by Morris West
To Nino and to me the logic was plain; but Pat protested it, violently.
“They couldn’t, Johnny. They wouldn’t dare. They couldn’t hope to get away with it.”
“Why not, Miss . Pat? You know where we are. We are three hours’ sailing from the mainland. Out there is the big ocean. I will tell you how they would do it. They would kill us first and feed our bodies to the sharks. Then they would destroy all trace of the camp. They would load the stores on the Wahine and tow her out into the big waters and let her drift. Then one day, perhaps, she would be washed inshore and the newspapers would call it another mystery of the sea. It would be very simple.”
In the face of this stark revelation Pat was horror-stricken. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. I put my arm round her shoulders and drew her to me to comfort her. I said gently, “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but Johnny’s right. Nino’s way is the only way. It’s their lives or ours.”
“I think,” said Nino quietly, “I think, maybe, the lady should go to bed. These are not pleasant matters.”
“No!” The word snapped like a lash. She lifted her ravaged face, still set with tears, and challenged us. “I will not be turned out like—like a waitress. My life is involved as yours are. I will stay and listen to what you have to say.”
If I had ever loved my small dark woman, I loved her at that moment. I was proud of her and grateful for her and humbled by the bright courage of her. I bent and kissed her while Nino grinned and Johnny Akimoto smiled his wise, slow smile of approval. Then we settled to our planning.
“It is important,” said Nino Ferrari, ‘that there should be no moon. We have seen that each night they keep a watch on deck. The men on the pumps are busy, but this fellow walks the deck with a gun. We shall be under the water, but there are still the bubbles. If the sea is flat they are unmistakable.”
Johnny Akimoto made a quick calculation.
“Tomorrow night the moon does not rise until eleven o’clock. The tide is full by eight. That will give you three hours to work.”
Nino nodded and went on briskly, “Good! But it is still important that we make full use of the time.” He turned to me. “Is there a place where we can get into the water without having to float ourselves across the reefs? We shall be carrying explosives, remember.”
I thought for a moment, and then I remembered. Just behind the first shoulder of the western horn there was a place where the rocks dropped down into deep water, and where the sea ran in like a long tongue, into a deep cleft in the side of the island. The reef was broken at this point and, if we had strength enough to fight out twenty yards against the wash, we should strike the current that would carry us down towards the lugger. I pointed it out to Nino on the map. He questioned me meticulously. Then he was satisfied.
“So! The next thing is to plan our movements so that tomorrow will look like any other day. They watch us from the lugger, remember. They know, therefore, that Johnny stays aboard the Wahine and I sunbathe on the beach and you and the young lady trot about the island. Tomorrow we must do exactly the same thing. Johnny stays on the boat, one of us visits him. This time it had better be me. I can fix the mines down in the cabin. You two will take your little walk, but tomorrow it will be to the point where we are to enter the water. Then you can lead us there, quickly, when we are ready to go.”
I was filled with admiration for the little Genoese. He was planning his small campaign like a great general. The stone man on the pedestal in his native town would have smiled his approval. There was one point that worried me. I put it to Nino.
“If Johnny stays on the Wahine that means Pat is left here alone. I don’t like that.”
“Neither do I,” said Nino, “but I think it is necessary. We cannot afford to make any change in our routine. She will light the fire and make the meal at the same time. She can finish her meal and go to bed, if she wants. She will have the rifle and my pistol, but I do not think she will have any need of them. On the lugger they work right through the night; besides, they will not risk her in the channel in the darkness.”
Pat nodded and gave me a brave smile.
“It’s all right, Renn. Really it is. I’m used to it, remember? I was alone on the island before I met you.”
I submitted, of course. I had to. But I told myself that if I survived the following night I would never leave her alone again. Nino went on, patiently detailing the final stages of the operation.
“As soon as it is dark we will leave the camp. The signorina will have sandwiches and hot tea ready for us. We will carry them to the place where we enter the water and eat there. Better, you see, that they do not see too much movement in the camp after dark. When we enter the water remember that we have a long swim ahead of us and we must save our strength for the swim home. Do not hurry, do not thresh about. Content yourself with keeping on course and let the current do the rest. Then, when we come to the ship, stay well under her counter, so that the bubbles will dissipate themselves out of sight of the watch. We will fix four mines . . . two amidships, the others fore and aft. I will do that myself. You will float beside me and hand me the two which you will carry. And after that. . . .”
He shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture of comic resignation. For myself, I was less good-humoured about it. After that would come the half-mile race to the channel, before the mines went off and the depth-charges exploded and the killing shock-waves battered our tired bodies. After that, the mill-race of the turbulent channel and the final swim to the Wahine. For most of it we would not dare surface because of the machine-gun in the bows of the black lugger.
“Now,” said Nino abruptly, “we go to bed. And you, young lady”—he thrust a bony finger at Pat and grinned like the father of all the goats—“you go to bed first. Kiss your man and tell him you love him. Then go to bed. Love is a tiring business and tomorrow he will be swimming for his life.”
She laughed and kissed me and clung to me a brief moment. Then she walked to her tent, a brave small figure, shoulders squared, head high.
