‘That would be grand,’ said Keith. ‘I could make a good inspection of the engine in an hour or so and decide if it’s worth taking back to England. If the engine room could let me have a few spanners it might help.’
‘Sure. You got plenty of film?’
Keith nodded. ‘I’ve got three new rolls, over a hundred exposures. I got them here today. I’ll be all right for film.’
He went to bed soon after that and slept soundly in Chuck Ferris’ cabin, the first night that he had had in comfort for about a month. He wondered, as he went to sleep, about Dawn Ferris; no complaint had come from her, or, if it had, Captain Petersen had not told him. Perhaps the omnipotence of Sol Hirzhorn could protect him, even against that. In any case, apparently they were leaving in the morning. He must take things as they came. He slept.
He was roused by the bustle on the decks at dawn, had a shower and dressed in an open-necked shirt and slacks, and went up on deck. The steward found him and brought him coffee and biscuits, and he stayed on the aft deck out of the way of the seamen, watching the processes of getting the ship to sea. It was all very different from the Mary Belle, a matter of ordered movement controlled by an occasional whistle from the boatswain. The pilot came on board, dark-skinned and French-speaking, and was welcomed by the captain. Then the main diesel started below his feet with a rumble that steadied to an even purr. The springs were taken aboard, bow and stern lines singled up and brought back on board by a harbour boat. Captain Petersen moved into the wheelhouse, the stern lines were cast off, the engine-room telegraph bell sounded, and the Flying Cloud moved forward from her berth into the main waters of the harbour. She turned and made for the entrance, hoisting the mainsail as she went, followed by the foresail and the mizzen, causing Keith to retreat into the deck saloon.
From Tahiti to the Tuamotus is a dead beat into the easterly trade wind at that time of year. Captain Petersen put his vessel under all plain sail and kept his engine going hard, taking in the mainsail for the hours of darkness. The distance to Marokota is about three hundred miles, and it took them four days of hard slogging against the wind, a restful and invigorating four days for Keith. He learned a good deal about the management of a large schooner yacht, and took the helm for several spells, to the interest and amusement of the captain. He found that sailing the big schooner was not very different from the sailing of the Mary Belle once you had got accustomed to the wheel instead of tiller, and the size of her, and the speed.
They were approaching Marokota Island on the evening of the fourth day. Captain Petersen hove to at sunset, unwilling to venture in among the reefs in the hours of darkness, and they lay hove to all night with the engine stopped so that they could hear breakers but with an engineer on watch ready to start up if necessary. With the first light they got under way again, and by ten o’clock they were hove to under the lee of the island, on the west side of the encircling reef.
Captain Petersen stood at the door of the deckhouse staring at the reef through glasses. He lowered them and handed them to Keith. ‘That’s the wreck,’ he said. ‘She went on from this side. Just past that grey coral, where you see those timbers sticking up. That must be Shearwater.’
Keith stared at the timbers, washed by the sea. It seemed incredible that this should be all that remained of the yacht that he had been on board in the Hamble River, only six or seven months before. He lowered the glasses. ‘Would I be able to get near her from the other side?’ he asked.
The captain lifted the glasses again. ‘I should think so, in the dinghy. It’s on the lee side of the island, so there’s not much sea.’ He lowered the glasses. ‘It looks quite calm in the lagoon.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘Like me to come with you in the dinghy?’
Keith shook his head. ‘I’d rather be alone.’
‘Okay.’
They rigged the launch derrick, put the coir bolsters over the lee side, and, steadying the big launch with guy ropes, watched their opportunity and put her in the water. They lowered the gravestone cased in a wooden frame into the launch with the sack of cement, a breaker of water, a pick, and a couple of shovels. Then they lowered down Keith’s pack for the night, and dropped the ten-foot dinghy into the sea with a small davit. The captain got down into the launch with Keith, four seamen joined them, and the launch cast off and made for the narrow passage through the reef into the lagoon, towing the dinghy behind.
The chief engineer leaned upon the rail with the Second, watching the boats as they went in to the shore. ‘If he comes off with that engine in the morning we’ll have to carry it on deck,’ he said. ‘Get Sammy to lash a tarp down on the deck, somewhere there.’ He jerked his head. ‘Don’t want to get the deck messed up with oil and rust.’
