by Nevil Shute
“Sure,” said the captain. “There was a piece about you in the paper. You came from San Francisco single-handed, didn’t you?”
“Piece about me in the paper?” asked Jack vaguely.
“In the Post-Journal, nearly a column about you and your ship. One day last week. Didn’t you see it?”
Jack shook his head.
“I’ll get the steward to look through the papers in the cookhouse. Maybe we’ve got it still. That’s your ship up at the end? The white sloop?”
“That’s right.”
“Where are you bound for now, captain?”
“Going south to this place Tahiti,” Jack Donelly said. “Mr. Keats got business to do there.”
“Quite a way,” said the captain, “but you should find a fair reaching wind, this season of the year. It might fall light and variable when you get down about five north. Then after the equator it might steady up again, still from the east. You haven’t got a motor?”
Jack shook his head.
“Oh well, I think you’ll be all right. You may get a few days’ slamming about in the doldrums. Come into the chart-house and we’ll have a look at the course.”
They went with him towards the deckhouse door. Keith asked, “Have you got a motor, sir?”
“Oh, sure. We’ve got a big main Diesel and a smaller one for starting and battery charging. The engine room is quite a show place in this ship.”
“How many hands you carry?” asked Jack.
“Nine deckhands,” said the captain, “two engineers, one cook, two stewards, boatswain, mate, and me. Seventeen all told.”
They entered the wheelhouse and stood by the chart table. The captain pressed a bell-push and a buzzer sounded below; a steward appeared. “Sam,” said the captain, “chase around the ship and see if you can find a copy of the Post-Journal about the middle of last week, Wednesday or Thursday, with the column in it about Captain Donelly and the Mary Belle. If you find it, bring it here. And — hold it.” He turned to Jack and Keith. “Cup of coffee? Right. Three cups, Sam.”
They turned to a consideration of the course. Keith was surprised and pleased by the consideration that the American captain of this very fine yacht gave to Jack Donelly’s problems. A dumb fisherman from Oregon was clearly no novelty to him; moreover, he had probably been briefed by local gossip in the yacht harbour. He examined Jack’s smudged atlas page with interest and with care and turned to Keith’s charts with tact, ran out the course for them, and curiously enough arrived at exactly the same magnetic course as Captain Davies had in the Cathay Princess. “Guess I needn’t have troubled you,” said Jack at last. “I thought maybe it would be something different, the tanker being an iron ship.”
The captain shook his head. “That’s compass deviation. You don’t want to stow anything made of iron near your binnacle — an anchor, or anything like that. Take it up forward.” They went on to discuss the probable winds, two men of the same country talking the language of sail.
They went on talking for half an hour, sipping the cups of coffee, smoking as they stood over the charts. Keith showed his newspaper cutting about the loss of Shearwater and the death of Jo, and told this pleasant man the purpose of his journey. The red-headed woman came up from below dressed for the shore and passed them by, walked with quick steps up the gangway, got into a car upon the quay, and drove off.
“You won’t have any trouble,” Captain Petersen said at last. “A good, reaching wind most of the way, unless you’re very unlucky. You should make better than a hundred miles a day, average. Add a week in the doldrums. I’d say you’ll be in Papeete in thirty days.” He paused, and then said, “Wish I was coming with you.”
Keith asked, “Have you been here long?”
“Too long,” the captain said. “Nearly four weeks. We came here from L.A. bound for Tokio and then Manila with the owner, his daughter, and some friends. Four months’ cruise, it was to be. But soon as we got here he was talking on the telephone to New York and then to Cincinnati, where the plant is, and he left and flew back East. He’ll be back again sometime, but Lord knows when. In the meantime there’s just the daughter living here on board, and she’s doing no good.”
“That’s the lady who went on shore just now?” Keith asked. “She came and spoke to us while we were waiting.”
The captain nodded. “Mrs. Efstathios,” he said. “At least — I always call her Mrs. Efstathios. I don’t think the decree’s gone through yet.”
Jack said, “She was asking sump’n about a guy called Manuel. Seemed to think we ought to know about him.”
