Arthur Upfield: Wings above the Diamantina

“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 whatis 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 fore-head and the backs of her hands, but to all her treatment the aeroplane girl failed to respond.

“I can’t understand it,” Elizabeth said at last. “It frightens me.”

Now on his knees beside his daughter, the station manager used the tip of a little finger to raise the girl’s left eyelid. He uttered an exclamation and raised the other. The girl was now staring at him with sinister fixity, her eyelids remaining in the position to which he had raised them. They were large and blue, dark-blue, and in them was the unmistakable expression of wild entreaty. Involuntarily, he said:

“It is all right! Really, it is. We are going to be your friends.”

“What! Is she awake?” Elizabeth demanded sharply. Quickly she lifted the girl’s head and then, finding the angle difficult, shesquirmed her body round so that she, too, was able to look into the blue eyes. “Why, she is conscious!”

For a moment they regarded the staring eyes, in their hearts both horror and a great pity. Not once did the eyelids blink. The helpless girl uttered no sound, made no smallest movement save very slightly to move her eyes. Except for the poignant expression in them, her face might have been cast in plaster of Paris.

“Can’t you speak?” said Elizabeth, barely above a whisper.

Obtaining no response, she took up the cup of water and again pressed its edge against the immobile lips. There was no movement, no effort made to drink.

“Oh! You poor thing! Whatever is the matter?”

“Part her lips and see if she will drink when you drop the water into her mouth,” Nettlefold suggested.

Elizabeth accepted the suggestion, and they presently saw that the helpless girl swallowed. Her eyes were now misty, and from themwelled great tears which Elizabeth sponged away with the handkerchief.

“Won’t you try to talk?” she pleaded softly. “Can’t you talk? Can you close your eyelids? Try-just try to do that. No?” To her father, she said: “I can’t understand it. She seems perfectly conscious, and yet she is so helpless that she cannot even raise or lower her eyelids. I am positive that she can hear us and understand us.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” he agreed instantly. “Well, the only thing to do is to get her home as quickly as possible, Then we must call Dr Knowles. He should know whatis the matter with her. We’ll be moving. We can do nothing here.”