Getting it down, I started back for the door, carefully freeing my lines from any obstructions.
Chug…chug…chug…
The pump slowed, almost stopped, then picked up slowly again, and then something floated in the water, falling slowly, turning over as I watched, something that looked like an autumn leaf, drifting slowly down, only much larger.
Something with mouth agape, eyes wide, blood trailing a darkening streamer in the green water…It was Long Jack, who had seen the last of Sydney….Long Jack, floating slowly down, his belly slashed and an arm cut across the biceps by a razor-edged knife.
An instant I saw him, and then there was a gigantic swirl in the water, the shark turning, doubling back over, and hurling himself at the body with unbelievable ferocity. It was my only chance; I stepped out of the door and signaled to go up.
There was no response, only the chug-chug-chug of the pump. Closing my valve only a little, I started to rise, but desperately as I tried, I could not turn myself to watch the shark. Expecting at any moment that he would see me and attack, I drifted slowly up.
Suddenly the ladder hung just above me, although the hull was still a dark shadow. I caught the lower step and pulled myself slowly up until I could get my clumsy feet on the step. Climbing carefully, waiting from moment to moment, I got to the surface and climbed out.
Hands fumbled at the helmet. I heard the wrench, and then the helmet was lifted off.
Smoke Bassett had a nasty wound over the eye where he had been struck by something, and where blood stained his face it had been wiped and smeared. Limey Johnson was standing a dozen feet away, only now he was drawing back, away from us.
He looked at the harpoon in my hands and I saw him wet his lips, but I said nothing at all. Bassett was helping me out of the helmet, and I dared not take my eyes from Johnson.
His face was working strangely, a grotesque mask of yellowish-white wherein the eyes seemed unbelievably large. He reached back and took up a long boat hook. There was a driftwood club at my feet, and this must have been what had struck Bassett. They must have rushed him at first, or Long Jack had tried to get close, and had come too close.
When I dropped the weight belt and kicked off the boots, Smoke was scarcely able to stand. And I could see the blow that had hit him had almost wrecked the side of his face and skull. “You all right? You all right, Scholar?” His voice was slurred.
“I’m all right. Take it easy. I’ll handle it now.”
Limey Johnson faced me with his new weapon, and slowly his courage was returning. Smoke Bassett he had feared, and Smoke was nearly helpless. It was Limey and me now; one of us was almost through.
Overhead the sun was blazing….The fetid smell of the mangroves and the swamp was wafted to the ketch from over the calm beauty of the lagoon. The sea was down, and the surf rustled along the reef, chuckling and sucking in the holes and murmuring in the deep caverns.
Sweat trickled into my eyes and I stood there, facing Limey Johnson across that narrow deck. Short, heavy, powerful…a man who had sent me down to the foulest kind of death, a man who must kill now if he would live.
I reached behind me to the rail and took up the harpoon. It was razor-sharp.
His hook was longer…he outreached me by several feet. I had to get close…close.
In my bare feet, I moved out away from Smoke, and Limey began to move warily, watching for his chance, that ugly hook poised to tear at me. To throw the harpoon was to risk my only weapon, and risk it in his hands, for I could not be sure of my accuracy. I had to keep it, and thrust. I had to get close. The diving dress was some protection but it was clumsy and I would be slow.
There was no sound…the hot sun, the blue sky, the heavy green of the mangroves, the sucking of water among the holes of the coral…the slight sound of our breathing and the rustle and slap of our feet on the deck.
He struck with incredible swiftness. The boat hook darted and jerked back. The hook was behind my neck, and only the nearness of the pole and my boxer’s training saved me. I jerked my head aside and felt the thin sharpness of the point as it whipped past my neck, but before I could spring close enough to thrust, he stepped back and, bracing himself, he thrust at me. The curve of the hook hit my shoulder and pushed me off balance. I fell back against the bulwark, caught myself, and he lunged to get closer. Three times he whipped the hook and jerked at me. Once I almost caught the pole, but he was too quick.
I tried to maneuver…then realized I had to get outside of the hook’s curve…to move to my left, then try for a thrust either over or under the pole. In the narrow space between the low deckhouse and the rail there was little room to maneuver.
I moved left, the hook started to turn, and I lunged suddenly and stabbed. The point just caught him…the side of his singlet above the belt started to redden. His face looked drawn, I moved again, parried a lunge with the hook, and thrust again, too short. But I knew how to fight him now…and he knew, too.
He tried, and I parried again, then thrust. The harpoon point just touched him again, and it drew blood. He stepped back, then crossed the deck and thrust at me under the yard. His longer reach had more advantage now, with the deckhouse between us, and he was working his way back toward the stern. It was an instant before I saw what he was trying to do. He was getting in position to kill Bassett, unconscious against the bulwark beside the pump.
To kill…and to get the knife.
I lunged at him then, batting the hook aside, feeling it rip the suit and my leg as I dove across the mahogany roof of the deckhouse. I thrust at him with the harpoon. His face twisted with fear, he sprang back, stepped on some spilled fish guts staining the deck. He threw up his arms, lost hold of the boat hook, and fell backward, arms flailing for balance. He hit the bulwark and his feet flew up and he went over, taking my harpoon with him…a foot of it stuck out his back…and there was an angry swirl in the water, a dark boiling…and after a while, the harpoon floated to the surface, and lay there, moving slightly with the wash of the sea.
