delta. The sun set before we came in sight of the city, and we put down
at Mingadon airfield in the dusk and taxied to a parking place. We spent
the night at the rest house upon the aerodrome.

I left Connie in the rest house when I got my party out at four in the
morning for a cup of coffee in the restaurant and a dawn take-off for
Yenanyaung. It's only an hour's flight or so and we landed in time for
breakfast. I could have got back to Mingadon by noon and gone on to
Bangkok that day, but I didn't want to hurry Connie in his conference
with U Set Tahn, and I had promised him the day. I stalled a bit at
Yenanyaung and was glad when one of the passengers asked if he had time
to go to the head office there. So we stayed there on the airstrip all
the morning, and had lunch from what we carried with us in the aircraft,
and took off for Rangoon at about one o'clock and landed back at
Mingadon in the middle of the afternoon.

As we taxied in I could see there was a considerable crowd on the tarmac
round the entrance to the Burmese National Airways hangar; there seemed
to be a rope barrier keeping a clear space upon the tarmac in front of
the building. We parked the aircraft and I sent my passengers to the
rest house, and set to work with Arjan Singh and Phinit to get the Tramp
refuelled and ready for the morning.

I sent Phinit to make contact with the fuel manager and get the petrol
bowser up to the machine. He came back presently without it. "No
driver," he said. "Drivers and fuel men all over at the hangar, listen
to Shak Lin. Manager says, in one hour, will that do?"

It would have to. "Shak Lin's over there now, is he?"

He nodded. "Many pongyis there too, very holy men." He hesitated. "May I
go?"

There was little for him to do till the bowser came. "All right. Find
the bowser driver, and bring him back here in an hour's time."

He went running off to join the crowd. I finished cleaning up the
aircraft with Arjan and then, twenty minutes later, I strolled down
myself to see what was going on at the B.N.A. hangar. There was an old
Anson parked outside it. Connie was standing up upon the wing of this
and talking to the crowd. There were several pongyis, monks in the
yellow robe, standing by the wing, and in one of them I recognised the
old man I had visited in his ashram, U Set Tahn, at one time Colonel
Maurice Spencer of the R.A.S.C.

I stood on the outskirts of the crowd, but they were so massed I could
not hear what he was saying. He was speaking in English; I could hear
that much, and in the crowd of Karens and Burmese and Chinese and
Indians there was a good deal of whispered translation going on, which
made a low hubbub drowning all but a few sentences of what he was
saying. He was impressive, standing up there on the Anson wing, speaking
quietly, with that wonderful smile he had.

I had not seen him quite like that before. Looking up at him silhouetted
against the sky, it struck me suddenly how very thin he had become. He
had always been a lean man, but now, and from that point of view, he
looked almost emaciated. It was a good thing, perhaps, that he had left
the Persian Gulf for the milder and more generous climate of the isle of
Bali. Two years of the desert seemed to have taken a good deal out of
him. I wondered vaguely if it had not taken a good deal out of me.

I couldn't hear, and so I turned away and walked around outside the
crowd. On the other side of the Anson I met Moung Bah Too, the chief
engineer of the air line. He recognised me, and came towards me with a
smile.

"I'm sorry about this," I said quietly, indicating Connie on the Anson
wing. "It seems to have stopped work a bit."

He shook his head. "I allowed it. We heard that Shak Lin was to come
through here four days ago, and I arranged a holiday. We are treating it
as a duty day." He meant, as if it was a Sunday.

He paused. "It is a great honour," he said quietly. "He is a very
wonderful man."

"I've only just come up," I replied. "What has he been talking about?"

He said, "He took as his thesis the Mingala-thut, our sermon on the
Beatitudes," he said. "He took the words to the Buddha in the list of
the blessed things, that a man ought to hear and see much in order to
acquire knowledge, and of study all science that leads not to sin. He
has been saying that in studying the stresses and the forces in the
structure of an aircraft, the thermodynamics of an engine or the flow of
current in the oscillating circuits of a radio transmitter, we are but
following the injunctions of Gautama, who said expressly that we were to
learn these things. The world is full of suffering and pain caused by
our wrong desires and hatreds and illusions, and only knowledge can
remove these causes of our suffering..." He paused.

He listened for a moment. "Please forgive me," he said. "It may be years
before he comes this way again." And he left me and pressed through the
crowd towards the Anson.

I stood on the outskirts of the crowd and listened, and for a few
sentences I could hear him plainly. "You know that aeroplanes do not
crash of themselves," he was saying. "You are intelligent men. You do
not think there is a jealous God who stretches out a peevish hand to
take an aeroplane and throw it to the ground. Aeroplanes come to grief
because of wrong cravings and wrong hatreds and illusions in men's
hearts. One of you may say, 'I have not got the key to the filler of the
oil tank. I cannot find it. I looked yesterday and there was plenty of
oil. It is probably all right today.' So accidents are born, and pain
and suffering and grief come to mankind because of the sloth of men..."
His voice was lost in the murmurs of the crowd.

It was the same message that he had preached so often in the hangar at
Bahrein, that the maintenance of aeroplanes demanded men of a pure and
holy life, men who would turn from the temptations of the flesh to serve
their calling first. Here the message was transmuted into terms of
Buddhism, but it was the same set of ideas, that good work and good
living were one and indivisible.

I turned away, and strolled back to the Tramp, deep in thought. It
seemed to me that Connie had done something quite remarkable. He had
gained support for his ideas both from the Imams of the Persian Gulf and
from the pongyis of Rangoon; he had succeeded in impressing both Moslems
and Buddhists with the same message. True, it was all coloured by the
fact that he was talking to the men who maintained aircraft, whose
profession made a bond of internationalism which might transcend the
narrower boundaries of their religion. But all the same, it seemed to me
to be a remarkable achievement. I wondered if he would make his mark
upon the degenerate Hinduism of Bali.

After a time the meeting broke up, and presently Phinit came with the
bowser and we refuelled the Tramp. When that was over I went back with
Phinit and Arjan Singh to the rest house. There was a small crowd of
Burmese around the veranda and the door of Connie's room was closed;
squatting outside it was U Myin, the Burmese lad that we had found at
Damrey Phong.

I greeted him. "Evening, U Myin," I said. "Is Shak Lin inside?"

He got to his feet. "The Teacher is very tired, and he must rest."

"May I go and speak to him?"

He hesitated, and then stood aside and opened the door for me. Connie
was lying stretched upon the charpoy in a short pair of pants; it was
very hot in the room with the door shut, and he was sweating in streams,
so that dark patches showed upon the sheet on which he lay. I noticed
again how thin he had become.

He raised his head as I came in, and then raised his body on one elbow.
"Evening," he said. "I was just having a lie-down."

I grinned. "Takes it out of you, I suppose--all that talking."

"A bit."

"Let me send over for a whisky--a chota."

He shook his head. "I never touch it. You know that."

I nodded. "Have you eaten anything today?"

He shook his head. "I'll wait till the crowd's gone, and then I'll slip
over to the restaurant."

"That crowd's a fixture," I said. "I'll send one of the boys over for a
tray. They've always got a curry there. Curry and rice?"

He thanked me, and got up, and went across the room and had a long drink
of water from the chatty. I went out and spoke to U Myin and Phinit, and
U Myin went to the restaurant leaving Phinit to guard the door and keep
the crowd away. He came back presently carrying a tray covered with a
white cloth, a meal of curry and rice and fruit. I went into Connie's
room and saw him settled down and eating it.

"Take-off at dawn tomorrow morning," I said. "Refuel at Penang and enter
the Dutch Indies at Palembang, and then to Diento for the night. That
okay with you?"

He nodded. "I've got nothing more to do here."

"What about all those chaps outside? There's one or two monks with
them."

"I'll go out presently and say good-night to them. Tell U Myin to tell
them that, would you?"

I nodded. "I'll tell him."

He looked up at me, smiling. "I sometimes think that you're a very
patient man."

I grinned. "I'm a chap who's been operating aircraft for three years
without a sniff of engine trouble," I said. "If the price is to send for
a meal of curry and rice over from the restaurant, well, that's okay by
me."

We got to Diento at dusk next day without incident, and spent the night
with those hospitable people in their tropical country club by the
riverside. Next day we flew on. We passed Batavia and went on down the
length of Java to Sourabaya and landed there to refuel; then we got
going again and flew to Bali. We landed on the airstrip there about the
middle of the afternoon. There was no other aircraft there, but just as
we were preparing to leave the strip to drive into the city, Den Pasar,
a Dakota appeared from the east, circled once, and came in to land. It
taxied to park by our Tramp and stopped its engines.

I had not met Eddie Maclean before, though we had cabled and
corresponded. He drove with me in to the hotel, and when we had had a
shower and changed our clothes we met in the wide, airy forecourt for a
drink. At his end everything was working out all right, and he was
anxious to retain the contract and prevent the Arabia-Sumatran people
from operating the service themselves; I said that that was his affair.
He was anxious to examine my Tramp and very interested to know how much
it cost, and he had heard a garbled tale of Connie Shaklin that I had to
put right for him. I liked him well enough, and we sat for a long time
together in the blue of the night in the cool forecourt of the Bali
Hotel, drinking Bols and talking about aircraft and their maintenance.
From time to time Balinese young men and girls passed by in the road,
talking and laughing softly together in quiet, musical voices. Both men
and women wore much the same clothes, a sarong with a blouse or shirt
above, for they were in their best clothes now and walking out together.
They seemed to me to be a very beautiful people.

We all went out to the aerodrome early next morning and transferred the
load from the Tramp to the Dakota, a troublesome business because each
of the great drills weighed seven or eight hundred pounds. It took us
two hours with a gang of men to get the eleven drills out of the Tramp
and into the Dakota, and then we set to work to refuel. Finally Maclean
took off in the Dakota and vanished over the island of Lombok in the
direction of Australia, and I was left upon the airstrip with Connie and
Phinit and Arjan Singh.

I stayed two days at Bali with them, which was all the time that I
could spare. With the changes that had taken place at Bahrein I had to
get back there as soon as possible; I could not spend a week or ten days
holidaying in Bali as I had intended. I went and called upon the Dutch
administrator, Bergen, that I had met when I was there before, and took
Connie Shaklin with me and introduced him. With Bergen and Voorn, the
airport manager, we went back to the strip and inspected the store and
workshop building that I wanted to rent, built into the side of the
hangar. The buildings were in fair condition and the rents were not too
bad, and having no option in the matter I arranged to rent them there
and then.

The next day was spent in arranging with Voorn and Connie the
alterations that were needed. We had brought with us in the Tramp one
spare engine and a fair assortment of tools and spares, enough to carry
out minor maintenance work and repairs. We found a carpenter to come and
work under Connie to put up all the necessary racks and shelves, and got
that going. Then we had to fix up some accommodation for Connie and
Phinit.

At that, I must say, I was a bit out of my depth. They were both
Asiatics, and though in that place of no prejudice it would have been
quite possible for them to live in European style in Den Pasar, they
both declared that they preferred to live with the people in some
village closer to the strip. They had a point there, because Den Pasar
was ten miles from the airstrip, and I had no car to leave them, nor
would it have been at all easy to buy one or get petrol for it in that
place. If they wanted to live with the Balinese in Asiatic style, that
suited the work best, and suited me.

The major difficulty was, of course, the fact that they had no common
language; if the Balinese spoke anything at all but their own tongue it
would be Dutch. However, Connie made light of this point when I raised
it; he said that it would be an inconvenience for the first week if he
could not converse with the people, but after that the language would
present no obstacle. So we went and talked to Voorn and Bergen, and went
out that afternoon with a young man called Andel from the
administration office driving us in a jeep, to look for somewhere for
Connie and Phinit to live.

He took us to a place called Pekendang, a village about a mile to the
south of the airstrip, in the other direction to the city.

This village was a lovely place. It was built in a grove of coconut
palms a little away from a white coral beach; in fact, a proportion of
the men were fishermen. Behind it, rice-fields stretched in terraces up
the hill. The village itself seemed to consist of three or four walled
enclosures grouped around a temple enclosure, and the high walls which
surrounded these enclosures were pierced only by narrow entrances or
gateways with carved limestone ornamentation.

I asked Andel if the people put these walls up for defence. He grinned.
"Defence against bad spirits," he said. "These walls, they put up to
keep out the ghosts at night."

He stopped the jeep outside one of these gateways. "A man is here I
think will help," he said. We all got out and followed him through the
wall.

Inside, the wall enclosed a space about a hundred yards square. The
ground was of hard beaten earth, and dotted about in the area were a
number of single-storey dwellings, wooden structures with palm thatch
roofs and walls. Each seemed to consist of one or two rooms; the floors
were raised about three feet above the earth. As walls were absent on
one side of each house, if not on two sides, the effect was that of a
number of deep verandas which disclosed sleeping charpoys in the dim
background.

"This is a house temple," said Andel. "Each house for one member of the
family with his wife and children." Arranged around a central square
were six or eight shrines, small alcoves on masonry pedestals raised
five or six feet from the ground. There did not seem to be an image in
any of them, but a few artificial flowers of palm fronds were laid in a
few of the shrines, as offerings.

The whole area was well shaded with palm trees. Men and women were
sitting about, the men mostly working at fishing nets or carving
woodwork, the women weaving or cooking on open fires behind the houses
or nursing their children. In the confines of this family enclosure both
men and women went naked to the waist in a sarong. They were well
developed, happy people, golden brown in colour, going tranquilly about
their daily life in the warm sun. It struck me that they had achieved a
better life than I had, who dashed hurriedly from country to country in
an aircraft, pursuing God knew what.

They paid little attention to us, except to smile as we went by. Andel
stopped at rather a larger house, apparently the home of the head of the
family. An old, grey-headed man got up from squatting on the steps as he
approached, and smiled at him.

They talked together in Balinese for a time. Then Andel turned to us and
said, "This is I Wajan Rauh." Rauh was the name, and Wajan meant first
son of his father, an indication of his standing in the community.
"Wajan says that the village can accommodate your friends if they have
no objection to living as the people do. He says they can have a room to
themselves."

I said, "May we see where they would have to sleep?"

The old man led us to another house. I said to Connie, "What about it?
Is it a bit primitive? You can live in Den Pasar if you'd rather."

He said, "I would rather live here, with these people."

"What about you, Phinit?"

The Siamese boy said, "It is similar to how they live in my mother's
village, near Hua Hin. I should be happy to live here."

The house that Wajan showed us was a single room with one charpoy in it,
apparently kept for putting up a casual traveller. He could produce
another bed. As regards food, he had a daughter who would cook for the
two strangers, and he sent a child running for his daughter. She came in
a few minutes, a striking-looking, smiling woman of about forty perhaps,
but very well preserved. She was wearing only a sarong, but as she had
come to meet the strangers she had thrown a towel over her shoulders
with the ends hanging down her back so that her firm, fine breasts were
partially hidden. She talked to her father and to Andel for a minute or
two, smiling, and then nodded.

The Dutchman said "This is Mem Simpang. Simpang is her son; Balinese
women take the name of their first child, unless there is another to
make a confusion. You call her Mem Simpang."

Connie repeated that, and the woman nodded, laughing with him. He
indicated himself, still laughing, and said, "Shak Lin." She repeated
it, and then turned to Andel and asked something. He replied in the
negative.

"She asked if you have a caste," he said. "She thinks you must be an
aristocrat."

Connie shook his head. "Tell her we're just ordinary people."

"I will do that." A little conversation ensued, while a small crowd of
people gathered round. A girl of seventeen or eighteen with a very sweet
face, with a piece of cloth thrown over one shoulder and breast as a
sign of good manners, came and stood by Mem Simpang. Presently Andel
turned to us again.

"She will provide food and cook for you," he said. "They are asking for
three guilders a day each, for food and lodging. I have told them that
it is much too much, and they should be ashamed to treat strangers so,
but they say you are high-born people and must have the best."

Three guilders a day is about six English shillings. Connie laughed and
said, "Ask her if she'll take two if I help to look after the children."

Andel translated, and for some reason that sent the fine, middle-aged
woman off into fits of laughter, and the people round laughed with her.
Andel coloured a little. "She has only two children," he said. "The
eldest, a boy, is away fishing." He indicated the pleasant-looking girl.
"This is the younger, Ni Mad Jasmi. You call her Mad; that means,
second child. She will probably do most of your work."

He paused, and then he added, "I am afraid you will find that these
people have a very broad sense of humour, Mr. Shak Lin."

Connie said, "Most country people have, in all parts of the world. Tell
her that we will pay three guilders and Mad shall look after us."

We went back through the houses to the wall entrance, having made
arrangements for Connie and Phinit to get their gear and move in next
day. Passing the open space with the shrines, Connie said,

"They are Hindus, aren't they?"

Andel said, "Of a sort. I do not think that Indians would recognise much
of their religion in what these people do. It is a very complicated
religion, Mr. Shaklin; there are over forty thousand temples in Bali,
and each has a festival two or three times a year. The people here spend
most of their spare time in going to festivals or making up offerings to
take to the next one. They are very devout. And yet, I do not think they
really know what their religion is about. Certainly, I don't."

Connie said quietly, "It will be interesting to learn about it."

Andel said, "You will learn plenty about it as soon as you can talk to
them, because their whole life centres round the temple festivals. They
are a very religious-minded people."

As we drove off in the jeep I wondered uneasily what would come of
putting Connie down to live in such a place as that.

Next morning Arjan Singh and I took off in the Tramp for Diento on our
way back to Bahrein. We left Connie and Phinit to get on with it and set
up the small maintenance base I had planned. I left a credit at the bank
for him, and told him not to economise too much on cables; it would pay
us to know what his requirements were before the next trip left Bahrein
to come to him.

We got to Diento that day after a stop at Batavia for formalities and
fuel. We loaded up with about a ton and a half of machinery and three
passengers for Yenanyaung and made Rangoon next evening after one stop
at Penang. At Yenanyaung next day we picked up five passengers and two
tons of load for Bahrein and got back to Mingadon by dinner time,
refuelled, and made Calcutta for the night. Next day took us to Karachi,
where we night-stopped before going on to Bahrein.

We stopped outside the airport building at Karachi and Arjan went up to
the Control office to do his stuff there; I went and fixed up
accommodation for my passengers in the airport hotel. Then I had to move
the Tramp because it was in the way of other aircraft, and I got in and
started it up, and taxied it down the tarmac past the hangars to its
parking place for the night.

It was evening by then, and after sunset. I was very tired; we had flown
and worked continuously for four days since leaving Bali, and even in so
well-equipped an aircraft that can be a strain. I stopped the engines
and locked the controls. There were things I should have done that
night, but it was nearly dark and all the jobs could wait till we were
fuelling at dawn. I got down from the cockpit into the big, empty
fuselage and walked down to the door, and got down on to the tarmac,
locking the door after me.

There was a man waiting for me by the tailplane. He came towards me, and
I saw that it was Salim, the lad who had worked for us at one time and
was now with Sind Airways. He came forward and said, "Good evening, Mr.
Cutter."

"Evening, Salim," I said. "How goes it?"

"I am very well, Mr. Cutter," he said. "Mr. Shak Lin, he has not come
back with you?"

"No, he's staying down in Bali for a time," I said. "He's looking after
things for us there."

He was silent. Then he said, "Mr. Cutter, you heard about the trouble in
Bahrein?"

I turned to him quickly. "I haven't heard of anything. Has something
happened there?"

"They say there has been fighting in the souk," he said. "Much trouble,
very much trouble. It is because the Teacher has been sent away."

Nadezna lived in the souk, but Gujar Singh lived near; surely, he would
have been looking after her? "What happened in the souk, Salim?"

"An English officer was stoned," he said. "They say he was very badly
hurt. He would have been killed, but the Sister was there."

"Who was this English officer?"

"It was the Liaison Officer, from the Residency."

"Major Hereward?"

"I do not know the name. It was the Liaison Officer. The people of
Bahrein say it was because of him that the Teacher was sent away, and so
they stoned him. And then the R.A.F. stopped men from going to the
hangar by a guard, and when the people came the guard fired, but they
fired into the air and the people went on and said their _Rakats_ at the
hangar as usual. One of the bullets fired into the air fell down and
killed a goat. Then the guard was taken away, and now the people go and
say their _Rakats_ every night. Many people go, every night."

God, this was awful. It was just what Connie had warned me might happen.
I had done nothing to prevent it, but there was probably nothing that I
could have done; the Residency would not have listened to anything I
said.

"How is the Liaison Officer?" I asked. "Will he recover? When did this
happen?"

"It happened the day after you came through here with the Teacher," he
said. "Eight days ago."

"How is the Liaison Officer?"

"He is in the hospital. It is all right, because the Sister was there
and she saved him."

I was puzzled. "Which sister was that?" I was thinking of someone from
the hospital.

"The Sister of the Teacher," he said. "The one who works for you as
secretary."

"Nadezna? Was it she who saved the Liaison Officer?"

"Yes," he said. "The Sister."

"Do you know what happened, Salim?"

"The Englishman was driving in his car alone in the Muharraq road
towards the Causeway," he said. "Someone threw a stone and broke the
windscreen. And the man stopped and got out of his car, and more stones
were thrown, and one hit him on the arm and broke it, and one hit him on
the head and then he fell down beside the car, and more stones were
thrown to hit him as he lay upon the ground, by many people. But God,
the Compassionate, the Merciful, took pity on him. The Sister, who was
in the street, came running, and she saw the crowd and the men throwing
stones. And the Sister came to the crowd and they made way for her, and
she went forward through the stones that men were throwing and stood
over the Englishman who was lying on the ground. She said, 'This is a
bad thing, and the Teacher will be angry when he comes to hear of it.'
Then the men stopped throwing, and she called to two of them to take up
the Englishman and lay him gently in the back seat of his car, and that
was done, and the Sister got into the car and drove it to the hospital,
and the crowd made way for her to pass with the car. And when they came
to the hospital men came with a stretcher and they put the Englishman
upon it and took him inside, and he will recover from the stoning. And
when that was done, the Sister was ill and she was sick in the road by
the car, because she is a woman and had been afraid. And one came and
said, 'Sister of the Teacher, shall we take you also to the hospital?'
But she said, 'I will go back now to the souk, to my own place. Go you
to the Residency and tell the guard to come and drive this car away, and
see that no harm shall come to it.' And that was done."

I walked back with him to the main airport building, but he knew nothing
more than that. It had all happened a week ago. A machine of Orient
Airways had been through Bahrein upon a pilgrim flight to Jiddah and the
crew had heard all this and brought the news back to Karachi, but since
then there had been no authentic news of what was going on. "I think
everything is quiet now," said Salim. "If there was still trouble we
should have heard, because the radio operators talk to each other all
the time."

Outside the main building we met Arjan Singh walking towards us in the
tarmac lights. He said, "There has been fighting in Bahrein," but it
turned out that he knew no more than we did, and had the same story. We
talked about it for a time, but there was nothing we could do except get
going for the Persian Gulf as soon as possible in the morning; so we
dined and went to bed with an order to be called at four o'clock.

We landed at Bahrein about midday next day. Gujar Singh and Hosein were
both out on jobs, Gujar flying the Carrier and Hosein one of the
Airtrucks. Chai Tai Foong was in the hangar, however, and he came out
and met us as we stopped the engines on the tarmac. I got down quickly
from the door ahead of the passengers, leaving the machine to Arjan, and
walked over to the Chinese engineer, and said, "Morning, Tai Foong. How
are things here now? They tell me that you've had a bit of trouble while
I've been away."

He smiled. "All is quiet now. It was only one day. The people were angry
with the Major Hereward and they hurt him with stones, but now they
listen to Mem Nadezna and there is no more trouble."

"Was there trouble here, about the people coming in to pray?"

He nodded. "One day only. After that Mem Nadezna went to the C.O. and
said the people meant no harm in coming here to pray. And Flight
Lieutenant Allen, he spoke on the radio to Air Vice-Marshal Collins at
Habbaniya near Baghdad and said--his own words, Mr. Cutter, I am
sorry--he said the local Jesus had been crucified and he was in a mess
and wanted some advice because there was nothing in the book to tell him
what to do. And next day the Air Vice-Marshal flew down from Habbaniya
in his Devon, and after he had talked to Flight Lieutenant Allen they
both came here to the hangar and talked to Gujar Singh, and then they
talked for a long time to Mem Nadezna. And after that the guard was
taken off the road and there was no more firing, and the people now come
here to pray each evening. It is quite all right now, Mr. Cutter. No
more trouble at all."

I went into the hangar with him and he showed me what had been going on
in my absence, but I had only half my mind upon his maintenance jobs. I
told him to get on with the routine checks on the Tramp since she would
be leaving again for Bali in a few days' time, and I went over to the
office. It was the lunch hour and the babu clerk was there eating
something that he brought with him every day done up in a cloth; he told
me that Nadezna was over in the restaurant having lunch, as she usually
did. I went there to find her.

She was eating curry and rice at a table by herself, and at first she
did not see me. I crossed the room thinking how small she was, how
delicate, with her slim figure, her black hair, and her kind, thoughtful
features. It was incredible that this slight girl had pressed through a
yelling crowd of furious Arabs stoning a man to death, to walk through
the flying stones and stand over him, and tick them off. It was more
credible that she had been sick afterwards from nervous exhaustion. I
walked towards her not quite knowing what to say, because she had become
very dear to me, and I was shocked at the risks that she had taken.

She heard my step and looked up, and got up to meet me. "Mr. Cutter! I
didn't know you were back. Have you come back in the Tramp?"

"Yes," I said. "We landed about a quarter of an hour ago."

"I had no idea. I'm so sorry--I'd have come out to meet you. Have you
had lunch?"

I shook my head. "I'll join you, if I may." I pulled out a chair and sat
down opposite her. "They tell me that you've had a bit of trouble here."

"Nothing to speak of," she replied. "It was just one afternoon, down in
the souk. The people were a little upset. But that's all over now."

"How's Major Hereward?"

"He's still in hospital. He's going to be flown home on leave in a few
days' time. His relief, Captain Morrison, was flown up here from Aden
yesterday."

"Is this one any better?"

"You mean, as a liaison officer?"

I nodded.

"They say in the souk that he was quite popular at Aden. I don't think
Hereward was very bright."

"I don't suppose we'll see him here again," I said. "They'll probably
send him to another district, after this." I smiled at her. "He ought to
be very grateful to you, but I don't suppose he is."

She said, "Oh, but he is. He sent a message asking if I'd go and see him
in hospital, and all he wanted was to say thank you." She hesitated. "It
was a bit pathetic. He didn't know what he'd done wrong to make the
people so angry."

"Didn't he realise that sending your brother away was likely to make
trouble?"

"I don't think he did. I think he thought he was preventing trouble when
he sent Connie away."

You cannot argue with stupidity; you just have to accept it patiently as
one of those things. I said, "You didn't get hit by any of the stones?"

She shook her head. "They stopped throwing as soon as they saw me."

"Thank God for that," I said quietly.

She looked at me curiously for a moment, and then coloured a little.
"There wasn't any danger," she said. "They wouldn't do anything to me. I
knew that from the first."

"Like hell you did," I said. "That's why you were sick as soon as it was
all over."

She stared at me. "However did you hear of that? Did Chai Tai Foong tell
you?"

I shook my head. "Salim told me, last night at Karachi. He's a Pakistani
lad who used to work for us here. He's with Sind Airways now."

"He told you I'd been sick outside the hospital?"

"He mentioned it in telling me the story."

She looked me in the face with her thoughtful eyes. "They know about
that in Karachi. Do they know that I was sick in Rangoon, in Bangkok, in
Bangalore and in Bombay?"

I was silent.

"Does every little thing we do here in Bahrein go halfway round the
world?"

I met her eyes. "If you want a straight answer to that one, Nadezna," I
replied, "--I think it does."

She smiled. "A goldfish in a glass bowl has more privacy than we have,
if I can't even be sick without the whole of Asia knowing."

"Much more," I agreed. "But that's what comes of having Connie for a
brother."

"How did you leave Connie?" she enquired. "What sort of place is Bali,
anyway?"

I told her what had happened on our flight out as we sat over lunch in
the airport restaurant, and about that far-off village he was living in,
Pekendang. "It's very quiet, very lovely there," I said. "It's not like
this at all. It's tropical, of course, but it's a gentler place than
this, with plenty of rain-fall, plenty of shady trees and greenery. And
cleaner, gentler, happier people than live here. He hasn't got a lot of
work to do. I think he should be able to rest there, and put on weight a
bit. It seemed to me that he was getting very thin."

She nodded. "I know; he's terribly thin. I think he's been in Bahrein
long enough."

I sat thinking for a time, wondering if I could ask her what was in my
mind. At last I said, "I wonder if you'd tell me something. Was Connie
ever married?"

She shook her head, smiling. "Never came within a hundred miles of it."

"Was he ever in love with a girl?"

"I don't think so. Not that I know of, anyway. He always thought too
much about religion. What's all this about, Mr. Cutter?"

"I don't want to be nosey," I said. "It's just that he's stuck down
there in a very lovely place with very lovely women to look after him. I
was wondering how he'd make out."

She smiled. "Like a hermit or a monk or something. I wish he was
different, more like other men. If he'd go around with girls and fall
in love I'd be much happier about him."

