Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

I left him then to find the wardroom empty, breakfast already over and the table littered with the remains of the meal. I was tired and didn’t feel like food anyway. I slipped down the companionway to the main deck, got a mug of tea from the galley and took it to my cabin, turning in straight away. Holland was having a long lie-in in preparation for the night ahead, and I was due on the bridge again at noon.

Luke called me a little before twelve so that I had time to eat before going on watch. There was nobody else in the wardroom, and Samson, the big, burly steward, served me in lonely splendour. When I finally joined Luke in the wheelhouse, I found the weather had deteriorated. There was no sign of the coast now, visibility down to about 2 miles. ‘This evening I think it rain,’ he said.

‘You’ve got a new forecast, have you?’

He shook his head, laughing. ‘Don’t need forecast to tell me what this weather will be. I know.’

I was to discover that in this, and in many other things, his instinct was infallible. But he knew nothing about sorcery, or pretended not to, though he admitted it existed and that it was still practised in the islands. Talking to him, I found him a complicated mixture of pride and diffidence. He was also one of the most likeable men I had ever met.

He relieved me again at four, and by then there were rain clouds building up to the east of us. ‘Compass course is due north,’ I said, ‘and the radar shows the coast six-and-a-half miles off. Have you had some tea?’

‘No, I have coffee.’

I got some tea from the galley and took it up to the wardroom. There was nobody there, and when I had finished it, I started on a tour of the ship. It was the first opportunity I had had to look around. I started with the engine-room. They were still clearing up after the overhaul, but already the copper and brasswork gleamed and the whole hot mass of machinery had a cared-for look. The chief engineer was from Rabaul, an old grey-haired man who introduced himself as Ahab Holtz. Of mixed German blood, and German-trained, he was a cheerful, friendly man, and his regard for his engines was in the nature of a love affair. The others in the engine-room were different. They were from Buka, and I was unpleasantly conscious of the sullenness of their manner.

Outside of the engine-room the ship was in a poor state, dirt and rust everywhere and no sign of anything having been painted for a long time. Even essential gear looked neglected, and nothing seemed to have been done to clean up on deck after the period in dock. The galley on the main deck of the bridge housing was far from clean, and in the crew’s mess for’ard I sensed that same sullenness. They were most of them from Buka, and the coxs’n was there with them, a squat bearded man, the skin of his face so glossy black it looked like polished ebony. He said his name was Teopas, and when I asked him why he didn’t stick to his own mess aft, he affected not to understand, though I learned later he had been to school at a Marist Mission and spoke quite good English. I told him to come with me and check some of the things that urgently needed attention, but he just stood there staring at me with surly insolence, not saying a word, and the devil of it was there was no way I could enforce the order.

I went aft then to what had been the sergeants’ mess, which was where he should have been. The only occupant was the bos’n and when I asked him about the attitude of the Buka men, he said, ‘Buka bilong Solomons. No laikim Papua Niugini gavman. Buka pipal laik ind’pendence. Bougainville tu.’ He was from Kieta, and he said something about his father’s having been killed by the Australians during the war. At least, I think it was that. He said, ‘ Papa bilong mi and ol Australia maikim dai .’

Finally I went up to my cabin feeling distinctly uneasy. A ship with a political bombshell ticking away in its guts, that wasn’t what I had been looking for when I had come out to her in Darling Harbour. As I lay on my bunk, thinking about it, it was hard to realise it was only thirty-six hours since I had come on board.

I was back on the bridge at 20.00 after a greasy, overdone steak, apple pie and coffee. Holland was there, pacing restlessly back and forth. Nobody else except the helmsman. ‘We’re closing the coast now,’ he said. ‘I altered course about an hour and a half back, shortly after we came on to the continental shelf. I’m not sure, but I think I’ve got the loom of Double Island light fine on the port bow. We’re in sixty-five fathoms at the moment. When you get below thirty fathoms, put the engines at Slow Ahead and give me a call.’

‘What’s your ETA at the beach?’ I asked him.

‘Between midnight and o-four-hundred was what I told them. I guess we should be there about o-one-hundred, probably a little before.’ He went over to the chart. ‘That’s our position.’ He had pencilled in a cross with 20.00 against it. ‘When you raise the light keep it fine on the port bow, and whatever the depth call me at twenty-three-thirty. We should be less than an hour’s run from the beach then.’ He turned to me with a quick, nervous smile. ‘I hope you’re enjoying yourself. It’s a great help to have you on board, and I’m grateful.’

I nodded. ‘Glad I’m of use.’ I turned to him then, and the smile faded as I said, ‘There’s just one thing. Those two trucks you’re lifting off the beach, what’s in them?’

‘I don’t think that need concern you.’ His tone was abrupt, slightly defensive.

‘That depends,’ I said. ‘You’re loading off a deserted beach at night, no Customs Officer present, and if it’s contraband …’

‘The cases will be Customs-sealed, papers, everything dealt with.’

‘Yes, but what’s in them?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’

‘Does that mean you don’t know? You’re accepting cargo off a deserted beach and you don’t know what it is?’

He stared at me uneasily, then turned away. ‘It’s simply to save them trucking it all the way down to Sydney.’

‘You could have picked it up at Brisbane.’

‘I don’t know why they chose this method,’ he said irritably. ‘I didn’t fix it. But I need that extra cargo to cover my fuel bills.’

‘If you didn’t fix it, who did?’

‘My partner.’

‘Through your agents in Sydney?’

‘It’ll be on the manifest. I don’t know what agent he used.’

‘And you don’t know what the cargo is.’

He turned on me then. ‘Look, Mr Slingsby, either you’re a passenger on my ship or you’re acting first officer. Whichever it is, you’re under my orders. The cargo is nothing to do with you. But if you feel there’s something wrong, then there’s nothing to stop you going ashore as soon as we’re on the beach and the ramp down.’ He was facing me, his head down, his voice trembling on a high note. ‘It’s up to you,’ he added, and went quickly out as though afraid I’d persist with my questions.

I stood there for a moment, staring at the chart and thinking over what he had said. I was certain that there was something illegal about those trucks. All the time I had been questioning him I had sensed his doubt. But, as he had said, no reason why I should be a party to it. I was free to walk off the ship as soon as we reached the beach, except that I had radioed that message to his sister. ‘Kepten!’ The helmsman was pointing. ‘Lukluk, Kepten. Double Island lait.’

I picked up the glasses and went out to the bridge wing. The night was very dark. Away to the north a flash of lightning lit the low cloud base. It was some time before I saw it, picking up the flash as the old tub crested a swell. It was too low on the horizon for positive identification, but it couldn’t be anything else. During the next half-hour the echo-sounder recorded a gradual decrease in depth, finally steadying at between 39 and 34 fathoms. By then the light was very clear. But during the next hour it became increasingly difficult to see as rain came in from the north, very heavy at times so that it even blurred the trace of the coast I was getting on the radar screen. At 23.30 I called Holland. We were then in 32 fathoms, the indistinct radar trace showing us 6 miles off.