A Happy Landing
WHEN Henry Whyte emerged from protected adolescence to face the wide and very wicked world he was arrayed in the uniform of an officer of the Royal Air Force, and he was sent up into the blue to battle with his country’s enemies. Fortunately for him, that was in the summer of 1918 when German air power was paralysed, and thus he received a sporting chance of survival.
Perhaps it was that he happened to be the seventh son of a seventh son, or it might have been that he was born in a year divisible by seven, but from the day of his first solo flight in training the history of his life was red-lettered with luck. At least this was said by his friends to account for his escapes from The Reaper.
In his somewhat unordinary character was a streak of cautiousness which really ought to erase many of the red letters, for many of his escapes from death were directly due to forethought and thoroughness in planning for the future. He was one of many sons of the rich who burn with ambition to do something.
After demobilization, Major Henry Whyte settled down to win his medical degree, and, having accomplished this, he was looking about for a practice when he happened to read an article describing the work of the first Flying Parson in Australia, whose head-quarters were at Wilcannia, N.S. W., and whose parish was half the size of England. The corollary of the Flying Parson, of course, was the Flying Doctor.
Thus it was that Doctor Whyte came to Australia in 1927, then obtaining his transfer to the Australian register and taking a refresher course in aerial navigation. Ample means enabled him to begin his newly found career with means sufficient to stand the drain of two machines every year. They did not wear out, like motor cars.
Selecting Birdsville for his headquarters, Doctor Whyte never hesitated to fly anywhere in all weathers to succour men and women, even to transport them to the town hospital, to search for lost explorers, and to enhance the well being of a meagre population inhabiting a vast area of country.
He received Bony’s telegram, dispatched by Constable Price and purporting to be sent by McPherson, when he arrived home at four o’clock in the afternoon from a long trip. Glancing through his case-book and finding himself comparatively free, he left Birdsville at six on the 400-mile journey to McPherson’s Station where he had gazed into shy blue eyes and had felt tender red lips clinging to his own.
He ought to have arrived at the McPherson homestead when Flora and her small party were stopped at the break in the station telephone line, but then he was still engaged on the slight repairs to his engine the failure of which had caused a forced landing on a gibber plain one hundred miles south of Shaw’s Lagoon. He got off the ground just before night took possession of it.
He ought then to have returned to Birdsville where his own landing ground would have been illuminated to receive him. What he did was to set off to locate a tiny outpost blanketed by night, unmarked by street lamps, an infinitesimal dot no larger than a pea on a football ground, trusting to his navigational skill to locate Shaw’s Lagoon and so be able to reset the course to McPherson’s Station.
He made an error of a sixty-ninth of a degree in his calculations worked out when his machine was high above the shrouded world and flying in the twilight of the sky. The error was small, but it might well have ended in a disastrous night landing. He passed Shaw’s Lagoon fourteen miles to the west of the township, but quickly discovered his error and turned in an effort to find it-the pea lying on the football ground at night.
Quite a famous character at Shaw’s Lagoon was one known to all and sundry as Beery Bill, an elderly alcoholic in monthly receipt of money from a trust fund sufficient to hire him a hut and to supply him with an almost unlimited number of schooners.
Beery Bill had been away all day with Constable Price and others on the dreadful business of the burned car in the gully bed. During the journey, of course, the supply of schooners of beer was non-existent, and it can be easily imagined with what avidity Beery Bill carried on when the supply was renewed. It soon became evident that the enforced abstention had put Beery Bill out of his stride, as it were, because he became unwell for the first time during his sojourn at Shaw’s Lagoon and, to the amazement of the twenty inhabitants, he left the hotel to sit with his back against a pepper-tree in the street.
It was quite dark. The oil lamps in the few houses and the hotel sent only sickly gleams through the open windows. Beery Bill sat and wondered what on earth had gone wrong with him, and was thus dismally engaged with introspection when he heard the far distant hum of the aeroplane engine.
