Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

Alone, I paced back and forth, thinking about Holland’s problems, wondering where his sister was, vague fantasies flitting through my mind. Oddly enough, it was those damned stamps and the fate of the Holland Trader that were the recurring theme of my thoughts. There had to be some connection, some connection that was relevant, not just to what had happened in 1911, but to now , to this ship, to Jona Holland, Perenna, that wretched arrowhead, all those masks and pictures in the Aldeburgh house.

My brain went round and round, chewing at it like a mincing machine, like the echo-sounder interminably making its trace. Periodically I stood watching it, half mesmerised — 22 fathoms, 21, 24, 18, 20 … and then I would go out on to the bridge wing, take a bearing with the hand compass on the Double Island light, now barely showing above the horizon. And all the time my mind half occupied with strange thoughts that gradually resolved themselves into the conviction that what had happened to the Holland Trader would happen to the Perenna , that we’d mysteriously disappear to become a ghost ship, a latter-day Flying Dutchman damned for ever to steam the South West Pacific, always heading for Bougainville and the Buka Passage, but never making it. Lost in the Coral Sea — 19 fathoms, 20, 18, 17 … I was back at the echo-sounder but couldn’t remember how I got there. A coral reef? But that would have left her a wreck with at least her mast and her upper works showing. A volcanic disturbance? That would account for it. And there was a volcano on Bougainville, something about Rabaul also; hadn’t it been half destroyed about the turn of the century? Or the sea cocks, perhaps they had been opened, in error, or purposely. There could have been an explosion in the engine-room, boilers bursting, something that had blown a hole in her bottom. But the stamps. And that cover. There would have been a letter inside it. What the hell had it said? To get that stamp, the man must have been on board the ship, and I wondered whether that half-breed aborigine up in Cooktown still had the letter or could remember what it said. Even if he couldn’t read, his mother might have told him. I wished Perenna Holland were here. So many questions, and the need of somebody to talk to, somebody to share the half-formed fears that had begun to take root in my imagination.

‘Lait, Kepten.’

I turned, peering vaguely towards the helmsman, my eyes barely open, my thoughts still confused. ‘Where? On the port bow?’ But the Sandy Cape light was still 50 miles away.

‘Lukluk!’ He was pointing to starboard.

I saw it then, two tiny pinpoints widely separated. A ship south-bound down the coast. I noted it in the log, and the time, which was 03.47. Only another thirteen minutes before I called Holland. Watching the slowly changing bearing of that ship gave me something to occupy my mind, and ten minutes later I went to Holland’s cabin and gave him a shake. He started up abruptly, his eyes looking wild. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘Your watch,’ I said.

He shook his head, smiling thinly, his hair hanging over his eyes limp with sweat. ‘Dreaming.’ He pushed his hand up over his face. ‘I dreamed we were aground and then … ’ He shook his head again. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Just coming up to o-four-hundred.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll be glad of some air.’ He swung his legs off the bunk and sat there staring at me. ‘You all right?’

‘Tired, that’s all. Everything’s okay. We’re in seventeen fathoms with the coast about eight miles off.’ I left him then, and a few minutes later he came into the wheelhouse, his hair slicked back and looking fresher. The helmsman had already been relieved and I didn’t linger.

Back in my cabin I didn’t bother to switch on the light, undressing quickly, dumping my clothes on the foot of the bunk. And then, as I went to get into it, my bare feet stumbled against something on the floor. I just managed to save myself, cursing, my hand on the bunk and something moving under it. Then the bunk reading light went on, and I was standing there in my vest and pants, staring at her stupidly. She was sitting up, the orange-red hair falling across her face, her eyes blinking in the light. ‘Sorry if I startled you.’ She wasn’t wearing much, some sort of a slip, and she was smiling a little uncertainly. ‘I borrowed your bunk. I was a bit tired. I hope you don’t mind.’

I shook my head, still feeling dazed. It was her bag I had stumbled against. ‘How did you get here? You weren’t at the beach.’

‘Yes, I was. I was on that first truck. You talked to the driver, remember? I kept low because I was afraid Jona would send me ashore if he knew.’

‘You were taking a chance with a man like that,’ I muttered, remembering the hard-bitten face, that crack about a harem. She laughed and shook her head, her hand reaching up to a leather thong round her neck. ‘How did you persuade him to smuggle you on board?’

I don’t know what she replied, I was too astonished at the sight of her sitting up in my bunk, the freckled face still flushed with sleep, her hair a tousled mop, and dangling from its thong like a barbaric pendant between those thrusting breasts a native knife in a worn leather sheath. ‘I was quite safe, you see.’ She was smiling at me. ‘You look almost as shocked as that Aussie driver.’ She slipped it back and said in that husky voice, ‘Buka isn’t quite the same as Aldeburgh, you know.’ She pulled the coverings back, shifting herself close against the partition. ‘Come on. You’d better get some sleep. You’re almost dead on your feet.’

‘I’ll take one of the blankets and kip down in the wardroom,’ I told her.

‘No. That would look odd.’ She didn’t want her brother to know she was on board until we were clear of the coast. I was looking around, wondering where else I could put myself in that tiny cabin when she said, ‘Don’t be silly. Are you afraid I’ll seduce you? You look too tired for that. I know I am. I worked till I dropped on that cruise ship, every day an endless delay, thinking of Tim all the time, wondering … And the men on board,’ she added, seeing me still hesitating, ‘I’ve had all the men I need for the moment.’

The brazenness of her admission shocked me more than the knife. ‘You mean you’ve been sleeping-’ I checked myself. It was none of my business who she slept with. ‘I’m sorry.’

She laughed, an angry snort. ‘What did you expect on a cruise?’ Her tone was one of contempt. ‘And after being cooped up in that house, I’d have had every justification — except that I had other things on my mind.’ She patted the bunk. ‘Now come on. You look silly standing there in your underclothes.’

There was just room on the bunk, and she had no intention of vacating it. I was too tired to argue. I got in beside her and was instantly aroused by the warmth of her body close against my back. ‘I haven’t thanked you,’ she said. I could feel her hair against the back of my neck, the soft whisper of her breath, and I thought she said something about her brother, but I lost it, my brain gone blank, my body tumbling into sleep.

When I woke, sunlight was streaming in through the porthole, and somebody was calling, ‘Breakfast.’ I sat up, and there she was, fully clothed, opening the door. McAvoy came in with a tray, his hands trembling and the cups rattling. He put it down on the shelf table, then looked at me, his bloodshot eyes creased up in his wizened face. ‘I wouldn’t be doing this for anyone but Perenna, you understand.’ He turned to her. ‘He’s asleep now, so you can move around the ship without his knowing. By the time he wakes for his midday meal we’ll be a good twenty miles clear of the coast. You can tell him then.’