The captain nodded. “Manuel de Silva,” he said reflectively. “ ’Music with Manuel.’ He was born Mike Simmons, but that was in Puerto Rico so I suppose he felt he’d got a right to a Spanish name. Looks like he’s going to be Number Four if we stop here much longer.”
He stood in thought for a moment. “Gee,” he said, “I wish that I could jump this ship and come down to the islands with you boys.”
They thanked this competent man and said good-bye, and went on shore, and started to walk back towards the Mary Belle. “Fine ship,” said Jack Donelly.
“She was beautiful,” Keith said. “I’ve never been on board a ship like that before. Do you know her name?”
“Flying Cloud. Registered in Seattle.” He walked a few steps in thought. “She costs somebody plenty.”
They walked back to the Mary Belle and went on board. In the cabin Jack tucked the school atlas away under the mattress of his bunk, and Keith wedged the roll of charts behind the locker. Jack looked around the cabin. “You think of anything we need we haven’t got?” he asked.
Keith thought, and shook his head. “We’ve got food, water, and kero,” he said. “I don’t know about the ship.”
Jack grunted. “You ever been in a sailing craft like this before?”
Keith shook his head.
“Just keep out of my way, ‘n don’t do nothing ‘less I tell you.”
He busied himself for the next half-hour about the deck while Keith stood on the ladder in the hatch and watched. He set the jib in stops, made halliard and sheets ready, set up the main boom and removed the crutch, made fast the main sheet and removed all but two tie-ers from the sail. The wind was blowing from the east down the fairway of the yacht harbour towards the entrance. He took in the leeside bow and stem warps and led the doubled end of the bow warp from the weather bow pile to the stern. Then everything happened in a rush, so quickly that Keith had difficulty in appreciating what was going on. Jack cast off the weather stem warp and then he was everywhere at once, a big, nimble man stripped to the waist, hauling on ropes and casting them off. The Mary Belle moved forward smoothly from her berth into the fairway, turned as the jib broke out, and then she was sailing quietly down the middle of the rows of yachts towards the entrance trailing a long rope in the water from her bow, Jack at the helm. “Just gather that rope ‘n put it on the deck beside the mast,” he said.
Keith did his best with this, and got it all on deck. They turned by the Flying Cloud and headed out to sea under jib alone, the wind a little aft of the beam. As they passed the schooner yacht Captain Petersen came out and waved to them from the deckhouse door.
They carried on southwards down the channel till Jack judged that they were well outside the reef. Then he told Keith to get down below out of the way. He loosened the main sheet, cast off the tie-ers from the main, put the ship up to the wind, and ran forward to hoist both peak and main halliards. The big tanned sail slammed and banged about as Keith crouched down below it in the hatch and Jack worked like a demon at the mast. Then suddenly it was over, and they were sailing quietly again, Jack at the helm, the big sail billowing above them. They were sailing much faster now, a little heeled to starboard, making about five knots.
Keith sat in the cabin hatch enjoying the smoothness of the motion in the lee of the land. As he looked around he saw a white launch come out of the harbour behind them. Presently he noticed i
t was closing up upon them fast, making about twenty knots, a white plume under the raised bow that grew and spluttered as she slammed each wave.
He said, “There’s a boat coming out behind us.”
Jack turned and looked at it. “Always sump’n,” he grumbled.
The launch ranged up alongside them and slowed to their speed. A uniformed man in the stern spoke through a megaphone. “Say, Captain,” he said, “you better heave to.”
Grumbling beneath his breath Jack Donelly pulled the foresheet up to weather, slacked the main, and put the helm down; the Mary Belle came up into the wind and lay quietly with a little forward way. The launch ranged up beside her on the lee quarter only a few feet away. The uniformed man appeared by the coxswain. “Where are you bound for?” he shouted.
Jack Donelly answered, “Hilo.”
“You’re not going any further?”
“Just to Hilo.”
“You’ve got to get clearance if you go outside the group.”
“Don’t need no clearance for Hilo.”
“No,” the officer admitted. “All you need is just pay fourteen dollars and fifty cents.”
