by Nevil Shute
Keith asked, ‘Did you give him the course?’
‘He didn’t seem to know where he wanted to go to,’ the captain said indignantly. ‘He just wanted a course to what he called ‘The Islands’. Well, this is an island, but he didn’t like this one, apparently. Too civilised, I suppose.’
The Second grinned. ‘What he wants is the Huahines. Naked women.’
‘That’s about the strength of it,’ the captain said. ‘He’s been reading the books.’
‘I shouldn’t think he can read,’ remarked the chief engineer.
‘Well, somebody’s been telling him stories, then.’
Keith asked again, ‘Did you give him a course, sir?’
‘I did what I could for him,’ the captain said. ‘I gave him half a dozen, all magnetic. True courses wouldn’t be any good to him, and no good talking about variation being different at the end of two thousand miles. I gave him a mean value for the course to several places. Nukahiva was one, I remember, and Tahiti was another. Of course, ocean currents don’t mean anything to him.’
‘He can write - just,’ the first officer observed. ‘He drew a thick line with a stub of pencil on his atlas from here to each place, and wrote the course along the line. I never saw such a mess.’
Keith wrinkled his brows in perplexity. ‘But can he find an island two thousand miles away just with a compass course from here?’
‘Of course he can’t,’ the captain said scornfully. ‘He’ll go off and there’ll be no more heard of him. He’ll die, and that’s the end of it.’
‘I’m not quite sure that I agree with you, sir,’ said the first officer.
‘What don’t you agree with?’
‘I don’t think he’ll die. He may get to the wrong place, and he may take the hell of a long time to get there. I talked to him after you gave up, and gave him a beer. I must say, I was rather impressed.’
‘What was it that impressed you, Mr Fairlie?’
‘Well, for one thing, sir, he knows a lot about birds. Sea birds, I mean.’
The captain snorted. ‘What’s that got to do with it? Is this Raft Book stuff?’
‘Yes, sir, I think it is. Birds fly from A to B just like aeroplanes. What I mean is, if he gets within a hundred miles of land, I think he’ll find it.’ He paused. ‘Swell, seaweed, floating mangrove seeds - all that sort of thing. Things that we don’t use.’
The captain got up from the table. ‘Well, I’ve heard everything now, and so have you, Mr Stewart. If you like to go to sea with a bloke that navigates by mangrove seeds, don’t let me stop you.’ He smiled. ‘One of the boys will show you where the yacht harbour is, if you want to go there.’
He went out, and to his cabin. The others all got up from the table. The first officer glanced quizzically at Keith. ‘Want to go any further with it?’ he asked.
Keith hesitated. ‘Well - I don’t know. Do you think he’s going to Tahiti, for a start?’
‘So far as I could gather, he didn’t much mind where he went. Footloose, you might say.’
‘Do you think he’ll get there?’
Mr Fairlie stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. ‘It’s an opinion, Mr Stewart. I’ve got a better opinion of him than Captain Davies has. In some ways what the captain says is right - he’s simple. If you like, he thinks like a child ten years old. But he’s certainly a good seaman, and he knows a lot about the sea.’
‘You think he’ll get there?’
‘In the end - yes, I think he probably will.’ He glanced at Keith. ‘It won’t be comfortable.’
‘Would you go with him yourself?’
Mr Fairlie smiled. ‘If I was absolutely desperate and had to get there somehow, at whatever risk - yes, I think I would.’
There was half a minute’s silence in the wardroom. To go back tamely with the aeroplane to Blackbushe, to renounce all chance of getting Janice her inheritance because he was afraid of Jack Donelly, would be cowardice. If he did not at least investigate this line he felt that he would never be able to tell Katie the truth about this journey; at one point he would have to lie, and go on in the same lie for the rest of his life. At the same time, he felt that he was sliding deeper into the mire of the unknown and the fantastically dangerous. Still, there was no need to decide anything until he’d met the man.
‘I think I’d better go and have a talk to him,’ Keith said at last.
