The Strode Venturer

by Hammond Innes

  In the end I got out of my bunk and went along to his cabin. It was just after one. I pushed open his door and stood there listening. There was no sound, the portholes open and a feeling of emptiness. I switched on the light. He wasn’t there and his bunk hadn’t been slept in. It was all tidied up, the few clothes he possessed folded neatly. Two letters had been placed carefully on his pillow. One was addressed to Fields, the other to a Mrs. Chester in England. I hurried aft, across the well deck and up on to the poop. But there was nobody there. I stood for a moment leaning on the stern rail, looking down into the still, dark water below, wondering what to do. In the end I went back to my bunk without telling anybody. He wouldn’t have wanted them to launch a boat and start searching any more than my father had. I only wished I had known him earlier, before he took to drink. To go like that, so quietly, so unobtrusively—and cold sober.

  I was up again at five. The third officer was on watch, but Fields was still there and we watched together as dawn broke and the shape of the island appeared like a ghost against the fading stars. As soon as there was enough visibility he got under way, steaming north along the 300-fathom line. The light was increasing all the time, a hot glow in the east that silhouetted the island so that it was a black shape without detail. Only the glint of water beyond the nearest land identified it as the southern arm of the bay. As soon as we had opened up the anchorage he stopped the engines and went to call Deacon. He came back a few minutes later, very white and the letter crumpled in his hand. “He’s gone,” he said, a shocked look in his eyes. He stood there in a sort of daze, smoothing the letter out and staring at the words he’d already read. “The end of the road. That’s what he says. I don’t understand.” He shook his head, tears welling up in his eyes and trickling down his sallow cheeks.

  There was nothing I could say. They’d been together so long, and now he was on his own. The depth was decreasing, the anchorage opening up. “You’ll have to take her in yourself,” I told him.

  He nodded slowly and his thin body stiffened as though he were bracing himself. “Starboard wheel. Engines slow ahead.” We could see the backs of the shoals gleaming in the sunrise, a great heap of ore stockpiled on the quay and the bulldozer looking small as a beetle on the shelf where the ore had been excavated. The bows swung in towards the anchorage and Fields sent the second officer to get the anchor ready whilst he conned the ship from the starboard bridge wing.

  He took her in much closer than Reece had taken the Strode Trader and the sweat shone on his face as the depths decreased and the nervous tension built up in him. When he finally gave the order to let go the anchor the echo-sounder was reading eighteen fathoms. He had done what Deacon would have done and from that moment my opinion of the man began to change.

  A boat had already been swung out and I left immediately for the shore. Peter met me at the loading quay where most of the shore party were already gathered. He was wearing nothing but a sarong and sandals, his bare torso burned black by the sun and so thin every bone and sinew showed. Standing there on that desolate shore in the bright morning light he looked native to the place, a wild, strange figure with his beard unkempt and his black hair grown down over his ears. “Where the hell have you been?” His teeth showed in his beard and the whites of his eyes shone in the dark tan of his face. He was angry, a driven bundle of nervous energy that had been badly frightened by lack of contact with the outside world. “What’s Reece think he’s playing at?”

  “Did you monkey around with the compass?” I asked him.

  “The compass?” I saw his eyes go blank. “What’s the compass got to do with it? We’re half starved, food rationed, the fuel almost exhausted. You’ve been gone damned near a month and——”

  “Well, did you?” I demanded, remembering the shallows and how the lightning had struck, that poor devil burning like a torch.

  His eyes slid away from me and I knew then that we’d been right. It wasn’t Reece’s fault. “You stupid fool!” I said. “You nearly cost us all our lives.” I was remembering what Deacon had said, that he’d get more and more like his father. Despite the growing heat my body was cold with anger. “You’ve only yourself to blame.”

  “Never mind about that,” he said. “Where the hell has the Strode Trader been all this time?”

  “That isn’t the Strode Trader out there,” I said. “It’s the Strode Venturer.” And I told him briefly what had happened. But it didn’t seem to register, his mind half unbalanced by lack of food and the solitude of this lonely island. “You must have been crazy,” I said, “to fool around with the magnetic field of a ship’s compass. Three men dead, four injured and the ship gutted by fire.”

