by Nevil Shute
He did not want to die, and so he bought a large schooner yacht, the Flying Cloud, that had been built for a cinema magnate who committed suicide for an unmentionable reason. He had actually voyaged in her on his second emergence from the mental home across the Pacific and as far as Sydney. By that time he was so bored that he left her and sank into the deep chair of a Pan American airliner with an audible sigh of relief; in two days he was back in his office at Cincinnati and at work. Since then he had conscientiously tried to use his big yacht as his doctors had recommended, and he was actually on board her two or three times a year; each time intending a month’s cruise or longer. Each time the office drew him back as with a magnet, because he had no other interest in his life except his very fleeting loves.
He sat in his home on Paxton Avenue between the Observatory and the Country Club, and waited for the call from Jim Rockawin. It came at about three in the afternoon, noon on the West coast. ‘Look, Mr Ferris,’ said his representative, ‘this isn’t just what I thought.’
‘No business?’ asked his employer sharply.
‘I think he’s going to order presently, but he’s not ordering just yet. Emmanuel was there, the eldest son. They wanted to know if they could use the existing power house with the steam plant in it — throw out the steam plant and put our diesel motors and hydraulic generators in it. It’s three hundred and eighty feet from the first conveyor. It’s not a proposition, really, but I said that I’d go over Monday and take a look at it with them.’ He paused. ‘What Sol Hirzhorn really wanted was something different.’
‘What’s that?’
‘He wants to borrow your yacht.’
‘For crying out loud!’ said Mr Ferris. ‘What does he want with that? Go for a sail in it?’
‘No. He wants to use it. Say, Mr Ferris, this is going to be mighty difficult to explain over the long-distance line. You got a tape machine there, so you could read it over later and make up your mind?’
‘Sure I’ve got a tape. Wait while I fix it up.’ There was a pause, and then he said, ‘Go ahead.’
The representative had been collecting his thoughts during the pause, and when he spoke it was clearly and lucidly. ‘Some years ago Mr Hirzhorn had a bad spell with his health, and his doctors told him he must get himself a hobby in his home. Well, he started a workshop - not a wood workshop like the rest of us, but a real engineering workshop with lathes, milling machines, shapers, a drill press, oxy-acetylene welding, and God knows what. He took me down and showed me. I never saw anything like it. That’s where he spends most of his spare time now. He’s making some kind of a clock.’
The tape reel rolled slowly, steadily, as he spoke. He told the whole story, reading out the carbon copy of the letter from Mr McNeil to Professor O’Leary at Ann Arbor that he had got from Julie. ‘Well, that’s the way it is, Mr Ferris,’ he said at last. ‘He wants to borrow the Flying Cloud to go down to Tahiti and pick up these boys on their fishing boat, and do whatever this Keith Stewart wants to do, and bring him back to Tacoma so that Sol Hirzhorn can talk to him about his clock before he goes back to England. He’ll pay you charter money, of course. I know this all sounds screwy, but that’s the way it is.’
‘You think he’s going to convert that mill, Jim?’
‘I’m sure he is, Mr Ferris.’
‘Is he dickering with anybody else?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t think he’d do that. When the time comes he’ll try and beat us down on the price.’
‘Sure, sure.’ That was a commonplace. ‘Well, he can have the yacht, of course. Tell him that right away. Regarding charter money, it won’t cost him a cent if he puts an order with us. Otherwise — oh, tell him that we’ll let him know. I’ve never chartered it before. No — tell him he can have it free, as long as he likes.’
‘Whether he puts an order with us or not?’
‘That’s right. I shan’t be using it.’
‘I think that’s very wise, boss, if I may say so. Sol’s going to be very pleased.’
‘Okay, okay. I’ll play this tape back and call Captain Petersen. Now, you go over Monday and string them along. Better call me again Monday night, around six o’clock your time.’
