An Old Captivity (23 page)

He went back and explained to her again the rectification for tilt. Then he glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly half-past eleven. We’d better go to bed if we’re going to be up early in the morning. I think you’ll manage it all right now.”

She looked very doubtful. “I hope so.”

Lockwood asked: “What time do you want to start, Mr. Ross?”

“I want to get off the water by nine at the latest, so that we can fly the seventy miles or so to this place Brattalid and start photography by ten. I want to be back here by twelve, on account of the fog.”

“What time ought we to get up?”

The pilot said: “There’s no reason for you to get up early, sir. I told the boatman to meet me down at the slip at six o’clock. That gives me about two hours to get the camera installed before breakfast. Let’s have breakfast at eight o’clock, sharp.”

Alix said: “I’d like to come with you and see you fit the camera, Mr. Ross. I don’t feel that I know it properly yet.”

He smiled. “I’m setting the alarm for half-past five. If we get up then we’ll have heaps of time.”

The girl made a few arrangements with her father about breakfast; then they went to bed. She had made her own bed behind the matchboarding partition, where she had some privacy in spite of the absence of a door. The men slept in the living room, at the far end.

Ross did not sleep very well that night. He had taken his sleeping tablets for four nights in succession; he thought that it was likely that he would have to take a lot of them in camp. The day that was now over had been quite an easy one; the next day would not be very strenuous. He
felt that he could sleep without a tablet; after all, he was quite tired.

But he did not sleep. His restless active mind kept running over the new problems that were thrust upon him by the removal of Jameson. They would camp with a couple of Eskimos with them to do the heavy work, but the responsibility for the smooth running of the camp would fall on him; Lockwood had no experience of camping in the North. Clearly, he would have to adjust his work to the bare minimum of effort in order to get through what he would have to do. He would have to run the camp, do the flying, do the refuelling, maintain the engine and the airframe, superintend the photography, do most of the test developing, and stand watch over the machine in case of trouble. It was the last aspect of his duties that worried him most. They would have to take an anchor with them to Brattalid to make a mooring; the Eskimos could bring that with them in a motor boat. But what would happen if the wind got up, and the seaplane began to drag its anchor?

He tossed restlessly from side to side. If only he had someone with him who knew seaplanes, who knew when trouble was likely to arise; someone who could keep a watch on the machine for him while he got some sleep.

In any case, they would be too shorthanded to cope with the machine if it began to drag its anchor. That must not happen. They must get it off the mooring and bring it up on shore if the wind were likely to get up.

It might be better not to have a mooring at all. The other way would be to pick a sheltered, sandy little cove and beach the seaplane after every flight. If she were half-way up the beach on a receding tide she would be safe on shore for six hours while the tide went out and rose again, and he could sleep with a quiet mind. He had operated like that once or twice before when he had been shorthanded, and it had worked all right. True, it meant that you never got more than a few hours’ sleep at a time, and that time came at odd periods of the day. But the seaplane was quite safe like that,
and you could sleep in peace. That was the main thing, after all.

He lay revolving all these matters in his tired mind, while the others slept quietly. After a time he fell into a doze, and slept for about three hours till the alarm clock woke him.

He called to Alix as he got up; she joined him in a few minutes. Lockwood was awake; he lay in his bag and watched them as they went out, carrying the camera in its wooden case between them. When they were gone he dozed again in his sleeping-bag. He was fit and well, but for the last day or two he had begun to realise that he was nearly sixty years of age. The hard pace of the expedition was telling on him, as it was upon them all.

Ross and Alix found the boatman, went out to the seaplane, and unpacked the camera in the cabin. They fitted it into the emplacement that had been prepared for it, and spent some time adjusting it and making the connections to the power supply in the machine. Then Ross settled down upon the floor with Alix to coach her in the job she had to do in the air. They went at it quietly and patiently; at the end of an hour it seemed to the pilot that she knew her duties perfectly.

