to the latter’s annoyance, at once obeyed the command.
‘Bugger that, I’m going to see if I can help the pilot,’ the Birmingham man said, running forward and disappearing through the connecting door into the cabin. They were diving now, the turbulent green lurching up uninvitingly to meet them, the plane bucking as it set its nose down. A small suitcase of the Princeling’s shot out of a luggage rack and scuttled down the gangway after the Birmingham man.
‘Oh my God,’ Timpleton said. ‘Now we’re for it, Mr Noyes.’
‘N-nonsense,’ Soames replied with an attempt at a joke, ‘the pilot knows the Apostle is too valuable a cargo to damage.’
Long afterwards, he recalled with surprise how loudly Deal Jimpo and Wally Brewer laughed at his remark; and even in the face of what might conceivably be death-in-a-veil, he found himself resolving to try and make more jokes in future. Then Wally caught his eye, winked broadly to indicate that this was for the abject Timpleton’s amusement, and began to sing ‘Abide With Me’.
The noise in the cabin was so deafening that they could scarcely hear him. The earth which from the serenity of a few thousand feet up had looked as smooth and inviting as an electric blanket, now revealed itself in its true colours: a savage, Jurassic world of broken hill and valley, loaded with rivers and trees. Space in which to land was absolutely nonexistent. Uneasily, queasily, Soames tensed himself for the fatal shock. Just through the window, the wing was a giant fist shaken at him. It sounded like a madman’s banging on shutters.
Now they seemed to be clipping the tree tops. Startled giraffes broke through a tiny clearing and galloped beneath them. The suitcase was shuffling its way back up the gangway.
Four passengers with dry, open mouths sat clutching seat-backs. Their flight was so bumpy they might have been leaping from tree top to tree top. Wally Brewer’s oil-coated hair flapped up and down on his head.
‘We’re going too fast,’ Soames whispered.
Abruptly the jungle stopped. A sea of grass rushed beneath them. The plane dropped towards it. Now they staggered in for a landing, forest fringing them on either side, more rising up like a wave a mile ahead. It had to be now or never.
Their wheels touched the ground. A mighty hissing, a boiling sea of grass-noise, rose round them. And in that instant the loose wing struck the flowing earth.
With a crescendo of noise, the plane was flung round off its course, pitched back into the air, hurled on to one shoulder.
Timpleton screamed and somersaulted across the gangway. He had not buckled his safety belt properly.
A mighty mvule, outrageous, irresistible, spread out its branches to them. Foliage slashed across their windows. With a last heave, the body of the plane struck something solid. Everything in the universe rattled.
Maniac sound, maniac silence.
‘… whoever seeks abroad …’
The men and dwarfs seemed to be carrying an ocean liner, which was made of rubber and only semi-inflated, so that it flopped about as they dragged it up Everest.
Soames jerked out of his dream and opened one eye.
‘Yes, I’m inside the liner,’ he thought. ‘It’s clear to me now. It’s not made of rubber; it’s made of grey plastic and filled with special grey air …’
His mind cleared. He squeezed his eyes, opened them both, took a deep breath, roused, remembered.
He was still strapped in his seat. He was lying on his back, for the plane had come to rest with its nose high in the air, standing like a tower among a tangle of branches.
All Soames could do for some while was stare stupidly straight above him at the pilot’s door, some feet over his head. He was exceedingly cold. It occurred to him that the grey light was the light of early dawn. They had crashed at about six, or perhaps an hour before sunset; he had been unconscious for some twelve hours. He was too numb to attempt to check this observation by lifting his arm and looking at his wrist watch.
Instead, he turned his attention to the other passengers. Over to his right lay Wally Brewer, in a position much like Soames’ own, except that his head was twisted backwards in such a ghastly fashion as to make it obvious even to Soames – a tyro in such matters – that his neck was broken and he was dead. The grey light, filtering through the leaves, pressed against the windows, lingered complacently on Wally’s staring eyes.
There was no sign of Ted Timpleton.
Twisting himself round with an effort, Soames looked backwards and down to where Deal Jimpo Landor had sat. There was no sign of him either.
He wondered how the pilot and the Birmingham man had fared, but there seemed no possible way of getting up to them in the forward compartment. As he stared rather dreamily upwards, the communicating door opened slightly and a head was poked into the cabin; it wore the flamboyant bushwacker hat the Birmingham man had deemed appropriate for the journey.
Soames was about to shout out to him when he recalled he did not know the man’s name (Duncan? Dobson? Hobson? Hobhouse?); again absurd inhibitions overcame him and silenced him. And now the head turned, allowing Soames a glimpse of gleaming teeth and a hairy shoulder.
Just for a startled second, horror invaded Soames. Was the Birmingham man a werewolf? Had the crash released lycanthropic tendencies in him?
Then a grinning chimpanzee, still wearing the bushwacker hat, launched itself into the cabin, swinging down from seat to seat with all the trained abandon of a Palladium act.
‘Shoo!’ Soames said with appropriate force.
Startled, the chimpanzee shed its headgear and beat a retreat back into the pilot’s compartment.
Thoroughly roused, Soames undid his safety belt and set about climbing out of the wrecked plane.
He swung down the seats in a clumsy imitation of the chimpanzee and reached the door, which had been broken open by the force of the crash. Looking out, he found himself some forty feet above ground level. The plane was standing on its tail against a giant tree whose damaged branches seemed to extend like broken tusks all round the fuselage, piercing it in some places.
Unexpected elation coursed through Soames. He was alive! He was romantically in the mysterious heart of Africa. Life was suddenly something worth a hearty cheer. He took a grateful breath of morning air, and found it smelt much like eggs and bacon.
There was no exit for him this way. He jumped down on to what had been the rear wall of the cabin and lowered himself through the door, now hanging open, into the rear of the plane.
Passing the little galley and toilets, he climbed down through another open door into the cargo hold. Here, all the crates containing the component parts of the Apostle Mk II looked still to be in position and unharmed; thanks to careful packing, they had not budged an inch. Working his way carefully down them, Soames reached the cargo hatch. It gaped open, and a steel ladder extended from it down some fifteen feet to the ground.
Descending the ladder, pushing through twigs and leaves, Soames could see that the crumpled expanse of tail plane acted as a pedestal for the wreck. He reached ground and there, a few feet away, Ted Timpleton, sleeves rolled up, was frying eggs and bacon over a stove.
Directly he saw Soames, he came running up, throwing out his arms and clutching Soames’ hands.
‘Oh, Soames,’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, how good it is to see you! Oh, what a ruddy relief; I quite thought you had had your lot. You’ve not a clue how terrible it felt here – the only white man …’
With Soames’ anger that this little man should have crept out of the plane without, apparently, attempting to help any of his fellows, went a detached