by Wilbur Smith
Shasa had to pick up that loop before the marlin passed under the boat. He pumped with his legs in a powerful mechanical rhythm, coming up to gain a foot of line, sinking down to give himself slack to take it on to the reel with two quick turns of the handle. Up and down he bobbed, grunting for air with each cycle, legs and arms working together, and the wet line coming on to the spool under such tension that a fine haze of droplets sprayed from the braid. The line was cutting sideways through the water, slicing a tiny feather from the surface. The loop was shrinking. The fish passed under the boat. The line began to straighten.
Shasa pumped with a frantic rhythm, getting those last few turns of line on to the reel.
"Turn now!' he gasped. Sweat was pouring down his naked chest. It mingled with the lipstick design that Elsa had drawn and ran down to stain the waistband of his shorts. 'Turn quickly! Quickly!" The fish was tearing away in the opposite direction, and the skipper got Le Bonheur around just as the line came up tight again. The full weight of the fish came down on the rod-tip, and it whipped over like a willow tree struck by a gale of wind. Shasa was levered up out of the chair to the full stretch of his legs, and the strain on the line was ounces short of snapping it.
He thumbed off the brake, releasing the tension, and the line crackled off the spool at fifty miles an hour. With despair he watched as those precious feet of line which he had won back with so much effort blurred effortlessly over the side.
"Chase him!' he blurted, and Le Bonheur pounded after the fish.
It was exquisite teamwork now. No single man could subdue a fish like this alone and unaided. The handling of the boat was critical, each turn and run and back-up had to be quick and precise.
Precious seconds before it was apparent to the men on the deck below, Elsa called out to warn of each new wild evolution of the great fish. For an hour those irresistible rushes never ceased. Every second of that time the thin strand of Dacron was under immense pressure, and Shasa stood in the chair and used his weight against it, pumping the rod and churning the reel. He took turn after agonizing turn on to the spool and then watched it dissipate again as the fish made another charge.
One of the deck-hands spilled sea-water from a bucket over his shoulders to cool him. The salt burnt the abrasions around his waist where the nylon straps of the harness had rubbed through his skin. The blood seeped from the injuries and stained his shorts watery pink. Every time the fish ran, the harness cut in a little deeper.
The second hour was bad. The fish showed no sign of weakening. Shasa was streaming with sweat, his hair was sodden as if he stood under a shower.
The galls of the harness around his middle were bleeding freely. The working of the boat hammered his thighs against the arms of the chair, and he was bruising extensively. Elsa came down from the bridge and tried to pack a cushion between the harness and his torn flesh. She gave him a handful of salt tablets and made him drink two cans of Coke, holding them to his mouth while he gulped them down.
"Tell me something,' he grinned crookedly at her with agony in his single eye. 'What the hell am I doing this for?" 'Because you are a crazy macho man. And there are some things a man must do.' She towelled the sweat off his face and kissed him with a fierce protective pride.
Some time during the third hour Shasa got his second wind. Twenty years ago it would have come sooner and lasted longer. The second wind was an extraordinary sensation. The pain of the galling harness receded, the cramps in his arms and legs smoothed away, he felt light-headed and invincible. His legs stopped juddering under him, and he planted his feet more firmly on the foot board.
"All right, fish,' he said softly. 'You have had your innings. Now it's my turn.' He leant back with all his weight against the rod, and felt the fish give.
It was only a tiny check on the rod. A shudder of movement, but down there in the blue depths the great fish had stumbled slightly.
"Yes, fish,' Shasa whispered, as his spirits soared, 'it's hurting you, too, now, isn't it?' He pumped with legs that were once more strong beneath him and laid four tight white coils of line on the reel - and he knew that they would stay there this time. The fish was coming at last.
By the end of the fourth hour the fish had no more wild dashing runs to make. He was fighting deep and dogged, making slow, almost sedate circles three hundred feet below the drifting boat. He was working on his side, offering as much resistance as possible to the pressure of rod and line. He was almost four feet deep across the shoulder and he weighed nearly three-quarters of a ton. The great half-moon of his tail swept back and forth to a stately beat, and his enormous eyes glowed like opals in the semidark. Waves of Mac and azure flame rippled across his body like the aurora of the Arctic skies. Around he went, and around again in steady sweeping circles.
Shasa Courtney was crouched in the fighting-chair, bowed over the rod like a hunchback. All the euphoria of the second wind had evaporated. He bent and straightened his legs with the deliberate agony of an arthritic, and every muscle and nerve screamed a protest at the movement.
Fish and man had established a dreadful pattern in this final phase of the struggle. The fish went out on the far lap of its circle, and the man hung on grimly, his sinews strained to the same pitch as the Dacron line. Then the fish swung through the circle and came back in under the boat; for a few moments the tension on the line abated and the arc in the rod straightened.
