Arthur Upfield - The Mystery of Swordfish Reef

“Another easterly making,” complained Alf Remmings, his moustache salted by sea spray, his darkly tanned face brightened by the spray’s stinging lash. “Why can’t it blow from any other quarter but the east? Looks like we’re going to be kept in for days. If Jack Wilton and Joe don’t soon turn up in theMarlin they won’t risk the bar and they’ll have to punch away out to Montague and shelter there.”

“Trust them two to look after themselves.” said Burns, as he was about to pass on his way to his home. “They went down south and they’ll likely enough run in to Eden for the night. And that’s where theDo-me is going to turn up, too, under her sail. This wind’ll bring her in even if she drifted fifty miles out.”

A little after seven o’clock the anxious Mrs Wilton was relieved of growing anxiety by a telephoned message stating that theMarlin had reached Eden and would stay there the night.

Her son and Joe had seen nothing of theDo-me.

At seven-thirty Edward Blade locked his office and went home to find his wife absent and no dinner prepared. He changed into warmer clothes and walked to the headland. The sea was a restless pattern of black and white. The sky was ribbed with black cloud streamers, pointing to where the highlands made a bold silhouette against the sunset glow. The endless procession of rollers, surmounted by a film of spray, swept past the headland into the great bay, their left flanks wheeling into the inner bay to smash with ghastly whiteness against the promontory protecting the river, their centres rushing onward to hurl themselves far up the sand slopes beyond.

Blade’s wife was with Mrs Spinks and Marion. Mrs Blade was almost beside herself, the girl tearfully beseeching her mother to abandon the vigil.

Mrs Spinks was screaming:

“Leave me alone! I’m staying here to see theDo-me come home. I won’t go. I tell you I won’t go down. My Bill’s outthere, and I won’t go home.”

The woman’s appearance shocked Blade. His wife and Marion could do nothing to pacify her, and his own efforts were of no avail. He hurried back for Constable Telfer. They were obliged to use force. All the way down the path to the road Mrs Spinks continued to scream. She screamed until the doctor came to her house and administered morphia.

Flotsam

THE PREDICTIONS of the local weather experts were wrong. On the following morning the sun rose in a clear sky and a light southerly already was having effect on the ugly white-capped rollers. Day was breaking when Joe called his partner to the breakfast he had prepared on a primus stove.

“Weather’s cleared, Jack, me lad,” he announced. “We can get away any time.”

An hour later theMarlin was running up and over thewater mountains , both men standing in the shelter of the glass-fronted structure protecting the wheel and steersman, the cockpit and cabin entrance. The wind was cold. The sea had the appearance of having been washed, for the valleys were dark blue, the mountain crests light blue, and the breakers brilliantly white. Astern, beetling cliffs bore the everlasting attacks of the foaming breakers. Above the cliffs were green caps of grass. Beyondrose dense timber, and farther back the distant blue-black highlands.

Wilton had interviewed the police at Eden-some forty miles south of Bermagui-for possible news of theDo-me. There was no news from ship or shore station, no discovery of any wreckage. In his heart this morning hope was almost dead: in Joe’s heart hope was a corpse.

“She’s foundered, Jack, that’s what she’s done,” he growled, hands lightly resting on the wheel-spokes, teeth biting upon the lacerated stem of one of his two pipes. “All yesterday we looked for theDo-me. Today I reckon we’d better look for oil and flotsam.

Wilton nodded, saying nothing, his eyes stern, his face seemingly fixed into a mask. Presently he passed into the cabin. A glance at his barometer told him that the pressure was steadily rising. He adjusted the engine running to maintain a steady seven knots, greased the bearings of the propeller shaft. On rejoining Joe, he said:

“We’ll look for oil and flotsam. You’re boss today. The general current is setting to the nor’ard. Whend’you reckon it changed?”

“Not till some time after midnight. I was up then and the wind was still easterly.

“Well, I’ll leave the course to you. You’re better able to nut out the currents working south from Swordfish Reef from the time theDo-me was last sighted by theGladious. It would give me a headache, and then I’d be wrong.”

“All right,”assented Joe.

Wilton rolled a cigarette, lit it, inhaled deeply. Then he clambered for’ard past the protruding shelter structure, and stood against the mast, his feet planted far apart. This day he would be the mate and would have to maintain a constant look out, not for a fin but for relics of a tragedy which had surely engulfed his lifelong friend and might engulf his own hopes of happiness centred upon that friend’s sister. He left in charge at the wheel a man whose knowledge of the sea off this coast, its feminine whims and its masculine habits, was almost uncanny. They had looked for theDo-me with more guesswork behind the search than would be employed this day in the hunt for a patch of oil and possible flotsam.

The trawler had vanished, having left for Sydney to unload her catch. The coastal steamer, Cobargo, was coming south to call at Eden, whilst far at sea a trader was making for Melbourne, smoke from her solitary tall stack lying low upon the water astern of her.

Noonday found theMarlin fifteen miles north of Eden and some ten miles off land. The trader had been captured by distance and theCobargo had gone in to Eden to unload and pick up cargo. The sea was empty. Even when theMarlin was atop a water mountain Wilton could see nothing afloat. The rollers were becoming mere swells, shrinking fast under the energetic influence of the low chop set up by the southerly wind.

He went aft to bring back his lunch and tea thermos. He ate whilst sitting on the forward hatch, his gaze never on his food, always on the sea. Once he saw the fin of a mako shark, and now and then a shoal of small fish whip-lashing the surface in frantic effort to escape bigger fish. A school of porpoises came to gambol about the bow, grey-green symbols of streamlined speed.

Having disposed of his lunch, he repacked the basket and took it down below. Only a minute did he give to tending the engine and then gained Joe’s side to take a trick at thewheel.

“Keep her there for a bit,” Joe said. “I’ll go for’ard with me grub and keep a look-out. Might alter course from time to time so’s to come in to the tail of Swordfish Reef from the east. Keep an eye on me.”

Wilton heard him moving heavily beside the shelterstructure, saw him waddling forward to sit on the hatch-covering he had just vacated. Joe’s thin grey hair was whipped by the breeze, but his body seemed as immovable as a rock. He was a man of whom a first impression was always bad and always in error.

In his turn he was repacking his tucker basket when he paused to stare landward, and then to thump the decking with onecalloused hand. Through the glass Wilton saw him pointing to the west. He heard him shouting but could not distinguish the words, and he left the wheel to raise his head above the shelter structure by standing on the gunwale.

“Aireyplane,” shouted Joe, again pointing.

Wilton saw the machine. It was flying low above the sea, and its course quickly informed him that it was on no normal flight. It was searching for theDo-me, or its wreckage.

So the fact of theDo-me ’s disappearance had been broadcast, for the plane must have come down from Sydney. Although it was a twin-engined machine, the pilot was taking a chance by flying so far from land. It was coming towards them now on a straight course; Wilton was able to watch it and steer the launch with his left foot on the wheel-spokes.