Coasts of Cape York by Christopher Cummings Page A

sharks might come!’ That chilled him even more and he could only pray that things would go well.
    To his dismay he heard the aircraft’s engines begin to bellow. He wanted to cry out that he wasn’t ready, that they hadn’t discussed this and needed more time to explore the options and to discuss the situation. Then he felt Marjorie gripping him tightly and he realized that he wasn’t the only one who was scared. That helped. He smiled at her and put an arm around her.
    â€˜The officers knowing that we are friends won’t matter if we die,’ he thought.
    Then he made a conscious effort to act calm and to help the others. It made his face feel like it was made of plastic and it felt very stiff and unfeeling but he managed to pretend he was interested and enjoying the adventure. The ‘Catalina’ began to bump and smack into the waves as it picked up speed and Willy began to try to remember what he had read about flying boats and safe sea states for take off and landing.
    Spray began showering back over the entire hull as the bow pounded harder and harder into each wave. From his vantage point Willy could see forward along the side of the hull and that was no help to his peace of mind. He watched with alarm as the bow drove hard into a big wave, sending a huge shower of water back over the aircraft. A lot of this was sucked into the engines or caught by the whirling propellers and then blasted back past him in a roaring mist which all but blotted out visibility for a few seconds.
    â€˜Will all that water cause the engines to fail?’ he wondered. He was very aware that the failure of even one engine in the middle of a take-off could have catastrophic effects on the aircraft’s performance. As the bow slammed into yet another wave, causing the entire machine to buck and shudder, an icy clutch of real fear gripped Willy’s heart.
    The plane powered into an even bigger wave and seemed to lose all forward momentum to an alarming degree. ‘We will never get flying speed,’ Willy thought. Now his face was a frozen mask, a grin fixed on it. But inside his heart was hammering and he knew he was afraid. ‘I will keep pretending I’m not so that Marjorie isn’t too scared,’ he rationalized.
    The ‘Catalina’ bounced and hammered across more waves, its progress all but hidden by the flying spray. Willy saw the starboard float dig deeply into a wave crest, causing the aircraft to yaw noticeably. Then the float dragged itself free and the engines kept bellowing. His sight of the propellers was lost in the sheer volume of spray and foam they lashed up and Willy could only hope that Mr Southall had a better view forward than he did.
    As the bow dipped and the tail gave a sickening upwards swoop Willy feared that they were about to drive right under. Then the aircraft shuddered, shook, then powered on. ‘We aren’t going to make this,’ he told himself. ‘The waves are too big for us to build up any real speed.’
    But then Willy noted that the waves seemed to be getting smaller and as the spray thinned a bit he noted a huge area of churned up water a few hundred metres to starboard. That puzzled him for a second, even as his brain calculated that the maelstrom was getting closer with every second. Then he gasped. ‘That is waves breaking on the reef! We are trying to take off in its lee,’ he reasoned. He now understood that Mr Southall had taken the ‘Catalina’ out into the rougher water to start the take-off run and that they were now coming in to the relatively smoother water as they picked up speed.
    Even as this realization came to him he worked out that the take-off course was diagonal to the edge of the reef. With every passing second the aircraft’s course was converging with that welter of foam. ‘If we don’t get off in the next few seconds we will run onto the coral!’ Willy thought.
    Now the