down the Gulf of Mexico until her corroded keel sent her conveniently to the bottom.
For two months they had cruised forlornly from one port to another, boarded by hostile maritime police and customs officers, public health officials and journalists alerted to the possibility of a major ecological disaster. At Kingston, Jamaica, a television launch trailed them to the ten-mile limit, at Santo Domingo a spotter plane of the Dominican navy was waiting for them when they tried to slip into harbour under the cover of darkness. Greenpeace power-boats intercepted them outside Tampa, Florida, when Captain Galloway tried to dump part of his cargo. Firing flares across the bridge of the freighter, the US Coast Guard dispatched them into the Gulf of Mexico in time to meet the tail of Hurricane Clara.
When at last they recovered from the storm the cargo had shifted, and the Prospero listed ten degrees to starboard. Fuming chemicals leaked across the decks from the fractured seams of the waste drums, boiled on the surface of the sea and sent up a cloud of acrid vapour that left Johnson and the Mexican crewmen coughing through makeshift face-masks, and Captain Galloway barricading himself into his cabin with his tequila bottle.
First Officer Pereira had saved the day, rigging up a hose-pipe that sprayed the leaking drums with a torrent of water, but by then the Prospero was taking in the sea through its strained plates. When they sighted Puerto Rico the captain had not even bothered to set a course for port. Propping himself against the helm, a bottle in each hand, he signalled Pereira to cut the engines. In a self-pitying monologue, he cursed the Mexican shipping agent, the US Coast Guard, the world’s agro-chemists and their despicable science that had deprived him of his command. Lastly he cursed Johnson for being so foolish ever to step aboard this ill-fated ship. As the Prospero lay doomed in the water, Pereira appeared with his already packed suitcase, and the captain ordered the Mexicans to lower the life-boat.
It was then that Johnson made his decision to remain on board. All his life he had failed to impose himself on anything — running errands as a six-year-old for the Nassau airport shoe-blacks, cadging pennies for his mother from the irritated tourists, enduring the years of school where he had scarcely learned to read and write, working as a dishwasher at the beach restaurants, forever conned out of his wages by the thieving managers. He had always reacted to events, never initiated anything on his own. Now, for the first time, he could become the captain of the Prospero and master of his own fate. Long before Galloway’s curses faded into the dusk Johnson had leapt down the companionway ladder into the engine room.
As the elderly diesels rallied themselves for the last time Johnson returned to the bridge. He listened to the propeller’s tired but steady beat against the dark ocean, and slowly turned the Prospero towards the north-west. Five hundred miles away were the Bahamas, and an endless archipelago of secret harbours. Somehow he would get rid of the leaking drums and even, perhaps, ply for hire between the islands, renaming the old tub after his mother, Velvet Mae. Meanwhile Captain Johnson stood proudly on the bridge, oversize cap on his head, 300 tons of steel deck obedient beneath his feet.
By dawn the next day he was completely lost on an open sea. During the night the freighter’s list had increased. Below decks the leaking chemicals had etched their way through the hull plates, and a phosphorescent steam enveloped the bridge. The engine room was a knee-deep vat of acid brine, a poisonous vapour rising through the ventilators and coating every rail and deck-plate with a lurid slime.
Then, as Johnson searched desperately for enough timber to build a raft, he saw the old World War II garbage island seven miles from the Puerto Rican coast. The lagoon inlet was unguarded by the US Navy or Greenpeace speedboats. He steered the Prospero across the calm surface and let the freighter settle into the shallows. The inrush of water smothered the cargo in the hold. Able to breathe again, Johnson rolled into Captain Galloway’s bunk, made a space for himself among the empty bottles and slept his first dreamless sleep.
‘Hey, you! Are you all right?’ A woman’s hand pounded on the roof of the staff car. ‘What are you doing in there?’
Johnson woke with a start, lifting his head from the steering wheel. While he slept the lianas had enveloped the car, climbing up the roof and windshield pillars. Vivid green tendrils looped themselves around his left hand, tying his wrist to the rim of the wheel.
