I looked at Deacon, lying there, his thick, hairy arms black against the sheets, his eyes closed and his forehead like a great bald dome shining with sweat. Was it really there, the information I wanted, locked behind the gleaming bone? It was hard to believe after what Fields had told me, and my hopes fading, I turned towards the door. “I’d like to see the ship’s log,” I said, and I took him, protesting, up to the chartroom.
But the log didn’t help. Thursday, March 28: Anchor up at 1356: steamed out of Addu Atoll by the Kudu Kanda Channel, log streamed at the outer buoy 1507; course 350°, wind NW 7-10 knots, sea calm, visibility five miles approx., haze. At 1630 hours, having cleared Hittadu, which juts some ten miles to the north, course had been altered to 298°. This was the course for Aden. But at 1920 there had been a further alteration of course—this time on to 160°. “It was dark then, I suppose?”
Fields nodded. “He didn’t want the R.A.F. to know he’d turned south. At least, I presume it was that. We were about twenty miles off the island, but he still had the navigation lights switched off.”
“And Deacon agreed to that?”
“I suppose so. I don’t know. All I know,” he added venomously, “was that from then on Strode gave orders around the ship as though he were the captain, not Deacon.”
At 2300 hours the course had still been 160°, but when I turned the page the continuity was gone. Several pages had been torn from the log and the next entry was dated Sunday, 14th April. It simply recorded that the Strode Venturer had dropped anchor off Gan at 1715 hours. Thereafter the ship’s log gave absolutely no indication of where the vessel had been during that crucial fortnight, 29th March to 13th April. And chart No. 748b, which covers the whole northern half of the Indian Ocean, was equally unhelpful. It was grubby, drink-stained and obviously a veteran of many voyages from Singapore to Gan and Gan to Aden, but there was no trace of any pencil markings below 0° 42′ South, which is the latitude of the southern end of Addu Atoll.
“Is there any other chart he could have used?” But Fields shook his head and when I checked the Catalogue of Admiralty Charts, which he produced from a drawer full of Admiralty publications, it confirmed that there was only this one small-scale chart covering the whole enormous area from the African coast right across to Indonesia. Looking at it in detail with the aid of the chartroom magnifying glass, and in particular the area to the south and east of Addu Atoll and the Chagos Archipelago, I couldn’t help thinking that an international survey was long overdue. The paucity of soundings demonstrated all too clearly how little attention hydrographers had paid to the Indian Ocean.
With both log and chart barren of any information as to courses steered I could hardly blame Fields for his failure to help me. However, I did get something out of the hour I spent with him, a clear and surprisingly vivid account of that first expedition to the island. They had sighted it late in the afternoon. “Just a line against the westering sun,” he described it, and the line so thin that at first they had thought it some local squall ruffling the oily swell. It was only gradually, as they steamed steadily towards it, that they had realized it was not the darkening effect of waves but the low-lying shore of an island. “Like a coral reef, like an atoll,” he said. “But as we got nearer we knew it couldn’t be an atoll. Least, it wasn’t like the atolls of the Maldives. The sun was setting then, the usual tropical blaze, and this filthy island floating there, black and bare like somebody had just raked it out of the fire. There wasn’t nothing growing on it—nothing at all. Just a bit of the sea bed.”
“You were approaching from the east then?”
He nodded. “I can remember the course—so can Deacon, I expect. It was two-seven-o degrees near as makes no odds. But that won’t tell you anything. We’d been on all sorts of courses, just about boxing the compass day after day for almost five days, searching all the time.” They had had the echo-sounder on, of course, but the ocean depth was too great for it to record anything until they were within two miles of the island, and then suddenly it was reading around 150 fathoms. They went in very slowly, feeling their way, with the water shoaling all the time. They had anchored about a mile off in seventy fathoms. “We couldn’t see very much of the island then. The sun had set right behind it, but what we could see it looked a hell of a place, and there was a strange smell about it. Strode had one of the crew plumb the bottom with the lead and the tallow arming came up covered with a lot of black grit as though we were sitting on a bed of cinders.”