“What we got to pay that for?”
“Harbor dues, Captain.”
“Jeez. I wasn’t in the harbor more’n a week.”
“Nine days,” the officer said. “Your size makes one fifty each day, plus tax. Makes fourteen dollars fifty.”
“I dunno as I’ve got it.”
“Then you’ll come right back and tell the Judge about it. Come on, Captain — I got things to do.”
Grumbling, Jack left the helm and went below and from some secret store unearthed the money. The officer reached out a little fishing net on a bamboo for it and passed back the receipt in the same way. The launch sheered off, put on speed, turned around, and made off back towards the harbour.
Keith asked timidly, “Where’s Hilo?”
“On Hawaii. They make all kinds of trouble if you say you’re going foreign.”
He let draw the jib and the main, and got the vessel on her course again. “You sick yet?” he asked.
“Not yet,” said Keith.
“Come ‘n take the helm awhile and I’ll show you.”
Keith came to the tiller, held by a turn of light rope round it from a cleat upon the bulwark, the rope held in the hand. He sat down on the deck as he had seen Jack sit. “Keep looking at the card,” he said. He laid a dirty finger on the glass of the binnacle. “That black line, that’s the lubber line ‘n that goes with the ship. The card, with all them black marks on it, that moves against the lubber line the way you pull the tiller. You see the big thin diamond? Well, not that one but the one next to it; the tiddy little triangle. Not the big triangle, the tiddy little ‘un. Keep her about there.”
Keith put on his glasses to inspect the binnacle and picked out the tiny numerals, remembered from his navigational instruction, and so identified the tiddy little triangle. He settled down to try to steer the ship, and became engrossed in it. Jack watched him for a time, and then went down and lit the Primus stove. He made a jug of coffee while Keith steered and the island of Oahu grew less distinct behind them, and presently passed up on deck a cup of coffee, a great hunk of corned beef out of a tin, and two inch-thick slices of bread. “You okay?” he asked.
“So far,” said Keith.
Jack Donelly grunted. “Guess I’ll have a bit of a lie down,” he said.
Keith was alarmed. “What will I do if anything happens?” he asked.
“Aw, nothing’s going to happen,” said the captain. He sat by the galley at the foot of the ladder contentedly eating bread and beef. Then, without ever looking out on deck, he went forward and lay down upon the lee berth, which was Keith’s, and went to sleep.
Keith sat at the helm, terrified. He had never sailed a ship of any kind before. Now he was in sole control of this rushing, heaving monster which towered above him in a mass of brown sails and rope whose very function was a mystery to him. He had only mastered one small element of the seaman’s craft, that of keeping the appropriate compass mark upon the lubber line, and that only within the last half-hour. He did not know what disaster would ensue if he should let it stray either way. The wind seemed to be increasing and the sea rising as they cleared the land, and the ship was heeling noticeably more. He was scared stiff. He sat there in his cricket shirt and braces with Panama hat upon his head under the brilliant sun of the Hawaiian Islands, the bread and the corned beef untasted on the deck beside him, concentrating on doing the one thing that he had been taught, keeping the tiddy little triangle upon the lubber line. Presently his cup of coffee, now quite cold, left him and slid down into the lee scuppers, still upright.
An hour later he was still sitting in the same position, the ship still rushing along in much the same way under the steady beam trade wind. He was hungry and thirsty, and very sore from sitting motionless on the hard deck. He was less frightened now and his arms were getting tired. He began to experiment with the rope lanyard which assisted him to hold the tiller. If he took another turn around the tiller it eased the grip of his hands. He still had to steer . . . but if he tied it, the ship would probably go straight enough for ten or fifteen seconds while he retrieved the cup of coffee from the scuppers. He made a couple of trials, and then, greatly daring, lashed the helm and slithered down the deck upon his bottom to retrieve the cold cup.
