The Strode Venturer

by Hammond Innes

  I’d come six thousand miles to offer him a directorship and fees of four thousand a year and all he did was to sit there on the floor in a dirty sarong pretending to be engrossed in a Chinese game and waiting anxiously for me to go. It didn’t make sense—unless … unless he had some objective, some secret objective so immediate and all-absorbing that my arguments touched only the outer fringes of his consciousness. At what point I became certain of this I don’t quite know. Nor do I know how it was communicated to me, whether by some form of thought-transference, or by the more reasonable processes of observation and deduction. All I know is that I was suddenly convinced of it. “You wrote a paper on the Maldives.”

  He looked up at me then and even in that dim light I couldn’t miss the look of sudden animal wariness.

  “And now you’re here in Addu Atoll,” I said. “Why? What’s so important to you about …”

  It was as though I had touched a spring or flicked the raw edge of a nerve. “What are you after, Bailey?” He flung down his “tiles” and came to his feet in one flowing Arab movement. “Do you think I don’t know who you are? I know the company’s history as well as you do. As soon as I had Alexander’s cable I guessed——” He stopped there, a conscious effort to get a grip on himself for he was actually trembling. And then in a quieter voice he said, “I know how you feel. The sins of the father …” The trace of a smile flitted across his faun-like face. “I’ve been through it all myself and even if Alexander hadn’t cabled …” He stepped over the Mah Jong pieces and came across to me, taking hold of my arm and leading me outside into the quiet stillness of the night. “Now, what are you after—what’s behind this?” He tapped the letter I still held in my hand. “They’re worried, aren’t they—about the future of the company?”

  “They’d rather have you on the board,” I said, “than run the risk of being taken over.”

  “Did you know somebody was after my shares?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I sell they’ll liquidate the company. Is that right?”

  I nodded.

  “And where do you come into it? What do you get out of it?” He was staring at me angrily. “Are you trying to play off one against the other? Do you want to smash the company—is that it?”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “I’ve told you already—a job.”

  “Sir Reginald Bailey’s son—in Strode House? Balls. You’ve got more guts than that.”

  “If I wanted to smash the company,” I said, “I’d be trying to get you to sell your shares instead of pressing you to accept a directorship.” And I told him about the lunch I’d had with Slattery.

  “And you turned him down—why?”

  “I can’t think,” I said. And I added, “You’ve got a choice now—either you stop running away and join your brothers on the board or you sell your shares.”

  “I don’t have to do either.”

  “No, but it’s time you made up your mind.”

  “I see. And I’m running away, am I?”

  I shrugged. I was remembering his sister then—seeing again the firelight glinting on the bone structure of her face, on the dark eyes and the jet black hair. “I think you’ve been running away all your life.”

  I thought he was going to hit me then for his face went suddenly white and all his body seemed to contract with tension. “My father said that to me once.” There was a strange mixture of hate and sadness in his voice. And then suddenly the tension was gone and he was smiling. “I should have remembered the sort of person you were. But it was several years ago that we met and——” His head jerked up at the sound of a voice hailing out of the darkness. It came floating across the water, strangely disembodied like the call of a muezzin.

  He glanced at his watch and then at me as though uncertain what to do. And then he called back in a language which took me back to the years I had had at Trincomalee. “Would you like to come?” he asked.

  “Where?”

  “One of the islands.” He didn’t wait for an answer but dived back into the crew’s quarters. The white glimmer of a sail emerged out of the night. It was there for a moment and then it was struck and the dark shape of a boat glided in to where the rope ladder still hung over the ship’s side.

  By the time it was alongside Strode was back, a kit-bag slung over his shoulder and a valise in his hand. He dropped the kit-bag carelessly down to the natives in the boat, but the valise he lowered carefully on a length of nylon cord. “Well, are you coming?”

  “There’s a launch picking me up——”

  “Let it wait. Once you’re on Gan you’ll be stuck there. The islands are out of bounds to service personnel.” He hesitated, peering at me in the starlight. “Also there’s something I want to show you—something I’d like you to see.”