Chapter Six
The first officer changed out of uniform into linen slacks and a light shirt open at the neck, borrowed Mr Yamasuki’s car and driver, and took Keith to the Alawai yacht harbour. They dismissed the car and walked past the rows of sleek motor cruisers till they came to the less opulent end. Mr Fairlie pointed out a vessel with one mast. ‘He’s still here. I was half afraid he might have left by now.’
The vessel that he pointed out was a white, fishing-boat type, about forty feet long and very beamy. She had one mast and no bowsprit. She had no pretensions to yacht finish; everything about her was heavy and painted; her metal fittings were all of iron. The sail upon the boom was of heavy red canvas, apparently tanned with oil and ochre. There was an appearance of rough efficiency about her, but in the Alawai yacht harbour she looked like a poor relation.
She was moored stern-on to the quay, and a single plank gave access to her deck. Mr Fairlie stood on the quay and hailed. ‘Jack Donelly! You aboard, Jack? I’ve got a friend I’d like you to meet.’
He hailed again, and presently there was movement in the cabin and a man appeared at the hatch. He was a very big man possibly forty years old, olive-skinned, with tousled black hair and a somewhat vacant expression. He was bare to the waist and wore only a pair of very soiled blue jeans. He blinked in the sunlight and muttered, ‘Who are you yelling at? I was having a lie down.’
Mr Fairlie said, ‘You remember me, Jack? Jim Fairlie, from the Cathay Princess, the tanker you came aboard the first day in. We had a beer together.’
‘I haven’t got any beer,’ said the mariner vaguely.
‘That’s all right,’ said the first officer. ‘I didn’t come for that. I brought a friend along with me to see your ship. Mind if we come aboard?’
‘I haven’t got any whisky either. Haven’t got nothing.’
Mr Fairlie said quietly to Keith, ‘Except methylated spirits, I should think.’ Aloud he said, ‘That’s all right, Jack. We’ll come down, if we may. I want you to meet Mr Stewart. He’s from England.’
Mr Donelly grunted, turned his back on them, and retreated from the hatch into the cabin. ‘He may be on the booze,’ Mr Fairlie said to Keith, ‘and he’s very shy. But there’s no harm in him. I think he means for us to go on down.’
They walked gingerly down the sagging, teetering plank on to the transom of the vessel, stepped over the horse, ducked under the boom, and stood on deck by the tiller; the vessel had no cockpit. Jack Donelly appeared again at the hatch. ‘Guy fell in off that plank,’ he muttered. ‘Wanted dough for berthing here or sump’n. He got a swim.’ He threw back his head and laughed, suddenly and a little shrilly, startling to hear. ‘He wanted seven dollars and two bits, and he got a swim.’ He went on laughing, and then stopped suddenly. ‘Tell you sump’n,’ he muttered. ‘You tread on the bow warp up forward by the winch,’ he said seriously, ‘ ’n she goes forward just a tiddy little way ’n then the plank comes off the transom. That’s how it’s done. But don’t tell anybody.’
They laughed dutifully. ‘Has he been back again?’ asked Mr Fairlie.
Mr Donelly shook his head wordlessly.
‘I want you to meet Mr Stewart, Jack,’ said the first officer. ‘His name’s Keith - Keith Stewart. He’s from England and he’s having a look round. I was telling him how you built this ship yourself and sailed it out here from the States.’
‘Keats,’ said Mr Donelly.
‘No, Keith, Jack. Keith.’
‘Keith,’ said the mariner obediently. ‘Never heard a name like that before.’
‘It’s a Scots name,�
�� said Keith. ‘Did you build this ship yourself?’
Mr Donelly grunted.
‘It’s a big job,’ said Keith. ‘Did you have anyone to help you?’
Mr Donelly shook his head.
‘How long did it take you?’
‘ ’Bout five years. Worked in the lumber mill some of the time, get dough for fastenings and that.’
Keith ran his eye over the ship with a new interest. There was nothing that a patient woodworker could not have done over the years … except … his eye fell on the seams of the deck planking. Each plank was twelve or fifteen feet long and tailored in plan form to fit the washboard and the bulwarks at the outside of the deck, the curvature reducing to a straight edge towards the centre of the ship where the hatch and the skylight of the cabin made a line. Keith stooped and ran his finger along the seam. ‘How did you get these curves?’
