felt very weak and lit another Sobranie. I could hear him ploughing towards me through the long grass, and once he called my name. God knows why I didn’t answer. Some kind of shock. I suppose. I simply sat there, the cigarette slack between my lips and stared beyond the wreck of the Vega to the river, taking in every sight and sound in minute detail as if to prove I was alive.
‘By God, you can fly, boy. I’ll say that for you.’
He emerged from the grass and stood looking at me, hands on hips in what I was to learn was an inimitable gesture. He was physically very big indeed and wore a leather top-coat, breeches, knee-length boots, a leather helmet, goggles pushed up high on the forehead and there was a .45 Colt automatic in a holster on his right thigh.
I put out my hand and when I spoke, the voice seemed to belong to someone else. ‘Mallory – Neil Mallory.’
‘You already told me that – remember?’ He grinned. ‘My name’s Hannah – Sam Hannah. Anything worth salvaging in there besides the mail?’
As I discovered later, he was forty-five years of age at that time, but he could have been older or younger if judged on appearance alone for he had one of those curiously ageless faces, tanned to almost the same colour as his leather coat.
He had the rather hard, self-possessed, competent look of a man who had been places and done things, survived against odds on occasions and yet, even from the first, there seemed a flaw in him. He made too perfect a picture standing there in his flying kit, gun on hip, like some R.F.C. pilot waiting to take off on a dawn patrol across the trenches, yet more like a man playing the part than the actuality. And the eyes were wrong – a sort of pale, washed blue that never gave anything away.
I told him about the mining machinery and he climbed inside the Vega to look for himself. He reappeared after a while holding a canvas grip.
‘This yours?’ I nodded and he threw it down. ‘Those crates are out of the question. Too heavy for the Hayley anyway. Anything else you want?’
I shook my head and then remembered. ‘Oh yes, there’s a revolver in the map compartment.’
He found it with no difficulty and pushed it across, together with a box of cartridges, a Webley .38 which I shoved away in one of the pockets of my flying jacket.
‘Then if you’re ready, we’ll get out of here.’ He picked up the three mail sacks with no visible effort. ‘The Indians in these parts are Jicaros. There were around five thousand of them till last year when some doctor acting for one of the land companies infected them with smallpox instead of vaccinating them against it. The survivors have developed the unfortunate habit of skinning alive any white man they can lay hands on.’
But such tales had long lost the power to move me for they were commonplace along the Amazon at a time when most settlers or prospectors regarded the Indians as something other than human. Vermin to be ruthlessly stamped out and any means were looked upon as fair.
I stumbled along behind Hannah who kept up a running conversation, cursing freely as great clouds of grasshoppers and insects of various kinds rose in clouds as we disturbed them.
‘What a bloody country. The last place God made. As far as I’m concerned, the Jicaros can have it and welcome.’
‘Then why stay?’ I asked him.
We had reached the Haley by then and he heaved the mail bags inside and turned, a curious glitter in his eyes. ‘Not from choice, boy, I can tell you that.’
He gave me a push up into the cabin. It wasn’t as large as the Vega. Seats for four passengers and a freight compartment behind, but everything was in apple-pie order and not just because she wasn’t all that old. This was a plane that enjoyed regular, loving care. Something I found faintly surprising because it didn’t seem to fit with Hannah.
I strapped myself in beside him and he closed the door. ‘A hundred and eighty this baby does at full stretch. You’ll be wallowing in a hot bath before you know it.’ He grinned. ‘All right, tepid, if I know my Manaus plumbing.’
Suddenly I was very tired. It was marvellous just to sit there, strapped comfortably into my seat and let someone else do the work and as I’ve said, he was good. Really good. There wasn’t going to be more than a few feet in it as far as those trees were concerned at the far end of the campo and yet I hadn’t a qualm as he turned the Hayley into the wind and opened the throttle.
He kept her going straight into that green wall, refusing to sacrifice power for height, waiting until the last possible moment, pulling the stick back into his stomach and lifting us up over the tops of the trees with ten feet to spare.
He laughed out loud and slapped the bulkhead with one hand. ‘You know what’s the most important thing in life, Mallory? Luck – and I’ve got a bucket full of the stuff. I’m going to live to be a hundred and one.’
‘Good luck to you,’ I said.
Strange, but he was like a man with drink taken. Not drunk, but unable to stop talking. For the life of me, I can’t remember what he said, for gradually my eyes closed and his voice dwindled until it was one with the engine itself and then, that too faded and there was only the quiet darkness.
2
Maria of the Angels
I had hoped to be on my way in a matter of hours, certainly no later than the following day for in spite of the fact that Manaus was passing through hard times, there was usually a boat of some description or another leaving for the coast most days.
Things started to go wrong from the beginning. To start with, there was the police in the person of the comandante himself who insisted on giving me a personal examination regarding the crash, noting my every word in his own hand which took up a remarkable amount of time.
After signing my statement I had to wait outside his office while he got Hannah’s version of the affair. They seemed to be old and close friends from the laughter echoing faintly through the closed door and when they finally emerged, Hannah had an arm round the comandante’s shoulder.
‘Ah, Senhor Mallory.’ The comandante nodded graciously. ‘I have spoken to Captain Hannah on this matter and am happy to say that he confirms your story in every detail. You are free to go.’
Which was nice of him. He went back into his office and Hannah said, ‘That’s all right, then.’ He frowned as if concerned and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’ve got things to do, but you look like the dead walking. Grab a cab downstairs and get the driver to take you to the Palace Hotel. Ask for Senhor Juca. Tell him I sent you. Five or six hours’ sleep and you’ll be fine. I’ll catch up with you this evening. We’ll have something to eat. Hit the high spots together.’
‘In Manaus?’ I said.
‘They still have their fair share of sin if you know where to look.’ He grinned crookedly. ‘I’ll see you later.’
He returned to the comandante’s office, opening the door without knocking and I went downstairs and out through the cracked marble pillars at the entrance.
I didn’t go to the hotel straight away. Instead, I took one of the horse-drawn cabs that waited at the bottom of the steps and gave the driver the address of the local agent of the mining company for whom I’d contracted to deliver the Vega to Belem.
In