"I know," I said. "Everyone ought to do that."

She coloured a little, and then she said, "I'll have to be getting back
on to the job, Mr. Cutter. Can I ask Arjan for the journey log book of
the Tramp?"

"That's all right."

"I'll get the airframe and the engine log books written up, then, right
away. Oh, Mr. Cutter, Tarik wants to see you as soon as you can fit him
in."

"What does he want?"

"He wants to go down to Bali to work under Connie. Tai Foong came and
told me all about it."

"What does he want to go there for? This is his home town."

She sighed a little. "He's writing up the Gospel according to St. Tarik
in a lot of five-cent exercise books. He's afraid there'll be a gap."

I suppose I was dead tired. I just sat back and laughed as if that was
something very funny. I knew it really wasn't funny at all, and yet for
a few moments I couldn't stop laughing. I saw her face change, and she
came across and laid her hand upon my shoulder. I think that was the
first time she had ever touched me.

"Stop it, Tom," she said gently.

I think that was the first time she had called me Tom, though I had
called her Nadezna for some time. I never had been quite sure if Shak
Lin was her surname, or what.

I took a pull upon myself. "Sorry," I said. "Tarik can't go down there.
He's got Phinit with him. That bit'll have to be the Gospel according to
St. Phinit."

She nodded. "Don't bother about that any more. I'll see Tai Foong and
Tarik. Go to the chummery and rest an hour or two. There's nothing very
urgent in the office."

"I can't do that," I said. "I must go up this afternoon to the
Arabia-Sumatran and tell Johnson how the trip went off."

I went and got the Dodge out of the hangar and drove into town to the
Arabia-Sumatran office. I told Johnson how the trip had gone and fixed
with him the details of the next one, to start in four days' time. We
spent half an hour talking of the business, which was going smoothly
from his point of view. Then, as I got up to go, I said, "I hear that
there was some trouble the day after I went."

He nodded. "It was very foolish of Hereward to advise the Resident to
expel your man Shak Lin. Very foolish indeed. As it is, he's lucky to be
alive today. He wouldn't have been but for that girl Nadezna."

"I know," I said. "I heard about it."

He thought for a moment. "We owe a lot to her," he said. "I'd give her a
medal if I had one to give."

"Things seem to be quiet enough now," I remarked. "I suppose the people
in the souk have accepted the position?"

"The souk? Oh--they don't matter. It's the Sheikh of Khulal and his oil
that I was worried about. I'm a bit worried still, I don't mind telling
you."

"The Sheikh of Khulal?"

"I see you don't know the half of it," he said. "The Sheikh of Khulal
was behind that business in the souk. Not a doubt of it. He was in
Bahrein that day. I think we might have had a first-class riot if your
girl Nadezna hadn't gone to see Wazir Hussein."

I was startled. "When did she do that?"

"The same evening. She put on one of those black _milfa_ veils to hide
her face and went to see the Wazir at Sheikh Muhammad's palace, where
they were staying."

He paused. "It would be very awkward for our interests if an open breach
were to develop between the Sheikh of Khulal and the Resident," he said
thoughtfully. "I wish you'd bear that in mind, Cutter. We want peace in
this country. In a way, I think perhaps you and Nadezna can do more to
bring peace back into this district now than the Resident can. Bear it
in mind, and just do what you can. Especially if anything crops up that
has to do with Khulal."

I left him and went back to the aerodrome. As I crossed the causeway I
saw an Airtruck on the circuit, coming in to land, and when I drove up
to the hangar Gujar Singh was just taxi-ing in. I met him on the tarmac,
and walked with him to the office.

He told me about the various flight jobs that had been going on in my
absence. About the disturbances, he knew little that I did not know
already. "I think things are becoming quiet now," he said. "I think that
when Air Vice-Marshal Collins took the guard off the road and let the
people come back here to pray it made a great deal of difference."

"I should think that would begin to tail off now," I said. "Now that
he's gone away, they won't be quite so keen to come out all this way
just to say their prayers."

"I do not know," he said. "I have not counted them, but it seems to me
that more of them come here to pray each evening. I think there are more
coming now than when Shak Lin was here." He paused and then he said, "I
think a movement such as this is strengthened if you try to repress it."

I told him that I wanted him to take the Tramp on the next trip to Bali
with Hosein as co-pilot, and discussed the route with him a little.
There was not much to talk about, because he had flown it already once
with me; he had plenty of time in the next four days to study his maps
and radio information to prepare the flight. I left him presently, and
went back into the office and started on the correspondence.

That was the bad part of my job, the office work. I had been flying and
working hard for five days in the tropics, all across the world, and as
a solace and a rest I came back to a desk piled high with papers to be
dealt with. I dictated to Nadezna for three quarters of an hour and gave
her more than she could cope with that day; then I sent her out to get
on with the typing and sat on at my desk turning over the remainder of
the stuff with a mind dulled with fatigue.

Presently outside my office Arabs from the town began to pass along the
road; it was getting towards sunset and the time of evening prayer. I
could not concentrate enough for useful work; I got up and went out of
the office and watched what was going on from a distance. A string of
motor buses and taxis were parked on the road, and men were streaming
from them to the empty space reserved for prayer just by the hangar.
There were a great many of them. I did not try to count them, for I was
too tired, but as I stood there watching it seemed to me that there were
many more than I had seen before. There was an Imam with them, and
presently he stood up in the semi-circle of white stones that faced to
Mecca and began to lead them in the evening _Rakats_.

I stood and watched them for a time, most desolately alone. I could not
go and join them because I was a European and a Christian, and because I
had never done so. I just stood at the corner of the restaurant watching
as they laid their troubles before God and cleansed their souls with the
ritual; I was tired and depressed, and I would have given anything to be
there with them, joining in their prayers. And presently I couldn't bear
it any longer, and I went back to the office and sat there with my head
resting on my arms upon the desk. If I had been able to I would have
wept, but I had not wept since I was a child.

And presently Nadezna came in with the letters. I raised my head, and I
said heavily, "The post must have gone. I'll sign them in the morning."
She came to my side and put the letters down upon the desk. And then she
put her hand to my head and caressed my hair, and said, "You're very,
very tired. You must go home and rest."

She was comfort and security and stability to me, a touch of everything
that was lacking from my life. I pulled her hand down and kissed it, and
she said softly, "Poor Tom." We stayed like that for a long time,
perhaps ten minutes.

It was no good starting off upon another Beryl. Presently I got up and
smiled at her, and said, "Thanks, Nadezna. That was good of you." And
then I went out to the old Dodge station wagon, and drove in a daze down
to the chummery, and went and lay down on the charpoy. I didn't sleep
much that night: perhaps I was too tired.




CHAPTER 8

    And God shall make thy body pure, and give thee knowledge to endure
    This ghost-life's piercing phantom-pain, and bring thee out to Life
      again.

    JAMES ELROY FLECKER


From that time on there was a period when everything went well. It was
autumn, for one thing, and with the onset of the winter weather nerves
became less strained, tempers less ragged. As the nights got colder so
that first a sheet was necessary over you for sleep, and then a blanket,
everybody slept better and was able to relax. The summer is a bad time
in the Persian Gulf, even if you can stand it. Every one of our party
was accustomed to great heat or we wouldn't have been there, but even
so--the summer's a bad time.

In Bahrein, the new Liaison Officer, Captain Morrison, turned out to be
a great success. He was quite a young chap, not more than about thirty
but, my God, he was good. He had come into the Army when he was about
twenty for the war, and had found his way into some branch of the
Intelligence in Egypt and the Sudan. He had stayed in after the war was
over and had been seconded for civil duties; he had travelled very
widely in Arabia with the Bedouins. He spoke Arabic fluently, and half a
dozen dialects of it. He was unmarried.

He came up to the aerodrome soon after he arrived and came into my
office. He had a shy, diffident manner, very unlike Hereward; there was
no professional charm about him at all. It was difficult to believe that
he was in the Army; he seemed just like an ordinary person.

He said, "I suppose you know what I've come for."

I must say, he got me a bit confused. As a matter of fact, I _did_
know. Gujar Singh had told me that morning that he was coming to see me
to ask me to have dinner with him in his quarters at the Residency.
Gujar had heard that in the souk, of course. The gossip was that this
young man had told the Resident that he wanted to tackle things in
Bahrein from a different angle. He had told him that I, Tom Cutter, was
one of the most influential people in the district, and that it was
absolutely necessary to get my co-operation and advice in tackling the
religious difficulties that seemed to have arisen. All this had got down
to the souk in about five minutes, and ten minutes after that one or two
grave, white-bearded old men had visited the house of the silk merchant,
Mutluq bin Aamir, to tell the rumour to the Sister of the Teacher and
ask her what she thought about it. Gujar Singh told me that Nadezna had
told them gravely that it was a good thing and that the Teacher would
certainly approve of any such co-operation from the Liaison Officer; so
everybody in the souk was happy. As for me, I didn't know what to say to
my shorthand typist, so I said nothing.

I temporised with Morrison. I said, "How on earth should I know what
you've come for?"

"I just thought you might have heard something," he said awkwardly. "I
wanted to ask you to have dinner with me tonight."

It was a friendly approach, meant in a friendly way. I was a bit
embarrassed in my turn, because essentially I was a fitter come up from
the bench, and I'd never had time for any social life or anything like
that. "I'd like to do that," I said. "But there's just one thing. I'm
afraid I haven't got a dinner-jacket."

He said that didn't matter because there'd only be him and me, and so I
dined with him that night. We sat on his veranda for a long time after
dinner drinking his whisky, and because he was simple and really anxious
to learn what had been going on, I told him everything I knew.

We must have sat like that talking for over an hour after dinner,
looking out into the still blue night, with the moon making a bright
track across the sea. I told him everything right from the first day I
met Connie in Cobham's Circus; I even put in a word or two about my
marriage. I told him about Dwight Schafter, and I told him about U Set
Tahn.

In the end he said quietly, "What do you really think about Shak Lin,
Mr. Cutter? What sort of a person do you really think he is?"

I stared out over the dim sea. "I think he's a very good chap," I said
at last.

"I know. But there are a large number of people here who think he is
divine."

"He's not," I said. "He's just a very good ground engineer with a bee in
his bonnet." I paused, and then I said, "If I thought he was divine, I
couldn't very well dictate my letters to his sister."

"No..." he said thoughtfully.

I could not put it into words, but what I meant was that Nadezna was a
human being, a girl like any other girl. She was somebody that one could
get to care for very much and to depend upon. It was unthinkable that
her brother should have qualities above humanity; it was a gross fallacy
that had to be put right, at all costs.

"I can assure you, there's nothing like that," I said positively. That
was the first time I denied him.

He got up and went and got some papers from the room behind us, and when
he came back he poured me out another whisky, and got a fresh bottle of
cold soda water from the refrigerator. Then he sat down beside me again.

"Did you know about the R.A.F. plans for expansion here?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Not a thing."

"It's in a very early stage," he said. "I think they're planning to put
a squadron on the aerodrome at last. Of course, the trouble is that you
are occupying the only hangar, and that's right on top of the R.A.F.
camp."

"I see," I said. "Do they want to kick me out?"

"Not from the aerodrome," he said. "They realise that your business
mustn't be disturbed. The proposal is that they should build a new civil
aviation hangar for you, at the south end of the north-south runway."
He unfolded a plan of the aerodrome and showed me where they meant to
put it. "Here. At the same time, they want to extend the present hangar
by building over the vacant land to the south of it, here. The present
hangar won't be large enough for them, apparently."

I stared at the plan in consternation. "Hell," I said. "They can't
possibly do that. They can't build over that bit to the south. That's
where the people come to say their prayers."

"It's all R.A.F. land, of course."

"It's holy ground," I retorted. "Honestly, you've got to put a stop to
this. If they prevent the people coming there to pray you'll have all
hell break loose."

"That's because it's the bit of land that Shak Lin used for praying on?"

"That's right," I said. "It's very holy ground."

He smiled gently. "And yet, you don't think Shak Lin is divine?"

"Of course I don't," I said. "But other people do." That was the second
time.

He sat studying the plan. "I think as you do," he said at last. "I don't
think we can let them put their hangar there--not just at present,
anyway. It's going to make a lot of difficulties I suppose, but I think
they'll have to put their hangar somewhere else. Let you stay in the
present hangar, and choose another site for their new buildings."

We talked over the details for a time. It was certainly an odd position,
that a holy place had come into being in the middle of an R.A.F. camp. I
told him that I thought that Air Vice-Marshal Collins might be
reasonable about it; he seemed to have acted with understanding at the
time of the previous trouble.

Presently he laid the papers down. "I don't feel that the present
situation is a static one," he said. "Do you?"

"I'm not sure that I know what you mean," I said.

"Well, what I mean is this. Either this cult of Shak Lin will die out in
a few months, or else it will increase and be a bigger thing than ever.
I don't believe that two or three hundred people will be coming up to
the aerodrome to make their _Rakats_ every evening, in two years from
now. There may be more or there may be less, but not two or three
hundred."

"I think I'd agree with that," I said slowly. "I think there'll be a
change."

"If we could guess which way the change would be," he remarked, "we'd
know what to tell the R.A.F. about their hangar. If the people have
forgotten all about Shak Lin in two years' time and nobody goes to the
aerodrome to pray, then the R.A.F. can take that bit of land and build
on it."

I shook my head. "I don't think it'll go like that. There's been no sign
of any diminution so far. This thing is growing now at a great pace.
Shak Lin has never been anywhere near Bombay, and yet his cult is strong
amongst the engineers there now. So far as I can see, it's growing every
day, all through the East. I haven't seen a sign of any falling off yet,
not in any place. You'll have to work on the assumption that this thing
won't die out here. I think myself that it will grow."

He said quietly. "You're saying, in effect, that we must work on the
assumption that Shak Lin's divine."

"God damn it," I said angrily. "I tell you he's not. I know him, and
he's just a damn good engineer who's going round the bend a bit. That's
all there is to him." That was the third time.

"A damn good engineer who's going round the bend a bit," he said
thoughtfully. "It wouldn't have been a bad description of the Prophet
Mahomet, only he was a damn good merchant."

I got to my feet. "Time I went home," I said. "I'm sorry if I spoke
strongly, but I know Shak Lin very well. And I know his sister, too.
They're very ordinary people. She works in my office, you know." I could
not possibly admit that there was anything different about Nadezna. I
was growing to depend on her too much.

"I expect you're right," he said. "We've passed the age of miracles,
except the ones that come from nuclear fission." He came down with me to
the courtyard to my old Dodge station wagon. "It was very good of you to
come this evening," he said. "It's a great help to have a talk to
somebody who really knows what's making this place tick."

It was nice of him to say that. I said something or other of the same
sort in reply and drove back to the chummery, feeling that at last the
Administration would be guided on the proper lines by this young chap.

Gujar Singh took the Tramp down to Bali on the first of the regular
trips with a load of passengers and freight for Yenanyaung, Diento, and
East Alligator River. He was back in nine days in accordance with the
schedule, bringing with him four passengers and about half a ton of
fresh fruit for the oil company's employees, mangoes and pawpaws and
pineapples, things that we didn't very often see in the Persian Gulf. He
brought me in a basket of this fruit to my office, and told me about the
trip and showed me the journey log book; it had been a good, uneventful
journey except that he had had a bit of trouble with the monsoon at the
inter-tropical front over north Malaya. He hadn't been able to get high
enough to over-fly the cloud banks and it looked so bad ahead that he
had been unwilling to go through them, so he had gone under and had
flown for five hundred miles in heavy rain along the beaches, only fifty
feet up. Coming back it had been easier.

I asked him how things were going at the Bali end. He said that Connie
and Phinit were getting quite a good little workshop going in the
hangar; they had taken on two Balinese lads temporarily for whitewashing
and painting and they were getting the place shipshape. The Governor
wanted them to maintain his Auster, as we had supposed. Gujar had a list
of tools and materials that they wanted to be sent down on the next
trip.

"How's the accommodation working out?" I asked. "Did you go to the
village where they live, Pekendang?"

"Oh yes," he said. "We went there to sleep and spend the evening with
them, Hosein and I." He hesitated, and then said, "I was not sure if we
would have been accepted in the Bali Hotel, or if that is only for
Europeans."

"I'm sure that would have been all right," I said. "There were Asiatics
there when I was there. I ought to have told you. I'm sorry."

He smiled. "We liked it in Pekendang. It is much cheaper, too. We did
not pay at all, but in the Bali Hotel it would have cost ten or fifteen
guilders. It is better for us to stay in Pekendang with Shak Lin and
Phinit."

"How are they getting on there, Gujar? Are they hitting it off with the
villagers all right? It's pretty primitive accommodation."

He said, "They are very happy there, Mr. Cutter. I think Bali is a happy
country, where people can live well and still have time to work upon
their arts and serve their temples. I think that they are very happy
there indeed."

"I'm glad to hear it," I replied. "I was just a bit worried that they
might not have fitted in. That woman Mem Simpang, is she looking after
them all right?"

He said, "I think so. I only saw her once. Her daughter brings the food
and keeps the room clean and mends Shak Lin's clothes."

"That's the good-looking girl? Ni Mad Jasmi?"

"They call her Mad," he said. "I did not hear the other name."

"She does for them?"

He hesitated. "There is another girl who seems to take care of Phinit.
They call her Ktut Suriatni. The two girls do the work between them, but
Mad works mostly for Shak Lin."

I said, "Is Phinit behaving himself, Gujar?"

He laughed in his great black beard. "With Ktut Suriatni? I do not think
so. The village would probably be very insulted if he did."

"Not going to make any trouble?"

He shook his head. "He is a good lad, from a country that is not so far
away, and he knows the rules by which this game is played. He will do
whatever is the right thing in the eyes of the village. There will be
no trouble, Mr. Cutter."

"I'm glad to hear it," I said. "What about Mad?"

He looked more grave. "Ah, Mad," he said. "She thinks nothing of
Phinit, and in any case he could not have two women at one time. I do
not think the village would approve of that. But Mad only serves the
Teacher."

"And is she getting any joy out of that?"

He shook his head. "No joy."

I did not think she would, but it was an interesting situation. "Will
the village take that as an insult, then?"

He smiled. "I do not think that they are very touchy. But in any case,
Shak Lin is different to Phinit, and the village know it. Phinit is one
of them, but Shak Lin is different."

"How do Connie and Phinit spend their time, Gujar?"

He said, "They are at the airstrip working most of every day. But in the
evenings they sit in the village and talk with the people. They can talk
to them now fairly well."

"What do they talk about?"

He grinned broadly. "What would Phinit talk about to Ktut Suriatni, Mr.
Cutter? Your guess is as good as mine. But Shak Lin talks to the old men
a great deal. A Buddhist priest came to the village the night I was
there. He had walked from Besakih, a great temple in the middle of the
island, to see the Teacher. He stayed after we had gone."

"I thought they were Hindus?"

He laughed. "I think you English call every religion that you do not
understand, Hinduism. But there are Buddhists in the island, just a
few."

"Shak Lin is finding out about the religion, I suppose?"

He nodded. "I think so."

"And that's bad luck on Mad?"

He nodded gravely. "He could have happiness for the asking, and give it,
too. But the Teacher is different to other men."

There was no arguing about that one. "I'll go down there myself one of
these trips, Gujar," I said. "Stop over for a fortnight till the next
one. It's time I took a bit of leave."

He said, "I think that would be a very good thing. It is a lovely
island, and you should rest sometimes, Mr. Cutter. I think that would be
very good indeed."

We left it at that, but the idea stayed in my mind. Late that night
before going to sleep, as I luxuriated in bed in a cold room with two
blankets over me, I got what seemed to me a pretty good notion. The more
I thought of it the more I liked it, and I drifted into sleep with a
smile on my face. It was still there when I woke up.

I could hardly wait till I had finished dictating to Nadezna next
morning. "Look," I said when the last letter was done. "I've been
talking to Gujar about your brother and how they're getting on down
there."

She nodded. "I've asked Gujar about Connie, too."

"Oh." I grinned at her. "Did he tell you about Mad Jasmi?"

She smiled. "That's the Bali girl who's looking after him?"

"That's the one. She's a very beautiful girl."

"So Gujar says."

"What I thought was this," I said. "I want a bit of a holiday. I was
thinking we might get everything cleaned up here in the office and go
down there, and stop over for one trip. Not this coming trip, but the
one after. That gives us a clear fortnight in the office here to get
everything buttoned up so that Dunu can look after things while we're
away. Go down on one trip and come back on the next one. That would mean
we'd have about a fortnight there. We should be away from here about
three weeks."

I hesitated, and then I said, "You'd like to see your brother, wouldn't
you?"

She sat silent with her eyes cast down, tracing a little pattern faintly
with her pencil on the cover of her pad. I was disappointed that she had
not welcomed the chance of a visit to Bali, but a man gets used to
disappointments as his life goes on. I said gently, "Wouldn't you like
to come?"

She said, "May I think it over, and tell you this evening?" She
hesitated. "I don't think we ought both to be away at the same time."

"Think it over," I said. "Gujar and Dunu can cope with anything that's
likely to crop up. I'd leave Gujar here in charge."

I went on with the day's work in the office, but it was a weary day. I
had counted on her coming with me for this holiday, and I didn't see
what there was against it. It couldn't possibly be that she wanted a
chaperon or anything like that, and I knew she was becoming fond of me.
I wanted to be with her, to get to know her better, to find out what she
liked and didn't like outside the office. She must have known I'd never
do her any harm. I spent the day uncertain, worried and impatient.

In the evening, as she was putting the cover on her typewriter, I said,
"Thought any more about this Bali business?"

She turned and faced me. She was wearing a white drill frock, very
simple. "I've been thinking about it all day, Tom," she said. "I don't
think I'd better come."

I suppose I'd known that was coming, though I didn't know why. My face
must have shown my disappointment, because she looked up at me and said,
"I'm just terribly sorry. It's not that I don't want a holiday with you.
It's Bali."

I sat down on the edge of the desk. "What's it all about?" I asked, as
kindly as I could. "What's wrong with Bali?"

She said, "I don't want to go there, not just now."

"Don't you want to see Connie? I thought you'd like the chance."

She shook her head. "I don't want to see him for a bit."

I reached out and took one of her hands in mine. "Tell me why," I said.
"I'm only trying to help."

"I know you are," she said. She smiled a little. "You're doing that in
your own way all the time. That's why this party runs so well."

"I'd like to know why you don't want to go and see Connie," I observed.

"I know you do," she said thoughtfully. "Otherwise you'll think that
it's because I don't want to go away with you, and it's not that at
all."

"Thank God for that, anyway," I said.

She raised her eyes and looked at me. "I want to leave him alone for a
bit," she said. "I don't mind you going. It might be quite a good thing
if you did. But I don't want to go myself, not now. I think he's better
without me."

"Why is that, Nadezna?"

She withdrew her hand, and walked over and stood by the open window. The
people were beginning to go past to the place by the hangar for the
evening prayer. She was silent for a bit, and then she said, "Did you
meet this girl, Mad Jasmi?"

I was amazed that she should raise that thing again. Surely, she wasn't
jealous? I said, "Yes, I just met her. She was with her mother when we
were settling how much they were to pay. I didn't speak to her, of
course. I couldn't."

"Is she nice, Tom?"

"She's got rather a nice face," I told her. "To look at her, you'd say
she would be kind and even-tempered, and probably faithful."

She nodded slowly. "That's what Gujar said. Did Gujar tell you much
about her, Tom?"

"He said that she looked after Connie mostly. There's another one who's
looking after Phinit."

"Did he tell you that she was in love with Connie?"

"Yes," I said. "He told me that."

She stood looking out at the muddled buildings between us and the
hangar, with glimpses of the tarmac and the sea beyond. "If that's
true," she said, "it's the first time it's ever happened."

"The first time anyone has ever been in love with him?"

"I think so. You don't know of anyone, do you?"

I shook my head. "I never saw him take an interest in a girl, or any
girl in him."

"Nor did I," she said. "But now, if Gujar Singh is right, there is a
girl, and she's in love with him."

I thought about this for a moment. "Well, you can put it like that," I
said at last. "I don't know much about the Balinese, and I don't think
Gujar Singh does, either. She's a very lovely girl, Nadezna, but it's a
very primitive village. She may want to go to bed with him. Probably she
does. But whether you can put it any higher than that, I wouldn't know."

She said, "I only wish she would."

I grinned. "Think it'ld do him good?"

She said gravely, "I know it would."

She came and stood by me again. "I want you to try and understand about
Connie, Tom," she said. "There's such a lot of nonsense being talked
about him that one can't deny, because it means so much to so many
people. So many people think that he... that he's a prophet, or
something. They do, honestly, down in the souk. They think that he's a
sort of prophet."

I took her hand again, and examined it. "I know," I said. "Some people
quite high up are starting to say that."

"You don't believe that, do you, Tom?" She looked at me appealingly.

I smiled at her. "I don't. I think he's just a damn good chap who's got
a bee in his bonnet. Perhaps he's been out in the East too long."

She nodded. "I think he has. He always was interested in religions, ever
since he was a little chap. And then, when we lived in America, we were
Asiatics, you see--different to the rest. Mother was Russian-born and we
always reckoned we were European, but we weren't really--not Connie and
I. And of course, it made a difference. I don't think Connie ever had a
girl friend in his life, not one. And his religion made up."

"I see," I said. This was a new light on the man I knew.

She said quietly, "Tom, I believe this is his chance, and it may be the
last one that he'll have. I don't care who she is so long as she'll be
kind to him, and make him happy like an ordinary man, and give him
children. If she's an Asiatic, well, he's Asiatic too, and so am I. I
want her to have him. He's never had a girl in love with him before, and
that's what's made him into what he is. I want her to make him love her,
and make him an ordinary man."

I stood studying her finger-tips, holding her hand in mine. "You think
that's what he's missed?"

"I know it is," she said. "He's always been incomplete, because he's
never had that. He's slid deeper and deeper into his religion, just to
compensate."

I stood thinking, perhaps, more about Nadezna whose hand I was caressing
than about Connie. I was wondering if the same Asiatic nature of her
birth had denied her boy friends, too. It might well be so. But she had
had her mother to look after, and perhaps she had found compensation in
that way.

"You're a good bit younger than Connie, aren't you?" I asked.

She nodded. "Eight years," she said. "There were two others between
us--both boys. There was a typhoid epidemic in our street down by the
harbour in Penang, and my father and Ivan and Victor all died. After
that, Mother took Connie and me to London, because my father died fairly
well off, and Mother didn't want us to grow up as Chinese. My father had
helped Sir Alan Cobham on one of his flights through Penang, and Mother
wrote to him in London, and Sir Alan took Connie on as an apprentice.
That's how he got started in this business."

I came back to the point that we had started from. "Why don't you want
to go to Bali, then?" I asked.

She said, "I might frighten her, and spoil it."

"I see."

She said, "Gujar and you say she's just a village girl, living in a very
primitive place. But Gujar says that she's in love with him, and Phinit,
living there with him, is living with another of the girls there, one of
Mad Jasmi's friends. If ever Connie had a chance of knowing what love
means it's now. And if he can have that, I think he might snap out of
all this prophet stuff, and come back to us as a normal man."

"Why do you think you'd frighten her?" I asked. "You're on her side."

Nadezna said, "If she's a village girl like that, she'd never believe
it. Different clothes, different speech, different colour.... If I
turned up there as his sister she'd be terrified of me, and angry, too,
because she'd think that I resented her and wanted to take him from her.
I'd never get her to believe that I want her to have him."

"No," I said thoughtfully. "I don't suppose you would."

"I think I'll have to keep away," she said. "However much one wants to
help her I think this is a time when another woman just can't help at
all."

"Would you rather I kept clear of them, myself?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I think it might be helpful if you went, if you can
spare the time. Connie thinks so much of you, Tom. He may want to talk
to somebody before he takes her." She smiled. "He's such a bunch of
ideals," she said. "He's quite capable of keeping a girl hanging round
while he consults a friend to ask him if he's doing the right thing."

I laughed. "You want me to push him into it."

"I do," she said, but she wasn't laughing at all. "I think that it's the
only thing to save him now."

There was real pain and anxiety in her when she said that, and for a
moment I thought that she was going to start crying I put an arm
clumsily around her shoulders. "It's not as bad as that," I said. "After
all, nothing's going to happen if he doesn't get this girl."

"Only one thing," she said sadly.

"What's that?"

"I think he'll turn into a prophet."

I was silent.

"I don't know how a man becomes a prophet," she said quietly. "But
thousands of people, spread all through the East--they think he's one
already. I suppose that if a person gives up earthly things and preaches
a new, simple way of life to people who are hungry for his teaching--I
suppose that's what a prophet is, isn't it? Or is there something more
to it than that?"

I pressed her shoulders gently. "Look," I said. "I don't know what a
prophet is, or what makes one. I only know that it's a very long time
since there's been a prophet in the world. Far as I know, Mahomet was
the last, and he lived about fourteen hundred years ago. That's a good
long time ago. I don't know what a prophet is, but I do know this: that
it's pretty long odds against our having one here in our little party,
now. In all these ages, people must have been thought to be prophets who
weren't really, just ordinary chaps who'd been out in the East too long.
That's all that Connie is, Nadezna--honestly. And if we treat him that
way, it's the best thing we can do." I paused. "I'd like to see him have
a job in a cold climate for a time. In England or America."

