Blood Ties

by A. J. Quinnell

  “Here you go Skip. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  With a mental sigh of relief Ramesh took the wheel and said “Thanks. We’ll be at the fairway in a few minutes. Let’s get the sails in. Then please stay forward, prepare the anchor and keep a look-out for coral heads. Give hand signals and call out degrees.”

  He reached forward, switched on the ignition and then pressed the start button. The engine turned twice and then fired and Ramesh mentally sent more thanks sixty miles astern to Jack Nelson.

  Fifteen minutes later they glided slowly in through the fairway with Cady leaning over the bow peering through the crystal water to the sand and coral below. Kirsty stood beside Ramesh. As soon as they had cleared the point they had seen only one boat anchored off the beach and it was a small cabin cruiser. An inflatable dinghy was pulled up on the beach next to a long dugout canoe.

  “Maybe he’s on the other side of the island,” she said.

  “No Kirsty,” Ramesh had replied. “There’s reef all round. This is the only entrance. Anyway, we’ll soon find out.”

  They could just make out a building in among the coconut trees and two figures emerged and came down and launched the dinghy. Ramesh took off the power and Manasa slowed almost to a halt.

  The dinghy, propelled by an outboard, raced out to them. Guy at the helm and Marie-France in the bow, smiling a welcome. They circled in front of Manasa and slowed and Guy called out, “Follow me.”

  Five minutes later they were secure to a mooring close in to the beach and Guy was accepting a cold beer from Ramesh and assuring him that the mooring was attached by a one inch chain to a five ton concrete block, that the nearest coral head was fifty yards away and that Manasa was as safe as a baby in a cot.

  After the introductions Kirsty’s first question was about the Jaloud. Her face fell when Guy told her that she had left the day before for Poivre, two hundred miles away, but she brightened when he explained they were staying a few days on Poivre and nearby islands and then definitely going on to Farquhar and Aldabra.

  She quickly brought them up to date and told them with some apologies about her real reason for being in the Seychelles.

  Ramesh offered to head out immediately in pursuit but Guy advised against it. In a boat like Manasa the passage would take at least twenty-four hours, and they would reach dangerous waters during the night. The best time to leave was early afternoon. Besides, one day would make no difference and they absolutely had to have dinner ashore and see the island. In the morning if Cady could wake up at dawn he would take him out and try to find him a sailfish. Kirsty turned to look at Cady. Before he could open his mouth she said, “It’s OK. Of course I’m impatient, but I have to live with that. It could take weeks —months. Go get your sailfish, Cady.”

  Chapter 17

  Cady closely watched the dark sail glide up fifty yards behind the boat. He heard Guy’s voice behind him, quiet but high-pitched with excitement.

  “If he takes it let him run. I’ll tell you when to strike.”

  Cady nodded, feeling his heart beat faster.

  He was sitting in a fighting chair at the stern of Guy’s cabin cruiser and he hoped that he was finally going to catch a sailfish. Twice in the last three hours he had come close, but both times due to his impatience the hook had failed to set.

  The sail curved back and forth behind the lure, just like a sleek yacht tacking across the wind, then it moved forward and disappeared and, in the next second, the huge drum reel between Cady’s thighs began silently to run out.

  “Wait!” Guy cautioned, and then began quietly counting. Cady’s thumb was poised on the reel’s brake button, the short rod pointing horizontally over the stern.

  “. . . eight, nine, ten— strike!”

  Cady flicked the button and snapped the rod back across his left shoulder.

  “Jeeezuz!” The word erupted as a hundred yards behind the boat the sailfish came out of the water to twice its own length, then tail-walked across the wake before crashing back in a great shower of spray.

  “A beauty!” Guy enthused. “Keep her tight.”

  Cady wound in, feeling the tension in his left hand gripping the rod. He was connected to that great fish by a nylon line which would break under a fifty pound strain. Twice more the sailfish jumped and ran and each time Cady had to let it go, taking yards of line with it.