  The way he said it, there was a sort of urgency that compelled me to go with him though I knew that I was being grossly discourteous to the Commanding Officer at Gan.

  As I went down the ladder the shape of the boat showed long and slender with a curved-up prow like a Viking long-ship. Hands reached out to steady me. I saw the mast against the stars and below me dark faces with eyes glinting in the light from an open porthole, the gleam of teeth. And then my feet were on the thwart and as Strode jumped nimbly down beside me, the bows were pushed clear, the oars dipped and the rusty plates of the old tramp were sliding away from us.

  Nobody spoke. The sail was hoisted without a sound, the clew-end sheeted hard home. It was a square-sail, but by thrusting a long pole into the upper of two cringles in the luff the vessel was converted to the semblance of a fore and aft rig. She heeled as she came on to the wind and the rowers shipped their neat home-made oars, the water hissing quietly along the lee gunn’l.

  “This is one of their big inshore boats—a bondo-dhoni,” Strode said. “With a good sailing breeze like this we’ll be there in under the hour.”

  The wind on my face, the surge of water at the bows creaming white to leeward—and when I turned my head the Strode Venturer was already merging with the dark treed island of Fedu and the lights of Gan itself were far away. I couldn’t see the men around me. They were no more than dark shapes, unidentifiable. But aft, standing high above us on the little stern platform, the helmsman stood outlined against the radiance of the Milky Way. There was a timeless quality about him. He stood with one hand gripping the stern post, his right foot curled round the graceful curve of the tiller, a tall, thin old man in a shapeless bundle of clothes. He wore them with the dignity of a toga and the tatters of rag that did for a turban streamed in the wind. Age and his command of the elements lent him authority. So might Charon have looked, master of the black waters as he steered his craft along the edge of coral reefs.

  The boat itself was quite different from any I had ever sailed in before. It was home-made, of course, but running my hand curiously over the rough, sun-worn surface of the wood, I found each morticed joint as tight as any boatyard could have made them, the planking copper-fastened and neatly stopped below the paint. The oars consisted of a bent blade of wood with the shaft socketed into a hole in the middle and bound with coir rope through two small holes. The thole pins were of wood, too, and the oars were strapped to them with fastenings of twisted rushes. In a matter of moments, it seemed, I had been transported back in time to another age where men existed by what they could make with their own hands. It was primitive and yet, glimpsing the line of coral islands ringing the horizon, conscious of their remoteness, their isolation in the enormous wastes of the Indian Ocean, everything about me in the boat seemed essentially right, a part of man’s creative genius, his ability to survive.

  At an order from the helmsman the starboard rowers took their places and five oars dipped as one, the men taking up a tireless rhythm that balanced the sail as it was sheeted still farther in. “Wind’s shifted,” Strode said. “There’ll be some spray flying as we get the sea coming in through the Wilingili
Channel.”

  We were close-hauled now, the boat going very fast to windward under sail and oar with the sea lipping the gunn’l. “Where are we making for?” I asked.

  “Midu.”

  From the chart I knew this was the island farthest from Gan, straight across the lagoon in the north-east corner of Addu Atoll. “And when we get there—what are you going to do?” His kit piled at our feet and the boat sent to fetch him … “You’re staying there—why?”

  But he had turned his head, his attention distracted by the distant sound of an aircraft. It was coming in from the north and peering under the sail I caught the blink of its navigation lights far out across the lagoon. It passed to the west of us, flying low, a dark bat shape moving across the sky. “Do you know anything about the political situation here?” he asked suddenly. “Do you realize we’re going to sell these people down the river, destroy their independence?”

  I didn’t say anything and we watched in silence as that tenuous link with the outside world made a wide sweep in the starlit night, and then it slowed, nosing down far astern of us to touch the runway end and shatter the quiet with the scream of its jets. “No, of course, you don’t. You’ve only just arrived and you know nothing about these people—how they’ve always been different from the rest of the Maldives, how the little they’re able to produce for export has always had to be sold through Malé. That’s the Sultan’s capital. It’s nearly three hundred miles north of here and the Malé Government doesn’t give a damn for the welfare of the Adduans. Exploited, living near the edge of starvation, T.B. and elephantiasis rife—you’ve only got to look at the size of them. You see what you think is a ten-year-old boy and you find he’s eighteen, possibly twenty. It’s pathetic.”