He was the only person in Shaw’s Lagoon who did hear it, and knowing that his eyes could show him things unseen by ordinary mortals, he also knew that his ears could not play him such tricks. Ah! Here was a chance to entrench himself on the best side of Constable Price, and off he trotted-he was beyond walking-to the police-station with the news.
Out came Price to listen and to hear. Having expected to receive a telegram from the Flying Doctor it needed no inductive reasoning to arrive at the belief that he was hearing Doctor Whyte’s machine, and that Doctor Whyte had missed Shaw’s Lagoon and was returning in an effort to pick it out from the void beneath him.
Thus it was that shortly after Doctor Whyte realized his mistake in his calculations and turned his machine he saw far down ahead a pin-prick of red light magically grow to become a leaping fire. Down he went until his altimeter registered a thousand feet and he was passing above the fire to see people standing about it and gazing upward at his navigation lights, to see the firelight painting the sides of small houses and the hotel, for the bonfire had been lit in the centre of the one and only street.
Well, well! He’d always been lucky!
On his pad he wrote the instructions to be telephoned to McPherson’s homestead. He wrote whilst the machine was climbing towards the lazy stars. He wrapped the paper about his pipe and tied it with fusing wire. Then he sent his ship down to within five hundred feet and dropped his message. Whilst circling the township, he saw a boy pick it up and race with it to Constable Price who had changed into uniform.
Now having his position, with only a hundred miles still to fly he reset his course and flew away into the unreal world of void and dimstarshine, depending on his instruments for height and speed and wind slip. The bonfire at Shaw’s Lagoon slid away beyond the tail, slid away to vanish beyond the rim of featureless void established only by the stars themselves. He sent the machine up four thousand feet and he had ample room to pass over the hill range whereon was that grove of six cabbage-trees.
Probably he was somewhere over those cabbage-trees when he saw a pin-prick of light on the invisible horizon ahead of the propeller. It was a white light and his guess was correct that it was made by a petrol lamp on the homestead veranda. Six minutes later he was flying over the homestead, looking down on the light which had been moved on to the lawn, seeing the dim star light reflected by the water in the reservoir.
He had arrived but not landed. He circled twice, and then saw the red spark born westward of the homestead, saw it grow into a scarlet flame, watched it swiftly become a towering beacon, and sending the machine towards it, he saw about the beacon a crowd of naked aborigines, a man dressed and a woman arrayed in white.
Down he went in a giant spiral, noting the wind direction by the beacon’s smoke. A hundred feet outward from it the ground was invisible to him. Ah! Outward from the beacon in opposite directions flowed a necklace of rubies, jewels which shone the brighter the farther they got away from the fire. He sent his ship up now whilst watching the ruby necklace begin to curve to the west, extend westward like the distant lights of a street, become stilled like jewelled arms extended to invite protection and safety.
Up and away towards the stars he climbed far to the west. Then he glided earthward with the engine just ticking over and the whine of the wind in the struts a new sound. He still could not see the ground, but down he went till the nose of the ship was directed to the open end of the avenue of torches, which excited aborigines whirled above their heads to keep them alight and burning fiercely. He felt the wheels touch ground, felt them touch again and then move over the slightly uneven surface. On went the brakes, gently at first, then harder to stop the ship from charging into the bonfire at the end of the fiery avenue.
The ruby necklaces broke into two fragments when the torch bearers raced with shouts and screams towards him. He could see and hear Burning Water bawling at them to keep back, but on they came, giving the impression that his ship was about to be engulfed by a sea of fire and flying sparks.
He watched impersonally the grey-haired chief and Bony race to the machine to keep back the excited aborigines, heard the chief’s mighty voice threatening, commanding. The fiery tide halted, here and there ebbed, became stilled. He saw the woman in white running to the ship, behind her a line of fire, and he never was able to recall how he reached ground. Now he was holding her in his arms and feeling the press of warm lips on his own.