  He had the grace to say he was sorry then. “But it can’t be helped. It seemed the only thing to do—at the time. I didn’t trust Reece and to have the position of the island——” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, everyone knows where it is now, I suppose. That Shackleton——” He leaned towards me, his eyes staring and luminous in the hard light. “Did you see Don Mansoor? Did he tell you when he was sailing?” There was a nervous urgency in his voice.

  “The Shackleton reported two native craft twenty miles to the west of the shoal area,” I said. “I imagine they’re Don Mansoor’s vedis.” The creak of oars sounded behind me and I turned. It was Fields coming ashore in the other boat.

  “Where’s Deacon?” Peter asked. “Is he on board?”

  “Deacon’s dead,” I said. “Suicide.”

  He stared at me, shocked. That at least meant something to him. “I’m sorry,” he said. And then again, “I’m sorry.” The anger, the nervous energy, all the driving vitality seemed to leave him then. He looked suddenly very tired. “And the Strode Trader a wreck, you say?” He passed his hand wearily over his face.

  And then Fields was ashore and facing us, his body tense, his mouth trembling. “You knew he’d gone, didn’t you?” He was staring at me, his long, sallow face reflecting a personal tragedy. “On the bridge, when I told you—you weren’t surprised. You knew.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I knew.”

  I thought he was going to hit out at me, blame me for what had happened. But all he said was, “Why? Why did he do it? I don’t understand.”

  The tears were coming back into his eyes and I felt sorry for the poor devil. “He couldn’t go on, that’s all. Like my father,” I said.

  He nodded slowly as though the mention of my father helped.

  “It’s your ship now,” I said and he stared at me, his eyes wide and the tears running unashamedly down his face. Finally he turned away, still crying, and stumbled blindly back to the boat. I called to him to take as many as he could of the shore party off to the ship and send the boat back for the rest. My own boat was already pulling away with about half a dozen Pakistanis in her. “So they may be here to-day?” Peter said and I realized his mind was still on those two vedis.

  I looked at the sea, shining blue to the horizon. The zephyr of a breeze touched my face, scattering cat’s paws over the bay’s calm surface. “With luck,” I said and we walked slowly up the road together towards the hut. It was then that he explained his urgency, his desperate need for them to arrive before anybody else from the outside world.

  It was a question of the future of the island under international law. At the moment it was terra nullius in the sense that it was newly emerged and open to occupation by anybody. He couldn’t claim it as an individual or on behalf of Strode & Company—the days for that sort of thing were long since past. In any case, to effectively establish title in international law the claimant must satisfy two requirements: first, the intention to occupy, signified by some formal act of declaration such as the planting of the national flag to give other powers notice that the territory is no longer terra nullius; and secondly, a continuing and effective occupation. As an Englishman, the correct procedure, according to a friend he had contacted in the Foreign Office, was for him to notify the British Government of the island’s location and
ask them to take formal occupation. “It would then have the status of a British colony.” He said it without enthusiasm.

  “And you want it for the Adduans?”

  “Yes. Don Mansoor discovered it. It’s their island. Besides,” he added, “in view of the behaviour of the Malé Government over the Gan lease I don’t think there’s any doubt that if this place were annexed by Britain it would be for strategic purposes.”

  I knew he was right there. An uninhabited island belonging to nobody—it was the dream of every major power. If we got hold of it, we’d undoubtedly establish a base and clamp a security guard on the place.

  “I doubt whether we’d even be allowed to exploit the manganese. Certainly no Adduans would be permitted to land.” We had reached the hut now and he paused before going in, looking round him at the long, bare sprawl of the island. The sun was rising over the back of it so that it had a warm glow. “That’s why I made sure Reece wouldn’t be able to report its real position. All these months—it’s been like sitting on a time bomb. At any moment a stray ship—the Navy, for instance, or an aircraft like that Shackleton—worse still, a Russian trawler——” He had turned and was looking towards the bay where the Strode Venturer lay reflected in the calm waters. “So you think they could be here to-day?”

