finger, making me squeeze the trigger gently without a jerk. He filed
the sear of the trigger until it clicked at a very slight pressure and
then made me practice a draw, snapping off the safety catch, pointing
the gun and squeezing the trigger all in one flowing motion.
On the third day I fired my first shot.
Campbell set up a rough target in the bows and when I stood near the
foremast and squeezed that trigger I was certain that I had missed.
But he led me to the target and pointed to a hole only two inches off
centre. “You’d make a pretty fair ten yard man,” he said. “Give me
another year or two and I’ll make a good shot out of you.” He took
his
.22 and, standing at the same distance, loosed off six shots in as many
seconds. “Now look at the target,” he said.
He had put a neat circle of small holes round the larger one made by my
bullet. “Give me time and you’ll be able to do that,” he said in reply
to my honest praise.
“I doubt if we’ll have time. Not if I run up against Kane and company
in the near future.” “You think we will? The Suarez-Navarro ship is
still up in Rabaul as far as I know.” “I don’t think it will stay
there,” I said. “They’ll be on our trail.” Campbell suddenly seemed
depressed. “How do we know it’s the right trail? We’re only going on
a wild hunch – a hunch that a couple of doodled drawings do mean
something.” He turned and went below, the pistols dangling heavily in
his hands.
We raised the island of Tongatapu on the morning of the sixth day out
of Papeete. Nuku’alofa, the southern port of entry for the Tongan
group, is on the north side of the island, so Geordie changed the
heading of Esmerelda.
He said to me, “There’s a paragraph in the Pilot that says you have to
keep a sharp lookout for undersea volcanic activity and new shoals in
these waters.” I smiled. “Sounds good from my point of view.” “Not
so good from mine. I have to skipper this ship.” But we entered the
anchorage without sighting anything unusual, tied up and settled down
to wait for the port officials’ Nuku’alofa was a typical Pacific island
town; the wooden houses with their galvanized iron roofs forever frozen
in a late-Victorian matrix. At one time it had looked as though
Nuku’alofa was going to be the chief trading port and coaling station
of the Western Pacific; but Suva, in the Fiji Islands eventually came
out on top, possibly for no more profound reason than that it was an
easier name to pronounce. At any rae, Nuku’alofa lost its chance and
relapsed into a timeless’ trance.
Once free to go ashore Campbell headed for the post office as usual. I
went off with the two girls who were going to book in at an hotel.
Clare announced that she was tired of salt water showers. “My hair’s
in a mess and I can’t get the salt out. It needs cutting,” she said.
“I want fresh water and luxury for a while.” I said thoughtfully, “It
looks as though we may be based on Nuku’alofa for some time. Maybe I’d
better do the same – get a room for me and see if Geordie wants one. A
ship’s all right if you can get off it once in a while.” Paula felt
happier here too, with Hadley a remote risk and nobody else around whom
she knew either. It was a lot more relaxing for all of us than our
second visit to Papeete. We arrived at the hotel and Clare said, “My
God, look at all that gingerbread!” It was a museum piece sprouting
galvanized iron turrets and cupolas in the most unlikely places; inside
it was pleasantly cool and dark with big electric fans lazily
circulating the air.
At the reception desk we ran into trouble when we asked for five rooms
– they had only three, one single and two doubles. I said to Clare,
“That’s all right if you don’t mind doubling up with Paula again.
Geordie and I will share and your father can have the single.”
The receptionist was most apologetic. There had been an unprecedented
rush on accommodation just recently. I left the desk feeling that
perhaps Nuku’alofa was going to give Suva a run for its money after
all.
I arranged with the girls to meet them in the lounge in an hour or so
and went upstairs to soak in a hot bath, and to lay schemes for getting
Clare away by myself somewhere that evening – the first chance I would
have had since Papeete.
When I came downstairs I found them already in the lounge with tall
glasses of beer in front of them, frosted on the sides.
“That’s a good idea,” I said and looked at the label on the bottle. It
was Australian beer – Swan. For a moment I was back in London on a wet
dull day a million years ago.
“That’s Kane’s favourite tipple. Maybe he’ll be around for a drink.”
Clare looked past me. “Here comes Pop.” Campbell came over to the
table with a sheaf of correspondence in his hand and the inevitable
worried look on his face. Clare said, “Have a cold beer, Pop. It’s
just the thing for this weather.” He dropped heavily into a cane chair
which creaked protestingly. “I think we’ve come to the wrong place,”
he said abruptly.
I signalled to a hovering waiter and ordered a couple of beers.
“What’s the trouble?” He unfolded a cable. “The Suarez-Navarro crowd
have moved again to Nourrida in New Caledonia.” I raised my eyebrows,
“Interesting, but not very informative. I wonder what they’re doing
there?” “I don’t know but it doesn’t look too good to me. According
to what we’ve figured they don’t know where the stuff is, so what the
hell are they drifting round the Pacific for? It looks as though
they’re as lost as we are.” Clare said thoughtfully, “Maybe Mark gave
them a bum steer before he died.” I shook my head. “No, if he’d done
that they would have been out testing for it, and we know they
haven’t.
But we’re not lost-at least we don’t think so. We’re here for a
purpose.” I glanced through the door of the lounge and saw the
receptionist working at his accounts. I said, “Excuse me for a
minute,” and went into the foyer where I had an interesting little
five-minute chat with him, which included the passing of a discreet
backhander across the counter.
I went back into the lounge, sat down and took a long, lingering
draught of cold beer. Then I said, “We’re in the right place.” They
all stared at me. “How do you know? How can anyone know?” I said,
“One
Ernesto Ramirez has booked half a dozen rooms in this hotel. He hasn’t
turned up yet.”
Campbell looked startled and Clare let out a yelp of pure joy. Paula,
on the other hand, visibly shrank back in her chair, and I made a quick
mental note of that. I said, “I thought it a bit odd that the hotel
should be so full right now, so I checked up on it.
Ramirez booked the rooms and paid handsomely for them in advance; he
wrote that he didn’t know exactly when he was coming, but that the
rooms must be kept free “I’ll be damned,” said Campbell. “But what’s
he been doing in Noumda?” “I think he’s been stooging around in this
area all the time, getting slowly closer to wherever we were, and
waiting to see where we’d go without being too close, so that he could
follow easily from a distance.” “But now he is coming here, and we’ve
not been in a day,” said Clare. “How could he know? And why come so
close now?” “We saw several ships as we came across, and we made no
secret of our destination. My guess is that he’s been fed the
information somehow.
As to why he’s closing with us, that I can’t guess. But what he
doesn’know is that we know he’s coming, and we have a head start on him
– we’re here.” “He must know we’ve arrived,” said Campbell soberly.
“He’s sure to have left a man here. I’ll bet they’re in touch right
now.” “We’re not going to be in for long,” I said. “We’ll be off
dredging soon. But we could put it about that we are leaving for
somewhere else – that might help draw him into the net.
At close quarters we can at least do something.” It was all very
dubious though, and we weren’t at all sure what was happening arbund
us.
“What kind of a ship have they?” I asked.
“Pretty much the same as ours – a bit bigger. Her name is Sirena.”