‘Okay,’ said the Second. ‘I’ll see Sammy. Beats me what he wants with all those tools.’
‘Going to examine it,’ he said. ‘See if it’s worth salving.’
‘With a hammer and cold chisel and a hacksaw?’
‘Loosen off the nuts that got rusted up, or cut them off. That’s what he said.’
The Second turned from the rail. ‘Shouldn’t think the engine would be worth the salving, after treating it like that.’
In the sunset Keith Stewart sat alone a little distance from the grave. He had done all that he had to do, and he had taken a good many photographs of the grave, the island, and the wreck out on the reef. He had turned the motor on its side, and he had taken off the sump, cleaned out the interior, and put it back again, replacing all the bolts and screwing them up tight. Darkness was approaching and he had finished all the major jobs. He sat eating his sandwiches upon the beach, and drinking his beer. In the morning he would take a few more photographs, and then he would be ready to return to England.
The gravestone stood erect behind him, set in a wide box of semi-liquid concrete, stayed upright with ropes to pegs driven into the coral sand. They would leave it so. The concrete would set into a solid mass when they had gone; the ropes would slacken off and rot away in time, but the stone would stay erect to mark the grave with its simple inscription to be read by any who should come to Marokota.
He finished his meal and sat looking out over the tropic sea in the fading light, a little sadly. This was the end of it. This was the end of something that had begun in a slum street of Renfrew near to Glasgow on the far side of the world, through the joys and tears of childhood, the Tiller Girls, John Dermott and the naval life, and Janice. Who could have thought that it would all end here, on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean?
He got to his feet and moved over to the grave. He took the steel egg from his pocket, the grey, case-hardened egg that he had made for Janice back in Ealing, on the evening he had told her of her mother’s death. ‘Jo,’ he said quietly, ‘this is one of the eggs I made for Janice to go with the duck. It’s the only thing I’ve got of hers to leave with you. And, Jo - I’ll do my best.’
He scraped a little hole before the gravestone, and buried the egg in the sand.
Chapter Ten
The Flying Cloud sailed back into the harbour of Papeete three days later, having made the voyage downwind under sail alone. For much of the time Keith Stewart had been working on the engine secured on deck upon a tarpaulin, assisted by one or other of the engineers. They had removed the cylinder head and washed out the cylinders with fresh water and had hosed out the crankcase, Keith rejecting a proposal that they should take off the sump again as being quite unnecessary. They had dismantled the magneto in the engine room and discovered that all that it required was a new contact breaker; they had assembled everything again and filled the crankcase and the cylinders with oil. By the time they sailed into the harbour the engine was ready for crating for shipment to England.
They approached the harbour in the late afternoon. In the wheelhouse Keith asked Captain Petersen, ‘How long will we be here?’
‘You got anything you want to do?’
‘No. The sooner I start home the better.’
&n
bsp; The captain nodded. ‘It’s too late to go into the quay now - it’ll be dark. If there’s a buoy to spare I’ll lie on that for the night. Go into the quay first thing in the morning. We’ll want to top up with diesel oil and water, and a few stores. Get some planks and timber for the packing case, put a little paint on the ship’s topsides where the coir mats rubbed, pick up Miss Ferris, get a bill of health and clearance, and send a radiogram to Cincinnati. It ought not to take us longer than a day. I’d say that we’ll be on our way day after tomorrow.’
Keith nodded. ‘Say good-bye to Jack Donelly.’
‘Sure. See if you can find out where he’s heading for, and if we can do anything.’
They sailed into the harbour before sunset with the motor ticking over, and rounded up to a vacant buoy. When the bustle of mooring and stowing sail had subsided a little the captain came aft, to find Keith on the aft deck with the glasses in his hand. ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘I can’t see the Mary Belle anywhere. She’s not in the place where she was.’
The captain scanned the shore line and the moored vessels, then took the glasses from him and searched with them. ‘She’s not there,’ he said positively at last. ‘He must have sailed someplace.’
Keith was disappointed. ‘I didn’t think he’d have done that. I wanted to thank him, and to say goodbye.’