A gleam of interest illuminated the dark features. ‘Router.’
‘You routed each plank all along its length to fit the next one?’ It was not impossible, but it denoted a skill and a love of ships that threw a little beam of light on the character of the man.
The owner grunted in assent. Then he heaved himself out on deck and stood beside them, a massive, powerful man. ‘Show you sump’n,’ he muttered. He led Keith down the port side to a point about three feet aft of the mast, went down on his knees, and pointed out a blemish on one plank, caulked with a tarry compound. ‘That’s where my finger come off,’ he said seriously. He lifted his left hand and showed that the forefinger of the left hand was missing down to the second joint.
‘In the router?’
Mr Donelly grunted. ‘Boss said I shouldn’t have been using the machinery. But how in hell would a guy do these curves without he had a router? That’s what I said to him. He couldn’t answer that.’
‘How long did it hold you up?’ The job was the thing.
‘Two weeks, I guess. Soon as it quit bleeding I could work.’
Keith got up from the deck, and the owner got up with him. He looked around, studying everything with a technical eye unpractised in the shipwright’s art. ‘Where did you get the hull lines from?’ he asked. ‘Out of a drawing in some book?’
Mr Donelly shook his head. ‘Guy gave me a lot of blue papers with white lines,’ he said. ‘I put my thinking cap on, but they didn’t seem to mean nothing.’ He paused. ‘Got some bits of hardwood ’n made half models over ’n over till I got one right. Took the frames off of that. Got it below still.’
It was the old shipwright’s approach. Keith said, ‘Can I see it?’
The man turned and made for the hatch; Keith and Mr Fairlie followed him down the ladder. Inside the ship was little but an empty shell. She was fairly new so that the dirt had had no time to accumulate, but she was already dirty. There were rough, unpainted wooden berths to port and starboard, the port one with a palliasse on it that was evidently Jack’s bed. There was a cupboard with a deeply fiddled top on which stood a Primus stove and a few dirty glasses and plates. Forward there was a mass of sails and sailcloth and rope in tangled confusion erupting into the living portion of the ship. Aft of the hatch, behind the ladder, seemed to be a tangled mass of nets and cordage. The whole smelt strongly of salt water and of Jack Donelly.
The owner burrowed into the forecastle, treading over sails and rope with his bare, horny, rather dirty feet. He emerged with three half models glued and screwed to pieces of hard, fine-grained planking. He showed them to Keith shyly. ‘These are what I made.’
Keith took one from him and examined it critically. Half models of ships were no novelty to him, but he had never examined one that had shown better workmanship. It was about two feet long, made of some hard, dark wood, perhaps mahogany, french-polished. He sat down uncomfortably on the vacant berth to examine it the better, squinting along the lines from bow to stern. ‘You certainly made a good job of this,’ he said seriously. ‘I never saw one better.’
‘You want to make them nice,’ commented the builder. ‘Else you get mad looking at them.’ He took the half model from Keith. ‘That’s the second one you’re looking at. This was the first.’ He gave him another. ‘I looked at it two weeks, maybe more, but it didn’t seem right somehow. Looked like she wouldn’t rise to a following sea.’ He took that model, and gave Keith the second. ‘I filled out the buttocks a tiddy bit on this one ’n I didn’t like that no better, made her look fat-arsed and slow.’ He took that model away and gave the third to Keith. ‘So I put my cap on ’n brought the beam back aft a ways, not so much cod’s head ’n mackerel tail. Couldn’t see nothing wrong with that, so that’s the way I built her.’
The process of design by eye was nothing new to Keith. There were very fine lines scribed vertically upon the half model that he handled, at intervals all down her length. ‘You took the frames off this?’
Mr Donelly dropped his eyes and shuffled one foot upon the floor. ‘You want book learning for that,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not right what I told you, I built her all myself. The schoolmaster at Cushman, he set out the frames. But I did everything else.’
Keith warmed to this uncouth, dirty man. ‘You designed her and you built her,’ he said. ‘Setting out the frames from the half model - that’s nothing. How does she behave at sea?’