“It’s really not so very difficult,” she said in the end. “I think I’m beginning to see what it’s all about.”

He nodded. “We’ll see how it pans out to-day. I think you’ve got it, now.”

They went back to the house for breakfast. The pilot did not eat much; he was feeling tired and stale. He drank a cup of coffee and smoked several cigarettes; then they went down to the machine again. Shortly afterwards they took off for Brattalid.

In contrast to the east coast, the sea here was practically free from ice. They flew for a short time towards the north; the coast consisted of a succession of long fiords running deep into the land between considerable hills. There was not a great deal of flat country. Between the fiords the hills were covered with short pasture grass and a low scrub; there were no trees of any size. From the air it seemed to be
a barren, desolate expanse of country, habitable, perhaps, for a short time in summer, but not, in fact, inhabited.

Lockwood was studying his map, culled from the pages of an archaeological review. “This must be it,” he said. “Fly up that fiord there.” He pointed to the east.

They were cruising at about two thousand feet. Ross leaned across, and looked at the map. “That’s it,” he said. “Tunug-something.”

The don said: “Tunugdliarfik is the name of the fiord. The mountain over there—the big one—must be Igdlerfigsalik.”

The fiord was about twenty miles long. It ran northeastwards into the land; at places it was two or three miles wide. They flew on up it at two thousand feet; near the end it split in two by the mountain of Igdlerfigsalik towering above them, apparently a good six thousand feet in altitude. On Lockwood’s instructions they took the fork that trended to the north. A couple of miles further on he said:

“This is it. Brattalid was on the west shore, here.”

The pilot put the seaplane into a wide turn. The place the don had indicated was a neck of land between two fiords, fairly flat, but rocky, barren ground. They stared down at it, circling around. It was clear that there had been some habitation there in the far past; the ground was seamed with lines and little rectangles that must once have been stone houses. “That’s it, all right,” said Lockwood.

They circled round that district for a quarter of an hour. On the other side of the neck of land, in Sermilik Fiord, the pilot saw two little coves, either of which might do for sheltering the seaplane. Both were about two miles from the centre of the Brattalid site. They were so far up the fiord that there could be no swell, and one of them at any rate had a sandy beach. Ross explained what he wanted to Lockwood and showed him the coves. “I don’t want to land to-day,” he said, “I’d rather wait till we get a party out here with a boat. But I’d like to go and have a look at them.”

They swept low over the site, and circled round the little
coves at about two hundred feet. The one with the sandy beach had a stream running down into it. “That one would do us fine,” the pilot said. “We can make our camp there by the stream and get the seaplane up on shore any time we like.”

They went up to five thousand feet and began the photography. Ross had arranged with Alix to take a trial strip of the coast, varying the shutter speeds and apertures according to a programme which he had written down for her upon a pad. She got out of her seat and crouched down beside the camera, troubled and apprehensive. She took the shield from the cabin floor, exposing the lens; a strong draught whistled up around her. The clamour of the engine and the cold rush of air confused her mind; she could remember very little of what she had known perfectly that morning.

Ross turned in his seat and shouted back at her: “I’m just coming on the line now. Are you all ready?”

She was not, but she nodded her head.

“O.K. Start her up now.”

She switched on the current to the camera and hoped for the best. The pilot flew a steady course, his eyes sighting a corner of the windscreen on a far mountain peak. He could not turn his head without spoiling his line, but he said to Lockwood, “How is she getting on?”

The don screwed round in his seat and shouted to the girl: “All right?”

She looked up unhappily. “Yes … no. It isn’t working properly. The film doesn’t seem to be going on.”

Lockwood repeated this to Ross. The pilot turned in his seat, and saw her in distress. “I can’t make it work at all,” she shouted. “The film won’t go—it’s stuck, or something.”

He could do nothing to help her while they were in the air; he could not leave his seat. He said: “All right. Switch it off, and put the cover back over the hole. We’ll land now and have a look at it.”

