The Devil's Eye (12 page)

The sea blossomed under the freshening wind. Single-masted cutters ran close-hauled into the south-easterly, leaning towards the land. Further out, two-masted luggers, long and low, enjoyed a straight run north.

The company luggers that had been on the coral reefs or down near Lizard Island wanted to be close to their schooners so that they could unload and take on provisions early the next day. They were coming in from the reefs and sandbars, and a few now worked the deeper water around Pipon Island and Barrow Point.

The colourfully painted hulls of the privateers were beating south for Howick and Lizards Islands. No one wanted to do more work than necessary on a Friday.

Beneath the
Zoe
, Willie Tanna walked the sea floor. Above him, Sam was having difficulty controlling where the lugger went, the cross swell, the tide and the wind pushing her in all directions.

‘Come up when ready,’ he felt Sam say through the lifeline.

‘Wait,’ said Willie. The cold had seeped into him, but he needed to think.

Joe Harry seemed to believe that the
Zoe
had fished more than one pearl. Or maybe Joe Harry was simply what he seemed: mad and murderous.

He considered his options. He and Sam could make a dash for Cooktown, and he could make Sam sell the pearl. They’d have to bring the crew into that plan. It wouldn’t work.

No. His best plan was to seek company and let things settle down. He desperately wanted to get the pearl off the boat. It wasn’t worth losing his job as a diver, even if it paid him a season’s wages. He had to persuade Sam to get rid of it.

When Willie Tanna finally surfaced and spilled from his suit, he felt cold and sick.

‘It’s diver’s disease,’ Sam told him. ‘I told you to come up an hour ago. You’ll now bleed from the ears and die.’

‘Coffee,’ was all Willie could say. The pain alarmed him, a deep pain, and he thumped his fist into his leg muscle, hoping it was cramp.

Sam stowed the equipment and told him to pray. Charley brought the coffee.

The flapping
Vision
was only a cable length away today. A flag at the masthead signalled ‘Diver Down’. He couldn’t believe that Joe Harry would be in any condition to dive.

‘We’re going around to Bathurst Bay,’ said Willie, when Sam came close. ‘Now.’

Willie croaked orders to weigh anchor and make sail, and staggered to the tiller.

The swell had increased and cut across the south-easterly chop, making the
Zoe
corkscrew. The haze had thickened so that the colours of sea, sky and boats bled into each other and lost their lives.

When he and Sam were alone at the stern, Willie asked, ‘What did Joe Harry mean when he said he’d seen our pearl?’

Sam shut his eyes and appeared to be praying again.

‘How could he have seen the pearl?’ Willie continued. ‘You only found it last night.’

‘He must have been talking about another pearl,’ said Sam.

‘What other pearl?’

Sam answered, ‘Maybe one that Thomas had.’

Willie pointed the
Zoe
towards Pipon Island, taking her on a course that would require one tack to get her around the cape.

‘Why would Thomas show
you
a pearl?’

They passed the
Vision
without a remark being fired. A few faces stared, but Joe Harry’s wasn’t one of them, and Willie was relieved to leave the lugger behind.

‘Willie, I didn’t sell Thomas any pearls.’ Sam had put his mouth close to Willie’s ear. ‘But someone did. I saw Thomas at the watering place, and he showed me. He said there were more to be found just like it. Willie, he told me where it was fished and I told him if we found
more there, we’d sell them to him.’ Sam pointed to their wake, to where Willie had been diving.

‘Jesus! Why didn’t you tell me?’ said Willie.

‘I wasn’t sure that you wanted to find a pearl. You’re not…’ and Sam struggled to describe what Willie was. ‘Hungry. You don’t have ambition. It makes you a dangerous man. Joe Harry’s made a big mistake.’

Willie didn’t say a word after that. Of course he had ambition. It was just that he was happy with the way things were at the moment. If what Sam meant was that he wasn’t greedy, well, they could all go to hell. Sam didn’t realise that this was as good as life could get for a man.

The wind bore them quickly into the shipping channel and Willie, still in pain, had his arm wrapped over the tiller.

He recognised the fifteen-ton
Ehime
in deep water half a league north.

As they passed the
Ehime
a hullabaloo broke out. The
Ehime
crew was yelling, and the
Zoe
crew started yelling back, but then Willie realised something was wrong; it wasn’t the common exchange of insults. They wanted the
Zoe
to come alongside.

Willie considered sailing on, but he had already made enough enemies. He set a course for the
Ehime
and told Sam unnecessarily to keep an eye on the
Vision.

The diver was curled up on the deck, out of his suit, and shivering under a blanket. Willie knew most of the divers, but not this boy. This crew was new, the diver from one of the other fleets and the crew fresh from Japan.

The poor man’s teeth were clamped together and he groaned softly. Four men were still at the airpump. They had another diver down below. It seemed to be a crowded lugger.

‘Please take him to the schooner,’ said the tender, a taut Japanese man who Willie knew by sight, but not by name.

