Solomons Seal

by Hammond Innes

  That got through to him at least. ‘Three? You’ve been on three?’ He put his glass down carefully, leaning forward, the frown deepening as he tried to concentrate. ‘This one came from Singapore. There was a number on her. Can’t remember now. I’ve got it somewhere. The British were pulling out, and they were going to scrap her. She was so old they wouldn’t risk sailing her back. Were you in Singapore on LCTs?’

  I nodded. ‘I had almost a year there. Before that I was on the St Kilda run. The Outer Hebrides and the North Atlantic. I wouldn’t think you could throw anything worse at me down here than we had on that run.’

  He smiled then. ‘You were Army, were you? These ships weren’t Navy ships. They were run by a Maritime Detachment of the Army.’ His uneasiness returned. ‘What was your outfit?’

  ‘RASC Water Transport. I was doing my National Service.’

  He hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes, of course. They changed the name. Were you an officer?’ And when I told him I had been newly commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant, he said almost eagerly as though now, suddenly, he wanted to believe me, ‘A deck officer?’

  ‘Yes. A very junior one.’

  ‘How much do you remember about running these ships?’ His voice was no longer slurred, his manner almost urgent. ‘You say you like the sea. Have you done any navigating since?’ And when I told him I owned a sailing boat and occasionally raced her in the East Anglian offshore races, he leaned back, laughing quietly to himself. ‘And you just walk on board, like manna from bloo’y heaven. You know these buckets, you sail your own boat – Jesus Christ, there must be a catch in it somewhere.’ He paused, staring at me hard. ‘If I gave you a berth, would you be prepared to work your passage, take a watch? Not officially, of course. Officially my first officer is Pat McAvoy. But unofficially?’

  ‘What’s wrong with McAvoy?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s an alcoholic. He’s ashore now. He’s been ashore all during the engine overhaul. I know where he is, an’ his condition. But he’s on the list, and I’ll get him on board before we sail so they can’t stop me.’

  ‘What about the second officer?’

  ‘Luke? Luke is from New Britain. Inshore he’s fine, but not on this run. A fisherman’s son, passed his exams, but can’t be left to navigate an ocean passage. He knows the theory, but panics when he’s out of sight of land.’

  ‘So you’re on your own.’

  ‘For the run to Bougainville, yes. Coming over, I was five nights on the bridge. Five bloo’y nights with no sleep.’ He straightened up, leaning forward, his voice urgent again as he said, ‘Well, is it a deal? You sign on as a deckie, as one of the crew; then once we’re at sea I make you an acting ship’s officer, okay? There’s no union where I come from, so no problem, and that way, if anything goes wrong, I’m covered.’

  ‘Nothing I’d like better.’

  He laughed then, suddenly relaxed as he reached for the bottle and poured me a stiff drink, slopping some of it on to the table in his excitement. He tipped the rest of the bottle into his own glass, then raised it. ‘Welcome aboard, Mr Slingsby. If you’re what you seem, then for once I’ll have had a slice of luck.’ He gulped down most of his whisky. ‘Bit of a change, that. Luck and I don’t seem to have been on speaking terms for a long while.’

  We finished the whisky, and as I was about to leave, I asked him whether he had ever come across an aborigine half-caste named Lewis. But the name meant nothing to him, and he had never heard of Black Holland. ‘Red Holland, yes – but no’ Black Holland. No blacks, only mixeds in my fam’ly.’ And he gave a drunken titter. He tried to get up to see me off, but by then he was almost out on his feet. Slumped back on the settle again, he pulled himself together sufficiently to say, ‘See you Friday morning.’ And then with a great effort, ‘You meant it, didn’t you? ’Bout standing watch.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Send a boat for me at nine. Darling Island, I’ll be there.’

  He nodded. ‘Dar’ing – ‘arling Island. Nine. Boat. I’ll be there. Tell Luke.’ His head lolled back, his eyes rolling, the whites yellow.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Sure. Sure I’m awright.’ His eyes closed, his mouth falling slightly open.