Keith Stewart sat on the deck of the Mary Belle that Saturday afternoon twelve days out from Honolulu, while Jack Donelly slept below. He was very different now from the fat, rather unhealthy little man who had sailed upon the Mary Belle. Five days of sea-sickness had made him noticeably slimmer and more competent in his appearance. That had been over for a week. He now knew the sails and ropes by name and what they did. He could not yet pull down a reef alone, or he had never done so, but he knew how it was done. He still wore the tattered Panama hat as a protection from the midday sun, and he still wore the cricket shirt at night and when the sun began to burn, but most of the time he went clothed only in a pair of bathing shorts, and barefoot; from frequently stubbing his toes he had charted the position of every eyebolt in the deck and now avoided them. He was a very different man from the Keith Stewart who had boarded the aeroplane at Blackbushe.
By his noon latitude observations and by Jack’s dead reckoning he judged that they were now about two degrees and forty minutes north of the Equator, about abreast of Christmas Island and probably two or three hundred miles to the east of it. Jack thought that they were closer than that. They had seen a patch of floating seaweed early that morning, and he had viewed it with concern. ‘It could have come from anywhere,’ Keith had protested.
‘Not from the east it couldn’t,’ Jack grumbled. ‘Seaweed don’t last more ’n a few weeks in the sea. I never seen seaweed more ’n three hundred miles from land, ’n that only when there’s been an off-shore gale. Want to put the thinking cap on for this.’
Later, in the Pacific Islands Pilot, Keith had found some evidence of an east-going current in the vicinity of Christmas Island at that season of the year. Jack grunted when he told him. ‘I guess we’re well away down to leeward,’ he grumbled. ‘Give me a shake up if you see any birds.’ He went down below to sleep.
Later that afternoon Keith saw something better than a bird; he saw the smoke of a steamer. It appeared broad on the starboard bow on the horizon and grew fairly rapidly. It was the second ship that they had seen since leaving Honolulu, and Keith watched it with interest. Presently he could see the hull above the horizon, and realised that it was going to pass fairly close to them.
He called Jack Donelly from his sleep.
The captain put his head out of the hatch and studied the position. ‘Bear up a little,’ he said. He pointed with the flat of his hand at the direction he wanted Keith to steer to intercept the steamer, or pass close to her. Keith put down the helm and pulled in the main sheet and then the foresheet. ‘That’s okay,’ said Jack. ‘Keep her as you go.’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Keith.
The captain looked at him in surprise. ‘Why, stop her ’n ask where we are,’ he said. It seemed the most natural thing to him. To Keith it seemed an appalling thing to do; this was a big ship, costing millions of pounds. But he was new to the sea, and he said nothing.
Jack said, ‘We’ll need a board.’ He thought for a moment, vanished down below, and reappeared with the lid of the locker under his bunk, and, mysteriously, a piece of chalk. ‘I’ll take her,’ he said, going to the helm. ‘You write better ’n what I do. Put, WANT POSITION.’ A sudden doubt assailed him. ‘Suppose they give it on a board in this latitude and longitude. You know how to put that out upon the chart ’n say where we are?’
Keith said, ‘I can do that.’ He bent to his task, making the letters as bold and clear as he could, and adding the word PLEASE, which seemed quite unnecessary to his captain. Then he took the helm again while Jack went below, and reappeared with a large flag of the United States, which he bent on to the burgee halliards and hauled to the masthead upside down. He viewed it with satisfaction. ‘It’s a great thing to belong to a wonderful country like the ole United States,
’ he remarked. ‘I mean, you Britishers, nobody wouldn’t know if your Union Jack was upside down or not. But with Old Glory, there’s no mistaking.’
The ship drew nearer on an intercepting course. She was a tanker, light in the water, painted grey all over like a battleship, and wearing the Blue Ensign. In fact she was a Fleet oiler that had discharged her cargo at Christmas Island and was now on her way back to England through the Panama Canal, but they had no means of knowing that. When she was less than half a mile away and they could hear the noise of her engines above the noises of their own passage they held up their board. Her engines slowed and stopped. Jack took the helm and put the ship about to windward, and let all sheets draw, and sailed down the length of her, Keith holding up their board. From the bridge an officer scrutinised it through glasses, waved to them in acknowledgement, and vanished inside. At the stern of the tanker Jack gibed the mainsail and sailed up the length of her again.
