Wings Above the Diamantina Read online

  “Come, come! Wake up!” he said loudly, and this time he shook her, finding her body flexible with life. He failed, however, to awaken her.

  Nor, he assured himself, was the rear cockpit occupied, although here were the controls of the plane.

  “Is she dead?” asked Elizabeth from the car.

  “No, but there is something peculiar about her. Come here, and have a look.” Then, when she had joined him: “She looks exactly as though she is asleep, but if she is I can’t wake her. Where, I wonder, is the pilot?”

  “Walked away for assistance, I suppose. The plane appears to be quite undamaged. Ought we not to lift her out? She may be merely in a faint.”

  “Wait ... one moment! Don’t move about!”

  Nettlefold’s bush-acquired instincts now came into play. His gaze was directed to the ground in the vicinity of the machine. As mentioned, the grass butts were widely spaced, and between each cropped butt the lake surface was composed of fine reddish sand. Their own boot and shoe prints from the car were plainly discernible, but there were no other tracks left by a human being. The pilot had not jumped from the machine to the ground on their side. Neither had the girl.

  Having walked round to the far side of the machine, the cattleman discovered that neither the girl nor the pilot had dropped to the ground on that side. When he rejoined Elizabeth he had made a complete circuit, and he at once proceeded to make a second, this time one of greater circumference.

  “There wasn’t a pilot,” he said when he again joined his daughter. “That girl must have piloted the aeroplane herself. No one has left it after it landed here.”

  “But if she controlled the machine she would be in the rear cockpit, wouldn’t she?” queried Elizabeth.

  “Doubtless she was. She must have climbed forward to the front cockpit after she landed the machine. That no one has left the machine is certain. No one could have left it without leaving tracks.”

  With compressed lips, Nettlefold stepped back the better to view the crimson varnished aeroplane from gleaming propeller to tail tip. It was either a new machine or had been recently varnished. Along the fuselage in white was painted the cipher, V.H–U, followed by the registration letters.

  It was indeed an extraordinary place in which to encounter a flying machine. They were hundreds of miles off any established air route, and to Nettlefold’s knowledge no squatter within the far-flung boundaries of the district possessed an aeroplane. He was, of course, aware that adventure-seeking people were beginning to fly round and across Australia, but hitherto they had kept to well-defined routes. Here they were about one hundred and twenty miles from the nearest township, Golden Dawn, and Emu Lake did not lie on any line from town to town, or from station homestead to homestead.

  “Let’s get her out, Dad,” urged Elizabeth. “If she has fainted we must bring her round.”

  Placing his foot in the step cut in the side of the fuselage he hauled himself up and astride the plane as though mounting into the saddle. He settled his weight securely on the narrow division between the two cockpits and behind the motionless girl. His hands slipped beneath her arms, and then he cried out to Elizabeth: “Why, she is strapped into her seat!”

  “They all do that, you know,” she reminded him.

  “Maybe they do, but why should this young lady strap herself into her seat if she got into it after she landed the machine from the rear seat controls?”

  “The plane may have what they call dual controls.”

  “Well, there are no gadgets in the front cockpit,” he objected.

  “Never mind, Dad. Lift her out and down to me. The mysteries can be cleared up after we have discovered what is the matter with her.”

  It proved no mean task to lift the girl out of the cockpit. She remained absolutely passive during the operation of getting her down to the waiting Elizabeth. She was well developed, and her weight proved Elizabeth’s strength when she took the unconscious girl and laid her on the ground beside the aeroplane. When her father joined her, she was looking intently at the rigid face.

  “She’s rather pretty, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Nettlefold agreed. “Do you think she is in a faint?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it. It doesn’t look like a faint. Will you bring me some water from the car, please?”

  Elizabeth, while waiting for the water, continued to study the immobile features. The lips were parted just a little, and the breast rose and fell regularly. The girl appeared to be sleeping, and yet it was a strange sleep, because as a rule the face of a sleeping person registers some kind of expression. It was strange, too, because it was a sleep from which no ordinary methods could wake her. She was wearing a blue serge skirt and a light-blue jersey over a silk blouse. Her shoes and stockings were of good quality. She was wearing no jewellery.