She smiled, and pressed my hand, and said, "Dear Tom. But he wouldn't
go."

"No..." I thought about it for a minute. "Well then, I'd like to see him
get this girl. I think you're quite right there. I think that it would
do him good, perhaps."

She looked up, smiling. "If he became the father of twins it'ld knock
him off his perch, wouldn't it?"

I burst out laughing, and she freed herself from my arm and laughed with
me. "Well, anyway," she said, "you go alone this time and find out what
he's up to, and give him a push the right way." She was calm and
matter-of-fact about it now, all apprehensions of the unknown put away.
"I'll stay here and look after things with Dunu." She paused. "But don't
think it's because I won't come with you for a trip, Tom. I'd like to do
that--but not to Bali. Not just now."

"All right," I said. "I'll go and see what I can make of it."

Arjan and Hosein took the Tramp down for the next journey to Bali, and I
went on quietly at Bahrein, making my preparations to go down on the
following trip and spend a fortnight there. I flew one of the Airtrucks
once or twice upon a local journey, and I spent some time in the hangar
with Chai Tai Foong and the ground engineers. Most of the time I spent
in the office, because it was there that I liked to be now. There was
always something to talk about with Nadezna, something to make a joke
about with her.

I never took her out anywhere, for the very good reason that there was
nowhere to take her to in Bahrein. There was no restaurant where we
could have a meal together, or anything like that. If one drove out in
the car you got out into the dry, parched desert in a couple of miles,
without a tree or any vegetation whatsoever. I did think once or twice
of taking her bathing, but that's not much catch in the Persian Gulf;
you can't go in more than knee deep because of the sharks, and there's
no shade at all, which makes it rather trying. I'd never felt the need
of anywhere to go except the office up till then, and now it was in the
office that we met and got to know each other. It was very pleasant
there in those few days.

Hosein and Arjan came back in the Tramp according to their schedule, and
I warned Gujar Singh and a new pilot that we had, called Kadhim, that
they would be the first and second pilots for the next trip down to
Bali, the one I should be going on. Hosein and Arjan Singh had spent the
night in Pekendang with Connie and Phinit, but they were neither so
observant or so much in my confidence as Gujar Singh, and I didn't like
to question them too closely about the women. I learned nothing from
them. Nadezna asked Gujar to find out anything he could from them, but
they had little information for him. They were both devout followers of
Connie, Hosein in particular, and it had probably never entered their
heads that the Teacher could take any interest in a woman.

Two days before I was due to leave for Bali, I was in the hangar with
Tai Foong when Nadezna came to me. "Wazir Hussein's just arrived and
wants to see you, Mr. Cutter," she said. She always called me Mr. Cutter
in front of other people. "He's in the office, waiting."

I left the hangar and went over to the office, wondering what he wanted.
I was up to date with my payments on the loan to buy the Tramp, and with
the work that the machine was doing I could step the payments up, if
need be. I thought about that quickly as I walked over to the office,
past the maroon car with the Arab chauffeur.

I went and greeted him. "How very nice of you to come," I said. "Let me
order coffee." I nodded to Nadezna in the doorway and she nodded back
that she would send for it, and closed the door softly behind her, so
that I was alone with Hussein.

We began to talk about the weather and the crops as usual, and very soon
he asked me how the Tramp had been behaving, so I knew it wasn't that
that he had come to talk about. I told him all about it and the work
that it was doing, wondering all the time what he had come for if it
wasn't that, and he listened politely and said all the right and
courteous things at the right time. Then Dunu brought a tray with the
small cups of Turkish coffee, and put it on the desk between us, and
went out and closed the door behind him.

Presently the Wazir said, "And where is Shak Lin now, Mr. Cutter?"

"He's at Bali in Indonesia," I said, "looking after the far end of our
service there." I told him what Shak Lin was doing and how he was
living. I found he did not really know where Bali was, and he wasn't too
sure about Indonesia either, so I took him to the big map of Asia that I
had pinned up upon the wall and showed him where Bali was and how the
aircraft flew there every fortnight to meet the Dakota coming up from
Darwin. He was an able man with an alert mind, and he grasped the
various points very quickly.

We went back to our chairs. "And will El Amin be coming back here to
Bahrein in the near future?" he asked.

"I don't think so," I said carefully. "As you must know, there was a
small amount of friction here about him, and the Liaison Officer
suggested to me that he should be sent away." He inclined his head, and
his face darkened; with his black beard and aquiline features framed in
the white cloth of his head-dress he looked quite an ugly customer for a
moment. "Things are much more pleasant now," I said. "I think perhaps if
I were to ask for his return the Government might allow it." I paused.
"On my side, I don't need him back here. He's doing good work for us
where he is, and the Chinese boy, Chai Tai Foong, who has succeeded him,
is doing well." I added, "Doing well in the straight performance of the
work, I mean. No one could replace Shak Lin as a teacher of ground
engineers, or as a man."

He nodded gravely. "That is very true. He is not likely to return here,
then?"

"I don't think he is." I hesitated. "I doubt if he would want to,
himself. When he left here, he felt that his time here was over, that it
was time that he moved on, in any case. He went without resentment, for
that reason."

He nodded again, and we sat together for some time in silence. At last
he said, "My master, the Sheikh Abd el Kadir, is becoming an old man. He
will not live for very many months more. He is not ill, but he is tired
now and ready to put down his burdens. He wants very much to meet El
Amin once again, to pray with him and take his blessing before he lies
down to die."

"I see," I said. The old man, after all, had lent me sixty thousand
pounds at a time when I needed it badly. I still owed him most of it.
"That's very easy to arrange," I said. "Shak Lin can come back here on
one machine and go down again on the next trip. He'd have about four
days here, if he did that. I should have to ask the Resident, of course.
But this new Liaison Officer, Captain Morrison, would help us there. And
as for Shak Lin, I know he'd be glad to come."

He said evenly, "My master would not ask the Resident for any favour in
this matter, nor would he allow you to do so."

There was another long silence while he left that to sink in. I had
known, of course, that there was some bitterness; I had not realised
that it was quite so strong as this. Time would heal it, of course,
because the old Sheikh would be dead before so very long, but it seemed
to me to be a sad thing that official clumsiness should have produced
such lasting ill-feeling. If anyone could ease the matter for the
Resident and Captain Morrison, perhaps now, queerly, it was me.

"What can we do about it?" I enquired at last. "How can I help your
master, who has helped me so much?"

He said, "My master would like to travel to El Amin. I do not think that
he would ask so great a man to come back here, halfway across the
world, to visit him. My master wishes to arrange that you should fly him
to El Amin in your large aeroplane, with some members of his household,
so that he may see Shak Lin again and talk to him before he dies."

I thought quickly. The Sheikh would have to go in his own aeroplane, the
Tramp; no doubt that was his idea. Because of the relationship between
the Arabia-Sumatran and the Sheikh by which they paid for his oil,
Johnson would probably forgo one of his fortnightly trips for this
purpose, if I put it to him. We could free the Tramp for the job. But
the Tramp was a bare box inside, unfurnished, unheated, and unsound
proofed; a poor vehicle for an invalid old man to live in for four days
to Bali, and four days back, all through the tropical extremes of heat
and cold.

I said, "Of course I will do that, Wazir. If that's what he wants to do,
he shall do it. I can arrange for him to fly to Bali in the Tramp, the
large aeroplane which he lent me the money to buy, or I can arrange for
him to charter a more comfortable aeroplane, that an old man can travel
in without so much fatigue." And I went on to tell him of my doubts
about the suitability of the Tramp.

We walked over to the hangar together for me to show him the Tramp. We
got up into it and stood in the great empty cabin, floored with
duralumin, with bare stringers and formers supporting the outer skin of
the walls, innocent of any upholstery. I showed him the toilet that my
mother had admired so much, back in distant Eastleigh; that was about
all the passenger accommodation that there was. "As an alternative," I
said, "I can arrange for him to charter a York from B.O.A.C. That would
have a crew of five or six, probably with two stewards in uniform, with
proper arrangements for serving meals. It would be warmer for him, and
much less noisy. I can't say quite what it would cost; probably between
five and six thousand pounds for the return journey."

He said, "The money is not important..." He looked around the inside
of the Tramp. "Could we put a carpet on the floor, and a couch for my
master to lie on?" I said, "Of course we can, Wazir. If he would like
to use this aeroplane we can do anything like that, only limited by the
amount that we can carry, which is five tons."

He said, "I think my master would prefer to go in one of your
aeroplanes. He would not want to go upon his pilgrimage in luxury and
carried by a crew of unbelievers." He glanced around him at the bleak
functional utility of the metal cabin. "This is more suitable." He
turned back to me. "My master would prefer to be carried by devout men."

"Of course." I thought for a minute. "If he wishes," I said, "I can
arrange for the whole crew to be Moslems. I can arrange for Hosein and
Kadhim to go as first and second pilots; they're both Iraqis. Then I
should send two of my Bahrein men who are accustomed to travelling by
air to act as servants--Tarik and Khail, I think. But frankly, I should
like my chief pilot to go with your master upon such a journey--Gujar
Singh. He's a Sikh. If your master has no strong objection, I should
like to send Gujar as chief pilot and Hosein as second pilot."

"It does not matter that the crew should all be Moslems," he replied,
"El Amin himself is not a Moslem. My master knows Gujar Singh, and
everybody trusts him."

As we walked back to the office I told him that the Arabia-Sumatran had
first call upon the Tramp under their contract, and that I would see
Johnson at once and see if I could get him to release the aircraft for
one trip. I told him that I was going down to Bali on the next flight
myself, and we arranged that the Sheikh's journey should be the trip
after that, so that I should be at Bali to meet the aircraft when it
arrived, and could make arrangements for the accommodation of the party.
Then I would travel back with them to Bahrein on the return journey.

He was staying with Sheikh Muhammad, with his master, the Sheikh of
Khulal, at the palace just outside the town. I told him I would see
Johnson at once and call on him at the palace later in the day. Then he
bowed to me and said, "May God protect you," and got into the back of
his maroon Hudson, and was driven away.

I went and saw Johnson and got him to agree to stand down for one trip;
as I had thought, he was very ready to oblige the Sheikh of Khulal in
this way. I went to the palace and drank coffee with the party and
confirmed the arrangements with the Wazir, and told him how much it
would cost him, and got away from there after only an hour and forty
minutes--good going in those parts. Then I went back to the aerodrome.
Gujar Singh was there, and I had a talk to him about it in the office.
We re-arranged the pilots' schedules to send Arjan on the next trip with
Kadhim since Gujar was to pilot the old Sheikh, because I didn't want my
chief pilot to be away from the home base too much.

As he got up to go, Gujar said, "This is the next phase, then."

"What's that?" I asked.

He said, "This is the first pilgrimage to visit Shak Lin."

Nadezna was in the room, taking some papers from the basket on my desk.
I felt her check and stiffen. "This is exceptional," I said uncertainly.
"This won't happen again."

He smiled. "We can't do anything to stop it, if it does."

He went out, and Nadezna was still standing there, motionless by my
desk. "It is exceptional," I said gently. "It doesn't mean anything..."

She said dully, "Only that an old man who is dying thinks it worth while
to go six or seven thousand miles to get Connie's blessing."

I tried to cheer her up. "Perhaps Mad Jasmi's done her stuff by this
time." And then I said, "You're sure you wouldn't like to come down with
me?"

She sighed a little. "No," she said, "I couldn't help. You go alone,
Tom, and do what you can."

I left with the Tramp two days later, and travelled like a passenger,
resting in a long chair in the cabin with the load. The pilots were
getting the hang of the journey by that time, and were making longer
stages. We were circling the airstrip of Den Pasar on Bali by midday of
the fourth day, half a day ahead of time. The Dakota from Darwin wasn't
due until the evening; I made a note to put its times forward by a day.

Connie and Phinit were on the aerodrome to meet us, and began to work at
once to check the aircraft and the engines, and to refuel. We had two
Australian scientists and a Dutchman with us to go on as passengers to
East Alligator River, and for courtesy I had to stay with them and not
go off alone to Pekendang. Moreover, it wouldn't have benefited me to do
so, because Connie and Phinit would be working very late upon the Tramp,
perhaps all through the night, to get it ready for the trip back to
Bahrein. Probably they wouldn't get back to Pekendang themselves that
night.

I sent my passengers into the Bali Hotel in the K.L.M. car, and set to
work with the pilots and the engineers to get the aircraft serviced and
the load ready to tranship to the Dakota when it came. It turned up just
before dusk and taxied in, and as we were all there and working we
changed loads that night. It was most of it light stuff that could be
carried over from one aircraft to the other, all except one motor
generator set that the Dakota had brought for us to take back to Diento;
this weighed over a ton and we had to rig the sheerlegs for it. It was
nine o'clock by the time we could leave for the Bali Hotel, and Connie
and Phinit were still working on the engines of the Tramp when we went.

They were there when we got out to the airstrip next morning at about
half-past seven. Connie said that they had finished about one o'clock
and had slept for a few hours on charpoys in the hangar; they had the
engines running and the machines all ready to go when we got there, so
they had probably been working again at dawn. The crews and passengers
got into their respective aircraft and made ready with the usual
deliberation; then the machines taxied out and down the strip together.
The Dakota took off first and headed straight out from the strip towards
the east. The Tramp followed and climbed straight ahead till it was at
about five hundred feet, slowly raising flaps; then it turned in a wide
circle and flew past north of us, climbing, and set a course to the
north-west for Sourabaya and vanished up the coast.

Connie, Phinit, and I were left upon the ground, tired, they with a
night's work and I with four days flying. Connie said, "Where are you
going to stay? Will you stay in Den Pasar or come with us?"

"I'd like to come and stay in Pekendang, if that can be arranged," I
said. "Would they mind having a European in the village?"

"Not a bit," he said. "I thought you might want to come there, for a day
or two anyway. I've fixed up a room for you to yourself, and a bed, and
a mosquito net. But it's all a bit primitive, you know."

I nodded. "If I get fed up with it I'll go back to the Bali Hotel. But I
don't suppose I shall."

"They've got very interesting techniques of wood carving," he said.
"There's quite a bit to see."

I had brought my bag with me to the aerodrome, and he sent one of the
Balinese labourers to get it; we locked the workshop and closed the
hangar doors, and started off walking across the airstrip towards the
village. We went slowly because the sun was getting up and the heat
increasing, but when we got off the aerodrome the track led through
scrub and palm trees, and it was shady and cool and pleasant. After
about half an hour we came to the walled family enclosures that made up
the village, and turned into the one that I remembered, and into the
internal square with the shrines round it.

Connie and Phinit, I found, now lived separately. Connie was alone in
the one-roomed atap house that I remembered, but Phinit had moved out
and had gone to live with one of the families of the village, the family
of the girl Ktut Suriatni who looked after him. He was, in fact, living
happily and openly in wedded bliss. Connie was living alone. He had got
another single-roomed house for me a few yards away and he took me
there; a little place with a thatch roof and atap walls, the floor
raised about three feet off the ground. There was no door, and not much
privacy except what would be provided by the darkness when night fell.

"People will come in and have a look at all your things," he said. "They
won't take anything."

A girl came up as he was showing me the little house, Mad Jasmi, that I
remembered from my previous visit. She had her long black hair gathered
behind her head and hanging down her back; she wore a little cotton
jacket which represented her best cloth is in deference to me because I
was a stranger, open down the front for coolness. I smiled at her in
recognition and she smiled at me, and then she asked a question of
Connie.

"She wants to know if we want food," he said. "I'd like to rest this
afternoon, if you don't mind. I was up most of the night. Shall we eat
something now?"

I said that that would suit me. "What do you eat here?"

"Rice," he said. "Always rice. Usually with something curried on
top--dried fish or meat. They eat a good many vegetables, and a certain
amount of fruit. I leave it all to Mad here, and she feeds me very
well." He spoke to her and she smiled shyly, and went away.

She brought us food to Connie's house presently; he had a table and two
rickety chairs. She brought two wooden bowls filled with rice, and two
spoons, and a number of broad leaves upon a tray each with a small
portion of curry or dried fish upon it. "I'm teaching her western ways,"
he said. "The people here eat everything off leaves so there's no
washing up. I told her that I had to have a bowl and a spoon, and you'd
want one, too." He had two glasses, and Mad brought water in an
earthenware jug with a curious long spout. "If you're a Balinese you can
drink out of that by pouring it into your mouth. Very hygienic. I can't
do it without choking, though."

"It looks as if you make quite an unreasonable amount of work for her,"
I said.

"I don't think she minds that," he said. "She wants to learn how people
do things in the West."

The girl settled down upon the edge of the small balcony or floor before
the hut, and watched us while we ate. The food was good, well cooked
and appetising. As we ate, Connie asked me how Tai Foong was settling
down into the job at Bahrein, and I told him about that, and about the
new Liaison Officer, and how the work had been going generally. He was
interested in the proposal of the R.A.F. to build on to the hangar. "It
would be better if they didn't build just there," he said. "It's not
very important, though. It's only sentiment, because I took our people
there to pray after work, and then the others from the souk got into the
habit. But that could very easily be changed. If the R.A.F. really need
that bit of land, let me come back there for a week, and I'll see that
they start praying somewhere else."

"It's not necessary," I said. "There's all the land in the world there.
The R.A.F. can put their hangar on the north side of the long strip.
They've got to have a civil aviation hangar, anyway."

"If it's going to make any trouble," he said, "we can easily put it
right."

He spoke to the girl, and she smiled, and got up and went away. "I asked
her to get fruit," he said. "They've got some quite good things like
grapefruit here."

"You've learned the language very quickly," I remarked.

"I never have much difficulty with that," he replied. "I was brought up
to speak Canton in Penang when I was a boy, and I speak Malay, of
course. These languages are all very much the same."

The girl came back with a wooden bowl full of fruit and put it on the
table, and went back and sat on the edge of the floor again. "Phinit
eats in his own place, I suppose," I said.

He nodded. "He's gone to live with the other girl's family just over
there." He smiled. "Quite a married man."

"That's all right, is it?" I asked.

He said, "I think so. Mad here tells me that it's a very good idea."
The girl, hearing her name spoken, looked up and smiled. "But I'm afraid
she's got an axe to grind."

I didn't follow that one up, and presently I got up and went to my own
hut, and dropped off my two garments, and blew up the air pillow that I
carry on these journeys, and lay down on the charpoy. From where I lay I
could see out into the brilliant sunlight across to Connie's hut; he
also had gone to bed, and the girl had carried away the remnants of our
meal. I lay dozing before sleep while the sweat slowly ceased to run,
and presently she came back with a flat basket of palm leaves, and sat
down on the corner of his hut in her usual position, and began doing
something with her hands. Later I found that she was making lamaks,
woven panels of dark green and yellow palm leaves in a chequer design,
and stylised artificial flowers of the same craft, for offerings at the
shrines of the house temple. I fell asleep and slept for about an hour
in the heat of the day. When I woke up she was still sitting there
making her offerings, waiting, perhaps, to be ready to fetch Connie
anything he wanted when he woke.

I got up presently and put on my khaki drill trousers and bush shirt,
and a pair of sandals, and went to the entrance of my little house. Mad
saw me and got up, and moved softly into the room behind where Connie
was asleep. I crossed over to where she had been sitting to look at her
basket and examine what she had been doing; she had been using a crude
knife of hoop-iron to split the fronds of the green leaves, and her
basket was half full of her offerings. She came out of the room, and she
was carrying her earthenware pitcher of water and a glass, and she
poured out the cool water for me. It was no good trying to talk to her,
so I smiled at her and took it from her, and drank, and she smiled
gravely in return, and put the pitcher back in the shade and the
draught.

She offered me the bowl of fruit, but I refused that and strolled slowly
through the village. There was a girl weaving at a loom, and a young man
roasting a pig upon a spit over a wood fire, and a very old man carving
an elaborate wooden sculpture of a girl dancer, a very advanced and
refined piece of artistry, or so it seemed to me. I stood and watched
all these for a time, and then I went out into the road and down towards
the sea. Two or three children followed me at a safe distance, quiet
and a little timid, watching everything I did.

There were fishing-boats on the beach, and a few children bathing. The
boats were beamy, well-built vessels with one big lateen sail; there was
a lighter type also, a sort of dug-out canoe stabilised with an
outrigger formed of a large bamboo log. I sat in the shade of the trees
at the head of the beach for a time watching the boats come in and go
out; women were washing and gutting the fish nearby and salting them,
and spreading them out to dry in the hot sun. Both men and women on this
job were less crude in their manner than fishermen and herring girls in
other countries; it seemed to me that they must make their living more
easily, permitting greater attention to the arts and graces of their
lives.

I left the beach presently, and went back into the village in the late
afternoon. There was a temple there, an enclosure of brick walls with
facings of a soft white limestone, most elaborately carved with fruits
and gods and gargoyles. Inside there were a number of platforms with
thatched roofs, and a number of shrines, but the shrines were all empty
and unattended, and the whole place was swept and clean and empty. I
learned later that there was a festival there three or four times a
year, when the whole countryside came to make offerings and pray, but at
other times it stood empty and unused, the daily worship taking place at
the shrines in each house.

I came out of the temple and looked around. There was another one a
short distance away, and here I was brought up with a round turn at a
statue before the door. It was a stone figure, more than life-size, of a
hideous old woman, perhaps a witch. She had huge, pendulous breasts, and
the face of an animal; her body appeared to be covered in hair. In the
talons of her hands she held a baby, and she was about to eat it.

The children were still following me. I stopped and stared at this
monstrosity, and they gathered around me. One little girl went and
patted the stone figure and said, "Rangda." Whatever the thing was, it
didn't seem to worry them a bit.

I left the enigma, and found my way back to my own place. Connie was up
and sitting at the entrance to his house in a deck-chair; Mad Jasmi was
still sitting at the corner of his house weaving her offerings. He said
something to her and got up to meet me, and she came back in a minute
with another deck-chair and I sat down beside him.

I told him where I had been and what I had seen, and I asked him about
the hideous statue outside the temple. He laughed. "Oh, that's Rangda,"
he said. "That's the Death temple, where they do cremations. Rangda
symbolises death, and evil--all the bad things of this world. To make it
perfectly clear, she's usually shown eating a baby."

"Well," I said. "That doesn't seem to leave much doubt."

He smiled. "No. The opposite to Rangda is the force of Good, or Life.
He's the Barong. The Barong's an animal that's a cross between a lion
and a bull, very fierce. At one season of the year mummers go round
every village and act a sort of play. They have a pantomime Barong with
two men in it, and this has to fight a pantomime Rangda. It goes on for
hours. I'm not sure who wins, but everybody gets very excited about it,
specially the children."

"Is all this Hinduism?" I asked uncertainly.

He shook his head. "It's something much older--animism, I think you'd
call it. It's not got much to do with the daily worship, although, of
course, it all gets a bit mixed up. What Mad here is making----" she
looked up at the mention of her name, and smiled----"is offerings for
the shrines here in the house. Those are for the Hindu gods in the
shrines. The one in the big shrine in the corner is the kingpin--that's
Surya, the sun god. Then there's Brahma, and Vishnu, and Shiva, and
Ganesh, and half a dozen others. Mad doesn't know them all. The only
ones she knows are Surya and Shiva. She picked Shiva when she was a
little girl, because the shrine was the fourth from the left and she
liked that one best. Perhaps she was four years old. She's always said
her prayers to Shiva ever since. She asked the pemangkoe once--he's the
local priest--she asked him who lived in that one and he told her Shiva,
so she says her prayers and makes her offerings to Shiva."

I asked, "Is there an image in the shrine? I didn't see one."

He smiled. "No image. Shiva likes to come down and live in a bit of
quartz. She got the pemangkoe to show it to me the other day. He keeps
it in a sort of cupboard with a lot of other bits of things--a piece of
coral, a bit of lava, a bit of carved ivory, one for each god. Shiva's
spiritual home is this bit of quartz. On holy days the priest takes them
out and puts each in its own shrine, and then the god comes down and
takes possession of it. The soul of the god, that is. She works for days
before that holy day to make offerings that will please the god. Not
only palm lamaks like these--she'll kill a duck and roast it and dress
it up nicely as a cold roast duck, with little sweet rice cakes all
round. She mustn't smell it, if she can avoid it, because that takes the
essence of it, that's reserved for the god." He paused. "When the great
day comes she takes her offering and lays it down before the shrine,
roast duck and all, and kneels down to say her prayers. The priest comes
along and sprinkles it and her with holy water while she prays. And the
soul of the god comes down out of the shrine while she is praying, and
he takes the soul of the roast duck, and the soul of the rice cakes, and
the soul of the lamaks. She stays there praying for an hour or more than
that, and she feels good after it, so she knows that the god is pleased
with her. Shiva doesn't want what's left of the roast duck and the rice
cakes; he's taken their soul, and so only the husks, so to speak, are
left. She can have those, and so she picks them up when she's done
praying and takes them away to eat, and has a feast with her friends. I
got a bit of Shiva's offering for supper the day before yesterday."

I couldn't make out if he was making a joke of it all, or not. I said
uncertainly, "That sounds like a very debased sort of religion."

"Is it?" he said thoughtfully. "I'm not so sure. It keeps her praying."

I didn't quite know what to say to that one. "What does she pray for?"

"All the usual things," he said. "She prays for her mother, for her good
health and long life. She prays for her father, that he may rest quietly
and that his ghost shan't come and trouble them. She prays for a good
rice crop and for good fishing, and she prays for her brother and for
her cousins who are children, that they may grow up clean and good. And
because she's a girl, she prays for a man that she can love and respect,
and she prays for children by him, and that she may stay faithful to
him, and he to her, until they die. She probably spends an hour upon her
knees in prayer each day, and double that on holy days, apart from the
amount of time she spends in making up the offerings. I don't know that
you can say that it's a bad sort of religion."

"I don't know that you can say it's a good one," I replied. "It seems to
me that these people are naturally devout, and that's all about it."

"Maybe so," he said thoughtfully. "Somebody once said it doesn't matter
much what you believe in, so long as you believe in something. These
people here believe that their religion helps them to lead better lives.
If we think that the impulse is from their own nature, not from the
religion--does it matter? Does it matter much if they believe in Jesus,
or Shiva, or Mahomet, or Gautama, so long as the results are good?"

"Blowed if I know," I said. "Perhaps it doesn't. I don't know."

"Nor I," he said. "I only know that the results here are good, and I
like to see it."

I glanced at him. "You like this place all right?"

He nodded. "Yes," he said. "I like it here."

"I was afraid there might not be enough work for you," I said. "Enough
interests in training and directing other people, which is what you're
good at."

He smiled. "Can't you believe that I'm a normal man, and that I like to
draw my pay for doing nothing, and be lazy?"

"No," I said. "It would be all too easy if you were like that."

"Why do you think I'm not?"

"You'd be living with Mad Jasmi, if you were as you say," I remarked.
"Phinit hasn't wasted much time."

He sat silent for a little. Behind his hut the sun was going down; the
small buildings were casting long shadows, and the air was golden with
the light of sunset. "I was very tired when I came here," he said at
last. "It was time for me to get out of things and sit quiet for a time,
and think where I was going. These weeks have been very good for me, I
think."

"And where are you going, Connie?" I asked him. "Do you want to go back
into the active life again, or to stay here?"

"What do you think I ought to do?" he asked. "You know me well enough by
now to say."

Perhaps it was as Nadezna had said: he wanted someone to advise him. I
said, "Well, this job is pretty stable, far as one can see. I'll
probably be getting a small passenger machine before long, a Dove
perhaps, and then we'll run that down here turn and turn about with the
Tramp. That means there'll be an aircraft down here every week within a
few months, and you'll have a bit more work then."

I was talking to gain time, and he knew it. "I think you ought to settle
down here," I said quietly. "Take what's given you, and be happy with
it. Marry Mad Jasmi and raise a family, like any ordinary man."

He smiled. "And you," he said. "Are you an ordinary man?"

I wasn't ready for that one. "You mean, I'm a fine one to talk?"

"I know that you have been married," he said, "and that it ended in a
tragedy. But is that any reason why you should not marry again? Will you
ever be really happy till you do?"

"All very well to swing it over on to me like this," I said. "It's you
that I was talking about. You and Mad Jasmi."

He smiled. "And I was talking about you."

"That's not fair," I said. "Stick to the subject."

"She would marry you if you asked her," he observed. "I knew that, of
course, when I lived in Bahrein, and Gujar Singh, he tells me that she
is in love with you."

Gujar, it seemed, was something of a two-way street. "I wouldn't ask any
girl to marry me and raise a family in the Persian Gulf," I said. "The
summers are too bad. If I did that, I should want to give up everything
and go and find another job in a cold climate, in England or America
perhaps. I don't know that I'm ready to do that yet. I've started
something, and I've got to see it through."

"So the work comes before the chance of marriage and children, and a
quiet home," he said.

