Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

‘What’s that mean?’ I asked Holtz.

‘Trouble.’ He stared at me, his eyes hostile. ‘Did you know what we were shipping off that beach?’

‘Not until early this morning.’

‘So, it is you who break open those crates.’ He seemed relieved. ‘I thought perhaps you were on board as an agent-’ He gave me a little apologetic smile. ‘My engine-room is full of rumours this morning.’

‘You mentioned trouble. What sort of trouble?’

He shook his head, wiping his moustache and getting to his feet. ‘Maybe it is nothing.’ And he muttered a formal apology, escaping back to his engines.

Shelvankar, too, got to his feet, excusing himself. ‘I must go to the radio.’

As soon as I had finished breakfast, I went along to the wheelhouse. Holland wasn’t there, only Luke and the helmsman. At the far end of the tank deck I could see several of the crew standing by the trucks. ‘There are four now,’ Luke said. ‘All Buka men.’

‘Has Captain Holland been down there?’ I asked him.

‘Yes. He talk to them. But they don’t let him go near.’ And he added, ‘Is it true, Mr Sling’by, that you and Miss Holland find guns in those trucks?’ I nodded, and I heard his breath sucked in between his big white teeth. ‘Tha’s bad.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’ know. The war, I think. There was a bad war in the islands, very bad on Bougainville and Buka. The Japanese, the Americans, the Australians, they bring so much Cargo.’ He didn’t say anything more, staring morosely through the porthole, and when I asked him to explain the significance of that word ‘Cargo’, he gave a high, nervous laugh. ‘All Buka people laik Cargo. My people also. But Buka people, they laik very much because their ancestors send it to them from across the sea.’ He gave a shrug, laughing nervously again. ‘Is what they believe.’

I went over to the chart table and stared at the pencilled cross that marked our 08.00 position. We were already more than halfway across the Solomon Sea. Soon the high mountains of Bougainville would show up on the radar. I turned to Luke again. He was still gazing nervously for’ard at the tank deck. ‘Have we any weapons up here or in the officers’ cabins?’

He shook his head. ‘I not seen any.’

And two truckfuls down there. I left him then and went to my cabin. The sun streamed in through the porthole, the small space hot and stuffy. I hesitated, but I knew rest would be impossible, so I went down the alleyway, past the empty wardroom, to what had once been the quarters for tank officers and other Service passengers. I pushed open the door. The same two-tier bunks and McAvoy lying there unshaven, his clothes piled in a heap on the upper berth, and a stale, old man’s smell pervading the cabin. His eyes were open, pale moonstones in rheumy sockets, the whites still bloodshot. ‘Come in and shut the door. That galley stinks.’

I sat myself down on the bunk opposite. I don’t think he had been drinking, but his eyes looked vacant, staring into space, and when I asked him about the Cargo Cult, he didn’t seem to hear me. ‘You read much?’ he asked.

‘A little.’

He nodded. ‘Thought mebbe you did. Myself, I never had the time. But there’s a writer man buried out here. On Upolu. I’ve climbed to the top of the hill overlooking the sea and seen his gravestone. Home is the sailor, home from sea. That’s what he wrote for them to put on it.’

‘Stevenson,’ I said.

‘Aye, that’s the man.’ He pulled himself up by his elbows till he was sitting propped up against the soiled pillow. ‘Care for a drink?’

I shook my head. ‘I’ve only just had breakfast.’

‘That’s when you need it.’ He looked vaguely round the room, his eyes fastening on the locker below the porthole. ‘You’ll find a bottle and some glasses yonder. Pour me a dram, will you, and help yourself or not as you please.’ I got the bottle out, and as I poured him a drink, he went on, speaking slowly, ‘I’ve been thinking about that poet in his island grave. If they buried me at sea now … Just give it to me neat, will you? Burial at sea, I’ve never really liked the thought of that.’

I helped myself to a drink while he rambled on about death and not giving it a thought until he was damned near sixty. ‘When you’re young, somehow it don’t seem very important. Just a fact of life. But dying …’ He was staring dully at the porthole where the sun blazed in a blue sky. ‘I was on a dhow once, in the Red Sea. We had gold on board and we were pirated. Threw the nakauda and his crew overboard to the sharks, all except me. I was just a kid bumming my way from place to place. White, not Arab, so they figured I’d do as a hostage if they got caught. Missed India by a full point, hit the Maldives instead. That was my first experience of coral, wrecked on the outer reef of Suvadiva. But it never worried me.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Got picked up by a vedi on its way back from Java to Addu Atoll.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Death never worried me, then or later. I didn’t give it a thought until the Old Man went … ’

Silence then, his neck showing white crease-lines, his Adam’s apple moving as he swallowed. ‘Never gave it a thought,’ he muttered again. ‘You leave it that late an’ it suddenly hits you. Wondering what it’s all about — life, death, the whole pointless bag of tricks. I lie here thinking … Then, by Christ, I need another drink.’ He held his glass out, and as I filled it, he said, ‘Wondering what to do about those Buka boys and their Cargo, are you?’

‘You’ve heard then?’

He nodded. ‘Perenna. She woke me in the middle of the night to tell me.’ He leaned forward suddenly, spilling his drink. ‘Leave them be, Slingsby. That’s what I told Perenna. Now I’m telling you. It’s Cargo. You try getting it away from them, and they’ll turn nasty.’ I asked what was meant by the words ‘Cargo Cult’, and he began telling me about the missionaries and how the ships that had supplied them from Europe and America were responsible for it all. ‘It was Cargo, from out of the sea. How would the islanders know where it came from? They got the new God mixed up with their old religion of ancestor worship an’ came to believe that if it worked for the missionaries, then why shouldn’t it work for them? That’s how it started.’ He leaned forward, hunched over his knees, holding his glass carefully. ‘Missionaries! They’re half the damned trouble.’ He didn’t like missionaries. He was an atheist himself. ‘They only got themselves to blame …’ He went into a long tirade, his words confused and difficult to follow. Then suddenly he said, ‘Pako. That was the fellow’s name. He started the Cargo Cult on Buka, and it spread to Bougainville. And Muling. Muling was the original Cult wizard.’

‘When was that?’ I asked.

‘Oh, a long time ago. Before the Kaiser’s war. The Germans held Bougainville then. But the second war, that’s what really did it. First the Nips, then the Americans, finally the Australians. Can you blame them? All those ships stuffed with everything they’d ever dreamed of.’ He gave a low, cackling laugh. ‘Jesus! It’s a funny world. War material sent by God. And if you believe your ancestors make just as good gods, then why the hell shouldn’t they deliver the goods to their own descendants?’

That was when I asked him about the welfare society Perenna had mentioned. ‘It was a co-operative, wasn’t it?’

He didn’t say anything for a long time, sitting there, nursing his drink, staring at nothing. Then at length, he mumbled the name. ‘Hahalis Welfare Society. I saw the start of that.’ He was speaking very slowly, his voice barely audible. ‘There was a woman, in a village just north of Hahalis. I was there when those two young devils, Hagi and Teosin, abandoned their Mission schooling and came back with their heads stuffed full of the business methods they’d picked up. Communism, and baby gardens to increase the working population!’ A long pause; then he said, ‘But Cargoism was a fact of life in the islands long before the war. When I first joined the Holland Line …’ He was nodding to himself. ‘And he was in it up to his neck, of course.’