Читать книгу Round the Bend онлайн

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"This is it, Mum," I said. "I'll be back in a year or so."

She kissed me. "Good-bye, Tom," she said. "Look after yourself, and don't go killing yourself or anything of that."

"I won't do that, Mum," I said smiling. One always thinks, of course, those things can't happen to me.

"Don't forget what I was telling you, about finding a nice girl."

"I won't. Good-bye, Mum."

"Good-bye, son."

I swung the little propeller, and the engine fired, and I went round and got into the cockpit, clumsy in my leather coat. Then I waved to Mum and taxied forward, and the Control gave me a green light and I moved to the end of the runway and took off from England.

I'm not going to say much about that trip out to Bahrein; there was nothing to make it interesting but my own inexperience and the inadequacy of the aircraft for so long a journey. I could fly the thing all right, but my total flying experience was only about five hundred hours and I didn't know a lot about navigation, when I started. I knew a bit more by the time I reached the Persian Gulf.