Just Visiting

by Graham Wilson

  Chapter 17 – Running the Night Tides – Night 27

  Now they saw their destination before them, an island at the end of the next river stretch.

  Mark finished checking the instruments before opening his gun case and taking out a big stainless steel revolver. He opened the chamber and placed in four heavy bullets. Susan looked inquiringly. He said, “Just in case a large crocodile should try and come into the boat with us tonight. This is easier than a rifle at close quarters. I leave two chambers empty to ensure no shots by accident.” He placed the gun in a holster that he strapped to his waist.

  Mark brought Susan into the cabin to familiarise her with the instruments. Even though Mark would mostly operate them, and call out measurements for her to log, Susan needed to understand how they worked, just in case she also had to take readings.

  There was a GPS, to log their position, plot their track and keep record of their real over-ground speed. There was a flow meter, to tell the speed of the water as it passed the boat. There was a depth finder that ran a continuous record of the depth below them. Finally, there was a side-scan sonar, which gave a reading of the shape of the riverbed.

  The method would be to take up position just before the last big bend south of the island at five o’clock, and hold it steady for five minutes while they got a reference position fix and zeroed all their instruments, Then they would go down the river, passing through the left hand channel and returning up the right side channel, passing the island on both sides. As they reached their starting point they would rerun their course to the sea in the reverse direction, going down the right-channel, and returning back up the left.

  After Mark showed her the instruments it was time to start their work.

  First they would do a trial pass through, and take and log photos of the banks, and river structures; the islands, shoals, rapids, the places where rocky hillsides ran hard along the river, the places of back eddies and hidden obstacles.

  Mark took the photos and Susan logged the locations. She also practised quickly and neatly capturing the written record they would later require. It was systematic and demanding work, like keeping track in a laboratory. Susan felt well at home with her task and proud of what Mark said was an important contribution.

  She was learning how to use the barrage of equipment and how to work with the men who were driving the boat, the hand signals to manoeuvre slightly, to anticipate the drift and Mark’s needs as they did their work, the subtlety of boat, tides and hidden currents.

  They came back to their starting point, meandering with the currents, waiting to begin their real work in the running tides. They cruised next to the north-eastern bank, in a place where big hills ran up against the river.

  The afternoon sun sank slowly towards the horizon of a near cloudless sky. Below it was the thin crescent of a near new moon, a faint shadow in the sky. A little fresh water soak ran from the hill, the water glistening as it flowed over a narrow strip of sand to the river.

  A big boar pig had come to drink here. It stood, head down in the soak, back slightly from the river’s edge. Susan looked away; watching as a flock of low flying geese wended their way upriver, flying a tight vee formation, with strong wing flaps.

  Violent squealing rent the air. They all looked around. The boar and a mighty crocodile were locked in a death struggle. Somehow the crocodile had caught hold of a back leg and dragging it towards the water. The pig’s screams of terror were pitiful.

  Mark watched with a rapt expression on his face. He seemed to be communing with the crocodile, oblivious to the suffering. Susan felt revolted and turned away. The awful screams went on and on. At last the noise ceased, pig and crocodile vanished into the murky river.

  Mark’s fascination scared her to her core, she could not say why. It was, as the Top Springs bartender had said, as if some part of Mark held a kindred crocodile spirit, a sort of crocodile brotherhood.

  When the noise ceased the ordinary Mark returned. But in her memory the chilling vision remained, as if some part of his human soul was missing, replaced by that of a crocodile. She remembered the carved crocodile he kept. He called it a totem, but it felt more like its crocodile spirit lived inside him.

  They got to work and the hours flew by in a dizzy blur. As the light disappeared they turned on a barrage of spotlights. Now starlight was their only companion.

  At first they were running with a rising river; the flow surged ever higher, the shoals hidden, the mud banks were gone, fish flapped on the incoming tide, waters flooded into side creeks, low banks overflowed. It slowed and it slowed; little by little this power of water went slack. Several crocodiles were swimming along the edges, mouths opening and feasting on the in-rushing fish.

