Trustee From the Toolroom

by Nevil Shute

  They stood examining the charts and the Pilot for the best part of an hour, Keith making notes busily. In the middle the air navigator came in, greeted them, and stood listening in silence. They turned to the predominant winds, and studied the picture for January. ‘You should have a fair wind all the way, easterly.’ The first officer laid his finger on the page. ‘A bit irregular on the Equator, in the Doldrums, but steadying again as you get further south. All easterly. I don’t know how much leeway that ship makes, but just watch out you don’t get set over too far to the west. Jack knows about that, I think. I’d keep edging up to windward, ten degrees at least. You’re very unlikely to go much east of track, but you might get down a long way west of it.’

  They stood in consultation, Keith scribbling down notes. At last he said, ‘Well, that’s pretty clear. It’s very kind of you to take all this trouble.’ He smiled. ‘The only thing remaining is to know how far one’s gone.’ He laid his finger on the line that marked the track.

  From behind them the air navigator remarked, ‘You’ve said it, chum.’

  Jim Fairlie said, ‘Jack Donelly would probably say he knows how fast he’s going from the look of the water, how many miles he does in a day. Take note of that, and jot down what he says for each day. He may not be so very far wrong when you tot it up. But don’t depend on him.’ He paused. ‘You could trail a log, but then it’s not your ship. He might not take to it - probably wouldn’t.’ He paused. ‘The proper thing for you to do would be to take a noon sight for latitude each day. As a matter of fact, we were talking about this last night.’

  The air navigator said, ‘It’s dead easy, Mr Stewart. You’d better let us show you how to do it. Once you’ve got your latitude upon this course you know how far you’ve gone, and no argument. Have you ever handled a sextant?’

  Keith shook his head.

  ‘Well, you’re going to handle one now.’ The first officer was opening a polished wooden box upon the chart table.

  Keith was torn between technical interest and practical considerations. ‘I haven’t got a sextant,’ he said, ‘and I’m sure Jack hasn’t.’

  ‘You can probably pick one up second-hand quite cheap,’ the air navigator said. ‘As a matter of fact Dick King’s off looking for one now, with Captain Fielding. Look, Mr Stewart. We don’t want to read in the newspaper one day that you’re dead. This latitude sight’s easy for a man like you. You’d better let us put you in the way of it, and then go off and buy a sextant.’

  They settled down to show him how the sextant worked. He was accustomed to precision instruments and had no trouble with it upon the stable deck of the fifteen-thousand-ton ship in harbour. In half an hour he was able to bring the sun down on to the horizon and read off its altitude with some accuracy. ‘You’ll find it a bit more difficult on Jack’s ship because of the motion,’ the first officer said. ‘It’s a matter of practice on a ship like that. Or any other ship, for that matter.’

  They took him through the relevant part of the nautical almanac, and drew a little diagram for him to show what declination meant. ‘You’re behind Greenwich time,’ they told him. ‘When you’re taking your noon sight you want to use the declination for ten o’clock at night on the same day. Twenty-two hundred. Look, I’ll underline it for you each day so you won’t go wrong. You can take this copy and we’ll get another for the ship.’ The air navigator bent to the task.

  At a quarter to twelve they took him out on to the bridge and made him start taking the altitude of the sun on the horizon over Sand Island. ‘Never go back,’ Mr Fairlie said quietly. ‘Maximum altitude is what you want.’

  When they were satisfied that he had got it they took him back into the chart-room to do the figuring. ‘Height of eye here is about thirty feet,’ they told him. ‘With you - take about five feet.’ They underlined the correction for him. ‘Now - away you go.’

  He did the sum. ‘That seems to come to twenty-one degrees twenty-three minutes,’ he said diffidently.

  ‘North or south?’

  He studied the figures. ‘North’.

  ‘Quite sure?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Okay. Now put a horizontal pencil line on that latitude, on the chart.’ He did so. ‘Not too bad,’ the air navigator remarked. ‘You’re about three miles north of where we are, up in the suburbs somewhere. Still, it’s not too bad.’

  Keith stared at them in wonder, and at his pencil line. ‘Is that all I’m wrong?’

  ‘That’s right. Twenty-one twenty is the right answer. I told you it was dead easy.’