“Was there any volcanic debris floating around?” I asked. “Pumice, anything like that?”
But he shook his head. There had been no indication at all of volcanic activity and in the morning they had steamed round the island, finally moving the ship into a bay on the western side, leading with the boats and anchoring about two cables off-shore in sixty-four feet. They had worked like blacks all that day and most of the next ferrying boatloads of ore nodules out to the ship until they had the after-hold half-full of the stuff and then they had sailed.
“What day was that, do you remember?” I asked him.
He thought for a moment. “April ninth, I think.” He nodded. “Yes, it must have been the ninth ’cause I remember it was the night of the seventh we’d first sighted it.” And they had been back at Gan the evening of the 13th. Four days’ steaming at, say, ten knots. That would be just over 900 miles. “Did you return to Addu Atoll direct—the same course all the time?” But I knew Peter wouldn’t have done that. “I don’t know what course we steered,” Fields said. “Nor does anyone, not even Deacon. For the first twenty-four hours after we left Strode wouldn’t allow anyone in the wheelhouse. He steered the ship himself.”
“Right through the twenty-four hours?”
“Right through the night and all the next day.”
“You had the stars,” I said. “And the sun during the day. You must have some idea what point of the compass you were steaming.”
His eyes shifted uneasily. “Why should I worry what direction we were steaming? We were getting away from that hell-hole of an island. That’s all I cared about. And if one of the directors wants to keep the course secret, it’s no concern of mine. Let him get on with it, that’s what I thought.”
“You weren’t curious?”
“No, I was bloody tired, sick to death of the whole mucking expedition. I’d had a basinful of it, driving those Chinese to quarry the stuff out with picks and shovels, load it into the boats and then get it off-loaded on to the ship. You try filling half a hold with dirty muck like that under a blazing tropical sun. You’d be tired by the end of it. I was just glad I didn’t have to stand any watches. I had a few drinks and took to my sack.”
“And Deacon—was he drinking with you?”
His eyes shifted nervously, staring at the sea beyond the chartroom window. “What if he was? Strode taking over his ship like that, what the hell else was there for him to do?”
So they’d both of them stumbled into their bunks with a skinful of liquor and not a care in the world. I began to doubt whether Deacon would be able to give me any more information than Fields had given me. But at least I had something. I knew the outer limit of the island’s distance from Gan was about 900 miles. “How was we to know the position of that bloody island was going to be important?” The whine was back in his voice.
“No, you weren’t to know,” I said. I had got a pair of compasses out of the chart table drawer and was marking a circle in on the chart with a radius of 900 miles from Addu Atoll. The next thing was to interview Brady, the chief engineer.
I saw him after lunch, a thick-set, paunchy little man with red-rimmed eyes whose breath smelt of stale whisky. Yes, they had been short of fuel. In fact, he had raised the matter with Deacon and also with Strode at the time the ship had been turned south in the night past Addu Atoll. They had been due to bunker at Aden and as a result had fuel for rather less than 3,000 miles at normal speed. Normal speed was a little over nine knots.
“And econom
ical speed?” I asked him.
The economical speed was nearer seven knots. He had raised the question of fuel again only the day before they had sighted the island. There was then no question of being able to reach Aden; the danger facing them was that they wouldn’t have enough fuel to get back to Addu Atoll. “Did you discuss the fuel situation with Mr. Strode at all before you sailed from the island?” I asked.
“Aye. He was aware of the danger.” He had a slow, north country voice.
“So that you had to keep engine revolutions down to the most economical speed all the way back to Gan.”
“We were doing between seven an’ eight knots most of the time.”
The circle had narrowed to under 800 miles. It narrowed still farther as I began to question the crew, for Peter hadn’t steered direct for Gan in those first twenty-four hours. I had no hope of reconstructing the ship’s exact course, but at sea most men have some general idea of the direction they are headed—a star seen through a porthole, sunrise, sunset and the heat of the sun during the day, the side of the ship in shade, the dazzle of its reflection in the sea.