‘Okay. Bit heavy on the helm first go, so I took a tiddy bit off the boom ’n leach, makes her easier to reef anyways, ’n just as fast.’
Mr Fairlie asked, ‘You built her at Cushman, Jack? Where’s that?’
‘Mouth of the Suislaw.’
‘That’s in Oregon?’
‘South Oregon,’ the owner muttered. Interrogation seemed to make him shy and resentful.
Keith reached up and ran his finger along the joint between one of the deck beams and the frame at the side of the ship; it seemed to him that it would be difficult to insert a ten-thou feeler in it, and all the others were the same. ‘You certainly made a beautiful job of building her,’ he said.
The owner glowed with pleasure. ‘I kinda liked doing it,’ he said. ‘It took quite a while, but I kinda liked it.’
‘I know,’ said Keith. ‘I like making things. But mine aren’t so big as yours.’
He pulled the little box from his pocket and unwrapped the generator set and gave it to Mr Donelly, who handled it as carefully as an egg in his great horny hands. ‘You made this?’ he enquired.
‘He designed it and made it, electrics and all,’ Mr Fairlie said. ‘Just like you did this ship.’
Mr Donelly stared at it in wonder. ‘I never did see such a tiddy little thing,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t go, does it?’
‘It goes all right,’ said Keith. He took the little engine, turned it upside down, adjusted the tiny carburettor delicately, and flipped it into life with his thumb. It broke into a roar disproportionate to its size, steadied its note, and the pea bulb lit up. He placed it on the bare wood of the cabin floor and it went on generating steadily.
Mr Donelly went down on his hands and knees upon the floor and studied it, entranced. ‘Making the electricity,’ he breathed.
‘That’s right.’
‘I seen the big ones,’ he said, ‘three-cylinder diesels and that, making electricity.’ He raised his head. ‘Say, Mr Keats, I guess this is the smallest in the world, isn’t it?’
Keith said, ‘It’s not the smallest engine. I think perhaps it might be the smallest generating set.’
Mr Donelly broke into a cackle of laughter, and looked up at Mr Fairlie. ‘Well, what do you know?’ he enquired. ‘There’s the smallest generating set in the world running right here in the cabin of the Mary Belle! Folks wouldn’t never believe me if I went ashore and told them that. They’d say I was nuts!’
Keith leaned down and stopped it with his pencil, fearing that it might overheat if he kept it running too long without a cooling draught of air. Mr Donelly bent closer to examine it at rest. ‘Look at all those tiddy little wires,’ he breathed as he scrutinised the armature. ‘All going t
he same way, and each to the right place.’ He raised his head, ‘Mr Keats, did you think out all that, yourself? The way each had to go?’
Keith nodded. ‘Everybody to his own job,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have begun to build this ship. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘You start with the half model. What I showed you.’
‘Ah, yes. But if I made a half model, I wouldn’t know by looking at it if it would make a good ship. Not like you do.’
‘You wouldn’t?’
Keith shook his head. ‘Not a hope. You’ve got to really know the sea for that. You must have been at sea all your life.’
‘My old man,’ said Mr Donelly, ‘he took me off-shore first of all when I was six, long lining. ’Course, I was playing around in scows and that with all the other kids before.’
Keith nodded. ‘You build up experience without knowing it,’ he said. ‘Then when the fit takes you to build a ship like this, or build a generating set like that, it just comes easy.’
Mr Donelly glanced at him with common understanding from the floor. ‘Say, you got sump’n,’ he said. ‘Building Mary Belle was just like it was kinda fun.’
Keith reached down and picked up the little generating set, wrapped it up, and put it back into his pocket. Mr Donelly watched him do it regretfully; he got back on to his feet and sat down on his berth. Keith asked him, ‘What are your plans, Jack? Where do you go from here?’
‘I guess I’m going to the Islands.’
Keith said, ‘I’ve got a reason for asking that. I want to get down to Tahiti, and then out to an island called Marokota. That’s somewhere in the Tuamotus. But there’s no regular service and no trading schooner, and anyway I’ve not got very much money. Mr Fairlie here suggested that you might be going down that way.’
