by John Harris
“Just giving the old man a go.”
“Coming into Taio?”
“Sure. Frightened him to death. Stopped him agitating. Been at me the last three weeks to have a go.”
Rosa flashed him a look of gratitude for his quick wits and said nothing, and Captain Seagull started to rattle off to his bosun a list of their needs, apparently satisfied with the explanation, though his treacherous little eyes were shining greedily.
Joe sat licking his lips, trying to recapture the flavour of the gin on them, his eyes strangely bright, his manner tense with excitement.
He couldn’t bring himself to say anything, for he had a feeling that if he opened his mouth he would condemn himself. In his closed fist thrust deep into his trouser pocket were a dozen crumpled notes from Willie’s money belt. He had watched Willie take from his roll what they needed to buy their supplies and, as he and Rosa and Frankie climbed into the dinghy, Joe had dodged back on the excuse of requiring a coat and removed the rest.
He knew exactly what he was going to do with it. If Seagull had alcohol to spare, it was Joe’s intention to return to the Boy George with some of it. All his waking hours for more than a week had been concerned with the ways and means of obtaining it. He had hit on this scheme some time before and had been waiting ever since for the opportunity to carry it out. He knew their plans were to run from Aiotea to Apavana as soon as they had picked up canned food and posted Rosa’s letter and, since he knew he could smuggle the bottle back aboard in the sack he had brought for supplies, he intended to drink himself stupid as soon as they dropped anchor in the bay at Apavana. About what happened the following day Joe wasn’t very bothered. It would be worth it and that day could look after itself.
It didn’t take them long to choose the meagre supplies they required and stuff them into sacks, then Rosa handed her letter over to Captain Seagull.
He glanced down at the address, then he looked up again quickly, his empty mouth grinning. “You ain’t the Salomios, are you?” he demanded abruptly.
There was a long silence then Willie spoke. “Who’s the Salomios?” he asked.
Seagull gave him a shrewd glance and pushed back his cap with its silver-painted crown. “Coupla old Wops running off with a boat. Police want ’em. Done a murder. Carved up their grandma. Poisoned their uncle. Strangled a whole orphanage of kids. Thought you might be ’em.”
“Well, we’re not,” Willie said as he saw the distress on Rosa’s face. “I told you, didn’t I? They’re here to see their son on Okahé. Their name’s Howard.”
Seagull was still grinning at them, his peeled red face flushed with excitement. “OK, OK,” he said. “Didn’t say you were, did I? Just wondered when I saw the address on the letter.”
“Coincidence, that’s all,” Frankie put in as she saw Rosa’s jaw sag helplessly.
“Salomios was from Sydney. They got a daughter in Brisbane called Florentina. It’s in all the papers I get sent out. This is to Brisbane.”
“Just coincidence, like we said,” Frankie insisted.
“Look kinda Eyetie.” Seagull glanced up at them and went on maliciously. “Don’t like Eyeties.”
“Can’t say I like little men with red whiskers,” Frankie retaliated briskly.
“Can’t trust the Eyeties,” Seagull went on. “Fought ’em in Tobruk. Chased ’em back when they ran outa Caporetto in the first job. Tell me Sydney’s lousy with ’em since the war – all coming out with the Pommies and doing our boys outa jobs–”
He caught Willie’s eye and changed his tune. “Still, I ain’t the one to help the police. Not me. I just left one in Papeete, mad as a mangrove fly shaping up to sting because I left him stranded. I’d like to leave all policemen stranded. I don’t like policemen. Not since they clapped me in gaol for gun-running in 1913. You can rely on me, whatever you done.”
Rosa began to fidget to be off. She felt she was to blame for Seagull’s suspicion, but her letter had been burning a hole in her pocket for days. She climbed from the cabin and began to sort out their belongings with Frankie and Willie. In their anxiety to load their supplies, they failed to noticed that Joe wasn’t with them on the rain-wet deck.
“Just one bottle,” he was pleading below with Seagull.