  “The Adduans? Yes,” I said, “if the breeze gets up with the sun.” But I was more concerned now with what was happening back in London, and I told him about the extraordinary general meeting called by Strode Orient and what Ida had told me in that letter. “Somehow we’ve got to find the means of reaching London before the twenty-fourth.”

  But though we discussed it for almost an hour in the stuffy, sweat-rancid atmosphere of that hut, we could think of no form of transport that would get us there in time. The only aircraft that could pick us up was a flying boat and we knew of none that we could charter. The only ship we had was the Strode Venturer. To use her was out of the question if we were to deliver our first consignment of ore on time. Even the voyage back to Gan would cost her nearly a week and she would then be short of fuel. In any case, there was no certainty that Canning would be able to get us on a Transport Command flight. Finally Peter said, “Well, we’ll just have to play it from here and hope for the best.” But he knew as well as I did that wireless contact was no substitute for our physical presence at Strode House.

  It was in a sombre frame of mind that we went back down the road to join the last of the shore party going out to the ship. Our only hope was that the news that the island still existed would have its impact and enable Whimbrill to support us, possibly Felden, too.

  There was nothing to do then but wait as the sun climbed to its zenith and the sea took on the brassy glare of midday heat. The shore party were fed and stayed on board, cluttering up the deck. The breeze was very light and Peter became more and more morose as the hours ticked slowly by. No point now in stockpiling ore for without the barge and the landing craft we had no means of ferrying it out to the ship.

  Fields, in command now of a vessel that had no purpose, stayed in his cabin and drank alone. The only man who had anything to do was Weston, who sent out a stream of messages as we drafted them—to Whimbrill, to the Strodes, to Ida, Felden, the Dutch agent who had negotiated the contract for the sale of the ore, and also to Canning to thank him for diverting the Shackleton on his own responsibility. Finally we sent out a report on the situation and prospects for Whimbrill to circulate to all Strode Orient shareholders. Later, messages from the outside world began coming in, messages of congratulation, replies to our own communications, and then shortly after lunch a stream of cables from newspapers, not only in London, but all over the world.

  We were news and I took full advantage of it, sitting in my cabin, the sweat rolling off my naked body, as I wrote eye-witness accounts of my return to the island, of what it looked like, what the shore party had been doing, the glowing future of the place as a major source of manganese. And all the time Peter stayed on the bridge, searching the hazed horizon to the west. But there was no sign of the vedis. About three o’clock in the afternoon he burst into my cabin. “This has just come through.” It was from one of H.M. ships—a frigate. It asked for confirmation of the position of the island as given by the Shackleton and added: Our instructions are to take formal possession. We are now approximately 250 miles away. Expect arrive 1600 hours to-morrow.

  “I have told them to save their fuel, that the island belongs to the Adduan People’s Republic. But that won’t stop them.” And he added, “It’s just what I feared—a land grab that will cut the Adduans out and possibly ourselves, too. Your bloody Navy would have a ship in the vicinity.”

  Just twenty-four hours. Tea was served. The sun sank. The air was deathly still and I could picture those two vedis lying just below the wild glow of the horizon, motionless, their sails limp, their reflections mirrored in the long Indian Ocean swell. With night coming on it was pointless taking the Strode Venturer to sea in search of them. “We’ll leave at dawn.” But I could see Peter thought the chances of finding them and towing them into the anchorage before the frigate arrived were remote. For all we knew they might now be aground on the shallows where the Strode Trader had struck.

  The waiting was bad for all of us, a sense of anti-climax, of life temporarily suspended. Sunset faded into night, with Peter pacing the narrow confines of my cabin like a man jailed. I got out a fresh bottle of Scotch and gave him a drink, and once he’d started he didn’t stop. Yet it made no difference to him. His nerves burned up the alcohol as fast as he swallowed it.

