Island
Frank pulled at the carburettor de-ice control on his Cessna light aircraft when the engine spluttered, despite the fact that it was fully engaged already. He had anticipated the cold and damp Scottish air being a problem some minutes before, but hadn’t considered that the engine may actually cut out on him. He began to scan the world outside for a landing site, but could only see the mist in the air. His engine then gave a series of coughs, which convinced him that he needed to get serious about a place to land.
He tried to radio a mayday to air traffic control, but his range and the weather made it difficult to know if it had got through. He would have to assume that it had, even though he had received no reply, as he had to lose some height to be able to see anything.
He levelled out at fifteen hundred feet, at which altitude he began to see through breaks in the cloud cover. From his charts and flight plan, he knew he was still over sea, but that there were myriad small islands below him. The engine continued to complain about the ice building up in its intake system, so he had to commit to the first safe landing place that he spotted.
A brief glimpse of what appeared to be breaking surf led him to believe that he was now over one of the islands. He needed to lose some more height to see clearly any potential landing strip, and that meant it was this island or nothing! As he began wrestling with this dilemma, the decision was suddenly made for him, the engine gave one last splutter, and stopped. The distressed drone was now replaced by the relative calm of air rushing past and the occasional creak as the airframe absorbed the buffeting outside.
Now rapidly losing altitude, Frank soon began to make out details below. He could see what appeared to be a beach, though whether it was fairly flat, smooth, hard, or any of the other things he would like, would not become apparent until the wheels were about to touch down! At the present moment however, his mind was juggling heights, distances, turning radii and the like in an attempt to bring his dead-stick ‘plane onto a suitable approach to the strip, whether it was ideal or not.
After all too short a time he was wrestling the Cessna from the final turn to bring it in line with the beach. He had no height to spare and finished the turn, flared to lose speed and touched down all at the same moment. He had luckily had no time to worry about his predicament up until now, and had fallen back on his training to get this far. He now had to instantly adapt from being the pilot of a very inefficient glider in gusty weather, to being driver of an unstable tricycle on quite a steeply sloping, though thankfully hard and smooth, beach – in gusty weather. He was doing an heroic job, until the combined effect of a sudden wind gust and the seaward wheel hitting a rock, slewed the hurtling go-cart so that one wheel caught the water. This had effect of violently braking that side of the ‘plane so that it turned into the sea and all of the undercarriage struts were subject to the same retardation. In an instant, the Cessna flipped forward on one main and the nose wheel, and continued over to land upside down in the water, where it came to a crashing, hissing stop!
The windscreen had broken in the impact, so Frank found himself hanging from his seat belt upside down, with cold water rushing in at him. Luckily, the involuntary intake of breath that this invoked, coincided with moment he felt that it would be a good time to grab his knees and curl up into a ball, so he did not ingest too much water. As he coughed, spluttered and gasped, he managed to release his belt, and fell into the water, which was good at breaking his fall, but deep enough to necessitate a frantic scramble to get into a position where he could breathe again. Once that was done, he could pause for a moment to catch his breath and to take stock; a difficult thing to do when freezing water is constricting your chest and you are still coughing due to brine irritating your throat. The cockpit was still filling through the broken ‘screen, but would equal the level of the sea shortly and finish at his chest height, at which time it would become easier to push out the escape panel to get out. While he waited for this to happen, he cast around quickly for anything he thought he should take with him. All that came to hand was the first aid kit and his mobile ‘phone. He clasped them tightly and held them high above the rising water to keep them dry.
Once out of the upturned aircraft, he waded up onto the beach where he stamped angrily at his misfortune. If he had just held it for a few moments longer, to bring it safely to a halt, he would simply have waited for the engine heat to thaw the carburettor, and then continued his journey. Now, his ‘plane was wrecked and he must wait to be rescued. As he thought on this, he began to realise that he should be thankful that he was able to walk away unscathed.
He then noticed how cold he was. He would have been cold anyway at this temperature and in this wet wind, but he was also drenched and wearing only jeans and a tee shirt. There was a coat in his luggage, but he must wade back to the wreck to get it. This he did, reluctantly, as it meant going back into the cold water.