  “What do you think you can do about it?” I asked.

  He shrugged and gave a little sigh. “Maybe nothing. I don’t know. The R.A.F. have done a good job. Things are a lot better here than when I first came. But these people need trade, something permanent that they can rely on.” He stopped then, sitting silent, his face immobile.

  “Is that why you’re here?” I asked.

  But he didn’t answer.

  I could see the shore-line ahead quite plainly now and the sea was rough, spray coming aft and an occasional wave-top spilling over into the boat. The sheets were eased and the helmsman steered a little freer. The oars were shipped. Water creamed along the gunn’l so that it felt as though we were doing at least ten knots. “The Gan base must have made a big difference to them,” I said.

  “Oh, yes.” He nodded. “It provides employment for about seven hundred men. And the R.A.F. have hygiene squads going round the islands keeping down mosquitoes. The M.O.s make regular visits. The standard of living is better, the people healthier, but …” He turned and stared at me. “What happens when the R.A.F. go?”

  “There’s no question of that,” I said.

  “Not yet. But some transport aircraft are already overflying Gan. And even if Gan never becomes redundant, we could still be pushed out. We’ve been pushed out of so many places. What happens then?” he repeated, leaning forward, his eyes gleaming strangely bright as we passed through a patch of phosphorescence. “Two years ago the Adduans set up an independent People’s Republic. A couple of gunboats were sent down from Malé and if it hadn’t been for the R.A.F. there’d have been a bloody massacre. The island group to the north was brought to heel, but these boys still have their own government. They’re free. But they’ve had to pay a high price for their freedom. You’ll see when we land. I’ll show you something that as a sailor will make your heart bleed.”

  The wind was freeing, veering towards south-east and rising. The sheets were eased still further and the boat flew with the dark line of the shore paralleling our course to starboard. It was not high enough to blanket the wind, but it gave us a lee so that the sea became smooth and the hiss of the hull friction on the water was very loud. In less than half an hour I could see the land curving round ahead of us. The dark blur became steadily blacker, more pronounced. Suddenly there were palm trees, the dark outline of thatched houses, and then the shadow of a coral reef was slipping by and the crew were lowering sail as we glided into a white sand beach where men stood in the shallows waiting for us. Strode touched my arm and pointed. “See those?”

  “What are they?” I asked. “Some kind of long house?” They were built just back from the water’s edge, big thatched buildings not unlike the communal long houses of the Malay villages.

  “No,” he said. “They’re not houses.”

  There was a bump as our dhoni touched a nigger-head of coral. Thin wiry hands reached for the gunn’ls and a dozen men guided her in to the beach, not caring that they were up to their waists in water, all talking at once, and laughing with their teeth showing white in the soft half-light. They carried us ashore and on the coral strand Strode was greeted by a man who wore a linen jacket as a sign of his authority. The rest clustered round, touching him, reaching to shake his hand. They knew him for they called his name in their high guttural tongue and there was something more than the pleasure of greeting an old friend—a strange aura of excitement in the air.

  Strode turned at last and called to me so that I, too, was drawn into the circle of animated faces. “I want you to meet Don Mansoor.” The man in the linen jacket shook my hand. “I am very pleased to meet you,” he said in precise English. “Happy to be welcoming you to the island of Midu.” There was dignity and an old-world charm in the manner of his welcome, but his gaze was shrewd and his hand, though small, had a powerful grip.

  “Don Mansoor is a great navigator,” Strode added. “Probably the greatest in Addu.”

  The long, rather sad face broke into a smile that sent little lines running out from the corners of the eyes. “I am sailing very many times to Ceylon.”

  “And other places,” Strode said.

