by Nevil Shute
Mr. Fairlie said, “I think it’s probably too small to show on the atlas, Jack. If you’re going to take Keith along with you to Tahiti I’ll give you a chart that shows every island on the way and round about Tahiti. I know we’ve got a lot of out-dated ones on board.”
Mr. Donelly grunted; Keith guessed that he had little use for charts, never having used one. “You want to get down to Tahiti?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“Got a bed?”
Keith hesitated, somewhat taken aback. Mr. Donelly helped him out by lifting the dirty corner of his palliasse; it rustled, evidently filled with hay or straw. “Like this.”
“I haven’t at the moment,” Keith said. “But I’ll get something.”
“There’s a bolt of sailcloth you could sleep on but I guess you’d find that kinda hard,” said Mr. Donelly.
“I’ll get a bed like yours,” said Keith. “How much money would I have to pay you for the passage?”
“Well now,” said the mariner, “I’d have to put my thinking cap on for that. The harbormaster, he wanted seven dollars and two bits when he come on board and had his swim.” He cackled into laughter. “I reckon he’d want more now, what with drying his clothes. Then there’s the eats . . .” He sat in evident bewilderment. “How long you reckon it would take to sail to this Tahiti?”
Keith shook his head. “I don’t know at all.”
Mr. Fairlie asked, “How long did it take you to get here from San Francisco, Jack?”
“Three weeks ‘n two days. I had a fair, reaching wind most of the way.”
“It’s a little bit further to Tahiti,” said the first officer, “and you’ve got to get through the doldrums. You’ll need food for six weeks at least.”
“I dunno what that would cost,” said Mr. Donelly. He lifted his head, and cut the Gordian knot with decision. “Say,” he asked, “how much you got?”
“About a hundred dollars,” said Keith conservatively.
“Well then,” said the ship owner, “the fare’s a hundred dollars.” He leaned back with the air of one who has concluded a difficult business negotiation.
“We bake every day,” said Mr. Fairlie, “but we carry a stock of biscuits in sealed tins, twenty-eight pounds. I’ll talk to Captain Davies. Maybe we could let you have two or three of those against repayment in England. Save the dollars, anyway.”
“That’d be very kind of you,” said Keith.
“I got ‘bout half a sack of cornmeal, ‘n some grits,” said Mr. Donelly. “I guess we could catch fish a day or two ‘n dry some of them, ‘n salt down the rest. There’s plenty sun here, dry the fish. Not like it’d be at home.”
“Where would you put them to dry?” asked Mr. Fairlie.
Mr. Donelly looked surprised. “Out on shore some place,” he said.
“I don’t think they’d let you do that here, Jack.”
“Huh?”
“They’d get people on the power yachts bellyaching about the smell.”
“They said I was to berth here,” Mr. Donelly muttered. “Got a motor boat ‘n towed me round.”
Keith judged it better to change the subject. “We’ll think up something together about the food,” he said. “When do you want to sail?”
“‘Most any time,” the owner said.
“And you’d be willing to take me along?”
The other raised his head. “You get sick?”
It was better to face it. “I’ll probably be sick,” Keith said. “How long does it go on for?”
“Two-three days. I get sick after a spell on shore. There’s nothing to it.”
“I don’t suppose I’ll be much use to you, at first,” Keith said. “I’ll do the best I can.”
“Can’t do better’n that,” Mr. Donelly said. “You’ll be bringing the tiddy little motor along?”
“This?” He fingered the little box. “Oh yes, I’ll be bringing this.”
“Move in when you like,” said Mr. Donelly.
They arranged that Keith would go into the question of the food supplies with Mr. Fairlie, and presently they left the Mary Belle and took a taxi back to the Cathay Princess. In the wardroom Mr. Fairlie said, “I think we’ve earned a beer.” He went and fetched a bottle and two glasses, filled them, and raised his own. “I think you’re a brave man,” he said.
Keith smiled. “So do I. But I liked him well enough.”
