The Man who Missed the War (41 page)

At the first glance they both saw from the headlines that the war was not only still on but had become worldwide.

‘America’s in!’ cried Philip; ‘but so are the Japs. Look! “Americans Repulse Japanese in Solomons!” And here again, “U.S. Air-Sea Victory off Stewart Islands. Two Jap Aircraft Carriers and a Battleship severely damaged”.’

‘The Russians are in too,’ said Gloria.

‘Good God! On whose side?’ Philip exclaimed, abandoning his own sheet to look over Gloria’s shoulder. A second later he sighed with relief as he read: ‘Germans mount fresh Attacks against Stalingrad,’ and added: ‘Thank goodness! I always said they had no use for the Nazis; but after the Russo-German pact of Nineteen Thirty-nine who could tell what they meant to do? Where the devil is Stalingrad, though?’

Gloria pointed to a map down the bottom of the page, and he exclaimed in surprise again: ‘I say, the Germans
have
made a penetration. They must be nearly a thousand miles into Russia. I wonder how long it is since Hitler quarrelled with Uncle Joe?’

‘The British are attacking Egypt,’ Gloria remarked, pointing at a headline with another map below it.

Philip followed her finger. ‘But heaven help us, what on earth are they doing there, almost in the Delta? They must have been driven back over six hundred miles since General Wavell made his magnificent advance to Benghazi.’

‘I wish we knew how long America’s been at war, and just what brought us in,’ said Gloria.

Some two hours later she had the answer. They were looking through one of the dormitory huts when they noticed the front page of an American paper pasted up on the wall. It was an issue of December the 15th, 1941, and above it the sailor who had stuck it up—perhaps an American member of the whaler’s crew—had written in blue pencil: ‘
LET’S NOT FORGET.’

The big splash in heavy type was Colonel Knox’s official statement on his return from Hawaii, where he had been to investigate personally the dastardly attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour eight days earlier.

‘Two battleships sunk—destroyers—minelayer—aircraft burnt in hangars—over two thousand four hundred killed,’ murmured Philip, aghast. ‘By jove, your boys must have been properly caught with their trousers down.’

‘Yours don’t seem to have been all that slick either,’ Gloria cracked back, pointing at a smaller paragraph near the left-hand bottom corner of the sheet. It was a statement that the loss of life when H.M.S.
Prince of Wales
and H.M.S.
Repulse
had been sunk by Japanese aircraft on December the 10th was less than had at first been feared, but that Admiral Sir Tom Phillips was among the missing.

Philip groaned. The fact that in less than a week his own predictions had been so amply justified by two actions thousands of miles apart, in both of which a few well-aimed bombs had sent great capital ships costing many million pounds to the bottom of the sea in a matter of minutes, was no consolation. For the time being he could only realise with dismay that the United States Navy had been seriously crippled before it had even had a chance to get into the war, and he thought with horror of the engine-rooms and lower decks of our own big ships as they heeled over.

On making a thorough search of the whole camp they managed to find a number of other bits of old newspapers which had been used for lining shelves, or left in dustbins.

After reading themselves almost silly during the next twenty-four hours they had succeeded in getting a good general picture of the progress of the war. There were many gaps and seemingly contradictory statements, but the main facts were clear.

Hitler had, after all, never been able to invade Britain, and, despite the Prince’s stories about London having been bombed flat, large sections of it must still be standing, because the King and Queen continued to receive official guests at Buckingham Palace, and a certain amount of news was given in the Australian papers about dances and theatrical shows given in London for war charities. The U-boat blockade of Britain continued and
was costing the Allies hundreds of thousands of tons of shipping, but somehow or other the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy were still getting the bulk of the convoys through.

That was the bright side of the picture. On the other, in Africa the British had been driven back almost to the Nile. For sixteen months Russia appeared to have suffered defeat after defeat, losing millions of square miles of her territory and millions of her troops in dead and prisoners. In the Far East things were, if possible, even worse. Hong Kong, Singapore, the whole of the Netherlands, East Indies, Burma and the Philippines had all been conquered by the Japanese, and the Australians and Americans were now having their work cut out to hold them in New Guinea and the Solomons.

It was evident that, far from being nearing an end, the war would go on for a long time yet and that its issue still trembled in the balance. If Britain were so hard put to it to defend Egypt she could have little to spare for other theatres. How long could Russia carry on in the face of such terrible losses? If she were forced out of the war what would there be to stop the Germans switching their huge eastern army against Turkey and driving through Persia to India for a link-up with the Japanese? If that happened would even the vast war potential of the United States and the British Empire be sufficient ever to dislodge the Axis Powers from their hold on nine-tenths of Europe and the whole of Asia?

The very grimness of these possibilities re-aroused in Philip all his old urge to get home, to join in the fight, to do something, no matter what, provided that it would help to defeat the enemy. With his game leg it was virtually certain that they would not accept him for any of the fighting services now; but he could take up his old job in the aircraft works, or, even if he were too out-of-date for that, there would be scores of jobs open to him, a skilled worker, in munitions.

But he was still a prisoner in the Antarctic, and it looked as if he must continue so for another eight months at least. The way in which the whaling station had been dismantled showed that the season was over and the last ship likely to call there gone. John A.’s arrival had caused them to leave their journey too late. The only course now was to return to the valley for the Antarctic
winter and make arrangements for a second journey to the MacKenzie Sea much earlier in next year’s whaling season.

Feeling that they were fully entitled to some of the ‘stores for distressed manners’, they took a few tins of bully beef, condensed milk, sardines, tinned salmon and chocolate and packed them with their other goods on the sledge. Then, during the second evening of their stay, Philip wrote a long letter to his father, enclosing in it the log of the Raft Convoy. Gloria also enclosed a note to her mother, but it was only a brief one to say that she was alive and happy. The whole packet was addressed to Engineer Captain R. J. Vaudell, R.N., c/o The Admiralty, Whitehall, London, and left in the main mess-room with the request that the finder would forward it.

