by John Harris
“The police,” he was yelling. “Get your set going and contact the police.”
Villiers’ incoherent message – somewhat garbled – reached Robert Flynn at Papeete. In the Teura To’oa he had searched from New Caledonia to the New Hebrides before eventually heading in disgust for Tahiti.
His brain still numb from a new demand for increased charter rates from Captain Seagull, who had not realized just how long his boat was to be required and was in consequence determined to get as much as possible for it while he could, Flynn had been in Papeete some time, contacting the outlying islands by radio and trying to decide his next move, when a motor car called to take him to the Préfecture de Police.
Half an hour later, he hurried out into the sunshine and took a taxi back to the hotel where he had left Voss, heading along the crowded waterfront where everything from a Hong Kong junk to the wealthy yachts that came in from America lay alongside. They were passing the trading schooners, lashed beam to beam in a maze of rigging, bowsprit after bowsprit pointing to the open sea away from the pink-flowered acacias that shaded the sea-wall, when a lorry loaded with food from Australia backed across the road and the taxi came to a stop. In his haste, Flynn paid off the driver and hurried the rest of the way on foot through the American tourists and the French servicemen who whistled at the dark-skinned girls.
He found the journalist among the ramshackle buildings that were hidden with cascades of flaming bougainvillaeas and hedges of hibiscus, sitting in a little café half obscured by oleanders and occupied in gesturing with a fly spray at a half-caste Tahitian waitress.
As he approached, Voss looked up, waved away the girl and ordered drinks for them both.
“We’ve got some real news at last,” Flynn said, dropping into a chair and mopping his face. “I think we’ve found the Salomios. Some old joker on Fleet in the George IIIs has spotted them.”
“The George IIIs!” Voss sat up and put the fly spray on the floor beside him. “God, and we’ve been searching round New Caledonia! They must have been hundreds of miles away while we were putting up with that lousy hotel where the bugs ate the pattern out of your hat band and that damned man tried to sing like Jean Sablon every other night. How do you know?”
Flynn thought bitterly of all the wasted miles they had covered; of weeks of patient, useless searching; of the airless streets of Noumea where they had listened to the flat Asiatic pipes mingling with the blare of jazz and the Melanesian voices intoning ‘I got sixpence’ with no knowledge of what it meant; the dusty hotel rooms with faulty fans chattering in the ceilings like nagging women as they stirred the thrice-breathed air; all the islands they had visited, questioning the priests and the native gendarmes who lorded it over the islanders, the schooner captains whose gin they had sipped, and the government officials.
“How do I know?” he said. “They put in for stores there. That’s how.”
“But the last we heard they were in Vila doing a bit of hard rowing to pick up food! Daughter-in-law Lucia in Sydney got an airmail from Vila.”
Flynn looked up, his neat bulk in direct contrast to the other’s untidy leanness. “Well, now they’re hundreds of miles away,” he said. “They’ve disguised the boat. They’ve stepped an extra mast.”
Voss sat back, staring at the blue half-circle of jagged peaks of Moorea across the bay. “What do we do now then? Send out a new description? Because if they’ve rigged an extra mast there’s nothing to stop ’em taking it down again if they feel like it.” He picked up the DDT spray and gave a few experimental squirts at the flies around him which paused only for a moment before returning refreshed to the assault.
Flynn was staring at the table. “I never thought I’d be reduced to this,” he said bitterly. “I feel like a hack man on a beat again. You wouldn’t think one slow old boat without radio or engine could put it across us with all the equipment we can muster, would you?”
“There’s one thing you forgot when you alerted all those police and officials and listening stations,” Voss pointed out. “The other side’s got brains, too. They’re doing a bit of dodging.”
“I expect Keeley put ’em up to that.” Flynn looked cheated and angry.
Voss waved the DDT spray at a fly. “I wonder if you’re meant to club ’em with it?” he mused. He turned to Flynn. “I expect he did,” he said. “He’s got good reason to. It’s getting a bit protracted, isn’t it?”