  When her father brought the canvas waterbag and a cup, Elizabeth seated herself beside the still figure and lifted the head into her lap. The filled cup she set against the curved lips, but the unconscious girl made not the slightest effort to drink. With her handkerchief, Elizabeth sponged her forehead and the backs of her hands, but to all her treatment the aeroplane girl failed to respond.

  “I can’t understand it,” Elizabeth said at last. “It frightens me.”

  Now on his knees beside his daughter, the station manager used the tip of a little finger to raise the girl’s left eyelid. He uttered an exclamation and raised the other. The girl was now staring at him with sinister fixity, her eyelids remaining in the position to which he had raised them. They were large and blue, dark-blue, and in them was the unmistakable expression of wild entreaty. Involuntarily, he said:

  “It is all right! Really, it is. We are going to be your friends.”

  “What! Is she awake?” Elizabeth demanded sharply. Quickly she lifted the girl’s head and then, finding the angle difficult, she squirmed her body round so that she, too, was able to look into the blue eyes. “Why, she is conscious!”

  For a moment they regarded the staring eyes, in their hearts both horror and a great pity. Not once did the eyelids blink. The helpless girl uttered no sound, made no smallest movement save very slightly to move her eyes. Except for the poignant expression in them, her face might have been cast in plaster of Paris.

  “Can’t you speak?” said Elizabeth, barely above a whisper.

  Obtaining no response, she took up the cup of water and again pressed its edge against the immobile lips. There was no movement, no effort made to drink.

  “Oh! You poor thing! Whatever is the matter?”

  “Part her lips and see if she will drink when you drop the water into her mouth,” Nettlefold suggested.

  Elizabeth accepted the suggestion, and they presently saw that the helpless girl swallowed. Her eyes were now misty, and from them welled great tears which Elizabeth sponged away with the handkerchief.

  “Won’t you try to talk?” she pleaded softly. “Can’t you talk? Can you close your eyelids? Try—just try to do that. No?” To her father, she said: “I can’t understand it. She seems perfectly conscious, and yet she is so helpless that she cannot even raise or lower her eyelids. I am positive that she can hear us and understand us.”

  “Yes, I think so, too,” he agreed instantly. “Well, the only thing to do is to get her home as quickly as possible, Then we must call Dr Knowles. He should know what is the matter with her. We’ll be moving. We can do nothing here.”

  “All right. You take her. I’ll get into the back seat of the car, and you can hand her in to me,” Elizabeth directed. To the girl, she said: “I am going to close your eyes because of the sunlight. Have no fear—Dad and I will look after you and find your friends. And Dr Knowles is really clever.”

  Throughout the entire homeward journey, Elizabeth supported the helpless girl against her body, exhibiting stoical endurance. She took the shocks that her careful father was unable to avoid.

  Ted Smart and his men, with the cattle, had disappeared from the grey plain,
and for mile after mile the car hummed eastward to one of the most extraordinary rivers in Australia. At this time no water was running down the Diamantina’s multitudinous channels. Here the river had no main channel to distinguish it from the veritable maze of streams which intertwine between the countless banks. Westward from the Coolibah homestead, the channels which form the river are fifteen miles across, and when the great floods come sliding down from the far northern hills only the tops of the coolibah trees are left visible.

  When crossing the river the track was a seemingly endless switchback, and here the greatest trial was put upon Elizabeth coming after the long journey from Emu Lake. Narrow channels and wide channels; narrow banks and wide banks: the car was constantly being forced up and down like a ship passing over sea waves. Long before they arrived there could be seen the large white-painted homestead, men’s quarters and outhouses, all with red roofs gleaming beneath the sun. The conglomeration of buildings appeared and disappeared endlessly until at last the travellers reached the easternmost flat to speed smoothly for half a mile before reaching the horse-paddock gate. From the gate it was a quick run up a stiff gradient to the house which, with the many other buildings, was built on comparatively high land. Before the car stopped outside the gate of the garden fronting the south veranda, a woman came running to meet them.

