02 South Sea Adventure (10 page)

Another night of sailing under the bright stars. A little after sunrise Roger at the wheel shouted, ‘Land-ho!’

This is it,’ thought Hal, tumbling out of his bunk. He came out on deck. The missionary lost no time in joining him.

Ahead lay a ring of reef enclosing a green lagoon. At two places the reef broadened to make islands but there was not much growing on them. Signs of the hurricane had been seen on some of the other islands the day before. This place had evidently been hit hard. Palm trees had been snapped off within ten feet of the ground. Only the stumps remained. Hal excitedly took an observation. What if he had missed the right island entirely? But the reading when he worked it out was the same as the singsong that kept going through his brain - 158° 12’ east by 11° 34’ north.

This was Pearl Lagoon!

He sliced off ninety minutes from each bearing and wrote in the logbook: ‘Sighted Pearl Lagoon at 156° 42’ east by 10° 4’ north.’

Let him copy that, he grinned. If his enemy ever chose to sail to that spot, he would find no island or, if he did, it would not be this one. He would be ninety miles west of the correct position and about the same distance south. That would put him more than a hundred miles from Pearl Lagoon.

Hal was thankful that Mr Jones was no sailor. The way he walked about the deck showed that. He lost his appetite when the sea was rough. He had occasionally operated the engine controls and held the wheel, but any amateur could do that. The only time he had tried the sextant he had held it upside down and he had never made any attempt to compute position by the Nautical Almanac. He was entirely at the mercy of Hal’s figures.

All right, let him take a good look at Pearl Lagoon. He would never see it again.

‘Let’s circle it,’ Hal said to Roger who was still at the wheel. ‘Don’t go too close to the reef.’

The atoll was less than a mile around. On the west side there was a good passage into the lagoon. Roger sped the boat through it upon the breast of an ocean swell. The water shoaled to a depth of only a fathom or two. The lagoon bottom seen through the clear green water was a paradise of coral castles of all the colours of the rainbow.

It was pitiful, the contrast between the beauty of the landscape underneath and the desolation of the hurricane-swept reef and its two battered islets.

‘Certainly wouldn’t like to be cast away here,’ shivered Roger. ‘Looks as if that storm didn’t leave a thing alive. I’ll bet it even killed the rats. Pearl Lagoon, eh? It ought to be called Starvation Island.’

At a sign from Hal, Omo dropped anchor. Hal had selected the spot with some care. It was behind a high shoulder of reef which cut off the view of the northern part of the lagoon. The boat drifted to within a few feet of the reef where it was checked by the anchor chain.

‘We’re going ashore for a little while,’ Hal said to Mr Jones. ‘You probably won’t be interested in this island because it’s uninhabited. Perhaps you’ll prefer to stay on board.’

Mr Jones pretended to welcome the suggestion. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay here. The place means nothing to me since there is no flock awaiting a shepherd.’

Hal, Roger, and Omo went over the side into water less than a foot deep and waded ashore. They clambered through humps of coral to the top of the reef and trudged northward. A shoulder of the reel soon cut them off from the view of the man in the boat.

Up the west reef they walked to where it broadened into an island at the northwest corner of the lagoon. Then there was a narrow neck of reef to another island at the northeast corner.

It must be here somewhere,’ said Hal. ‘Professor Stuyvesant said the northeast corner.’

The island was only a few hundred yards across. The shrubbery, if there had ever been any, had been ripped away by the storm. Probably the whole island had been under water. The forlorn stumps of palm trees looked like monuments in a cemetery. A few palm logs remained - the rest had evidently been swept away.

It was hard going, The storm had left the surface a litter of coral blocks in piles sometimes ten feet high. If you stumbled and put out a hand it was cut by the sharp coral. On the lagoon side of the island was a deep bay. It was not possible to see the bottom clearly for it was some ten fathoms down. The bay was a hundred yards across. The boys gazed down into its mysterious depths.

‘Lucky we brought Omo,’ Roger said. ‘I could never get down that deep. How about you, Hal?’ ‘I wouldn’t want to try it,’ Hal said. Omo made ready to slip off his dungarees but Hal stopped him. ‘Wait a minute. Let’s sit down and talk things over. Sort of a council of war.’ He told them his suspicions regarding the missionary. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Omo said. ‘I’ve known a lot of missionaries. He doesn’t quite ring true.’

