The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [157]
The petrol took a long time to replace, and even with the care we took, it splashed around and had us reeking and light-headed. At last, when the sun was well down in the afternoon sky, Javitz tossed down the coffee-pot he had been using to transfer the liquid, and we were ready.
He spent some time warning the boys about the danger of the fumes and traces that remained on their utensils, and more time explaining to the larger boy, in painful detail, how to work the prop and exactly what the consequences would be if the boy did it wrong.
He climbed back, I dropped my cover down, and we crossed our fingers. When he shouted his command, the lad yanked hard on the propeller. The engine sputtered and died, and Javitz shouted for him to do it again. On the fourth try, the engine cleared its throat and came to life.
When the boys were well clear of the wings, Javitz aimed our nose down the mild slope we had landed on, and opened the throttle.
Hard.
The engine noise built as 230 horses stirred themselves to life. We rattled and rumbled over the field, bouncing and nearly flipping over. My teeth felt loose in my jaw, and each bounce left us only slightly closer to air-bound.
There was a rock wall at the far end of the field, and we were coming at it fast.
Too fast. It looked as high as a building and was certainly solid enough to smash us to pieces. I caught only glimpses past my pilot's shoulders, but I was in no doubt that the rocks were there, greedy for our fragility, vanishing with each bounce, only to reappear closer and higher than before. Three times this happened, and I closed my eyes and drew down my head, because when we descended again, we should be on top of it.
But we did not descend. The wings clawed at air, and the wheels kissed the stones in passing, then before us was only the violet expanse of the heavens.
Exultation lasted perhaps thirty seconds, before it penetrated my mind that the lighter portion of sky was to our right. I rapped on the glass, then unlatched it and wrestled it up a crack to shout, “Mr Javitz, why are we going south?”
There was no response; between the noise and the partition, communication threatened to be a one-way event. I drew breath and shouted more loudly: “We're going south!”
I thought he had still not heard me—either that, or was refusing to acknowledge it. Then I saw that he was bent over something held near his lap. After a minute, he held up a note-pad on which he had printed:
BE NIGHT IN EDINBURGH.
I protested, loudly, cursing that my revolver was in the storage locker, but before I could excavate through my layers of clothing for the knife, I realised he was right: I had to trust his decisions. If we could get safely to Edinburgh, we would be going there.
We made it back to the air field near York well before dark. Fortunately for the laconic individual who had sold us the petrol earlier, Javitz did not find him, and when he laboriously filtered the new petrol through his cloth, not a trace of foreign matter showed up. We spent the night in a nearby farmhouse that let rooms, and before it was truly light, the farmer motored us back to the air field and swung the prop for us. In minutes, the clamour drew us forward and into the sky.
I had, I need hardly mention, given up any real expectation that this northward journey would be anything but a wild-goose chase. I was by now quite certain that Holmes would be closing in on Bergen, and he and Mycroft's men would be baying on the trail of Brothers and his captives.
For me, onward motion was merely a thing to cling to until someone told me to stop.
Place (2): All these are considerations in choosing the site
for a Work: Central and apart, it must draw from the ages
yet be ageless,