The Land Leviathan

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My grandfather, who died relatively young after he had volunteered for service in the Great War, became increasingly secretive and misanthropic in his last years so that the discovery of a small steel safe amongst his effects was unsurprising and aroused no curiosity whatsoever in his heirs who, finding that they could not unlock it (no key ever came to light), simply stored it away with his papers and forgot about it. The safe remained in the attic of our Yorkshire house for the best part of fifty years and doubtless would still be there if it had not been for my discovery of the manuscript which I published a couple of years ago under the title The War Lord of the Air. After the book was published I received many interesting letters from people asking me if it was merely a piece of fiction or if the story had come into my hands as I had described. I, of course, believed Bastable's story (and my grandfather's) completely, yet sometimes felt quite as frustrated as my grandfather had done when he had tried to get people to share his belief, and I couldn't help brooding occasionally on the mystery of the young man's disappearance after those long hours spent talking to my grandfather on Rowe Island in the early years of the century. As it turned out, I was soon to find myself in possession of, for me, the best possible proof of my grandfather's veracity, if not of Bastable's. I spent this past summer in Yorkshire, where we have a house overlooking the moors of the West Riding, and, having little to do but go for long walks and enjoy the pleasures of rock climbing, I took to looking through the rest of my grandfather's things, coming at length upon the old steel safe jammed in a corner under the eaves of one of our innumerable attics.

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