  He was amazed and naïvely pleased that he had done this thing, that he, Keith Stewart, looking at the sun through a precision instrument had established the position of Honolulu on the surface of the earth. He said something of the sort to his instructors. ‘You’re forgetting about longitude,’ Jim Fairlie said. ‘I’d like to teach you that, but there’s not time. Anyway, it needs a watch and a wireless set and tables. It’s not practical, I’m afraid. But learn this thoroughly, and you’ll be all right - on the way to Tahiti, anyway.’

  That afternoon he went off with Dick and the air navigator and bought a second-hand sextant for twenty-seven dollars and a depressed looking flock mattress for six fifty. Back to the ship to show his sextant to Mr Fairlie, who spent an hour trying to get out the index error and reduced it to about three minutes, and to have a session with the third officer about provisioning. Subject to the captain’s approval, he found that the ship could provide practically everything that they would need on board the Mary Belle in the way of food. He mentioned an extra forty-gallon drum for water; the Third said that if he got the drum they could steam it out for him. He went and called Mr Yamasuki, who agreed to find a second-hand oil-drum and get it to the ship.

  It was Sunday evening. He was tired by the events of the day, but he did not dare to let a day go by without visiting Jack Donelly, lest he should forget about his passenger. He gave the sextant to Dick King to take back to the hotel and went on shore and found a taxi. He picked up his mattress at the Chinese shop and drove to the yacht harbour. Jack Donelly was sitting on the bow of his ship fishing over the side with a hand line; six or seven small silvery fish lay on the deck beside him in the evening light.

  ‘Evening, Mr Donelly,’ Keith said. ‘I brought my bed. Can I come on board?’

  The owner grunted. Keith took this as assent and ventured cautiously down the plank, the mattress on his shoulder, keeping a wary eye on Jack Donelly as he went. But the owner went on fishing. Keith carried his mattress below and laid it on the vacant berth, and then went up on deck and forward to his host. ‘What are you using for bait?’ he asked conversationally.

  ‘Maggots,’ said Mr Donelly.

  Keith sat down on the deck beside him, watching the line. ‘Where did you get them from?’

  ‘Out the cornmeal sack. There’s just a few in there. Don’t make any difference.’

  Keith swallowed spasmodically. ‘How long did it take you to get these?’

  ‘Not long.’ He jerked the line sharply, there was a flurry in the water, and he pulled another little fish on board. ‘They come in here after the muck the boats let go, toilets and that.’ He baited the hook with another maggot. ‘You staying to supper?’

  ‘I can’t tonight, Jack. I’ve got things to do back at the hotel. I was thinking I’d move in tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Cornmeal fritters ’n fish. Get a few more, ’n there’ll be plenty for two.’

  ‘I’d like to, but I can’t tonight. Look, we’ll want another oil-drum for water, won’t we?’

  ‘What for? We wouldn’t be having baths.’

  ‘How much did you use coming from San Francisco?’

  The owner ruminated. ‘I guess I filled it last at Sausalito. There’s still some left. I’d better get a hose ’n fill it up before we go.’

  ‘Think you’d have used half of it? On the passage, I mean.’

  ‘Might have done. There
was plenty left when I came in.’

  ‘There’ll be two of us this time,’ Keith said patiently, ‘and the trip’s a longer one from here down to Tahiti. I’ve got another oil-drum if you want it.’

  ‘You have?’ The owner considered this proposal. ‘It might be a good thing to have it along,’ he admitted. ‘Always use a barrel.’

  ‘Where would you put it? Forward by the mast, with the other one?’

  Mr Donelly sat in thought. ‘Have it aft under the ladder, if you want it full of water,’ he said at last. ‘Make her a bit lighter on the helm. I’ll have to make some chocks.’

  Keith nodded. ‘It’s getting steamed out tomorrow. I’ll get it on board soon as I can.’

  ‘Say,’ said Mr Donelly with enthusiasm, ‘that’s a good idea. The one I got had kero in it one time. Been better, maybe, if it had been gas.’ He paused. ‘Kero kinda makes you feel sick in the stomach,’ he explained.

