Another half hour or so passed, and then Coker arrived. He had had no better luck than Stephen and I.
* * *
Back in Charcott Old House that evening we gathered again around the map. Coker started to mark out new areas of search. We watched him without enthusiasm. It was Stephen who said what all of us, including, I think, Coker himself, were thinking:
“Look here, we’ve been over all the ground for a circle of some fifteen miles between us. It’s clear they aren’t in the immediate neighborhood. Either your information is wrong or they decided not to stop here and went on. In my view it would be a waste of time to go on searching the way we did today.”
Coker laid down the compasses he was using.
“Then what do you suggest?”
“Well, it seems to me we could cover a lot of ground pretty quickly from the air, and well enough. You can bet your life that anyone who hears an aircraft engine is going to turn out and make a sign of some kind.”
Coker shook his head. “Now why didn’t we think of that before? It ought to be a helicopter, of course—but where do we get one, and who’s going to fly it?”
“Oh, I can make one of them things go, all right,” said the radioman confidently.
There was something in his tone.
“Have you ever flown one?” asked Coker.
“No,” admitted the radioman, “but I reckon there’d not be a lot to it, once you got the knack.”
“H’m,” said Coker, looking at him with reserve.
Stephen recalled the locations of two R.A.F. stations not far away, and that there had been an air-taxi business operating from Yeovil.
* * *
—
In spite of our doubts, the radioman was as good as his word. He seemed to have complete confidence that his instinct for mechanism would not let him down. After practicing for half an hour, he took the helicopter off and flew it back to Charcott.
For four days the machine hovered around in widening circles. On two of them Coker observed; on the other two I replaced him. In all, we discovered ten little groups of people. None of them knew anything of the Beadley party, and none of them contained Josella. As we found each lot, we landed. Usually they were in twos and threes. The largest was seven. They would greet us in hopeful excitement, but soon, when they found that we represented only a group similar to their own, and were not the spearhead of a rescue party on the grand scale, their interest would lapse. We could offer them little that they had not got already. Some of them became irrationally abusive and threatening in their disappointment, but most simply dropped back into despondency. As a rule they showed little wish to join up with other parties and were inclined rather to lay hands on what they could, building themselves into refuges as comfortably as possible while they waited for the arrival of the Americans, who were bound to find a way. There seemed to be a widespread and fixed idea about this. Our suggestions that any surviving Americans would be likely to have their hands more than full at home was received as so much wet-blanketry. The Americans, they assured us, would never have allowed such a thing to happen in their country. Nevertheless, and in spite of this Micawber fixation on American fairy godmothers, we left each party with a map showing them the approximate positions of groups we had already discovered, in case they should change their minds and think about getting together for self-help.
As a task, the flights were far from enjoyable, but at least they were to be preferred to lonely scouting on the ground. However, at the end of the fruitless fourth day it was decided to abandon the search.
At least that was what the rest of them decided. I did not feel the same way about it. My quest was personal; theirs was not. Whoever they found, now or eventually, would be strangers to them. I was searching for Beadley’s party as a means, not an end in itself. If I should find them and discover that Josella was not with them, then I should go on searching. But I could not expect the rest to devote any more time to searching purely on my behalf.