* * *
—
THERE’S A PLACE on the Sigalong River, close by the Trusan waters, a place where the nipa palms make shade and rustle their long leaves in the slightest touch of wind. Under the palms, within sound of the water, I buried Smoke Bassett on a Sunday afternoon….Two long days he lasted, and a wonder at that, for the side of his head was curiously crushed. How the man had remained at the pump might be called a mystery…but I knew.
For he was a loyal man; I had trusted him with my lines, and there can be no greater trust. So when he was gone, I buried him there and covered over the grave with coral rock and made a marker for it and then I went down to the dinghy and pushed off for the ketch.
* * *
—
SOMETIMES NOW, WHEN there is rain upon the roof and when the fire crackles on the hearth, sometimes I will remember: the bow wash about the hull, the rustling of the nipa palms, the calm waters of a shallow lagoon. I will remember all that happened, the money I found, the men that died, and the friend I had…off the mangrove coast.
THE DANCING KATE
In one of my most interesting periods, I was down for a while in Indonesia working on a schooner. I was on the books as second mate, but actually I was functioning as supercargo as well—a seagoing bookkeeper, in other words. The captain, who also owned the ship, could barely read and write, so I used to keep track of all the sales and purchases that he made on the boat. We spent almost a year in the East Indies, moving around from place to place, usually going to all the small ports, Gorontalo and Amurang and Makassar and over to Timor and Ternate. I don’t think there was anywhere in the Indies that Douglas hadn’t been. It was an exciting time.
He was a man with no education, but he probably knew as much of anthropology as anybody I ever ran across. He learned it by dealing with the natives himself. For example, we went up
the Fly River in New Guinea one time, left the schooner tied up, and took an outboard motor and a dugout canoe and went on up to a lake where he was doing some trading and we traded with some natives up there who had gold in quills. They’d hollow a quill and put little gold flakes in it and that was the way we’d buy it. He’d come to the East Indies when he was fifteen. He was sixty-five when I knew him and he’d had his own boat for about twenty-five years, not the one I was on but another and then this one.
I spent a lot of time with him because I’d stand the twelve-to-four watch at night and he’d usually come up on deck part of the time, because being an officer on a boat was a new job for me, you know, though I was an able-bodied seaman, and we had very good native seamen aboard. He would stay up there and talk with me by the hour. I used to copy information out of the logbook and I used a lot of it in writing stories later.
IT WAS A strip of grayish-yellow sand caught in the gaunt fingers of the reef like an upturned belly except here and there where the reef had been longest above the sea. Much of the reef was drying, and elsewhere the broken teeth of the coral formed ugly ridges flanked by a few black, half-submerged boulders.
At one end of the bar the stark white ribs of an old ship thrust themselves from the sand, and nearby lay the rusting hulk of an iron freighter. It had been there more than sixty years.
For eighteen miles in a northeast and southwest direction the reef lay across the face of the Coral Sea—at its widest, no more than three miles but narrowing to less than a mile, a strip of jagged coral and white water lost in the remote emptiness of the Pacific. The long dun swells of the sea hammered against the outer rocks, and overhead the towering vastness of the sky became a shell of copper with the afternoon sun.
At the near end of the bar, protected from the breaking seas in all but a hurricane, a hollow of rock formed a natural cistern. In the bottom were a few scant inches of doubtful water. Beside it, he squatted in torn dungarees and battered sneakers.
“Three days,” he estimated, staring into the cistern, eyes squinting against the surrounding glare. “Three days if I’m careful, and after that I’m washed up.”
After that—thirst. The white, awful glare of the tropical sun, a parched throat, baking flesh, a few days or hours of delirium, and then a long time of lying wide-eyed to the sky before the gulls and the crabs finished the remains.
He had no doubt as to where he was. The chart had been given him in Port Darwin and was worn along the creases, but there was no crease where this reef lay, hence no doubt of his position. He was sitting on a lonely reef, avoided by shipping, right in the middle of nowhere. His position was approximately 10°45' S, 155°51' E.
The nearest land was eighty-two miles off and it might as well have been eighty-two thousand.
It started with the gold. The schooner on which he had been second mate had dropped anchor in Bugoiya Harbor, but it was not fit anchorage, so they could remain only a matter of hours. He was on the small wharf superintending the loading of some cargo when a boy approached him.
He was a slender native boy with very large, beautiful eyes. When the boy was near him, he spoke, not looking at him. “Man say you come. Speak nobody.”
“Come? Come where?”
“You come. I show you.”
“I’m busy, boy. I don’t want a girl now.”
“No girl. Man die soon. He say please, you come?”
Dugan looked at his watch. They were loading the last cargo now, but they would not sail for at least an hour.
“How far is it?”
“Ten minutes—you see.”
A man was dying? But why come to him? Still, in these islands odd things were always happening, and he was a curious man.
