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‘I dare say,’ I said bitterly. ‘How long are we to stay in this hell-hole?’
‘There’s not a finer schooner –’ Fleck began irritably, then broke off. ‘We’ll see. Few more hours, I don’t know. You’ll get breakfast at eight.’ He shone his torch around the hold and went on apologetically: ‘We don’t often have ladies aboard, ma’am especially not ones like you. We might have cleaned it up more. Don’t either of you sleep with your shoes off.’
‘Why?’ I demanded.
‘Cockroaches,’ he explained briefly. ‘Very partial to the soles of the feet,’ He flicked his torch beam suddenly to one side and momentarily picked up a couple of brown monstrous beetle-like insects at least a couple of inches in length that scuttled out of sight almost immediately.
‘As – as big as that?’ Marie Hopeman whispered.
‘It’s the copra and diesel oil,’ Henry explained lugubriously. ‘Their favourite food, except for
D.D.T. We give them gallons of that. And them are only the small ones, their parents know better than to come out when there are people around.’
‘That’s enough,’ Fleck said abruptly. He thrust the torch into my hand. ‘Take this. You’ll need it. See you in the morning.’
Henry waited till Fleck’s head was clear of the hatch, then pushed back some of the sliding battens that bordered the central aisle. He nodded at the four-foot-high platform of cases exposed by this.
‘Sleep here,’ he said shortly. ‘There ain’t no other place. See you in the morning.’ With that he was gone and moments later the hatch shut to behind him.
And so, because there was no other place, we slept there, perched shoulder to shoulder on the high platform. At least, Marie did. I had other things to think about.
She slept serenely, like one dead, for over three hours, her breathing so quiet that I could hardly hear it. As the time slipped by, the rolling of the schooner became increasingly more pronounced until after one particular violent lurch she woke up with a start and stared at me, her eyes reflecting confusion and perhaps a touch of fear. Then understanding came back and she sat up.
‘Hallo,’ she said.
‘Morning. Feel better?’
‘Mmm.’ She grabbed a batten as another violent lurch sent some loose boxes banging about in the hold. ‘But I won’t be for long, not if this sort of thing keeps up. Nuisance, I know, but I can’t help it. What’s the time? Half past eight, your watch says. Must be broad daylight. I wonder where we’re heading?’
‘North or south. We’re neither quartering nor corkscrewing, which means that we have this swell right on the beam. I don’t remember much of my geography but enough to be pretty sure that at this time of the year the steady easterly trades push up an east – west swell. So, north or south.’ I lowered myself stiffly to my feet, walked for’ard along the central aisle to where the two narrow spaces, one on each side, had been left clear of cargo to give access to the ventilator intakes. I moved into those in turn and touched both the port and starboard sides of the schooner, high up. The port side was definitely warmer than the starboard. That meant we were moving more or less due south. The nearest land in that direction was New Zealand, about a thousand miles away. I filed away this piece of helpful information and was about to move when I heard voices from above, faint but unmistakable. I pulled a box down from behind its retaining batten and stood on it, the side of my face against the foot of the ventilator.
The ventilator must have been just outside the radio office and its trumpet-shaped opening made a perfect earphone for collecting and amplifying soundwaves. I could hear the steady chatter of morse and, over and above that, the sound of two men talking as clearly as if they had been no more than three feet away from me. What they were speaking about I’d no idea, it was in a language I’d never heard before: after a couple of minutes I jumped down, replaced the box and went back to Marie.
‘What took you so long?’ she asked accusingly. She wasn’t very happy down in that black and evil-smelling hold. Neither was I.
‘Sorry. But you may be grateful yet for the delay. I’ve found out that we’re travelling south, but much more important, I’ve found out that we can hear what the people on the upper deck are talking about.’ I told her how I’d discovered this, and she nodded.
‘It could be very useful.’
‘It could be more than useful,’ I said. ‘Hungry?’
‘Well.’ She made a face and rubbed a hand across her stomach. ‘It’s not just that I’m a bad sailor, it’s the fearful smell down here.’
‘Those ventilators appear to be no damned help in the world,’ I agreed.’ But perhaps some tea might be.’ I went for’ard and called for attention as I’d done a few hours earlier by hammering on the bulkhead. I moved aft and within a minute the hatch was opened.
I blinked in the blinding glare of light that flooded down into the hold, then moved back as someone came down the ladder. A man with a lantern-jawed face, lean and lined and mournful.
‘What’s all the racket about?’ Henry demanded wearily.
‘You promised us some breakfast,’ I reminded him.
‘So we did. Breakfast in ten minutes.’ With that he was gone, shutting the hatch behind him.
Less than the promised time later the hatch opened again and a stocky brown-haired youngster with dark frizzy golliwog hair came nimbly down the ladder carrying a battered wooden tray in one hand. He grinned at me cheerfully, moved up the aisle and set the tray down on the boxes beside Marie, whipping a dented tin cover off a dish with the air of Escoffier unveiling his latest creation. I looked at the brown sticky mass. I thought I could see rice and shredded coconut.
‘What’s this?’ I asked. ‘Last week’s garbage?’
‘Dalo pudding. Very good, sir.’ He pointed to a chipped enamel pot. ‘Here is coffee. Also very good.’ He ducked his head at Marie and left as nimbly as he had come. It went without saying that he had shut the hatch behind him.
The pudding was an indigestible and gelatinous mess that tasted and felt like cooked cowhide glue. It was quite inedible but no match for the fearful coffee, lukewarm bilge-water strained through old cement sacks.
‘Do you think they’re trying to poison us?’ Marie asked.
‘Impossible. No one could ever eat this stuff in the first place. At least, no European could. By Polynesian standards it probably ranks with caviare. Well, there goes breakfast.’ I broke off and looked closely at the crate behind the tray. ‘Well, I’ll be damned. Don’t miss much, do I? I’ve only been sitting with my back against it for about four hours.’
‘Well. You haven’t eyes in the back of your head,’ she said reasonably. I didn’t reply, I’d already unhitched the torch and was peering through the inch cracks between the spars of the crate. ‘Looks like lemonade bottles or some such to me.’
‘And to me. Are you developing scruples about damaging Captain Fleck’s property?’ she asked delicately.
I grinned, latched on to my anti-rat club, pried off the top spar, pulled out a bottle and handed it to Marie. ‘Watch it. Probably neat bootleg gin for sale to the natives.’
But