The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

256 THE FOOT OF TIME
the reason why, and would take steps (with more
voluntary help than they could very well cope with
and organise) before you could say knife, or any
other short word, to find them. To-morrow morning
was good enough. With food aboard and the
night being warm, the three of them lay out under
the stars, and breathed the gum-tree infected clear
Australian mountain air than which this earth contains
nothing better. By morning Bruce rose like
a giant refreshed. Indeed, Edith had to call Bruno
to her aid to restrain him from over exertion. He
located the trouble—a most grave one. He had to
unscrew a small jet and blow through it. Bruno
could have done it—even Edith could, if given
accurate diagnosis. Where engines were concerned
the girl was no doctor.
But when Bruce saw the precipice drop right in
their path and reflected upon the value to him of
the pilot, his nerves began to fail him, so Edith lied
to him beyond hope of forgiveness, lied concerning
the number of yards necessary to acquire lifting
speed, and upon precipices as applied to aeronautics
in general. To hear her talk one would have
thought this take-off was the normal. She practically
said it was, but she lied in her pretty teeth.
So they got Bruce and Bruno aboard, started the
double-bladed propellor, dropped at an alarming
angle down the precipice, swooped up again near
the bottom, carrying away both wheels, together
with the top of a fair-sized gum-tree, before the
upward rush. Relieved of the weight of the wheels,
the plane made good going. Sydney's skyscrapers,
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THE FOOT OF TIME
257
came into the horizon, and then Mascot, and
the extra special edition of the mid-day papers
did a roaring trade, for Bruno had become a public
character, the adored of all fair Aussie, as he well
deserved to be. The plane had landed safely, if
heavily, upon its spring skids.
It's difficult to believe, but the stubborness of
facts can be accepted as a maxim. William Burne,
at Orange, never read anything. He had no time
for that tosh." Enough to do to manage his farm.
What was in the papers? Politics, and again politics,
and naught else. In any case, no mid-day
shockers came to outlying f arms near Orange, and
his wife, being easily pledged to secrecy, Edith's
father remained happy in his ignorance.
But of all the things of which William knew
least was that under the stars that night Edith had
pledged herself to marry Bruce without her father's
consent so soon as , it was reasonably possible for
them to do so. It might be a year, or it might be
two, but her father, at least, should not come between
them any longer. She would run away with
Bruce if necessary, for he assured her that his promise
but prevented him from visiting her at
Orange, "setting foot in her house," or facing William
until he could, if ever, do so unashamed.