The captain was coming along the wharf, and he walked over to him. “Cap? Something’s come up. This boy wants to take me to some man who is dying. Says not to say anything, and he’s only ten minutes away.”
Douglas glanced at the boy, then at his watch. “All right, but we’ve less than an hour. If we leave before you get back, we’ll be several days at Woodlark or Murua or whatever they call it. There’s a man in a village who is a friend of mine. Just ask for Sam. He will sail you over there.”
“No need for that. I’ll be right back.”
Douglas glanced at him, a faint humor showing. “Dugan, I’ve been in these islands for fifty years. A man never knows—never.”
Misima, although only about twenty miles long and four or five miles wide, was densely wooded, and the mountains lifted from a thousand to three thousand feet, and as the south side was very steep, most of the villages were along the northern shore.
The boy had walked off and was standing near a palm tree idly tossing stones into the lagoon. Taking off his cap, Dugan walked away from the wharf, wiping the sweat from his brow. He walked back from the shore and then turned and strolled toward the shade, pausing occasionally. The boy had disappeared under the trees.
At the edge of the trees Dugan sat down, leaning his back against one. After a moment a stone landed near his foot, and he glimpsed the boy behind a tree about thirty yards off. Dugan got up, stretched, and hands in his pockets, strolled along in the shade, getting deeper and deeper until he saw the boy standing in a little-used path.
They walked along for half a mile. Dugan glanced at his watch. He would have to hurry.
Suddenly the boy ducked into the brush, holding a branch aside for him. About thirty yards away he saw a small shanty with a thin column of smoke lifting from it. The boy ran ahead, leading the way.
There was a young woman there who, from her looks, was probably the boy’s mother. Inside, an old man lay on an army cot. His eyes were sunken into his head, and his cheeks were gaunt. He clutched Dugan’s hand. His fingers were thin and clawlike. “You must help me. You are with Douglas?”
“I am.”
“Good! He is honest; everybody knows that of him. I need your help.” He paused for a minute, his breathing hoarse and labored. “I have a granddaughter. She is in Sydney.” He put his hand on a coarse brown sack under his cot. “She must have this.”
“What is it?”
“It is gold. There are men here who will steal it when I die. It must go to my granddaughter. You take it to her, and you keep half. You will do this?”
Sydney? He was not going to Sydney; still, one could sell it and send the money to Sydney. The old man pressed a paper into his hand. “Her name and address. Get it to her—somehow. You can do it. You will do it.”
“Look,” he protested, “I am not going to Sydney. When I leave Douglas, I’m going to Singapore and catch a ship for home—or going on to India.”
“You must! They will steal it. They have tried, and they are waiting. If they think you have it, they will rob you. I know them.”
“Well.” He hesitated. He had to be getting back. Douglas’s appointment at Woodlark was important to him. He would wait for no man in such a case, least of all for me, who had been with him only a few weeks, the man thought. “All right, give me the gold. I’ve little time.”
The woman dragged the sack from under the cot, and he stooped to lift it. It was much heavier than it appeared. The old man smiled. “Gold is always heavy, my friend. Too heavy for many men to bear.”
Dugan straightened and took the offered hand; then he walked out of the shack, carrying the gold.
It was heavy, though once aboard the schooner it would be no problem. He glanced at his watch and swore. He was already too late, and the tide—
When he reached the small harbor, it was too late. The schooner was gone!
He stood, staring. Immediately he was apprehensive. He was left on an island with about two dozen white people of whom he knew nothing and some fifteen hundred natives of whom he knew less. Moreover, there was always a drifting population, off the vessels of one kind or another that haunt Indo
nesian seas.
Woodlark was eighty miles away. He knew that much depended on the schooner’s being there in time to complete a deal for cargo that otherwise would go to another vessel. He had been left behind. He was alone.
A stocky, bearded man approached. He wore dirty khakis and a watch cap, and the khaki coat hung loose. Did he have a gun? Dugan would have bet that he had.
From descriptions, he was sure he knew the man.
“Looks like they’ve gone off and left you,” he commented, glancing at the sack.
“They’ll be back.”
“Douglas? Don’t bet on it. He calls in here about once every six months. Sometimes it’s a whole year.”
“It’s different this time,” he lied. “He’s spending about three months in the Louisiades and Solomons. He expects to be calling in here three or four times, so I’ll just settle down and wait.”
“We could make a deal,” the man said. “I could sail you to the Solomons.” He jerked his head. “I’ve got a good boat, and I often take the trip. Come along.”
“Why? When he’s coming back here?”
Deliberately, the man turned his back and walked away. Zimmerman—this would be Zimmerman.
At the trade store they told him where he could find Sam, and he found him, a wiry little man with sad blue eyes and thin hair. He shook his head. “I have to live here.”
“Douglas said—”
“I can imagine. I like Douglas. He’s one of the best men in the islands, but he doesn’t live here. I do. If you get out of here, you’ll do it on your own. I can tell you something else. Nobody will take the chance. You make a deal with them, or you wait until Douglas comes back.”
Yondering: Stories Page 12