Two officers appeared upon the bridge holding a blackboard. The figures on it read, ‘Lat. 02° 5°’ N., Long. 156° 55’ W.’
Keith copied the figures down carefully, and went below and set them out upon his chart. He reappeared at the hatch. ‘We’re only seventy-four miles from Christmas Island,’ he said.
‘How far ought we to be?’
‘About two hundred and fifty.’
Jack waved a salutation to the officers on board the tanker, and they waved back; they heard the engine-room telegraph bells jangle and the big propeller turned in a flurry of foam under her counter. They sailed clear of her stern and got on to their course.
‘Guess we’ll put her up a point to windward, maybe a point and a half,’ said Jack Donelly. ‘I knowed that we was getting down to leeward by that patch of weed.’
• • •
That afternoon Mr Ferris called Captain Petersen from Cincinnati. ‘Say, Captain,’ he said, ‘I was hoping to have joined you again before now, but I don’t seem able to make it. I got a job for you to do, though. You know anything about a fish boat called the Mary Belle, been in the yacht harbour recently?’
‘Sure, Mr Ferris,’ said the captain in surprise. ‘They sailed for Tahiti, maybe two weeks ago.’
‘How many people were on board her when she sailed?’
‘Two, I think. There was the captain, a guy by the name of Jack Donelly. The other was a kind of passenger. English, he was. Flew out here in an airplane from England, and wanted to get down to Tahiti. They came on board here to ask about the course.’
‘They did? What was the passenger’s name?’
The captain rubbed his chin. ‘Well now, Mr Ferris - I’ll have to try and think. It might have been Keats.’
‘Keith. Keith Stewart. Say, he’s a friend of Sol Hirzhorn and Sol’s all het up about the risk he’s taking going to Tahiti in that way.’
‘He is?’ The captain’s jaw dropped. He knew all about Sol Hirzhorn and his empire of the forests. ‘He hasn’t any money,’ he remarked weakly. ‘That’s why he went with Jack Donelly.’
His employer replied, ‘Sol Hirzhorn hadn’t any money when he started, nor had I. Now look, captain, I want you to get going right away ’n follow down the route that he’d have taken to Tahiti. If you catch up with him, that’s fine. If you don’t, then when you get to this place Papeete, ’n he’s not there, you start looking for him back along the track. If you reckon they’ve got wrecked upon an island, visit every island they could be on. But find Keith Stewart.’
Captain Petersen’s heart rejoiced; he was sick of Honolulu. This was a job after his own heart. ‘What will I do when I find him?’
‘You’ll put the Flying Cloud at his disposal,’ Mr Ferris said. ‘Keep in touch with me by radio. His sister got wrecked in the Tuamotus or something, so he wants to go to one of the islands.’
‘I know about that,’ the captain said. ‘He told me. He had a newspaper clipping about it.’
‘Fine. Well, put the ship at his disposal for whatever he wants to do. But when that’s over, I want him back in Seattle or Tacoma. You’d better come right back to Seattle with the Flying Cloud, ’n mind you bring Keith Stewart with you. Sol Hirzhorn wants to see him, and I’ve got a big deal on with Sol.’
‘You shall have him, Mr Ferris.’
‘Okay, then, for now. I’ll maybe meet you in Seattle when you arrive, or else it might be Jim Rockawin. You know Jim?’
‘Sure, I know Jim, Mr Ferris.’
‘Well, keep me informed by radio, every two, three days, how it’s going on.’
‘There’s just one thing, Mr Ferris.’
‘What’s that?’
‘About Mrs Efstathios. Will she be coming along with us?’
There was a momentary silence. ‘Gee.’ said Mr Ferris, ‘I forgot all about Dawn. She with you now?’
‘She’s on shore some place. I wouldn’t know. Maybe the Royal Waikiki Hotel. Music with Manuel, Mr Ferris.’
‘I know, I know.’ There was a pause. ‘What time is it with you?’
‘A quarter of three, in the afternoon.’
