As he sat there in semi-darkness concentrating on the small illuminated horizon bar before him and the aero figure on the gyro, he suffered an experience that he had had before in difficult test flying, and that he welcomed. He saw the instruments with only a small portion of his mind. Only a small portion of his being was seated in the cockpit beside Ryder, holding the controls. The rest of him seemed to be seated in mid-air forty or fifty feet above and behind the rear fin and rudder of the machine. From there he could see the whole aeroplane spread out before him, from wing tip to wing tip. He could see the four engines, the elevons, the flaps, the long line of the fuselage tapering to the nose, the fin and rudder itself. All this was clearly visible to him in every detail; it was blueish grey in colour, slightly luminous. Beyond the aeroplane he could see the horizon clearly defined in two shades of grey, a light grey above that was the sky and a darker grey below that was the ground. With the small portion of his mind he knew that the horizon bar had tilted very slightly; from his heavenly seat he saw the left wing drop a little. He moved his hand a little and saw the elevons move a fraction under his control, and he levelled the wing up upon the grey horizon.
Then with the small portion of his mind he saw the second hand of the clock upon the panel creep to the end of the minute he was giving Frank Cox to prepare. In his heavenly seat he moved his hand and throttled both the inner engines, and he saw the glow from the exhaust tubes on the wing deepen in tone, and die. He pulled back gently with both hands and saw the luminous blue nose of the machine rise to the horizon, and then he pulled back firmly and lifted it right up into the air. It was all so easy when you could see the whole aeroplane spread out in front of you, in this way.
For a second the Ceres hung poised nose up at a steep angle, virtually standing on her tail. It was incredible to see a blue aeroplane stand up like a fish rising to a fly. Then the nose dropped violently and a wing dropped; with the small portion of his mind the pilot saw the horizon bar rise and tilt quickly, and the gyro move around. From his heavenly seat David saw the wing drop and the spin commence, and he was amazed at the rapidity and violence of the rotation. Seated behind the aeroplane, however, and with everything in view, it was easy to correct. His hand and foot moved gently and he saw the tail pipe of the port outboard engine glow and rise in colour till a long streak of blue flame came from it, and he saw the rudder move a few degrees to bring the wing up. She was nearly vertically nose down now, but let her go. Poor old thing, she needed her speed. The spin was nearly checked, a trifle more from the port inner engine … so. He pulled the throttles back and the glow from the tail pipes died, and now she was diving straight for the dark ground, and the turn had stopped. From his seat up in the air behind her he could see the flaps half out, and he noticed that they were bending slightly with the pressure of the air at the increasing speed; he put his hand to the flap control, and saw them sink back into the wing. He could sense the relief in the machine and feel a gladness in the structure, and now he eased back very gently on the wheel again, watching the line of the blue wings as they rose up towards the grey horizon, and correcting now and then gently to keep them level. The dark ground slipped backwards underneath them a long way below, and now she was nearly horizontal again. He pressed forward slowly on the throttle levers of the inner engines as the blue wings met the light grey of the sky, and moved his hand upon the trimming wheel to keep them so.
Gradually his being came back to the cockpit, the vision faded, and he was trimming the machine to fly steadily at five thousand feet. He turned to Ryder by his side. “Keep her at about two hundred and thirty,” he said. “I’m going to see what’s happened down below.”
He slipped out of his seat, and went to the hatch and opened it. Group Captain Cox stood up in the hole, and heaved himself out on to the floor.
“Get rid of it, sir?”
The other nodded. “It fell away quite clear,” he said standing up. “If anything the air was blowing out this time, instead of coming in. I got it out before you actually stalled her, before she got to the top.” He grinned. “I got the wind up that you’d catch it up in your dive.”
“You didn’t see what happened when it hit the ground?”
Frank Cox looked at him, astonished. “We were in thick cloud!”
“Yes,” said the pilot. “Yes, of course we were,”
Frank Cox dusted his uniform a little, and straightened his tie. “I’ll go back and tell them it’s all over and done with. Cummings is putting back the studs.”
“Get up to operating height again, and set a new course for Ratmalana?” said the pilot. “We use a lot of fuel down here.”
Frank Cox nodded. “Get on up. I’ll come and check the fuel reserve with you when I’ve had a drink.”
“I think we’ll be all right,” the pilot said.
“Have you had any dinner?”
“Not yet. You might ask Gillian to bring me a tray here.”
He went back to his seat, but handed over to Ryder, and sat resting, tired with the strain of the last hour. He sat watching the second pilot and the engineer get the aircraft into climbing trim and take her up, and presently they broke out above the clouds again to the glory of the setting moon upon their right hand side. Then Gillian brought him a tray of dinner with a cup of hot coffee, and he ate it, and felt better.
They came to operating height somewhere over Rhodes at ten minutes past nine, and put the machine into the cruising trim. David checked the fuel with Frank Cox, with Bahrein in mind for possible refuelling, but they came to the conclusion that they would still have adequate reserves to reach Colombo in spite of the two climbs, favoured as they were with general tail winds when flying east. Frank Cox volunteered for a watch at the controls, and Ryder went to lie down, and David strolled aft down the saloon for another cup of coffee.