  Keith nodded. ‘They’re steaming it on board the tanker,’ he remarked. ‘They might do the other if we asked them - the one you’ve got now. There’s another thing, Jack. They’ve got out a list of food they think we’ll need for the trip to Tahiti, basing it upon the seamen’s scale. I’ve got to see the captain, but I think they’ll let us have the stuff. They say that I can pay for it in England.’ He pulled the list out of his pocket on two sheets of paper. ‘That’s what they suggest.’

  Mr Donelly took the list and glanced at it, uncomprehending. ‘You read it out,’ he suggested.

  Keith started in to do so. Mr Donelly sat watching him, bemused, while the words flowed past him. Presently he stopped Keith. ‘Jam, ’n butter, ’n currants,’ he said. ‘Kinda rich chow for a ship. We haven’t got all that dough.’

  ‘It’s what they give the seamen on the tanker,’ Keith explained. ‘They have to, by law. If you signed on on the Cathay Princess that’s what they’d give you to eat.’

  ‘That so?’

  ‘That’s right. I was going to pay for it myself and take it out of the hundred dollars, if that’s all right by you.’

  Mr Donelly looked at him vacantly. ‘What hundred dollars?’

  ‘The hundred I was going to give you for the passage. I could buy the food for us both from the Cathay Princess if the captain agrees, and take the cost of it out of the hundred dollars.’

  ‘You got two pages there,’ Mr Donelly objected. ‘A hundred bucks wouldn’t buy that much.’

  ‘I think it will, and leave a good bit over,’ said Keith, who had already been roughly through the costs with the third officer.

  ‘Huh,’ said Mr Donelly.

  Keith turned to the list again. ‘Is there anything that you don’t like that I’ve read out?’ he enquired.

  ‘Turnips,’ said Mr Donelly.

  Keith wrinkled his brows, and turned over the two pages. ‘There aren’t any turnips on the list,’ he said.

  ‘That so? I never did like turnips.’

  Keith nodded. ‘I’ll look out and see that we don’t get any.’ He put the list back in his pocket, assuming correctly that Jack Donelly would eat everything else. ‘When do you think we ought to sail?’

  ‘ ’Most any time. Tomorrow, if you like. Sure costs the earth in this place.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll be able to sail tomorrow, Jack. We’ve got to get this food on board from the Cathay Princess, and the other barrel. I tell you what - I’ll probably move in tomorrow, and sleep on board, if that suits you. Then maybe we could sail on Tuesday.’

  ‘Suits me,’ said the owner. He jerked another little fish on board, re-baited the hook with a maggot from a tin, and lowered the line again, ‘I been thinking,’ he said presently. He paused a long time after that alarming statement. Then he said, ‘See that three-stick schooner at the end?’

  Keith followed his glance. Lying at the end of the seaward jetty there was a fine three-masted schooner yacht. She lay almost in the deep water channel because there was no room and no depth of water for her closer in. She carried a big crew all dressed in whites; her decks were white, her polished brass gleamed in the setting sun. She wore the flag of the United States, and one of the white-clad seamen was standing by the halliard ready to lower it at the sunset gun. Even Keith was impressed by her.

  ‘I see her,’ he said.

  ‘She’s built of wood,’ said Mr Donelly. ‘I guess we’ll go aboard her before sailing, ’n check up on the course.’ He struggled to give voice to what was in his mind. ‘Ships built of iron,’ he explained, ‘they go a different way upon the compass to what ships do if they get built of wood. That Cathay Princess, she’s built all of iron. I guess she’d go quite a different way to get to this Tahiti than what that schooner would, because she’s a wooden ship. She’s a wooden ship, and Mary Belle’s a wooden ship, so they’d go the same way. I guess we’ll go aboard before we sail ’n check up with the captain.’

  Novice in navigation though he was, Keith suspected that Jack Donelly hadn’t got his theory of compass deviation quite right. Still, any second check upon their course was good, and it might be that from the captain of a sailing ship Jack could pick up information about getting through the Doldrums which he would not have learned on the seventeen-knot tanker. ‘That’s a good idea,’ he said amiably.