"If you put it that way," I said, "--yes, I think it does."

"And so it does with me."

There was a pause. "We are two men of the same temperament," he said.
"Mad would marry me tonight if I should say the word." I don't think
she knew what he was saying, but she heard her name and knew that we
were talking about her, and she looked up, smiling. "If we did that, I
should stay here, of course, probably for ever. Living is cheap and easy
here, and while there are aeroplanes, and an airstrip upon Bali, there
will be casual work for an engineer, to let him earn the few guilders
that mean wealth among these people. I would not take her from this
place, into the world outside. Here she is known and loved and happy,
but in the outside world she would be treated as a savage. Marriage with
one of these people means a life spent in this place, and there are few
better places in the whole wide world to spend one's life." He paused.
"Only the work prevents."

We sat silent for a little, and then he went on, "This power of the job,
so much greater than we ourselves! When you came to Bahrein with one
Fox-Moth to do a little charter work, you never thought that you were
setting up a power that would rule your life, impede your marriage,
dictate where and how you were to live. When a good man employs others
he becomes a slave to the job, for the job is the guarantee for the
security of many men. So when a man speaks candidly in the hangar of the
things, the ethics of the work, that he believes in, he may bring
others to believe in those things too, and to depend upon his words.
Then he, too, is a slave to his own job, because if he relaxes his
endeavours to teach men proper ways of work and life, he may destroy the
faith he has created in them, and so throw them back into an abyss of
doubt and fear and degradation, lost indeed." He paused. "I think that
we are very much alike, you and me. Both, in our own way, in the same
boat."

"Both going round the bend a bit, if you ask me," I said, a little
bitterly.

"Yes," he said thoughtfully. "Perhaps the road has a curve in it.
Perhaps it is necessary to go round the bend a little before you can see
clearly to the end."

"Nadezna would be very happy if you were to marry Mad," I said. It was
my last argument. "She wants to see you married, very much indeed."

He smiled gently. "She's been a good sister, Tom. Not many women would
have left California to come to the Persian Gulf, to live as an Arab
woman in the souk, merely to look after me. Will you give her a message
from me?"

"Of course I will," I said. "What is it?"

"Tell her that I should be very happy if she were to marry you."

"I can't tell her that."

"I think you can."

I hedged. "I might in my own time, but not just yet."

"Tell her in your own time," he said. "But be sure that you tell her."

It was nearly dark. The girl got up from beside our feet and said
something to Connie; he exchanged a word or two with her, and she went
away. "Supper," he said. "We have it soon after dark here. I usually go
to bed after that, and get up before dawn. It's the best routine in a
place like this, I think."

I said something or other agreeing with him, and then I said, "Nadezna
was going to come down with me on this trip, for the holiday. But then
she thought she'd better keep away, till things were settled between you
and Mad."

"Things are settled now," he said. "But not the way she wanted them to
be."

"Mad knows that, does she?"

He nodded. "If it looks like being difficult for her, I shall go away.
Live in Den Pasar perhaps, and buy a bicycle, and come to work on that."
He paused. "But very soon, I think that there may be a change."

"What sort of change?" I asked.

He said vaguely, "A change. I don't know what sort of change, but I
think perhaps a change is coming, and quite soon."

"I see," I said.

He glanced at me. "Have you got any other message for me, that you have
not told me yet?"

"Not exactly a message," I said slowly. "But there is something you'll
have to know. I had a visit a few days ago from Wazir Hussein. The
Sheikh of Khulal is a very old man now, perhaps dying."

He nodded. "I know that he is near his time."

"He's very anxious to see you before he goes," I said, and then I
hesitated. It seemed such a stupid thing to say to my chief engineer.
"He--well, he wants to get your blessing. He's chartered the Tramp, and
he'll be coming here to visit you on the next trip. He'll be here in
about ten days from now."

"He's liable to die upon the journey, isn't he?"

"I don't know. If he is, it's a risk that they're prepared to take.
We're rigging up a bed for him in the fuselage."

"Is the Imam coming with him--the Imam from Baraka?"

"I don't know," I said. "I know there's quite a party coming to look
after him, seven or eight of them, at least."

"I would have gone to him," he said. "Why strain an old man to come all
this way?"

"I offered that, Connie, but they wouldn't have it," I told him. "They
seemed to think that he should come to you."

He nodded. "You see the workings of the job," he said. "Once you start
something, you must see it through. I am as much enmeshed in my net as
you are in yours. Only by an act of treachery to those who believe in us
can either of us escape."




CHAPTER 9

    And God shall make thy soul a Glass where eighteen thousand ons pass,
    And thou shalt see the gleaming Worlds as men see dew upon the grass.

    JAMES ELROY FLECKER


I look back on the ten days that we spent in Bali before the Arab party
came as one of the happiest periods of my life. For the first time in
many years it was impossible for me to control events in any way. That
of itself might not have freed me from the worries and the strain of my
responsibilities, but being with Connie did. We had no more serious
conversation. There was little to do in the workshop except painting and
distempering, which was being done by a couple of Balinese boys from the
village, who were doing it very well. Each morning soon after dawn we
would stroll over to the hangar and see them started working under
Phinit, and as the sun got warm we would go off and go down to the beach
and bathe. It would have been just perfect if Nadezna could have been
with us.

We didn't go far from Pekendang. There are forty thousand temples in
Bali, I believe, but I only saw the one. I never was much of a
sightseer; Connie had wandered fairly widely inland and had been up to
the central volcanic mountain, Kintamani, but transport wasn't easy, and
he seemed to think that when one had seen and absorbed Pekendang the
rest was largely repetition. We went once or twice to a place the other
side of the strip called Sanoer, where a Belgian artist was married to a
very fine Balinese woman. I think that was the most wonderful house I
have ever been in, the walls covered with paintings of the Balinese and
their way of life, and full of Balinese young men and women so that it
was difficult to say in memory which of the scenes remembered from that
house were real ones and which were paint.

We saw a good deal of the headman of the village, Wajan Rauh. He used to
come and sit and talk to us sometimes, about the crops and the fishing,
and about the Dutch and the full-scale war that they were waging against
the Indonesians in Java and Sumatra. I could not understand these
conversations, and I used to sit back, smoking, watching the old man and
his friends, watching Connie as he talked to them.

One did not need any interpreter to see how greatly they valued his
advice. All through my life I had seen him gain this influence over
people; it had been the same story even in Cobham's Circus, as a boy, I
think, and certainly it had been so in Damrey Phong, in Rangoon, in
Bahrein. I do not think he ever worked for it, or sought this influence.
When simple people came and told him things that troubled them, which
they did very often, he gave them straightly what advice he could, and
his manner of doing it encouraged them, so that they came back with more
important and more intimate matters for his ruling. I think that's all
there was to it.

He told me that they thought little of the war in Java. They did not
greatly care who ruled them, whether the radjas who had ruled before the
Dutch came, and who still ruled them in name, or whether the Dutch. The
Balinese had no national ambitions. All they wanted to do was to get on
with their farming and their temple festivals and let the world go by
them; they had no desire whatever to become involved in great events. If
the Dutch or the Indonesians or anyone else wanted to come and rule
them, they were welcome to do so, thought the Balinese; they were shrewd
enough to know that in the case of one small, self-supporting island it
could not make any great change in their daily lives.

Because they thought so very highly of Connie, and because I was his
guest, the village went out of their way to show me all their arts. They
put on a dance one evening, a most complicated and picturesque affair of
stylised dancing by little girls eleven or twelve years old, dressed
heavily in gold-embroidered skirts and jackets sewn with tiny mirrors,
and enormous golden head-dresses. This dance was called Legong; it was
danced to the music of an orchestra of bamboo xylophones and small brass
gongs. It went on for over three hours, and seemed to be an affair for
the whole village; when one xylophone player tired another took his
place, and the little dancers danced in relays too, though the two chief
ones danced the whole evening with only short pauses for rest. The
village sat around in a rough square that formed the stage, and children
played about among the dancers, who avoided them skilfully, and dogs
walked through; from time to time a mother would get up and go out on
the floor to adjust the clothing of a little dancer that was slipping,
and the dance went on. At about ten o'clock at night it stopped quite
suddenly and for no particular reason, and the people all streamed away
to bed, gossiping and chatting, well content.

Cockfighting was a sport of the men, and they held a main in my honour.
I had never seen it before, although it still goes on in England,
quietly and illegally. It is a cruel sport, of course, because the fight
is to the death and usually bloody. It was not the sadist angle that
appealed to the Balinese, though, but the opportunity for betting. They
are tremendous gamblers, and bet furiously on their cockfights, though I
think that this is general in South-East Asia. Phinit told me that in
his mother's village in Siam they breed small fish, three or four inches
long, that will fight fiercely to the death when put together, and the
people bet on those.

They put on a play for me one night, entirely incomprehensible to me
and, I think, to Connie also. It was quite colourful, and it was amusing
to sit in a deck-chair and watch. Mad Jasmi, I think, didn't understand
much of it either, because it dealt with very high-born people, kings
and princes, who for the sake of verisimilitude spoke a regal dialect
called Kawi which nobody of common clay can understand. Mad Jasmi
evidently thought I needed sustaining through this entertainment because
she kept bringing me glasses of toeak, palm-juice beer. In the end the
performance came suddenly to an unexpected finish, as the dance had
done, and people and actors melted quickly away.

I cannot describe the grace, and the charm of that small village. It was
like nothing I had ever seen before; I shall find nothing like it in
this world again.

I suppose there always must be something, or there would be nothing to
distinguish places such as that from those that we have been taught to
look forward to in the world to come. In this case, it was the physical
condition of Connie Shak Lin that began to worry me. As I have said, he
had grown very thin. I doubt if he weighed more than about eight stone
at that time, and yet he was a big man, five foot ten or eleven in
height. When we went bathing together I could see every bone in his
body, so it seemed, and I began to get a little worried about him.

He ate fairly well, though nothing like as much as I did. He didn't
smoke or drink; he never had. He was well in himself, at least, when I
was there, but he had little energy and spent a good part of each day
within his hut, lying upon the charpoy, dozing or asleep. He had a great
store of nervous energy that he could call upon, however. It had not
distressed him unduly to work most of the night upon the aircraft when
it had been there, and he could sit for hours in the evening talking and
discussing with the old men. There seemed to be nothing really wrong
with him, and certainly nothing that required a doctor. But--well, I was
a bit uneasy over him. As I have mentioned, he was very thin.

After a few days of this idyllic life we began to make preparations for
the Arab party. It was a bit tricky, because I had to get the permission
of the Dutch Governor for the party to come to the island at all, and
though I didn't expect any difficulty it did mean that I had to disclose
the fact that they were coming on a pilgrimage five thousand miles or so
to see my chief engineer, which was unusual, to say the least.

The Governor spoke no English, and in any case he was too high a
dignitary for me to approach direct. I went and called on Mr. Bergen,
his second in command, who had served with the American Army in the war
and spoke English as well as I did.

He was interested to hear that this Arab Sheikh and his retinue were
coming to visit Bali. He had already had a telegram about them from his
headquarters in Batavia, which was quite incomprehensible to him, and he
was glad to find somebody who could inform him on the matter. Only the
crews of aircraft, people such as myself and my pilots and ground
engineers, can move easily about the world these days, and Sheikh Abd el
Kadir and Wazir Hussein and all the rest of them had to have passports
and visas for their journey. Before I left Captain Morrison had been
getting busy with all this, and the Foreign Office in London had
requested permission for their visit from the Dutch Ambassador in London
as a matter of diplomatic urgency. Morrison must have been very positive
with the Resident back in distant Bahrein, because cables had been
flying backwards and forwards halfway round the world in English and in
Dutch, so that a notification of permission for this visit had come to
the Governor of Bali from his immediate superior without any information
what the visit was about. Probably the people in Batavia didn't know
themselves.

I suppose I was a coward, but I really didn't feel equal to explaining
to this Dutchman that the Sheikh of Khulal was coming to get Connie's
blessing. I felt that it was better to go softly on the religious side.
I stressed the vast wealth of the sheikhs, and their power to indulge
their slightest whim. I said that this Sheikh and Connie had become
great friends during his time at Bahrein, and now that the old man felt
his end approaching he wanted very much to see Connie again and say
good-bye to him. I said confidentially that to Europeans like us a
journey of this sort might appear unreasonable, but that he, of course,
was accustomed to Asiatic ways of thought, which were not always quite
upon our lines. I said that the desire of the old man to see his friend
for the last time had become an obsession with him, and his position in
the Persian Gulf was such that the British Government were anxious to
oblige him. Hence the permission which had been requested for this
visit on the highest level, and which had been granted by the Dutch in
Holland.

This went down all right, and Mr. Bergen went out of his way to help me
to arrange accommodation for the party. There were few people staying on
the island at the time, and the Bali Hotel, built for a considerable
tourist trade before the war, was not more than half full. As is common
in the Indonesian islands, this hotel was built in bungalow style and
spread widely as a number of little suites built around courtyards,
somewhat in the manner of a very good American motel. I got a row of six
of these rooms for the party, each with two beds and a bathroom and a
sitting veranda, and I arranged for two cars for their use.

The Tramp came in to schedule, in the late afternoon. Connie and Phinit
and I were there to meet it, of course. We stood in the shade of the
hangar and watched it touch down on the strip and run to a standstill;
it turned and taxied towards us and I saw the familiar, bearded face of
Gujar Singh in the chief pilot's seat on the port side. He taxied to the
hangar and swung it round accurately into position for pulling in; then
he stopped the engines, and we went forward to the door.

Tarik opened up from the inside and put down the steps, and Wazir
Hussein came down first, grave and dignified in long white skirts, as
ever. He told us that the old Sheikh had stood the journey well; he was
tired, but not unreasonably so. There were nine of them in the party all
told, including the Imam from Baraka and the Sheikh's personal
physician, a French-speaking Arab who came, I think, originally from
Tunis. I told him the arrangements I had made, and I showed him the two
cars which were at their disposal; then I handed over to Connie, who
went up into the machine to greet the old man, and I retired myself into
the background.

Gujar Singh came out of the machine in a few minutes, and came over to
where I was standing by the bowser, ready to refuel the Tramp. I asked
him how the trip had gone. He said it had been normal; the old Sheikh
had been interested in the details of the flight, and had followed
their journey on the maps with a good deal of intelligence. At every
night stop the most elaborate arrangements had been made for them; at
Karachi and at Calcutta and at Singapore a fleet of cars had been
waiting on the tarmac to meet the aircraft, and suites of rooms had been
reserved at the best hotels.

"The difficulty was to prevent taking on more passengers," he said,
smiling. "It is not possible to keep a journey that concerns Shak Lin a
secret. At every stop ten or fifteen engineers came to me, or to Hosein,
or to the Wazir, asking if they might join us, to come here to listen to
the Teacher. The Wazir consulted me, and I advised him to refuse them
all. I think that was the best. Otherwise, there would have been too
great a crowd, that would have tired the Sheikh too much."

"It was like that, was it?" I asked thoughtfully.

"Everywhere people knew about this journey," he said. "It is the radio
operators, of course, talking with each other. Everywhere people wanted
to come too. I could have filled the aircraft three times over."

While we were talking the Arabs were getting out of the aircraft,
organised by Connie; there was a bustle of flowing white skirts and
black beards, and then the old Sheikh himself appeared, helped down the
steep duralumin steps of the Tramp by a couple of his retinue. I went up
and said something to welcome him, and he recognised me, and smiled, and
Wazir Hussein translated for him. Thanks be to Allah, he said, they had
had a safe and an easy journey in the hands of Gujar Singh; he was not
tired, and he was grateful to me for the arrangements I had made for his
comfort. I replied that anything I had done for him was nothing in
comparison with what he had done for me, and he smiled again when that
was translated; then he turned away and spoke to the Imam, and said
something about sunset prayer.

That didn't concern me, of course, as a European and an unbeliever, and
so I excused myself and went up into the cabin of the Tramp with Gujar
to inspect the aircraft and the journey log. Hosein was there tidying
up and putting maps and instruments away into their stowages, and I told
him that prayer was about to take place and he could go down to it if he
wished. Gujar didn't want to go; he often used to go to Connie's prayer
meetings outside the hangar at Bahrein, but not, I think, when there was
an Imam conducting the _Rakats_; perhaps that made the prayers too
officially Moslem, so that a good Sikh could not participate.

I stood at the chart table in the Tramp behind the pilots' seats
watching the Arabs through the little navigator's window. Connie had
marked out a small, square area of ground beside the hangar with white
stones, and he had had the grass cut here by two Balinese boys so that
it made a small, level sward. The square was carefully oriented towards
Mecca, and in the north-west side there was the usual semi-circular
indent. Tarik and the other servants brought three carpets from the
Tramp and spread them on the ground inside this square; the Imam took
his place in the indent, and they began their devotions. Connie knelt
beside the old Sheikh in prayer, motionless, all the time; he did not
follow the others in the ritual of Moslem devotions, the standing, the
kneeling, the prostrations. He remained kneeling all the time.

The old Sheikh had one of his retinue each side of him, who helped him
to his feet each time from the kneeling position. He was evidently
getting very feeble.

Phinit was there, praying with them. Like Connie, he remained kneeling
all the time, but his position was just outside the square. He was a
Buddhist. I think it must have been something quite exceptional that
Connie should have prayed inside their prayer ground amongst the
Moslems, and yet not go through the ritual of their devotions.

The prayers lasted for about a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes.
Then they were over, and I went down and drove with the party into Den
Pasar to see them comfortably installed in the hotel. Connie stayed with
Phinit at the airstrip to refuel the Tramp; it is better in the tropics
to keep fuel tanks always full to prevent condensation troubles. They
were not going to work late, however, as the aircraft would be there for
a full day, and could be serviced normally in working hours.

I stayed that night in the hotel myself, to be on hand to assist the
Arabs if they got into any difficulty; I had a room on the far side of
the courtyard from them, in order to be near and yet not be obtrusive.
They had brought a Moslem cook with them to ensure that no unclean meat
was prepared for their food; I took this chap along and introduced him
to the kitchen staff, and I arranged for one of the cars with a driver
to be permanently on call parked near their rooms. There was nothing
else they wanted, so I went and changed and had a bath myself, and had a
Bols, and dinner.

They had Phinit up there that evening, but not Connie; from my suite
across the courtyard I could see him squatting on the ground talking to
the old Sheikh and his Wazir. I found later that Connie had spent the
evening quietly in Pekendang; apparently he was in a position to dictate
to these Arab princes who had come six thousand miles to see him, when
he would see them and when he would rest. In default of Connie they had
got hold of Phinit, and I had little doubt that they were hearing from
Phinit heavily embroidered stories of the asceticism of the Teacher.
Mad Jasmi would come into this, I thought, but there was nothing I
could do about it. Once, talking with the desperate humour of fatigue to
Nadezna, I had spoken of the Gospel according to St. Phinit. Perhaps, I
thought, as I looked out across the courtyard, the first chapters of
that Gospel were already taking shape.

When I got up next morning soon after dawn, the Arabs were already gone.
They met Connie down at the hangar on the airstrip for the sunrise
prayer at about six o'clock. They must have stayed there for two hours
or so, because when I was ready to go down to the airstrip at about
half-past eight, they arrived back in the two cars. I waited till the
Sheikh was settled back into his room and then went over to see Wazir
Hussein, to find out what his plans were. He told me that they were to
meet the Teacher again in the cool of the evening, and that they would
like to start back for Bahrein next morning, after the sunrise prayer.

I got a car and went down to the airstrip to see what was happening to
the Tramp. I found Connie and Phinit working to give her the routine
check over, with Gujar and Hosein helping them; they had got the
cowlings open and they were checking the filters, changing the sparking
plugs and examining contact breakers; there was a defective directional
gyro to be changed. Nothing indicated that there was anything unusual
about my party at all; it was just a large aeroplane being serviced by a
good crowd of Asiatics.

I found that Connie already knew about the plan to start back for
Bahrein next day, and he was working through the heat of the day to get
the servicing of the aircraft finished by mid-afternoon. There was
nothing much that I could do to help them. I told Connie that I would
move back to my hut in Pekendang for that last night, for I was going
back to Bahrein with the Sheikh's party. I wanted to spend the last
night of my holiday in Pekendang rather than in the civilised luxury of
Den Pasar.

My car was waiting for me at the small airport bungalow, and I walked
from the hangar to it across the sun-drenched tarmac. As I got near the
bungalow another car drove up, one of the two allocated to the Arabs. It
had only two people in, the Sheikh's personal physician and the Wazir
Hussein.

I went up to their car as it came to a standstill, and spoke to the
Wazir. I told him that I was just going back to the hotel to check out,
and said that if he wished I would settle the bill for their party and
invoice him for it in Bahrein; I told him that I was going to spend the
night myself in Pekendang, and that I would join them for the return
flight at the airstrip in the morning. We talked about these matters for
a few moments, and then he said:

"I am glad that we have met you here, Mr. Cutter. There is another
matter which I came here to discuss with you, if I could find you." He
turned to introduce his companion. "This is Dr. Khaled."

I bowed and said something or other. The doctor was dressed in a grey
European suit and a Panama hat. He had a short black beard trimmed to a
neat point; he might have been forty-five or fifty years old.
Conversation with him was difficult because he could only speak French
and Arabic; I know hardly any French and my Arabic, at that time,
although adequate for the hangar and the direction of casual labour,
wasn't good enough for a prolonged conversation on any subject but
aircraft.

The Wazir said, "Dr. Khaled is worried about the health of El Amin, Mr.
Cutter. He would like to ask you a few questions, and perhaps talk also
to the Teacher."

"Of course," I said. "I'm not too happy myself." I took them through
into the small veranda with a few chairs and tables that served for an
airport restaurant; it was a shady place where we could talk quietly,
looking out over the strip. I ordered coffee, but that was difficult, so
we drank fresh lime squashes. "I'll tell you anything I can," I said.

The Wazir had to translate for us; I think Dr. Khaled understood a
little English though he could not speak it. He wanted to know at once
what Connie weighed, but I could not tell him that. He asked if his
emaciation was a recent matter. I told him that Connie had certainly
been heavier when he had joined me nearly three years before, but that I
had not noticed any very sudden change. He asked if he had been ill, and
I said that he had never had any time off. He asked if he was eating
well, and here I was able to give him some definite information about
Connie's habits of life, having lived with him for ten days. He was
interested in his lassitude when there was no work to be done, and asked
several questions about that. He asked about women.

After a quarter of an hour of this the Wazir asked if I thought Connie
would permit the doctor to make an examination of him. I said I thought
that was a very good idea, and that Connie should certainly take this
opportunity to be checked over. I indicated as politely as I could that
though Connie might be a prophet to them, he was an employee to me, and
that if I said he'd got to have a medical examination he'd bloody well
have one.

We walked back to the hangar, and I got Connie down off the machine and
introduced him to Dr. Khaled. Connie spoke fluent Arabic, of course, and
he knew Dr. Khaled well from his visits to the Sheikh's palace at
Baraka. He made no objection to a medical examination, and they went off
together to the workshop, Dr. Khaled carrying a black case in his hand.
I took Wazir Hussein back to the restaurant and sat with him there till
the doctor joined us.

He came after about three quarters of an hour; Connie had gone back to
work upon the Tramp. The Wazir questioned him at once, and translated
his replies to me. The examination had revealed nothing particularly
wrong, beyond the obvious fact that Connie was exceedingly thin and had
only small reserves of physical energy. In general, he was careful with
his health, apart from the fact that throughout his life he had been in
the habit of eating what the native peoples of the countries that he
lived in ate, and drinking what they drank. He had had malaria, of
course, but it had not troubled him recently, perhaps because I always
issued ample supplies of Paludrine to any of my party who were
travelling away from Bahrein. That's an economy measure, of course,
because if an aircraft gets delayed because the crew are ill you can
lose hundreds and hundreds of pounds, easy as wink. I always made the
money side of illness clear to everybody, and my pilots and my engineers
appreciated that, and took far more care over my money than they would
ever have done over their own health. Connie had taken Paludrine
regularly while he had been in Bali, and his malaria had not recurred.

The doctor said that he had taken samples of sputum, blood, and urine,
and he had these in test tubes in his case. There were no facilities in
Bali for an analysis of these samples. He had good connections with
hospitals in Karachi and in Cairo where such things could be
investigated, and since the aircraft would be passing through Karachi in
three days' time he proposed to put his test tubes in a thermos jar
full of ice, and stop off in Karachi while the analysis was carried out,
and come on to Bahrein by air line as soon as he had the report. He
wanted to know if the Wazir would agree to this, or if he would prefer
him just to leave the samples and travel to Bahrein with the old Sheikh,
in which case the report from the Karachi hospital would come on by
post.

The Wazir was emphatic that he must complete the journey to Bahrein with
the Sheikh, and see him safely installed back in his palace at Baraka.
After that, and if the Sheikh was in good health, he could return to
Karachi if necessary for a consultation about Connie's samples. He asked
me if I could provide an aircraft to take the doctor back to Karachi, if
that should be necessary.

I said, of course I could do that if there was no convenient machine
upon a scheduled service. I went on to suggest that perhaps it might be
a good thing to make some contact with the Dutch doctor in Den Pasar
now, since if any treatment should prove to be necessary it would hardly
be practical for it to be directed from Bahrein.

The Wazir said blandly that if any treatment should be necessary, he did
not think that his master would agree that it should be put into the
hands of the local doctor in Bali. Until the samples had been examined
it was impossible to say what was required, but if the matter should be
serious in any way, his master would consider the health of El Amin to
be as important as his own, and much more so. If that should be the
case, he was sure that his master would say that a specialist should be
engaged in Europe and should fly to Bali to be in attendance upon El
Amin for as long as was required. He did not think that his master would
like a local doctor to attend El Amin.

We left the matter so. I had already had a good deal of experience of
how these fierce, proud Arabs who led simple and ascetic lives
themselves could handle the unlimited money that was at their command in
any cause that touched on their religion. People who would lend a man
like me sixty thousand pounds merely to keep the business that employed
El Amin free from usury would not hesitate to pay a man from Harley
Street ten thousand pounds to drop everything and fly to Bali and stay
there a month. To suggest that they would do otherwise would be
offensive to them, as suggesting that they put their riches before their
religious beliefs.

I did not see Connie until late that night, or not to talk to. I went
back to Den Pasar and did my business with the hotel, and packed my bag,
and took a car back to Pekendang. I got there about midday and Mad
Jasmi came to me as soon as I arrived and asked by signs if I wanted to
eat. I ate what she brought me, and then, as Connie had not turned up, I
managed to make her understand that she was to take a bowl of rice and
curry to the hangar, and she went off carrying the bowl wrapped in a
cloth and a basket of fruit.

Connie came back about the middle of the afternoon and went straight to
his charpoy; he did not appear till half an hour before sunset, when he
went over to the strip again, to meet the Arabs for their prayers. I sat
in a deck-chair and waited for him to come back, and presently Gujar
Singh appeared strolling through the village, and I called him, and he
came and talked to me.

An hour after sunset Connie came back to the village, walking slowly,
and flopped down in a deck-chair outside his house. I got up and went
over to him; Gujar slipped away. I sat down on the wooden step that led
up to Connie's house, the place where Mad usually sat. "Tired?" I
asked.

He said, "A bit. It takes it out of you, talking to these people. You've
got to be right, so exactly right, the whole of the time."

I nodded. "We'll all be gone tomorrow," I said. "Then you can rest for a
week if you want to."

He was silent for a time, and then he said, "Did that doctor tell you
anything?"

I shook my head. "So far as I know, he didn't find anything the matter
with you. He's going to have those samples analysed."

He said, "He found something all right."

I glanced up at him quickly. "What did he find?"

"I don't know. Nothing that you can put your finger on, perhaps. But
he's good, that chap--and cagey, too. He'd never say a word to anyone
till he was certain. He thinks there's something wrong with me, and he's
got an idea in his head of what it is. I couldn't make him tell me,
though."

I was disturbed. "He didn't give us that impression."

"Perhaps he found he could fox you more easily than me."

"What sort of thing does he think wrong with you?"

"I don't know. With a man like that no one will know until he's certain
of his facts."

I didn't pursue the subject because I didn't want to turn his mind to
sickness; instead I asked about the Tramp and got his report; she was
all ready to go first thing next morning. He said he thought the sunrise
prayer would take half an hour or so; then we could put the old Sheikh
straight into the aircraft and get started up.

Mad came with food, but he ate very little. I said presently, "Nadezna
was coming down with me this time, Connie. But then she decided not to.
You wouldn't mind her coming down here if she wants a holiday?"

"I'd like to have her here," he said. "It'ld be good for her to get away
from the Gulf for a bit." And then he said, "You will give her my
message?"

"In my own time, and when I think she wants to hear it," I said. "Yes,
I'll give it her."

Nothing more happened that evening. He was evidently very tired indeed,
and that I put down to the fatigue of his religious ministrations to the
Sheikh. He only pecked at his food, and ate half an orange, and very
soon he went into his hut and lay down on the bed.