  She was tall and angular, strong and exceedingly plain. She was dressed in stiff white linen, reminding one of a hospital nurse. Mrs Hetty Brown, the deserted wife of a stockman, was the Coolibah housekeeper.

  “Oh, Mr Nettlefold! Miss Elizabeth! Whatever do you think?” she cried. Her light-grey eyes were slightly protuberant, and now they were wide open with excitement. “Just after you left this morning Sergeant Cox rang up to say that last night someone stole an aeroplane at Golden Dawn. He said he would have rung through before but there was something the matter with the line. He wanted to know if we had seen or heard the aeroplane. It belongs to.... Why, Miss Elizabeth, who is that?”

  “It is a young lady whom we found in peculiar circumstances, Hetty, and we have to get her to bed,” the manager informed her. “Where will you have her, Elizabeth?”

  “In my bed for the present—Hetty, come round to the other side and assist Mr Nettleford. My arms are useless with cramp.”

  “Dear me! Whatever has happened to her?” Hetty cried.

  “We don’t know yet. There now. Hold her while I move aside. Take her weight. Gently, now! Got her, Dad?”

  “Yes, I have her.”

  Despite his growing years, John Nettlefold was still a powerful man. He lifted the helpless girl and bore her along the garden path, up the several veranda steps and through the open house door as a lesser man might carry a child. At Elizabeth’s command, Hetty assisted her from the car, and then was ordered to run on and prepare her bed for the stranger. Grimacing with agony, Elizabeth followed slowly, moving her limbs to hasten returning circulation, and was just in time to meet her father coming from her room.

  “I’ll get in touch with Knowles and Cox right away,” he said. “How’s the cramp?”

  “It’s going,” she stated calmly. “It was stupid of us not to have thought of looking in the plane for her belongings.”

  “Yes, we should have done that,” he hastened to agree. “Anyway, either Cox or I will have to got out to it to-morrow, so our omission is unimportant.”

  She smiled at him, then smiled at something which flashed into her mind.

  “Do you know,” she said, “I think I am at last going to justify my life here at Coolibah.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Some day I will tell you,” she replied swiftly, and was gone.

  Chapter Three

  A Flying Doctor

  WHEN GOING “inside,” people at Coolibah followed the track winding away to the north-east from the homestead. Having travelled that track for twenty-four miles, they arrived at the Golden Dawn-St Alban track. Here there was a roughly made sign-post pointing south-west to Coolibah, north-west to Tintanoo Station and St Albans, east to Golden Dawn. About noon every Wednesday, the Golden Dawn-St Albans mail coach reached the road junction, and the mailman alighted to place the Coolibah mail in the letter-box fashioned from a petrol case and nailed securely to a tree. At noon the following day, on his return journey to Golden Dawn, he collected the Coolibah outward mail from the same box.

  In addition to the twenty-four miles from the homestead to the track junction, the person desiring to go “inside” had to travel eighty miles to Golden Dawn, and a farther hundred and ten miles to the railhead at Yaraka. And from there the long rail journey to Brisbane began. It is not precisely a journey which can be undertaken from a country town to the city on a Bank holiday, and consequently people in the far west of Queensland do not often visit Brisbane.

  Beside the track to Coolibah ran the telephone line which at the road junction was transferred to the poles carrying the Tintanoo and St Albans lines. When John Nettlefold rang Golden Dawn he was answered by the girl in the small exchange situated within the post office building. She connected him with the police-station. It was exactly six o’clock, and Sergeant Cox was dining with his wife and son. To answer the call, the sergeant had to pass from the kitchen through the house to the office, which occupied one of the front rooms.

  “Well?” he growled. “What is it?”

  “Nettlefold speaking, Sergeant. I understand that an aeroplane belonging to the visiting ‘flying circus’ was stolen last night.”

  “Ah—yes, Mr Nettlefold. Know anything about it?”