Gradually the picture built up—first southerly, then westerly for the first day, the final approach to Addu Atoll from the south, the intermediate variations of course always between 180° and 360°. It was slow work, particularly with the Chinese where I had to depend on an interpreter, mostly the chief steward. But strangely enough it was from the Chinese that I obtained most of my information. They had been scared by the island and not knowing where they were going when they left it, they had been unusually alert to the ship’s general direction. I saw most of them twice, some of them three times, checking and cross-checking each observation. It was a process of elimination and when I finally plotted the result on the chart it all added up to an area of probability centred on 03° South, 84° East.
This position was roughly 600 miles east-south-east of Gan and nearly 250 miles north-east of the line the Shackletons had flown on their way to and from the search area. I marked in the position Reece had given. The distance between the two was just over 500 miles.
It was evening of the second day out and the sun was setting by the time I had worked it all out to my satisfaction. I picked up the chart and went through into the wheelhouse. The second officer, Taylor, was on watch, sprawled drowsily in the chair, his eyes half closed. We had just cleared Socotra and the Chinaman at the wheel was steering 118°. Away on the starboard quarter where the sun had just gone down the sky flamed a searing brilliant orange with isolated patches of cu-nim thrusting up black anvil shapes, sure sign that we were getting near the equator. “What speed are we making?” I asked.
“Eleven knots,” Taylor replied. “Chief’s been on the blower twice.”
I could guess what Brady had said. It wasn’t that he loved his engines. It was just that the mountings were so rotten, the hull so strained, he was scared they would shake themselves out through the bottom of the ship. I went along to Deacon’s cabin, taking the chart and the parallel rule with me. I had had a talk with him that morning. Now he had had a whole day to think it out and note down all the courses he could remember.
I found him propped up in his bunk, a glass of whisky on the locker beside him and the notebook I had left with him scrawled full of courses, dates and times. I spread the chart on the table and whilst he read the courses and distances out to me I plotted them. There were many gaps, for this was one man’s observation covering nearly a fortnight and reproduced from memory nearly three months later when he was ill and suffering from the after-effects of great mental strain.
He gave me the notes on the voyage out from Gan first. The period covered was more than a week, including nearly five days of searching. The search courses could only be guessed at since they had been changed at increasing intervals as the area covered increased. He had, however, been able to reconstruct, with what he thought was a reasonable degree of accuracy, the voyage out to the search area. Plotted on the chart this indicated a position of little over 200 miles north-west of the area of probability I had already arrived at.
I then plotted on a piece of tracing paper the courses he’d noted of the voyage back. The overall course for the first twenty-four hours he reckoned at between SSW and WSW, confirming what I had already learned from the crew. The result of the trace when the final point of it was laid on Gan and the sheet aligned with the chart gave a position south-south-east of his previous position—a difference this time of only 100 miles from my area of probability.
“Well, what’s the answer?” His voice sounded tired, a low, rumbling whisper, and he fumbled for his glass. “Does it add up to anything?” Whisky ran down the stubble of his chin and he didn’t bother to wipe it away. “It seems a long time ago. Too damned long, and my mind’s not all that clear …” His voice trailed away and his eyes closed.
I gave him the results and he nodded slowly. “A big area to cover.” I could see him working it out, the island little more than sixty feet high, its range of visibility barely fifteen miles and even that reduced by haze. But he was thinking of it as a sea-level search, whereas a Shackleton would probably be able to cover it in a single day. I drew in a square on the chart, noted the latitude and longitude of the four corners and got to my feet. “I’ll wireless Gan.”
It was almost twenty-four hours before I got Canning’s reply: Regret little likelihood of resumed search being authorized unless you can give me clearer justification. Reece satisfied areas already searched covered island’s last known position. In the circumstances volcanic action still seems most likely explanation of our failure to locate it, but we can discuss it further on your arrival.