By the middle of the afternoon he was taking things more easily. He ate his lunch about three o’clock, and sat on at the helm growing steadily more sunburnt and tired. Below, he could see Jack sleeping peacefully upon the lee berth. Tired as he was, he realized that this made sense since for the next month they would have to sail all night. He could not sail the ship at night; Jack would have to do that, or they must heave to as they had done when the harbourmaster’s launch had overtaken them. He must stick it out, and call Jack at sunset, which seemed to come at about six o’clock.
When the sun was about an hour above the horizon he couldn’t stand it any longer, and called Jack. The big man stood up in the cabin, yawned, and came on deck. “You done a good spell,” he said. “Everything okay?”
“I think so,” said Keith. “I haven’t touched anything.”
Jack Donelly took the tiller. “I got her now. Get down and rustle up some chow. I’ll heave her to ‘n pull a reef down case it gets up in the night.”
Keith got up stiffly and went down below, regardless of what was going on on deck. He lit the stove to make some coffee and got out a tin of pork and beans to heat up for their supper. He had got as far as getting out the bread when he suddenly felt dizzy and faint; the fumes of the stove were nauseating, the motion of the ship intolerable. He struggled on for a little, unable to focus his eyes on anything. Then he was overcome and dashed up on deck to be sick over the lee rail.
He moved back to the hatch when it was over. Jack was tying down the reef points at the boom, and paused in his work. “Gets you, down below,” he said affably. “Stay out on deck awhile. I’ll get the chow.”
“I can manage.”
“You’ll get sick again. Stay where you are.”
Keith obeyed him and sat on the deck by the hatch gradually recovering. Jack finished his chores on deck and went below. Presently he handed up a dirty plate with a great mess of steaming pork and beans on it, a huge hunk of bread, and a cup of coffee. “I don’t want anything,” said Keith faintly.
“Go on ‘n eat it.”
“I’ll be sick again.”
“Sure you’ll be sick again. Go on ‘n eat it.”
Keith took the path of least resistance, and ate most of it and felt the better for it for the moment. Jack took the dirty plates and cups, wiped them with a filthy rag, and put them back ready for use again. He took the bucket with the lanyard on the handle and sluiced it over the side, left a little sea water in it, and placed it on the deck below beside the head of the lee berth. He lit the cabin lamp and turned it low, then came on deck and took
the tiller, let draw the sheets, and got the vessel on her course. It was now nearly dark.
“Get on down ‘n get some sleep,” he said. “Don’t go standing up — lie down right away. You got nothing else to do till daylight.”
“You can’t sail her all night.”
“Aw, if I get sleepy I’ll heave to.”
Keith took off his shoes, went down below and stretched out on the berth. Somewhat to his own surprise he fell asleep at once. He slept for five or six hours, woke up feeling sick, and got out on deck to vomit over the rail. Jack was sitting smoking at the helm, and the ship going smoothly over the long ocean swell. “Just take her while I get some chow,” he said.
Keith took the helm in the bright moonlight and struggled to keep the vessel on her course in the faint light of the oil-lit binnacle. Presently Jack passed him up a mug of coffee and a great hunk of bread spread with jam, and sat below himself finishing up the tin of cold pork and beans. Then he came on deck again. “Guess I’ll take her now.”
So the night passed for Keith, in alternate vomiting and sleep. He took the helm again at dawn while Jack Donelly slept. In general he was well enough on deck while he concentrated on the sailing of the ship, and he was ill directly he went below. They sailed on all the day under a blue sky flecked with cloud. Once in the afternoon when Keith was lying dozing and exhausted on the lee bunk he opened his eyes to see Jack Donelly wedged upon the other bunk, and realized that there was no one at the helm. To his enquiry Jack said, “She goes by herself okay with the wind forward of the beam. Won’t be no harm if we get up a tiddy bit to weather.” He pointed at the bulkhead at his feet. “I reckon we made ninety-five miles yesterday, up till dawn today. See where I wrote it down?”
Later that afternoon when Keith was at the helm and Jack below beginning the preparations for supper, he happened to glance up through the hatch. Immediately he stopped what he was doing and came out on deck, and stood looking at the sky. Keith asked him what he was looking at.
“Frigate bird,” said Jack. “That’s the third I’ve seen.”