‘Maybe he’s gone out fishing, be back tomorrow,’ said the captain.
The men were putting the launch into the water with the derrick. ‘Guess I’ll go ashore and take the pilot,’ said the captain. ‘See the Chef du Port and tell Miss Ferris that we’re back. You like to come along?’
They went in in the launch and stepped out on to the concrete steps that led to the Customs House quay. Here they said goodbye to the pilot and shook hands with him; he went off up an alley in the dusk. There was a light on in the office of the Chef du Port and they went in. The Chef was still there, and he got up to greet them.
‘Well, we’re back, monsieur,’ said Captain Petersen. He offered cigarettes and lit them for the Chef and Keith. ‘We’re at the buoy right now, but tomorrow I’d like to move in to the quay.’
‘Certainement,’ said the Chef. ‘Tomorrow at what hour?’
‘Eight o’clock?’ The Chef made a note upon his pad, and they went on to discuss the refuelling of the Flying Cloud and her clearance for Seattle.
A quarter of an hour later, business concluded, the captain asked casually, ‘What’s happened to the Mary Belle?’
‘She has depart,’ the Chef said. ‘Sailed.’
‘Sailed? Where for?’
The Chef shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who can say? Native boats, they do not need clearance. They come, they go. Some say Huahine, but that I do not know. In the Iles sous le Vent - anywhere. Raiatea, Tahaa, Bora-Bora — anywhere. Perhaps even to Samoa in the end. That one, he makes long voyages.’
They stared at him. ‘I didn’t think he’d have gone off like that before we got back,’ said the captain.
The Chef shrugged his shoulders. Then he glanced at Captain Petersen, a glint of humour in his eye. ‘We have many years been friends,’ he said, ‘and we have laughed together. I hope you will laugh now.’ He hesitated. ‘He took a passenger.’
A terrible thought occurred to Captain Petersen. ‘Who was that?’
‘A lady from your ship, Mademoiselle Ferris, avec la tête châtaine.’
The captain stared at him aghast. ‘For the Lord’s sake!’ he said quietly. ‘Well, what do you know!’
‘The more I see of women the less I know,’ replied the Chef du Port. ‘At my age it is better to stick to wine.’
‘When did they sail?’ asked the captain.
‘Two days after you,’ replied the Chef. ‘One night only she stayed at the hotel. Then she moved into the boat. They bought many choses de cuisine. Then they sailed the next day.’
‘Over to the west? On a westward course?’
‘That is true.’
They stood in silence for a minute. Then the captain turned to Keith. ‘I guess this is just a bit outside my province,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to put this to Chuck Ferris in a radiogram. Where do we go from here?’ He stood conning the words over. ‘It’s going to be a mighty long one, too.’
They left the Chef du Port and went up to the hotel, hoping to find that Dawn Ferris had left a suitcase there, indicating an early return. The captain went in to enquire at the desk, and came out in a minute or two. ‘No suitcase, and no note,’ he said shortly. ‘Too bad.’
He led the way to the Bureau des Postes et Télégraphes. The office was closed, but there was a light inside and he hammered on the door. A half-caste clerk came at last and told him that the office was closed. A mille changed hands and opened it, and the captain stood in worried thought writing three pages of a radiogram to his employer. He made a copy, paid the charge, and went out into the dark, vanilla-scented street with Keith. ‘I don’t know what we do now,’ he said, worried.
‘Go back on board, sit down, and have a drink,’ said Keith.
‘I guess that makes sense.’
They walked back in silence to the steps, hailed the motor launch, and went off to the schooner in her. On the aft deck the captain rang for the steward, ordered the evening drinks, and they sat down in the long chairs in the warmth of the tropic night, looking at the lights reflected in the dark waters of the harbour.
At last the captain broke the silence. ‘If I’d thought a million years,’ he said, ‘I’d never have thought of this one.’
‘I would,’ said Keith. ‘Knowing Jack Donelly.’
‘I guess you know him better than I do.’
They drank. Then Keith asked, ‘Has she ever done this sort of thing before?’
‘I wouldn’t know - well - yes. I’d say she must have done. She’s been married three times. There must have been - incidents.’