‘Ithink he’s a phony,’ Roger said. ‘Let’s tell him so to his face.’

‘Not unless we have to,’ Hal warned. ‘He’s probably armed and we’re not’

‘But he wouldn’t kill us - just for some pearls.’

‘Don’t be too sure. There may be a fortune in this bay. I don’t think he would stop at killing to get his hands on it. Remember, this isn’t home - with a police station every few blocks. Here the law is whatever a man chooses to make it. Unless he forces our hand, let’s just go along as usual. But I thought you ought to know so that if anything breaks we’ll be prepared to act fast. Okay, Omo. Suppose you take a look at the bottom of this bay.’

Omo slid out of his clothes. Straight and strong and brown as the trunk of a coconut tree he stood poised on a rock overhanging the bay. His bathing-suit consisted solely of a pair of gloves. They would protect his hands when he seized the rough coral at the bottom to hold himself down or gripped the thorny oyster shells.

He began to go through the process that skin divers call ‘taking the wind’. He breathed heavily, each breath deeper than the last, groaning and straining to force the air down. He pressed his diaphragm downwards with both hands to increase his capacity. He pumped the air into his lungs as if they were a compressor, and held it.

Then he dropped into the water. He did not dive but went straight down feet first without a splash.

The momentum took him to a depth of about ten feet. Then he turned end for end and swam downwards with powerful pulls of his arms and thrusts of his legs.

Hal and Roger had seen exhibitions of underwater swimming and had taken part in some of them. But they had never seen anything like this. Any American or European swimmer who could plough his way down to a depth of thirty feet was a champion. At that depth the pressure was tremendous. The water beneath seemed to be trying to throw you up like a cork exploding from a bottle.

But Omo went on down, to forty feet, fifty feet, sixty feet.

‘And I’ll bet he could go twice as deep as that if he had to.’ Hal said. These fellows really know how to swim. They learn before they are two years old. Lots of Polynesian babies can swim before they can walk. They’re as much at home in water as on land - amphibians like the seals, turtles, frogs, and beavers.’

Now the boys could dimly see that Omo had stopped swimming. He was clinging to the coral bottom, his feet floating upward. He pulled himself down, let go, and took another hold a little farther on. He did this several times. He looked as if he were walking about the ocean floor on his hands.

Then he gripped something black and round and shot to the surface. He bobbed up out of the water waist high, sank back, came up again until his head was free, and clung to the rocks.

The compressed air came out of his lungs with a noise like the hiss of a piston. He breathed great gulps of pure air. His face was agonized and he did not seem to hear what the boys were saying.

Gradually his features relaxed. He looked up and smiled. The boys lent a hand as he clambered out of the water. He laid the black round thing on the rocks. It was an enormous oyster fully fifteen inches across. Roger shouted with glee. Hal silently thanked his lucky stars that he had found the right island, found the right bay, found the professor’s oyster bed. This must be it, for the few oysters that grew wild in Micronesian waters were seldom more than six or eight inches in diameter. ‘Are there many more like this?’ Hal asked. Omo nodded solemnly. That’s why the bottom looks black. It’s covered solid with shells. Hundreds of them.’

Roger danced with excitement That means hundreds of pearls.’

‘No,’ Omo said quietly. ‘Not every oyster produces a pearl. In fact we may have to open hundreds to get one.’

‘That’s usually the way of it,’ Hal agreed. ‘But here the average may be higher because the professor has taken special pains to make favourable conditions.’

There might be a pearl in this one.’ Roger took out his sheath knife and tried to prise open the bivalve. He strained and sweated but it defied all his efforts.

There’s a little knack to it,’ Omo said, and took the knife. Instead of prising, he thrust the knife between the lips of the shell, deep into the central closing muscle. With the muscle cut, the shell sprang open.

Then he let Roger take over. ‘If there’s a pearl,’ he said, ‘you’ll probably find it by running your finger along the inside of the lip.’

Roger feverishly explored the inner edge of each shell. There was no pearl. Roger looked crestfallen. But he would not give up yet. There might be one inside.’ He opened the shell completely and probed about in the oozy, sticky mass. He found nothing.

‘What a mess!’ he said disgustedly, and flung it behind him over a pile of coral blocks. It came down on the other side and hit something with a splash - and what sounded like a grunt. Roger darted behind the pile and encountered the Reverend Mr Jones wiping oyster out of his eyes, nose, and mouth.

