Trustee From the Toolroom (18 page)

Mr Donelly went down on his hands and knees upon the floor and studied it, entranced. 'Making the electricity,' he breathed.

"That's right.'

' I seen the big ones,' he said, ' three-cylinder diesels and that, making electricity.' He raised his head. 'Say, Mr Keats, I guess this is the smallest in the world, isn't it?'

Keith said, ' It's not the smallest engine. I think perhaps it might be the smallest generating set.'

Mr Donelly broke into a cackle of laughter, and looked up at Mr Fairlie. 'Well, what do you know?' he inquired. "There's the smallest generating set in the world running right here in the cabin of the
Mary Belle!
Folks wouldn't never believe me if I went ashore and told them that. They'd say I was nuts!'

Keith leaned down and stopped it with his pencil, fearing that it might overheat if he kept it running too long without a cooling draught of air. Mr Donelly bent closer to examine it at rest. 'Look at all those tiddy little wires,' he breathed as he scrutinized the armature. 'All going the same way, and each to the right place.' He raised his head, 'Mr Keats, did you think out all that, yourself? The way each had to go?'

Keith nodded. ' Everybody to his own job,' he said. ' I couldn't have begun to build this ship. I wouldn't know where to start.'

'You start with the half model. What I showed you.'

'Ah, yes. But if I made a half model, I wouldn't know by looking at it if it would make a good ship. Not like you do.'

'You wouldn't?'

Keith shook his head. ' Not a hope. You've got to really know the sea for that. You must have been at sea all your life.'

'My old man,' said Mr Donelly, 'he took me offshore first of all when I was six, long lining. 'Course, I was playing around in scows and that with all the other kids before.'

Keith nodded. 'You build up experience without knowing it,' he said. 'Then when the fit takes you to build a ship like this, or build a generating set like that, it just comes easy.'

Mr Donelly glanced at him with common understanding from the floor. 'Say, you got sump'n,' he said. 'Building
Mary Belle
was just like it was kinda fun.'

Keith reached down and picked up the little generating set, wrapped it up, and put it back into his pocket. Mr Donelly watched him do it regretfully; he got back on to his feet and sat down on his berth. Keith asked him, 'What are your plans, Jack? Where do you go from here?'

'I guess I'm going to the Islands.'

Keith said, 'I've got a reason for asking that. I want to get down to Tahiti, and then out to an island called Maro-kota. That's somewhere in the Tuamotus. But there's no regular service and no trading schooner, and anyway I've not got very much money. Mr Fairlie here suggested that you might be going down that way.'

There was a long silence. 'Ma came from Huahine,' Mr Donelly said at last. ' She said for me to get back to the Islands where I'd meet up with my own sort. So that's where I'm going.'

Mr Fairlie asked, 'To Huahine?'

' I guess I'll go there some time. I don't know where it is.'

'It's not far from Tahiti. It's in the same group.'

' That's what a guy said one time. Then another guy said it was this place Nukahiva.'

'It's not, Jack. It's nowhere near Nukahiva. It's a bit over to the west from Tahiti. I'll give you a chart.'

'I got an atlas,' said the mariner. He rummaged under the palliasse on the wooden boards of his bunk and produced his one navigational aid. It opened automatically at the map of the Pacific Ocean. ' I looked at all the tiddy little names,' he said, 'but I never see Huahine. I guess they left it out by mistake.'

Mr Fairlie said. 'I think it's probably too small to show on the atlas, Jack. If you're going to take Keith along with you to Tahiti I'll give you a chart that shows every island on the way and round about Tahiti. I know we've got a lot of outdated ones on board.'

Mr Donelly grunted; Keith guessed that he had little use for charts, never having used one. 'You want to get down to Tahiti ?' Donelly asked.

'That's right.'

'Got a bed?'

Keith hesitated, somewhat taken aback. Mr Donelly helped him out by lifting the dirty corner of his palliasse; it rustled, evidently filled with hay or straw. 'Lake this.'

'I haven't at the moment,' Keith said. 'But I'll get something.'