  I hesitated, wondering what it was had started him off on a lonely drinking bout. Something he was scared of, but it wasn’t the sea or the condition of his ship. And it wasn’t the prospect of five sleepless nights. Well, doubtless I’d get it out of him in due course. I went back through the wheelhouse and down the bridge ladder. I didn’t have to signal the Yamagata; there was a big inflatable with outboard at the bottom of the rope ladder now, and the man who had greeted me ran me the short distance to the wharf steps.

  Before stepping ashore, I asked him his name, and he said, ‘Luke Pelau.’

  I told him who I was and that I’d be sailing with him. ‘Remind Captain Holland to meet me here at o-nine-hundred Friday morning. Meanwhile, get him to bed.’ I was on the point of making some comment, but he didn’t look as though he was in the mood to respond to a touch of humour, his black face blank, almost sullen.

  ‘Gutbai,’ he said, and gunned the engine, swinging the inflatable out into the dark waters of the harbour, heading back to the slab-sided hull of the LCT, a black silhouette now against the headlights streaming across the Harbour Bridge.

  It was a long walk back to the hotel, and I had plenty of time to consider Holland’s strange behaviour. I suppose it was that, and the realisation that in two days’ time I would be at sea with him, that started me thinking again about Carlos Holland and the disappearance of the Holland Trader. I had sandwiches brought up to my room and scribbled a note to Josh Keegan, passing on to him the stamp dealer’s description of the Solomons Seal ship label and enclosing a copy I made of the missionary’s letter confirming Lewis’s ownership. As soon as I had posted it, I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I was too excited. It was the thought of being on the bridge of an LCT again, this time heading out into the Coral Sea towards an unknown Pacific island – I was as excited as I had been that first time, years ago joining ship in the Clyde, and as nervous. But it was a different sort of nervousness now, more a feeling of uneasiness, almost trepidation.

  First thing the following morning I went to the Maritime Services building in George Street. To my surprise they not only had records going back to the year 1911 but were able in a very short time to produce the details I had asked for. The Holland Trader had arrived from England via the Cape on July 4, 1911. She had discharged one member of the crew, a seaman, and had signed on two others. She had taken on coal and sailed for Port Moresby on July 10. They were even able to give me the names of the crew members who had been shipped at Sydney. One of them was named Lewis – Merlyn Dai Lewis. He had been signed on as a stoker.

  I would have tried the newspaper offices then, to see what had been said about the ship’s disappearance, but I hadn’t time. The restrictions covering currency remittances overseas were very tight so that I had the bank as well as the lawyers to contend with. In the end I only just managed to purchase the additional items of clothing I thought I would need before the shops closed.

  Friday morning everybody seemed to be checking out of the hotel at the same time, and on top of that I had to wait for a taxi. It was past nine before I reached the Darling Island docks, sun glinting on the water and the wharves seething with activity.

  He was there waiting for me, pacing up and down, a stocky figure in dark blue trousers and jersey, cap pushed back from his forehead. His face lit up as he saw me. ‘’Fraid you’d had second thoughts about it.’ There were dark circles under his eyes, but otherwise he seemed himself. He was even smiling as he took my bags. ‘Well, let’s get the formalities over.’ He passed my gear to the two black crew members manning the inflatable, told them to wait for him, and then we took my taxi on to the Maritime Services building, where I signed on.

  Just over an hour later we were back on board, the engines thrumming under my feet and the anchor co
ming in. We loaded at a roll-on, roll-off ramp, the cargo reconditioned Haulpaks for the Bougainville copper mine, and shortly after noon we had cleared and were steaming out under Sydney Harbour Bridge.

  I was in the wheelhouse then, checking the instruments and following our course through Port Jackson towards the Heads. Besides the helmsman and the pilot there were just Holland and Luke Pelau on the bridge, no sign of McAvoy, and when I asked Luke where the first officer was he said, ‘Mr McAvoy little tired this morning.’

  Holland heard him and laughed without humour. ‘You won’t see Mac on the bridge unless he’s in one of his moods. Then he’ll come and tell us how to run the ship. That’s right, isn’t it, Luke?’ And the black officer nodded.

  ‘How long has he been like this?’ I asked.