We were all up before dawn, as usual, but early as I was, Connie was
earlier; he had already gone down to the strip when I came out. Mad
Jasmi brought me coffee and fruit as a breakfast, and I packed my small
bag, and waved the farewell that I could not say to the villagers, and
walked down to the airstrip. The sun was just coming up when I got
there, and the Arabs and Connie were at their devotions in the marked
out square beside the hangar, with the Imam leading in the _Rakats_. The
Tramp had been drawn out of the hangar and parked in front of it, and as
I walked across the strip I could see Gujar already in the cockpit,
busying himself with the preliminaries of flight.

Prayers lasted for about half an hour, as Connie had said they would,
and then we were ready to go. While Hosein made out the flight plan and
went through the formalities in the Control office, Gujar and I helped
the old Sheikh up the duralumin ladder into the cabin of the Tramp, and
saw his retinue install him comfortably on the divan bed. Then Gujar and
Connie went up into the cockpit and started up the engines; in that
climate motors don't take very long to warm up, and in five minutes they
were running through the cockpit drill. The run-up over, they stopped
both motors again and waited for Hosein to come, and while we were
waiting, Connie came down and sat cross-legged on the floor, talking
quietly to the Sheikh sitting on his divan.

Then Hosein came and got into the aircraft, and went past up to the
cockpit, his hands full of documents and log books. Connie got up and
glanced at me, and I nodded and said, "Ready to go now." He turned to
the Sheikh and said quietly in Arabic, "May God strengthen you," and the
old man said, "'Alaikum as salam," which means, "On you be peace". Then
Connie got down on to the strip and put up the ladder to us from the
ground, and I closed the door and Tarik stowed the ladder. I went
forward and got up into the cockpit and sat at the navigator's table,
and Gujar in the pilot's seat with Hosein at his side started the
motors, and we taxied down the sunbaked turf to the end of the runway,
and took off.

That journey was just one of many journeys that I made along that route,
and I cannot now remember much about it. I think we stopped at Penang
and at Allahabad, but for the life of me I can't remember, and it
doesn't matter, anyway. I know we got to Karachi about midday after a
dawn start, and as we hoped to get the old Sheikh back to Bahrein that
night for him to sleep in comfort in the Sheikh Muhammad's palace,
Wazir Hussein put Dr. Khaled in a car with his samples, and told him to
drive quickly to the city hospital, and leave his samples to be
analysed, and come back immediately so that we could take off. Karachi
civil airport is about fifteen miles out of the city, and it was an hour
and a half before he came back and we were able to get under way again.

We were all of us in a hurry to get on, because none of us were
particularly happy about the condition of the Sheikh. It was obvious
that the long journey to Bali, and the excitement there, and the strange
accommodation, and the long journey back, had tired him very much. There
is an insidious sort of fatigue in travelling in an unsoundproofed
aeroplane. After the first few minutes you don't notice the noise at
all, and you think nothing of it, but at the end of the day you may find
yourself too tired to eat, too tired to sleep without a drug. The pilots
knew all about this, of course, and none of us ever flew in my machines
without our ears being stuffed with cotton-wool, which makes all the
difference. Gujar had tried to get the old man to use cotton-wool on the
flight out, and I tried on the way back to make him use it, but although
he did make some effort to co-operate he never kept it in for very
long--partly, I think, because his ears were full of hairs and the wool
worried him.

Because of this, he was very, very tired on the last leg of the journey
home. He sat, or lay propped up with cushions on his divan, and he no
longer wanted to look at the maps, or hear where we were, or any of the
details of the flight. He did not talk to anyone, and he refused all
food, though now and again he took a few sips of water. I know before we
reached Karachi Dr. Khaled had suggested to him that we should stop
there for the night, or possibly for more nights than one, but he had
got a bottle from the old Sheikh, who was only anxious now to get back
to the places and the people that he knew. He wanted to be back in his
palace at Baraka, even if it killed him.

We made a night landing at Bahrein at about half-past eight, local time.
I had been talking to them on the radio for the last hour and telling
them to ring through to Sheikh Muhammad's Wazir to tell him that the
Sheikh of Khulal would be arriving at the aerodrome at eight-thirty,
very tired by his long journey, and to ask for cars to be on the tarmac
for the party without fail to meet us when we landed. One of my pals
from the chummery, a bloke called Alec Scott, was in the Control room,
and I didn't scruple to call him every ten minutes in the last hundred
and fifty miles to make sure that he had passed on all my messages.

So, when we taxied to a standstill before our hangar in the floodlit
darkness and stopped the engines, the maroon Hudson was alongside the
machine before we could get the steps down. We were able to get the old
man down on to the ground and into the car within five minutes; he could
hardly stand alone, and drove away with one of his servants sitting on
each side of him on the broad rear seat to hold him erect in case he
should fall sideways on a corner. He was as bad as that.

There were other cars there for the rest of the party and their luggage,
and in ten minutes or so they, too, were gone. I stood with Gujar Singh
and watched the last car disappear into the darkness. We were all tired,
too. "Well, thank the Lord we've got him home safely," I said heavily.
"I wouldn't have liked it if he'd died on the way home."

"I was afraid of that," said Gujar. "It would have made great trouble if
he had died in India, a Hindu country. I do not think he could have been
buried there.... If that had happened, I would have suggested that we
just flew on as quickly as we could, and brought him home."

"We couldn't have done that," I said. "Not for two days, in heat like
this."

"We could have flown high, above the freezing level."

"We'd never have got him through the Customs at Karachi," I said. "But
anyway, he didn't die on us, so that's all right." But I was only
partially correct because, in fact, the old man never left his palace
again. He died a few months later. He'd known that he was near the end,
of course, before he started on his journey to see Connie.

It was a disappointment to me that Nadezna was not there to meet us; I
didn't look forward to the prospect of telling her that I had failed to
make Connie consider marrying Mad Jasmi, but I had looked forward to
meeting her, all the same. I went into the office and found my desk
completely empty and bare, not a paper on it except one little note,
which read,

     "DEAR MR. CUTTER,--

     "I know you'll be tired when you get in, so I've taken the IN
     basket away and locked it up. There's nothing urgent in it. I hope
     you'll take the hint and go to bed.

     "Best wishes,

     "NADEZNA."

I grinned, and took the hint, and went to bed.

I was in the office bright and early next morning, but Nadezna was there
before me, and my desk was stacked with correspondence, invoices,
receipts, release notes, official pamphlets, and all the other paper
clutter that a business can accumulate in a fortnight. Before beginning
upon this, I told her about Connie and the girl. "I didn't cut any ice
at all," I said. "I don't think he's got any intention of marrying."

"No," she replied. "I don't think he has. It was a chance, though. Tell
me, is she nice?"

"She's a very nice girl," I told her. "She's just a village girl, of
course--she can't read or write. He'd have to make his life there if he
married her, but there are worse places to live than that. They live
simply and eat well. Her mother must be forty-five at least, and she's a
beautiful woman still. A man who was prepared to settle down and live
there quietly could have a very happy life."

"I thought it was like that," she said. "But that's not Connie's way."
She paused, and then she said, "Oh well, that's over, then. How was he
in himself?"

"You mean, his health?"

She nodded.

I thought for a minute before replying. I did not want to alarm her
unduly. "He's very, very thin," I said at last. "He seems to get tired
easily, too. I think he's quite all right, though. Dr. Khaled examined
him." I told her about what was going on at Karachi.

She wanted to know a lot of things then, how he was eating, how he was
sleeping--all the usual enquiries. I had one or two to make of her. "Has
he ever had anything like this before?" I asked. "Any sort of illness?"

She shook her head. "Not that I know of. He's always been thin, and he's
always lived a great deal on his nerves. I mean, I've seen him get very
tired sometimes, when he's been talking a lot. But I don't ever remember
him being in the doctor's hands at all."

"It's probably nothing," I said. "He may need something with his diet
down there--cod liver oil and malt, or something like that."

I settled down then to pick up the threads of my business, and I worked
with Nadezna on the papers for the whole of that day. Johnson came on
the telephone in the middle of the morning wanting to know the earliest
date for the Tramp to leave again for Bali and for the Maclean Dakota to
meet it there; having given up a trip to the Sheikh of Khulal, the
Arabia-Sumatran Company had an accumulation of scientific equipment and
staff wanting to go through to the East Alligator River oil field as
soon as possible. I checked the work on the machine with Chai Tai Foong,
and came back to the office and rang through to Johnson and told him the
machine could take off at dawn the day after tomorrow. I got a cable off
to Maclean Airways, and then I sent for Arjan Singh and warned him for
the trip, with Kadhim as second pilot.

I got up before dawn that morning to see the Tramp loaded, and to have a
final word to the two pilots before they went. I always think it helps
if the boss shows up on an early morning show like that, especially if
it's the start of a long flight. There was really no need for me to be
there, of course; Arjan had done the trip several times before, and
though Kadhim was new he'd got over a thousand hours in with the Iraqi
Air Force and Iraqi Airways on the Baghdad-Mosul route.

I said to Arjan, "Tell Shak Lin we got the old Sheikh back all right.
He's still in bed, though--I think he's pretty sick. Shak Lin's sure to
want to know how he is."

He nodded gravely, "I will tell him everything."

In the first light of dawn the Tramp taxied down to the far end of the
runway, and took off over the sea, and swept round in a great left-hand
turn to get on course, and vanished into the sunrise. I went back to the
chummery and had breakfast and shaved, and went to the office. I had a
Proctor booked to take a couple of surveyors out to a place called Marib
in the desert later in the day, and I intended to take them myself since
I should be fairly clear of office work.

At about half-past eight, half an hour before the surveyors were due,
the maroon Hudson passed my office window with Dr. Khaled and Wazir
Hussein in it, and swung round to park. I was dictating to Nadezna at
the time. "Christ," I said. "Look, pack up this. Nip out and see if you
can find Gujar Singh, and tell him I'd like him to take this Proctor to
Marib, because I'm tied up here after all. And look--tell Dunu to go
over to the restaurant and order us three cups of coffee--Turkish."

I got up to meet my visitors as they came in. "This is a great honour,"
I said. Probably they had come to talk about Connie, but one had to let
them start it in their own time. "I hope the Sheikh of Khulal was not
too tired by the journey?"

They said something or other, and we made the usual polite conversation
till the coffee came. When Dunu had gone out the Wazir came to the
point.

"We have received the report about El Amin from Karachi," he said. "It
is not good."

"Oh," I replied. "What does it say?"

He spoke to Khaled, who produced a white printed form, filled in with a
few words of typescript. The Wazir handed it to me; it was in English.
There were spaces for sputum and for urine, and opposite each of these
was typed the one word, "Negative". There was a space for blood, and
here was typed,

Red cells, 2 million.

White cells, 275,000, with immature cells present. There was a further
space at the bottom for remarks, and here it said,

     _Chronic Myelogenous Leukmia_, indicated by the blood count
     figures above. From the number of primitive white cells present the
     disease would seem to be entering an acute phase.

That, with a signature, was all there was.

I looked up at Hussein. "Well, this doesn't mean a thing to me," I said.
"What is Myelogenous Leukmia? I've never heard of it."

"Dr. Khaled tells us that it is a disease of the blood," he said. "It is
a very bad disease."

"How bad?" I asked. "What's the treatment?"

He turned and spoke to the doctor in Arabic. It was evidently the
continuation of a discussion that had, perhaps, been gone over many
times. The doctor spoke emphatically with some gesticulation, but he
spoke Arabic with a strange accent to me and he spoke quickly, so that I
could not get very much of what he said.

The Wazir turned back to me. "It is a long and complicated treatment,"
he said. "It needs X-rays to cure it, and very modern things that are
not found in many cities of Asia. It would be better that Shak Lin
should go to Europe, Dr. Khaled says. He can arrange treatment in
Paris."

"I see," I said. I sat in thought for a few minutes. There was no
question of expense in my mind, or of the work. Connie's job at Bali was
a sinecure that could be done by any good reliable engineer. If this
thing was serious he must come straight back to Bahrein and go on to
Paris or to London for his treatment; I could get him back to England
from Bahrein in a couple of days.

I raised my head and spoke to the Wazir. "He shall certainly go to
Europe for his treatment if he's really got this thing," I said. "If we
get him back to Karachi for a start, could we have him properly
investigated at the hospital there in the light of this report, to get a
second opinion?"

Dr. Khaled said that could be done.

"The next thing," I said to Wazir Hussein, "is just this. Will he come?"

"He will come if you say that he must come," the Wazir said. "I think
that you are right. He would not change his way of life or travel to
Europe for his health, for himself alone. But if you say he must do that
for reasons of your business, I think he may agree."

I bit my lip. I wasn't a bit sure, myself. Connie was so much a part of
the East that it was difficult to visualise him as a patient in a
hospital ward in London or in Paris, in countries where he had no
friends at all, where nobody had any reverence for him. "I think the
first thing to do is to get him back to Karachi for a proper
examination," I said at last.

Dr. Khaled spoke quickly to the Wazir. As I had thought, he could
understand English all right, though he was reluctant to try to speak
it. The Wazir turned to me. "My master wishes to spare no expense," he
said. "If he is to come to Karachi for examination, it would be better
that a specialist should come from Paris or from London to examine him
at Karachi, in the hospital. My master insists that he should have the
best advice." He paused, and then he said, "This has been a great
trouble to my master, this news of El Amin."

I said, "It is a great trouble to me, too." I sat in thought for a
moment. "It's bad luck that the Tramp left this morning for Bali," I
said. "It will be back here in nine days, and going down again"--I
glanced at the calendar--"on the fourteenth. To get him back here on
this trip means I must try and explain the situation to him in a
telegram, and persuade him to come back to hospital at Karachi. That's
not going to be very easy."

Wazir Hussein asked, "If he came by the next trip, when would he reach
Karachi?"

"On the twenty-second or the twenty-third," I said. "It means he
wouldn't reach Karachi for about three weeks from now."

We discussed this for a time. If he could be induced by skilfully-worded
telegrams to come back to Karachi with the present trip he could be
there in about seven days' time. It was doubtful if the Arabs, with all
the power of their wealth, could get a specialist from Europe there so
soon as that. They would have to write to their agents in London and the
letter would take three days; the man then had to be found and induced
to leave his work in London or Paris to fly to Karachi. No specialist of
any repute would leave his other patients in mid-air and unattended,
whatever the fee paid. It seemed to us that such a man would need at
least a week to settle his affairs before coming out to Karachi, and
then the flight would take at least two days. It would be a fortnight at
the earliest before he could be there.

Dr. Khaled, pressed by the Wazir, said that he did not think that El
Amin's physical state would alter very greatly in a fortnight. The
disease was probably getting worse, and if unattended death might well
occur in a year or eighteen months. Since the specialist could hardly
reach Karachi for at least a fortnight, if Connie came on the next trip
the greatest time that would be lost would be one week.

We decided that that would be the best course, that he should come back
upon the following trip. Wazir Hussein said, "Will you write him a
letter?"

"Yes," I said slowly. "I'll write to him by air mail." I thought
quickly. "It can go by Orient Airways tomorrow to Karachi, and I'll get
the pilot to see that it gets on to the K.L.M. for Batavia there." I
knew that any letter for Shak Lin would get whatever special treatment
was required. "Wazir," I said. "Would your master, the Sheikh of Khulal,
write a letter to El Amin, too? We shall have difficulty in persuading
him to leave his work and come to Karachi to hospital. I know a letter
from your master would have weight with him."

He nodded gravely. "It shall be done. I shall bring it here tomorrow
after sunrise, so that it can go with yours."

Dr. Khaled said something, and the Wazir turned to me after a brief
exchange. "It would be well that we should be certain that El Amin will
come to Karachi," he said. "Perhaps it would be better that the
specialist should go direct to Bali."

But Bali had no technical facilities such as Karachi hospital had. We
talked about that for a time. "I tell you what I'll do," I said. "I'll
take the next trip down to Bali myself, as pilot. If his sister wants to
come, I'll take her, too. Then we'll bring him back with us to Karachi
and meet the specialist there."

That settled that, and they went away, and I walked over to the hangar,
not because I had anything to do there but because I wanted to get out
of the office for a few minutes to think over how I was to tell this to
Nadezna. I went back presently and called her in from the other office,
and when she came, I said, "Bit of bad news, Nadezna. They did a blood
count at Karachi. It seems that Connie's got a thing they call
Leukmia." And then I told her all about it.

She took it amazingly well. Asiatics do take these things well, of
course; they never show their grief by any extravagant display of
emotion. All she said was, "That's fatal, isn't it? He's going to die?"

I was from the West, and perhaps we kid ourselves more than they do.
"Oh, it's not as bad as that," I said. "He'll have to go into hospital
for some sort of treatment, possibly in Europe. He'll be all right."

She shook her head. "I think this is the end of it," she said. "I've
heard about this thing."

"What have you heard?" I asked.

"There's no cure for it at all," she said quietly. "They may take you
into hospital and mess you about, but once you've got it, you die just
the same."

"I can't believe that's true," I said.

"I think it is."

I turned the subject and told her about the letter I was going to write.
She agreed that Connie ought to come up to Karachi and be properly
examined, and she said that she would write as well. And then I said,
"Look, Nadezna, I think I'll go down to Bali myself again on the next
trip, probably with Hosein as second pilot. I think it may take a bit of
arguing to get him to come. Will you come with me this time?" I
hesitated. "It's not the holiday I wanted it to be, but I think it 'ld
help if you came. And then we can take him straight back to the hospital
at Karachi."

She said quietly, "You can't go away again so soon, Tom. You've only
just come back."

"There's nothing for me to do here," I said. "The business runs all
right without me."

"Does it?" she asked. "I don't believe it does." And then she said, "I
sometimes wonder who this business is supposed to benefit, you or
Connie."

"I make money out of it," I said.

She smiled. "No, you don't. I've never seen you spend a penny, except on
other people. You could live in a big house with plenty of servants and
run a Bentley. But you don't. You go on living in the chummery and the
sergeants' mess, and you drive a station wagon. You don't make money at
all, Tom. You make aeroplanes, that's what you do. Every penny that you
make goes back into the business."

"What if it does?" I asked. "I like aeroplanes. I wouldn't want a
Bentley, anyway."

"I suppose you'll tell me next that you're going down to Bali again
because you like flying in the Tramp."

I laughed. "Many a true word." And then I said, "Will you come with me
for the joy-ride?"

She said, "Dear Tom. You've never quite got used to having me around,
have you?"

"No," I said. "I don't suppose I ever shall. It's a fresh wonder every
day I come into the office, to find you here."

She smiled, and smiling she was very lovely. "All right, Tom. I'll come
to Bali with you, and we'll do what we can for Connie."

After that, our life at Bahrein went on smoothly for a few days. I saw
Wazir Hussein again and heard of the energetic steps that he was taking
to get a specialist out to Karachi. These efforts finally resulted in
them getting a Frenchman called M. Serilaud, who seemed to be the
authority on leukmia in Europe; Dr. Khaled said that he had worked in
New York and in London and spoke English fluently, which was a help. The
earliest that we could get him to Karachi was the twenty-seventh, which
gave us a good margin of time to get Connie there to meet him.

I rang up Captain Morrison, and he came to see me one evening, and I
told him everything that was going on. He was friendly and helpful, and
said that if I wanted to bring Connie back to Bahrein there would be no
difficulty from their end at all. He indicated that he, personally,
would welcome his return as a gesture that would help to heal the breach
that had arisen with the Sheikh of Khulal.

Inevitably, the news got round in the souk that Shak Lin was ill, and
was coming to Karachi for examination. I don't know how these things get
out in Asiatic places; I didn't tell anyone, and I don't suppose the
Arabs in the Sheikh's retinue did much talking, though they may have
done. In any case, it was all known in the town within a day, and
Nadezna told me that wherever she went, in the streets, in the market,
in her house, there were continuous enquiries. After a day of this she
had to give up going out into the streets, and I sent the station wagon
down to pick her up each morning and drive her home in the evening.

On the ninth of the month the Tramp arrived back from Bali, dead on
schedule. It came in and landed about three o'clock in the afternoon. I
walked out on to the tarmac to meet it when it came in. The five
passengers got out and were met by a young man from the oil company, and
then Arjan came out and walked across to me. He said that they had had a
good trip, with no special incidents; there had been bad weather over
Sumatra which had delayed them half a day on the outward journey, but on
the homeward trip they had got through the inter-tropical front without
much trouble. And then he said, "I have letters for you, from the
Governor and from Shak Lin. I will fetch them and bring them to the
office."

"Okay," I said, and I went back to the office myself, because it was hot
out on the tarmac. Arjan Singh appeared in the office in a few minutes
and laid them on my desk, and then he went through into the other room,
perhaps to speak to Nadezna or Dunu. I opened the first letter.

It was from the Dutch Governor in Bali. It ran:

     "DEAR SIR,

     "It is with regret that I write to say that the continued residence
     of your engineer Shak Lin in Bali is no longer acceptable to the
     Royal Netherlands Government of Indonesia.

     "I must demand that this man is removed from Bali very soon, and
     should be replaced by another engineer with neutral religious
     associations.

     "B. HAUSMANN,

     "Governor."

I bit my lip, and read it through again. Then I opened the one from
Connie. He said that by that time I should have received a letter from
the Governor ordering him out of Bali. He was sorry that this had
happened, and that it was not due to any action on his part, but due to
circumstances out of his control that Arjan Singh could tell me about.
He thought that it would be better now that he should leave my service,
and he suggested that I should send down another engineer to work with
Phinit by the next machine. He himself would leave on the same aircraft,
and he proposed to make his way to Bangkok.

At the time he wrote that letter, of course, he hadn't received our air
mail letters to him about leukmia.

I got up heavily and went into the other office. Arjan Singh was there
talking to Nadezna; she had an open letter in her hand. From her face I
guessed that she had had the same news. I did not want to talk about it
in front of Dunu; I told Arjan and Nadezna to come into my office, and
when the door was shut and they were sitting down, I asked:

"What's all this about, Arjan? This trouble down at Bali?"

He said, "Two Dakota-loads of pilgrims."

"What?"

He said, "Three days after you left Bali, a Dakota came to Bali from
Bangkok. It was chartered from the Thai-Cambodia air line by a party of
about thirty ground engineers from Don Muang. Most of them were
engineers, but some I think were from the Siamese Air Force. They came
to visit Shak Lin and to pray with him. They went away after one day.
Then another Dakota came, with Indians from Allahabad and Calcutta. The
Dutch administrators were angry, and they say that you should not have
sent a man with a religious following to Bali. They do not encourage
missionaries in Bali; they prefer that the people should continue in
their own religion. The Governor gave me that letter to give you." He
paused. "That is all I know."

I was silent for a time. Then I said, "Did you hear of any other
machines going to Bali with pilgrims?"

He replied, "I heard talk at Karachi airport that a Dakota was leaving
very soon, with pilgrims. I told them that it was forbidden, but they
said that Shak Lin was ill. I think they mean to go."

"They mustn't go," I said. "When did you hear this?"

"Last night--and this morning."

In favourable conditions, usually late at night, we could get Karachi
from Bahrein on the radio telephone. In a case such as this, Alec Scott
would probably let me speak to Karachi myself. I might be able to stop
that machine from leaving.

"Who pays for all this?" I asked. "It must cost somebody a packet."

Arjan said, "I asked that, also. The machine from Bangkok was provided
by the Thai-Cambodia for a nominal charge only--one hundred rupees,
somebody said. The engineers at Bangkok had agreed that each would work
ten hours on the machine without pay in the next month, so that the
servicing and life of the aircraft should not suffer. The pilots flew
without pay, of course, being pilgrims themselves. The engineers
serviced the machine upon the flight without pay. All the expenses to be
met were petrol and oil, and insurance, and landing fees. They say that
each man had to pay two hundred and fifty rupees. Some of them had not
got the money, and their companies advanced wages to them so that they
could join the flight, and they would work the time off later, so much
in each week, to repay the loan."

Two hundred and fifty rupees is about twenty pounds. It was a big sum
for an Asiatic engineer, but it was by no means prohibitory, and if the
air line companies were prepared to help their men to go off on a trip
like this by allowing them to work the advanced pay off over several
months, it might be that many such journeys would take place. I already
had abundant evidence that Shak Lin's teachings had spread widely
through the East and had resulted in a marked up-grading in the quality
of aircraft maintenance. If the employees of an air line wanted to go
off on such a pilgrimage, a worth-while manager would encourage the
project and make it easy for them to go, knowing that such a religious
experience would encourage the men and lower his maintenance costs. If
my own people had come up with such a proposition I should probably have
taken that line myself. There was no telling now where this thing would
end.

"What started this, Arjan?" I asked at last. "What put the idea into
their heads? We've never had anything like this happen before."

He said, "It was the Sheikh of Khulal's pilgrimage."

"I see.... They saw that trip go through, and thought they'd do the
same?"

"Also," he said, "the word got around by radio that Shak Lin is dying."
By my side Nadezna stirred, and then was quiet again. "I do not know if
that report is true or not," Arjan went on. "But it is all over the East
now, that Shak Lin is a dying man. And so, on all the aerodromes,
engineers who work according to his teaching but have never seen
him--such men desire more than any earthly thing that they should see
Shak Lin before he dies, and hear his voice, and hear his blessing on
their work. This is a thing that many men want more than anything else
in the world."

"So we're likely to get a good many more Dakotas going to Bali," I said
thoughtfully.

"I do not think that they will be able to go now," he said. "I think the
Dutch will stop them. It is too far for a Dakota to fly from Singapore
to Bali without landing for fuel, and when they land, at Palembang or at
Batavia or Sourabaya, I think the Dutch will stop them. I do not think
that such machines will get clearance from Singapore now, any more, to
fly to Indonesia."

That seemed likely enough, though whether the authorities at Singapore
would have the power or the will to raise a hornet's nest by standing
between Dakota-loads of resolute pilgrims and their religious goal
seemed to me to be doubtful. Arjan Singh was obviously tired with his
eight days' flying, and I let him go soon after that, telling him that I
was going to take the next trip down myself with Hosein as co-pilot. He
was pleased to hear that I was going down myself again. "I think that is
very good," he said. "I think it will be good that you should be with
the Teacher at this time, for a few days."

"How is he taking it all, Arjan?" I asked. "Is he very much upset?"

He said a little pityingly, "Was he upset when he left here, Mr. Cutter?
He is not like ordinary men. Nothing that is written for him can cause
him to grieve. Only the errors of mankind do that." He paused, and then
he said more practically, "There is a woman there who serves him, Mad
Jasmi. She sees that he lacks nothing, does not grow too tired. I think
she will attain a great advancement in the life to come."

He went away to eat and rest, and I was left alone in the office with
Nadezna.

She said, "Poor old Connie--to be kicked out of a second place, for his
religion! And when we've just written to him about leaving, and telling
him about the blood count. It's too bad, Tom."

"I know," I said. "He doesn't have much luck." And then I said, "He's
going through a bad patch now, of course, but he'll get through all
right. I suppose it was a mistake sending him to Bali, though it didn't
seem like it at the time. After he's got rid of this leukmia thing
we'll see if we can find a place for him where they'll like his
religion. Somewhere in Burma or Siam would suit him best, I think. A
Buddhist country."

She smiled faintly. "But, Tom, he's not in your employment any more.
He's resigned."

I said quickly, "He can't do that to me, after being with me all this
time. I'm going to send him a cable now to say I won't accept his
resignation."

"You won't accept the fact that he's dying, either, will you?" she
asked.

"No," I said, "I won't. I won't accept that any more than I'll accept
his resignation. He's going to get well."

She came over to where I was sitting, and bent down and kissed me. I
stood up and held her in my arms for a minute. "It's going to be all
right," I said. "There are times when things are a bit of a battle, and
this is one of them. But it's going to be all right."

We broke away presently, and I sat down and wrote a cable to Connie. I
said,

     Won't accept your resignation now or ever. Coming down myself next
     trip with Nadezna to take you to Karachi; specialist arrives
     Karachi 27th. After treatment have new job for you in Siam.

     CUTTER.

Nadezna stared at this. "What is this new job in Siam?" she asked.

"I haven't thought it out yet," I said frankly. "I'll have it cut and
dried before I see him. We've got to give him something to look forward
to, and hang on to."

"But you don't operate in Siam at all, Tom."

"I didn't operate in Indonesia six months ago," I said.

I took her down to the souk myself in the old Dodge that night; it was
not possible to get the car up to her house, so I stopped it at the end
of the narrow alley and walked with her to the flight of steps that led
up to her room. Then I went back and got into the station wagon again,
and on an impulse I drove out to the Residency compound at Jufair and
went to call on Captain Morrison.

The Liaison Officer was out, but he was somewhere not very far away; his
boy offered to go and tell him that I was waiting to see him and his
bearer brought me a whisky and the paper. Morrison came in about five
minutes and apologised for keeping me waiting in his shy, diffident way.

"I've come about Shak Lin," I said. "He's been chucked out of Bali." And
I told him all I knew.

He took it very seriously. "The bloody fools," he said bitterly.
"They've done just the same as we did here."

"I don't see that we can blame them for that," I said.

"No. I suppose that, down in Bali, they're right out of things; they
couldn't know how fast this Shak Lin cult is spreading. It's up in
Baghdad now." He glanced at me. "I suppose you know about that."

