The Last Place God Made

‘Well, here she is,’ he said.

The Bristol fighter was one of the really great combat aircraft of the war and it served overseas with the R.A.F. until well into the thirties. As I’ve said, there were still one or two around on odd stations in England when I was learning to fly and I’d had seven or eight hours in them.

But this one was an original – a veritable museum piece. She had a fuselage which had been patched so many times it was ridiculous and in one place, it was still possible to detect the faded rondel of the R.A.F.

Before I could make any kind of comment, Hannah said, ‘Don’t be put off by the state of the fuselage. She’s a lot better than she looks. Structurally as sound as a bell and I don’t think there’s much wrong with the engine. The guy I bought it from had her for fifteen years and didn’t use her all that much. God knows what her history was before that. The log book’s missing.’

‘Have you flown her much?’ I asked.

‘Just over a hundred miles. She handled well. Didn’t give me any kind of trouble at all.’

The Bristol was a two-seater. I climbed up on the lower port wing and peered into the pilot’s cockpit. It had exactly the right kind of smell – a compound of leather, oil and petrol – something that had never yet failed to excite me and I reached out to touch the stick in a kind of reluctant admiration. The only modern addition was a radio which must have been fitted when the new law made them mandatory in Brazil.

‘It really must be an original. Basket seat and leather cushions. All the comforts of home.’

‘They were a great plane,’ Hannah said soberly.

I dropped to the ground. ‘Didn’t I read somewhere that van Richthofen shot down four in one day?’

‘There were reasons for that. The pilot had a fixed machine-gun up front – a Vickers. The observer usually carried one or two free-mounting Lewis guns in the rear. At first, they used the usual two-seater technique.’

‘Which meant the man in the rear cockpit did all the shooting?’

‘Exactly, and that was no good. They sustained pretty heavy losses at first until pilots discovered she was so manoeuvrable you could fly her like a single-seater.’

‘With the fixed machine-gun as the main weapon?’

‘That’s right. The observer’s Lewis just became a useful extra. They used to carry a couple of bombs. Not much – around two hundred and forty pounds – but it means you can take a reasonable pay load. If you look, you’ll see the rear cockpit has been extended at some time.’

I peered over. ‘You could get a couple of passengers in there now.’

‘I suppose so, but it isn’t necessary. The Hayley can handle that end of things. Let’s get her outside.’

We took a wing each and pushed her out into the bright sunshine. In spite of her shabby appearance; she looked strangely menacing and exactly what she was supposed to be – a formidable fighting machine, waiting for something to happen.

‘I’ve known people who love horses – any horse – with every fibre of their being, an instinctive response that simply cannot be denied. Aeroplanes have always affected me in exactly the same way and this was an aeroplane and a half in spite of her shabby appearance and comparatively slow speed by modern standards. There was something indefinable here that could not be stated. Of one thing I was certain – it was me she was waiting for.

Hannah said, ‘You can take the Hayley. I’ll follow on in this.’

I shook my head. ‘No, thanks. This is what you hired me to fly.’

He looked a little dubious. ‘You’re sure about that?’

I didn’t bother to reply, simply went and got my canvas grip and threw it into the rear cockpit. There was a parachute in there, but I didn’t bother to get it out, just pulled on my flying jacket, helmet and goggles.

He unfolded a map on the ground and we crouched beside it. The Rio das Mortes branched out of the Negro to the north-east about a hundred and fifty miles farther on. There was a military post called Forte Franco at its mouth and Landro was another fifty miles upstream.

‘Stick to the river all the way,’ Hannah said. ‘Don’t try cutting across the jungle whatever you do. Go down there and you’re finished. It’s Huna country all the way up the Mortes. They make those Indians you mentioned along the Xingu look like Sunday-school stuff and there’s nothing they like better than getting their hands on a white man.’

‘Doesn’t anyone have any contacts with them?’

‘Only the nuns at the medical mission at Santa Helena and it’s a miracle they’ve survived as long as they have. One of the mining companies was having some trouble with them the other year so they called the head men of the various sub-tribes together to talk things over, then machine-gunned them from cover. Killed a couple of dozen, but they botched things up and about eight got away. Since then it’s been war. It’s all martial law up there. Not that it means anything. The military aren’t up to much. A colonel and fifty men with two motor launches at Forte Franco and that’s it.’

