Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

But by the third day Munnobungle was beginning to get under my skin — the wide skies, the sense of space, and the birds flocking round Deadman’s Hole, a pool in a dry tributary of the Burdekin. It was only 5 miles from the homestead and about the only water I saw on the place. I was riding a horse that day and beginning to understand why Chips had so enjoyed the time he’d spent on the station.

It was my last day there, and that evening I persuaded McIver to drive me over to the hotel at Mushroom Rock on the Burdekin, which was the nearest place I could buy him a beer. I still needed clarification on some of the sale details I had prepared, and I thought it would be easier to discuss them away from the homestead. By then he had become resigned to the inevitable, and we were on reasonably friendly terms, so that when I had got the information I required, I began to tell him about my own problems. I think that was when I first saw him smile. ‘So we’re both of us in the same boat, eh, wondering where the hell we go from here?’

He was no help to me, merely repeating what the estate agents had said, but more colourfully and in greater detail. ‘It’s a tough life, a tough country. No place for a Pommie unless he’s got a helluva lot of capital and doesn’t mind how much he loses.’ When I asked him about the islands, he shrugged. ‘There’s the copper-mining and plantations, that’s about it. Some smart boys, Canadians some of them, are doing well selling to the indigenous population. That’s in PNG, government contracts mainly. It’s what I hear anyway. I never bin there. But I might,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘I might pack it in here and try my luck, ‘cept that I got a family to provide for.’

I told him about the Holland Line then, and asked him whether he knew anything about it, or the family. But he shook his head. ‘There was a Holland on Bougainville became something of a war hero. One of the coast watchers. I remember my father talking about him. Stayed on when all the others had left and fought his own private war.’

‘Was that Colonel Lawrence Holland?’

‘Could be.’ He nodded. ‘He was a colonel, that I do remember.’

‘Did Rowlinson mention a man named Black Holland?’ I asked.

‘Yes, that’s right. He did.’ He frowned. ‘I remember now. He came back full of some story about an aborigine he’d met. Tried to sell him a share in a mine. The Dog Weary gold mine. That was it.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Oh, I don’t recall that. Only the name Black Holland. It seems the abo killed him in a brawl over the ownership of the mine. I remember Rowlinson was full of it at the time, thought it a damned funny story.’ And when I asked him whether the killing had happened locally, he said, ‘Oh, dear, no. Cooktown, I think. Rowlinson had just been to Cooktown to see where Captain Cook had repaired the Endeavour after she’d hit the reef.’

He couldn’t tell me anything more, but when we got back to the homestead and I showed him the letter the stamp dealer in Sydney had given me, he agreed the aborigine’s name might have been Minya Lewis. ‘Reck’n that’s it. Welsh and Cornish miners, they were in on all the gold strikes, and the Palmer River was full of the stuff until the Chinks mined it all out.’

He could tell me nothing more except that there was an amazing graveyard out beyond Cooktown that included a Chinese burial place, also an old Edwardian hotel with frosted glass windows and a large wall painting that included some of the old-timers that still hung around the bar. He had been there only once. Took the wife and kids up there, but it’s a helluva journey unless you fly up with Bush Pilots Airways.’

Had I gone to Cooktown then, I might have had some warning before I got myself involved in the tangled background of the Hollands. As it was, I flew back to Sydney next day knowing nothing about the trail of greed and death that had its origin in the Dog Weary mine, or the relevance of that stamp collection, only that there was probably some connection. I had a window seat, and coming in low over Sydney Harbour Bridge in the late afternoon, the sky clear and the sun just setting, I thought I could see the repair yard where the LCT had been lying. But now there was only a coaster alongside. The plane tilted slightly, giving me a view of the bridge and the whole broad expanse of Port Jackson right out to the Heads. That was when I saw her, a squat little toy of a vessel out beyond Fort Dennison. I thought for a moment I had missed my chance and she had sailed. But as we steadied on our course for the airport on Botany Bay, craning my head, I caught another glimpse of her below the tailplane. I could see the wake then. She wasn’t outward bound. She was heading back into port.

As soon as we landed, I rang the agent. This time I had no trouble, probably because the man who answered was in a hurry to get home. The Perenna had just completed her engine trials. There were still some minor adjustments to be made. These would be carried out tomorrow. She would be taking on cargo Friday morning and sailing for Bougainville that same day. It didn’t give me much time, for I still had the legal side of the Munnobungle sale to deal with, as well as currency and land sale regulations to check. I went straight to my hotel, left my bags and took a taxi to Observatory Park, where I knew I would have a good view of the dock area.

It was a cold, very clear evening, and from the steps above Kent Street I looked across Darling Harbour to wharves thick with shipping and more vessels anchored off in the dark expanse of water. It was some time before I picked her out. She was half hidden by a big container ship, just her bows showing, and then she was completely lost to sight, for the container ship was under way with two tugs in attendance.

When the container ship was clear, I could see her plainly, small and slab-sided among the freighters over towards Peacock Point. There were no taxis, and it was a long walk across Pyrmont Bridge to the dock area and the gate leading on to the wharves. I was almost an hour wandering about under the stars among ships and cranes and the blank walls of the storage sheds before I was lucky enough to find a launch lying alongside some steps out by Donkey Island. It was taking on the crew of a Japanese freighter anchored off, and the coxs’n, who spoke a few words of English, agreed to drop me off at the LCT. It was just on eight when we left, a stiff breeze blowing up the harbour and all of us huddled under the canopy. He made for his own ship first, and when we were alongside, there was a great sorting out of packages and souvenirs before the crew members finally went chattering like a group of starlings up the gangway. ‘Your ship ex-war?’ the coxs’n asked me, his teeth showing in a grin.

‘Not my ship,’ I told him.

‘You visit?’

I nodded, and he turned the launch towards the LCT, now only three or four cables away. ‘How you get shore?’ he shouted above the sound of the engine and the crash of the bows.

‘They’ll have a boat.’

‘No boat.’

I didn’t say anything, watching as we approached the familiar shape of her. She looked even older than when I had seen her last, the paint flaking from her flat side, the letters HOLLAND LINE showing red and streaked with rust in the glimmer of the shore lights, and her plates all buckled by years of work. And then that name again as we rounded the stern to come alongside under her lee.

No gangway, and no sign of anybody on board, only a light high up in the bridge housing aft. It came from what used to be the wardroom. I hailed her, but there was no reply. A rope ladder lay flat against her side, and I seized hold of it as the launch bumped. ‘You send a signal Yamagata ,’ the little coxs’n said, ‘I come take you shore.’