Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

I nodded and went into the wheelhouse. Luke was already there, looking sullen. ‘You take her out,’ I said to give him something to keep him occupied. One of the Buka crewmen was standing beside the helmsman with a machine pistol gripped in both hands, the same man who had let loose that shattering deadly burst of fire. There would be another in the engine-room; even the men hauling in the warps were armed.

The time was 03.21 as we steamed out of Anewa Bay, the stars still bright, the sea calm with a light breeze from the north-east. We cleared Bara shoal on a backbearing, passed the Takanupe light close to port, and quarter of an hour later, we were out through the gap between the Kuruki and Banaru reefs and had turned on to our course of 325° to pick up Cape L’Averdy at the north-eastern end of Bougainville. The black outline of the mountainous spine of the island was clear against the stars, and in less than an hour we could identify the volcanic mass of Bagana and the higher peak of Balbi beyond it.

In ordinary circumstances it would have been a night to dream about, the sea so quiet and the ship ploughing serenely through the diamond-bright velvet of the darkness under the Southern Cross. But the armed crewman in the wheelhouse, the others on the catwalks, the mob of captives huddled like slaves on the tank deck … everywhere I looked there was something to remind me of the situation we had left behind. The simplicity of it, the speed, the organisation! In just a few hours it had all been over, the copper mine unprepared and held in pawn, the Administration, all the services, taken over, the airport out of action. An armed landing at Kieta or Anewa, anywhere along the coast, would be met now by a warning that the lives of Australian and other expatriates would be at risk. And Perenna and her brother, would they be at risk, too? Were they now hostages for the safe delivery of my human cargo to that island off the Queen Carola anchorage?

I learned a lot about myself that night, my mood introspective, which is something quite unnatural to me. Normally I act without too much thought, taking things as they come. But now there was Perenna. For the first time in my life I was emotionally involved with another human being, and it made a difference — made me think.

In the darkened silence of the wheelhouse, the course set and nothing else to do but let thoughts chase one another through my mind, I found myself in a state of uncertainty. I knew I ought to do something, try to gain control of the ship, free the human cargo. It was Perenna’s ship as much as her brother’s, her name on the stern, her capital locked up in it. But then there were moments when I was able to persuade myself that the whole thing was a political matter where the divisions between right and wrong are blurred and principles depend upon circumstances. When a man like Hans Holland takes the plunge, risking all on one wild attempt to alter the balance of forces to his personal advantage, then I suppose there are always people like me who will throw overboard any principle they ever had in the hope of bettering themselves.

Oh yes, I learned a lot about myself in the small hours of that calm, quiet night.

But then Teopas had the three bodies thrown over the side, an action that altered my perspective, so that as the night wore on, sleepily steaming along the coast of that high-backed Pacific island, my mind dwelt more and more on the heroics of action, weaving fantasies that had no basis of reality. I knew damn well I wasn’t going to do anything heroic. I was going to drift along with events, deliver those poor devils to Hetau and steam back again, hoping there’d be something in it for myself, and without too much risk.

I tried to pretend that it was because I didn’t care who ruled Bougainville, that I was just a visitor caught up in something that didn’t concern me. Why should I stick my neck out when for all I knew the Buka people, and those Bougainvilleans who supported them, had right on their side? But deep in my guts I knew it wasn’t that. There was a side of my nature that said, Make the most of it, seize the opportunity. I could just see myself captain of a big ore carrier making the run up to Japan or across the Pacific to California with a shipload of concentrates. That side of me admired what Hans Holland was doing, admired his determination, his ruthlessness, his efficiency. And in a few years I could be Marine Superintendent, in charge of a whole fleet of ships. Why not?

Dreams, all dreams, fantasies woven by a tired brain. I was just a pawn, useful to replace a man who had drunk himself into a stupor rather than do what I was doing. I could use a landing craft man. He hadn’t said anything about ore carriers, only that it was a chance to become part of something big. So why build castles? My eyes were closed, and I was rocking on my feet, thinking suddenly of Perenna, the flash of anger and despair as I had asked the price of cooperation. If I did what I was told and stayed with Hans Holland, would she stay, too? Would she accept it? For the sake of the Holland Line, her brother — me? And there was Hans. Hans with his boundless vitality, his essential male dominance. I thought of that wretched little house and shuddered. The first masterful man she had met in ages and she had fallen flat on her back with her brother lying desperately ill in the next room. I pictured that scene, that bed, the mask hanging over them.

A hand was tugging at my arm, and I opened my eyes. It was Luke. ‘Cape L’Averdy,’ he said.

I went to the porthole, my eyes wide, peering into the night ahead. The stars were paling over the mountains. Dawn was approaching. ‘There!’ A flash low down on the horizon. I counted six, and it came again, almost dead ahead and the ship’s bows swinging across it. I checked the course and then handed over to him, telling him to wake me when we were abreast of the Cape, which would be about 08.00. There would just be time for both of us to get a couple of hours’ sleep before we started the run through the Buka Passage.

In the alleyway a guard sat with his machine pistol resting on his knees, his back propped against my cabin door. He was a young man, his eyes closed, sleeping peacefully, and I hesitated, suddenly alert as I considered whether I could get the pistol from him. But his hand was on the butt, and as I moved softly towards him, some animal instinct seemed to trigger off the mechanism of his body, his dark eyelids flicking open. In one quick, flowing movement he was on his feet, wild-eyed and the gun pointing, his finger on the trigger.

I smiled at him, holding my hands wide, and went through into my cabin. It was hot and I was tired, but sleep didn’t come easily, my mind active. I was thinking of the Buka Passage, all that had happened there during the war, and the Hollands, that house of theirs on the island of Madehas, wishing Perenna were with me, that this was a different sort of voyage and we could stop for her to show it to me. But then, of course, the memories of her grandfather, and of the yearly visits made when she was a child, were now overlaid by the tragedy of her mother’s death. The Passage, Madehas, Kuamegu in Papua New Guinea — all the past of the Hollands. And that house in Aldeburgh, The Passage — was that nostalgia, or had the name some deeper significance? Four hours and I would be in the Passage. There, somewhere, I felt, must lie the key to the chequered past of this strange family.

An hour later the cook woke me. What was he supposed to do about feeding the men on the tank deck? He hadn’t enough bread, and to give them all something would just about clean him out. Could we purchase food for the voyage back at Chinaman’s Quay? I told him to check with Shelvankar, then remembered Hans Holland had taken the little Indian off the ship. ‘Do the best you can,’ I said, adding, ‘Use the lot if you have to. The crew can go short.’ He was from the Mortlocks, and he nodded, smiling. Though as black as the Buka men, he was not in sympathy with them.