The doors of the Queen’s cabin and the Consort’s cabin were both shut. He found Rosemary awake, and paused by her. “Fun and games,” he said. “We do see life in this job.”
She cleared the seat beside her. “Sit down a bit, Nigger,” she said. “Or have you got to go back?”
He motioned to the stewardess to bring him the coffee there, and sat down by Rosemary. “What was it like back here, when she stalled?” he asked. “Did anyone fall over, or get hurt?”
She shook her head. “Ryder and Jim Hansen came along and saw that we were all strapped in, and collected all the loose cases,” she said. “I think Fethers was sick.” Miss Fethers was the Queen’s maid.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll have a word with her as I go back. It was the only way we could get rid of the damn thing. I think I’ll suggest we have a hatch made right aft somewhere, by the tail, in case we ever have another one.” He sipped the coffee. “You were all right?”
She nodded. “Did she swing round when she went down? Something funny happened, didn’t it?”
“She got in a bit of a spin,” he replied. “They do that very easily, these things. They’re quite all right when you understand them.”
He sat with her a little, and pressed her hand discreetly between the seats. “Try and get some sleep now,” he said. “It’ll be dawn in a few hours. You’ve had enough excitements for one day.” She smiled at him, and he got up and went back to the flight deck, pausing to talk a little to Miss Fethers.
In the blackness of the night they passed over Nicosia and Beirut and Basra, and went on down the Persian Gulf past Bandar Abbas. As they cleared the Gulf of Oman the sky lightened ahead of them, and forty minutes later the sun rose over the Arabian Sea. Soon after that, David put the Ceres on the long let down that would bring them to Colombo at a moderate height, and had another cup of coffee and a few biscuits.
He was sitting eating these in the pilot’s seat when Frank Cox came to him. “The Queen’s coming in here,” he said. “She’s been talking to the passengers and the stewards in the saloon. She wants to talk to the rest of you here, on the flight deck. I’ll take over. Get that chap out
of bed and get them all lined up. She’s coming in here in five minutes time.”
David got out of the pilot’s seat and Frank Cox got in; they exchanged a few words about the course and rate of descent. There were a few minutes of hurried putting on tunics and straightening ties, and then the door opened, and the Consort and the Queen were there. The flight deck of the Ceres was not very spacious, and with eight people standing in it it was definitely crowded. The Queen stood close against David, for all the room he tried to give her, and her head came hardly to the level of his shoulder.
She said in the clear voice he knew so well, “First of all, I want to thank you all for what you did a few hours ago. When the Federal Government first suggested that they should give this aeroplane for the use of my Flight and that they should man it with an Australian crew, I knew that I should fly very safely. Now I have seen it proved. I do not think I can say very much more than that, except that I thank you with all my heart.”
She paused. “And now I have a command for you, and it is this. You are not to talk about this bomb that was put into the aeroplane. You are not to say a word about it to your wives, or to your sweethearts, or to anybody at all. You are not to talk about it even between yourselves. It is to be forgotten. This is a royal command from myself to you, and if anybody should break it I shall be very severe. The world outside this aeroplane is not to know that this has happened.”
She smiled at them. “But since we are friends, and since you boys have saved my life, I will tell you why this is. There have been two attempts upon my life since I came to the throne thirty years ago, and this is the third. It is one of the occupational hazards of the throne of England, or of any other throne, that poor, distraught, unbalanced people think that their troubles will be rectified if they can kill their Monarch.” She paused. “In the previous two instances of my own experience I could feel nothing but pity for the people who tried to kill me, when their cases were investigated and disclosed. It has always been the same, because political murder has never been a fashion in our Commonwealth.”
She looked around the faces of the young men. “I am convinced that this attempt upon my life, and yours, will prove to be the work of some unhappy person who deserves our sympathy. Unfortunately, it has come at a troubled time in England, when feelings are running high. It would not assist England to regain her balance if it should become known that my life has been attempted. Rather, the schisms which may heal in a few days might well become deeper, to the damage of England, to the damage of the Commonwealth. And so, it is my royal command to you that this thing is to be kept secret, absolutely. And this secrecy is to endure until I die.” She smiled faintly. “After that, you can talk all you want to.”
She looked at David. “Do you understand that, Captain?”
“Yes, madam,” he said. “I shan’t talk.”
She looked at Ryder. “And you, Mr. Ryder?” And so she went to every member of the crew with the direct question, and David was surprised to see that she knew all their names.
In the end she smiled at them, and said, “That is all, except, thank you again.” She looked up at David, “Captain, will you please come to my cabin.”
He followed her out of the flight deck and to her tiny cabin, and the Consort entered it with her, and David followed, and the Consort closed the door. And then she said, “Of all the people in the aeroplane I feel that you deserve our special thanks, Captain, for the care and the intuition that led you to discover our danger and for the skill with which you handled it. I have been thinking over what is the best way for me to recognise your services. Normally, I should have liked to bestow on you the Air Force Cross, for acts of gallantry and devotion to duty not in face of the enemy.” She smiled. “But I see you already have it, and a bar to the Air Force Cross would be so unusual, I think, that it might lead to enquiry.”