Wiping his face, he saw the American biologist peering at him through the leaves, as if he were the inmate of some bizarre zoo whose cages were the bodies of abandoned motor-cars. He tried to free himself, and pushed against the driver’s door.
‘Sit back! I’ll cut you loose.’
She slashed at the vines with her clasp knife, revealing her fierce and determined wrist. When Johnson stepped onto the ground she held his shoulders, looking him up and down with a thorough eye. She was no more than thirty, three years older than himself, but to Johnson she seemed as self-possessed and remote as the Nassau school-teachers. Yet her mouth was more relaxed than those pursed lips of his childhood, as if she were genuinely concerned for Johnson.
‘You’re all right,’ she informed him. ‘But I wouldn’t go for too many rides in that car.’
She strolled away from Johnson, her hands pressing the burnished copper trunks of the palms, feeling the urgent pulse of awakening life. Around her shoulders was slung a canvas bag holding a clipboard, sample jars, a camera and reels of film.
‘My name’s Christine Chambers,’ she called out to Johnson. ‘I’m carrying out a botanical project on this island. Have you come from the stranded ship?’
‘I’m the captain,’ Johnson told her without deceit. He reached into the car and retrieved his peaked cap from the eager embrace of the vines, dusted it off and placed it on his head at what he hoped was a rakish angle. ‘She’s not a wreck — I beached her here for repairs.’
‘Really? For repairs?’ Christine Chambers watched him archly, finding him at least as intriguing as the giant scarlet-capped fungi. ‘So you’re the captain. But where’s the crew?’
‘They abandoned ship.’ Johnson was glad that he could speak so honestly. He liked this attractive biologist and the way she took a close interest in the island. ‘There were certain problems with the cargo.’
‘I bet there were. You were lucky to get here in one piece.’ She took out a notebook and jotted down some observation on Johnson, glancing at his pupils and lips. ‘Captain, would you like a sandwich? I’ve brought a picnic lunch — you look as if you could use a square meal.’
‘Well…’ Pleased by her use of his title, Johnson followed her to the beach, where the inflatable sat on the sand. Clearly she had been delayed by the weight of stores: a bell tent, plastic coolers, cartons of canned food, and a small office cabinet. Johnson had survived on a diet of salt beef, cola and oatmeal biscuits he cooked on the galley stove.
For all the equipment, she was in no hurry to unload the stores, as if unsure of sharing the island with Johnson, or perhaps pondering a different approach to her project, one that involved the participation of the human population of the island.
Trying to reassure her, as they divided the sandwiches, he described the last voyage of the Prospero, and the disaster of the leaking chemicals. She nodded while he spoke, as if she already knew something of the story.
‘It sounds to me like a great feat of seamanship,’ she complimented him. ‘The crew who abandoned ship — as it happens, they reported that she went down near Barbados. One of them, Galloway I think he was called, claimed they’d spent a month in an open boat.’
‘Galloway?’ Johnson assumed the pursed lips of the Nassau schoolmarms. ‘One of my less reliable men. So no one is looking for the ship?’
‘No. Absolutely no one.’
‘And they think she’s gone down?’
‘Right to the bottom. Everyone in Barbados is relieved there’s no pollution. Those tourist beaches, you know.’
‘They’re important. And no one in Puerto Rico thinks she’s here?’
‘No one except me. This island is my research project,’ she explained. ‘I teach biology at San Juan University, but I really want to work at Harvard. I can tell you, lectureships are hard to come by. Something very interesting is happening here, with a little luck..
‘It is interesting,’ Johnson agreed. There was a conspiratorial note to Dr Christine’s voice that made him uneasy. ‘A lot of old army equipment is buried here — I’m thinking of building a house on the beach.’
‘A good idea… even if it takes you four or five months. I’ll help you out with any food you need. But be careful.’ Dr Christine pointed to the weal on his arm, a temporary reaction against some invading toxin in the vine sap. ‘There’s something else that’s interesting about this island, isn’t there?’