“There’s no harm in him,” Mr. Fairlie agreed. “He’ll probably get you there. But I wouldn’t take any liquor on board.”
“I won’t.”
The first officer eyed him speculatively. “You’re technical. Do you know anything about navigation — anything at all?”
Keith shook his head.
Mr. Fairlie sighed. “Well, there’s no time to teach you astro navigation. But I’ll look out the charts and a volume of the Pacific Islands Pilot for you this evening, and give you an hour on them tomorrow morning. You can read, at any rate, and that’s more than Jack Donelly can.”
Keith left the ship soon afterwards and walked back through the town to the Beachcomber Hotel, looking as he walked for a shop that sold a mattress. The prices did not seem to him to be excessive, but they were all far too good to put into the Mary Belle. He knew that he was in for an indefinite spell of hard living, and he had no great fear of it. It was many years since he had suffered much discomfort though as a child and a young man in Renfrew he had known plenty of it; to sleep on a straw palliasse upon bare boards would be no novelty to him. The food was a perplexity. Something better was needed than Jack’s cornmeal, grits, and dried fish, but what he needed was to him unknown, or how to buy it. He clung to the thought of the sealed tins of biscuit that might come from the Cathay Princess.
In his room at the hotel he found Dick lying upon his bed listening to the radio, and told him all about it. “I fixed up that I’d go with him,” he said. “He’s not as mad as all that.”
The engineer raised himself on one elbow. “He’s going to Tahiti?”
Keith started to undress, preparatory to a shower. “He’ll go anywhere so long as it’s away from here. He’ll take me to Tahiti.”
“Sure about that?”
Keith sat down upon the bed. “I think so.”
“Captain Davies isn’t, old man.”
“I know. I’ve been talking to Jack Donelly all afternoon on board his boat. The boat’s quite good, you know. What’s more, he built her himself.”
“He did? Without any help?”
Keith nodded. “Single-handed.”
“That doesn’t mean that he can find his way to Tahiti from here, though. It’s an awful big place, the sea.”
“I know.” Keith got up from the bed. “I’ve never done this before,” he muttered. “There’s no fuel problem anyway, because all he uses is the wind. It seems to boil down to carrying enough to eat and drink for an indefinite time.”
“How much water storage has he got?”
“I saw a forty-gallon drum, up-ended, tied to the mast with rope lashings. I suppose that’s it.”
“How long is the trip going to be?”
“Jim Fairlie says at least six weeks.”
“You’ll want more than that much water, then, old man.”
Keith went into the shower, and Dick lay back upon his bed in perplexity. What Keith did was no concern of his, really, and yet he felt himself involved. In the world of workshops and of amateur mechanics Keith was a well-known man, and that world was Dick’s world also. If Keith were to lose his life at sea with this man Jack Donelly, inevitably Dick King would be involved and charged with some responsibility by other members of their common world, for it would be known throughout that world that he had been with Keith in Honolulu. If Keith were to disappear at sea, as Captain Davies had warned him bluntly might well happen, he, Dick King, would be telling a defensive story of their time in Honolulu in the workshops of England for many years to come, excusing himself, perhaps for all his life. He could h
ear the whispers: “He’s the bloke who was with Keith Stewart in Honolulu and let him go off with that crazy fisherman. You’d think he might have done something about it . . .” He did not like the prospect.
If only Keith knew a little more about foreign countries, about the tropics. If only he wasn’t quite so raw.
He said no more, but lay there troubled in his mind while Keith also rested on his bed, letting the cool breeze blow over his bare body. It seemed to Dick that there was no escape from the position he was in. Keith had some compelling reason to get down to Tahiti that was driving him to take the most fantastic risk by going with this half-caste fisherman. If he, Dick King, wished to escape the odium of the future, there were only two courses he could take. One was to talk Keith out of it; he did not think that would be possible. The other was to try to make the journey a success.
Presently they dressed and went downstairs for a beer before dinner. Captain Davies was there in the bar with Captain Fielding. Somewhat the same line of thought may have been running in his mind, too, because he said, “Evening, Mr. Stewart. Evening, Mr. King. Beer?”