When she was out of earshot Nino turned to me. He wasn’t grinning now. He was dead serious. He said bluntly, “I made it sound as simple as I could for the lady. But it is not simple. We are swimming in bad waters to the limit of our air-supply. By midnight tomorrow night we may both be dead. Understand that.”
“I understand, Nino.”
He turned to Johnny Akimoto. He spoke tersely, crisply, a general giving the last battle orders to his staff.
“Johnny, this is an operation that runs to time. If it does not, it fails, and we are dead men. We should be back by ten o’clock. That is the extreme limit of the air-supply. Give us till eleven. If we are not aboard then, you will know that we are dead.”
Johnny nodded gravely, Nino continued.
“What you will not know is whether we have managed to fix the mines or not. So this is what you will do. You will take the dinghy and row inshore as quietly as you can and pick up the girl and bring her out to the Wahine. Then you will start the engines and head out through the channel at full speed. You will have a little start, because they will have to get the men up from the bottom of the sea and that takes time. After that they will come for you, shooting. You understand?”
“I understand very well,” said Johnny.
I understood, too. In his dry, crackling, professional voice Nino had been discussing our funeral arrangements.
Chapter 16
JOHNNY was going back to the Wahine. I walked with him down to the beach and stood with him on the damp sand under the bright, cold stars. Each of us knew that this might be our last meeting.
“Look after my girl, Johnny,” I said.
“With my life, Renboss,” said Johnny Akimoto.
I told him about the money in the bank on the mainland. I told him how, if anything happened to me, the money would be paid to him. He shook his head.
“No, Renboss. Not to me. You have your own wahine to look after.”
“She
doesn’t need it, Johnny. She wouldn’t take it anyway. I want you to have it.”
“Thank you, Renboss,” said Johnny.
It takes a great gentleman to accept a gift gracefully. Johnny Akimoto was a very great gentleman. I thanked him—banally enough, God knows—for all he had done for me. I tried, with halting awkward phrases, to convey all that I had come to feel for him: respect, admiration, the kind of love that grows between men who have drunk the wine of triumph together and tasted the stale sour lees of defeat.
He heard me out, with embarrassment. Then, quite simply, he said a strange and beautiful thing which I shall remember till the day I die.
“Wherever you are, Renboss, my heart will be with you. Wherever I am, your heart will be with me. Good night . . . my brother.”
Then he took my hand and pressed it to his naked breast, released it and was gone. I heard the rattle of the rowlocks and the ripple and dip of the oars as he sculled back to the Wahine. God has made few men like Johnny Akimoto. I have often wondered if he made all of them black.
The next day began like all the other days.
We swam before breakfast. We pottered about the camp. And when the chores were done Nino took the work-boat and went out to the Wahine. He carried with him a small wooden box in which were the limpet mines and the detonators, packed in cotton-wool. Pat and I strolled out, hand in hand, to explore the tracks that led to our launching-place. The whole island was crossed and recrossed with goat-pads, but we needed a path that we could follow without difficulty in the darkness and which would be screened from the beach and the watchman on the black lugger.
We found it, without difficulty. We calculated that Nino and I could walk it comfortably in fifteen minutes. We climbed down to the launching-place and studied it carefully, noting the juts and hollows in the rocks and the snags that would be hidden by the high water. Then we retraced our steps, checking the landmarks that would guide us in the darkness—a twisted tree-trunk, a jutting rock, a clump of tree-ferns, the perfumed blossoms of a solitary ginger-flower.
Then, our survey completed, we made our way through the bush to the small valley with the grassy bank and the drooping of rock-lilies. The shade was grateful to us, and the cool was kind. The words we spoke were simple, private, pitiful We were a man and woman who loved each other and who knew that the next twelve hours might see the end of all love and the death of all desire. Yet we were like the old, old lovers turned to marble in the market square whose hands are clasped, whose eyes look always into each other’s but whose lips are parted a hair’s breadth from a kiss and whose bodies ache eternally for ectsasies that will never come.
Nino Ferrari was right—love is an expensive luxury when a man must swim for his life.
We turned our backs on our disappointed paradise and walked out of the bush into the sun.
Nino was in his usual place on the beach. This time he was not sunbathing. He was sitting propped against a small mound of sand, scanning the black lugger through the field-glasses. When we came to him he grunted a greeting, told us with a curt gesture to sit beside him, and continued his scrutiny of the boat. Then he handed the glasses to me. He was frowning.
“Tell me what you make of that, my friend.”
It was a curious and puzzling little scene. One of the divers was sitting in the midst of a small ring of spectators with a square, dark object at his feet. His helmet had been unscrewed and was lying on the deck beside him, but the rubberized fabric of his suit was shining and dripping with water. He had evidently just come up. He was pointing to the dark object and gesticulating awkwardly as if explaining where and how he had found it.
The crew were grouped round him in a broken circle. Manny Mannix stood facing the diver. I could not see his face, but I caught the familiar flourish of the cigar. I knew that he was questioning the diver closely.
“Well, my friend, what is it all about, do you think?”
I lowered the glasses and turned to Nino.