I nodded. "It's in Teheran, too. And it's all through India, from Lahore
to Trincomalee."

He said, "It's gone right through the East--so far, only with one
limited class of people, on the aerodromes. You can't say that it's a
very strong cult, yet. It hasn't touched the peasants, or the
politicians, or the intellectuals. But it's strong enough already to
rouse vast resentment if we Europeans take to kicking Shak Lin out of
every place he tries to settle in."

I agreed with him. "It's just not got to happen again," I said. "For one
thing, he's a sick man now. After he's got rid of this thing, I think a
Buddhist country would be best for him. I'm thinking of Siam. He's
always been very well thought of in Bangkok. He'd be all right there."

"He'd be all right here," said Morrison. "The Foreign Office are quite
aware that a mistake was made. You don't think he could come back here
again?"

"I doubt if he'd want to," I said. "I think he feels that he's done all
he can in this part of the world. You see, he's much more of a religious
teacher now than a chief engineer. And as the cult grows, he goes
further that way every day. I'd like to see him back in the hangar on
the airstrip here, running the maintenance of my aeroplanes. But you
can't put back the clock."

"No," he said, "you can't do that. When you make a mistake, sometimes,
it's made for good." He stood in silence for a moment, staring out into
the night. "Do what you can to get him back here for a little while,
Cutter," he said. "Even if it's only for a visit, for a week. We made a
blunder over this, and there's no doubt that it's affected British
prestige in the Persian Gulf. People may call the Sheikh of Khulal an
old fuddy-duddy, but he's an important man in these parts. If you could
get Shak Lin back here if only for a visit so that we could make amends,
I think it might be very helpful. Just bear that in mind."

"I'll do that certainly," I said. "I'll get him back here for a little
if I can. But everything depends upon his health; this treatment at
Karachi or in Paris must come first."

I went back to the aerodrome for dinner in the restaurant. Alec Scott
was in the Control Tower; I went up and talked to him about Karachi.
Radio telephone connections were not very good at the moment, and he
said they would get better as the night went on; I went back at about
midnight and Karachi was coming through as clear as a local call.

I asked to speak to the Controller, and I had luck there, because it was
Khalil, the chap that I had spoken to once before, who was himself a
follower of Shak Lin. I asked him to deter any aircraft that might be
taking off for Bali with pilgrims and make it clear to them that they
would almost certainly be stopped upon the way. I told him that I should
be going down in two days' time myself and bringing Shak Lin back to
hospital in Karachi. There was no point in any pilgrims going anywhere,
since Shak Lin would himself be in Karachi in a fortnight and they
could see him there.

He thanked me for the message, and said he would explain what I had said
to the engineers. I only just got through to him in time, because the
Dakota was already chartered and was to take off at dawn.

We left two days later in the Tramp. I made Hosein chief pilot and went
as second pilot myself, and I put Nadezna on the manifest as navigator,
and she travelled in the navigator's seat most of the way. We had eleven
passengers for various destinations on the route, all oil men of course,
and about two and a half tons of miscellaneous machinery and stores, so
we had a pretty good load up.

We passed through Karachi in the early afternoon. Wazir Hussein had
arranged for his agent to meet us on the aerodrome and this chap turned
up. The hospital bed was all arranged and everything laid on. I took his
name and address, and promised to send him a cable to tell him our exact
time of arrival back with Shak Lin, so that he could meet us with a car
upon the tarmac. I made these arrangements with some difficulty, because
Hosein was up in the Control office with the paper work, and Nadezna and
I were beset with continuous enquiries from the engineers about Shak
Lin. Finally a Pakistani customs officer in uniform came to our
assistance and got a couple of the aerodrome police to keep the people
off us, and to explain to new-comers what we had already told them many
times.

We took off presently for Ahmedabad and spent the night there. Next day
we flew on to Calcutta and Rangoon, and then in the evening light up to
Yenanyaung, landing just at dusk. We set down some of our passengers
there and took on others, spent the night in the oil company's rest
house, and went on next day down the Kra Isthmus.

I had cleared the machine that morning from Rangoon for Kallang airport
at Singapore, because when making a long journey I always like to get a
good long stage done in the early part of the day, and a short one in
the afternoon; it's less tiring doing it that way than the other way
about. We were passing the Siam-Malaya border about noon and beginning
to think about lunch; I was flying the machine with Nadezna by me in the
co-pilot's seat, and Hosein was down organising the lunch baskets, when
Nadezna said:

"Are we going to land at Penang?"

I didn't think for a moment. I said, "No--Singapore." And then I said,
"Why, of course--you were brought up in Penang. It doesn't matter--I can
go in there and fuel just as well. Would you like to? I can get upon the
blower."

She said, "Oh no. I'd just like to see it."

"We'll go past," I said. "Go past between Penang and Butterworth. You
can see the harbour and the town that way. I'll drop off height and come
down to a thousand feet or so." I throttled back a bit and re-trimmed
the machine. "How long did you live there?"

"Only till I was five," she said.

"Remember anything about it?"

She smiled. "Oh yes. I used to go to a convent school; I remember the
nuns very well. They were so kind. There was a rocking-horse there, and
a swing."

"I tell you what we'll do," I said. "We'll night-stop there on the way
back, with Connie. I often do that. Then you can get a rickshaw and go
down and see the school."

She said, "Oh Tom, that would be fun!"

I brought the machine down on a long descent, and Hosein came up from
the cabin to see what was going on and I told him, "Nadezna was born
here!" and he grinned, and went down again to reassure the passengers.
We passed Georgetown on Penang Island quite close, and Nadezna looked up
flushed and excited and said, "Oh Tom, I believe I can see the street we
lived in!" And I said, "Bunkum. You were only five years old." And she
said, "I'm sure I did."

"We'll come back this way and spend a night," I promised her.

It was a grand day that, spent flying the Tramp in fine weather down the
coast of Malaya with Nadezna by my side. I made her fly it while I ate
my lunch, touching the wheel now and then to bring the machine back
level when I thought the passengers would be dying of heart failure.
Hosein kept bobbing up to see what was going on, and once he asked me
why I didn't use the automatic pilot. I said, "I am," and indicated
Nadezna. I think he went down and told the passengers that I was in
love, and they'd all probably be killed. We had a fine time up in the
cockpit, that afternoon.

We put down at Kallang for an hour to refuel and then went on over the
Linga Archipelago and Banka Strait down to Diento. It was a lovely
evening; the sea blue and green around the coral atolls, the coastlines
with their massive forests dim on the horizon. Nadezna and I were in the
pilots' seats as before, and now a new problem was right upon me, not
altogether unpleasant. Connie had ordered me to give his sister a
message, and I hadn't given it to her. I should be meeting him the next
day, and he might ask me about it; he was quite capable of asking her.
It seemed to me that I'd better see about delivering it, and Diento was
as good a place as any.

They had Customs at Diento since our flights had become regular, so we
didn't have to waste time by putting down at Palembang. We landed just
at sunset and were, met, as usual, by cars from the oil company. It was
dark by the time we had refuelled the Tramp and got her shut up for the
night. The others had gone on, and Nadezna, Hosein, and I drove the five
miles through the scented tropic night in an open car, to the refinery
club. There was a great full moon, just coming up.

She said, "Oh Tom--this is a marvellous place! It's everything the
tropics ought to be, and aren't."

It was, that night. The Dutchmen had arranged bedrooms for us in the
club, as usual, but because we came there so frequently now they had
given up the effort of entertaining us, and the routine now was that
they just turned us loose to swim in their swimming pool, eat their food
and drink their liquor, and dance to their dance band with the shorthand
typists of the refinery. We did all that, that night. Hosein had a girl
friend there and he went off with her, and Nadezna and I swam and
changed and dined and danced in that lovely place beside the tropical
river. I couldn't have staged a better evening for her if I'd taken her
to the south of France.

We had flown all day, down from Yenanyaung, over ten hours in the air.
We were both tired, and by eleven o'clock we both felt like packing up
and going up to bed. We lingered a little on the terrace by the river,
bright in the moonlight; sampans moved about on it with little lanterns,
going upstream with the tide.

She said, "It's been a marvellous evening, Tom. Thank you so much."

I squeezed her arm a little. "Why say that? You know I've enjoyed every
minute, being with you."

She raised her face and smiled, and I kissed it. She said, "Oh Tom.
Think of all the Dutchmen!"

"They've probably got a rule against that," I said. "We'll get chucked
out of the club."

But nobody seemed to have noticed us, so we moved into a bit of black
shadow and did it again.

"I had a message for you from Connie, that I've never given you," I said
presently. "Would you like to hear it now?"

"I don't want to hear anything about Connie just now," she said. "Not
tonight."

I raised her face to mine and stroked her cheek. "I think you'd better
have it," I said quietly. "We shall be seeing him tomorrow, and it's
kind of relevant. He came back at me when I told him that it would make
you very happy if he married Mad. He seemed to think that was a bit of
lip. He said that it would make him very happy if you married me." I
paused, and then I said, "He said I was to tell you."

She stood quiet in my arms. "He isn't very practical," she said. "You're
English, Tom, and I'm an Asiatic. You wouldn't want a quarter Chinese
baby."

"If it was yours I'd want about a dozen of them," I replied.

"That's a fine way to propose to a girl," she said. "I ought to push you
in the river."

"You can do that, if you'll marry me," I said. "Will you?"

She stood silent for a time, and then she said, "Not just like that."

"Like what, then?" I caressed her shoulder.

She said, "We're such very different people, Tom. I know you like the
East, and for an Englishman you get on wonderfully well with Asiatics.
That's probably why you want to marry me, because you think of us as
people like yourself, not different. But we _are_ different, all the
same. You're English, and I'm Asiatic."

"Does that matter?"

She said, "It might not, but it might ruin everything. I wouldn't want
to marry without children, Tom. And I wouldn't want to marry and try and
raise a family in the Persian Gulf--there'd be no joy in that. You're
English, and some day you'll want to go back and live in England. All
your roots are there, not in a place like this." The sampans moved on
the dark water at our feet; over our heads the flying foxes wheeled
under the full moon. "Suppose we went to live in England. I look Chinese
now, and I may look more so when I'm older. Suppose someone said
something about us, in the subway or a restaurant or something. I
couldn't bear that, Tom. I'd have to get out of England if that
happened, and where would we be then?"

I was silent.

"There's the children, too," she said. "I couldn't bear it if the others
called your children Chinks, at school."

"Look," I said. "All these are serious things, Nadezna. I think you're
worrying too much about them, making too much of them, but still, I know
they're there. I wouldn't want to live anywhere where my wife would be
insulted in the street, or my kids have a bad time in school just
because they were yours. But there's lots of places where those things
don't happen; we could live in one of those."

"There aren't so many white countries where those things don't happen,"
she said. "I know."

She turned in my arms, and put her face up to me. "I do want to marry
you, Tom," she said. "If we got half a chance, I could make you very
happy. But I'm not going to marry you till I can see things a bit
clearer than they are just now. Some day, if you ask me again, I'll
probably say, yes."

"You wouldn't like to say it now?"

"Not now. All I'm going to say now is, good-night."

She got kissed good-night, and it took about ten minutes, and then we
broke it up and went to bed. I really hadn't expected anything much
different, I suppose, and perhaps as you get older you get philosophical
about these things, and don't go off the deep end as you do when you are
young. You get to count your blessings, and my blessing that night was
that Nadezna loved me, and that there was a very good chance she'd marry
me one day.

We went on in the Tramp in the morning, stopped at Sourabaya for fuel,
and put down at Den Pasar airstrip in the middle of the afternoon.
Connie was there to meet us with Phinit; I got out of the machine with
Nadezna and left the work to Phinit and Hosein for the moment, and
walked with Connie and his sister into the shade of the hangar.

"One damn thing after another," I said. "First leukmia and then
pilgrims."

He smiled. "I told you that that Arab doctor had found something wrong."

"I know you did," I said. "The crafty little mugger. He never said a
thing to me till he got his samples reported on from Karachi."

Nadezna said, "We're going to take you back to hospital in Karachi." She
told him about the specialist from Paris and the arrangements that had
been made. "It's going to be much better if you have it all done there."

He smiled. "If I've got to get out of Bali I might as well go there. The
only thing is this, and it's quite definite. I'm not going to Europe."

Nadezna said, "It may be that the best treatment is there, Connie.
There's something about X-ray therapy."

He said, "They can keep it. I belong in these countries, not in France
or England."

There didn't seem to be much point in arguing about it there and then.
"In any case," I said, "the first thing is Karachi. Will you be all
ready to start tomorrow morning?"

He nodded. "I'm all ready now."

"Okay," I said. "Now look, about these ruddy pilgrims. I'll have to go
into town and see the Governor and smooth things over with him, Connie.
I heard about two Dakotas coming here. Has anything else happened?"

"Three," he said. "It was two when Arjan Singh was down here ten days
ago. One came in from Bangalore after that. It had a lot of people from
the Hindustan Aircraft Company."

"Any more coming?"

"Not that I know of," he said. "But then I didn't know those were
coming, either."

"I don't suppose that there'll be any more," I said. "They won't clear
pilgrim aircraft at Kallang, because the Dutch don't like it."

I left them to get on with the refuelling and transfer of the load,
after warning Connie not to do any physical work himself, and I drove
into Den Pasar to see the Dutch authorities. I went first to see Bergen.
He was quite polite, though somewhat distant. He said that the policy in
Indonesia was to interfere as little as possible with the indigenous
religion of the peoples in Dutch territory, and that they had naturally
assumed that this policy was known to me and that they would have my
co-operation. They had nothing against Shak Lin except that he appeared
to represent a new creed of some sort, and that aeroplane loads of
people from all over the East had started coming to see him. It was
quite impossible for that to be allowed. They understood that this man
had been expelled from British territory in the Persian Gulf for similar
activities, and they considered it a little underhand of me to have
introduced him into Bali without disclosing his record. In any case, I
must remove him now, and I must understand that no activities of a
religious nature by my staff would be tolerated in the future.

There was nothing to be gained by quarrelling with them. I said I was
exceedingly sorry this had happened. It seemed to me that this was
hardly a religious matter; Shak Lin had done no missionary work among
the natives, and had not, in fact, infected any Balinese men or women
with his ideas. All that had happened was that visitors had come to see
him from considerable distances, and had left again without troubling
anybody or making any contact with the Balinese. I told him that Shak
Lin in any case was a sick man and would have to be removed to hospital
immediately, outside Dutch territory; I proposed to promote Phinit to be
chief in his place and send down a young Chinese called Pak Sza San to
work with him. I said that I hoped there would be no further trouble.

We went in to see the Governor then and Bergen explained all this to him
in Dutch, and he delivered a rocket in Dutch which Bergen translated to
me, and then we all smiled and shook hands, and it was over. I said
good-bye to Bergen and went out to my taxi to drive back to the
airstrip. The young Dutchman, Andel, was waiting for me by the car; he
was the man who had first taken us to Pekendang, in the jeep.

He said, "Is it true that Shak Lin has to go?" I suppose he was too
junior in the Administration to have been told.

I said, "Yes. He's a sick man, anyway. I shall be sending down a young
Chinese to work with Phinit."

He said quietly, "I am very, very sorry, Mr. Cutter. It may not be my
place to say so, but I think it is a great mistake."

I wrinkled my forehead. "Why do you say that?"

"I think he is a very great man," he said simply. "Perhaps the greatest
that has ever visited Bali." And then he said, "I am interested in all
that has to do with aeroplanes. I served in the war with the R.A.F. in
Bomber Command; I was the rear gunner in a Halifax. I have been to
Pekendang several evenings, to be with Shak Lin and to listen to him
talking. He is the greatest man that I have ever known."

It was nearly dark when I got back to the airstrip. The Dakota had come
in and both lots of passengers had gone up to the Bali Hotel. Refuelling
was just finished but the loads had not been changed; we would do that
in the morning. I knocked everybody off for the night, because I knew
that if anybody worked late on the aircraft Connie would insist on
working too, and I wasn't going to have that. We shut up the machines
when the bowser had driven away, and then I asked Connie if there was
room for us at Pekendang.

"I think so," he replied. "There's only three--you and Hosein and
Nadezna?"

"That's right," I said.

"Hosein usually goes with Phinit. There's the hut you had before--that's
ready for you. Are you sleeping with Nadezna yet?"

She was in hearing, but I didn't dare to look at her. "No, I'm not," I
said. "We haven't got as far as that."

"Pity," he said. "Well, she can come in with me. We've shared a room
often enough before."

We all walked over to the village carrying our small over-night bags. It
was dark and shadowy when we got there, a friendly darkness with brown
people moving about in it and welcoming us, in the light of a few
coconut oil wicks and a hurricane lamp or two. Connie took Nadezna to
his room and sent Mad Jasmi to organise an extra bed. I dropped my
haversack down in the hut that I had occupied before and went to find
Phinit to talk over the new organisation with him.

I sat with him on the steps of his house in the dim light, telling him
what I wanted him to do; he knew Pak Sza San, and said he would fit in
all right in Bali. I had chosen Pak Sza San because he came from
Singapore, and so his home was geographically close to Indonesia, and he
might be expected to know the customs and the ways of the Balinese by
hearsay, anyway, better than, say, an Iraqi engineer from Basra. We sat
there talking for about a quarter of an hour, and then a girl, bare to
the waist, came up and spoke to him. I peered at her in the dim light,
and it was Mad Jasmi.

Phinit said in English, "She wants to ask you something, Mr. Cutter."

"Of course," I said. "Ask her what I can do for her."

There was an exchange in Balinese. "She says, is it true that Shak Lin
has to go away to a hospital in a far country?"

"Tell her, I'm afraid that's true enough."

They spoke again. "She says, may she go with him to the hospital to
cook his food and wash his clothes."

I sat in silence for a minute. That's usual in rural hospitals in the
East, of course. A man's wife always goes with him to hospital and
sleeps on the floor beside him. They think it is a very cruel custom of
the West to separate husband and wife when one is ill. They think that
in the great distress of a bad illness husband and wife need each other
most.

"Tell her," I said gently, "that she can't do that. She's not his wife."

They spoke. "She says that Shak Lin has no wife, and he will never have
one. She says that he will be unhappy if he is alone, and that she knows
what he likes to eat, and when, and she knows all his clothes and how he
likes them washed. She says he cannot look after himself when he is
tired and ill."

I replied, "Tell her that he is going to a fine large hospital, larger
than the Bali Hotel, a hospital such as Europeans go to when they are
ill. Tell her that every person there has two or three servants that the
hospital provides, and these are taught to do everything in the way the
doctor says. Tell her that it is better that those servants should look
after him, because he will get well more quickly, because they know
everything about this illness."

She said something a little scornfully.

"She says, if they know everything about this illness, then they know
that he is going to die."

I didn't know what to say to that one. Presently she said something
again, and all the scorn was gone out of her voice.

"She says, Shak Lin will not stay in hospital for very long, because he
is only going there to please you and his sister. She says that
presently he will become too weak to travel, and he will go then to a
quiet place beside an airstrip, and live there until he dies. She says,
when he goes to that quiet place, may she get into your aeroplane to go
to him, to be with him, to cook his food and wash his clothes."

She had a simple faith, apparently, that my aircraft would always fly
direct from Bali to Shak Lin, wherever he might be.

"Yes," I said. "Tell her she may do that."




CHAPTER 10

    His speech is a burning fire;
      With his lips he travaileth;
    In his heart is a blind desire,
      In his eyes foreknowledge of death.
    He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
      Sows, and he shall not reap;
    His life is a watch or a vision
      Between a sleep and a sleep.

    A. C. SWINBURNE


For a number of reasons, I worked to a slower schedule than normal on
the homeward flight. Work upon the aircraft was not finished, for one
thing, so that a dawn start was out of the question, and for another I
had promised Nadezna that she and Connie should revisit the scenes of
their childhood in Penang, so that I planned to get there early in the
afternoon and stop there for the night. Accordingly, we took off from
Bali about ten o'clock in the morning, and made a short day of it to
Diento, arriving there about three o'clock in the afternoon and stopping
over for the night; next morning we went on at dawn and stopped for the
night at Penang at about midday, to the surprise and delight of our
passengers, who had no objection to an afternoon in Penang at their
company's expense.

I had sent a cable from Diento to reserve accommodation for my
passengers and crew, and since the passengers were all European I had
reserved it at the best hotel in the town, the European and Oriental.
Penang is a bit of a holiday place that planters come to when their
isolation becomes unbearable, and everything in this hotel was of the
best. It suited my passengers down to the ground, but it didn't suit
Connie or Nadezna half so well, and I was out of tune with its luxury
myself. They were going down to the Chinese quarter together. They
suggested that I should join them down there later for a Chinese meal,
and after some discussion about meeting we settled that I should meet
them at six o'clock at the convent school that Nadezna had been to as a
child, the Convent of the Sacred Heart.

I found it was a big place, with a school and an orphanage attached to
it, down in the lower and less fashionable part of the town. Children
played in the crowded streets all round it and the telephone wires
overhead were tangled with their kites, and the streets were full of
young women in flowered cotton pyjamas and old women in black pyjamas
and young men in vests and shorts. The door was opened to me by an old
sister in a coarse white cotton habit who showed me into a bare
waiting-room, embarrassingly clean and scantily furnished.

Nadezna and Connie came very soon, and with them was the Mother Superior
and a couple more sisters. Connie introduced the Mother to me, who was
evidently Irish, and then they were saying good-bye to her. She wished
Connie a good recovery from his illness. To Nadezna she said, "Remember
that we deal in orphans here. If at any time you feel you have no home,
come back and see us."

She said, "That's very kind of you, Mother."

When we were out in the street I asked her, "Did they remember you?"

She nodded. "They remembered us both. The one you saw, Mother Mary
Immaculate, she used to teach me in the kindergarten. She looks just the
same as she did then. Connie sometimes used to come to take me home. She
knew both our names, before I told her."

She paused. "They're so _stable_, those sisters," she said quietly.
"Whatever else may change, whatever gets upset, you feel that they'll be
going on there just the same, taking in orphans and bringing them up and
putting them out into the world. Teaching the children..."

I told my passengers when I got back to the hotel that night that I
wasn't going to tire Shak Lin by flying very long stages. We took off at
about nine o'clock next morning and stopped for the night at Calcutta.
On the following evening we landed at Karachi. As usual, when we landed
there a crowd of engineers was waiting on the tarmac to see Connie. I
kept him in the aircraft and got out myself to find out what
arrangements had been made. There was an ambulance from the hospital
waiting for us; I got this backed up to the aircraft and got him into it
and away while Hosein held the crowd off and answered questions.

Nadezna stayed in Karachi to be near her brother in the hospital, and I
went on with the Tramp next morning to Bahrein.

The specialist from Paris, M. Serilaud, got to Karachi about the time
that the Tramp went through again on its way down to Bali some days
later. I had sent Arjan Singh this time, and I told him to night-stop at
Karachi and go into town to see Nadezna, and then write me by air mail
before flying on, to tell me what he thought about it all.

His letter came a couple of days later, and in the same mail there was
one from Nadezna. And it wasn't very good news.

There is no known cure for leukmia, only palliative treatments, and
none of these are of great value. The disease is a sort of cancer of the
blood-forming organs, and once you've got it medical science can't do a
lot for you. Medical science, of course, is reluctant to admit this; the
disease is a rare one, and human guinea pigs with it are not so
plentiful, so that medical science has plenty of new suggestions for
treatment when a case appears. There is not much evidence that anybody's
life has been prolonged by such experiments, and no record of a cure.

Nadezna said as much to me in her letter. She said that Connie had
agreed to a short course of X-ray therapy, not because he had any faith
in it but because it would take a few days that he would have to spend
in Karachi anyway. He wanted to come to Bahrein to see me, and he
proposed to leave the hospital and travel to Bahrein on the Tramp with
Arjan Singh on his return from Bali. Nadezna said that she had come to
the conclusion that his time was limited, and as he had things on his
mind that he wanted very badly to do, it would be best to let him do
them.

Arjan Singh's letter was to the same effect. He made the point that a
first-class ground engineer, accustomed to diagnosing the ailments of
the most complicated aircraft engines and instruments from an
examination of the symptoms, had little difficulty in mastering the
functions of so crude and inefficient a mechanism as the human body. He
said that the Teacher knew all about the prospect before him and he was
not distressed. He wanted very much to come back to Bahrein for a short
time, and Arjan proposed to bring him back on his return from Bali. In
the meantime the Teacher was quite happy to rest in hospital, and let
the doctors have their fun.

I saw Captain Morrison with these letters. He was pleased that Connie
was willing to come back for a short time, and he sat down there and
then and wrote a short personal letter to him to welcome him back to
Bahrein; we got that off to him that night by air mail.

As I was going away, he said, "Let me know when you expect him to
arrive, Cutter. I'd like to come out to the aerodrome and meet the
machine."

I smiled, a little bitterly. "Shall I see if I can find a bit of red
carpet?"

"We all make mistakes," he said quietly. "I'd like to come and meet him,
if you'd let me know." I was sorry then that I'd said that, because,
after all, the mistake had not been his.

The Tramp came in late one afternoon. I had got Gujar Singh to fix up
Connie and Nadezna in the same rooms that they had occupied before in
the house of Mutluq bin Aamir, the silk merchant; Nadezna had retained
her room, I think, but someone had to be turned out of Connie's, which
was done with great despatch. This of course put the news that he was
coming back to Bahrein all around the souk, and when the Tramp landed
there were close on a thousand people waiting by the hangar to see it
touch down. Morrison knew about this, and he had laid on a few policemen
to keep the crowd behind the rope barrier that I had set up, and when
the Tramp taxied to a standstill Morrison went forward to meet Connie
as he got out of the machine. Connie was bareheaded and dressed in khaki
shirt and stained khaki drill slacks, and Morrison shook hands with him
in front of all the crowd. It was good of him to do that.

Connie wasn't very tired, though I think he was paler than when I had
seen him a fortnight before. He wanted to join in the sunset _Rakats_,
and as there was half an hour to go I took him round the hangar with Tai
Foong and showed him what was going on in the shop. When it was time for
prayer, he went out to the vacant ground with the Imam, and the crowd
trooped on to it when we took away the rope, and the engineers formed a
solid phalanx around Connie so that he would not be crowded. Then the
Imam stood up in front of them and called on Allah, and I went over to
the office with Nadezna, and gave her a cup of tea.

After the prayers were over, Connie came into the office. I said, "I
expect you'd better get down to the souk and rest." And I got out my
keys and began putting the papers away and locking up my desk, because I
was to drive him in the station wagon.

He sat down on a chair and said, "One thing, Tom, if you've got a
minute. I came back here because I wanted to see you."

I stopped bustling around. "Of course," I said. "What's on your mind?"

"I want an aeroplane," he said. "I haven't got any money for it, but I
was wondering if you could let me have a Proctor for a month or two."

I had two old Proctors. I had paid six hundred pounds for one and four
hundred and fifty for the other; they were a fleabite in the total value
of my aeroplanes, and both of them were pretty well written down in the
accounts. "Of course," I said. "You can have a Proctor for as long as
you like. What do you want to do with it?"

"I'm going to die of this thing," he said practically. "They seem to
think I've got about a year, and I shan't be a lot of good after the
first six months. Well, that's all right; most of us don't get so much
notice. I've always said what I believed in, in the hangar, anywhere.
And now I've started something. I don't know if what I've started will
endure or not, but if it does endure, I think it's quite a useful thing
to have done. So many people now, in so many countries, on so many
aerodromes, are talking about what I've said quite casually at some
time, and repeating it, and writing it all down. And sometimes it's just
hearsay--they're putting down things that I never said at all. Well,
that's not right. If this thing's going to die out with me, it doesn't
matter. But if it's going to endure, I'd like it to be right."

I smiled. "I see."

"If I had a Proctor," he said, "I could go round all these airfields and
spend a day or two on each, just talking to the chaps. I want to do
that. I want them to see me as a real man, not as a kind of God. I sweat
like they do, eat like they do; I get tired and hungry and sleepy as
they do. And ill, perhaps. When I tell them what I think about things, I
want to tell them as a first-class G.E., not as a bloody preacher. I
want to go into each shop and hangar and tell them what I think of their
routines and their inspection schedules, so that they'll remember me as
someone who was good at their own job. Then if they like to pay
attention to the things that I believe in, they'll be doing it on
grounds of solid competence and fact, not just emotion."

"If you're going to go round all the airfields in the East where men are
talking about you," I said, "it's going to take you all your time. There
must be a hundred at least--more than that."

"I want to go on till I've got to stop," he said.

"Well, you can have the Proctor." I thought for a minute. "You'd better
have Yoke Uncle--the engine's got about three hundred hours to go in
that. That ought to see you through. If you want any more time, bring it
in, and swap it for Nan Oboe. Who's going to fly it for you?"

He said, "Arjan Singh has offered to do that. He's coming in to see you
in the morning. He wants you to give him leave without pay."

