The Land God Gave to Cain Read Online Free PDF Page B

the name Laroche mentioned for the first time. He had written it in capitals, heavily underlining it and putting a question mark at the end, and had added a note: QUERY LEDDER .
    Isolated from all the nonsense and doodles which disfigured the pages of his log books, my father’s notes confirmed what I already knew—that he had been picking up messages from Simon Ledder at Goose Bay to the McGovern Mining Company in Montreal and that these were daily reports in some sort of code passing on information received from Briffe at 2000 hours from somewhere in Labrador. I found one half-obliterated entry which appeared to read: 3.780— nothing, nothing, nothing—always nothing . It suggested that my father was also keeping regular watch on Briffe’s transmitting frequency. But I could only pick out for certain one entry a day at 2200 hours, until September 14. That was the day of the crash, and from then on the pattern changed and the entries became more frequent, the comments fuller.
    Two days before that Briffe appeared to have called for air transport to move the party forward to C2, for on September 13 occurred an entry: Plane delayed, W bad. B. calling for usual two flights, three in first wave and Baird and himself in second. If C2 NORTH OF C1 THEY ARE GETTING V. NEAR .
    The move apparently took place on September 14, but the first flight proved difficult for at 1945 hours he had made this entry: In luck—Contact VO6AZ. Beaver floatplane not back . Scrawled across this were the words TROUBLE and KEEP CONSTANT WATCH ON 75-METRE BAND . And then an hour later at 2045: Fog cleared, but Beaver still missing . VO6AZ was now apparently transmitting to Montreal every hour at 15 minutes to the hour, for the next time entry was for 2145. But nothing had been written against it and the time itself was barely decipherable amongst the mass of little drawings my father had made. In fact, the whole of this last page of the log book was an indescribable mess and it took me a long time to sort it out. The next entry, however, was only half an hour later— 2215: Advance party safe C2. Beaver back. Hellish W. report. B. going.… The last part was completely unreadable. But the comment that followed was clear enough: POOR HOLDING DISAPPOINTMENT—THAT THE REASON? BARELY AN HOUR. THE FOOL! WHAT’S DRIVING HIM?
    After that the entries were back to 15 minutes to the hour—2245, 2345, 0045, right on to 0345. They were all blank. There was a sort of finality about those blank entries, and though it was the soft, warm English countryside that slid past the windows of the train, I saw only the cold and fog and the desolate misery of Labrador, the night closing in on the little floatplane and my father sitting up half the night, waiting to find out whether they were safe or not.
    The entries in the log book were, of course, for British Summer Time which is four and a half hours ahead of Goose Bay. Briffe’s report that the plane was back must have been made shortly after 5 p.m. so that my father’s reference to “barely an hour” obviously referred to the fact that Briffe was taking off with little more than an hour to go before nightfall.
    The train stopped at Swindon and I sat staring down at that last page of the log book. I couldn’t blame the authorities for regarding him as unbalanced. It had taken me almost a quarter of an hour to decipher that one page. I could see my father sitting in his wheel-chair with the earphones clamped to his head, waiting and waiting for the news of Briffe’s safety that would never come, and passing the long, slow, silent hours by drawing. He had covered the whole of that page and all the cover of the exercise book with little pencil drawings—lions and fish with faces and canoes, as well as squares and circles, anything that his wandering hand and brain took a fancy to. It was here that he had written— C2—C2—C2.… Where the hell is