His case and coat were in the luggage hold in the tail, which was out of the water. As the ‘plane was upside down, the hinges to the hold door were at the top, so that when it finally opened, his coat fell out. He quickly made a grab for it before it hit the water and was largely successful at keeping it from getting wet. He then wrestled the case from the hold too, and hoped its contents remained dry.
Back on the beach, He retrieved the first aid kit and ‘phone and took them, the case and the coat up to the trees where he thought he might find shelter from the wind. Soon he was looking through his case and sorting out the driest of its contents to change into. With this done, he felt much better, and put on the coat. It had one wet sleeve and one half of the hem was soaked too, but he was more comfortable in it than without, so he kept it on and began deciding on the best course of action.
He tried to use his mobile ‘phone but there was no signal. He had expected this as there was no sign of civilisation in sight and certainly no ariel mast, but he had to try.
Frank knew that he should stay near the ‘plane, as that would be what the coast guard would look for when mounting the search that would follow, when it became apparent that he was overdue. But he thought that if he could find a house with a telephone, he could save a lot of time and taxpayers money. He tried to remember any signs of life he had seen from the air, but could not recall any. Out of boredom as much as any plan of action, he began to walk along the beach. The woodland was quite an effective shield to the wind and rain and he (fairly) happily meandered along wondering what he would find.
Perhaps two hundred metres or so along, he came across a path into the trees! It wasn’t a properly paved path, but unmistakably a well-used walk-way; used, Frank hoped, by people rather than some undiscovered highland man eating creature. He glanced back at his Cessna and realised that it was being further swamped by the incoming tide. There was, however, nothing he could do about it. Looking to the floor with a sigh, he determined that the search for him would not start for at least three hours, so he looked along the path into the woods, and decided he would explore it a little. He may find that house with the telephone.
There were parts of the path that were being encroached upon by the vegetation to the sides. Frank optimistically took this to mean that it was a seasonally used track that was out of season, rather than that it had fallen into disuse. After a very short walk, no more than a minute, he came to an open area that had once contained a large prefabricated building, in fact it still contained the building, it was just that it had fallen into such disrepair that the word building no longer really applied. None of the roof remained in place, having either fallen in, or blown away, and the walls were mainly reduced to their pre-fab sections and lay on whatever they had fallen (a ‘Post-fab'?).
Frank was intrigued by the building and began to sift through whatever he could find. The walls were fairly easy to move, or at least to lift over to fall the other way and reveal what was under them. He found little to explain what had gone on here. Whilst desks and filing cabinets had been left, their contents had been scrupulously cleared out and he suspected that, while it was too expensive to remove the hardware, the information they had contained was too valuable to leave behind.
As he debated to himself the likelihood of this having been a military establishment or a basecamp for an oil company survey, he made for the tallest part of the fallen structure. Whatever was under this pile of debris had been almost as tall as the room itself. The removal of a few bits of roof and wall soon revealed…. a chocolate vending machine! Frank was quietly thrilled, he gazed at the red behemoth with a feeling of real discovery, especially as he could see that it still contained a few bars of assorted confectionary.
He wasn’t hungry by any means, but seeing the chocolate bars in the machine, and not knowing how long it would be until he would eat again, made his mouth water. After quickly inspecting the machine, his plan was to simply smash the glass front to get access to its contents. A few moments rummaging through the rubble turned up a likely length of wood. Frank returned to the machine with it and positioned himself to strike. He kicked a piece of roof away, which he felt was in his way. After some more foot adjustments and a few short practice swings, he readied the piece of wood over one shoulder, took a deep breath and swung at the front of the machine as hard as he could.
When the timber stopped moving at the glass, it sent a jarring shock through his whole body, which caused him to call out in discomfort. It also made his hands shift on the wood which caused several splinters to imbed themselves in the web between the thumb and index finger of both hands. The glass however – remained intact.