“Ain’t for sale. I don’t sell booze. Not sold booze since prohibition. Then I made a fortune. Used creosote to give it kick.”
“Just one bottle.” Joe opened his fist and showed a bundle of notes. “I’ll give you all that for a bottle.”
Seagull stared at the money, his eyes bright, then he turned to the locker and returned with a square bottle of gin.
Joe thrust the money into his hand hurriedly and stuffed the bottle into the sack he carried. “OK,” he said. “Good, eh?”
Seagull called to him as he turned for the companionway. “Where you bound for?” he asked.
Joe sniggered, already a little under the influence of the gin he was going to consume. He felt light-headed and foolish with delight at the thought of what was stuffed into the sack to be covered by the tins of beans, and defiance burst out of him at last. The thought of the journey in front of them suddenly unmanned him and and he was unable to hold back a spasm of anger as he saw a means of putting an end to Rosa’s fantasy. “If they say we’re going to Okahé,” he hissed, his brows down in a dramatic scowl, “then we ain’t-a going to Okahé’. You ask-a me, it’s the other way to Apavana. You tell somebody that. We get-a caught. I don’ care no more.”
Seagull watched him waddle on deck and dump his sack carefully in the stern of the dinghy, then they pushed off and made their way back to the Boy George. Seagull stared at them with an expressionless face, eyeing first Willie, then Frankie, then Rosa and Joe.
“Me, I’m on your side,” he called after them. “I like to be on the wrong side. I’m a rat. Nice folk won’t sit down at table with me. Anything to fix the police, I’m in on it.
He was still standing on the deck of the Teura To’oa, his trousers whipped by the eddies from the mountain, his crew watching curiously from the lee of the deckhouse, as the Boy George’s patched sails heaved slowly up, flapped and filled. As she passed between the two great rocks that marked the entrance to the bay, Seagull heard the cough of the engine as Willie, taking no chances with the current and the wind, started up, then she slowly disappeared out of sight towards the west.
As the last glimpse of her disappeared, Seagull climbed below and went into his cabin where he kept the radio transmitter he used to order his supplies.
Two
The message that crackled over the air from Captain Seagull’s transmitter reached Flynn as usual through the Prefécture de Police. It had been picked up and passed on by a schooner captain on his way into Papeete, and almost when Flynn was convinced that the Salomios were not going to respond to his stratagem to bring them out of the Tuamotus and nearer to the forces he had deployed for their apprehension, a police official rang him up at his hotel and gave him Seagull’s information.
He put down the telephone with care, staring at it thoughtfully. His first impulse was to hurry triumphantly to the corner of the lounge where he had left Voss and tell him the news, but instead he breathed deeply and walked slowly towards him through the palms.
Voss was sunk in a chair, half-hidden by a newspaper, and Flynn stopped behind him and rested his hands on the table alongside.
“We’ve got ’em, Voss,” he said slowly and deliberately, “we’ve got ’em at last.”
Voss threw down the paper and snatched off his spectacles.
“You’d never guess who’s put us on their track,” Flynn said and, as the other’s eyebrows raised, he continued: “Seagull. He was lying in Aiotea out of the blow when they followed him in and dropped their hook alongside. You were right. They were going to America. They left a letter for Lucia with Seagull and, of course, he opened it. They were headed for Apavana.”
He paused, then went on thoughtfully: “With this hurricane blowing up, they’re
bound to stay there till it’s over. That’ll give us time to get near enough for them not to escape again.”
Voss said nothing. He stared at the stormy clouds outside and the dancing palms. He could see people hurrying for shelter from the approaching gale, keeping to the lee side of the roads under the dripping bougainvillaea and acacias, and there was something in their bent shoulders and anxious movements that made him think of the Salomios. Their hurry would be twice as urgent, the glances they threw over their shoulders twice as fearful. And their pursuer wasn’t just the weather – it was the rest of the civilized world, one part of it wanting to punish them, arrest them, impound their boat and insist on its debts, the other and probably the most terrifying part, that which would plague them for interviews and pictures and gape and stare and read all about it in the papers.