Flynn sat up, recovering his confidence. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll be back in Sydney before long.”
“Think so?”
“Someone on the Tina will crack. People from big cities can’t sail round these islands for ever, never seeing anyone, never talking to people, cooped up on an old boat, dodging civilization all the time. It’s just a fact that exists about the islands – just as you know there are sharks at Penrhyn and none at Manihiki. It’s something we all dream about but it doesn’t work. It might be the old man. It might be Keeley. But someone’ll crack sooner or later.”
Voss swung round to face him and pointed with the fly spray. “I’ll bet it’s later rather than sooner. Mama Salomio’s a tough old bird. She won’t crack and she won’t let anyone else crack.”
Flynn frowned: “I hope to God we get ’em before they reach the Tuamotus,” he said. “The islands there look like the Milky Way. They’re not on a plane route either so we could write off our arrangement with the airline pilots to keep their eyes skinned. The whole thing becomes more difficult altogether. Besides–” he paused “–the Tuamotus are notoriously dangerous and if they run ashore there – and they could with only an atlas and a few throwaways to navigate with – the whole lot of ’em could be lost.”
Voss eyed him curiously. “And you wouldn’t be satisfied to see friend Keeley quietly drowned?”
“I would. But the mother of the kid he murdered would rather see him hanged, I’m sure.”
“And the Salomios?”
“I don’t want the Salomios drowned in the Tuamotus any more than you do,” Flynn said. “But not for the same reason. To you, they’re a story. To me, they’re assisting Keeley to escape. I want them as much as I want Keeley. Quite apart from the fact that they’re dodging their debts, they’re breaking the law.”
“Do you realize how far they’ve come, Flynn?” Voss asked quietly. “I was working it out when you arrived.”
“I know how far they’ve come all right,” Flynn said shortly, thinking of the money and the time that had been wasted. “It’s a hell of a long way!”
“They could become the best-known couple in Australia,” Voss said, flipping at his newspaper. “We could get everybody screaming for photographs – even in America, and that’s big money. Lucia could sell the family album, if we could persuade her she’s got a saleable commodity. We’d have to get an option on all the pictures, of course,” he mused. “An appeal fund for them would go down well, too.”
“Do you usually run appeal funds for people who don’t pay their debts?” Flynn asked sarcastically.
Voss raised his eyebrows. “We do more,” he said. “We run polls and reader surveys and we’ll probably run one now to decide if the police in their mercy should follow like avenging angels or leave the Salomios alone merely because they’ve got guts. All the same–” he broke off and glanced at Flynn “–if some adventurous kid had sailed as far as these two old jokers – and in a leaky boat, too, he’d have got his name in the papers, wouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t they, at their age?”
“Why shouldn’t they? It’s just a pity they had to take my man along with ’em, that’s all.”
“Makes a better story,” Voss grinned. “You’ve got to blow ’em up a bit. If they hadn’t thought of it, damned if I wouldn’t have suggested it. Boy, with this angle, I can get the great reading public screaming for its before-breakfast blood-and-thunder in no time. Demanding the latest on them. If they keep it up much longer, they’ll be as famous as Josh Slocum. Everybody’ll take ’em to their hearts.”
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“Will they take Keeley as well?” Flynn asked dryly.
Voss smiled. “Nobody would care two hoots about Keeley. I’d take good care to make it clear the Salomios don’t know who he is. And, if I guess right, so would all the other newspapers.”
“You can’t be certain they don’t know.”
“No, I can’t. But better men than me have told whoppers. Even Simon Peter fenced a little.”
Flynn began to get angry. “In other words, because of this newspaper campaign that’s being prepared, I’ve got to catch Keeley without upsetting the great reading public. You’ll make it damn’ difficult for me. I’d rather find him without all this damn’ nonsense clogging up the issues. You seem to have lost sight of the fact that the Salomios are hiding a murderer who stabbed a harmless if rather stupid kid.”