‘It’s a quarter of eight with us. The doctor says I got to be in bed and asleep by ten. Say, if she comes within the next two hours, ask her to call me. Otherwise, tell her how things are yourself.’ The captain made a slight grimace. ‘She isn’t Mrs Efstathios any more. The decree went through. She can move into a hotel on shore, or she can go along with you, or she can come right home. Tell her that — with love and kisses from Daddy. But you sail for Tahiti first thing in the morning.’
‘Okay, Mr Ferris,’ said Captain Petersen.
Chapter Nine
The Mary Belle made a quick passage to Papeete, covering the two thousand four hundred nautical miles in twenty-five days. They carried a fair beam trade wind all the way but for one day of slamming about in the light airs of the Doldrums on the Equator. They never made quite enough allowance for leeway and passed within five miles of an island which from the latitude they assumed to be Vostok; they bore up two points and passed close to Flint Island. Thereafter they had no difficulty. They sighted Tahiti with the last of the light one evening, hove to for the night and went to sleep, and sailed into the harbour of Papeete next morning.
They had need of all their sleep, because in Papeete every man’s hand was against them. On their non-arrival at Hilo the French officials had been fully informed by Honolulu over the radio of their suspected destination, and there was quite a reception committee waiting for them on the quay. The harbourmaster in his launch directed them where to drop their anchor and took a stern warp to the quay. As soon as the vessel was made fast a gangway was put down on to their stern and the reception committee came on board. There was the harbourmaster, an official in plain clothes from the Bureau de l’Administration, an official in plain clothes from the Banque d’ Indo-Chine, the Port Health Officer, and three gendarmes in uniform armed to the teeth.
There followed the most unpleasant hour that Keith Stewart had ever had to undergo. Jack Donelly could produce no ship’s papers at all and no carnet, and was told that import duty would be due upon the value of his vessel on entry into French Oceania, probably at thirty per cent; he was also liable to a considerable fine. He had no bill of health. They would therefore be put in quarantine for thirty days and refused permission to land during that time; they would have to pay for the visits of the Port Doctor to inspect them each day, and would be fined for that as well. He had no passport and no visa to visit the islands; that merited another fine. Keith Stewart had a passport, which the police immediately confiscated. He pointed out that no visa was required for France; they said that a visa was required for French Oceania, and he would be fined. They were forced to produce what money and travellers’ cheques they had, which the official of the Banque d’Indo-Chine immediately confiscated, giving them a receipt and stating that accounts would be opened to their credit, a first charge on which would be their liabilities to the Administration. After that the ship was searched very comprehensively by the gendarme
s, who left everything in confusion. The party then departed, leaving one of the gendarmes as a guard at the head of the gangway. They were given to understand that they would be towed to the quarantine anchorage later in the day.
Jack Donelly was dazed and bewildered by this rude reception. ‘I don’t see why they want to be so mad about these tiddy little things,’ he said. ‘We haven’ done nothing wrong.’
‘I suppose we set about it the wrong way,’ said Keith. He thought deeply for a few minutes while putting the nets back into the stern locker from which the gendarmes had dragged them. ‘I think the thing to do would be to ask to see the British consul. Your consul, too.’
I dunno,’ said Jack. ‘I never had no truck with one o’ them. You ask to see yours first, ’n see what happens.’
Keith went to the gangway and spoke to the gendarme. He knew no French and the gendarme knew no English, so they did not get very far. ‘British consul,’ he said.
The man shook his head. Actually he was trying to convey the information that there was no British consul in Tahiti. Failing to get his message through, he tried again. ‘Sous-officier viendra,’ he said. ‘Aprés le dèjeuner. Spik English.’
Keith said, ‘I am speaking English.’ He tried to move past the man to find someone on the quay who would interpret, but the gendarme barred his way with his rifle. Keith returned disconsolate to the deck of the Mary Belle. ‘I suppose we’ve just got to wait here till something happens,’ he said.
There was a strong smell of vanilla in the port, and very soon little black iridescent beetles started to descend upon the ship in hundreds; they were everywhere. ‘They’d be copra beetles,’ Jack observed. ‘Ma used to tell me about them, when we were little nippers. They can bite.’ He shook himself. ‘Let’s have some chow.’