At the Going Down of the Sun by Mary-Anne O’Connor

Author:Mary-Anne O’Connor [O’Connor, Mary-Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781761344442
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

32

Thom had gone from afraid to relieved to awestruck in a matter of mere minutes but fear was quickly taking over once more. The pure exhilaration of sailing over nothing but a glistening sea for the very first time still filled him but the clunky sound this flimsy machine was making could hardly be ignored.

It was struggling along but in the disturbingly familiar way of their old biplane back home. Surely the speed they were going wouldn’t possibly get them to Turkish lines and back, let alone help them to evade gunfire. It couldn’t be more than fifty miles an hour, sixty at best.

‘Can’t you give it any more?’ he yelled to Archie.

‘I’m trying!’ he called back and Thom could hear him struggling with the throttle, jigging it back and forth. Then the worst possible thing happened and the engine cut out altogether, leaving them drifting in deathly silence.

‘Shit!’ he heard Archie say and Thom felt the plane already begin to glide downwards in a slow and heart-stopping faint.

He looked down at the sea, realising that if they couldn’t get it going again they’d be forced to crash-land this thing, something they’d never done on water and barely achieved only once on land. That it was a seaplane and built for such manoeuvres seemed an optimistic technicality. This barely used machine was, in truth, little more than an experiment and he and Arch were trapped inside it.

‘Try again!’ he yelled desperately.

Archie shoved the throttle back and forth and Thom found himself begging for the sound of the clogging engine to resume, as laboured as it had been.

‘Come on, damn you!’ Archie yelled into the eerie space around them.

Thom had the odd thought that this was the first time they’d ever flown without the aid of an engine, truly like a pelican, gliding in the surreal world of the sky. Yet the plane was a mere cage without the propulsion of flight and there was nothing bird-like about the seaplane’s lopsided teetering as they tipped further into descent.

‘Come on!’ Archie yelled, jamming the throttle hard and Thom thought to pray, somewhere amidst his panic.

Dear God, Holy Mother, oh just . . . help us somebody . . .

Click. Whir. Archie cried out in relief and shock.

‘We’re back! Oh sweet mother of all things holy, Thom . . . we’re back!’

All things holy indeed, Thom thought, not sure if that had anything to do with it, but relief was relief. He closed his eyes momentarily yet their troubles were far from over as he opened them once more to see land coming into sight on the far left. Archie had turned to grin at him but Thom simply nodded towards it and Archie followed his gaze, blanching.

‘Right,’ Thom heard him say.

Never before had the sight of anything filled Thom with such dread. For all the two of them had mucked about over the years, taken a risk or two and, yes, perhaps even put their lives in danger, they were ‘calculated risks’, as Archie liked to say.

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