‘Why don’t you take him in yourself?’ said Willie.

‘We fill our bags now or the skipper very angry.’

Willie thought this unlikely. If they didn’t have a full hold they weren’t going to get one in the next few hours. They simply didn’t want to surrender any time or any amount of shell, or the possibility of a pearl, just because someone was sick. It would have been less inconvenient for them if the man had died.

‘How deep?’ asked Willie, his sympathies now with the sick diver.

The tender looked around, unwilling to give information, but said, ‘Twenty-five fathom.’

Willie whistled. The diver had relaxed and was stretched out, panting. And then another seizure crumpled him into a ball.

‘Get him aboard,’ said Willie.

The Japanese crew lifted the man across and
propped him up against the side of the cabin, and the
Zoe
cast off.

‘What name?’ called Willie from the tiller.

Sam bent down and asked.

‘His name is Shemona Nanda,’ said Sam. ‘He says he doesn’t want to die today.’

The
Zoe
approached Cape Melville with the freshening breeze on its beam.

‘Weather’s turning dirty,’ said Sam loudly to Nanda, who didn’t care.

The lugger rolled, and Sam was suddenly drenched. The crew laughed, the tension broken, happy to be facing the weekend.

Sam held on to a shroud and told the sick diver that he didn’t like the way the weather was turning at all.

Willie tried whistling. They passed another lugger riding the swell. He expected to see the masts of the
Vision
coming up from the south, but there was no sign.

The sea was now uniformly grey and inscrutable. Willie took a bearing as they headed towards the bony finger of Boulder Rocks jutting out from the cape.

Sam told the Japanese diver, ‘They’re all hoping for shelter behind the cape.’ He was looking around at the hazy sky. ‘But I tell you, mate, don’t get your hopes up.’

‘All right, just shut up now,’ Willie yelled to him.

They passed the rocks with little leeway and glided smoothly into the relative calm of Bathurst Bay.

‘Maybe we can catch some fish for tea,’ Willie said. ‘Can we get some lines over the side while we’re still moving?’

Sam said that he had never wanted to eat fish less.

Shemona Nanda did indeed seem to be at death’s door. As the
Zoe
slid into Bathurst Bay, he coughed blood onto the deck.

‘We’ll run her straight in,’ said Willie.

They came up against
The Crest of the Wave
harder and less gracefully than Willie would have liked, but he didn’t want the man to die on board.

‘Sick diver,’ Sam called up as the
Zoe
’s crew held the two hulls together. ‘Permission to bring him aboard?’

‘Who in God’s name is it?’ Captain Porter yelled down.

‘A Jap from the
Ehime
.’

‘Damn it, what’s wrong with him?’

‘He’s going to die.’ Sam pointed to the man curled up on the deck, and Porter scowled and stormed off while the schooner’s crew reached down and the sick man was passed up.

As Willie watched, Maggie Porter appeared at the side, a vision in white. She caught his eye and raised a hand before he could look away.

‘If he was at twenty-five fathoms then it’s his own damned fault,’ Porter was saying.

He had Daniel Jones and another crew member carry Nanda to the sick berth up forward, and as he followed them below he called to Tommy, ‘Get Willie Tanna aboard and see what he’s got to say. Tell him he can’t unload now, though, if that’s what he’s thinking. He’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’

Poor Tommy went to the side and ordered Willie aboard.

‘How much shell, Mr Tanna?’ Tommy asked, as Willie and his tender stepped onto the deck.

Willie shrugged and looked aft. He hated talking to the British men and couldn’t think what to say.

Sam came to his rescue. ‘Plenty shell,’ lied Sam. ‘It’s been a good week.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘Weather’s turning dirty, though. Could be trouble.’ Willie kicked Sam in the foot.

‘Eh?’ said Tommy, looking around the sky. He gave Willie and Sam a cigarette each, and lit them. He then lit his own and said to Willie, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen Joe Harry?’

Willie shook his head, but Sam said, ‘Sure. We seen him. He was anchored off Barrow Point as we came in, wasn’t he, Willie?’

Willie blinked at Sam, who continued, ‘Them
Vision
boys must have a big load of shell. Or something.’

‘Really?’

‘They all getting drunk. When we passed them they were all singing. Them lucky boys, I think.’

Poor Tommy stared out to sea and said, ‘Damn that Joe Harry.’ He puffed, blinking, trying to gather his thoughts.

Sam glanced at Willie, and Willie was now looking fixedly at the deck.

Tommy asked, looking pale, ‘You heard anything about someone being speared?’

Sam said he’d heard no such thing.

‘Well, ask around for me, will you? And when you come back tomorrow, let me know what you’ve heard. Right?’

Willie bundled Sam to the side. As Sam climbed down the ladder, Maggie Porter appeared at Willie’s side.