  They looked at each other, smiling. “That’s right. Some other places also.” And I wondered where else this strange little man with the sad face had been. Zanzibar perhaps or the Nicobar Islands to the east or north to Arabia.

  “But there’s no voyaging now. Not for two years.” Strode’s voice was suddenly harsh. “Come on. I’ll show you.” He turned to Don Mansoor. “I want him to see one of the vedis.”

  “To-morrow he can see.”

  “No, not to-morrow. And not that one. He has to go back to Gan.”

  “But we have to talk about it now, Peter.” A note of urgency had crept into Don Mansoor’s voice and he pointed along the beach to where a small boat lay on the sand with an attendant sitting cross-legged beside it.

  “So he’s come to meet me here?” Strode sounded pleased.

  “He is coming more than an hour ago. Now you are here we should not keep him waiting.”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll understand.” He nodded to me and we started off along the beach towards the first of the long houses. Everybody followed us, a retinue almost fifty strong, their bare feet scuffing the fine coral sand, churning up the water of the shallows. We passed the little boat with its attendant. It proved to be an imported British sailing dinghy, one of the GP14s. The mast was in, but no sign of any sails; instead, an outboard motor was strapped incongruously to the stern. Ahead of us palms stood against the stars, dark frond-fingers stirring in the breeze, and below them the bulk of the first thatched building loomed black. “You said something about a vedi?” I said.

  “Bugaloe, hodi—it’s all the same. Vedi is the local word.”

  Bugaloe I knew. Bugaloe was Sinhalese for a certain type of sailing craft. And now I could just see the clipper-type bow of a boat poking out of the seaward end of the thatch. “Two years,” Strode said as he led the way over the wrack of reef weed until we stood together right under the bows. “A little over two years. That’s how long it is since they’ve traded with Ceylon. And all the time these boats have lain hauled out on the beaches rotting in the tropical heat.”

  It was a beamy-looking boa
t and though it was difficult to estimate size in that dim light, it looked about two or three hundred tons. The keel was long and straight, still resting on the palm bole rollers on which they’d hauled it up the beach. I passed my hand over the wood of the stern post. The surface was rough and tired, the wood exhausted with the sun’s heat. Strode guessed what I was thinking. “Another few years and they’ll never go to sea again.” It was a pity for they had done their best to preserve their ships, moth-balling them the only way they could, under thatchings of palm fronds with the ends left open to allow air to circulate. “What stops you trading with Ceylon?” I asked Don Mansoor.

  “Piracy,” he said, pronouncing it pir-rassy. “All Adduan peoples fear piracy of Maldivian Government.” And he added with sudden vehemence: “Sultan’s men have motor launches, machine-guns. Our ships are sail and we have no guns. I am going once to Ceylon and I lose my ship. So, we can do nothing—only lay up our vedis and pray to Allah.” He glanced at Strode and again I was conscious of their closeness, the sense of communion between them.

  We moved slowly down the plaited palm frond walls and stood for a moment by the stern, which was shaped not unlike some of the smaller trading dhows. A little group of children pressed close, staring up at us with wide eyes. Chains of gold coins gleamed against the satin dark of young flesh. “They still use a variation of the calabash with its water horizon as a sextant,” Strode said. “And they’ve no engines in these boats. Just sail.”

  I nodded, thinking what it must be like sailing these heavy, beamy boats loaded with dried fish in equatorial waters. The monsoons didn’t reach down here; light trade winds, that’s all, and an occasional storm. Conditions couldn’t be very different from the doldrums of the Pacific. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “I thought you’d be interested.”

  But there was more to it than that, for he was watching me closely. Here I felt was the key to his presence on the island. It was the ships and this man Don Mansoor that had brought him back. But why?

  I think if we’d been alone he might have told me. The velvet night and the shadow of that sun-dried vessel—it had a still, sad magic that invited confidence. But then Don Mansoor was talking to him. “You’re invited up to his house,” Strode said. It was already past nine, but he made it clear the man would be offended if I refused. “It won’t take long and the dhoni will be waiting. You’ll have a fair wind back to Gan.”