LITMIR.BIZ

      I

      ‘Speaking of furs,’ said Sullivan, fanning himself with a folded palm-leaf, ‘did I ever tell you of that Japanese cook I met while you were in Batavia?’

      ‘We were not speaking of furs in the first place, and what has a Japanese cook got to do with them, anyhow?’ asked Ross, leaning back against his camel saddle. The big Scot was too hot to fan himself.

      Sullivan stretched his tall, lean body, and yawned. ‘It was just an idea that passed across my mind,’ he said.

      ‘Not one of your ideas for making money?’ asked Ross suspiciously.

      ‘Well, as a matter of fact –’

      ‘Ha! I was afraid of that. Now listen: you can take your idea and bury it. You’ll have plenty of time to dig a nice deep hole before this Kaid of yours turns up with the money.’

      ‘Arrah, don’t let that be worrying your Scotch soul, my boyo –’

      ‘Scots, please,’ interrupted Ross; ‘and you listen to me. Quite apart from the fact that we’ll never see our guns or our money again, I’m sick of this beastly oasis, and I’m tired of dates for breakfast, lunch, and tea, with half a peck of sand for dinner. We’re sailormen, and we ought to earn our living on the sea, not sitting by a puddle in a desert a thousand miles from the nearest port. So just you get it into your teak head, Sullivan that I dislike the sound of your voice when you talk about ideas.’

      A little before moonrise the same night, five white mehari camels hunkered down at the oasis.

      ‘Salaam, Kaid,’ said Sullivan, greeting the Arab.

      ‘Salaam aleikum, Effendi,’ replied the Kaid, touching his head and heart. They exchanged a few remarks, and then, apparently as an afterthought, the Kaid mentioned that he had some money. His men brought leather bags and a rug. The Kaid rung the coins out on to the rug one by one, while Sullivan, knowing the breeding of the desert, affected not to count them.

      Next day, as Sullivan and Ross travelled across the desert on the thoroughbred trotting camels that the Kaid had left as a present, the Irishman settled himself comfortably, and said, ‘I don’t want to rub it in, my good man, but if I were not a gentleman and the descendant of ancient Irish kings, I should say that there was something in my ideas.’

      ‘Mphm,’ replied Ross. For a long while they rode in silence.

      ‘Ay,’ said Ross, at last. More by luck than good management, though. We ought to stick to the sea.’

      ‘Very true: now this idea of mine would be entirely on the sea.’

      ‘Then you’d better tell me about it. You’ll surely burst if you don’t.’

      ‘It was like this, then. Yamamoto, the cook I was telling you about, went down with pneumonia out beyond Medicine Hat, and I looked after him. He had been a sailor most of his time – he came from one of the northern Japanese islands – and a little before he died, he told me of an island way beyond Saghalien where the sea otters breed: he was more than half Ainu, and his totem was the sea otter, so he had never made use of the knowledge, but he passed it on to me, as a sort of payment for looking after him.’

      ‘Sea otters, eh? The fur is more valuable than ermine.’

      ‘Yes. Next to chinchilla it’s the rarest fur in the world. My idea is that we go and get some. We have got the capital now for a boat, and I have got a good many more details – that’s just the bare outline.’

      ‘What, go to Saghalien because of the babbling of a delirious Japanese cook? Blethering foolishness. Those parts are very poorly charted: and how do you know he was really talking about sea otters, anyway? It was probably a moribund seal that his cousin’s wife’s brother-in-law saw. Tush! Stuff! If you find me wandering about in those latitudes calling “Puss-puss-puss” to imaginary sea otters, you can call me a yellow-belly.’

      II

      The schooner pushed slowly through the fog: the soft chug-chug of her auxiliary engine echoed back from the blank yellow wall that surrounded her. The lookout man, who had been staring for hours into the dense whirling vapour, started as he heard a step behind him. He could hardly distinguish the dim form in the murk.

      ‘You’re a yellow-belly, Ross,’ came Sullivan’s voice through the fog.

      ‘Och, you’ve said that twice today, man. D’ye think we shall ever be able to take our bearings again? It’s four days since we’ve had a shot at the sun. And I’m afraid there’s ice about by the smell of it.’

      Sullivan sniffed the air. His keen nose detected that faint change that had already warned Ross.

      ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s not far away, either. We must be farther off our course than I had thought. What do you make of the current?’

      ‘I can’t make it out at all. According to the chart there shouldn’t be one here, but there’s no manner of doubt that we have drifted a prodigious great way.’

      ‘Have you seen anything at all?’

      ‘Nothing all this

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