Voss subsided slowly into his chair and Flynn stood up, leaning on the table to point. “The sooner it’s finished the better – before the whole of Australia starts to swoon with emotion. We’ll get the radio hams on the job. There are plenty of them in the islands. All the schooners carry radios. They use ’em mostly to order their whisky, but for once they can use ’em on behalf of law and order. I’ll have every damn’ pair of eyes in the islands looking for ’em. They can’t go on for ever. Time’s on our side.”
“Is it?” Voss eyed him through his cigarette smoke. “With Seagull cutting up rough? He knows we can’t get anything else with the hurricane season on us. If he picks up any business, he’ll leave us flat. He’s always fiddling with that blasted pedal wireless in his cabin, talking to his buddies. Time’s not on our side. It’s on theirs. If they get out beyond the Tuamotus they’ll make for the Marquesas and if they make the Marquesas, they’ll try America. Bless ’em, they’ll never do it. But if they do, if they do, Flynn – you’ve had ’em. Murder or no murder. The Yanks’ll love ’em. They love the underdog there. If Bonnie Prince Charlie had fled to America instead of France, there’d still have been Stuarts on the throne in the Old Country. You’ve got to move.”
Flynn’s smile had grown hard. “I’ve moved,” he said triumphantly. “I did a lot of moving while I was at the Préfecture de Police. The French are going to search the Marquesas, the Societies, the Tubuais and the Gambiers. I’ve got things churning at last.” His voice rose slightly as Voss stared back at him. “They’re doing most of it by enlisting the islanders’ help. There’ll be launches and schooners and native outriggers looking for ’em. There’ll be every blasted boat that floats. And I’m going to take the Teura To’oa into the Tuamotus and search there myself. I’ve already contacted the Governor by wireless. I’ll drive that old bastard, Seagull, till he drops apart. The Salomios have got to keep going,” he concluded, “and, God help ’em, bucking the trade winds all the way as they are, it’s going to be tough.”
Three
Up to the point of leaving Fleet Island, luck had been with the Salomios with no worse incident than when Joe’s dubious navigation had been in error and the grease spots that Frankie’s boisterous cooking had spilled on the charts had been mistaken for islands. The weather had been kind with sunshine and following winds that didn’t strain the old boat, and by sheer luck they had kept out of the way of the authorities. But now, as officialdom got its back up, the weather began to turn against them also.
They ran into a calm with air so dead the clouds were mirrored exactly in the water by day and the stars by night and the horizon disappeared in a misty haze that left them apparently suspended in mid-air over a silent ocean. The sails drooped limply, giving no shade to the sweltering decks, and the pitch rose in slow bubbles between the planks. The drinking water was hot in the tank and, overside, nosed by the foraging sharks, were the empty tins they had thrown away a week before, without a ripple big enough to overturn them, glinting all day in the water until they grew so sick of them they thrust them under with the boathook.
When their nerves were ragged with the rattle of blocks and the sound of empty sails slapping from side to side, a faint doldrum whisper appeared and the canvas filled and the old boat began to move again. But no sooner had the wind arrived than it backed to easterly and they had a run of head winds and squalls which tested the Boy George to her limits. The rain which came with the squalls flattened the great Pacific swells to a calm but soaked them all to the skin for, with her seams opened by weeks of hot sun, the old ship leaked through into their living quarters and even their bedclothes were cold and cheerless. Puddles formed on the floorboards and the air was misty with a dampness that seemed to hang about below-deck like a fog.
The fresh-water tank began to leak and the supply they had taken on at Fleet with so much labour had been halved before they discovered it. The constant rain squalls provided an answer to the problem, however, and they put out on deck all the containers they possessed and rigged big baths out of old sails. But these and the barrels and buckets they had lashed at various points made movement difficult until, eventually, nerves began to get frayed and quarrels came quickly and arguments started, even Rosa and Willie, who had never argued before, disagreeing over their course.
When they halted for the night in the lagoon at Tyburn, another of the George III group, they found they had anchored over a shallow and awoke to find the boat on her beam ends, with all the lockers bursting open and the stove hanging from its moorings. When the morning came, they discovered they had lost one of their precious buckets overboard from the deck.