'There's a bolt of sailcloth you could sleep on but I guess you'd find that kinda hard,' said Mr Donelly.

'I'll get a bed like yours,' said Keith. 'How much money would I have to pay you for the passage?'

'Well now,' said the mariner, 'I'd have to put my thinking cap on for that. The harbourmaster, he wanted seven dollars and two bits when he come on board and had his swim.' He cackled into'laughter. 'I reckon he'd want more now, what with drying his clothes. Then there's the eats . . .' He sat in evident bewilderment. 'How long you reckon it would take to sail to this Tahiti?'

Keith shook his head. ' I don't know at all.'

Mr Fairlie asked, 'How long did it take you to get here from San Francisco, Jack?'

'Three weeks'n two days. I had a fair, reaching wind most of the way."

'It's a little bit farther to Tahiti,' said the first officer, ' and you've got to get through the Doldrums. You'll need food for six weeks at least.'

'I dunno what that would cost,' said Mr Donelly. He lifted his head, and cut the Gordian knot with decision. 'Say,' he asked, 'how much you got?'

'About a hundred dollars,' said Keith conservatively.

'Well then,' said the ship owner, 'the fare's a hundred dollars.' He leaned back with the air of one who has concluded a difficult business negotiation.

'We bake every day,' said Mr Fairlie, 'but we carry a stock of biscuits in sealed tins, twenty-eight pounds. I'll talk to Captain Davies. Maybe we could let you have two or three of those against repayment in England. Save the dollars, anyway.'

'That'd be very kind of you,' said Keith.

'I got 'bout'half a sack of cornmeal, 'n some grits,' said Mr Donelly. ' I guess we could catch fish a day or two 'n dry some of them, 'n salt down the rest. There's plenty sun here, dry the fish. Not like it'd be at home.'

'Where would you put them to dry?' asked Mr Fairlie..

Mr Donelly looked surprised. ' Out on shore some place,' he said.

'I don't think they'd let you do that here, Jack.'

'Huh?'

'They'd get people on the power yachts bellyaching about the smell.'

' They said I was to berth here,' Mr Donelly muttered. 'Got a motor boat 'n towed me round.'

Keith judged it better to change the subject. 'We'll think up something together about the food,' he said. 'When do you want to sail?'

' 'Most any time,' the owner said.

'And you'd be willing to take me along?'

The other raised his head. 'You get sick?'

It was better to face it. 'I'll probably be sick,' Keith said. 'How long does it go on for?'

'Two-three days. I get sick after a spell on shore. There's nothing to it.'

' I don't suppose I'll be much use to you, at first,' Keith said. 'I'll do the best I can.'

'Can't do better 'n that,' Mr Donelly said. 'You'll be bringing the tiddy little motor along?'

'This?' He fingered the little box. 'Oh yes, I'll be bringing this.'

' Move in when you like,' said Mr Donelly.

They arranged that Keith would go into the question of the food supplies with Mr Fairlie, and presently they left the
Mary Belle
and took a taxi back to the
Cathay Princess.
In the wardroom Mr Fairlie said, ' I think we've earned a beer.' He went and fetched a bottle and two glasses, filled them, and raised his own. ' I think you're a brave man,' he said.

Keith smiled. 'So do I. But I liked him well enough.'

'There's no harm in him,' Mr Fairlie agreed. 'He'll probably get you there. But I wouldn't take any liquor on board.'

'I won't.'

The first officer eyed him speculatively.' You're technical. Do you know anything about navigation - anything at all?'

Keith shook his head.

Mr Fairlie sighed. 'Well, there's no time to teach you astro-navigation. But I'll look out the charts and a volume of the
Pacific Islands Pilot
for you this evening, and give you an hour on them tomorrow morning. You can read, at any rate, and that's more than Jack Donelly can.'