Philip felt a certain sense of relief when he had done this. He knew now that, even if some accident prevented him from returning to the whaling station several months hence, all the data concerning his experiment with the rafts would reach the Admiralty and be examined by the experts for what it was worth. Even if were too late to be of any use in this war, it might prove of value for commercial purposes afterwards, or, if we were unlucky enough to become involved again, in some future conflict. He was glad, too, to think that, whether he got home or not, his father would now learn that he had not been drowned off the Cornish coast in October, 1939, but had survived to enjoy much happiness with the girl he loved and to beget a son.

On the third morning after their arrival at the whaling station they left it again for what they now thought of as ‘home’. It was a relief to get away from the fishy smell of the place, but that was not the only thing that accounted for Gloria’s high spirits. She had voted for leaving the valley because she knew that Philip would not be really happy if he were prevented from doing his best to get back to England. For her the valley held happiness and security, while Europe offered only a vague and uncertain future, so in her secret heart she was glad that they found no ship to carry them back to the haunts of men.

The journey back went well for the first four days, but from then on they were a prey to constant anxiety. Fresh snow began to fall in considerable quantities. Where they struck soft patches of it their feet sank in up to the ankles with every step they took,
and the going proved extraordinarily fatiguing. Then for two days and nights they were confined to their tent by a blizzard. The tent became so heavily snowed up that its sides were forced right in, so that its ground space was reduced by half, and they were compelled to lie for many hours on end jammed together almost as if they were in a double coffin, with scarcely enough room to turn over. They would, in any case, have cuddled up for mutual warmth, but the lack of power to move their limbs freely resulted in numbness and the most appalling bouts of cramp. John A. alone remained comparatively cheerful, but to achieve that Gloria had to keep him bound closely against her breasts, which was no small inconvenience.

At last the snow stopped falling. They were able to dig themselves out and proceed on their way, but they had been badly frightened, so they pushed on to the limit of their endurance, hoping to reach the valley before being caught again. On the evening of the tenth day, to their great relief, they camped in the pass half-way up through the mountains, but on the following morning when they came down into the valley they had a sharp reminder that there were times when it, too, was far from secure.

No one was working on the farms, and, although it was broad daylight, all the Palace servants were cowering in the safest hiding-places they could find. Now that Gloria and Philip could both speak the Little People’s language fairly fluently, it did not take them long to discover the cause. On the previous night the valley had been ravaged by another visit from the Dog.

It was, Philip remembered, just a year since that night of horror when they had actually seen the great mastiff gallop by carrying one of the pigmies. Then, he had been in no position to cross-question the Little People about it, but now he determined to find out everything he could concerning the sinister beast.

This proved no easy undertaking, as, for one thing, the pigmies seemed to have a superstitious fear of discussing the subject at all, and, for another, because he and they still found great difficulty in finding words to convey abstract ideas. The sum of many hours spent on talking to members of his household and farmers living nearby amounted to the following.

The visits of the Dog were of two kinds. First, it appeared once a year, always on the same night towards the end of March.
On these annual visits it took thirteen people—never more and never less. This number was in some way connected with the thirteen electrical storms, one every lunar month, which took place above the valley during each year. Secondly, there were much worse visitations in which anything from fifty to a hundred people were carried off, but these took place quite irregularly. Sometimes, as in the year that had just gone, no such raid took place at all; other years two or even three raids occurred, so no one could ever tell on what night the dreaded Dog might appear.

It was so strong and resourceful that when it had once selected a house from which it intended to secure a victim it was virtually impossible to keep it out. The flimsy doors and window-shutters of the cottages were little protection, and to erect stout stockades such as the Prince had made around the Palace enclosure, was beyond the capabilities of the pigmies. The Dog never killed its victims but carried them away alive. Strangest of all, it was not considered to have any will or baleful intelligence of its own, but was regarded as a servant sent by a great and maleficent power that Philip could only translate as ‘The Lords of the Mountain’.

He wished with all his heart that he could devise some way in which to protect the Little People from this terrible menace which hung over them, and from which they were never free for a single night; but with such scanty information there seemed little he
could
do. He did not doubt that the evil came from the great chain of mountains to the south, but, crippled as he was and with Gloria and his little son to look after, he did not feel called upon to attempt the rôle of Jack the Giant-Killer. For one thing, he doubted if he would be able to accomplish such a journey on his own, and, for another, if he could, he had no intention of undertaking it until he had a much clearer picture of what he would have to face when he got to the other end.

All he could do was to urge the pigmies to live inside a number of stockaded cantonments which he offered to help them make; but that would have meant most of them abandoning their houses. It seemed that they were a race of fatalists and, rather than do this, they preferred to continue to accept the risk that formed part of the lives of their forefathers for many generations.

For some time past Gloria had been interesting herself in such bits of their history and folklore as she could pick up, and she had formed her own theory about them. On one point she was quite definite; certain words in their language had a distant resemblance to the Erse which she had learnt in old Irish songs that her mother had taught her. From this she argued that the Little People, or a branch of their race, had once lived in Ireland and that the Irish legends concerning the leprechauns were based upon a memory of these real human beings.

This idea was to some extent supported by the only tradition the pigmies seemed to have concerning themselves, which was that their ancestors had at one time lived in a big island which had many lakes, rivers and mountains, and was known as the Green Land. White men and Red men of the larger races had both dwelt there, and at a time of great storms, earthquakes and upheavals some of the Red men had taken the forebears of the Little People away from their original home in ships, later to settle them in their present country of the valley.