02 South Sea Adventure (9 page)

‘No. I’ll stay here to put the Lively Lady in shape. Hal will do his own navigating.’

Brady looked at Hal with new admiration. ‘Explorer -scientist - and now navigator. You’re doing pretty well for a young fellow.’

Hal reddened. Praise embarrassed him. And he didn’t quite like being referred to as a young fellow. What if he was a bit younger than Brady, he was bigger and stronger and learning as fast as he could. ‘I’m afraid I’m still pretty green on navigation,’ he admitted. ‘But perhaps I have enough of it for a short trip.’

I’m sure you have,’ said Brady cordially. ‘It’s too bad our police have had to deprive you of one of your crew.’

Hal understood that he was speaking of Crab. ‘I wouldn’t have taken him anyhow,’ he said. ‘And he’d be no use to me,’ said Captain Ike vigorously.

‘I don’t know why I ever took him on in San Francisco. He came highly recommended. But was as lazy as a sea slug, as sour as a crab-apple, and always making trouble.’

‘Well then,’ said Brady, ‘he ran true to form when he likkered up our natives. Our regulations are very strict on that point. So when the missionary notified us…’

Hal saw a chance to learn more about the mysterious missionary.

‘How about this Mr Jones?’ he asked. ‘Do you have any information on him?’

‘I’m afraid we haven’t,’ Brady said. ‘He flew here from San Francisco a week ago. He represents some mission organization in California. He seems to know other parts of the South Seas very well. I believe he’s hoping to get a ride out to some of the islands. Apparently he’s quite devoted to the welfare of the natives.’

‘What he did yesterday proves that,’ granted Captain Ike.

‘Ponape isn’t tough enough for him,’ said Rose admiringly. ‘He wants to go out and help the natives on some little island where life is really rugged. I’d say he’s okay.’

‘We need more like him,’ added Connor.

Hal reflected that if he had been fooled by the Reverend Archibald Jones, he was not the only one. The man was either extraordinarily clever - so clever that he could bluff these four very able and intelligent men - or else he was on the level. Hal was ashamed that he had had any doubts of the missionary’s integrity. He was ashamed too that he had not generously offered to take him as a passenger.

Brady was saying, ‘You see how Rose and Connor feel about anyone who lends a hand to the natives. These two men may look to you like plain Navy - but Rose is a schoolteacher and Connor is a doctor. They’re trying to see to it that the new generation of Ponapeans will grow up wise and healthy.’

They eat it up,’ Rose said. ‘Education, I mean. You never saw kids so anxious to learn.’

Is there much sickness?’ Hal asked Dr Connor. ‘A lot of it. Mostly diseases brought in by the white man.’

‘I’m afraid,’ said Hal, ‘the white man has given these people a pretty raw deal.’.

The doctor nodded. ‘Spanish sailors brought tuberculosis to the islands about a hundred years ago. Forty years ago a German radio operator brought leprosy to Yap. English traders brought dysentery to Palau. Americans brought measles and other diseases far more serious. These people weren’t used to such diseases. They died like flies. The population of Yap went down from 13,000 to 4,000. Kusaie had 2,000 natives before American whalers came roistering ashore - they were reduced to 200. The hundred thousand of the Mariana Islands were cut down to 3,000.’

‘How many people are there in all your islands?’

‘If you mean the 2,500 islands governed by the Navy as Trust Territory - the group called Micronesia - there are about 60,000 people. There used to be 400,000.’ ‘Are they still dying off?’

‘No. The Japanese checked the decline. We have to give them credit. They had good doctors and hospitals. But I think we are doing even better. Because the population is increasing now on nearly all the islands.’

‘It must give you a great lift,’ Hal said, ‘to feel that you’re helping these people to get a new start.’

And he wished he were doing something like that. The collection and study of animals might be important, but it was cold business compared with helping your fellow man. What could he do for these islanders?

Of course the first and easiest thing he could do would be to take the missionary wherever he wanted to go. He would do that.

Far behind lay Ponape, its lofty Totolom Peak wrapped in a thunder cloud.

Everywhere else the sky was blue. The sea was calm and the motor-boat made good time. Dolphins played alongside. Flying-fish reflected the sunlight on their outspread fins.