He brought the machine low; circled once above the
water of the fiord, and landed about a quarter of a mile from the shore. The machine pivoted round into the light wind and lay there rocking gently, with the engine ticking over. The pilot got out of his seat, went aft in the cabin, and bent over the camera with the girl.

He smiled. “Look, you’ve got it set for manual working. This little catch wants to be over this way.”

She stared at it miserably. “I am a fool. Of course it ought to be.”

“Cheer up. It’ll go all right next time. Let’s just run through your programme again.”

He went over the exposures and apertures with her, told her exactly what she had to do, and settled her down comfortably beside the camera. Then he got back into his seat and took off. She removed the cover from the floor and waited till he had got to his altitude and till he shouted that he was coming on the line again. Then she went religiously through the exact motions of starting the camera.

She watched it apprehensively. The indicator of the exposures suddenly flicked to a fresh number. It seemed to be working; apparently it had taken a photograph. She was surprised. She consulted her pad hurriedly, and re-set the aperture.

Ten minutes later she shouted to him: “That’s all, Mr. Ross.”

He swung round. “All right. Switch it off, and put back the cover.”

She did so, and came forward to him. He asked her: “How did it go that time?”

“I believe it was working all right. The numbers on the cyclometer thing kept changing.”

He nodded: “Good show. We’ll nip along back home and get these developed.”

He turned to the don. “Is there anything else that you would like to do, sir, while we’re here?”

Lockwood shook his head.

An hour later they landed again at Julianehaab and picked up their mooring. The boatman came out to meet them.
Ross carefully detached the film charger from the camera, and they all went ashore.

Alix set to work to get the lunch ready. Gertrud, the Eskimo woman, produced a lump of beef which had been boiling on the stove most of the morning, and a loaf of home-made bread. The girl set to work to open tins of vegetables, Ross put the film charger carefully aside and turned to the developing materials.

He puzzled over them all the time that he was eating his lunch. There were instructions on the various bottled powders that would have been comprehensible to a photographer; they were not comprehensible to him. The meal finished, Alix came and leaned over his shoulder and read them with him. The chemical descriptions meant nothing to them at all.

Alix said despondently: “When I used to do my Kodak ones there was a powder in a blue paper and one in a white paper, and it told you what to do with them.”

Ross nodded. “I remember those. The trouble is, we haven’t got a book of the words.”

Lockwood said: “Does that mean we’re stuck?”

The pilot shook his head slowly. “It’s not looking quite so good at the moment.”

He lit a cigarette, got up, and walked to the window. A sea-gull outside wheeled, and banked past the window with a sharp cry. Ross started and turned back to the Lockwoods. “Is the governor a photographer?”

The don stared at him. “I haven’t an idea.”

“His house was full of photographs—enlargements, on the walls. Sea-gulls, and things like that. Don’t you remember?”

Alix said: “Of course there were. Like somebody who’s had a Leica given to them as a present.”

Ten minutes later they were with the governor. He beamed at them over his spectacles, a little puzzled. “Yes, I am enthusiast,” he said. “It is good in winter here, in the long night, to make enlargements. That is very interesting, I think. I will show you.”

They explained their predicament to him. “Come,” he said, “we will go and see. This morning, I have come to see you because I wished you to show your big camera. I am much interested in the photographic apparatus. But already you had flown.”

They went back to the shack; on the way Ross explained to him what they had been doing. The chemicals presented no difficulty to him at all. “With this,” he said, “the emulsion is developed, and with this made hard. With this it is fixed. This, and this, are for the printing.”

He glanced at them. “I will show you. In my house I can make a dark room—you understand?”

They left Lockwood to his own devices, and Alix went with Ross to the governor’s house. They spent the remainder of the afternoon in and out of his dark room. Finally the governor held up the developed strip of negative to the light, still dripping from the wash, thirty exposures each five inches square. It lay in a bucket in a great coil, fifteen feet in length; he passed it rapidly through his hands. “All have too much light,” he said. “These are best, but still too much light.” He showed them the last negatives.