  Now it was ten o’clock; the tide and time stood still. They straightened and walked around the boat for ten minutes in the slack tide. Sandwiches and drinks were passed from hand to hand; they refreshed their bodies and cleared their minds.

  Then they began again. Their first run was relatively gentle, the water in a full but steady flow. It started to surge as they came back up river. The second run became fast and dangerous. The flow through the narrows sounded a muted roar as it rushed through the constricted passage. Soon it was midnight.

  The third run down-river was really scary, the water thundered through, all sound now blurred and buried below the endless noise assault of cascading white water. The boat felt like it was flying, their course wherever they could steer safely, keeping the boat clear of shallow edges, with danger of grounding and flipping in the falling tide.

  Then came the return leg; three motors screaming in their effort to maintain speed against the thundering water. The helmsman’s job was hardest now, trying to hold a steady course against the buffeting water. At times water surges came bursting through and the boat was flung sideways like a cork. It seemed that they must surely be overwhelmed by the raging river. The fourth run was easier; control returned as the power of the river subsided.

  Now they were all exhausted, buffeted by the endless movement, eyes gritted with strain. Finally they came back where they started. They all patted each other on the shoulders and backs; none could have believed it would be that hard. But they had done it and were proud of their success.

  Mark took the helm. He told his two men, who for long hours had alternated between helmsman and spotter, to stand down and each take an hour for sleep. He would drive the boat and Susan would watch out.

  Susan sat in the bow, watching the river as it flowed past. But her work was not needed now, the river was wider, passage was easy. She came to the back and sat alongside Mark. They drove this way until four-thirty, the darkest and most silent time of night, enjoying the peace as the steady thrum of the motors drove them on.

  The early morning on the river, with the steady pulse of the large engines, and the muted rush of the river, seemed to provide a space for them to talk in a meaningful way.

  Susan chose not question Mark’s past; rather she gave him space to volunteer his own small pieces. He told a little story about an uncle, whom he barely knew, taking him to fish on the Brisbane River; he recounted the thrill of the first fish he caught and of how proud he was when his uncle allowed to drive the boat.

  He told of a time when a friend from school invited him to their farm in the country, his pleasure riding horses and going rabbit shooting in the fields; two things which remained great loves’ ever since.

  Susan spoke of how her mother and father bought her and her brother a horse each, which they rode at the weekends; she remembered her joy in walking out in the Scottish Highlands alongside her father as he hunted and taught her about the land.

  She told Mark about the first time she had killed a deer; the nervous anticipation as she held her aim, the instant ecstasy of success, and the poignancy of the moment when she realised what she had done as the magnificent creature lay dead before her. But then the pride as, with her father, they brought it home and it provid
ed a feast for the whole family and her cousins.

  Mark spoke of work as a research assistant in Kakadu, where, for many nights, they had to go out and catch large crocodiles to sample for heavy metals. He told her of the dangers of pulling a three or four metre crocodile alongside a small dingy to take their samples.

  He told her more about this biggest of crocodiles which he had discovered on the Mary River. It was unknown to others due to its incredibly secretive nature. Something in the hidden danger and power of large crocodiles, their remorseless predatory behaviour, had captured his Mark’s mind. He spoke of this Mary River crocodile like his brother.

  Time rolled by along with the river. Susan began to yawn, and she could not stop. Mark called the men and returned the controls to them. He directed Susan to the bunk and he lay on the floor. Both fell into a deep sleep, only waking when the boat slowed to a stop.

  It was bright with early daylight. They had returned to Timber Creek. The boat pulled up to the bank just behind the airport where the car was parked. Mark returned the pistol to his gun case, locked away, unneeded. Then he packed up the record sheets, computer drives and arranged for all the other high tech equipment to be stored.

  Mark and Susan climbed off the boat and followed a path from the river that brought them up to the vehicle. They were both mussy, yawning with sleep. They agreed it was a night to remember, a night of discovery of the river and themselves.