Flynn was sitting down now. “They’ve had a pretty tough time by the sound of it,” he was saying. “They’ve rigged a new mast. They ran aground somewhere in the Tuamotus. We came darn near to losing ’em after all.”
“Poor bastards!”
“They bought some stores – not much.”
“I suppose they’ve not got much money left.”
“I suppose not. And the old man – Papa Salomio – bought a bottle of gin. Paid a colossal sum for it. Keeley’s money, I reckon. He blew the gaff on the way they were going.”
Voss said nothing and Flynn hurried on. “A French naval launch has been into Aiotea,” he said. “It’ll go straight over to Apavana as soon as the weather permits. They didn’t fancy dragging the navy in on a police job but they stretched a point and agreed to decide that the Salomios were taking an unnecessary risk at this time of the year and that they ought to be escorted back to Papeete. That seemed to ease consciences all round and it’s good enough to hold ’em until the police can get near enough. I wish we could have picked ’em up on an island under British authority. It’s bound to hold things up.”
Voss nodded. “Tough luck!”
Flynn lit his pipe, finding that the other’s lack of enthusiasm made telling the story difficult.
“It’s all over bar the shouting,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“I gathered so.” Flynn looked up quickly. “What’s the matter? Sorry your story’s over?”
“No, I’m not.” Voss answered him angrily. “I’m sorry for the Salomios. I always have been. I must be getting too soft-hearted for this game. They tried hard but they just weren’t clever enough.”
Flynn frowned slightly. “I thought this would be your big moment,” he said.
Voss shrugged. “Now that it’s arrived, I find I don’t care two bloody hoots about the story any more. I’m sick of the whole disreputable business. I’m sick of chivvying old unhappy people to make a Roman holiday for the great Australian public. To hell with the great Australian public.”
He stared out of the window towards the harbour where heavy swells were rolling in from the approaching storm. The vessels lined against the sea-wall were plunging and rolling as the last of the eddies that hustled round the Diademe hit them, their masts swaying and heaving against the sky.
The rain was coming down in wavering lines across the view, blurring the pilot launch that chugged its way slowly across the harbour. Moorea, normally so close and clear, had disappeared. Then the surf on the reef became visible again as the rain lifted a little, and the phosphate ship from Ocean Island that dwarfed everything in the harbour became sharper, its colours showing through the thinning curtains of water. The rain stopped abruptly as the wind started, and twigs and branches began to shower down from the trees and litter the streets, and an empty barrel rolled along the wharf, clattering and spinning on its end.
Voss stood at the window, staring at the pools in the roadway. “Here I am,” he said wonderingly. “I have it all at my fingertips. How to trot out the sob-stuff and push up the circulation. Fred J Voss, the golden boy of journalism.” He dropped his cigarette end on the floor and ground it out with his foot. “And now I find it doesn’t matter any more. I must be going nuts.”
“Cheer up,” Flynn said with a grin. “You’ll get over your emotion when you get home. It won’t be long now.”
Voss turned from the window. “Aren’t you counting your chickens before they’re hatched again?”
“I don’t think so,” Flynn said. “Not this time. From Aiotea you can see almost into Apavana. There’s only one way out – in the direction of Aiotea. Apavana has a submerged reef running south and west. They can’t clear it in any direction except towards Aiotea. There’ll be a constant watch kept.”
“It gets dark.”
“They wouldn’t dare risk it.”
“They’ve taken risks before.”
There was a note of finality about Flynn’s words as he replied. “No,” he said. “This is it. It’s all over. This time I’ve got Keeley–” he formed his fingers into claws “–like that. He can’t get out.”
Three
The Boy George made Ania Bay in Apavana only just in time. She had taken a beating in the last few miles, rolling and plunging in the seas, sending mugs and spoons and forks hurtling to the floor from burst locker doors, tossing their few remaining stores out of the cupboard to slide backwards and forwards along the deck with the tins and boxes and mugs and plates and the old shoes and the blankets that had shot from the bunk.