  “Was the machine a monoplane type varnished a bright red?”

  “Yes. Have you seen it? Has it come down on your place?”

  “It has,” announced Nettlefold from Coolibah.

  “Have you got the fellow who stole it?” grimly demanded Cox.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t ... you don’t think so! Surely, Mr Nettlefold, you know definitely if you have or have not apprehended the thief?”

  The station manager’s prevarication acted like wind on sea. The policeman’s large red face took to itself a deeper colour. The short iron-grey hair appeared to stand more stiffly on end, and the iron-grey eyes to become mere pinpoints. The iron-grey moustache bristled. Place Sergeant Cox in khaki, and on him put a Sam Browne belt and a pith helmet, and you would see the popular conception of an army general on Indian service.

  “No, I cannot say definitely whether I have the thief,” replied Nettlefold easily, quite unabashed by the sergeant’s asperity. “Listen carefully.”

  He related the bare details of all that had happened at Emu Lake, and then he asked for particulars of the theft.

  “It’s queer, Mr Nettlefold, to say the least,” Cox said, as though he addressed John Nettlefold, Esq., J.P., when sitting on the bench. “This aeroplane circus—that is what Captain Loveacre, who is in charge, calls it—has been here three days. There is a twin-engined de Havilland passenger machine for taking up trippers, and there’s that red monoplane which the captain flies himself, the big one being flown by his two assistant pilots. We have got no proper aerodrome here, as you know, but the surrounding plain makes a fair landing ground.

  “As usual, last night the two machines were anchored just back of the hotel; and, at one-forty-two this morning, everyone was awakened by the roar of a motor engine. Captain Loveacre states that when he woke he recognized the sound of the engine as that of his monoplane, but before he or any one else could get out to it it had left the ground and flown off eastward.”

  “So you do not know the sex of the thief, Sergeant?”

  “No. Is the girl you speak of very ill?”

  “We can’t make her out at all,” answered Nettlefold. “Look here! It is now only a minute past six. Do you think you could get Knowles to fly here this evening to have a look at her? There are two hours of daylight yet, remember.”

  “Oh—he’ll agree to go,” Cox said, with airy assurance. “He’d start if
he had to make a night landing on those river channels. What I can’t understand about him is that he’s still alive. The more drunk he is the better he flies. I might come with him.”

  “Do. We can put you both up. I could then take you out to Emu Lake early in the morning. Tell Knowles that he can land with reasonable safety on the white claypan country half a mile north of this homestead. I’ll be there in the car, and in case it’s dark when he arrives I’ll have the boys light fires along the edges of the enclosing scrub. Will you ring me when you know what he will do?”

  “I will. But he’ll go all right,” Cox further assured the station manager. “If he breaks my neck ... well, I’ll be the most unlucky man in Queensland.”

  “You’re game, anyway. I wouldn’t trust my life to Knowles ... off the ground.”

  Cox chuckled and replaced the instrument, to walk thoughtfully back to the kitchen.

  “Pack me a bag, Vi,” he commanded his wife. “I’m going to Coolibah Station.”

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know. Only a night, I think.”

  “Have they found the stolen aeroplane, Dad?” asked his son, a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy of fifteen years.

  “Yes, Jack,” Cox replied, nodding. “It is at a place called Emu Lake at the back of Coolibah. Pass the bread. I may just as well finish my dinner while your mother’s hunting up those pink-striped visiting pyjamas of mine.”

  “Who stole it, Dad?” pleaded the boy.

  “We don’t rightly know, son, but you can trust your father to find out.”

  The red face was now less red. The stern lines about the iron jaw were much less hard. Sergeant Cox led a double life, one of which was known only to his wife and son. He was softly human when with them in their home.

  “I won’t be home to-night to show you how to do your home lessons, so you’ve got to get right down to them yourself and work out those sums the best you know how.”

  “All right, Dad. I’ll do ’em goodo.”

  “Of course he will, Pops,” added Mrs Cox, then entering the kitchen. “Who is going to drive you to Coolibah? Driving your own car?”