Читать книгу Round the Bend онлайн

56 страница из 103

I had to land a good many times for fuel on the way. The extreme range of the Fox-Moth was only about three hundred and fifty miles; later on I fitted an extra tank. I went by way of Dinard, and across France to Cannes, landing at Tours and Lyon. From there I went to Pisa and Rome and Brindisi and Araxos and Athens, and from there to Rhodes and Cyprus. I rested a day there and did a quick run round the engine, and went on by way of Damascus to a place called H.3 in the middle of the desert; then to Baghdad, Basra, Kuweit, and so to Bahrein. It took me eight days of trundling along at ninety miles an hour, and I was tired when I got there.

I landed one evening on the big R.A.F. and civil aerodrome on Muharraq Island. There was a hangar there, and the place is an R.A.F. station, but there were no service aircraft stationed there at that time. Several used to come through every week, and at that time the B.O.A.C. flying-boats called there, as well as several foreign lines.

It was a lovely, summery evening as I taxied to the hangar after landing, just like a warm day in June in England. It had been very cold over most of the route, until I got south of Baghdad, and then it had begun to warm up. A couple of R.A.F. flying officers strolled out to the machine as I switched off in front of the hangar, and I got out of the cockpit to talk to them.