some food. Who’s cook?” I headed determinedly for my cabin to get a
change of clothes, leaving the others to see to my inner comforts – and
was brought up by the sight of Geordie, still in his bunk in the, cabin
we’d been sharing all along.
“Geordie! What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the
hospital?” I was already seething at this inhuman treatment, but he
waved me down casually.
“I’m fine, boy. It’s good to see you. What happened to you?”
“Geordie, I’ll tell you together with the rest, once I’ve washed and
had some coffee. Are you sure you’re all right?” But in fact he
looked a lot better, and I could see that his face had been
professionally attended to, with neat stitches and tidier bandaging.
As I stripped he said, “They wanted to cart me off but I sat firm.
There’s nothing wrong with me that their pretty visiting nurse can’t
fix. I’d get her to take a look at you too.” He nodded at my hands,
still partly covered with burnt skin, though they had started to heal
pretty well on the short trip back. I completed a quick ablution and
was finally seated in the saloon over breakfast and surrounded by the
whole of the crew of the Esmerelda – bar one. It was an immense relief
not to see Kane’s face among the others.
I told them as much as they needed to know, reserving a few more
private comments for Geordie and Campbell later.
“He’s a worried man, that Chamant. Was even when he saw me, and he has
to be even more so now that Hadley’s skipped,”Campbell said.
“He saw you?” “Oh yes, and the girls too, and Ian – wanted to speak to
Geordie but he was unaccountably sicker just then.” Geordie, propped
up on a saloon berth, winked at me, and I realized that my news had
cheered everyone up amazingly. Although we, and our ship, were all
technically still under arrest it was clear that we weren’t in any real
trouble, thanks to the various bits of evidence I had offered the
police chief, and we lacked only physical freedom – not any of the
oppression of spirit that imprisonment usually meant.
“Tell me about your interview,”I asked Campbell.
It had apparently been somewhat hilarious. Instead of being chastened
at being caught with a small armoury under his bunk Campbell was airy
and unconcerned about it, claiming that the guns were properly
licensed, that he was a well-known collector and wouldn’t dream of
travelling without something for target practice, and that in any case
only one of his guns had been fired – and that by his daughter
gallantly defending herself from attack by a shipload of murderous
pirates. He was scathing about Clare’s poor shooting and seemed not at
all troubled by her having winged a man, only irked by her not having
killed him outright. It appeared that while in Papeete, Kane had had a
small bullet taken from his shoulder, ironically by the same doctor
who
tended to Geordie. He was not, it seemed, badly hurt, which
disappointed Campbell considerably.
He was soundly reproved for not having declared the guns on his arrival
and was threatened with their confiscation, but he’d wangled his way
out of that somehow; and had got away with their being sealed at the
mouth for the duration of our stay.
It turned out that the other gun that I had seen belonged to Nick
Dugan, and he was similarly ticked off. According to Clare there had
been at least two other small handguns in use during Esmerelda’s fight
with Pearl, but none of them surfaced during the search that was made,
and I asked no questions. I also learned that Geordie had a shotgun on
board which apart from being legally licenced, had even been declared
by him to the Papeete customs – and was the only gun on board that had
not seen some action.
Campbell had lustered much as I had and had invoked all the powers he
could think of to back his credentials, and apparently M.
Chamant had done much what he had done with me – had let him speak at
will, listened carefully, and had finally released him back to the ship
with a fairly mild request that he write down an account of the
affair.
Everything pointed to our story being accepted, and indeed later that
afternoon the guards began to let us all out on deck in twos and threes
for some, exercise, after they’d moved Esmerelda to a mooring buoy well
away from the quayside. Things were looking up, and we all turned in
that night a great deal happier than we’d been at the start of the
day.
A senior police official came on board next morning and took formal
statements from everyone on board, which took a considerable time,
though some of us had written them out in advance and needed only to
sign them in the official presence.
My camera was removed as well, and I prayed that my photography had
been up to scratch. The doctor came to see Geordie again and Campbell
cornered him and asked innumerable questions about the hospital on
Tanakabu, and about the possibility of getting another doctor to go out
there soon.
We were all beginning to feel restless and uneasy. In spite of some
relaxation, we were still confined to the ship and as they kept us
battened down apart from whoever was being allowed on deck it was
stifling and airless on board.
Some time in the afternoon Geordie sent word that he’d like a word with
me and so I went to his cabin. He was propped up in bed and surrounded
by books. His face was still heavily bandaged but he was obviously
much stronger and the effects of the concussion had long worn off.
“Sit down, boy,” he said. “I think I’ve found something.” “To do with
what?” I asked, though I could already guess.
Several of the books were nautical and the Pilot was prominent among
them. “Has it got to do with those damned nodules?” “Yes, it has.
Just listen awhile, will you?” I felt a small indefinite itch starting
in the back of my skull.
At the end of the terrible business on Tanakabu I had felt sickened of
the whole search and had wanted nothing more to do with it.
The nodules could lie on the seabed forever as far as I was concerned,
and with the murder of Mark more or less exposed even the urge to lay
that ghost had died away to a dull, resignation. But now, deprived of
ordinary activity, I couldn’t help feeling that it would be interesting
to have the problem to chew on again, and my professional curiosity was
rising to the surface once more. So I settled down to hear Geordie out
without protest.
“I was thinking of that lunatic Kane,”he said.”He slipped up when he
mentioned New Britain the time he shouldn’t have known about it. I got
to thinking that maybe he’d slipped up again, so I started to think of
all the things he ever said that I knew of, and I found this. It’s
very interesting light, reading.” He handed me Volume Two of the
Pacific Ocean Pilot opened at a particular page, and I began to read
where he pointed. Before I had got to the bottom of the page my
eyebrows had lifted in surprise. It was a lengthy passage and took
some time to absorb, and when I had finished I said noncommittally,
“Very interesting, Geordie – but why?” He said carefully, “I don’t
want to start any more hares – we blundered badly over Minerva – but I
think that’s the explanation of the other drawing in the diary. If it
seems to fit in with your professional requirements, that is.” It
did.
“Let’s get the boss in on this,” I said and he half-lifted himself from
his bunk in delight. He’d played his fish and caught it.
I got up and went to round up Campbell, Ian and Clare and brought them
back to the cabin. “Okay, Geordie. Begin at the beginning.” I could
see that the others were as pleased as I had been to havd something new
to think about.
“I was thinking about Kane,” Geordie said. “I was going over in my
mind everything he’d said. Then I remembered that when he’d seen
Clare’s drawings he’d called one of them a “scraggy falcon”. We all
saw it as an eagle, didn’t we? So I checked on falcons in the Pilot
and found there really is a Falcon Island. The local name is Fonua
Fo’ou but it’s sometimes called Falcon because it was discovered by
HMS
Falcon in 1865.” Clare said, “But where’s the “disappearing trick”?”
“That’s the joker,” I said. “Falcon Island disappears.” “Now wait a
minute,” said Campbell, a little alarmed.