Keith left the ship soon afterwards and walked back through the town to the Beachcomber Hotel, looking as he walked for a shop that sold a mattress. The prices did not seem to him to be excessive, but they were all far too good to put into the
Mary Belle.
He knew that he was in for an indefinite spell of hard living, and he had no great fear of it. It was many years since he had suffered much dis-. comfort, though as a child and a young man in Renfrew he had known plenty of it; to sleep on a straw palliasse upon bare boards would be no novelty to him. The food was a perplexity. Something better was needed than Jack's cornmeal, grits, and dried fish, but what he needed was to him unknown, or how to buy it. He clung to the thought of the sealed tins of biscuit that might come from the
Cathay Princess.

In his room at the hotel he found Dick lying upon his bed listening to the radio, and told him all about it. 'I fixed up that I'd go with him,' he said. 'He's not as mad as all that.'

The engineer raised himself on one elbow. ' He's going to Tahiti?'

Keith started to undress, preparatory to a shower. ' He'll go anywhere so long as it's away from here. He'll take me to Tahiti.'

'Sure about that?'

Keith sat down upon the bed. ' I think so.'

'Captain Da vies isn't, old man.'

' I know. I've been talking to Jack Donelly all afternoon on board his boat. The boat's quite good, you know. What's more, he built her himself.'

'He did? Without any help?'

Keith nodded. ' Single-handed.'

'That doesn't mean that he can find his way to Tahiti from here, though. It's an awful big place, the sea.'

'I know.' Keith got up from the bed. Tve never done this before,' he muttered. ' There's no fuel problem anyway, because all he uses is the wind. It seems to boil down to carrying enough to eat and drink for.an indefinite time.'

'How much water storage has he got?'

'I saw a forty-gallon drum, up-ended, tied to the mast with rope lashings. I suppose that's it.'

' How long is the trip going to be ?'

'Jim Fairlie says at least six weeks.'

'You'll want more than that much water, then, old man.'

Keith went into the shower, and Dick lay back upon his bed in perplexity. What Keith did was no concern of his, really, and yet he felt himself involved. In the world of workshops and of amateur mechanics Keith was a well-known man, and that world was Dick's world also. If Keith were to lose his life at sea with this man Jack Donelly, inevitably Dick King would be involved and charged with some responsibility by other members of their common world, for it would be known throughout that world that he had been with Keith in Honolulu. If Keith were to disappear at sea, as Captain Davies had warned him bluntly might well happen, he, Dick King, would be telling a defensive story of their time in Honolulu in the workshops of England for many years to come, excusing himself, perhaps for all his life. He could hear the whispers: 'He's the bloke who was with Keith Stewart in Honolulu and let him go off with that crazy fisherman. You'd think he might have done something about it . . .' He did not like the prospect.

If only Keith knew a little more about foreign countries, about the tropics. If only he wasn't quite so raw.

He said no more, but lay there troubled in his mind while Keith also rested on his bed, letting the cool breeze blow over his bare body. It seemed to Dick that there was no escape from the position he was in. Keith had some compelling reason to get down to Tahiti that was driving him to take the most fantastic risk by going with this half-caste fisherman. If he, Dick King, wished to escape the odium of the future, there were only two courses he could take. One was to talk Keith out of it; he did not think that would be possible. The other was to try to make the journey a success.

Presently they dressed and went downstairs for a beer before dinner. Captain Davies was there in the bar with Captain Fielding. Somewhat the same line of thought may have been running in his mind, too, because he said, 'Evening, Mr Stewart. Evening, Mr King. Beer?'

The engineers said, 'Thank you, sir.'

The captain said to the girl in the cheongsam, ' Two more beers.' Then he turned to Keith and said, ' Mr Fairlie tells me that I've got to provision your ship.'

Keith was embarrassed. 'That's not necessary at all, sir. All he said was that you might let me have some biscuits on repayment in England.'

'To help out the grits and .dried fish? I don't know if you've ever tried to live for two months on dried fish. It goes bad, of course. Then the thing to do is to put it in a barrel with some salt. You've got to eat it in the end, of course. Some people like it.' He laughed. 'You'd better come on board tomorrow with a list of what you want, and we'll see what we've got.'