He found a chair and sat on it where he could face the chocolate machine while pulling the splinters. Most were easy to get out, if uncomfortable, but some were too small to extract without a needle or tweezers. He was forced to put up with these and went back to contemplating how to get at the chocolate. The plan to break the glass was still sound he reasoned, but he needed to hit it with something that would concentrate the force, something sharp and hard. He began to look around for a metal bar or something similar, and soon found a good alternative, a length of wood with a steel bracket screwed to one end.
Settling himself in front of the machine again, like a baseball player psyching himself up for a big hit, but this time with a piece of rag wrapped around the wood to prevent splinters, he narrowed his eyes and stared at one chocolate bar in particular. Then, after two or three slow practice swings to check his reach, gave it his all once more, this time with a loud vocal roar, perhaps to let the machine know that he meant business.
The wood stopped dead again, with the same uncomfortable shock as before. Frank dropped the tool and swore loudly at the pain. He soon recovered though, and eyed the front of the machine as he shook his jarred arms. The sharp bracket had scratched but not broken the glass. He could see now that it wasn’t glass after all, but some tough plastic. What Frank knew about materials didn’t amount to much, but he had heard of bullet-proof plastics and suspected that he was looking at some now!
Perhaps going in through the front wasn’t the best plan after all. He wandered around the machine noting various features designed to thwart unauthorised access. There were no visible screws or bolts for example, only smooth domed rivets. The lock on the door looked formidable, and the door edges wrapped around the main body of the machine making it difficult or impossible to get any sort of lever in to jemmy it. He was now back at the front and caught himself gazing at the chocolate longingly. “This is stupid!” He said aloud. He then walked away from the infernal thing in the direction of the path back to the beach. “I’m not even hungry!” he continued to himself.
At the tree line he looked out to where his wrecked Cessna was. The tide had come in far enough to cover the tail and engine. He glanced at his watch. Just over an hour had passed of the three he had estimated it would take before a search would start.
“Maybe,” He thought, “I could find something to chisel at those rivets.”
Frank was once again heading for the vending machine. On arriving at the pre-fab, he began a thorough search for items he thought he could use. This time, instead of just turning over walls with no particular plan, he systematically went through one room at a time, dragging debris away where possible and dumping it to the side where it wouldn’t get in the way of the next phase of his search.
In a desk drawer he found a pen-knife; on the shelf of an otherwise empty bookcase he found a medium flat screwdriver and an A to Z of Glasgow, and in a desk tidy in another room he found a small metal file and a pound coin. He stopped the search at this point to use what he had found. With the tool collection in hand (he left the A to Z and coin where they were!), the machine was once again under attack.
The finds were supplemented by a building brick to use as a hammer, and Frank immediately began to chisel at one of the rivets with it and the screwdriver. The rivets had very little edge for the blade to contact, so only about one in five blows delivered any force to them, the rest slipping off as the brick struck home. After a few successful strikes, a careful inspection revealed more damage to the screwdriver blade than to the rivet. In response to this disappointment, Frank gave the rivet as big a clout as he could manage, which resulted in both the brick breaking and the plastic screwdriver handle splitting. As the rivet still seemed unaffected by the abuse, he threw the broken tools as far as he could into the trees.
Sitting facing the machine once more, with his chin cupped in his hands and a glum but determined look on his face, he considered the other tools he had found. What good would the penknife be, he wondered? It was quite small and simple, having no fancy gadgets, only two blades of different sizes and what Frank took to be a flat screwdriver blade. He rather aimlessly wandered over to the chocolate machine and began poking around with it between the door frame and the ‘glass’ in case he could somehow prise the pane free, but it would not even penetrate the joint by a fraction of a millimetre. He then tried the different blades in the lock, but the key for it would have been tubular, so the penknife was entirely the wrong shape. Placing it on top of the machine, he turned his attention to the file. Going around to the rear, he found a rivet head in a good position to tackle, and began trying to cut it down. The file slid effortlessly over the fastener. Frank looked to check that he wasn’t using a plain face or that maybe it was blunt, but the tool looked good as far as he could tell. He tried the other side to be sure, with the same result, the rivets were harder than the file and would not be cut.