  But then it tired and slowly he reeled it in. Pumping the rod back and winding in on the down stroke. After twenty minutes he could see its shape behind the boat, then Guy was pulling on a pair of old leather gloves. He moved past Cady and opened a hinged section of the transom. Then he reached forward and grabbed the wire trace.

  “OK, I’ve got her!”

  Cady put down the rod and stood up and watched as Guy hauled in the last few feet. He could see the long pointed bill and under its base the bright red of the lure.

  “Hold the trace,” Guy called, and Cady picked up the slack. Then Guy reached out with his right hand and gripped the bill, got his other hand on it and gave a mighty heave.

  The head of the fish appeared through the transom gate, but most of its body and wildly flapping tail were still in the water.

  “Hell! Give me a hand,” Guy grunted.

  Cady reached forward but Guy cried, “No! Get a cloth. It’s like sand paper. You’ll strip your hands.”

  Cady quickly found a cloth, wrapped it round the base of the bill and gripped with both hands. Then Guy called, “One, two, three-heave!”

  For a moment the fish stuck in the gate, then abruptly it slid through and Guy and Cady collapsed on their backsides on either side of the flapping body.

  Cady rolled away in alarm and scrambled to his feet. Guy lay where he had fallen. He was making strange noises and in a panic Cady thought he was hurt. But then he realised the noises were gurgling laughter, and he joined in.

  The sailfish was about seven feet long and their heave had slid it halfway into the cabin. Still laughing Guy got to his feet and pulled it back into the cockpit and the sunlight.

  “Now watch!” he instructed urgently.

  Slowly the sailfish began to glow and glisten in a myriad shades of blue. Cady watched in disbelief. He could not conceive that a single colour could have such variety or luminosity.

  It only lasted a minute and then faded to a dull blue-black.

  Guy was looking at Cady, who shook his head in awe. “In my life,” he said, “I never seen the like. What happened?”

  Guy shrugged. “It’s when it dies. The old people say it’s the soul going out of it – going to heaven. They say that of all the fish only the sailfish go to heaven and the light there is the same as what you just saw.”

  “It’s almost a pity to catch them.”

  Guy shook his head. “Out here we eat everything we catch, it’s not just sport.” He tapped it with his foot. “This one I’ll salt and then smoke – delicious, and lasts for ever.” He looked out over the side of the boat towards the distant island, and then at his watch.

  “Come on. It’s an hour’s run back-and we’ve got enough,”

  He went to the wheel and pushed the throttle and the boat picked up speed. Meanwhile with great difficulty Cady extracted the hook from the rim of the fish’s mouth, then tidied up the gear and the cockpit. He was a little puzzled. Earlier they had caught a selection of wahoo, dorado, tuna and barracuda, and Guy had used the gaff to bring them all aboard.

  When he joined him beside the wheel he asked: “Why didn’t you gaff it?”

  “It’s sort of tradition and cosmetic,” Guy answered. “It’s one of the few fish that sportsmen like to stuff and hang on the wall. The gaff can cut them up too much. I don’t care to stuff anything but somehow I prefer not to mark them up.” He grinned. “Maybe it’s a bit sentimental.”

  Cady was silent for a while watching the blur of green on the far horizon, then he said, “Guy thanks a million. It was a hell of an experience.”

  “You’re welcome. Anyway,
like I said we eat everything up one way or another. We have eight plantation workers and what they don’t eat we dry and salt and send to Mahé.”

  There was another silence, then Guy began talking of Lascelles. Over dinner the night before he had heard the whole story and he was clearly worried. He had known Lascelles many years and he thought eventually the man would resort to violence, if Kirsty went through with her plan to ‘haunt’ him.

  Cady was sanguine. He still bore the marks from Lascelles but he explained to Guy, as he had to Kirsty, the circumstances of the fight. If Lascelles wanted violence then he would get it.

  Guy nodded. “It sounds like him, and no doubt you won’t let it happen again.” He paused, then said soberly, “Trouble is, Cady, that aboard Jaloud Lascelles always carries a variety of guns . . .”