  He left the Mary Belle shortly after that, and went back to his hotel. He found most of the aircrew drinking beer with the officers of the Cathay Princess, and joined them. Captain Davies said, ‘Mr Fairlie tells me that you’ve turned into a navigator.’

  ‘He was very kind,’ Keith said. ‘He showed me how to get the latitude.’

  The captain nodded. ‘Think you’ll remember how to do it?’

  ‘I think so. I made a lot of notes. I’ll have another go at it tomorrow, at midday.’

  ‘Jack Donelly’s in luck. I don’t suppose he knows it. But he might get there, now.’ He took a drink of beer. ‘Mr Fairlie show you the victualling list?’

  Keith took it from his pocket. ‘I’ve got it here. He said I was to see you and ask if I could have the stuff.’

  ‘You can have it if you sign a pretty detailed letter saying where and when you’ll pay for it,’ remarked the captain.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, sir. Payment in England would be all right, would it?’

  ‘I think so. You’d better come on board tomorrow morning and I’ll draft the letter for you to sign while the Third gets the stuff on deck. How are you going to take it round to the yacht harbour?’

  ‘I’ll have to get a taxi.’

  ‘Make Yamasuki take it. He’s got nothing else to do.’

  Beside them Dick King said, ‘Give you a hand with it, if you like. I’ve got nothing else to do, either.’

  Presently they went in to dinner. At the table Keith said to Dick King, ‘You’re still taking off on Tuesday morning?’

  The flight engineer nodded. ‘Seven o’clock take off for Vancouver.’

  ‘You’re going back the same way?’

  ‘That’s right. Vancouver, Frobisher, Blackbushe.’

  ‘When will you be back in England?’

  ‘Thursday midday if the fans keep turning. We’ll have been away a week.’

  Keith said, ‘I wonder if you’d take a letter back with you, and post it in England? It’s just to tell my wife what’s happening.’

  ‘Why, sure. She should get it Friday morning.’

  That evening Keith went up to his bedroom after dinner and sat for an hour with his sextant and his nautical almanac and his notes. He rewrote the notes into a progressive and coherent form while the subject was still fresh in his mind, pausing from time to time to draw little diagrams around the outline of an English penny. It was when you came to the Equator that you needed a clear head, or when the sun went over the zenith … Still, if you followed the rules exactly it would probably come out all right. The thing was to practise.

  Presently he left the navigation and started a letter to Katie. He could not make it very detailed because he did not want
to worry her; the details of his passage to Tahiti were not such as would create confidence. In consequence, his letter consisted mainly of a description of the flight to Honolulu and the installation of the rotor in the ship; his future plans and movements were dealt with in one sentence at the end, in which he said that he had got a passage on a ship going to Tahiti and he hoped to be there by the end of February. He sealed it up and gave it to Dick King to post in England.

  Next morning he went with the flight engineer to the ship, signed a letter drafted for him by the captain, looked in on the generator trials, inspected the oil barrel newly steamed out and free from taint, and took another noon sight. They lunched on board, telephoned for a taxi truck, loaded the oil barrel and the stores into it, and set off for the yacht harbour.

  Dick had not seen the Mary Belle before nor met Jack Donelly, and he was filled with misgiving. He knew about sailing boats in theory, at any rate, and he had little confidence in them. They depended solely on the fickle and the vacillating wind; if the wind didn’t blow in the right direction they couldn’t go. They were archaic survivals of a bygone age. It was true that the wind, their motive power, was free, but what did that matter in an era of government subsidies? The right way to get from Honolulu to Tahiti was in a Douglas with twelve or fifteen thousand horsepower pushing it along. It was penny-pinching to think of going by the wind because the wind was free. It was thinking small, and there was no future in that in these modern times. You wanted to think big.

  He was deeply concerned when he went on board the Mary Belle with Keith. There was not so much as a wheel to steer by, nor any seat on deck for the pilot of the craft. A sort of stick stuck froward from the top of the rudder, which came through the deck, and you steered by pushing this stick from side to side so that the ship went the opposite way to what you pushed. He knew of this arrangement, of course, but had thought that it had gone out with the dodo. There was, of course, no engine. He was prepared for that, but the total absence of all mechanical contrivances shook him badly. Even the bilge pump was a crude affair, square section in its bore, built up of wood.