Once again he tried to tell himself to leave the thing and go back to the beach until he was rescued, but once again an idea came to him and the obsession to get at the chocolate was fuelled. He searched around the grass and plants in the general area that the screwdriver he had hurled away earlier must have landed. Soon he found it and removed the split handle. He then tried to get it between the door flange and the body, to try to lever the door open. It would not go in very far and simply slipped out as he pulled the shaft sideways. He found another brick to hammer it deeper, but could not then grip the shaft well enough to pull on it. He remembered the penknife and was able to use it to prise the shaft far enough away from the machines side to get a grip. He pulled as hard as he could, putting one foot on the machine side to push it away. The door flange deformed slightly and then the screwdriver slipped out. Frank was encouraged. He tried to hammer the screwdriver in even further to see if he could cause any more damage, but with only limited results. The blade was hitting something solid which was preventing it from going any deeper, and so limiting how far it could be levered before slipping out. He persevered however, working his way up and down the door until he could see in to assess the merits of this approach. Upon inspection, however, he could see that he wasn’t any closer to getting in. In order to get anything in to lever the door, he would need to bend the deformed rim right out of the way to be able to approach the door gap real from the side, he simply hadn’t the tools to do this. Not wishing to give up too quickly on a tactic which had started more encouragingly than any other, he tried hammering the metal back further. First with the good old building brick hammer, which broke after a couple of hits without moving the shield any further, then with a lump of wood which suffered all the damage. Frank suspected that even if he had a sledge hammer, the angle of the steel shield would mean it would dent and crumple, but not bend out of the way as he needed it to.
He sat down again on the chair that had become his sulking/thinking seat. There were still rooms that remained unexplored he remembered, and checked his watch to see that he still had time to pursue this. He did.
Finding the place where his last search had left off, he continued through the rest of the ‘building’. The search was fairly uneventful, he found another screwdriver, this time a posidrive, but was sure that this would be less useful than the flat bladed one he had already destroyed. Then he came to a room that was tagged onto the outside of the main building. When he cleared away the collapsed wall and roof segments, he found a generator. At first he thought nothing of this and went on to the next room, but then he began to wonder. The vending machine was probably electrically operated he realised, and rushed over to check this out. There was its electrical supply cable, still plugged into a wall socket, though the wall was now lying on the floor! Frank hoped that there was no damage to the wiring and went back to the generator to see if he could get it started. He quickly found the control panel and smiled at two pieces of good fortune that stood out straight away, the key that was required to start it was there, and the fuel gauge showed just under half full. It seemed to him that he needed to turn the key to ‘run’, and press the start button. If the generator had not stood for too long, he hoped, there was no reason why it shouldn’t start!
He gingerly turned the key, then he placed an index finger over the start button and hesitated for what seemed like a minute or more, but was probably only a second. It was a moment of involuntary paralysis, where he couldn’t press the button in case it didn’t work, or in case it did, he wasn’t sure which. Eventually he overcame the feeling and managed to firmly push it home. The generators’ starter motor churned away, much to Franks’ surprise and delight. After a few seconds without the rumble of a diesel engine starting, he took his finger off the button and the churning stopped.
With his finger hovering over the start pushbutton, his mind raced through the situation to see if he had missed some silly detail out of the start sequence, or if there was an explanation for the generator not firing up. A few moments later he decided to just try the button again. Without hesitation this time, he pressed it again. Once more the starter motor got to work, after a couple of seconds however, there was a slowing of the motors’ speed, which concerned Frank. He debated whether to release the starter, but elected to give it a little longer. The speed dropped some more, but just as he was about to give the battery a rest, the generator gave a cough, then two coughs, and then roared into life. Frank released the starter button and smiled skywards, then punched the air in delight, before remembering that this was just one step towards his goal. Many things could go wrong yet, and some of the steps weren’t even clear to him at the moment.
The next thing to do was to see if there was any power getting to the vending machine. As he approached it, he was disappointed not to see any lights, but soon found that the socket into which it was plugged was switched off. With one simple flick, he saw the flash of the tube lights inside the machine as they came on. “YES!” He exclaimed.
