“All right,” I said. “You don’t like rats. And you don’t like men.”
“I’ve never had any reason to change my mind about either.”
It was hardly the time to point out that with her face and her figure she had as much chance of escaping attention as a magnet would have of moving untouched through a heap of iron filings. Instead, I cleared my throat and said: “I’m a man, too.”
“So you are. I’d quite forgotten.” The words meant nothing but the little smile that went with them made me feel ten feet tall. “I’ll bet you’re just as bad as the rest.”
“Worse,” I assured her. ” ‘Ravening’ would be a weak word to describe me.”
“That’s nice,” she murmured. “Put your arm around me.”
I stared at her. “Come the dawn,” I said, “you’ll regret this weakness.”
“Let the dawn look after itself,” she said comfortably. “You’ll stay here all night?”
“What’s left of it.”
“You won’t leave me?” This with a child-like persistence. “Not even for a moment?”
“Nary a minute.” I rattled my club against the battens. “I’ll sit here and I’ll keep awake and I’ll fight off every rat in the South Pacific. Every man in the South Pacific, too, if it conies to that.”
“I’m quite sure you would,” she said peacefully. She was asleep inside a minute.
CHAPTER TWO
Tuesday 8:30 A.M.-7 P.M.
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 particularly 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, taking the weight off my arm for the first time in hours.
“Hullo, knight-errant,” she said.
“Morning. Feel better?”
“Mmm.” She grabbed a batten as another violent lurch sent some loose boxes banging about 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?”
I made to look at the watch on my left wrist, but the arm was quite dead. I reached it across with my right hand, trying not to wince as the pins and needles of returning circulation shot through it. She frowned and said: “What’s wrong?”
“You told me not to stir all night,” I pointed out patiently. “So I didn’t. You are no light weight, young lady.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. She looked at me quizzically, colour in her cheeks, but smiled without embarrassment. “It’s come the dawn and I still don’t regret my weakness…. 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 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 knew the rats were still around and a phobia doesn’t die away in a night.
“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 watched her as she swung her legs over the side of the boxes, then touched the side of the right foot, gently. “How does it feel?”
“Stiff. Not very sore.”
I pulled off the socks and one side of the plaster bandage. The wound was clean, slightly swollen and slightly blue, but no more than it had any right to be.
“It’ll be O.K.,” 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 moved into the tiny cabin, striking an apprehensive match or two to make sure that there were no rats lurking around 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.” He looked at me curiously. “Had a good night?”
“You might have told us about the rats.”
“I might have. Hopin’ they didn’t show themselves. Trouble?”
“My wife was badly bitten on the foot.” I dropped my voice so that Marie couldn’t hear it. “Rats carry plague, don’t they?”
He shook his head. “Rats carry fleas. The fleas carry plague. But not here. Place is awash in D.D.T. 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 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 caviar. Well, there goes breakfast.” I broke off and looked closely at the crate behind the tray. “Well, I’ll be damned. Don’t miss very 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 managing 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 it wasn’t, it was lemon juice, and excellent stuff at that. Excellent for thirst, but hardly a substitute for breakfast: I took off my jacket and began to investigate the contents of the schooner’s hold.
Captain Fleck appeared to be engaged in the perfectly innocuous business of provision carrier. The half-filled spaces between the two sets of battens on either side were taken up by crates of food and drink: meat, fruit and soft drinks. Probably stuff he loaded up on one of the larger islands before setting off to pick up copra. It seemed a reasonable guess. But then, Fleck didn’t seem like an innocuous man.