When I showed this to Deacon, he read it through slowly, his steel-rimmed spectacles perched on his big nose. “Volcanic action,” he growled. “Submarine pressures, yes. But that island wasn’t a bloody volcano. It was a bit of the sea bed, nothing more.” And he added, “I never did trust Welshmen.” The message-sheet slipped from his fingers and he leaned back with a sigh. “Justification, he says. What’s he mean by that?” His bloodshot eyes stared at me, strangely magnified by the glasses. “The opinion of an Adduan wouldn’t count, I suppose? Not with a man like Canning—a serving officer who’s never had anything to do with them.”
“You’re thinking of Don Mansoor, are you?”
He nodded. “He’s been there twice, once on his own and once with me, and he shared some of Peter Strode’s watches with him.”
“Could he mark the position in on a chart?”
The laugh was thick with phlegm. “ ’Course not. He’d barely seen a chart before he sailed with me. But he knows about the stars, and in his own way he’s a good navigator.”
“Canning has had a great deal to do with the Adduans,” I said. He respected them, even admired them. And remembering how those working on the base came in from the other islands each morning sailing their dhonis, I thought perhaps Gan was the one R.A.F. station where the view of the local inhabitants on a matter of navigation might carry weight. At any rate, it was worth trying.
It was the afternoon of 10th July that we reached Addu Atoll, steaming in by the Kudu Kanda Channel. But instead of continuing south across the lagoon to Gan, I ordered Fields to turn the ship to port and anchor just clear of the reefs off Midu. The breeze was fresh on my face as I rowed in to the beach, the palm fronds rattling with a noise like surf and the hot sun glistening on the broken tops of the waves. Inside the reef five vedis lay afloat with their masts already stepped. The palm-thatched boathouses along the beach all stood empty.
The Strode Venturer, anchored so close, seemed to have drawn the whole island from its green jungle shell, a great crowd that hemmed me in as I stepped ashore, a circle of brown faces bright with curiosity. An old man came forward, bade me welcome in halting English. But when I asked him for Don Mansoor he swept his arm towards the open sea and said, “Him leaving on great journey. Looking to island, all men looking to your friend.”
I remem
bered him then, this old man in the ragged turban, his clothes bunched tight around his thin shanks; he had steered the dhoni that night they brought me secretly to Midu. I asked him when Don Mansoor had left and he said he was leaving now four days. “And these?” I pointed to the vedis lying in the shelter of the reef. He thought they would leave next day or perhaps the day after. “All strong men now leaving Midu.” Without their sails the vedis looked lifeless, their fat hulls listless in the still water, the wood tired after the years ashore in the hot sun. I asked him whether they were not afraid to make such a voyage in ships that had been laid up so long.
Yes, he said, they were very much afraid. “All women fearing their men drown.” He smiled, adding that the fears of their women-folk wouldn’t stop the men of Midu from following Don Mansoor—the Malimi, he called him. “We Adduans hoping for new life now.” And as we went up to his house he began telling me a rambling story about some monster long ago that used to come in from the sea at night to devour human tribute and how the malimi, the captain of a foreign ship, who believed in a greater god had stood in for the sacrifice and had defeated the monster by his fearless demeanour and by reading the Koran. It was a mythological story, a Maldivian version of St. George and the Dragon that represented the islanders’ conversion to the Muslim faith, and long before he had finished it I was seated in his house with a drink of palm juice in my hand. It made a very strong impression on me sitting there, conscious of the bed at the far end of the room swaying on its cords, dark feminine eyes limpid in the shadows and the old man talking as the sun went down and the dhonis came in with the men from Gan.
The point of the story was to explain to me that men were not afraid to die if they believed in something. “Now Ali Raza is making all Midu vedi ready and we are sailing to find your friend and the new land. If Allah wills it,” he added, and the old eyes stared at me, the whites yellowed with age. One of the vedis now afloat was apparently his. “I am not sailing my vedi for three years now because those Malé men making piracy on the sea. But now I am going for I am—how you saying—odi vari meeka, and wishing to see this new land.” The words odi vari meeka mean owner rather than captain. There is no word for captain in Adduan, doubtless because they are a seafaring race and any owner would automatically sail his own boat.
The Strode Venturer Page 25