“Too right, madam,” he said. “There aren’t very many of those.”
“So, Wing Commander,” she said, “we have decided to commemorate your services by giving you a greater voice in the affairs of your country than is held by other men, since it appears to us that in wisdom and good sense you merit that distinction. We have confidence that the qualities that you have shown will be of value in matters of State far removed from aeroplanes or flying. So, we have instructed our Secretary to draw up a Royal Charter for our signature, granting to you the Seventh Vote in elections for the Federal Government of Australia, and in elections for the government of any State of Australia in which you happen to reside. We do this with gratitude to you, and from the bottom of our heart.”
She held out her hand, back upwards, and he divined what was intended, and bowed low, and kissed it rather clumsily.
They landed at Ratmalana in Ceylon at about nine o’clock by local time. The Governor-General and a small crowd of politicians and a guard of honour were on the aerodrome to greet the Queen. She stepped from the machine looking as fresh as a daisy, smiling and composed, the tired, anxious woman that the pilot knew all put away. He was amazed that she could do it, at the strain that Royalty imposed, but he had other things to think of. While the Queen was conversing with the Cingalese politicians and while refuelling was going on, David had every article of luggage taken out of the machine, with every food container and every kit of tools. When all these things were lying on the tarmac in the shade of the wing, he went through the aircraft on a tour of inspection with Frank Cox and Dick Ryder. Together they opened every box and cupboard and compartment in the aeroplane; by the end of half an hour they were satisfied. Then, as each piece of luggage was brought into the machine they opened it and searched it with the assistance of the owner before clearing it for the luggage bay. When finally they were ready to take off again, they did so with the knowledge that the aeroplane was free of any further surprises.
They took off at half past ten by local time, having spent longer than usual upon the ground over this business. For five hours they moved in brilliant, burning sunshine under a deep blue sky, with nothing to be seen but an appearance of the sea immediately below. The passengers were all exhausted with the strains prior to the commencement of the flight and with the reaction from the emotions of the first stage. The Queen and the Consort kept to their cabins, probably resting in bed; the others lay dozing in their reclining chairs, impatient for the journey to end. Even in the flight deck reaction was evident; David himself was sleepy, and as soon as operating height was reached he took an hour’s sleep upon one of the bunks.
They crossed the coast of West Australia at half past three by Colombo time, but it was already evening in Australia and soon after they began upon the desert crossing the sun set behind them and to starboard. They went on in the light of the rising moon, and now David took a couple of Benzedrine tablets, and offered them around the crew. A meal served to pass the time, and three hours after sunset they began the long let down that would end up on the circuit of Fairbairn aerodrome, at Canberra. At midnight, local time, they saw the lights of the city ahead of them as they approached at seven thousand feet, mindful of the hills around, and made a close circuit of the lighted airport, dropping off height at two thousand feet a minute. Then they were on the final circuit at a thousand feet with flaps half down and speed reduced to a bare two hundred knots, and at fourteen minutes after midnight David brought his Ceres in on a long, straight approach and put her down upon the runway.
A few cars were waiting for them on the tarmac, but only a few because nothing had been published about the Queen’s arrival. The Governor-General was there to meet her, and Mr. Hogan the Prime Minister, but it was all very informal, and after a few words with them the Queen and the Consort drove off in a car for Tharwa. The rest of the party for the Royal Residence followed with the luggage in a small bus, while David and Ryder taxied to the hangar of the Queen’s Flight and saw the aircraft drawn in under cover.
Rooms had been reserved in the Canberra Hotel for the same members of the Royal party, and David drove there when h
e had seen his crew accommodated, at about half past one in the morning. It had been a hot day in Canberra with the thermometer up somewhere in the nineties, and the night was warm and balmy, and scented with the fragrance of the gum trees and the wattles. He walked up the steps into the lounge of the hotel carrying his suitcase, and there in the desert of small tables and empty chairs Rosemary was waiting for him. A great Christmas tree stood in the lounge beside her, decorated with imitation frost and snow.
She said, “We’ve got the same rooms as before, Nigger. I got them to produce a couple of bottles of lemonade out of the ice chest. I thought you’d like a drink of something.”
He said, “You shouldn’t have stayed up.”
“I shouldn’t sleep if I went to bed just yet. I thought it would be nice to sit out in the garden for a bit, till we get sleepy.”
He nodded. “Let me go and put this case down, and wash my face. I’ll join you in five minutes.”
When he came to her again, he found her sitting in a deck chair in the garden quad, with a tinkle of water by her where somebody had left a sprinkler on all night. He sat down by her side, and took the glass she handed him. “Well, here we are again,” he said.
The girl said quietly, “It hardly seems possible, that we’ve been so far, and lived through so much. It’s only three weeks since we were here, David. And everything is just the same. And everything has changed so much in England in that time …”
“It’s a quiet place, this,” he replied. “A place free from great excitements and emotions, free from the strain of not having enough money, a place where one can sit and think.” He turned to her. “It’s a wonderful experience to go to England and get mixed up in great affairs. But when you’ve had the great affairs, this is a better place to be.”