Hammond Innes - High Stand

It was the handler who had pulled the dog away, and after that we closed the hatch and went back down the ladder, to lie huddled together on the single berth, Miriam taking the only chair. It was Brian and I who were short of sleep and we left it to her to wake us just before dawn.

The loading went on most of the night. I must have slept some of the time, in spite of my shivering, for I woke just after four in the morning, no sound on board or ashore, only the hum of the generator. They had stopped loading. I switched my torch on, shielding it with my hand. Miriam was asleep in her chair. I pulled the blankets tight around my shoulders, enjoying the warmth, conscious that my clothes were almost dry against my skin and that I was no longer shivering. I would have been asleep again in seconds, but as I snuggled into a tight ball I suddenly realized Brian was no longer in the bunk with me.

I lay there for a moment, reluctant to leave the little oasis of warmth I had created, then I threw the blankets off, felt my way to the ladder and clambered up to peer cautiously out of the deckhouse window. The barge was now almost fully loaded, the logs stacked higher than the deck. The floodlights were still on, but the only sign of life was a man armed with a rifle walking slowly along the quay, the only sound the generator. Beyond the lights the black of the peaks at the head of the inlet stood sharp-etched against a sky that was paling to the approach of dawn, the moon set and the stars less bright.

I couldn’t see Brian anywhere. Had he gone up to the lake? The early hours is not a good time to find oneself alone. Did the silence and emptiness ashore mean the hunt had been called off?

I was just wondering what I would do if he didn’t turn up before dawn broke when his head appeared above the edge of the deck plates, peering cautiously out at the man patrolling the quay. He waited until he was well away from the barge, with his back towards it, then he scrambled onto the deck and dived quickly into the shelter of the wheelhouse. ‘It’s okay’ he said. ‘Iron rungs leading down into the hold and one or two quite sizeable gaps where the logs have been carelessly loaded. We can lay up between them.’

‘They could shift.’ My mind had a sudden terrible vision of what could happen to a human body if we were caught in a seaway on one of the open stretches and those logs started to move.

But he shook his head. ‘They’re too big, and they’re wedged too solid against the side.’

We went back down into the cuddy. Miriam was awake, her eyes wide, almost shocked in the light of my torch. ‘Where’ve you been? I thought — ‘ But then she got a grip on herself. ‘I’d have woken you. It’s not time yet.’

‘Better make the move now,’ Brian said. ‘It’ll get light early this morning.’

It took time to tidy up the place and leave it with no trace of our having occupied it. Dawn had, in fact, broken when all three of us finally made the transfer from wheelhouse to hold. Brian went first, moving slowly, his body no more than a shadow in the paling floodlights. Then Miriam. I followed her, lying sprawled on the deck plates, my legs swung over the edge, feeling for the rungs just under the overhang of the after deck.

It was to clear this overhang that the logs had been loaded so that there was a gap of almost two feet between the butts and the after bulkhead. And because they had been loaded with their tops interlaced in layers, the butts were slightly separated to present a honeycomb effect and, as Brian had said, some of the gaps were quite sizeable though the logs themselves were undoubtedly very firmly wedged.

Down in the hold it was dark and we had to use our torches, swinging our bodies out from the rungs onto the rounded bulk of the logs, each of us worming our way into a separate cavity. We had divided up the little food we had left. I don’t know what the others did, but I ate all of mine in one go. I felt a hearty breakfast would give me strength to cope with whatever the day might bring. But after I had finished it there was nothing else to do and I lay there watching the daylight gradually filter down into the cavernous hold until I could see the shape of the logs, the rough corrugation of the bark and the smooth steel of the rear bulkhead weeping drops of moisture over red flakes of rust.

Time passed slowly. The generator was switched off and after that it was so quiet I could hear water lapping at the hull, the slapping of the house flag on the short mast. Occasionally I thought I heard voices, but so indistinct that I couldn’t hear what was said. About eight a vehicle of some sort moved out of the camp. It sounded like the pick-up. Then all was quiet again.

They made no attempt to load more logs. After a while I saw a foot reach out to the rungs facing the gap where I had wedged myself. It was Brian, and about ten minutes later he climbed back down, leaning his head in towards me. ‘They’ve stopped felling by the look of it. The quay is empty. No logs anywhere. And nobody about. You all right?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What about Miriam?’

His head disappeared and I heard her voice, very low and muffled.

‘She’s okay,’ he said. ‘Two logs away to your right and a little higher. I’m two away from you on the starb’d side.’ And he added, ‘I suggest we all try and get some sleep. And we’d better not talk any more, not until the tug arrives and we get moving. It’s too quiet.’

We had over four hours to wait and in all that time we did not dare climb the rungs to peer out over the edge of the deck. Occasionally we heard voices. Once somebody came on board, moving aft to the wheelhouse and down into the cuddy. I could just hear the sounds of his movement through the after bulkhead. Presumably he was the man who would be on the barge during the tow. After what seemed an age his footsteps sounded on the deck again and he went ashore. I held my breath, but there was no shout of alarm. Apparently he was unaware that the place had been occupied during the night.

I think they were all at breakfast. It was very quiet and to ease my cramped limbs I crawled out as far as the rungs, peering up at the log butts. They had shiny little metal tags hammered into them and as I was trying to decipher the numbers Miriam poked her head out of the cavity to my right, her face very pale against the bark, sawdust clinging to her hair. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I thought I’d make certain they haven’t concealed anything between the logs,’ I told her.

She shook her head. ‘Brian and I checked when it was still dark. You were asleep.’

‘And you found nothing?’

‘No. If the drugs are on board, then they must have been put there before the barge was towed into the Halliday Arm. In which case they’re now in the bottom with the whole cargo of logs on top of them.’

But I thought it unlikely. The previous tow had been loaded and on its way down to Seattle when it had made contact with that other vessel, and anyway, drug enforcement officers would have supervised its unloading. If a consignment of cocaine had been exposed customs and police would have been swarming all over the camp here long before now. Brian joined in the discussion, and it was then, while all three of us were whispering together, that we heard the drone of an engine. It was reflected back from the logs above us, so that it seemed to come from the for’ard end of the barge, but it was increasing all the time and very soon we realized it was a plane flying low up the inlet. It landed quite close to the quay, the engine note dying and then the sudden splash as the floats hit the water.

My first thought was that it might be the police, or maybe Jim Edmundson had returned, but Brian, watching with his head close against the butt end of a log, reported nobody on board the floatplane, only the pilot, and it wasn’t anyone he knew. He was wearing a little round woollen cap knitted in bands of red and black, and when I suggested it made him too conspicuous he pulled it off and rubbed it against the butt of a log so that it became coated in sawdust. When he put it back on, head and face merged with the sawn log-ends behind him.