“I don’t know exactly. On the face of it, the diver’s brought up something from the wreck and they’re just standing round discussing it.”
“You know what it is they have brought up?”
“No. It’s dark and squarish—that’s all I know. Every time I tried to get a better look some fool shifted his feet and I couldn’t focus on it.”
“I saw it,” said Nino soberly. “It is our box. The one we found in the cabin.”
I burst out laughing. The thought of Manny Mannix, frustrated and fuming over that empty sea-rotten box was too much for me. I threw back my head and roared.
“I’m glad you think it’s funny, my friend.”
Nino’s icy voice was like water thrown in my face. I stopped laughing and looked at him. Then I looked at Pat. Her face was as troubled as Nino’s.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “I’m sorry to be so dull, but I don’t get it. Maybe I have a peculiar sense of humour, but I think that’s very funny . . . very funny, indeed.”
“No,” said Nino tersely, trenchantly. “Not funny. Not funny at all. Very unfortunate for all of us. They have found our box. They have been working for many days now, with divers and pumping equipment. They have found nothing but that single, broken box. Now they are telling themselves that perhaps we have found the treasure and carried it ashore. They are telling themselves that is why we did not put up a fight, but let ourselves be pushed off the diving area without so much as a dirty word. Soon, I think, very soon, they will come in to take us.”
I was horror-struck. The stark simplicity of the situation, the sudden wreck of all our careful plans, left me for a moment without power of thought or speech. I looked out towards the Wahine and saw that Johnny Akimoto was standing in the bows, shading his eyes with his hand, watching the men on the deck of the lugger. I wondered if his thoughts were the same as ours.
I raised the glasses again. I saw the circle of men break up. I saw them moving about the decks with the disciplined hurry of those turning to an urgent but familiar task. I saw the pump-hands stripping the diver of his heavy suit. I saw the winch-man winding in this cable, making it fast on the drum and throwing the canvas cover over it. I handed the glasses to Nino.
“You’re right, Nino. They’re making ready to move.”
“Then,” said Nino curtly, “it is time for us to move also.”
I pointed to the Wahine.
“What about Johnny?”
“Johnny knows what is going on as well as we do. We cannot help him, he cannot help us. If he wants to join us he has time to do so, but I do not think, he will leave the Wahine.
“Nino’s right, Renn,” said Pat quietly.
“But they’ll kill him!”
“I think,” said Nino dryly, “they will try to kill all of us. Johnny has the rifle and ammunition. He has the same chance as we have—a slightly better one, I think, unless they try to board him, which I doubt they will do.”
There was a moment’s silence. We watched them get the anchor up. We heard them start the engines. We saw the flurry of water under the stern of the lugger. Then they were moving.
“Come,” said Nino briskly. “Back to the camp. There is work to do.”
We turned and went up to the camp at a run. We arrived panting and breathless, but Nino would brook no delay. His voice crackled in a running fire of orders.
“We have twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour. No more. They have not run the channel before. They will take it carefully. They will go to the Wahine. After that they will come for us. Sooner or later you will have to stand and fight. Is there a place where you can do that?”
I tried to marshal my thoughts. They were like sheep, scattered by fright on a country road. It was Pat who answered for me. Her voice was cool and controlled.
“The western horn. The cleft in the rock. It goes in a long way. It is in the angle between the main saddle and the shoulder that falls down to the sea. There’s only one way to reach it. They must come up the goat-track. With a rifle we
can hold them off a long time.”
Nino grinned sourly.
“Didn’t I say you’d got yourself a good woman? Now, listen, and listen carefully. You will take a water-bag and food. You will take the rifle and the amunition. You will take the knife from your diving-belt in case . . . in case the ammunition runs out, or you have to fight quietly in the bush, then the two of you will make your way up to the cleft in the rock. Is that clear?”
“Quite clear, but what about you? Aren’t you coming with us?”
“No, but what I will do concerns you as well, so you must understand clearly what I am telling you. They cannot run the lugger inshore. So they will send a party to the beach in a boat. They will be armed. They will search the camp first. Then they will beat the island, looking for you.”
I nodded agreement.
Nino talked on crisply.
“When you are gone, with the signorina, I will take the lung-pack and the pistol and two of the limpet mines, which is all I can carry. I will go through the bush and find a place where I can hide myself in the rocks and enter the water without being seen. Then, when I can, I will enter the water and swim out to the lugger and fix the mines. I will set them on a three-hour fuse, then I will swim to the Wahine and float myself under her blind side until I have a chance to get myself aboard. That is my party. This is yours.”
He paused and wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand. Pat and I watched him silently, full of admiration for this small dark fellow with the icy courage and the brain like an adding machine. He continued.
“You will go up to the cleft in the rock under the western horn. Soon—in an hour, ninety minutes—they will come up with you. You will have to pin them down with rifle-fire so that they do not move out of the bushes. Then—I cannot think how, but you will know—you will have to work your way out of the rockhole into the bush and down again to the beach. Then you will swim to the Wahine. If God wills, I shall be waiting for you. We shall run her out through the channel before the big blow-up. Is it clear now?”