  “Oh yeah! You think he’d resort to that?”

  “You have to understand,” Guy said thoughtfully, “like all bullies, Lascelles is basically a coward. I remember the first time he came to Bird, a few years back. He had a girlfriend with him — English. Strangely enough she was a pleasant girl. They’d been together quite a while. He wasn’t drinking as much then. Well one afternoon she was swimming. He was on the beach. She was about seventy yards out goggling over the coral heads. A big shark came along hammerhead about twenty feet. That’s no problem. We have lots of sharks in these waters but they don’t attack people, except maybe on the far outer islands like Aldabra. No one can remember anybody being taken by a shark on the plateau islands. Hell, the kids here don’t even get out of the water when they see one. But of course she didn’t know that, and she panicked. In her frenzy to get ashore she got cramp in the leg. I was in the house and heard her screams. When I got to the beach Lascelles was standing there rigid. His face was white —white with fear.”

  “What happened?”

  Guy shrugged. “I went in and got her out. She was half drowned but recovered all right. She refused even to talk to Lascelles or leave on his boat the next day. She stayed for a month until the inter-island schooner arrived.” He smiled. “She was a pretty girl, and very grateful, and my being a bachelor then she was very welcome company.” He turned serious again. “But the point is it showed Lascelles in his true colours — he’s a coward. Trouble is, if you corner a coward he’ll use anything to hand – even a gun.”

  There was a silence while Cady digested that, then Guy said, “I didn’t say anything last night – didn’t want to alarm the others. Do you think it will make Kirsty reconsider?”

  Slowly Cady shook his head and Guy asked, “What about you, and Ramesh . . . and the girl?”

  Cady thought about it. “It won’t put me off. I’ll stick with her, an’ strangely I think Ramesh will. He’s a curious guy. He looks kinda placid an’ all but it’s my guess he’s got a lot of strength . . . an’ character. Lani will stay with him. She’s got no choice really; but even if she had I guess she’d stay . . . She’s also got a lot of character.”

  “But you’ll tell them that Lascelles is armed?”

  Cady nodded. “It’s only fair . . . but it sure changes the odds. You really think it’s that dangerous? I mean those bird guys are gonna be around . . .”

  Guy shrugged. “Not all the time. When they get down to the outer islands they’ll have to camp ashore. There are no settlements. There will be periods when Lascelles can leave them and take the boat away. If you stick with him that’s when it’s going to be dangerous.”

  There was another thoughtful silence. The island was looming closer, Guy glanced at the preoccupied Cady a couple of times and then reached a decision.

  “Take the wheel a minute.”

  Cady took the wheel and Guy went below. He was down there about ten minutes and there was a lot of shifting and banging. Cady glanced through the companionway and saw that floor boards had been lifted. Guy was lying on his belly groping into the bilges.

  Cady was mystified. Had they sprung a leak or something?

  When Guy reappeared he was carrying a battered metal box about two and a half feet long and a foot deep and wide. It was padlocked. He put it on the cockpit deck and then rummaged around in a tin box under the windscreen. He found a key and handed it to Cady.

  “Open it.”

  Very puzzled Cady squatted down over the box. The lid opened with a rusty squeak. Inside were several oilcloth bundles. He looked up at Guy who said,

  “Open them.”

  Cady picked up the longest and unravelled it and found himself holding a submachine-gun. Stunned he looked up again at Guy, who grinned and said,

  “Sten gun – mark 2. Old but it works. Know how to use it?”

  “Yeah — I guess so. A lot of oil men are gun enthusiasts. I’ve fired a Sterling, and a Grease gun.”

  “Good. Look at the other stuff.”

  Cady unwrapped the other bundles and found six loaded magazines for the Sten gun. A Walther P1 9mm pistol and six loaded clips.

  “Where did you get them?”

  Guy smiled. “It’s ironic, but I got them from Lascelles.”

  He told the story.

