The village was formed of a semi-circle of huts of various sizes fringing upon an open space, and as they drew closer the reason for the glistening look became plain. The ground, the huts themselves, and the surrounding trees, too, all had a thin coating of the slime which had been on the guns.
The party kept steadily, slowly on until they reached the centre of the open space. There they paused, bunched together, facing outwards, examining each foot of cover closely. There was no sound, no movement but a few fronds stirring gently in the morning breeze. The men began to breathe more evenly.
The First Officer removed his gaze from the huts, and examined the ground about them. It was littered with a wide scatter of small metal fragments, most of them curved, all of them shiny with the slime. He turned one over curiously with the toe of his boot, but it told him nothing. He looked about them again, and decided on the largest hut.
'We'll search that,' he said.
The whole front of its glistened stickily. He pushed the unfastened door open with his foot, and led the way inside. There was little disturbance; only a couple of overturned stools suggested a hurried exit. No one, alive or dead, remained in the place.
They came out again. The First Officer glanced at the next hut, then he paused, and looked at it more closely. He went round to examine the side of the hut they had already entered. The wall there was quite dry and clear of slime. He considered the surroundings again.
'It looks,' he said, 'as if everything had been sprayed with this muck by something in the middle of the clearing.'
A more detailed examination supported the idea, but took them little further.
'But how?' the officer asked, meditatively. 'Also what? And why?'
'Something came out of the sea,' said one of his men, looking back uneasily towards the water.
'Some things three of them,' the First Officer corrected him.
They returned to the middle of the open semi-circle. It was clear that the place was deserted, and there did not seem to be much more to be learned there at present.
'Collect a few of these bits of metal they may mean something to somebody,' the officer instructed.
He himself went across to one of the huts, found an empty bottle, scraped some of the slime into it, and corked it up.
'This stuff's beginning to stink now the sun's getting at it,' he said, on his return. 'We might as well clear out. There's nothing we can do here.'
Back on board, he suggested that a photographer should take pictures of the furrows on the beach, and showed the Commander his trophies, now washed clean of the slime.
'Queer stuff,' he said, holding a piece of the thick, dull metal. 'A shower of it around.' He tapped it with a knuckle. 'Sounds like lead; weighs like feathers. Cast, by the look of it. Ever seen anything like that, sir?'
The Commander shook his head. He observed that the world seemed to be full of strange alloys these days.
Presently the photographer came rowing back from the beach. The Commander decided:
'We'll give 'em a few blasts on the siren. If nobody shows up in half an hour we'd better make a landing some other place and find a local inhabitant who can tell us what the hell goes on.'
A couple of hours later the gunboat cautiously nosed her way into a bay on the north-east coast of April Island. A similar though smaller village stood there in a clearing, close to the water's edge. The similarity was uncomfortably emphasized by an absence of life as well as by a beach displaying four broad furrows to the water's edge.
Closer investigation, however, showed some differences: of these furrows, two had been made by some objects ascending the beach; the other two by, apparently, the same objects descending it. There was no trace of the slime either in or about the deserted village.
The Commander frowned over his charts. He indicated another bay.
'All right. We'll try there, then,' he said.
This time there were no furrows to be seen on the beach, though the village was just as thoroughly deserted. Again the gunboat's siren gave a forlorn, unheeded wail. They examined the scene through glasses, then the First Officer, scanning the neighbourhood more widely, gave an exclamation.
'There's a fellow up on that hill there, sir. Waving a shirt, or something.'
The Commander turned his own glasses that way.
'Two or three others, a bit to the left of him, too.'
The gunboat gave a couple of hoots, and moved closer inshore. The boat was lowered.
'Stand off a bit till they come,' the Commander directed. 'Find out whether there's been an epidemic of some kind before you try to make contact.'
He watched from his bridge. In due course a party of natives, eight or nine strong, appeared from the trees a couple of hundred yards east of the village, and hailed the boat. It moved in their direction. Some shouting and counter-shouting between the two parties ensued, then the boat went in and grounded on the beach. The First Officer beckoned the natives with his arm, but they hung back in the fringe of the trees. Eventually the First Officer jumped ashore and walked across the strand to talk to them. An animated discussion took place. Clearly an invitation to some of them to visit the gunboat was being declined with vigour. Presently the First Officer descended the beach alone, and the landing-party headed back.
'What's the trouble there?' the Commander inquired as the boat came alongside.
The First Officer looked up.
'They won't come, sir.'
'What's the matter with them?'
'They're okay themselves, sir, but they say the sea isn't safe.'
'They can see it's safe enough for us. What do they mean?'
'They say several of the shore villages have been attacked, and they think theirs may be at any moment.'
'Attacked! What by?'
'Er perhaps if you'd come and talk to them yourself, sir ?'
'I sent a boat so that they could come to me that ought to be good enough for them.'
'I'm afraid they'll not come, short of force, sir.'
The Commander frowned. 'That scared are they? What's been doing this attacking?'
The First Officer moistened his lips; his eyes avoided his commander's.
'They er, they say whales sir.'
The Commander stared at him.
'They say what?' he demanded.
The First Officer looked unhappy.
'Er I know, sir But that's what they keep on saying. Er whales, and er giant jelly-fish. I really think that if you'd speak to them yourself, sir ?'
The news about April Island did not exactly 'break' in the accepted sense. A curious going-on on an atoll which could not even be found in most atlases had, on the face of it, little news value, and the odd line or two which recorded the matter was allowed to slip past. Possibly it would not have attracted attention or been remembered until much later, if at all, but for the chance that an American journalist who happened to be in Jakarta discovered the story for himself, took a speculative trip to April Island, and wrote the affair up for a weekly magazine.
A pressman, reading it, recalled the Saphira incident, linked the two, and splashed a new peril across a Sunday newspaper. It happened that this preceded by one day the most sensational communique yet issued by the Standing Committee for Action, with the result that the Deeps had the big headlines once more. Moreover the term 'Deeps' was more comprehensive than formerly, for it was announced that shipping losses in the last month had been so heavy, and the areas in which they had occurred so much more extensive that, pending the development of a more efficient means of defence, all vessels were strongly advised to avoid crossing deep water and keep, as far as was practicable, to the areas of the Continental Shelves.