  ‘Since my grandfather’s death. They’d been together a long time, and he never forgave himself for being away after a woman when the Colonel started out on his last voyage.’ He was staring out towards the Heads, which were separating now to show the empty heaving expanse of the Pacific in the gap. ‘Go down and check those Haulpaks are properly secured, will you? She’ll be rolling a bit when we get outside.’

  Down on the tank deck the Haulpaks were huge, their fat rubber-tyred wheels standing taller than myself. The crew, all black, were tightening up on the securing chains. The bos’n, an elderly man with a great mop of frizzy black hair streaked with grey and a broken-toothed smile, was standing over them. The ore trucks were larger than anything they had carried before, but he knew his stuff, and though I went round every vehicle I had no fault to find.

  Already there was movement on the ship, the faint beginnings of the swell coming through the Heads. I went for’ard to the storm door and, having checked that, climbed the vertical ladder to the port catwalk. For’ard, under the ladder to the foredeck, was the bos’n’s locker and workbench. The watertight door leading to the controls for the electric motor powering the bow door thrusters was open. One of my jobs had always been to check the bow doors and the ramp before sailing. I ducked through to the narrow platform that looked down into the well behind the bow doors, and there I got a shock. The steel cross-members that should have been bolted into their transverse position to hold the bow doors securely shut were still in their vertical housing.

  I hurried back and yelled for the bos’n, telling him to get some men on to the job right away. But he didn’t understand what I wanted. Even when I took him with me and showed him, he only shrugged and pointed to the hydraulic thrusters, indicating in a complicated mixture of Pidgin and English that that was what kept the doors shut. ‘No use ol ain girders,’ he added, referring to the cross-members.

  ‘Well, you use them this trip.’ And I told him to get on with it. Good God! With the sort of seas we might encounter on the run across to Bougainville, the bow doors could be burst wide open. What really appalled me was the knowledge that they must have come all the way to Sydney with the bow doors held on the thrusters only. This was apparent as soon as the cross-members had been dropped into position. They couldn’t find the securing bolts. ‘Better get hold of the Chief Engineer,’ I told the bos’n, who seemed to understand what I said even if he couldn’t speak proper English. ‘If he hasn’t got any the right size, then he’d better make some quickly.’

  He was just leaving, looking puzzled and unhappy, when one of the crew, squatting on his hunkers below the workbench, held up one of the missing bolts. All eight of them were there where they had fallen, covered with dirt and a pile of steel and wood shavings. The place looked as though it had not been cleaned out since the ship had been handed over by the Army.

  I stayed until the cross-members were securely bolted together; then I took the bos’n with me up to the bridge. Holland had to be told. A first officer who was drunk, never took a watch, never checked the cargo, was one thing. But not checking the bow doors, leaving those cross-members unsecured – that was something different: gross negligence that endangered the ship and everyone in her. But we were dropping the pilot, and Holland wasn’t on the bridge, only Luke. I turned to the bos’n. ‘Where’s Mr McAvoy’s cabin?’ I was so angry I decided to have it out with the man myself. ‘Where is he?’ I repeated as the bos’n stood there gazing dumbly at his feet.

  ‘Okay, kum,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Mi suim.’

  I was thinking McAvoy must have some hold over his captain; otherwise Holland would never put up with it. But that was no reason why I should. And then to find him tucked up in his berth in the obvious place, in the first officer’s quarters right across the alleyway from the spare cabin I had been allocated aft of the wardroom. He was lying flat on his back, his pale blue eyes wide open, a vacant stare, the skin of his face haggard and drawn, and so drained of blood he looked positively yellow, as though he were suffering from jaundice. ‘McAvoy. Can you hear me?’

  He must have been getting on for sixty, a hard little monkey of a man with battered features and a scar running white under the hairs of his half-bare chest. ‘Why aren’t you up on the bridge? Why haven’t you secured the bow doors?’ I didn’t expect any reply, but I thought I saw a flicker of comprehension in those dull, lifeless eyes. They were like two pebbles that had dried out and lost their lustre. ‘Where do you keep the stuff?’

  That at any rate got through to him, his eyes suddenly wide and alarmed. ‘Fu’off. None of your fu’ing bus’ness.’

  I started searching his cabin then, emptying drawers, lockers, the lot, and flinging everything on to the floor. ‘Ge’out,’ he screamed. ‘Ge’out, d’ye hear me?’ He had hauled himself up to a sitting position, his head gripped in his hands as he groaned. ‘Wha’ye looking for?’

