The D.C.4 was noisy and very cramped. The gangways between and alongside the horses were too narrow for two people to pass, and in addition one had to go forward and backward along the length of the plane bent almost double[164]. It was, as usual, normally a passenger ship, and it had low-hung luggage shelves along its length on both sides. There were catches to hold the racks up out of the way, but they were apt to shake open in flight and it was more prudent to start with all the racks down than have them fall on one’s head. This, added to the angled guy chains cutting across at shin level, made walking about a tiresome process and provided the worst working conditions I had yet struck. But Conker, I was interested to notice, had no complaints. Peters, maybe, hadn’t been with him on a D.C.4.

After take-off, the horses all being quiet and well-behaved, we went forward into the galley for the first cup of coffee. The engineer, a tall thin man with a habit of raising his right eyebrow five or six times rather fast when he asked a question, was already dispensing it into disposable mugs. Two full ones had names pencilled on:

Patrick and Bob. The engineer picked them up and took them forward to the pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit.

Coming back, the engineer asked our names and wrote us each a mug.

‘There aren’t enough on board for us to throw them away every time,’ he explained, handing me ‘Henry’.

‘Sugar?’ He had a two-pound bag of granulated, and a red plastic spoon. ‘I know the way you lot drink coffee. The skipper, too.’

We drank the scalding brown liquid: it didn’t taste of coffee, but if you thought of it as a separate unnamed thirst quencher, it wasn’t too bad. In the galley the engine noise made it necessary to shout loudly to be heard, and the vibration shook concentric ripples in the coffee. The engineer sipped his gingerly over the scrawled word ‘Mike’.

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