The name of the boat, Kiku, was lettered on the bow in Japanese characters. Kiku meant Chrysanthemum.

Perhaps when the boat had been built in Japan it had been as beautiful as a flower and may even have smelled as sweet. But not now. It had a strong odour of dead-and-gone fish. Its decks and gunwales were scratched by the fins of countless bonitos, the daggers of swordfish and barracuda, and the sandpaper-rough skins of sharks.

But everyone aboard was happy. Omo in the galley hummed a Polynesian chant. Roger at the tip of the bow tried to catch flying-fish in his hands. Hal at the wheel basked in the tropical sunshine tempered by the cool ocean breeze.

But happiest of all hands was the Reverend Archibald Jones. Every few moments without any apparent reason he would break into a hearty roar of laughter.

‘You’re feeling pretty good,’ commented Hal.

The missionary laughed until the tears came to his eyes. ‘Oh, it’s rich, it’s rich! Imagine! You taking me right where I want to go ‘He checked himself. ‘I mean, my boy, it does my soul good. Your generosity has restored my faith in human nature. Yes, in the words of Holy Writ, it ‘hath put a new song in my mouth’.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Hal said.

‘Oh yes it is. You have no idea what it means to me. No idea. Ha ha! Ahem! To think of being on my way at last to - to my chosen work among brown sheep that have gone astray. No wonder I feel like making a joyful noise unto the Lord.’

Strange talk, Hal thought. Somehow the Scriptures seemed dragged in by the heels. And the joyful noise of his curious passenger seemed to have more of the devil than the Lord in it.

But Hal did not consider himself a judge of such matters. His acquaintance with clergymen had been limited-Perhaps they all acted this way, he did not know.

What of it? How Mr Jones chose to talk was no business of his. His good deed was to land the holy man on some inhabited island where he could help the natives. The chart showed two such islands on the way to Pearl Lagoon.

By noon all of Ponape, including its cap of thunder, had sunk below the horizon. There was not a scrap of land to be seen anywhere. There was not a sail, not a wisp of steamer smoke. There was nothing to show where they had come from or where they were going - nothing but the compass and Hal’s calculations. ‘I hope you’re a good navigator,’ Roger said. Hal got out the sextant and chronometer he had borrowed from the ship and took an observation. He entered the reading in the logbook. He set his course north by northwest. That ought to head him straight for Pearl Lagoon.

But he knew it would not be as simple as that. Winds would throw the Kiku off her course. Besides, they were now getting into the fringe of the North Equatorial Current. They had no way of judging its strength or exact direction. Its main trend was westward.

And to hit a tiny pinpoint of an island on the nose in this vast expanse of waters was a task that made Hal feel weak in the joints. The boat seemed so small and lost in this mightiest of oceans with the limitless sky above and, according to the chart, three miles of water between the keel and the hills and valleys of the sea bottom.

Hal checked his observations frequently, entering each new reading in the logbook. When night came the skies luckily remained clear and it was possible to steer by the stars. Omo and Roger relieved him at the wheel. Mr Jones was quite evidently not a sailor and spent the night comfortably in his bunk.

At sunrise the sea had humped itself a bit and the boat was rolling. Omo prepared a good breakfast and they sat down on the deck to eat it. Mr Jones finished first and with the plea that he was feeling a little seasick retired to the cabin.

A few moments later Hal went to the cabin to get the logbook. He found Mr Jones leaning over the open book and copying the readings on a slip of paper.

His back was partly towards Hal. It was curved like a barrel. Suddenly aware that someone was behind him, he hunched his back still more to cover his action and slipped the piece of paper into an inner pocket of his jacket.

Then he said cheerfully, ‘I was just glancing over your log. Very interesting. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ said Hal, but he was staring. Staring at that back. It was still hunched as if concealing something. Where had he seen a back like that? A back with a secret. A back hiding a sneak.

Then he remembered. A back hunched just like this one, hunched as if over a secret. The back of the man who had come furtively from the house next to Professor Stuyvesant’s. The man who had stepped into the black car. The car that Hal had suspected of following his into the country.