The engineers said, “Thank you, sir.”
The captain said to the girl in the cheongsam, “Two more beers.” Then he turned to Keith and said, “Mr. Fairlie tells me that I’ve got to provision your ship.”
Keith was embarrassed. “That’s not necessary at all, sir. All he said was that you might let me have some biscuits on repayment in England.”
“To help out the grits and dried fish? I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to live for two months on dried fish. It goes bad, of course. Then the thing to do is to put it in a barrel with some salt. You’ve got to eat it in the end, of course. Some people like it.” He laughed. “You’d better come on board tomorrow with a list of what you want, and we’ll see what we’ve got.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir.” The aircraft navigator strolled up to them, beer in hand. “As a matter of fact, that really would be a great help. I was coming on board tomorrow anyway to see Mr. Fairlie. He was going to go over the charts with me.”
“Well, that’s something, anyway. Bring your list along.”
“Thank you, sir. Here’s luck.” He raised his beer.
“You’re going to need it,” said Captain Davies grimly.
The air navigator asked, “Is this Jack Donelly?”
“That’s right,” said Captain Fielding. “Keith’s going with him to Tahiti.”
“Can he find Tahiti?”
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” said Captain Davies.
The navigator sipped his beer in thought. “Has he got a sextant?”
“Of course he hasn’t,” said the captain. “He looks to see which way the aeroplanes are flying. If there aren’t any aeroplanes he looks for mangrove seeds. If there aren’t any mangrove seeds he follows his compass, and that’s probably wrong.” He turned to Keith. “I was right — he hasn’t got a motor in the ship, has he?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, that’s something. I don’t suppose he’s ever had his compass swung. Just watch he doesn’t put a bucket down beside it when he needs it most.”
Keith nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll watch that, sir. It makes a big difference, does it?”
Captain Davies laughed. “Try it and see.”
“Pity about the sextant,” said the air navigator. “The track must be just about due south. A meridian latitude would give them quite a lot of information.”
“You’ve got to be able to add and subtract for that,” said Captain Davies.
Mr. King drew the air navigator on one side. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “I mean, he’s made up his mind to go. A meridian sight for latitude isn’t very difficult, is it?”
“It’s the easiest sight there is,” said the navigator. “You want a sextant and a nautical almanac, and a rough idea of Greenwich time. Then you’ve only got to add and subtract.”
“He could learn to do that, couldn’t he?”
“Jack Donelly?”
“No, Keith. Keith Stewart. I mean, look at the things he does in the shop with mikes and sine bars and all that. He’d learn to manage a sextant in five minutes with somebody to put him in the way of it.”
The navigator stood in thought. “It’s an idea . . . where’s the sextant coming from?”
“I think I know where one could pick up one second-hand,” said the engineer. “You know where King Street crosses Nuuanu?” The navigator nodded. “Well, coming this way, second or third side street on the right, there’s a Chinese shop — sells everything, you know. Old clothes, lacquer screens, Bali heads, all sorts of junk. I’m pretty sure I saw a sextant there.”
“This trip?”
“This afternoon. I was poking around, get something for the wife.”
The navigator stood in thought. “It’s an idea. There’s not much time to teach him. We could write it all down for him, of course — just what you do. And it should be possible to pick up an old sextant in this place.” He stood in thought. “Pity it’s got to be this time of year,” he said at last. “The sun’ll be pretty near the zenith when they get down to Tahiti.”
“That makes it less accurate?”
“More difficult, anyway. I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll slip down to the ship after dinner and have a talk to Jim Fairlie — see if it’s worth while trying to stuff something into him.”
Keith spent the evening cogitating in his bedroom, pencil and paper in hand. He had no wish to provision the Mary Belle with expensive delicacies to which Jack Donelly would be unaccustomed. He knew that if he were to live harmoniously with this man for six weeks in the close association of a very small sailing vessel he must adapt himself to Jack Donelly and live as he did. That did not trouble Keith; what troubled him was that he had little idea what Jack was in the habit of eating. He did not know what cornmeal tasted like or how you ate it, and grits were a sealed book to him, but they were what Jack seemed to eat. It was pretty certain that he would like sweet things, though. He headed his list with — Sugar, 30 lbs — and added — Jam.