I folded the map and shoved it inside my flying jacket. ‘From the sound of it, I’d say the Hunas have a point.’

He laughed grimly. ‘You won’t find many to sympathise with that statement around Landro, Mallory. They’re a bunch of Stone Age savages. Vermin. If you’d seen some of the things they’ve done…’

He walked across to the Hayley, opened the cabin door and climbed inside. When he got out again, he was carrying a shotgun.

‘Have you got that revolver of yours handy?’ I nodded and he tossed the shotgun to me and a box of cartridges. ‘Better take this as well, just in case. Best close-quarters weapon I know; 10-gauge, 6-shot automatic. The loads are double-O steel buckshot. I’d use it on myself before I let those bastards get their hands on me.’

I held it in my hands for a moment, then put it into the rear cockpit. ‘Are you flying with me?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve got things to do. I’ll follow in half an hour and still beat you there. I’ll give a shout on the radio when I pass.’

There was a kind of boasting in what he said without need, for the Bristol couldn’t hope to compete with the Hayley when it came to speed, but I let it pass.

Instead I said, ‘Just one thing. As I remember, you need a chain of three men pulling the propeller to start the engine.’

‘Not with me around.’

It was a simple statement of fact made without pride for his strength as I was soon to see, was remarkable. I stepped up on to the port wing and eased myself into that basket seat with its leather cushions and pushed my feet into the toestraps at either end of the rudder bar.

I made my cockpit checks, gave Hannah a signal and wound the starting magneto while he pulled the propeller over a compression stroke. The engine, a Rolls-Royce Falcon, exploded into life instantly.

The din was terrific, a feature of the engine at low speeds. Hannah moved out of the way and I taxied away from the hangars towards the leeward boundary of the field and turned into the wind.

I pulled down my goggles, checked the sky to make sure I wasn’t threatened by anything else coming in to land and opened the throttle. Up came the tail as I pushed the stick forward just a touch, gathering speed. As she yawed to starboard in a slight cross-wind, I applied a little rudder correction. A hundred and fifty yards, a slight backward pressure on the stick and she was airborne.

At two hundred feet, I eased back the throttle to her climbing speed which was all of sixty-five miles an hour, banked steeply at five hundred feet and swooped back across the airfield.

I could see Hannah quite plainly, hands shading his eyes from the sun as he gazed up at me. What happened then was entirely spontaneous: produced by the sheer exhilaration of being at the controls of that magnificent plane as much as by any desire to impress him.

The great German ace, Max Immelmann, came up with a brilliant ploy that gave him two shots at an enemy in a dog-fight for the price of one and without losing height. The famous Immelmann Turn, biblical knowledge for any fighter pilot.

I tried it now, diving in on Hannah, pulled up in a half-loop, rolled out on top and came back over his head at fifty feet.

He didn’t move a muscle, simply stood there, shaking a fist at me. I waved back, took the Bristol low over the trees and turned up-river.

You don’t need to keep your hands on a Bristol’s controls at cruising speed. If you want an easy time of it, all you have to do is adjust the tailplane incidence control and sit back, but that wasn’t for me. I was enjoying being in control, being at one with the machine if you like. Someone once said the Bristol was like a thoroughbred hunter with a delicate mouth and a stout heart and that afternoon over the Negro, I knew exactly what he meant.

On either side, the jungle, gigantic walls of bamboo and liana which even the sun couldn’t get through. Below, the river, clouds of scarlet ibis scattering at my approach.

This was flying – how flying was meant to be and I went down to a couple of hundred feet, remembering that at that height it was possible to get maximum speed out of her. One hundred and twenty-five miles an hour. I sat back, hands steady on the stick and concentrated on getting to Landro before Hannah.

I almost made it, banking across the army post of Forte Franco at the mouth of the Rio das Mortes an hour and a quarter after leaving Manaus.

I was ten miles upstream, pushing her hard at two hundred feet when a thunderbolt descended. I didn’t even know the Hayley was there until he dived on my tail, pulled up in a half-loop, rolled out on top in a perfect Immelmann Turn and roared, towards me head-on. I held the Bristol on course and he pulled up above my head.