but the others.” “Sure,” I said. “That’s fine, Jimmy.”
“It would have been the sensible thing to ask your help long ago, instead of blundering around the way we have been. Anyway, now the others have suddenly decided it’s okay.” He had just told me much more than he imagined, and I adjusted my opinion of Master James. It was clear that he possessed information, and he had not shared it with the others. It was his insurance, and he had probably insisted on seeing me alone to keep his insurance policy intact.
“Skipper, we are looking for an island, a specific island. I can’t tell you why, I’m sorry.”
“Forget it, Jimmy. That’s all right.” What will there be for you, James North, I wondered suddenly. What will the wolf pack have for you once you have led them to this special island of yours? Will it be something a lot less pleasant than penicillin allergy?
I looked at that handsome young face, and felt an unaccustomed flood of affection for him - perhaps it was his youth and innocence, the sense of excitement with which he viewed this tired and wicked old world. I envied and liked him for that, and I did not relish seeing him pulled down and rolled in the dirt.
“Jim, how well do you know your friends?” I asked him quietly, and he was taken by surprise, then almost immediately he was wary.
“Well enough,“he replied carefully. “Why?”
“You have known them less than a month,” I said as though I knew, and saw the confirmation in his expression. “And I have known men like that all my life!
“I don’t see what this has to do with it, Mr. Fletcher.” He was stiffening up now, I was treating him like a child and he didn’t like that.
“Listen, Jim. Forget this business, whatever it is. Drop it, and go back to your shop and your salvage company-” “That’s crazy,” he said. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand, Jim. I really do. I travelled the same road, and I know it well.”
“I can look after myself Don’t worry about me.” He had flushed up under his tan, and the grey eyes snapped with defiance. We stared at each other for a few moments, and I knew I was wasting time and emotion. If anyone had spoken like this to me at the same age I would have thought him senile.
“All right, Jim,” I said. “I’ll drop it, but you know the score.
just play it cool and loose, that’s all.”
“Okay, Mr. Fletcher.” He relaxed slowly, and then grinned a charming and engaging grin. “Thanks anyway.”
“Let’s hear about this island,” I suggested and he glanced about the cabin.
“Let’s go up on the bridge,” he suggested, and out in the open air he took a stub of pencil and a scrap pad from the map bin above the chart table.
“I reckon it lies off the African shore about six to ten miles, and ten to thirty miles north of the mouth of the Rovuma River. -“
“That covers a hell of a lot of ground, Jim - as you may have noticed during the last few days. What else do you know about it?”
He hesitated a little longer, before grudgingly doling out a few more coins from his hoard. He took the pencil and drew a horizontal line across the pad.
“Sea level.” he said, and then above the line he raised an irregular profile that started low, and -then climbed steeply into three distinct peaks before ending abruptly, ” and that’s the silhouette that it shows from the sea. The three hills are volcanic basalt, sheer rock with little vegetation!
“The Old Men-” I recognized it immediately, you are a long way out in your other calculations, it’s more like twenty miles offshore-“
“But within sight of the mainland?” he asked quickly. “it has to be within sight.”
“Sure, you could see a long way from the tops of the hills,” I pointed out as he tore the sheet from the pad and carefully ripped it to shreds, and dropped them into the harbour.
“How far north of the river?” He turned back to face me.
“Offhand I’d say sixty or seventy miles,” and he looked thoughtful.
“Yes, it could be that far north. It could fit, it depends on how long it would take ” He did not finish, he was taking my advice about playing it cool. “Can you take us there, skip? I nodded. “But it’s a long run and best come prepared to sleep on the boat overnight.” “I’ll fetch the others,” he said, eager and excited once more.
But on the wharf he looked back at the bridge.
“About the island, what it looks like and all that, don’t discuss it with the others, okay?”
“Okay, Jim,” I smiled back at him. “Off you go.” I went down to have a look at the admiralty chart. The Old Men were the highest point on a ridge of basalt, a long hard reef that ran parallel to the mainland for two hundred miles. It disappeared below the water, but reappeared at intervals, formirig a regular feature amongst the haphazard sprinkling of coral and sand islands and shoals.
It was marked as uninhabited and waterless, and the soundings showed a number of deep channels through the reefs around it. Although it was far north of my regular grounds, yet I had visited the area the previous year as host to a marine biology expedition from UCLA who were studying the breeding habits of the green turtles that abounded there.
We had camped for three days on another island across the tide channel from the Old Men, where there was an all-weather anchorage in an enclosed lagoon, and brackish but just drinkable water in a fisherman’s well amongst the palms. Looking across from the anchorage, the Old Men showed exactly the outline that Jimmy had sketched for me, that was how I had recognized it so readily.
Half an hour later, the whole party arrived; strapped on the roof of the taxi was a bulky piece of equipment covered with a green canvas dust sheet. They hired a couple of lounging islanders to carry this, and the overnight bags they had with them, down the wharf to where I was waiting.
They stowed the canvas package on the foredeck without unwrapping it and I asked no questions. Guthrie’s face was starting to fall off in layers of sun-scorched skin, leaving wet red flesh exposed. He had smeared white cream over it. I thought of him slapping little Marion around his suite at the Hilton, and I smiled at him.
“You look so good, have you ever thought of running for Miss. Universe?” and he glowered at me from beneath the brim of his hat as he took his seat in the fighting chair. During the run northwards he drank beer straight from the can and used the empties as targets. Firing the big pistol at them as they tumbled and bobbed in Dancer’s wake.
A little before noon, I gave Jimmy the wheel and went down to use the heads below deck. I found that Materson had the bar open and the gin bottle out.
“How much longer?” he asked, sweaty and flushed despite the air-conditioning.
“Another hour or so,” I told him, and thought that Materson was going to find himself with a drinking problem the way he handled spirits at midday. However, the gin had mellowed him a little and - always the opportunist - I loosened another three hundred pounds from his wallet as an advance against my fees before going up to take Dancer in on the last leg through the northern tide channel that led to the Old Men.
The triple peaks came up through the heat haze, ghostly grey and ominous, seeming to hang disembodied above the channel.
Jimmy was examining the peaks through his binoculars, and then he lowered them and turned delightedly to me. “That looks like it, skipper,” and he clambered down into the cockpit. The three of them went up on to the foredeck, passed the canvas-wrapped deck cargo, and stood shoulder to shoulder at the rail staring through the sea fret at the island as I crept cautiously up the channel.
We had a rising tide pushing us up the channel, and I agreed to use it to approach the eastern tip of the Old Men, and make a landing on the beach below the nearest peak. This coast has a tidal fall of seventeen feet at full springs, and it is unwise to go into shallow water on the ebb. It is easy to find yourself stranded high and dry as the water falls away beneath your keel.
Jimmy borrowed my hand-bearing compass and packed it with his chart, a Thermos of iced water and a bottle of salt tablets from the medicine chest into his haversack. While I crept cautiously in towards the beach, Jimmy and Materson stripped off their footwear and trousers.
When Dancer bumped her keel softly on the hard white sand of the beach I shouted to them.
“Okay - over you go,” and with Jimmy leading, they went down the ladder I had rigged from Dancer’s side. The water came to their armpits, and James held the haversack above his head as they waded towards the