He was certain of nothing else, and at the end of half an hour he had only six or seven items on the list. His mind drifted to the navigation hazards that they all seemed so concerned about. He got out the chart that Mr. Sanderson had given him in Ealing, Ealing that now seemed so far away. There were certainly a lot of islands to be passed on their course southwards to Tahiti. They had names that he had never heard before, Malden and Starbuck and Flint, and many others. He supposed they would be coral islands, similar to that which had destroyed Shearwater. If John Dermott who was an experienced navigator could not sail through this archipelago in safety, could Jack Donelly?
His hand drifted to his pocket, and he sat in perplexity fingering the case-hardened grey steel egg that he had made for Janice. Presently he got a scrap of paper and measured the distance between these islands. He had a hazy idea that the vertical graduations on the side of the chart gave you some measure of the scale, and by that the closest of these islands were two degrees apart. But how far was a degree? He sat in thought. Anyway, the earth was twenty-two thousand miles round at the equator. He figured with a pencil on the chart. If that was right, the closest of these islands were over a hundred miles apart, about as far as it was from Ealing to Weymouth. That didn’t seem so bad. There was a lot of sea to sail on in between.
The difficulty might lie, as the ship’s officers said, in finding one of them at all. It was very different in the Tuamotus where Shearwater was lost. There the islands all seemed to be on top of each other.
He went to bed before Dick King got back from exploring the night life of Honolulu, and slept fitfully, uneasy and worried. Next morning he was on board the Cathay Princess by half-past eight. He found Jim Fairlie and showed him his inadequate list. The first officer took it, summoned the third, and told him to get out a mess list for two men for eight weeks, able seaman’s scale, biscuit instead of
bread. “We’ll compare his list with yours and see how they match up,” he said. “There’s one thing, though. If you’re going to provision the ship, you don’t have to pay Jack Donelly a hundred dollars.”
He took Keith up to the chartroom on the bridge behind the wheelhouse. “I’ve got one chart,” Keith said diffidently. He unfolded the one that Mr. Sanderson had given him.
“Oh, good. You’ve got seven eight three.” Mr. Fairlie slipped a chart back in the drawer. “Now you want seven eight two and nine nine two.” He opened a volume of the Pacific Islands Pilot and showed Keith the chart index. “These two — and that one you’ve got.” He paused. “I’d have liked you to have three oh four five as well in case you get set over to the west, but I haven’t got it. Maybe you could get one in town — Yamasuki would tell you where to try. Now look. I’m going to put these two together and pencil in your track. Do you know what I mean by compass variation?”
They worked on together. “Well, there you are,” Jim Fairlie said presently. “Your track is one six six degrees, and in theory, at any rate, you don’t hit anything. You don’t have to sail over any dry land. You’re in the clear the first part of the passage. Then you come to all this over to the west — Christmas Island and all that. Keep away from that — they let off atom bombs from time to time. Then you’ve got to go between Flint Island and the Carolines. They’re about two and a half degrees apart — call it a hundred and fifty sea miles. If you’re on course you probably won’t see them. After that there’s nothing till you hit Tahiti.”
They stood examining the charts and the Pilot for the best part of an hour, Keith making notes busily. In the middle the air navigator came in, greeted them, and stood listening in silence. They turned to the predominant winds, and studied the picture for January. “You should have a fair wind all the way, easterly.” The first officer laid his finger on the page. “A bit irregular on the equator, in the doldrums, but steadying again as you get further south. All easterly. I don’t know how much leeway that ship makes, but just watch out you don’t get set over too far to the west. Jack knows about that, I think. I’d keep edging up to windward, ten degrees at least. You’re very unlikely to go much east of track, but you might get down a long way west of it.”