The glass had dropped steadily and there was that faint queer moan in the rigging now that told of the coming hurricane. The dawn had arrived with a sickly hue and scraps of high-flying cloud. The sea was ugly and, as they staggered along, heavy sleet squalls tramped down on them, one behind the other, humming out of the gloom astern, drenching the twice-drenched sails till they were as hard as boards, while the spray, harvested from every ripple on the tortured surface of the sea, stung their faces as it was whipped smoking from the waves.
The entire horizon astern was filling with swelling black clouds like funereal galleons which trailed their sooty keels along the wave tips, and lurid streaks of light reached out from the sea.
While Frankie held the wheel, Willie and Joe unbent the biggest sails and lashed the booms and gaffs to the deck, and, bringing the anchor inboard, secured it to a ringbolt. As the evening approached, the black evil astern crept clean across the sky, smothering the last of the daylight and bringing the darkness before its time.
Rosa huddled below, tying things down whenever she could get her hands on them. Her face was green with seasickness and she had a bruise on her forehead where the lurching boat had flung her against a corner of the table.
When she went on deck, Willie and Joe had stowed all sail except the one good jib they still possessed and they drove before the weather with this, Willie struggling in the rain to batten down the hatch as they went. Joe stood by the wheel now, drenched but confident in his experience and warmed by the knowledge that below deck in the paint locker for the evening was a whole bottle of gin, safely under the spare scraps of old canvas where it could not be broken.
Fortunately for them, the tide was right when they reached Apavana with the last of the daylight, and they were swept willy-nilly through the channel round the reef, with the spray exploding in all directions, until they reached the quieter harbour. Thankfully letting the anchor splash into the water, they went below to drink the thin scalding coffee Rosa had managed to prepare as they came under the shelter of the land.
Outside, they could hear the rollers pounding against the coral and the wind howling through the palms which groped to the east like arms in supplication before it, blown inside out like old umbrellas by the growing gale.
“Thank God we made it,” Joe said fervently. “Another hour and it would-a be too dark to find the channel. Then we stay all-a night outside.” He shuddered at the thought and reached for a towel to wipe his face.
Frankie looked up as Willie appeared through the hatchway. “Mama, can I sleep on the floor in here tonight?” he asked. “The engine room’s
crawling with water. Everything’s wet through. We’ve sprung some of the deck caulking and my bed’s soaked.”
Outside, the daylight was dwindling into a green-grey gloom and even in the lagoon the water was streaked with veins of white foam. Spray was whipped off the merest ripple and the Boy George tugged and dragged at her anchor cable like a sprightly young stallion. There was no rain now but the air had the humid atmosphere of a laundry, while overhead dark clouds tumbled along at an alarming speed.
They were all exhausted, and early in the evening Rosa lay back on the bed to rest and promptly fell asleep, a shapeless bundle under the blanket Willie had carefully placed over her. Her hair was over her face and her mouth was open, snoring gently, her heavy body moving slightly on its side every time the Boy George snatched at her anchor. Frankie was curled like a cat in the spare bunk, one hand still hanging over the edge, where she had placed it to be able to touch Willie until she fell asleep.
Joe sat dozing on a box in the shadows by the oil stove, his mouth dry, his arms heavy, his head throbbing with the stuffy atmosphere, watching under half-closed lids as Willie wrestled in the yellow light of the smoky oil lamp to make a spare jibsail out of two or three pieces of rotten canvas.
His eyes followed Willie’s arm as it moved backwards and forwards, and several times he almost fell asleep as he watched the movements, as regular as his own breathing, the drips of water that fell to the deck from the hatchway – plunk, plunk, plunk, every second or two – impinging on his ears with the monotonous tick of a metronome. Each time his head dropped forward, he woke with a start and fought fiercely to stay awake, terrified he would waste the only opportunity he was likely to get to enjoy the gin. He knew he should have been helping, but he thought that if he feigned sleep, Willie would eventually tire and go to sleep too, and having to feign sleep made it harder than ever to stay awake as he kept losing control over his heavy eyelids.
