Gregory Sallust (02): Contraband by Wheatley Dennis

Author:Wheatley, Dennis [Wheatley, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Espionage, Fiction, Novel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1936-01-17T03:00:00+00:00

14

By the Brown Owl Inn on Romney Marshes

As Gregory leapt the body of the plane seemed to shoot up like an express lift behind him. He felt himself gripped and twisted as though he was a straw in a tempest; then hurled violently downward. The plane roared away into the darkness above him.

His last thought before going overboard had been: ‘Mustn’t pull the rip cord until I’m clear of the plane.’ He knew little enough about parachute diving, but he’d heard somewhere, back in the war days, before it became a sport and when it was only undertaken as a dire necessity, that many a stout fellow had come to grief because he’d opened his parachute at the moment of jumping and it had caught in the fuselage of the machine, tearing the fabric and so making it useless or hanging the miserable parachutist.

He had not realised that in such cases the machine, crippled and often burning from anti-aircraft shell or the enemy’s inflammatory bullets, was falling too and that the wretched pilot might be a moment or more before, dropping with greater speed, he could get any distance from the wreckage; whereas in a normal jump, such as he had just made, he had been torn away from the fast-moving plane in a fraction of a second.

His fear, that if he had his hand on the rip cord the shock of the jump might open it immediately, had caused him to stretch his arms out sideways so that he could not possibly pull it inadvertently. Now, as he was flung face downwards by the rushing air current, his arms were forced back behind his shoulders and he was hurtling earthwards like a diver who has taken a fancy jump from a springboard, head foremost into the sea. The wind had ceased to turn him but seemed instead to be rushing upwards as he plunged down into the awful void.

Nearly a mile below him lay the earth; pitch black and terrifying; the friendly trees and inequalities of surface which formed its landscape blotted out by the midnight gloom. Not a light was to be seen in any direction, except the little ‘T’ of flares which now appeared to be some way towards his right as he shot earthwards.

With horrifying rapidity the ‘T’ grew larger. By a stupendous effort he forced his right arm inwards to grab the rip cord. The wind, tearing at his left as at some fin, instantly flung him over on to his back, and then, to his utter horror, he began to spin like a top.

His fingers were numb from the icy blast of the rushing air. He had an awful moment when he feared that they would no longer have sufficient feeling left in them for him to use them. Cursing himself for a panicky fool he tried to snatch comfort from the thought that plenty of people who did this thing for fun took extra pleasure in waiting until the very last moment before opening their parachute and that he must have a long way yet to drop.

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