Positioning himself in front of the machine with the cool demeanour of someone about to deliver a knockout punch, he thought about the next step, “Money…….NO!”
He frantically checked all of his pockets, but knew that he had no money in any of them. He thought about his wallet, which he remembered was in his case on the beach, but knew again that it contained no change, only notes and credit cards. Grabbing the machine with both hands he banged his head into the plastic front and moaned loudly. Then looked up suddenly. The pound coin he had found earlier, where was it? In the desk drawer he thought, no; in the desk tidy! He glanced around and soon saw it, possibly the only bright yellow thing in sight. He quickly had the coin hovering in the mouth of the slot, then he let it drop and felt such satisfaction as he heard it fall through the mechanism. Followed by the distinctly unsatisfactory clatter that he instinctively knew was the coin dropping straight through to the reject tray. He retrieved it and dropped it in the slot again, but even as it was falling, he noticed the ominous message flashing across the machines display, ‘EXACT CHANGE ONLY!’ When the coin clattered through again, he automatically took it and put it in his pocket before hitting his head against the machine several more times.
He was now out of time as well as ideas, he should return to the beach to await rescue. He despondently sloped off towards the path. When he reached it, he turned to look at the running generator, returned to it and switched the key to ‘off’. The clearing returned to near silence, which reflected Frank’s mood perfectly.
At the beach, he struggled to think about anything other than the chocolate vending machine. He looked at his upturned ‘plane and wondered what rigmarole the insurance company would put him through. He looked at his mobile ‘phone and saw that there was still no signal. He thought about meetings he was missing, and yes, he thought about the chocolate machine!
It was about four hours after sitting down on his case to wait, that a R.A.F. helicopter flew over from behind him and out over the sea. Frank leapt to his feet but thought that he had been missed. Then the aircraft turned and began moving back towards him. He ran down the beach waving his arms and shouting as loudly as he could. It was obviously the wreck that they had spotted. As he got closer though, the crewman in the open door saw him and waved back. The helicopter continued to hover over the Cessna in the water and Frank could see the crewman holding his helmet with one hand, clearly receiving a message over his intercom. When the message has been received, the crewman shouted something which Frank could not hear over the noise of the helicopter, and gave an exaggerated thumbs up as the craft drifted to one side and eventually flew off.
“Oh, thanks!” Frank said to himself, but could then hear another engine, a boat’s engine. A couple of minutes later, a coastguard launch came into view and turned towards where he stood. He remembered his case and rushed back up the beach to retrieve it. When he turned to walk back, he could see two of the coastguard crew climbing down into a motorised inflatable. He took his time walking back and arrived at the water as the inflatable slid halfway onto the sand.
“Frank Burton?” Asked the officer at the bow of the boat.
“Yes. Am I glad to see you. My carb iced up and I made a bit of a mess of the landing!” He replied.
“I see.” Said the officer, “But at least you’re in one piece. O.K., hop in.”
Frank threw his case into the boat and began to climb aboard, then he stopped and turned to the officer. “Errrm,” He began, rather apologetically, and reached into his pocket for the pound coin, “could you by any chance change this for two twenty pence pieces?”
The officer found himself digging out his wallet despite the absurdity of the situation, he then picked through the change within it until he had the required coins, all the while with a bemused frown on his face. The other seaman in the boat too, was completely baffled as he looked on. The twenty pence pieces were offered and exchanged.
“Thanks, back in a minute!” Said Frank as he ran off up the beach towards the path into the woods.
“Don’t you want a pounds worth of change?” The officer called after him.
“No, that’s fine.” Came the reply.
The coastguard was still frowning at the coin in his hand when, a minute or so later, he heard a diesel engine start in the near distance. This prompted him to turn to the other seaman, who was also staring at the pound with a look of total confusion. Another minute or so passed and the engine stopped, the seaman, feeling that a response was required, simply shrugged and shook his head. They both looked round to see Frank appear again, running back to them waving something and looking very happy.
When he reached the boat, he leapt in, sat down, took a bite of the chocolate bar he was holding, and while chewing on it said, “Thanks, we can go now!”
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