  ‘You know bloody well what I’m looking for.’ I reached over the bunk and shook him. ‘The bow doors. Don’t you know enough to have them braced? Now come on. Where is the stuff?’ He started to fight me off, his nails clawing at me, his teeth bared. ‘All right,’ I said, flinging him back on the bed. ‘I’ll find it in the end. And when I do, I’ll break every goddam bottle. Understand?’

  ‘You do that,’ he breathed, ‘I’ll kill ye. Aye, I will.’ He was staring at me, his eyes alive now with malevolence. ‘Wha’ are ye doing on this ship anyway?’

  ‘Standing in for you, you useless bastard.’

  The malevolence deepened to blazing anger. ‘You call me that again—’

  ‘I’ll keep on calling you that until you’re on your feet and sober enough to do your job. You’re supposed to be the first officer. You’re a bloody menace. A danger to the ship, do you hear me?’ I left him then, knowing I had got under his skin and wondering just how dangerous he’d be when the drink was out of him. If I hadn’t been so angry, I might have been a little gentler with him.

  The bos’n was waiting outside the door, and I made him show me all the likely places. In the end we found it tucked away in a locker behind the life-jackets, half a dozen bottles of whisky and two of vodka. We carried them through the wheelhouse and out to the bridge wing, where I jettisoned the lot. We were out through the Heads now, and the ship was rolling.

  Holland came into the wheelhouse just as I was getting rid of the last bottle. ‘What’s that you’re throwing overboard?’ he asked me. And when I told him, he said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ He didn’t wait for me to explain, but added as though to justify his forbearance, ‘He suffers from melancholy. He’s a manic-depressive. I think that’s the medical term. Without a drink inside of him he’s no good at all.’

  ‘Well, he’s no good with it, so it makes no difference.’ And I told him about the bow doors. ‘If you’d had that southerly buster when you were coming down the coast … ’

  ‘Well, we didn’t,’ he said sharply. ‘Anyway, they’d have held. We never use those cross-members. Takes too much time. And Mac,’ he added, ‘he needs his liquor. Without it he goes crazy. He’s afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Death. Devils. All the dark imaginings that inhabit
men’s minds. He’s quarter French and quarter Mortlocks.’ He didn’t tell me what the other half was. He didn’t have to. It was Glasgow Irish, the accent unmistakeable. ‘He was with my grandfather through the war, and afterwards. Fought with him, ran the schooners, taught me most of what I know about the sea. Never mind,’ he added. ‘I’ll see he gets enough.’

  I was about to argue with him, but then I thought better of it, knowing that men who have been together a long time develop ties that are sometimes closer than blood relations. Shelvankar would fill me in on the details. It was Shelvankar who had shown me to my cabin, a talkative little Indian Fiji who acted as radio operator when he wasn’t dealing with stores, fuel, cargo inventories and bills of lading. He came in shortly afterwards with the latest weather forecast. It was good; easterly Force 3 decreasing, sea calm with a slight swell, some rain showers, visibility moderate. The general situation indicated that conditions would further improve as we headed north to the Queensland coast.

  Holland spiked it and turned to me. ‘Care to take over, Mr Slingsby?’ I nodded, the formality not lost on me. ‘Course 010°. Keep her about five miles offshore.’ He stayed there for a while, watching as I entered up the log, checked the chart and the Pilot. Apparently satisfied, he said, ‘Luke will relieve you at four. I’ll take the last Dog.’ And he left me to it.

  There was only one ship in sight, a coaster heading north up the coast and about two miles ahead of us. A shower of rain was drifting across the sea to the north-east. I stood for a while by the portholes, watching it as it swept across the coaster, enjoying the movement of the ship under me, the lift and roll as the blunt bows breasted the swell, the steady throb of the engines under my feet. The tank deck below me, made strange by the ungainly bulk of the Haulpaks, rose and fell, the heavy vehicles straining at the chains as she rolled. Once, trying to make the lee of Barra, we had been caught out in Force 10. If we’d had this sort of a load, I thought, we’d have gone to the bottom.