Shasa took two quick turns of line and then hung on again as the fish swung on to the outward leg. With each circle he recovered a few feet of line, but he paid the full price for it in sweat and pain. Shasa knew he was coming to the end of his endurance. He thought about the risk of doing permanent damage to his body. He could feel his heart pulsing like a swollen fragile sac in his chest, and his spine was shot through with fire.
Soon something must snap or burst inside him, but he pulled with all his remaining strength and felt the fish give again.
"Please,' he whispered to it. 'You are killing us both. just give up now, please." He gathered himself and pulled again - and the fish broke. It rolled like a waterlogged tree-trunk and succumbed to the pressure of the rod. It came up, sluggish and heavy, and thrust its head through the surface so close to the stem of the boat that it seemed to Shasa that he could reach out and touch one of its great glowing eyes with the tip of the rod.
It stood on its tail and pointed its nose spike to the sky and shook its head the way a spaniel coming ashore shakes the water from its cars. The heavy steel trace whipped and whistled around its head, and the rod was battered and slammed from side to side. The butt clattered and banged in the gimbal, and the line flashed and looped and traced sweeping designs in the air.
Still the fish stood in the water and opened wide its mighty triangular beak and kept shaking its head, and Shasa was helpless in the face of such power. He could not control it. The rod was jerked back and forth in his grip, and he watched the steel trace flog like the lash of a bullwhip.
With a sense of despair he saw the long shank of the hook twist and flick in the hinge of the open jaw. The gyrations of the fish were working it loose from the bone.
"Stop it!' he gasped at the fish, and tried to haul it over on its side. He felt the hook come loose and slip and skid across the bone, before it caught again. The fish gaped at him, and he saw the hook still holding lightly on the very lip of the iron black beak. One more shake of the head and the hook would be catapulted away on the swinging steel trace.
Shasa rose up in the chair and gathered the last of his strength. He hauled the marlin backwards, and it toppled and crashed back into the sea in a smother of foam.
"The trace,' he croaked at the deckie. 'Get the trace.' A direct pull on the steel wire trace would bring the fish under control.
During all four hours of the struggle, no person other than the angler had been permitted to touch the rod or the line to assist in the capture. Those were the rules of the sporting ethic laid down by the International Game Fishing Association.
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br /> Now with the fish played out and lying beaten on the surface the crew were permitted to handle the thirty-foot steel trace, which was attached to the end of the line, and to hold the fish with it while the flying gaff was driven into its flesh.
"Tracep Shasa pleaded, as the deckie with heavy leather gloves reached out over the stern and tried to get a hand to the top swivel of the trace. It was just beyond his fingertips.
The marlin wallowed on the surface, rolling and pitching like a dead log in the swells.
"One more time.' Shasa rose up and braced ilimself behind the rod. He pulled with a steady even pressure. The hook was holding only by its needle point, the barb was not buried - the slightest twist or jerk could free it.
The second deck-hand stood ready with the flying gaff, a massive stainless-steel hook on the end of a detachable pole. Once that hook was plunged into the marlin's shoulder, the struggle would be over.
The top swivel of the trace was six inches from the fingertips of the gloved hand, and the marlin fanned its tail, a last exhausted effort. The tip of the rod gave a little nod, almost as though approving the gallant spirit of the fish - and the hook came free.
The rod snapped straight and the hook flicked through the air and clattered against Le Bonheur's gunwale. Shasa fell back with a crash into the chair.
Only forty feet away the marlin lay on the surface with its back and the tall dorsal fin exposed. It was free but too spent to swim away; its tail made only convulsive spasmodic movements.
They all stared at it, until Martin the skipper recovered his wits. He slipped Le Bonheur into reverse and backed her up on the wallowing monster.
"On I'aura! We will have himv he yelled at the gaff man, as the marlin bumped against the stem. The deck-hand sprang to the transom and raised the gleaming hook high to drive the point into the fish's unprotected hump.
Shasa tumbled from the chair, his legs buckling weakly under him. Only just in time, he managed to seize the deckie's shoulder and arrest the blow before it was struck.
"No,' he croaked. 'No.' He wrested the gaff from the man's hand and flung it on the deck. The crew stared at him in astonishment and chagrin. They had worked almost as hard as Shasa had done for this fish.
It did not matter. He would explain to them later that it was unethical to free-gaff a fish. The moment the marlin threw the hook, the contest was over. The fish had won. To kill him now would be a deadly offence to all the ethics of sportsmanship.
Shasa's legs could no longer support his weight. He collapsed across the transom. The fish stiff lay on the surface beneath the stern. He reached down and touched the colossal dorsal fin. The edge was sharp as a broadsword.
