‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Send a boat for me at nine. Darling Island, I’ll be there.’
He nodded. ‘Dar’ing — ‘arling Island. Nine. Boat. I’ll be there. Tell Luke.’ His head lolled back, his eyes rolling, the whites yellow.
‘You all right?’
‘Sure. Sure I’m awright.’ His eyes closed, his mouth falling slightly open.
I hesitated, wondering what it was had started him off on a lonely drinking bout. Something he was scared of, but it wasn’t the sea or the condition of his ship. And it wasn’t the prospect of five sleepless nights. Well, doubtless I’d get it out of him in due course. I went back through the wheelhouse and down the bridge ladder. I didn’t have to signal the Yamagata; there was a big inflatable with outboard at the bottom of the rope ladder now, and the man who had greeted me ran me the short distance to the wharf steps.
Before stepping ashore, I asked him his name, and he said, ‘Luke Pelau.’
I told him who I was and that I’d be sailing with him. ‘Remind Captain Holland to meet me here at o-nine-hundred Friday morning. Meanwhile, get him to bed.’ I was on the point of making some comment, but he didn’t look as though he was in the mood to respond to a touch of humour, his black face blank, almost sullen.
‘Gutbai,’ he said, and gunned the engine, swinging the inflatable out into the dark waters of the harbour, heading back to the slab-sided hull of the LCT, a black silhouette now against the headlights streaming across the Harbour Bridge.
It was a long walk back to the hotel, and I had plenty of time to consider Holland’s strange behaviour. I suppose it was that, and the realisation that in two days’ time I would be at sea with him, that started me thinking again about Carlos Holland and the disappearance of the Holland Trader. I had sandwiches brought up to my room and scribbled a note to Josh Keegan, passing on to him the stamp dealer’s description of the Solomons Seal ship label and enclosing a copy I made of the missionary’s letter confirming Lewis’s ownership. As soon as I had posted it, I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I was too excited. It was the thought of being on the bridge of an LCT again, this time heading out into the Coral Sea towards an unknown Pacific island — I was as excited as I had been that first time, years ago joining ship in the Clyde, and as nervous. But it was a different sort of nervousness now, more a feeling of uneasiness, almost trepidation.
First thing the following morning I went to the Maritime Services building in George Street. To my surprise they not only had records going back to the year 1911 but were able in a very short time to produce the details I had asked for. The Holland Trader had arrived from England via the Cape on July 4, 1911. She had discharged one member of the crew, a seaman, and had signed on two others. She had taken on coal and sailed for Port Moresby on July 10. They were even able to give me the names of the crew members who had been shipped at Sydney. One of them was named Lewis — Merlyn Dai Lewis. He had been signed on as a stoker.
I would have tried the newspaper offices then, to see what had been said about the ship’s disappearance, but I hadn’t time. The restrictions covering currency remittances overseas were very tight so that I had the bank as well as the lawyers to contend with. In the end I only just managed to purchase the additional items of clothing I thought I would need before the shops closed.
Friday morning everybody seemed to be checking out of the hotel at the same time, and on top of that I had to wait for a taxi. It was past nine before I reached the Darling Island docks, sun glinting on the water and the wharves seething with activity.
He was there waiting for me, pacing up and down, a stocky figure in dark blue trousers and jersey, cap pushed back from his forehead. His face lit up as he saw me. ‘’Fraid you’d had second thoughts about it.’ There were dark circles under his eyes, but otherwise he seemed himself. He was even smiling as he took my bags. ‘Well, let’s get the formalities over.’ He passed my gear to the two black crew members manning the inflatable, told them to wait for him, and then we took my taxi on to the Maritime Services building, where I signed on.
Just over an hour later we were back on board, the engines thrumming under my feet and the anchor coming in. We loaded at a roll-on, roll-off ramp, the cargo reconditioned Haulpaks for the Bougainville copper mine, and shortly after noon we had cleared and were steaming out under Sydney Harbour Bridge.
I was in the wheelhouse then, checking the instruments and following our course through Port Jackson towards the Heads. Besides the helmsman and the pilot there were just Holland and Luke Pelau on the bridge, no sign of McAvoy, and when I asked Luke where the first officer was he said, ‘Mr McAvoy little tired this morning.’
Holland heard him and laughed without humour. ‘You won’t see Mac on the bridge unless he’s in one of his moods. Then he’ll come and tell us how to run the ship. That’s right, isn’t it, Luke?’ And the black officer nodded.
‘How long has he been like this?’ I asked.
‘Since my grandfather’s death. They’d been together a long time, and he never forgave himself for being away after a woman when the Colonel started out on his last voyage.’ He was staring out towards the Heads, which were separating now to show the empty heaving expanse of the Pacific in the gap. ‘Go down and check those Haulpaks are properly secured, will you? She’ll be rolling a bit when we get outside.’
Down on the tank deck the Haulpaks were huge, their fat rubber-tyred wheels standing taller than myself. The crew, all black, were tightening up on the securing chains. The bos’n, an elderly man with a great mop of frizzy black hair streaked with grey and a broken-toothed smile, was standing over them. The ore trucks were larger than anything they had carried before, but he knew his stuff, and though I went round every vehicle I had no fault to find.
Already there was movement on the ship, the faint beginnings of the swell coming through the Heads. I went for’ard to the storm door and, having checked that, climbed the vertical ladder to the port catwalk. For’ard, under the ladder to the foredeck, was the bos’n’s locker and workbench. The watertight door leading to the controls for the electric motor powering the bow door thrusters was open. One of my jobs had always been to check the bow doors and the ramp before sailing. I ducked through to the narrow platform that looked down into the well behind the bow doors, and there I got a shock. The steel cross-members that should have been bolted into their transverse position to hold the bow doors securely shut were still in their vertical housing.
I hurried back and yelled for the bos’n, telling him to get some men on to the job right away. But he didn’t understand what I wanted. Even when I took him with me and showed him, he only shrugged and pointed to the hydraulic thrusters, indicating in a complicated mixture of Pidgin and English that that was what kept the doors shut. ‘No use ol ain girders,’ he added, referring to the cross-members.
‘Well, you use them this trip.’ And I told him to get on with it. Good God! With the sort of seas we might encounter on the run across to Bougainville, the bow doors could be burst wide open. What really appalled me was the knowledge that they must have come all the way to Sydney with the bow doors held on the thrusters only. This was apparent as soon as the cross-members had been dropped into position. They couldn’t find the securing bolts. ‘Better get hold of the Chief Engineer,’ I told the bos’n, who seemed to understand what I said even if he couldn’t speak proper English. ‘If he hasn’t got any the right size, then he’d better make some quickly.’