Chapter Two
Aerial Flotsam
“That’s strange!” Nettlefold said softly, still sitting in the halted car and gazing across the flat surface of the lake. In area the lake was some two miles long and about one mile wide. On it grew widely spaced tussock-grass which, because of its spring lushness, the kangaroos had eaten down to within an inch of the ground. Had Emu Lake been filled with water—as it had been after the deluge of 1908—it would have been a veritable bush jewel. Now the colouring of the lake itself was drab. Without the water it was like a ring from which the jewel had fallen, leaving the mere setting.
“I believe there is somebody in the plane,” Elizabeth said sharply. “Isn’t that someone in the front seat?”
“If there is, then your eyes are better than mine,” her father replied. “The pilot must have made a forced landing. We’ll drive round a bit and then cross to it.”
Nettlefold had to take care when negotiating the steep yet low bank to reach the ribbon of claypan, and then, because the machine was a little to the left, he drove the car along the firm level claypan strip until opposite the aeroplane, when he turned sharply out on to the lake bed.
The heavy car bumped over the tussock-grass butts, the open spaces between them covered with deep sand, and so eventually drew to within a few yards of the spick and span red-varnished monoplane.
Slightly above their level, a girl occupied the front seat. Her pose was perfectly natural. Her head was tilted forward as though she were interested in something lying on her lap. She was quite passive, as though absorbed by an exciting book. No one could be seen in the pilot’s cockpit.
“Good afternoon!” called Nettlefold.
The occupant of the monoplane offered no acknowledgment of the salute. She continued impassively to gaze down at her lap. She made no movement when he called again.
“It certainly is strange, Dad,” Elizabeth said uneasily.
“I agree with you. Wait here.”
John Nettlefold’s voice had acquired a metallic note. Alighting from the car, he walked towards the plane until his head became level with the edge of the front cockpit. He was then able to observe that the girl’s eyes were almost closed. She was not reading. She was asleep—or dead. …
“Good afternoon!” he called for the third time.
Still she made no response. He gently pinched the lobe of her left ear. It was warm to the touch, but his act failed to arouse her.
“Come, come! Wake up!” he said loudly, and this time he shook her, finding her body flexible with life. He failed, however, to awaken her.
Nor, he assured himself, was the rear cockpit occupied, although here were the controls of the plane.
“Is she dead?” asked Elizabeth from the car.
“No, but there is something peculiar about her. Come here, and have a look.” Then, when she had joined him: “She looks exactly as though she is asleep, but if she is I can’t wake her. Where, I wonder, is the pilot?”
“Walked away for assistance, I suppose. The plane appears to be quite undamaged. Ought we not to lift her out? She may be merely in a faint.”
“Wait … one moment! Don’t move about!”
Nettlefold’s bush-acquired instincts now came into play. His gaze was directed to the ground in the vicinity of the machine. As mentioned, the grass butts were widely spaced, and between each cropped butt the lake surface was composed of fine reddish sand. Their own boot and shoe prints from the car were plainly discernible, but there were no other tracks left by a human being. The pilot had not jumped from the machine to the ground on their side. Neither had the girl.
Having walked round to the far side of the machine, the cattleman discovered that neither the girl nor the pilot had dropped to the ground on that side. When he rejoined Elizabeth he had made a complete circuit, and he at once proceeded to make a second, this time one of greater circumference.
“There wasn’t a pilot,” he said when he again joined his daughter. “That girl must have piloted the aeroplane herself. No one has left it after it landed here.”
“But if she controlled the machine she would be in the rear cockpit, wouldn’t she?” queried Elizabeth.
“Doubtless she was. She must have climbed forward to the front cockpit after she landed the machine. That no one has left the machine is certain. No one could have left it without leaving tracks.”
With compressed lips, Nettlefold stepped back the better to view the crimson varnished aeroplane from gleaming propeller to tail tip. It was either a new machine or had been recently varnished. Along the fuselage in white was painted the cipher, V.H–U, followed by the registration letters.
It was indeed an extraordinary place in which to encounter a flying machine. They were hundreds of miles off any established air route, and to Nettlefold’s knowledge no squatter within the far-flung boundaries of the district possessed an aeroplane. He was, of course, aware that adventure-seeking people were beginning to fly round and across Australia, but hitherto they had kept to well-defined routes. Here they were about one hundred and twenty miles from the nearest township, Golden Dawn, and Emu Lake did not lie on any line from town to town, or from station homestead to homestead.
“Let’s get her out, Dad,” urged Elizabeth. “If she has fainted we must bring her round.”
Placing his foot in the step cut in the side of the fuselage he hauled himself up and astride the plane as though mounting into the saddle. He settled his weight securely on the narrow division between the two cockpits and behind the motionless girl. His hands slipped beneath her arms, and then he cried out to Elizabeth: “Why, she is strapped into her seat!”
“They all do that, you know,” she reminded him.
“Maybe they do, but why should this young lady strap herself into her seat if she got into it after she landed the machine from the rear seat controls?”
“The plane may have what they call dual controls.”
“Well, there are no gadgets in the front cockpit,” he objected.
“Never mind, Dad. Lift her out and down to me. The mysteries can be cleared up after we have discovered what is the matter with her.”
It proved no mean task to lift the girl out of the cockpit. She remained absolutely passive during the operation of getting her down to the waiting Elizabeth. She was well developed, and her weight proved Elizabeth’s strength when she took the unconscious girl and laid her on the ground beside the aeroplane. When her father joined her, she was looking intently at the rigid face.
“She’s rather pretty, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Nettlefold agreed. “Do you think she is in a faint?”
“I don’t know. I doubt it. It doesn’t look like a faint. Will you bring me some water from the car, please?”
Elizabeth, while waiting for the water, continued to study the immobile features. The lips were parted just a little, and the breast rose and fell regularly. The girl appeared to be sleeping, and yet it was a strange sleep, because as a rule the face of a sleeping person registers some kind of expression. It was strange, too, because it was a sleep from which no ordinary methods could wake her. She was wearing a blue serge skirt and a light-blue jersey over a silk blouse. Her shoes and stockings were of good quality. She was wearing no jewellery.
When her father brought the canvas waterbag and a cup, Elizabeth seated herself beside the still figure and lifted the head into her lap. The filled cup she set against the curved lips, but the unconscious girl made not the slightest effort to drink. With her handkerchief, Elizabeth sponged her forehead and the backs of her hands, but to all her treatment the aeroplane girl failed to