Arthur Upfield - The Mystery of Swordfish Reef

A Calm Day

A DEPRESSION which had been hesitant to move on from the south-eastern coast of Australia, and thereby had for a period of days sent mountainous seas crashing against the rock-armoured headland protecting the township of Bermagui, finally passed away over the Southern Tasman Sea. Its influence rapidly waning, the wind shifted to the north, the spring sunshine became warm, the grassy slopes back from the river gleamed like velvet, and Jack Wilton and his partner, Joe Peace, continued their work on the hull of theMarlin.

At high tide a week earlier the sleek ocean launch had been hauled to the foot of a narrow beach well inside the river’s mouth. Like many rivers along this coast the Bermaguee has teeth in its mouth in the shape of a bar, a bar perfectly safe to navigate in all weather save when the easterly gales roar across the great bay into which flows the river. The bar is something of a dividing line: outside it is the ocean, a despot of capricious moods; inside it the river provides shelter for many fishing launches, their slender jetty, a huge fish-trap, and migrating birds.

Although the tuna season was in full swing, Wilton had taken the opportunity provided by a week’s gap in his engagements with anglers to clean and treat the hull of his twenty-eight-foot-long marine engine-driven launch. After the tuna season would follow the more important swordfishing season, lasting from December to April. There would be little chance for a clean-up then; besides, at the end of long days at sea the anglers liked to be speedily taken back to port.

Work on theMarlin was completed this calm day the third of October; at midnight when the tide was high the craft would be refloated and taken to her berth at the jetty. Of the dozen launches that lay o’nights against this splinter of iron-bolted baulks of timber, eight had been there all this day. The other four had taken anglers to sea after the vast shoals of tuna and kingfish, anglers who came from Melbourne and Sydney, and as far afield as New Zealand, England and America.

The two men at work on theMarlin were unable to see the river’s mouth and the bar hidden from them by the low promontory protecting river and estuary. They could see a stretch of the straggling settlement of Bermagui. The main part of the township nestled in the lee of a greater headland that, like the smaller one guarding the river, pointed northward along the coast. They were able to observe the truck being driven along the road to Cobargo, see it stop at the shore end of the jetty, observe two men step from it. Even at this distance they could recognize the owner of the garage, Mr Parkins, who was the assistant weight recorder to the honorary secretary of the Bermagui Big Game Anglers’ Club, Mr Edward Blade, who now accompanied him.

“First of the launches must be coming in,” remarked Jack Wilton, owner of theMarlin.

Joe, his mate, stared from beneath bushy grey eyebrows at the two weight recorders now walking along the jetty to its seaward extremity where was erected the beam to take the scales and fish. Two women stood talking to a launch-man on his craft, and several day visitors followed the weight recorders.

“Likely enough to have been a good day out there,” Joesaid, his voice deep and penetrating even in the open. “I think this job will do for another nine months.”

He was a ponderous man, this Joseph Peace. His movements were sluggish and deliberate-until agility was demanded of him when theMarlin was bucking like a cork on a mill-race. The curious could not have discovered anyone in Bermagui who had ever seen Joe wearing either a hat or boots. Memory would have had to be placed on the rack to recall having seen Joe freshly shaven. The half-inch stubble of greyish beard seemed permanently halted in growth, but to balance this oddity his complexion defied the tanning effects of sun and wind; which was more than could be said of his dungaree trousers and the woollen pullover that betrayed many harsh washings. His small grey eyes were at the moment calm from mental contentment, and the strong and stubby fingers went downward to draw from the leather belt about his vast waist one of the two wooden pipes invariably carried there. Slowly, he said:

“TheDo-me might go on the market if Mr. Ericson buys land here, and builds himself a house and buys himself a launch for Bill Spinks to run for him year in and year out.”

Brown eyes surveyed Joe quizzingly, brown eyes set in an alert brown face. Jack Wilton was young and strong and lithe, of average height, and as clean as the sea which was as much part of his existence as the air. Joe became a little truculent.

“Well, if it turns out as you say Marion Spinks says so, Bill Spinks won’t have no more use for theDo-me.”

“Perhaps not, Joe. Supposing Marion’s right? Supposing Ericson does buy that land and builds a home on it, supposing he does buy himself a good launch and hires Bill permanently to run it for him: supposing Ma Spinks and Marion moves out of their house and goes to live with Ericson, Ma to cook and Marion to housemaid; and supposing that Bill does think he won’t have use for theDo-me and decides to sell her, what makes you think you’ll do better as her owner than you’re doing as my mate?”

The clear brown eyes had become stern and the old grey eyes shifted their gaze back again to the jetty.

“Might,” Joe answered.

“You wouldn’t,” Wilton assured him earnestly. “Running a fishing launch is the same as running a farm or a business. You’ve got to put back into her a lot of what you take out of her. You’re too easy-going, Joe. You’d take all out of theDo-me and put nothing into her as repairs and overhaul. You wouldn’t escape worrying, Joe. As my mate you don’t have to do any worrying at all, and you don’t have to put back into theMarlin anything of the quarter-share you take out of her. Besides, Joe, we’ve been mates for a long time.”

Grey eyes determinedly gazed at the jetty. A grunt was born deep in the massive chest beneath the blue pullover. Quite abruptly the grey eyes moved their gaze to cross swords with the brown eyes, blinked, and then as abruptly shifted back again to the jetty.

“Ha-well! Reckon you’re right-about us being mates for a long time, an’ about me being too easy to make money like an owner,” Joe agreed, still truculent.“Any’ow, where’d you be if I did have a launch of me own? Lost, that’s what you’d be. All you know about this coast, and the fish swimming off it, is what I’ve taught you, you young, jumped-up, jackanapes.”

“Agreed, Mr Know-all.”

“What’s that?”

Wilton laughed, white teeth flashing in the amber of his face, and Joe snorted and mumbled something like:

“Know-all! Me? Too right I know all there’s to know about this coast and the ruddy sea.” Then more distinctly, he added: “Well, do we stay here till the tide’s high, or do we go ’ome for some tucker?”

“Home and tucker it is, mate-o’-mine.”

“Mate-o’-mine!”Joe echoed, witheringly. “You’re going to the pitchers too much, that’s what you’re doing. There’s theGladious first home.”

Into their view slid a roomy launch, its white hull and brown-painted shelter-structure protecting the wheel and the cabin entrance. The owner was steering, and in the cockpit two anglers were dismantling their gear.

Joe and Wilton stepped into their dinghy and Joe rowed round the stern of theGladious, as she drew alongside the head of the jetty to permit her catch to be weighed, and pulled in alongside an ancient tub which provided a step upward to the jetty. They were watching the heavy tuna being weighed, their interest in fish eternal, when a smart craft hove into sight beyond the bar. TheEdith was gently lifted higher than the river, appeared to be powered by a force much stronger than her engine which rushed her forward over the bar and then deserted her. Like a gull shecame swimming towards the jetty. Behind her, still to cross the bar, was a heavier craft named theSnowy.