  By midnight we had finished the bottle. He was sharing my cabin and he had just curled up like a dog on the floor when the watch we had set knocked at the door. “Plenty wind coming now, sah.” We went up on deck. There was a wrack of cloud to the south of us, very black and stormy looking against the moon riding the ragged gap. It was blowing fresh from the south-west and in the pale light we could see the waves breaking on the shoals. The ship was beginning to come alive under our feet, a slow, trembling movement as she tugged at her cable. We stayed on the bridge about an hour, the sweat drying cold on our bodies as we strained our eyes seaward. But though the cloud gradually drifted away southward and the moon was bright we saw no sail, only the sea flickering white as the waves broke.

  It was still blowing fresh when we went below about one-thirty. It was pointless standing there for there was nothing we could do till dawn broke. I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow and the next moment the light was on and Peter was shaking me. “They’ve seen something—a sail, they think.”

  The time was 0455. Out on deck the moon was falling to the west, still bright, but in the east, beyond the dark back of the island, there was the first greying of the light before the coming dawn and the stars were beginning to lose their brightness. At first I couldn’t see it, only the dead line of the horizon on to which my eyes, straining into that strange ghostlight, superimposed imagined shapes, even the glimmer of lights which were too ephemeral to be real. Peter handed me the glasses. “I think it’s a sail, but I can’t be sure.” The horizon seen through the glasses was both clearer and less distinct, blurred by magnification. I swept the area slowly, gradually fastening on a pale blotch that might have been a trick of the light except that it was there each time I searched that section of the sea. “We won’t know for certain till dawn breaks,” I said. “Another hour, probably.”

  The wind had fallen, light to moderate now, but still strong enough to drive a ship under sail. We stood there watching through the glasses, neither of us feeling like going back to bed, and as the sky paled in the east and the moon’s light dimmed we lost sight of even that vague blur. Our tired eyes played us tricks and soon we were no longer certain that we had seen anything at all.

  Dawn came milky white, a pale glimmer that grew imperceptibly. The island, at first a remote silhouette, gradually came closer as details became visible—the gleam of a crevice, the shape of the road, the ore pile and
the machines stationary on the plateau. Finally we could see it all, the familiar pattern of it clear, and the sky behind it taking on the first tints of the sun’s spectrum. In contrast, the west had dimmed, the stars, even the moon, pallid now, the horizon gone.

  Coffee was brought to us and we leaned against the steel of the bridge housing, smoking, our eyes drawn to the east where colours were beginning to flare. The blaze of that tropical dawn had us mesmerized so that it was some minutes before we looked again towards the west. And suddenly they were there, clear and distinct, a splash of white canvas—not one ship, but two, sailing so close their spars and sails seemed one. It seemed incredible to us that we hadn’t seen them before, for they were quite close, barely a mile off. And as the sun thrust its red rim over the horizon beyond the island, their sails took on a rosy glow and every detail of the vessels was suddenly clear.

  They were vedis all right. The snub-nosed stems with the blunt attempt at the clipper bow where it was shaped to take the bowsprit, the fat buxom hulls and the squares’l yard trimmed to the quartering wind. They came on steadily under their full press of canvas, bright now in the blinding glare of the newly-risen sun—a rare, proud sight as they stood in to the island that was to be their home.

  Peter reached for the siren cord and gave them three long blasts, and then we hurried aft as the deck of the Strode Venturer became alive with men tumbling from their sleep. The vedis were bearing down to pass astern of us, the windward gunn’ls crowded with Adduans. They were almost naked, teeth and eyes agleam with the excitement of their landfall. There was no shortening of canvas. The vedis came down on us under full sail, heeling to the breeze and the water bone-white in front of their blunt bows. They were doing a good six knots and as they came abreast of us, so close we could have tossed a coin on to their decks, their crews began to sing—a sad, strange chant. Both ships were flying the blue, green and red flag of the Adduan People’s Republic and when they were past and showing us their blunt, dhow-like sterns, the crews moved to their stations. They stood in as far as the first shoal, and just beyond it they turned as one with their bows facing into the wind and the sails came down with a run as the anchors were let go.