Land, sea and sky were all the same, bleak and empty, and the night was darker than the dark anxiety inside him. The DC-3 quartered crabwise into the stiff wind, laboring like the sturdy old workhorse that she was. There were no stars and no moon, and as he sat beside the pilot in the dim glow of reflected light from the instrument panel, Durell had the feeling he was isolated from all the rest of the world. The pilot’s compartment was like an island suspended in dark space, a fragmentary bubble illusively balanced in the cold emptiness and liable to burst at any moment and plunge into the void all around him. He sat quietly in the bucket seat beside the pilot and Watched the chronometer. The pilot was young and capable, and Durell, knowing his business, was content to let this part of it remain in the pilot's hands without interference. Not that you could stop any of it now, any more than you could stop time by smashing the clock in front of you. The machinery would go on with its maze of men and plans and ambitions, whether you were here or not, even if time stopped for you personally.