I nodded slowly. I knew that Arjan was a believer in Shak Lin, and he
was unmarried; he could probably work without pay for a time. He was a
good man for the job, too, because Sikhs are known and somewhat feared
all over India. Arjan Singh in his best clothes was both an imposing and
a ferocious figure; it would be a bold Bengali or Madrasi who would try
conclusions with him. With Arjan Singh to run the practical affairs of
life, Connie would be in good hands.

There would be no trouble about maintenance of the Proctor; at every
aerodrome willing hands would seek to gain merit by servicing the
Teacher's aircraft. "You'll have to have _some_ money, Connie," I said
at last. "I don't think you need bother about insurance--it's very
little, and it can go on under the existing cover. Spares--we can fit
you up with anything you'll need from the stores. But you'll have to pay
for petrol and oil, or someone will."

"There's a chap called Noshirvan who lives in Bombay," he said. "A
Parsee. He's a motor agent in a fairly big way. He came up to see me in
Karachi. He wants to pay for the petrol and oil. I said I'd let him know
if I could get the aircraft, and he'll take out a Shell carnet."

"We'd better get a cable off to him tonight," I said.

Next day I took Yoke Uncle off the list of operational aircraft and
allocated her to Connie. He started in at once to do the fifty-hour
maintenance schedules on her, working with Tarik. Arjan Singh came to
see me and I fixed him up with unpaid leave for as long as he liked; I
told him I'd be glad to see him back in the business whenever he was
able to come. He said he did not know when that would be; as long as the
Teacher wanted a pilot, he said, he would like to serve him in that way.
He said that he had no home ties that would prevent him from devoting
his life to religion. He told me then a thing that I had not heard
before in all the three years he had been with me, that as a young man
he had been married, and that his wife and son had died of fever while
he was in the Royal Indian Air Force. Since then he had been unmarried.
It takes an Asiatic a long time to get around to talking of his private
life to a European.

Arjan and Connie got their Proctor going a couple of days later, and
flew it over to Baraka to see the old Sheikh, who now seldom left his
bed. They came back on the following day, stayed the night, and left for
Abadan.

Nadezna and I stood in the shade of the hangar watching the thin line of
the Proctor wing as it vanished into the haze to the north. Most of the
other staff stood there with us, watching till it was out of sight.

"I'm glad you let Arjan go, Tom," she said as we turned back to the
office. "I think he's about the best man to look after Connie. He's so
very practical."

I nodded. "I told him to let me know at once by cable if he gets
seriously ill."

She smiled. "I did that, too."

Nothing much happened after that for a couple of months. When Connie and
Arjan had been gone for about a fortnight, they appeared again from the
north and stayed one night; they had been to Abadan, Baghdad, Mosul,
Teheran, Basra, and Kuweit, and now they were on their way eastwards to
Pakistan and India. Connie was tired, but not more than one would have
expected from such a strenuous journey. They went on to spend a night at
Sharjah, and from there to Jiwani and Karachi.

About six weeks after they had gone through, Wazir Hussein came to my
office in the maroon Hudson one afternoon. I got up to meet him and
ordered coffee, and presently he came to the point.

"My master feels that he is near his end," he said. "Before he dies, he
wishes to speak to the Majlis. He has sent me to invite you to be
present, and the Sister, and Captain Morrison. He has matters of
importance to tell you."

It was a very unusual summons, but everything about my relations with
the Sheikh of Khulal was a bit unusual. "Of course," I said. "I should
be very glad to come. When does your master wish to summon the Majlis?"

"If it is possible, tomorrow," he said. "I have seen Captain Morrison,
and he is able to come tomorrow. He said that perhaps you would fly him
over, with the Sister."

I fixed that up, and fixed the time that we would take off in the
morning, and rang up Morrison to let him know. Hussein would come with
us, and as there were to be four people I took one of the Airtrucks. The
Wazir did not say what it was all about and I didn't care to question
him. Nadezna had no idea, but thought it had to do with Connie. As we
were getting into the machine next morning I drew Morrison aside and
asked if he knew anything.

"It's his will," he said. "He's calling the full Majlis. Can't be
anything else."

We landed at Baraka an hour later, and drove to the palace in the
Packard that came to the airstrip. Here we were shown into the same bare
ante-room with the hard gilt chairs that I had been in before; this room
was full of well-dressed Arabs, minor sheikhs and people of that sort,
some of whom I knew from having met them in the desert or their villages
in the course of various flights. There must have been about twenty of
them. We waited with them in silence for a quarter of an hour, and then
we were all led upstairs to the Sheikh's bedchamber.

This was a big, well-proportioned room, with little furniture in it
except the one great bed. The old man lay propped up on this; he was
much smaller and frailer than when I had seen him last. Dr. Khaled was
at his side. Huddled in a corner were several women, all heavily veiled
in black burqas so that nothing was visible of them except their hands.
We all grouped ourselves standing in a circle round the bed, and Wazir
Hussein went forward and said in Arabic that everything was ready and
that everyone was there.

The old man's voice was worse than ever, and I could only follow about
half of what he said. Morrison gave it me in full that evening. First,
he said his salaam to the Sister of the Teacher, who was the only woman
in the place unveiled. He then gave his salaam to me, and to the various
sheikhs assembled in the room, mentioning them all by name, and lastly
to Morrison. He seemed tired then, and rested, and the doctor gave him
something from a medicine glass to drink, pale pink in colour.

The old Sheikh revived after a few minutes and began to speak again. He
said that his eldest son Fahad would inherit the Sheikhdom and would
rule in his place after his death, and he would inherit all the incomes
of the Sheikhdom including the oil royalties. All the old man's personal
possessions, including his flocks and his herds and one half of all his
moneys in the various banks, were to be divided between his wives and
his children in accordance with the teaching of the Koran, and in this
division was to be reckoned the sums owed by his debtors, but these
debtors were not to be pressed to repay more quickly than had been
agreed.

He rested again then for a minute or two, and then he went on. He said
that it was fitting when a wealthy man died that he should provide for
his family against all possible chance of want. Any money that there
might be over should not be spent in idle luxuries, but should be given
to further the work of God. He had given much thought to this matter,
and had talked about it to the Imam many times. They were agreed that
the stranger, Shak Lin el Amin, had done more than anyone in recent
years to draw men back to God. In these modern times of machinery and
inventions men who served such things, and more men served them every
year, were tempted to abandon God, to their own utter destruction. El
Amin, brought up to machinery himself and honoured in his calling, had
shown them the folly of these ways, and had shown that only by turning
back to God can men attain to Heaven. His teaching was a firm rock to
which men could cling in a changing world, because it was the teaching
of God. It did not seem to him important that El Amin shared his
teaching with men of other creeds, with Buddhists and with Hindus and
with Sikhs. His teaching was of God, and God knew best.

He therefore directed that the second half of all his moneys in the
banks should be given to El Amin absolutely, since it would be used to
bring men back to God through all the temptations of the new world of
machinery. This was a legacy for a religious purpose in accordance with
the fourth Surah, and must not be disputed. He called everybody to
witness that he was sane in mind and not subject to the influence of
anybody in this bequest, which was made after due consideration for the
furtherance of the works of God.

He was obviously very, very tired after all that. He rested again, and
after a time he said, "God go with you," and we all trooped out.

There was nothing then to stay for, and no more to be learned. We flew
back to Bahrein at once, and went down to Morrison's house for a talk
about it, Nadezna and I. He said it was a perfectly valid will, and it
was quite unlikely that anybody would attempt to upset it. If the
Foreign Office should question it, he would have to testify that it was
made strictly in accordance with Moslem law.

I asked him, "How much do you think is involved?"

"I simply haven't an idea," he said. "I'd only be guessing if I told you
a figure. But it's a very large sum of money."

Nadezna said, "But Connie won't live to use it. It's given for his
religious work. And he's a dying man."

Morrison bit his lip. "I know," he said. "That's just the hell of it.
It's going to pass practically straight into other hands."

There was nothing to be done about it, and we went on with our work as
usual. We heard of Connie from time to time as he ranged through the
East, never staying longer than two days in any place. We heard once
that he was in Patiala in the north of India, and three weeks later he
was at Ratmalana airport at Colombo, and again, he was at Hyderabad, and
again, at Chittagong. He went to Chiengmai and to Songkhla in Siam, and
down to Singapore, where he spent several days.

It went on like that for about six weeks longer, and still the old
Sheikh lingered on in his palace at Baraka. He must have been very
tough. But then one day the inevitable happened, and Morrison rang me up
to say that the old man had died during the night.

"What happens now?" I asked.

He said, "Well, the burial will be today and then there's three days of
official mourning usually. I imagine we shall hear something from Wazir
Hussein about the end of the week."

He didn't, but I did. The Hudson came to my office a few days later
while I was dictating to Nadezna; we packed that up and I went out to
meet them. The Wazir had a youngish man with him, richly dressed in Arab
clothes and speaking perfect English; this was Fahad the eldest son, the
new Sheikh, who had been educated at Shrewsbury and Balliol. He was then
a man of about thirty, I should say.

I ordered coffee for them, but Fahad was of the new school and did not
wait till we had sipped our coffee before starting on the business that
had brought him to my office.

"I am sure you know what we are here for, Mr. Cutter," he said. "My
father, who died recently, left a bequest to Shak Lin, as of course you
know. It is now a matter of implementing his wishes."

I nodded. "I was very sorry indeed to hear of your father's death," I
said. "He was a great man, and a very good one." He bowed and I went on,
"The sister of Shak Lin is in the next room. Do you wish her to come
in?"

He said, "If you please."

I went and called Nadezna, and she left her typewriter, and the two Arab
noblemen got up and bowed to her, unusual in the East. I told her
briefly what had happened, and gave her a chair. Then Fahad said,

"Where is El Amin now, Mr. Cutter?"

"I don't know exactly," I replied. "He's travelling from aerodrome to
aerodrome, staying no more than two days in each place. He has been in
Malaya and in Siam, but when we last heard about ten days ago he was
making his way back through Burma and East Pakistan to India again. I
expect we could find out quite quickly where he is by the radio and Air
Traffic Control."

Wazir Hussein asked, "Does he know that my late master gave a legacy
into his care for the work of God?"

"I haven't told him." I turned to Nadezna. She shook her head, and said,
"I thought it better not to."

"I think that probably he knows nothing about it," I said. "I have told
nobody. I don't suppose Captain Morrison talked about it either."

Fahad said, "It seems probable that he knows nothing about it, then."
The coffee came at that point, and he waited till Dunu had put it on the
table and gone out, and shut the door behind him. And then he said, "In
that case, I should like to go to see him, with Wazir Hussein, to tell
him that this thing is done because it was my father's wish, and mine
also, that he should have this money to be used for God. Can you provide
an aeroplane for us to travel to him in?"

"Of course," I said. "I can fix up that. How many will there be?"

He said, "If possible, I think the Sister should be present."

Nadezna said, "I should be glad to come, Sheikh."

I said, "Would you like me to come? That's just as you wish. I can send
Gujar Singh to pilot the machine, or, if you wish, I'll pilot it myself.
Just as you like."

Fahad said, "If you can spare the time, I should like you to come too,
Mr. Cutter. The sum involved is a large one, and it would be well that
witnesses to the Majlis of my father should be present. And you are a
completely independent witness, which perhaps was why my father asked
for you."

I said, "I can come." And then I said, "How much money is involved in
this legacy? I don't want to ask impertinent questions, but if it is a
very large sum it may need some thought. Because, as you know, Shak Lin
is a sick man."

Fahad said, "I know that, Mr. Cutter. That has been in our minds, too,
but my father's will must first be carried out before we think of
anything else. As regards the sum, it seems to be about five hundred and
twenty lakhs."

"Five hundred and twenty _lakhs_?" I repeated. A lakh of rupees is a
hundred thousand rupees. I calculated quickly in my head--fifty-two
million rupees. "You mean, about four million pounds?"

"Probably a little less," said Fahad. "Just under four million pounds, I
think."

It may have been tactless before Moslems, but I said "Christ!" It's
always a bit of a shock when the fairy tale comes true, and though I had
heard for years that the old Sheikh had an income from the oil royalties
that was a good deal more than half a million pounds a year, I had never
believed it. I knew, of course, that he was wealthy, but sums such as
that are bordering on fantasy, and one assumes instinctively that there
is gross exaggeration somewhere. However, here it was, and it was true.
The old man had just under eight million pounds in his various bank
accounts, all in current accounts because of his hatred of usury. And by
his will, one half of that sum was now due to Connie.

Fahad and Hussein were quite phlegmatic about parting with this vast
sum, as well they might be, because the half that the family retained
was free of any sort of tax or death duty. The income from the oil
royalties was so vastly in excess of the requirements of their modest
and ascetic way of life that the accumulated savings represented nothing
but a burden and a responsibility. The old Sheikh had no idea of using
money in the modern way; it was beyond his mental power to visualise the
construction of roads, schools, hospitals, or sewage schemes as free
gifts to his people; he would have thought that pampering them and
leading them away from God into a life of sinful ease. Fahad, of course,
had plenty of modern ideas, but he was new to the Sheikhdom and had much
prejudice to contend with. It would be many years before he could spend
even the annual income from the royalties. I really think that they were
happy and relieved that the old man had discovered a means of letting
down the pressure in the Treasury for the service of God through El
Amin.

We talked about this for a time, and then it became imperative to
organise the journey to see Connie. There was a tendency for the party
to grow on the Arab side; a cook was necessary to free the Sheikh from
worries over eating unclean food, a servant or two were very desirable,
and so on. I decided to take the Carrier as being bigger and more
suitable than one of the little old Airtrucks, still doing yeoman
service, and I warned Gujar Singh that I should want him to come with
me on the flight, starting the day after tomorrow.

I took the Arabs up to the Control office then. Conditions were fairly
good, and Alec Scott was in touch with Karachi by radio telephone. We
got them to relay an enquiry to Air Traffic Control at Calcutta, and
within a quarter of an hour we had our information. The Proctor had left
Patna that morning for Benares; it was believed to be going on to
Cawnpore, Agra, and Delhi.

We caught up with them at Agra five days later.

Agra, of course, is where the Taj Mahal is, the incredibly lovely and
enormous tomb erected by a Moslem king to his beloved wife. To us Agra
meant something different to that. It has a huge three-runway aerodrome
with a long range of hangars and workshops; it is one of the principal
bases of the Indian Air Force. There must have been thirty Dakotas
parked there when we joined the circuit, and a mass of other aircraft.

Gujar was chief pilot for the flight and was flying the Carrier in for
the landing; as we went round I scanned this mass of aircraft from the
co-pilot's window to see if I could see the Proctor. And then I saw it.
It was parked on the tarmac between two Dakotas, and there was a great
crowd of people round it; looking carefully I could see a figure
standing on the wing beside the fuselage. I went quickly through into
the cabin and pointed the machine out to Nadezna and the Arabs.

Then we landed, and taxied round the perimeter track to the Control
Tower and stopped engines on the tarmac. I knew that Connie and Arjan
Singh would have seen and recognised the Carrier as it came in, and they
were expecting us because I had got a message to them at Cawnpore. It
did not seem to be a very good thing to break in on their religious
meeting, and so we cleared the necessary formalities regarding the
aircraft, and telephoned for rooms at a hotel, and laid on two taxis,
and then sat and waited until Connie and Arjan Singh turned up.

They came about half an hour later, driven by two officers of the
Indian Air Force in a jeep, and followed on foot by a great crowd of
enlisted men, all Indian, of course. I had not seen Connie for some
months, nor had Nadezna, but we were both shocked at the change in him.
With our intellects, of course, we had known that there must be a
change, but I hadn't visualised it. He was thinner than ever, and
obviously weak; when we saw him first, too, he was very tired because he
had been speaking for over an hour. He was much paler than I remembered
him, and he had lost a good deal of his hair, so that he looked ten
years older. Sudden movements seemed to hurt him in his chest and
abdomen.

He was very glad to see us all. I think he realised what the presence of
the Arabs meant, because after a formal salutation in Arabic he said at
once to Fahad, "Is your Father, the Sheikh of Khulal, well?"

The Arab said, "My Father is with God."

I broke in at that point, and insisted that we all went down to the
hotel. The taxis were waiting, and I didn't like the look of Connie a
bit; to start on a discussion of the legacy standing on the tarmac out
in the heat of the sun, with all sorts of people listening, seemed very
unwise. So we drove down to the Grand Hotel, and found it a big,
spacious building in the grand style, now sliding into shabbiness and
neglect since the departure of the British. In the vast place there were
only two or three other guests, and we got a row of rooms in a ground
floor arcade that opened on to a garden.

Connie and Arjan Singh shared a room as they were accustomed to do; it
was only later that I came to know how much Arjan had done for Connie in
those months, how good a nurse this robber baron with his great black
beard had been. I got hold of Arjan Singh while Connie was having his
bath and had a talk with him in my room. He said that Connie had never
been actually ill in the sense that he had been unable to travel or to
speak to his religious meetings, but he agreed that it was very near the
time when he would have to give it up. He said that he slept very
little, but rested a great deal; Arjan encouraged this, and kept him
lying on the charpoy for as much as seventeen or eighteen hours in the
day, only allowing him up to travel or to visit the aerodromes. He said
that recently Connie had suffered a good deal from pains in his bones.

I asked if they were in money difficulties, if their travelling way of
life could be made easier for Connie if they had more money. He said
that money would make no difference. They were very seldom allowed to
pay for anything; accommodation, taxis or gharries, and food were
invariably provided for them free or paid for by the generosity of
aircraft operators on the aerodromes. Landing fees were always remitted,
wherever they went, except in Malaya, which was British territory;
apparently the British civil servants didn't view religious travellers
in quite the same way as Asiatics. He said that after nearly six months
travelling they had spent no more than about four hundred rupees between
them, and they had ample for their needs.

I asked him when it would be convenient for Connie to meet the Arabs,
and he said that after dinner would be the best time; he said that
Connie ate very little now, but that his evening meal was the best of
the day, usually curry and rice and some fruit. After that he was alert
and at his best, and Arjan suggested that the Arabs might come along at
about eight o'clock or so to Connie's room, and we could all talk there.
In that way it would be possible for him to recline on the bed if he
felt like it.

I went and told Wazir Hussein this proposal, and then I went to tell
Nadezna, but she was in with Connie. I dined alone in the hotel
dining-room that night because the Arabs ate privately in their own
rooms food prepared by their own cook. After dinner we all met in
Connie's room.

There weren't enough chairs, so we sent the hotel boys to get some more,
and presently we were all sitting in a row on hard, upright cane chairs
in the bedroom, while Connie sat upon the bed, the mosquito net turned
back over his head.

Wazir Hussein told the story to begin with. He said that his late
master, the Sheikh Abd el Kadir, had been greatly troubled in his mind
in his last years about the disposal of his money. After much thought
he had decided that one half of his cash savings should be given to God,
and they were then puzzled as to how this was to be done. Baraka was a
small town that had a very good mosque already, and his master felt that
if great sums of money were spent in the district the people of the
country would become debauched. They decided that the money must be
spent outside Baraka, and at one time they had played with the idea of
spending two or three million pounds upon the erection of a vast new
mosque in Bahrein. Then Shak Lin had appeared, the new Teacher whose
ideas were refreshing and bringing up-to-date the old tenets of Islam
without in any way destroying their original purity. His master had
become convinced that this new teaching would spread through the Asiatic
world and bring men back to God, and that if the spiritual power of El
Amin were supported by the more material power of a great legacy to be
devoted to religious purposes, then the new Teaching would be placed
upon a firm foundation to the greater glory of God. Before the full
Majlis, with some other witnesses, he had therefore left one half of his
cash savings to El Amin absolutely, and this cash amounted to about five
hundred and twenty lakhs of rupees.

Fahad, the new Sheikh, spoke then. He said that his father had made this
decision after talking to him privately, and that he had agreed that
this legacy was a fitting and a proper use for the money. He was
entirely in agreement with his father's wishes, and he awaited a lead as
to the disposal of the money.

I said a very few words then. I said that the late Sheikh had invited me
to be present at the Majlis, which was a most unusual honour for an
Englishman. Captain Morrison had been there, too. The old man was
undoubtedly in full possession of all his faculties, and I had no doubt
that this legacy was the result of prolonged and careful thought upon
his part. Captain Morrison had told me afterwards that in his view the
legacy was valid and completely legal, and that if any question were
raised, he would advise the British Foreign Office so.

Connie said then, "I am very conscious of the honour that my old friend,
the Sheikh Abd el Kadir, has paid me. Let me think for a few minutes."

He sat silent on the bed before us, his eyes on the floor. Then he got
up and went to the door, and pushed aside the netted frame, and went out
into the garden. There was a moon, and as we sat there in the bedroom we
could see him through the netted door walking up and down upon the lawn
in the moonlight. We sat there talking in low tones about unimportant
things; I would have liked to smoke, but in that company of religious
non-smokers that was hardly possible. There was a bowl of grapes upon
the table, and we ate a few of these.

He must have been away for nearly an hour. At last he came in from the
garden and sat down upon the bed again. He was calm and thoughtful when
he spoke.

"My teaching has no need of temples," he said. "My temples are the
fitters' shop, the tool room, and the hangar on the aerodrome. Nor do I
need priests for what I teach, because each man who finds God in his
daily work by working in a shop with other men, he is a priest for me."

He paused. "The Sheikh of Khulal was my friend," he said. "In the last
years it has been one of the great pleasures of my life to visit him and
talk to him about the ways of God with man, because he was kind and
thoughtful, and compassionate to humble men, and wise beyond all belief.
I knew that he intended this legacy; he told me when I visited him four
months ago for the last time. I did not worry him in his last days by
refusing his great kindness, even though I knew that it must be refused.
If I did wrong in that, I ask your pardon."

Fahad cleared his throat. "It was not for temples or for priests alone
that my father intended this money," he said. "I think he meant it for a
pension fund in part, that men who turn to God in daily work and yet
fall into ill-health or distress should be assisted by this money to
regain their powers, or to die in peace. Also, he thought that men who
followed your way of teaching should be helped to travel to far
countries, where by their lives and work they would draw other men to
God by their example."

Connie smiled a little. "Men who follow my teaching become good
workmen," he said, "because good work and right thinking are as one.
Such men need no money to help them travel, for if such a one should
wish to leave his country and work, say, in Hong Kong to teach my ways,
he will find there is a manager who will agree to pay his fare because
he wants him in the shop. As for the old and the sick, you have
provision for them in the Koran of the blessed Prophet. If this money is
for them, it would be better that the Imam should dispose of it, not
me."

There was silence in the bedroom. Presently he spoke again. "I have no
possessions," he said. "Only the clothes I wear, my kit of fine tools
and micrometers, and three or four hundred rupees. These things should
go to my sister after I am dead. Because I have nothing of value,
nothing of responsibility, nothing but the memory of my words will
remain. That is the way I want it."

Gujar Singh spoke up. "Teacher," he said, "I know that what you say is
true. Yet all the older creeds have found a use for money, and in some
cases a good use. In Penang and many other places the Christians, the
Roman Catholics and other Christian sects, maintain large buildings as
schools and as homes for orphan children. Such deeds are good deeds, but
the buildings have to be paid for. In that case the power of money has
been used to do good things in the name of Jesus. May not the power of
this money be used to do good things in your name, too?"

Connie said drily, "I hope you're not comparing me with Jesus."

Gujar said defiantly, "I know that it is not the same. He was a
woodworker."

Connie smiled. "Okay," he said. "Have it your own way. But Jesus didn't
need five hundred lakhs to spread His word."

He was silent again, but presently he said, "This money is power. Great
money is great power. But power has no place in what I teach; I do not
teach men to be managers. I teach them to do good work and so serve God.
Whether they sit at the manager's desk or whether they sweep the floor
of the hangar is one to me. I shall die very soon. If I should receive
this money, someone must administer it after me. And power corrupts.

"Many evils spring from power," he said. "Even from the power to do
good. _All_ power corrupts, and the intention to do good has little
influence on the corruption. Either my words will last after me and be
believed by men, or else they won't. Yet if one thing were required to
kill them certainly, it is that my words should be spread after my death
by the power of money. No teaching could survive a campaign of paid
advertising."

There was a long silence. "I cannot take this money," he said at last.
"Let there be schools and orphanages, and let my name be on the schools
and orphanages if you wish, as one who loved Sheikh Abd el Kadir, but
let these schools and orphanages be in Baraka. Let Baraka be a centre
for learning and security in the Persian Gulf, so that no child, from
Abadan to Muscat, shall need a home and not find one. And let there be a
school for engineers, and an airstrip with hangars where men can learn
my calling and my way of life, and find their way to God by doing
first-class work. But let all these things be in Baraka and Khulal, to
the honour of Sheikh Abd el Kadir and his friend."

He got up from the bed and said, "God go with you," in dismissal, and we
all went out into the arcade, leaving Nadezna alone with him. The Arabs
did not seem disconcerted at the refusal of the legacy; perhaps they had
expected something of the sort. They did not discuss the matter then,
but said good-night with friendliness and courtesy, and went to their
rooms. I think Fahad had some cause for satisfaction from the doings of
the evening. Money meant nothing to him, as I have said; it would be
years before he could spend even the income of the oil royalties. But an
explicit direction from El Amin such as he had now received, to set up
schools and orphanages for the whole of the Persian Gulf in Khulal was a
help to him in dealing with the prejudice and reaction that was
hindering the reforms he wished to make. A start was made on buildings
for the orphanage and for the elementary school within three months of
his return to Baraka.

I was left in the arcade with Gujar and Arjan; for a time we walked up
and down upon the stone flags in the moonlight. "Everything has now been
renounced," Gujar said at last. "No more temptations can be left. This
was the final one, the temptation of Power to do Good."

Neither Arjan or I had anything to say to that, and we walked for a time
in silence, the two Sikhs and I, each busy with our own thoughts.

At last I said, "What comes next, Arjan? He can't go on like this for
very much longer. Do you know what he wants to do when the end gets
near?"

He said, "I know that. He wants to go back to where it all began, to a
place called Damrey Phong. I have never been there, but he says that you
and Gujar know it. Is it in Cambodia?"

"That's right," I said. "It's a very rural little village with one
tarmac strip, about twelve hundred yards, I should think. It's about two
hundred and fifty miles south-east from Bangkok, ten or twelve miles in
from the coast, on a river. That's where he wants to go to, is it?"

"That is where he wants to go to live until he dies," he said. "He has
told me that if he should become ill suddenly, wherever we may be, I am
to put him in the Proctor and fly quickly to Damrey Phong."

"I see..." I thought for a minute. "It's not on the map," I said. "I
think the village may be shown, but there was no airstrip marked on my
map. I can pencil it in for you in the morning. It's not difficult to
find, though. When you're two hundred miles out from Bangkok, start
looking for a peninsula like a hammer, with a little island off the
south head of the hammer. Go on about fifteen miles and you'll find the
mouth of the river. The strip is about ten or twelve miles up the
river, on the west side, between the river and a ruddy great mountain
about two thousand feet high. You want to watch it when you're on the
circuit; it's a place rather like Penang."

"Is there a good house there?" he asked. "A house where I can care for
him until he dies?"

I bit my lip. "I shouldn't think there is. There were two European
houses by the strip, but that's three years ago. I shouldn't think
they'd be much good by now, and the hangar had already fallen down. He
definitely wants to go there, does he?"

Arjan Singh nodded. "That is where he wants to go to die."

We walked a few paces in silence. "I'll see if I can get something
organised there, then," I said. "With five hundred and twenty lakhs
going spare, there's no reason why he shouldn't die in comfort."

I put the matter to Fahad in the morning. "There's so little we can do
for him, Sheikh," I said. "He will take nothing for himself. But if he
goes to this place Damrey Phong for his last few months, he ought to
have a house suitable for a sick man and a friend or two, and perhaps a
doctor. And I think there should be a hangar for his aeroplane; in such
a place he ought to have an aeroplane to keep in contact with Bangkok.
Moreover, aeroplanes are his life's work. I can provide the aeroplane
and a spare engine for it, and Arjan Singh wishes to stay with El Amin
till he dies, so there will be a pilot. Will you provide the house and
the hangar? I do not think that it can cost so much as one lakh."

He said, "I will do that gladly." We talked about it for a little time.
"Surely," he said, "something should be done at once, because the matter
is now urgent. Within a month he will be wanting to go there to die."

"I know," I said.

"Where is this place, Damrey Phong?" he said. "Is it possible for us to
fly there now, and engage men to start the buildings?"

"We could do that," I said. "It would take us about two days to get
there, by way of Calcutta and Bangkok."

"Let us ask El Amin if he will allow us to do that."

We went to see Connie, with the Wazir. Arjan and Nadezna were in his
room, so we were all together. He was resting on the bed. "Look,
Connie," I said, "we've been talking about what happens next." And then
I told him what we proposed.

He was pleased at the idea. "I want to go back there," he said. "If
you're going to do any building, keep it small and simple, so that
simple people will come and see me. I'd like a bedroom with a veranda
facing on the strip, and the hangar at right angles to the house, so
that if I'm in bed on the veranda I can see into the hangar, and the
aircraft landing and taking off on the strip, and everything that's
going on."

"Okay," I said. "We'll have it like that. Now, Connie, there's another
thing. Mad Jasmi, down in Bali--she wanted to come and cook for you and
wash your clothes when you had to stop travelling. Would you like to
have her there, or shall we give that a miss?"