  About nine months back the Jaloud had dropped anchor off the island. Lascelles came ashore and asked for fuel, water and supplies. He explained that he had come from the East Indies and due to a crack in the main mast had used the motor most of the way. He was en route to East Africa-he did not specify where-and in a hurry. Guy had been puzzled. Why hadn’t he put in to Mahé for fuel? With a knowing wink Lascelles had laid a finger alongside his nose. Guy immediately knew that he was on some smuggling trip and needed to avoid Mahé Customs. Reluctantly, for he was short himself, he agreed to supply Lascelles a drum of diesel, fifty gallons of water and some tinned food.

  Together with his workers he helped Lascelles and Carlo load it aboard. He noticed that Jaloud was low in the water. Also they lashed the fuel drum and water containers on deck, so the hold had to be full. Guy had then asked for the cash and Lascelles had muttered something about being tight at the moment but would be coming back in about three weeks and would pay him then.

  There was no way Guy was going to give him credit and he had told him so bluntly. Had Guy been alone the situation could have been nasty but he had four of his workers on board. After a certain amount of blustering Lascelles and Carlo conferred in whispers and then Lascelles offered to do a barter. For the fuel and provisions Guy could take his pick from the cargo for a similar value.

  “The cargo was guns and ammunition,” Guy said. “All sorts of stuff- mostly old. Sten guns, rifles, hand guns. Even a couple of heavy machine-guns. There’s a lot of weapons in the East Indies from the war and the fight for independence.” He gestured at the guns and ammunition on the cockpit deck. “After a bit of haggling I picked out those.”

  “Where do you think he was goin’ with that shipment?”

  “Who knows – he set off due west so it was somewhere on the East African coast. My guess is Zanzibar. About six weeks after he left here they had their revolution. Slaughtered a few thousand Arabs including women and children —and a lot of their own people.”

  Cady grunted. “I read about it. Lovely feller that Lascelles!”

  “Yeah, well, if he does cut up rough at least you’ll have some fire power of your own.”

  “I’ll pay you for them.”

  Guy shook his head. “No. It’s my contribution. But don’t say anything till you leave. Marie-France doesn’t know anything about those guns — that’s why I kept them on the boat. It’s highly illegal to have unlicensed guns on these islands.”

  At that moment Marie-France was standing in the middle of the bird colony with Kirsty, Ramesh and Lani. As she talked loudly above the screaming din the others kept ducking their heads involuntarily as bird after bird swooped in, inches above, outraged at this intrusion.

  She explained that sooty terns take a mate for life. Every year they return to the same tiny patch of sand to lay their eggs. In the interim it’s believed they migrate as far as Australia or t
he Americas. The young birds don’t mate until the third year and therein lay a mystery that ornithologists have been debating for years. The terns, unlike seagulls, cannot alight on the sea because their feathers are not waxed. They only come on land to mate and rear their chicks. No pre-mated young terns are ever seen on land. Hence it is believed that the terns stay aloft, never touching ground, for the first three years of their lives.

  Kirsty looked up at the wheeling mass and said, “I didn’t know there were this many birds in the whole world.”

  Marie-France laughed. “There are other colonies where you’re going.” She swept an arm to encompass the two sandy acres. “Fifty years ago they used to collect 40,000 cases of eggs a season here. They’re a great delicacy. If you take one egg the female lays a second, but no more. That means that in those days there must have been more than 10,000,000 birds! The people then were too greedy and began taking the second eggs. The colony almost died out, but now it’s increasing again. Those people with Lascelles estimated that we have almost 2,000,000 now.”

  At the mention of Lascelles Kirsty glanced at her watch.

  “Don’t worry,” Marie-France said. “Guy promised to be back by noon. Come on, we’ll go and find ‘Esmerelda’. Actually it’s a he – said to be one of the biggest and oldest tortoises in the world. At this time of the day he usually sleeps in the shade of the casuarina trees.”

  Half an hour later they stood on the beach and watched the cabin cruiser come into the anchorage. It first went alongside Manasa and they saw Cady transfer something from one boat to the other. Then they moved to another mooring. The plantation workers had all appeared and two of them slid the dugout into the water and paddled out.