"Well done, fiih,' Shasa whispered, and his eyes stung with the salt of his own sweat and with other things. 'It was a hell of a fight. Good for you, fish." He stroked the fin as though it were the body of a lovely woman. His touch seemed to galvanize the marlin. The strokes of his tail became stronger and more regular. His gill plates opened and closed like a bellows as he breathed and he moved away slowly.
They followed him for almost half a mile as he swam upon the surface with his fin standing in the blue like a tail tower. Shasa and Elsa stood hand-in-hand at the rail in silence and watched the strength and vigour return to the great fish.
Faster beat his tail, and he steadied in the water and pressed against the swells with all his former majesty. Gradually the tall fin sank below the surface, and they saw the long dark shape of his body recede into the depths. There was one last flash of light like the reflection from a mirror deep in the blue water and then the fish was gone.
On the long run back to port, Shasa and Elsa sat very close together. They watched the lovely emerald gem of the island grow before them, and once or twice they smiled at each other in quiet and perfect accord.
When Le Banheur ran into the Black River harbour and came into the dock, the other boats of the fleet were already tied up alongside. On the scaffold in front of the clubhouse hung the carcasses of two dead marlin.
Neither of them was half the size of the fish that Shasa had lost. A small admiring crowd was gathered around them. The successful anglers were posing with their rods. Their names and the marlin's weights were chalked on the glory-board. The Indian photographer from Port Louis was crouched over his tripod recording their moment of triumph.
"Don't you wish that your fish was hanging there?' Elsa asked softly, as they paused to watch the scene.
"How beautiful a marlin is when he is alive,' Shasa murmured. 'And how ugly he is when he is dead.' He shook his head. 'My fish deserves better than that." 'And so do you,' she said, and led him to the bar in the clubhouse. He moved stiffly, like a very old man, but his bruises gave him a strange masochistic pride.
Elsa ordered him a Green Island rum and lime.
"That should give you strength to get you home, old man,' she teased him lovingly.
Home was Maison des Aliz&s, the House of the Trade Winds. It was a rambling old plantation-house, built a hundred years ago by one of the French sugar barons. Shasa's architects had renovated it and restored it in authentic detail.
It sat like a glistening wedding-cake in twenty acres of its own gardens.
The old French baron had begun a collection of tropical plants, and Shasa had added to these over the years. The pride of the collection was the Royal Victoria waterlilies whose leaves floated on the gleaming fish-ponds.
The leaves were four feet across and curled at the edges like enormous platters, and the blooms were the size of a man's head.
Maison des Alizes was situated below the massif of Le Morne Brabant, only twenty minutes' drive from the clubhouse at Black River harbour. This was the main reason that Shasa had purchased it. He referred to it as his fishing shack.
As they drove up under the spreading canopy of the ficus trees, Shasa remarked: 'Well, it looks as though the rest of the party has arrived safely." Half a dozen cars were parked along the curve of the driveway, in front of the main portals of the house. Elsa's pilot had ferried the two engineers from Zurich in her personal jet. They were the technical directors of Pignatelli Chemicals who had developed the process and designed the plant for manufacturing Cyndex 25. Shasa had met Werner Stolz, the German director, during the delicate preliminary discussions in Europe. These had gone smoothly, under Elsa's skilful direction.
45e The technical directors and engineers of Capricorn Chemical Industries had come in from Johannesburg to attend this conference. Capricorn Chemical Industries was a fully owned subsidiary of Courtney Industrial Holdings.
Under Garry's chairmanship, Capricorn was the largest manufacturer of agricultural fertilizers and pesticides on the African continent.
The company had its main plant near the town of Germiston in the industrial triangle of the Transvaal. The existing plant already incorporated a high-security section which manufactured highly toxic pesticides. There was adequate space available to double this facility. The Cyndex plant could be set up without any fuss or undue public speculation.
The technical representatives of Pignatelli and Capricorn had come together here to discuss the blueprints and the specifications for the new plant.
For obvious reasons, it would have been unwise to conduct this meeting on the site in South Africa. In fact Elsa had insisted that none of her staff should ever visit the plant or have any connection with the enterprise that could be traced back to Pignatelli.
Mauritius had offered a perfect venue for this meeting. Shasa had owned Maison des Alizds for over ten years. He and his family and their guests were frequent visitors. Their presence here was unremarkable, and Shasa was on excellent terms with the Mauritian government and most of the influential figures on the island. The Mauritians treated the family as honoured and privileged guests.
Before his illness Bruno Pignatelli had also been a keen big-game angler who visited Mauritius regularly. So Elsa was also well known and respected on the island. Nobody was going to pry into her affair
s or make awkward enquiries about her reasons for being at Maison des Alizds with a team of her engineers and consultants.