"I'd like to have her," he said. "She'd be all right there. It's not so
very different to her own place. If I hadn't been such a fool I should
have married her."

"I'll see that she gets there," I said.

"Will you see that she gets back again to Bali after my death?" he
asked. "She wouldn't be happy knocking around the world in towns or
cities."

"No," I said. "I'll see that she gets back there right away."

There was one more thing. "Connie," I said, "we're going on to Damrey
Phong from here, but none of us speak a word of Cambodian or Siamese.
Can we make contact with anybody in Bangkok who can come with us to
Damrey and act as an agent?"

"Tan Khoon Prasit," he said. "He's in Bangkok, and he's a friend of
mine. He'll fix you up with everything you want. I'll give you a letter
to him."

We all left Agra that afternoon. Connie and Arjan Singh went on to Delhi
in the Proctor, and the Arabs and Nadezna and Gujar and I went to
Calcutta in the Carrier. We stopped the night there and took off at dawn
next day for Bangkok, and got there about midday after a six-hour
flight.

I had sent a telegram to Tan Khoon Prasit, and he was on the aerodrome
to meet us, a small, smiling Siamese who spoke good English. He was in
the Treasury and he had something to do with the Government's air line,
Siamese Airways. With the pull he had at Don Muang airport everything
was made very easy for us, and we were driving down to the city with him
within half an hour of landing.

He took us to his house, a villa on the outskirts of the town. He had
Chinese tea for us, served ceremonially in little cups without handles,
somewhat in the manner of Turkish coffee in the Persian Gulf, and then
we settled down to tell him our story and what we wanted. It soon
appeared that he himself was a follower of Shak Lin; he said that his
teaching had influenced aircraft maintenance in Bangkok very much, both
in the air line and in the Air Force. He had been a passenger on the
Dakota that had gone from Bangkok to Bali to pay homage to the Teacher,
and he remarked that he had noticed then how ill he looked.

He was practical and helpful over Damrey Phong. He said that the
district was still held by the Viet Minh forces, but no fighting had
taken place there ever, or was likely to do so. So far as he knew, the
airstrip had not been used since Dwight Schafter had left it; he had
never heard of anybody going there. He could supply an interpreter to go
with us to Damrey if we liked and to negotiate any settlement that might
be necessary with the local authorities before we started to build on
the airstrip. He did not think there would be any difficulty at all. He
suggested that he might make contact with the Buddhist hierarchy in
Bangkok, who thought so highly of Shak Lin and of his teaching, and who
might wish to send a priest with us to smooth out any points that might
arise on the religious side.

We left next day with a young Siamese on board called Khun Phra Sanid
and a Buddhist monk in a yellow robe whose name was Boonchuey, which
means Helped by Merit. We came to Damrey Phong about an hour and a half
later, and I circled it at about five hundred feet a couple of times. It
all looked much the same; the two European houses were still there and
apparently occupied, but the roof of one of them had been thatched with
palm leaves, which didn't look so good.

The strip looked all right still, but I brought the Carrier down and
flew ten feet up along the length of it while Gujar Singh and I studied
the surface from our windows. It was crumbling somewhat at the edges and
paddy melons were encroaching on it in parts and spreading over the hot
tarmac, but we saw no holes. I took her up again and made a circuit and
came in on a long, straight approach, and put her down.

She came to a standstill opposite the houses; I stopped engines and left
her where she was; nobody else was likely to want the runway. We all got
out, and the two Siamese began talking to the people who came out from
the houses and from the town. They remembered the Carrier, and they
remembered Gujar Singh and me from our visit to the place three years
before. They said that no aeroplane had visited Damrey since then. They
asked at once about Connie.

The two houses weren't too bad. One of them needed a new roof, and most
of the glass windows had been broken, but although white ants had been
at them a bit there was nothing that a few carpenters could not put
right. Fahad told Khun Phra Sanid to buy them right away, and we flew
back to Bangkok in the evening.

That night the Arabs chartered the Carrier from me for an indefinite
period, with Gujar Singh to fly it. All the building materials and
labour that were required could be obtained in Bangkok and flown to
Damrey in the Carrier, with hospital equipment and linen, and everything
necessary for a sick man. Nadezna stayed with them to organise that part
of it. They got corrugated iron sheets, too, and steel angles for the
framework of the hangar, and cement for the floor; all these things were
to go to Damrey in the Carrier in repeated trips.

I could do nothing much to help all these arrangements, and my business
in Bahrein required me urgently. I left all this to go ahead and flew to
Mergui in a Fairchild Argus of Siamese Airways, having cabled to Hosein
to pick me up there on his way back from Bali in the Tramp. He arrived a
day later, and two days after that I was back in Bahrein telling Captain
Morrison about it, and tackling the huge pile of paper on my desk.

A fortnight after that Mad Jasmi got to Damrey Phong. I sent a letter
down to Phinit at Pekendang and told him to explain to her that the time
had now come when she could go to Shak Lin in the quiet place beside the
airstrip that she knew about before any of us, to cook his food and wash
his clothes. She put on her jacket as a concession to foreign ways and
took a small rush basket with a few things in it, and got into the great
aircraft with Hosein and his passengers, and went off as nonchalantly as
the most seasoned traveller. Hosein put down at Mergui in Tenasserim as
he had done for me, and Nadezna met her with the Argus there, and flew
her to Damrey Phong by way of Bangkok.

Fahad was a good organiser, and he got the buildings up and ready in a
very short time. He got the hospital equipment that he needed in
Bangkok, because it was all simple stuff. Then Gujar Singh suggested
that there ought to be electric light, which meant a motor generator
set, and if they had electricity they might as well have a radio
telephony equipment that would enable them to keep in contact with
Bangkok. They appealed to me for these things, and I flew to Cairo in an
Airtruck and got them there, and sent them down to Mergui on the next
Tramp flight, and Gujar picked them up from there and took them to
Damrey Phong. I sent a spare engine for the Proctor too, because it
seemed to me that Connie's engine must be near its time, and with it I
sent down a kit of spares and tools in case he wanted to do the overhaul
of the old engine there himself. I had a hunch that possibly it was the
kind of job that he might like to potter about with, on days when he
was feeling well enough to work.

About six weeks after we had met him at Agra, his tour came to an end.
He was talking from the wing of the Proctor to a crowd of engineers and
pilots at Vizagapatam when he had some kind of a stroke and was unable
to go on talking, and he might have fallen but for the fact that Arjan
Singh was up there on the wing behind him, probably with that in mind.
He was deaf on his left side after that, and the sight of his left eye
was somewhat dimmed, and he decided to give up. Arjan Singh put him in
the back seat of the Proctor where he could lie at ease, and flew him in
two days to Damrey Phong by way of Calcutta, Akyab, Rangoon and Bangkok.

Nadezna told me that he was pathetically glad to see the Balinese girl,
Mad Jasmi, waiting for him there. She said that he could hardly take
his eyes off her on the first day, ill though he was.

He hadn't been there a week before the first Dakota-load of pilgrims
came. They were Buddhists from Rangoon. Gujar had brought the Arab party
back to Bahrein the day before, but Arjan Singh was there, and the
Buddhist priest, Boonchuey. There were about forty pilgrims, and when
the Dakota taxied to a standstill they got out and came and sat down in
rows in front of the houses, patient and orderly, waiting for a sight of
the Teacher. In spite of the protests of Nadezna and Mad and the
Siamese nurse, Connie got up from his bed and went and sat on the
veranda steps and talked to them for an hour, mostly about maintenance
schedules on the Dakota aircraft. The Buddha was still in the same
position at the edge of the airstrip, getting a bit weather-beaten now,
and in the evening he went there with Boonchuey and knelt with the
pilgrim engineers while the Buddhist monk held some kind of a service.

That was all right, perhaps, but there was no provision for feeding and
housing forty pilgrims on the airstrip; they slept in the aircraft and
in the hangar and all over the place, and ate the small village out of
all its food supplies. That was no matter because Damrey Phong is in a
rice-growing district and the pilgrims paid for their meals. The
villagers made money out of them, and looked for the next aircraft
eagerly.

It came a few days later, this time from Calcutta, and with it came news
of others on the way. Arjan Singh paid the villagers with money left
with him by Wazir Hussein to build an atap dormitory hut, a simple
affair that consisted of little but a board floor raised two feet above
the ground, a thatched roof, and a lot of charpoys or string beds. The
Hindus behaved well, but they were troubled by the Buddha, and they came
to Arjan in a body before leaving and asked if there might be a Hindu
shrine or temple there as well. He said that the Teacher would welcome
it, and that Hindus might put up what they liked, provided that it was
well back from the runway and generally in the line of the other
buildings.

Arjan Singh wrote letters about all this to Wazir Hussein to account for
the money he was spending, and Nadezna wrote to me every week. The Wazir
turned up in my office one day rather concerned about what was going on,
because it seemed that two or three Dakotas full of Moslems had been
there, and there was no mosque at Damrey Phong. There was a little
Buddhist temple which the villagers were building up themselves out of
the profits of the catering and urged on by Boonchuey, and a Bengali
jute merchant had provided three lakhs of rupees for quite an imposing
Hindu temple. The Wazir said that his young master was distressed to
hear that there was no mosque on the strip and no Imam, and that he
proposed to make good these deficiencies immediately. I said, of course,
I thought that it would be a very good thing.

Connie had been there for over four months before I was able to free
myself from my business in Bahrein for long enough to go down there
again to see him--and Nadezna. I had replaced her in the office by an
Iraqi shorthand typist, but he wasn't really any help to me; he could
never act upon his own initiative to relieve me, as Nadezna had done
every day. There came a time, however, when I realised that unless I
went to Damrey soon I might not see Connie again, and so I called in
Gujar Singh and told him to get on with it, and cabled Arjan to meet me
with the Proctor at Mergui, and went down on the Tramp with Hosein.

Arjan told me when I met him that a load of pilgrims came in almost
every day, and sometimes two in one day; in fact, we got to Damrey Phong
about the same time as a Dakota from Ceylon and had to make another
circuit while it landed ahead of us and got off the runway. They had got
into the swing of handling the pilgrims by that time. He told me that
they had never had any sort of trouble, even when Moslems and Hindus had
arrived together; this was probably because, being technicians, they
were all fairly well-educated men, made more broadminded, too, by
travel. To prevent any risk of clashes, however, he had had separate
dormitory huts put up for each of the three main religions, and these
stood each behind its own temple in an orderly array. With all these
buildings, from the air Damrey Phong was starting to look quite a place.

I found Connie in bed on the veranda. He was looking very frail and
white; it did not seem to me that he had very long to go. He no longer
got up to speak to the pilgrims, nor did he pay much attention to them
while I was there. The routine was that they went to prayer at their own
temple, and there the resident priest explained to them that they must
not expect much from the Teacher, who was now a dying man. Then they
would come and sit down on the ground in front of the house where they
could see Connie in his bed, and he went on talking to whoever happened
to be with him, or dozing, paying little or no attention to them. In the
evening they were called to prayer again, and ate, and slept, and took
off again in their aircraft in the morning.

I sat with him on the veranda in the days that I was there for long
periods, watched by all these pilgrims seated on the ground before the
house; after a time one forgot about them, and took no notice. He was
very pleased to see me, and grateful for everything that had been done
to help him. Mad Jasmi sat all day on the veranda steps when she was
not cooking or washing for him, making her palm leaf offerings in the
Balinese way; the Hindu priest had made a special little shrine to Shiva
for her in the temple, and she used to put them there, and pray. When
pilgrims were about she wore her jacket, but at other times she usually
left it off for coolness; when the Buddhist priest Boonchuey came to
talk to Connie, which he did frequently, Mad was banished to the back
quarters with the other women.

Connie liked to talk about the earliest days, when we had met in
Cobham's Circus, when we had done the Gretna Green act together in the
old Ford, when we had been bombed by the crazy-flying Moths and Avros
with little paper bags of flour and rolls of toilet paper, and my skirt
always got torn off. He could still laugh at the recollection of the fun
that we had had together, even though it hurt him to laugh now.

"You've come a long way since those days, Tom," he said once. "You never
thought that you'd end up by running an air line half across the world,
and owning all the assets of the business."

I smiled. "You never thought that pilgrims would be coming from five
thousand miles away to watch you talking to me, and to pray beside your
house."

"No," he said thoughtfully. "No, I'd never have thought of that. It's
funny the way things turn out."

Another time he said, "I didn't want to end up with this sort of
reputation, Tom. All I ever wanted to be was an absolutely first-class
ground engineer, the best in the world. And because the best teacher is
the chap who's only one jump ahead of the pupil, I thought I could teach
others to be first-class chaps. But the truth of it is, you can't do any
job really well unless you're really good yourself. The perfect job
demands a perfect man, and you can't separate the two. I didn't
understand that when I started. It wasn't until I came out to the East
and learned something about religious ideas here that I began to cotton
on to what it was all about."

And another time he said, "They're making legends about me already, Tom.
Try and tone that down. They're paying far too much attention to what
that English pongyi, U Set Tahn, has been saying."

"You mean, about you being born in Tibet or somewhere?"

He nodded. "It's completely wrong. I was born in Penang, and I'm a
British subject. I've got a birth certificate to prove it." He
hesitated. "My father married my mother up at Barkul, true enough. But I
was born in Penang. So that prophecy can't possibly apply to me."

I wasn't quite so sure about that, though I didn't argue the point. Some
Asiatic countries have a different definition of when a man is born.

"Another thing," he said. "U Set Tahn and the Rangoon Buddhists say that
the new Teacher's ministry will last for four years and twenty-three
days. They're trying to pin that one on me, too."

"I know," I said.

"Well, when did I start teaching anybody anything?" he asked
triumphantly. "I don't know myself. I simply haven't a clue."

"When did you first come to Damrey Phong?" I asked.

"Four years ago last Thursday," he said. "I worked it out. But I never
taught anybody anything while I was here. So that one's all wrong, too,
because I was here three months, and I don't suppose I'm going to live
that long. Try and put a stopper on this sort of thing, Tom, if you can.
I want people to remember me as a good ground engineer with both feet on
the ground. Not as a legendary mystic or anything like that."

"I'll do my best," I said. And as I sat there I wondered if he knew when
he had been teaching or if, in those early days, his teaching had been
largely unconscious. U Myin and Chai Tai Foong had both been with him at
Damrey Phong, and they were among the most devout of Connie's followers.

That evening I walked out with Nadezna to the runway in the bright moon,
and we walked up and down it for a time, talking of Connie. And
presently, at the far end where nobody could see us, I took both her
hands, and I said, "What about us? After this is all over, and it must
be soon, I'm afraid--after that, will you marry me?"

She said, "I wanted to tell you about that, Tom." She hesitated. "I'm
not going to marry anybody, ever."

I said quietly, "I don't think that's a very good idea."

She smiled. "I'm sure you don't. But it's what I'm going to do."

I held her a little closer. "Not because of your Chinese father?" I
asked. "It's not reasonable to let that worry you. It doesn't worry me.
You know it doesn't. We can work that out together. I don't want to go
and live in England. All my work, and all my interests are out here,
Nadezna. But it won't be any fun unless you're with me."

She freed herself a little, and I knew that I had failed. "It's not
that, Tom," she said. "I'm not worried about that now. I know that if I
married you we'd get over the mixed marriage side of it all right. But
we'd be letting such an awful lot of people down."

I was puzzled. "Who would we be letting down?" I asked.

She did not answer me directly. "I've learned a great deal since I've
been here with Connie," she said. "You can't help being influenced by
it, Tom--all these aeroplanes that come here every day, at such expense,
full of people who believe in him. People who have spent all their
savings just to make this journey, because Connie is a man that they can
pin their faith to. All they want to do is just to hear him say a few
words, or if that's not possible, then just to see him, or touch
something that he has touched. It's--it's like the Bible, Tom. Like
people that were wanting to see Jesus. They believe in him."

"They haven't been doing any worshipping, have they?" I asked. "Not like
as if he was a God?"

She shook her head. "They haven't been like that. They know that he's a
man, and that he's dying. Gods don't die. But they know, too, or they
think they know, that he is such a man as they will never see again, and
they go away feeling that just to look at him and touch what he has
touched has done them good, and has made their lives complete, and
justified spending all their savings to come all this way. They don't
think that he's a God. But if you asked me if they thought that he was a
man who had attained perfection as Gautama attained it--well, I think a
lot of them do think of him like that. They do."

"You mean, as an example?" I suggested.

"I think that's it," she said. "They venerate him as an example of what
any man can attain to if he can be as wise, and thoughtful, and
self-sacrificing, and as good as Connie."

We stood together in the moonlight for a little, on the runway. Over
against the strip the mountain loomed above us, scented in the warm
night air. "He's my brother, Tom," she said simply. "One never thinks
one's brother can be anything particular. I thought he was just nuts
about religion, and it was all because he'd never had a girl in the
United States, because he was an Asiatic who was out of place. It's not
easy when you're brought up as an Englishman or an American, but you're
really Asiatic, Tom. I know. I thought that Connie was just an ordinary
brother, just like any girl might have. I thought that up till the time
I came here. But now... I'm not so sure."

I was silent. Perhaps I wasn't quite so sure, myself.

"These people that come here to see him," she said presently, "--they
think he's a man, but a man touched by the hand of God, whichever form
of God they happen to believe in. And because that's what they think, it
does them good and gives them something to hang on to. Because, it means
that God still cares about the world, and cares for them. That's why
they come here, Tom. They come to see the evidence that God still cares,
that He has shown that care in making of one man a perfect example, to
show everyone the way to live their lives out in the modern world."

She turned to me. "It's bad luck on us," she said, "but I'm not going to
spoil it for them. If I, Connie's sister, married and had children, and
lived just a normal woman's life, going out shopping in the morning,
going to the movies in the evening while you worked up a bigger business
every year and we made money--it'ld detract from it. Maybe they'd get
to feel that Connie couldn't have been something after all, if his
sister wasn't anything. If they thought that, they'd lose the faith they
have, and with that they'd lose everything that he has worked to give
them. It's in my hands now, Tom, whether what he's started goes ahead or
flops--at least, I think it is. And it's not going to flop."

I cleared my throat. "What are you going to do?"

"It's bad luck on you, Tom," she repeated. "You deserve a better deal
than this. But if Connie could give up love to help along the things
that he believes in, so can I. I don't have to give up children, though.
I'm going to go back to Penang, Tom, where I came from. I'm going to go
to Mother Mary Immaculate and ask if I can start in at the bottom,
working in the orphanage. That's where I came from, and I reckon that'll
be the best thing I can do."

I asked her, "May I come and see you there, sometimes?"

She said, "Please--please don't do that, Tom. And please, don't write."

       *       *       *       *       *

I started on my journey to Bahrein next day, because I couldn't stay
away too long. Connie lived for a month after that, gradually growing
weaker. Then he went into a coma that lasted about thirty hours. He died
just before dawn, and the cremation took place on the same day,
according to the custom in the East.




CHAPTER 11

    Only the road and the dawn, the sun, the wind, and the rain,
    And the watch fire under stars, and sleep, and the road again.

    JOHN MASEFIELD


Damrey Phong has grown a bit since then, but the Proctor still stands in
the same tin hangar, with the engine that Connie took out of it when he
put in the new one standing beside it on an overhaul trestle. He changed
the engines before he got too ill to work and got the old one stripped
down for overhaul with the sump off and the cylinder heads, cylinders,
valves, valve gear, and pistons laid out neatly on a table in rows, all
washed and clean and resting on a blanket. He had to give up then and he
never worked again, and so the job remains just as he left it. The
pilgrims file past every day and look at the Proctor and these engine
parts laid out behind the wooden railing, and most of them kneel down
and say a prayer or two, according to their creed.

It's not quite the same, of course. Sheikh Fahad went there at a very
early stage and had a sort of temple roof, a temple with no walls except
the roof posts, built over the whole lot to protect it from the rains,
so that the two little European houses and the corrugated iron hangar
with the Proctor in it and the very lovely shrine that he set up to hold
the casket of ashes are all under the same wide roof and safe for a
considerable time. The house that Connie died in is kept just the same,
with his bed and his few clothes laid out, all very simple. In the other
house there is a small museum, and here his tools are displayed; he had
quite a lot of fine precision tools and measuring instruments,
micrometers, inside micrometers, feelers, thread gauges, callipers,
vernier gauges--all that sort of thing. These are exposed to view, and
may be touched and handled reverently by the pilgrims if they wish, and
they are kept so carefully cleaned and greased that they are as bright
and new as when he bought them.

In another room there are five pictures, and nothing else. Fahad, as a
Moslem, will have nothing to do with pictures, of course, though I have
been there with him and noticed that he spent a quarter of an hour in
that room with them. Mr. Ghosh, the Bengal jute merchant, commissioned
Evan Stanley to come out from England to paint them, and a committee of
the three priests on the airstrip decided that they should be of Connie
Shak Lin himself, taken from photographs, and of the four people he
loved best. So there is a very good picture of Connie in his stained
khaki shorts and shirt, grave and intent, working on the engine of his
Proctor, which stands in the background of the hangar behind him.

There is one of Arjan Singh, seated in the pilot's seat of the Proctor.
They chose that because so many people had seen Arjan in that six months
with Connie, and had seen how carefully he cared for him on that last
journey.

There is one of Nadezna, a very good one. I can hardly bear to look at
it.

There is one of Mad Jasmi, very sweet, but not quite natural because
she has her jacket on.

And there is one of me, which oughtn't to be there at all.

Things are a bit different at Bahrein, too, on the aerodrome. There was
a considerable demand from the people, backed by Sheikh Fahad, that a
mosque should be built on the bit of vacant land beside the hangar that
Connie had first used for prayers, and that the hangar should continue
to be used for civil aviation so that the Moslem engineers should have
the mosque available for prayer right by the hangar. This meant that the
R.A.F. would have to move away and leave that area undisturbed, although
it is right on the edge of their camp. They have been exceptionally
understanding and farsighted about all this, and have accepted the
considerable inconvenience that must result to them. Their new hangars
are going up at the south end of the north-south runway, nearly a mile
away from their camp. The mosque is going up beside the civil aviation
hangar.

A fair number of pilgrim aircraft come to Bahrein, perhaps one a week.
Most of these are from Egypt or Iraq, places relatively near at hand,
and most of these pilgrims are people who can't afford the long journey
to Damrey Phong. Damrey is the main centre for pilgrimages, of course,
since it was here that Connie's ministry began and finished, but it's a
long way and an expensive journey for them, however much one tries to
cut the rates. I have two new Tramps on order now specially fitted for
pilgrims, and I hope to get the fares down to about sixty per cent of
what one has to charge for a Dakota fare, but it's still an awful lot of
money for an engineer to save. And yet they do it.

Some of them, perhaps one or two machines a month, go further still,
right down to Bali, where Phinit shows them the hangar and the hut in
Pekendang where Connie lived, and Mad Jasmi still sits quietly weaving
her lamaks on the steps, oblivious of the brown people from far lands
who have come to see the relics, of which she is one. I told her,
through Phinit, when I took her back to Bali, that her service to Connie
had been an episode of her youth, tender and lovely to look back upon.
Now, I said, she ought to marry a young man of her people, and have
children like a normal girl. I told her that, but so far there is no
indication at all that she intends to follow my advice.

Nadezna is in Penang, living in the convent and working with the
orphans. She came to some working arrangement with the Mother Superior
and the Bishop that allows her to stay there; although she is far from
being a Catholic or anything else, as yet, the Bishop seems to have
agreed with her desire to be taken out of circulation. Gujar Singh and
Arjan go to see her from time to time when a machine night-stops at
Penang, and they tell me she is well and happy in her work. But I have
not seen her myself since I left Damrey Phong before Connie died, and
it may be that I shall never see her again.

I had several long conferences with Sheikh Fahad and Wazir Hussein in
the months that followed Connie's death. I was lonely and troubled, and
at first there didn't seem to be much point in going on with anything; I
was very tired, and I didn't know what to do. I thought of selling out
my business, to Airservice, perhaps, and going to live at Damrey Phong,
for a time, anyway. It's quiet there, and one can think about things.
But after a time I got settled down, and then it seemed to me that it
would be a better thing to carry on the business and run it in the way
that Connie liked, so that in a materialistic world my air line should
be an example running through Asia to show that men can keep the
aircraft safe by serving God in Connie's way, and yet keep on the black
side of the ledger. I'd go so far as to say, from my experience, that
only by serving God in this way can you keep out of the red.

So we go on as we did before. Sheikh Fahad is very anxious to do
everything he can to help the pilgrims, and after one or two talks he
asked me if I could find and operate some very economical machines
equipped solely for the job. I borrowed from him, as I had borrowed from
his father, the capital to order two new Tramps, short-range machines
with rather longer fuselages equipped solely for the pilgrim traffic,
and I hope to get these out to the Persian Gulf next month. I think at
some time in the future I shall move my main base to Baraka.

These technical alterations have meant that the delivery time of the two
Tramps has been extended to three months. I have taken that time in
England as a holiday, leaving Gujar Singh in charge, because it was
nearly three years since I had been home, and I was stale, and tired,
and nervy. Before I left, Sheikh Fahad told me of his new project, the
Six Books.

I think the Six Books are a very good idea. Already people are beginning
to say that Connie was divine, and legends are already growing up about
him. They are inventing quite fictitious miracles which he is supposed
to have performed, although he never did anything of the sort. Sheikh
Fahad's idea is that the people who had most to do with Connie should
write down what they know about him in a book, now, while the memory is
still fresh and before these stupid legends have had time to grow. In
that way proper evidence of what he was and what he did will be set down
by people who knew him at first hand. Sheikh Fahad has engaged three
scribes who between them speak English and Arabic and Burmese and
Siamese and Balinese, to help those who aren't very handy at writing to
get their evidence down on paper in a coherent form, and to edit all Six
Books. When they are all done, the Sheikh is going to have them
translated into several Asiatic languages, and possibly into English
also, so that men who maintain aircraft and believe in Connie may know
exactly what he said and did.

So first there is to be the Book of the Sister, which will tell us about
Connie's early life and about his private life in Bahrein, and about his
last months at Damrey Phong.

Next, there is the Book of Myin, which will tell about his first period
at Damrey Phong under Dwight Schafter, when his ministry began.

The third book is the Book of Tarik, which is a very detailed record of
his sayings in the hangar at Bahrein. There is good material for this,
because Tarik was in the habit of writing down everything he could in
penny exercise books, in Arabic, and there are about thirty of these
books for the scribes to consult.

The fourth book is the Book of Phinit, which is an account of Connie's
life in Bali, and of Mad Jasmi and her love for him.

The fifth book is the Book of Arjan, which deals with everything that
happened on the six months' tour they made together in the Proctor, in
which they visited so many aerodromes while Connie gradually grew
weaker.

The sixth and last book is this one, the Book of Cutter. It's obviously
right that anybody who can put down on paper any first-hand knowledge of
Connie's life should do so, but Fahad asked me to go further than that,
and put down anything about my own life that I thought would make the
picture complete, and explain to future generations why I did the things
I did which ultimately reacted upon Connie. So I have put down
everything that I could think of that would make the story a complete
one, and if Fahad's editors find any part of it unnecessary they can cut
it out.

I have been glad to have this three months at home in England, in our
little house in Southampton between the gas works and the docks. Dad
goes out to work each day, of course, and Mum is busy about the house
and in the kitchen, and I have been able to write quietly all day in the
back bedroom that we all slept in as boys. It's a good thing to get out
of the East for a job like this, because you can look back and see what
happened in perspective, and that helps.

Mum and Dad want me to stay in England now and find a job here. They
don't think the East has done me any good, and that's rather sad,
because I think it's done me all the good in the world. I know that I
don't think about things now in quite the same way as I used to, and
that in England people think me a bit queer. I know that in the aircraft
industry there's a good deal of talk about my operations based upon the
garbled tales that have got through to England. People are saying that
I've been out in the East too long, and I've gone round the bend. Maybe
I have, but then, I think that being round the bend is the best place to
be. So I shall go back to Bahrein as soon as these two Tramps are ready
for delivery.

And now, at the conclusion of this book, I still don't know what to
think about Connie. To me he was always an ordinary person, a good
friend from my youth, a very fine engineer, a very good man. He's still
that to me--I think. But as I have sat here for the last three months in
our back bedroom, writing down everything that I can remember about him,
and meditating, I am beginning to wonder if I have been right. So many
men, of so many races, are now turning to the memory of him, moulding
their lives upon his example, praying that they may be made as he was.
Could any human man exert such influence after his death? What makes a
man divine?

I can't answer my own questions. I still think Connie was a human man, a
very, very good one--but a man. I have been wrong in my judgments many
times before; if now I am ignorant and blind, I'm sorry, but it's no new
thing. If that should be the case, though, it means that I have had
great privileges in my life, perhaps more so than any man alive today.
Because it means that on the fields and farms of England, on the
airstrips of the desert and the jungle, in the hangars of the Persian
Gulf and on the tarmacs of the southern islands, I have walked and
talked with God.






[End of Round the Bend, by Nevil Shute]
