James Pattinson
The Golden Reef
Prologue
The boat was a dark speck in the centre of a wide disc of pale blue water. The Pacific shimmered in the tropical sun, and the boat moved lazily on the gently undulating surface.
There was no apparent life in the boat. From a spar that served as a mast a weather-beaten sail hung limply in the windless air, forlorn as an old scarecrow. In the bows a canvas awning had been erected to provide some shelter from sun and rain; but this, like the sail, had become worn and bleached by exposure, crusted with dried salt and a little frayed at the edges. A rope trailed in the water like some slimy maritime growth, and over the starboard side an oar crutch dangled at the end of a lanyard.
On board the freighter Southern Queen, outward bound from Sydney, it was the second mate’s watch. Mr Watkins was a young man and an observant one; he was the first to notice the speck in the distance.
It was on the starboard bow and he moved at once to the extreme end of the starboard wing of the bridge and focused his binoculars on this piece of flotsam. The speck became larger; magnified by the powerful lenses it swam into his vision in clear and definite outline. Mr Watkins knew a ship’s lifeboat when he saw one, and this boat seemed to be in a bad way. Excited by the idea that he might be instrumental in the saving of human life, Mr Watkins would gladly have handled the operation entirely on his own. Reluctantly, however, he came to the conclusion that Captain Rogerson had better be informed.
Rogerson was in his day cabin with the chief officer, Mr Brett, when the information came to him, and he was immediately interested. Ships’ boats drifting about the high seas were not nearly as common as they had once been; and that not so very long ago. The ending of the Second World War had made a sailor’s life less hazardous, but nature still had ways of sinking a ship even if man had ceased to employ his talents in this direction.
Rogerson, a florid, thick-set man of about fifty, got up from his chair and grabbed his cap from a peg.
‘Come along Ned. Let’s see what young Watkins is shouting about.’
‘If it is a boat it’s an awful long way from land.’
They went up to the bridge, Rogerson leading and the lanky chief officer close at his heels. Mr Watkins had already altered course a few points to starboard and now the boat lay directly ahead, an object that grew larger moment by moment as the gap between it and the ship’s bows steadily narrowed.
‘See any life in it, Mr Watkins?’
The second mate shook his head. ‘Nothing, sir. No movement. Looks like an empty shell.’ He sounded regretful.
Captain Rogerson examined the boat through his own binoculars, standing on the wing of the bridge, feet wide apart and the sun beating down on the white crown of his peaked cap. The boat appeared to sweep towards him as he adjusted the focus; he saw the tattered sail, the bleached and ragged awning, the dangling rowlock, the painter trailing in the water and an oar lying across the thwarts. But, like Watkins, he could detect no sign of life, nothing that might have been a man, a survivor.
Only between the ship and the boat was there a flash of movement, a glitter in the sunlight.
‘Sharks,’ Rogerson said.
Brett and Watkins had also seen the sparkle of water on the dripping fins.
‘Filthy devils,’ Brett said. ‘I hate sharks.’
Rogerson grunted. ‘I never knew anyone who liked ‘em.’
The gap narrowed rapidly. Soon they could see the faded paint, the crusted salt, a water breaker, the loops of the lifeline fastened just below the gunwale of the boat, two ends hanging loose where it had been broken.
Watkins was still peering through his binoculars. He said, controlling his excitement with difficulty in front of the older men: ‘There’s something else in the boat. Sticking out from that shelter for’ard. Something dark.’
A breath of wind, no more than a cat’s-paw, fluttered the ragged sail and the boat heeled over slightly, listing towards the ship as though to exhibit its contents.
Watkins said, this time unable to disguise his excitement ‘It is something. I believe it’s a man’s foot — two feet. There’s somebody under that awning. Alive or dead, there’s somebody there.’
Rogerson spoke briefly to his chief officer and Brett went quickly down the bridge ladder shouting for the bo’sun.
The bo’sun, a small man with a scarred cheek and the light step of a dancing master, was there almost at once. He also had seen the boat.
‘There’s a man,’ Brett said. ‘Get ready to hoist him aboard as soon as we draw alongside.’
‘Is he alive, sir?’
‘How should I know?’ The mate spoke impatiently. ‘Either way, we’ll want to have him aboard so we can take a look at him.’
The bo’sun turned away and started giving orders to the seamen. A Jacob’s ladder was pushed over the bulwarks and unrolled itself down the side of the ship. It hung there with its lower end trailing in the sea.
The Southern Queen, her propeller no longer turning, drifted towards the boat. Captain Rogerson had walked to the end of the bridge and was looking down at the smaller craft as the ship nudged gently against it, so gently in fact that only a slight grinding sound gave evidence of the pressure of steel on wood. The impact pushed the boat away, but it moved sluggishly, like a half-saturated log. Water swilled about inside it, lapping at the two human feet that projected from beneath the shelter of the awning. But the feet did not move.
A seaman had gone down the Jacob’s ladder and was hanging on it just clear of the water. Mr Brett shouted to him from the steamer’s deck.
‘Catch hold, man. Don’t let her go.’
The seaman jumped for the boat and landed on a thwart, recovered his balance and caught the end of a rope thrown down to him from the ship. He made it fast to the stern and the boat swung slowly round until it came to rest alongside the ship’s hull.
‘Stand by, below there,’ Mr Brett shouted. ‘I’m coming down.’
He climbed over the bulwarks and went down the Jacob’s ladder with the agility of a gymnast. A moment later he was standing in the boat with the water over his ankles, staring at the patched and battered timbers. To him it seemed a wonder that such a wretched craft should have stayed afloat at all; it was even more amazing that it should have been found floating here in the lonely wastes of the greatest ocean in the world.
Mr Brett allowed his breath to escape in a low hiss. He stepped over a thwart, avoiding the ragged apology for a sail and splashing through the stagnant water.
‘No tiller, sir,’ the seaman remarked suddenly, as though an irresistible urge had come upon him to say something, no matter what.
Mr Brett stopped with his long legs straddling the thwart. ‘What’s that? What did you say?’
The seaman pointed towards the stern. ‘They lost the tiller.’
The mate glanced back over his shoulder and saw that it was so. The tiller had gone, but the rudder was there swinging idly on the pintle.
‘Not that it’d make much difference with this carcass,’ the seaman muttered. ‘You wouldn’t sail this nowhere, except maybe to the bottom.’
He appeared nervous, as though he were thinking that at any moment the boat might indeed go on that last downward voyage, and he with it.
‘It’s certainly been in trouble,’ Brett said.
On the port side a gap had been torn in the boards, and this gap had been mended, not without a certain skill. It was a rough repair, but effective. A boat-builder might have done it better, but it was probable that whoever had carried out this work had done so without the facilities of a boat-yard, making do with the tools and materials that came to hand.
There were other holes, smaller ones, that had been plugged with timber and canvas, then daubed over with tar. A galvanised iron bowl that had perhaps served as a bailer lay in the water, its wooden handle projecting above the surface. The gunwale on one side was scarred and blackened, as though it had been scorched by fire; and on one of the thwarts were some brown stains like paint.