It was not much to go on, a slight hunch in a back. But now, with this copying of the log and quick concealment of the slip of paper, things began to add up. The professor had feared that his room was wired and their conversation overheard. So he had not breathed aloud the bearings of the island. That was the one bit of information the enemy must get. And so this ‘missionary’, who was probably not a missionary at all, had cleverly arranged to be taken straight to the secret island. And by the bearings in the log he would know exactly where it was and how to get there whenever he wished to come again.

Hal went back on deck, took the wheel from Roger, and began to think his way out of this one. He felt like kicking himself for having been so easy. Welfare of the natives indeed.’

He knew he was up against a master, perhaps a murderer, a man who would stop at nothing in his ambition to acquire a fortune in pearls.

‘What are you sweating about?’ asked Roger, seeing the beads of perspiration pouring down Hal’s face. ‘I’m as cool as a cucumber.’

He would let Roger stay as cool as a cucumber for a while. No need to worry him yet. Perhaps, thought Hal, his own fears were groundless and the man was exactly what he claimed to be.

And if he were not, he must not be allowed to know that he was suspected. In that case he might take violent measures. It was better to let him think that his scheme was succeeding. If Roger and Omo shared Hal’s fears they might by a word or a look tip off the passenger to the fact that he was under suspicion.

‘I’ll have to watch myself,’ Hal thought. He must give no hint that he smelled a rat. He must appear to be on the best of terms with his now unwelcome guest. At the same time, he must find a way to outwit him.

He puzzled and sweated over this problem for hours. But when he took his next reading an answer suddenly came to him.

He calculated the boat’s position at 158° 15’ east by 8° 40’ north. But in entering the position in the log he subtracted 10’ from each bearing. Thus according to the log the reading was 158° 5’ east by 8° 30’ north.

At the next observation he subtracted twenty minutes from each bearing, at the next thirty, at the next forty, and so on. Thus the error on the page of the log grew rapidly worse. But Hal, by simply adding the tens he had subtracted, always knew his true position.

He was not content with a noon sight, but took observations half a dozen times a day, because the chart indicated the prevalence of hidden reefs.

He left the logbook in the cabin and gave Mr Jones plenty of opportunity to consult it and copy the readings.

One minute of latitude was equal to a nautical mile, a bit more than six thousand feet. So an error of ten minutes meant the bearing was ten miles off. It would take only a few such errors to put an island so far off course that it could not be seen even from the masthead of a pearling lugger.

If this man were a pearl thief, his plan doubtless was, after learning the bearings of the island, to come back to it with a pearling lugger and divers and help himself. Hal was trying to make sure that he would never again find the island. With such inaccurate bearings there was as much chance of locating it as of finding a needle in a haystack.

The next day a few palms poked their heads over the horizon and an island climbed up after them. Hal knew from his readings that it could not be Pearl Lagoon but the big passenger’s eyes glowed with anticipation.

‘This is perhaps your destination?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Hal. ‘But perhaps you would like to be landed here. Judging from the number of canoes along the shore, there are plenty of natives here for you to minister to.’

But Mr Jones was not interested. ‘Ithink I shall go a little farther afield. Probably this island is served from Ponape. My call is to virgin territory where the Bread of Life has never been broken.’

Another island was sighted during the afternoon. But Mr Jones, learning that this too was not the goal of the Kiku, decided to continue.

Hal noticed that as they got farther from Ponape the chart grew less accurate. Some islands were marked with a P.D., meaning Position Doubtful. Islets appeared in the sea that were not on the chart and some on the chart were not to be found on the sea. Evidently the chart-makers were forced to indulge in a great deal of guesswork in regard to this almost unknown part of the Pacific.

It was a good place to get lost, Hal reflected. His head buzzed with the mathematical difficulties of computing his observations, allowing for semi-diameter, parallax, refraction, dip of the horizon, and all that. He felt very green. If he managed to compute his way to that pinpoint called Pearl Lagoon, it would be a miracle.

Always the bearings of Pearl Lagoon drummed in his mind - bearings he had never written down - 158° 12’ east by 11° 34’ north..

It went through his mind so automatically that he feared he would repeat it aloud in his sleep. If Mr Jones in his bunk only four feet from Hal should hear it, the jig would be up.