‘What did her husbands do?’
‘I think the first one was a college boy in Cincinnati. He went into real estate. The second was a rancher somewhere near Helena, Idaho. That lasted quite a while - she had two children, but I guess the country got her down. Then there was Efstathios, but that didn’t last long.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Oriental rugs and carpets in New York City. They called him Count Efstathios, but I don’t think he was a count at all.’
‘Nice chap?’
‘Small guy with black hair and a little black moustache,’ said Captain Petersen noncommittally. ‘Good dancer, I should say. He wore brown patent-leather shoes. I never saw shoes like that before.’ He paused. ‘They didn’t go with the ship,’ he said.
Keith laughed. ‘And now it’s Jack Donelly. Well, he’d go with the ship.’
‘Berthing with the seamen,’ said the captain. ‘But - I don’t know. The rancher, Gort or Grant, some name like that, he was a great big guy and pretty dumb. Maybe that’s the way she likes them, after all.’
They sat in silence for a time. ‘What worries me,’ the captain said at last, ‘is, where do we go from here? My last orders were to sail for Seattle, taking you along to meet Mr Hirzhorn. Well, that’s right the opposite way to Huahine and Bora-Bora, and there’s hundreds of islands down that way, all the way through Samoa and Tonga to Fiji and New Caledonia.’ He paused and took a drink. ‘If I’m supposed to go and look for her,’ he said, ‘it could take the best part of a year. And what about you?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Keith. ‘I could get back from here some other way.’
‘I do worry about you,’ said the captain practically. ‘I’ve got a home at Midlake just outside Seattle, and I want to see my wife and kids. I’m not losing any sleep over Dawn.’ He paused, reflectively. ‘I bet she is.’
There wasn’t much that they could do about it except to await an answer to the captain’s radiogram. They sat in the warm darkness drinking rather more than usual in their perplexity, and then went down to dinner. They came up on deck again later and sat in the long chairs on
the aft deck smoking Chuck Ferris’ cigars till it was time for bed. Keith went down and slept well, a little amused, but Captain Petersen spent a bad night.
They moved in to the quay next morning and began to take on diesel oil and water. In the middle of the morning a radiogram arrived in answer from Mr Ferris. It was refreshingly direct:
KING-SIZE DEAL PENDING WITH SOL HIRZHORN SO SAIL IMMEDIATELY FOR SEATTLE BRINGING STEWART ALONG STOP KEEP CONTACT WITH ROCKAWIN AND BE SURE ADVISE HIM DATE ARRIVAL TIME AND BERTH STOP YOU WEREN’T HIRED TO MONITOR DAWN’S LOVELIFE BUT APPRECIATE YOUR CONCERN LEAVE HER SETTLE IT HER OWN WAY STOP AM ARRANGING CREDIT FOR HER WITH THE BANK OF INDO-CHINA PAPEETE SUGGEST YOU TELL HARBOURMASTER ASK HIM TO INFORM HER AS OPPORTUNITY OCCURS.
FERRIS.
The captain showed this telegram to Keith, who read it with interest. ‘Well, that’s the way it is,’ Petersen said. ‘We kiss Dawn good-bye, and she goes sailing out into the far blue yonder with Jack Donelly.’ He stood for a minute in thought. ‘I guess I’ll go on shore and take the Chef to lunch, ’n show him this,’ he said. ‘It’s time Chuck Ferris gave a bit more to the Orphelines, anyway.’
Keith asked, ‘What’s this about the king-sized deal with Sol Hirzhorn? Am I in on that?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Captain Petersen. ‘Maybe I ought not to have shown you that.’ He paused. ‘One thing,’ he said. ‘Sol Hirzhorn’s getting an old man, but he still owns the business. It’s quite clear that he thinks a lot of you — as an engineer. My boss - Chuck Ferris - he sells engineering. Maybe Sol Hirzhorn’s looking to you for a fresh mind on his problem, whatever that is. Maybe Chuck Ferris knows it. I wouldn’t know. It’s just an idea I got.’
‘I see,’ said Keith thoughtfully.
‘Anyway,’ said the captain briskly, ‘we sail for Seattle in the morning.’
‘How long will that take?’