He began to growl some remarks that did not sound well coming from a missionary. Then he remembered himself and tried to smile.

‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Roger.

The missionary did not deign to reply to this juvenile impertinence, but came around the pile to greet Hal and Omo. Oyster juice dripped from his ears.

‘I was a little anxious about you,’ he said, ‘so I came to see if all was well.’

‘You were spying on us 1’ Roger said hotly.

Mr Jones looked tolerantly at Roger. ‘My boy, you must try to remember that good manners are next to godliness.’

‘It’s cleanliness that’s next to godliness,’ Roger corrected.

‘And you’d better wash the oyster off your face.’

Mr Jones turned to Hal with a grieved air.

‘Do you stand idly by while your brother flings insults as the gamin of an earlier day hurled stones at St Stephen? Is it not your duty as elder brother…’

‘My duty as his elder brother,’ Hall said, ‘is to protect him from such scum as you. He was right - you were spying on us.

‘My son, you are overwrought. Your words are the hot irresponsible words of youth, but I would be a poor missionary indeed if I could not find it in my heart to forgive you,’ and he put his hand on Hal’s shoulder.

Hal shook it off. ‘Cut that high-toned talk. You’re no more a missionary than I am. You’re a dirty two-faced crook.’

‘Now, now,’ said the missionary patiently, ‘let’s try to control ourselves. Tell me quietly what has given rise to this unfortunate misunderstanding.’

Hal was seized by doubt. Was he wrong after all? Certainly this man was showing a patience and forbearance worthy of any missionary.

He tried a new tack. ‘Can you stand there and tell me you never heard of Professor Richard Stuyvesant?’

Mr Jones seemed to search his memory. ‘Stuyvesant, Stuyvesant,’ he mused. ‘No, I can’t say that the name is familiar to me.’

‘And you didn’t wire his laboratory?’ persisted Hal. ‘You didn’t listen in on his conversations? You didn’t overhear when he commissioned us to come to this island? You didn’t come out of the next house and get into a black sedan? You didn’t follow us to the Hunt Animal Farm?’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ said Mr Jones, but his voice had lost some of its assurance. A gob of oyster pulp dripped from the end of his long nose.

‘And I suppose you didn’t put Crab on the Lively Lady to get the bearings? He didn’t go through my papers? You didn’t wangle this trip with us so you could get our secret? Haven’t you been copying the log? Did you get off on an island where you could preach to the natives? Not you. You don’t care a hoot about the natives. You’re interested in pearls.’

Mr Jones sat down heavily upon a palm log. He spread out his hands. His big shoulders were hunched forward. His face was dark with anger but he controlled himself.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I see the game is up. You’ve got it pretty well figured out, haven’t you? I’m afraid you’re too smart for me.’

Hal eyed him suspiciously. Was the fellow soft-soaping him to throw him off his guard?

‘Yes,’ went on Mr Jones, ‘I see it’s no use trying to pull the wool over your eyes. I should work with you, not against you.’

‘There’s no way you can work with us.’

‘I’m not so sure of that, my friend. It’s true I am not a missionary. That was just a playful deceit I meant no harm.’

‘You meant only to steal this pearl bed.’

‘Don’t say steal.’ The big fellow brushed away the unpleasant word. ‘I don’t understand that this pearl bed belongs to anyone. This island isn’t the professor’s property. It doesn’t even belong to the United States Government. It’s part of a trusteeship under the United Nations - but even the United Nations doesn’t claim to own it. It’s nobody’s -it’s everybody’s. And I’m part of everybody. So are you. This lagoon and anything that happens to be in it is common property. You and I have a right to it.’

‘You mean to say that after all the trouble and expense the professor went to to plant this bed…’

‘The professor was a fool. He had too much faith in human nature. Well, it’s human nature to look after yourself, and that’s just what I’m doing. Now I’ll be frank with you. My name is Merlin Kaggs. I’m a pearl trader. I buy pearls from the diving outfits in the South Seas and take them to New York and London and Paris and sell them. 1 know pearls. You could do worse than to go in with me. I can get prices for pearls that an amateur in the business couldn’t possibly match. And I’m willing to share with you fifty-fifty. How does that sound?’