Two days later, the Boy George gybed in a sudden squall so that the mizzen boom whipped round and the little mast Willie had so painstakingly rigged carried away its stays and cracked. They had to put back into Tyburn again and cut and trim another young pine for a new one.
“I knew it would be no good,” Joe said delightedly. “Always they are no good.”
As they left Tyburn a second time a heavy following sea was running and the Boy George groaned aloud as she rode like a surfboard on the foam-crested combers, constantly increasing her speed without warning and swinging to port or starboard as she slid into the deep troughs, while the water came in bucketful’s over the stern.
They lowered the mizzen sail which eased the motion a little and the watch that night was dry. The next day the sun was warm again and there was a strong breeze so that they were able to get most of their clothes and bedding on deck. It was while everything was flapping in the breeze like a regatta and they were all feeling happier at the prospect of warmer clothes, that Willie chanced to glance astern and noticed a tremendous roller filling the entire horizon. It was made up of several smaller waves which had run into each other and, as it came sweeping up on them, the Boy George dropped further and further into the smooth hissing trough that ran before it.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Rosa interrupted the Hail Marys she had been saying on their behalf ever since she had first sighted it and whispered a prayer to herself as it roared up on their stern. “Take care of little Tommy.”
Frankie was below in the galley and there was no time to get to her, and only Joe was calm, one hand on the wheel, one eye on the vast following wall of water, correcting the Boy George as she tried to slide off to port. Before any of them expected it, the whole tremendous weight of the sea collapsed on the decks, the solid green crashing across the planks with the fury of an avalanche.
Rosa heard Willie’s shout – “Frankie!” – then, coming to the surface through the boiling spray, she saw Joe, only his head and shoulders visible, still struggling with the wheel, the only one of them who knew what to do, while Willie clung to the stays forward, fighting the drag of the water that raced across the decks and ahead of them in a yeasty smother.
Fortunately, it was over in a moment and the waves behind appeared to be normal enough, and with the water sloshing round his ankles, Willie leapt to the cabin hatch. Dropping below, hardly touching the ladder in his hurry, he found Frankie sitting on the floor with the dishes and the remains of the food across her legs, spluttering and dazedly pushing the
hair out of her face.
“You all right, Frankie?” he asked, lifting her to her feet. “You hurt, kid?”
She gazed at him dizzily for a moment, then a smile that transformed her thin features spread across her face and her eyes lit up.
“Willie, you came to fish me out?”
On deck, as the water streamed noisily out through the scuppers, Rosa wrung the water from her clothes, then her eyes fell on the spot where their strings of washing had been, and with a wail she scrambled to her feet.
All but three of their precious blankets had been swept away, together with most of their spare clothing and all the containers which had been on deck. The mainsail had a split down half its length and what remained of their bedding huddled in sodden bundles like small dead bodies in the scuppers.
“The blankets,” she shrieked. “The blankets! See if you can find the blankets!”
“Never mind the blankets,” Joe roared. “Get-a the sail down before she tear to ribbons.”
Rosa hurried to the halyards and sent the sail rattling to the deck, while Joe whirled the Boy George about on her course.
They found one blanket still afloat half under the water and an old coat of Rosa’s, but all the rest of their belongings had disappeared.
They were in low spirits as they turned towards Tyburn Island for the third time. The disaster which had come on them from nowhere seemed twice as crushing, following as it did on all their good luck.
Joe was the first to voice his thoughts. The soaking they had received made him think back across the thousands of miles to Sydney with its sun-soaked slopes and the alleys of Surry Hills with their leaning tenement houses, the rattling corrugated iron fences and the homely smell of ham-and-beef shops. He suddenly realized just how far from home he was, how far from the cronies who gave him comfort when Rosa pressed him too hard, and he felt like bursting into tears. Surry Hills wore a cosy glow just then, for distance lent enchantment, and Joe remembered only the warmth and the familiarity.