‘Mr Tanna,’ said Maggie, ‘I need to speak with you.’ ‘I am in good health, Mrs Porter.’ ‘I can see that, Willie. I need to talk to you about Hope.’ ‘Hope?’

‘My sister. Do you know what I’m talking about?’

‘Yes, Mrs Porter.’ Willie put a leg over the side. ‘But I have to go now.’

‘Yes, I know, but you’ll be back tomorrow. We’ll talk then.’

When the
Zoe
had cast off, Captain Porter appeared, spoke briefly to Tommy and then went to the side to yell, ‘Willie! I’ll see you tomorrow. But if you spot that
Joe Harry again, you go and tell him I need to speak to him quick smart. Right?’

Willie saluted, but felt like curling up into a ball on deck himself.

Nature’s calm expression was cracking.

The sun rose from the mouth of the Starcke River and a school of small fish broke the flat sea to escape some toothy predator.

The flicker of heat lightning—Roth would no doubt say a reflection of his own troubles—had kept Jack Kenny awake most of the swollen night.

He’d come to this conclusion: he would marry Hope Douglas, and his sister and father had to return to New South Wales.

He simply could not maintain all these people, it would not be proper and there was not the room. He had done his best for everyone and in doing so had made everyone unhappy.

The realisation came as a relief in the early morning and he decided to get the troopers started before dawn. They left the camp in the dark and the horses were stamping the hard sand.

The patrol on horseback was now facing an empty sea.

Kenny asked, ‘So when Ogilvy promised to have the pilot boat meet you, the arrangement was for it to be here at the mouth of the Starcke yesterday?’

‘Yes,’ said Roth.

‘Friday the third.’

‘That was certainly the arrangement.’

‘And the boat would then wait for you?’

Roth glanced at Kenny. ‘That was the assumption.’

‘You
assumed
the boat would wait?’

‘Patience is one of the virtues, Jack. How long would you like to give it?’

Roth had apparently had a good night’s sleep and sat untroubled in his saddle relishing his cigarette.

It was calm inshore, but out to sea there must have been some wind. The eastern horizon seemed to be flowing south to north.

There was no good reason why the boat couldn’t have kept the appointment. Well, there were any number of reasons why it wasn’t there, Kenny supposed, but he didn’t care about them. He wanted to be rid of Dr Roth.

Kenny had to continue riding if he wanted to make Barrow Point by evening, search the area the next day, and return before his supplies ran out. He couldn’t leave Roth behind, but he certainly didn’t want him along.

They’d camped the previous night in the police paddock well away from the Aboriginal camp. Kenny
held little hope that the man called Frenchy would return, but he’d sent two of the troopers to keep an eye on the estuary.

A few naked children and a couple of dogs wandered over to the police tents.

‘I’ll interrogate them if you like,’ said Roth then.

He had befriended a half-caste girl with conjuring tricks.

‘It’s these children that I worry about,’ he told Kenny, as Pompey cooked their evening meal.

‘Take Dora here,’ said Roth, producing a penny from her ear. ‘You can guess where she’ll end up in a few years time.’

Kenny couldn’t bear the thought and turned away. One of the horses kicked a dog that came too close, sending it yelping in a ball of dust.

Roth had a plan for these children, and he explained it at length to Kenny that evening. In essence, it appeared to be to round up every half-caste girl and send her to the Cape Bedford Mission. Schwarz and the Government had only to be persuaded of this plan that would undoubtedly save the poor devils from certain abuse and disease.

Kenny thought it was a noble plan, but as he was the one who would be doing the rounding up, there were some practical problems. What if neither the child nor the parent saw things Roth’s way? Did he ride them down on horseback if they tried to run? Who would pay to raise these children? And after they were raised
at the mission, what then? Employment as maids and servants was surely all they could look forward to and in his experience the abuse continued there.

Now, staring out to sea from the mouth of the Starcke River, Kenny believed Roth’s plan to return to Cooktown had also been ill conceived. Kenny wondered if he’d actually contrived to miss the boat.

‘You go ahead,’ said Roth. ‘I’ll wait here. I suppose it’ll turn up eventually. Where’s that shotgun?’

‘I’m not leaving you alone on this stretch of the coast.’

A shoal of fish rose from the water in panic as something long and dark snapped at them. A few silver fish were left flapping on the sand under the horses’ hooves.

‘Well then, let’s take the day off,’ said Roth. ‘Have a picnic. If you like, I can even make it an order.’

Kenny was exhausted before the day started, his eyes stung from lack of sleep, and he decided to let Roth make up his own mind.

Without a word he wheeled his horse away from the shore. The troopers followed and Roth brought his pony around and cantered behind them, singing ‘Camptown Ladies’.

There was a well-defined native track inland that followed the coast, and once Kenny found it he had the
troopers go forward, Euro in the lead. He dropped back to the rear, behind Roth.

The country appeared to have been formed by blowing sand and the dunes ran at right angles to the prevailing south-easterly trade winds, providing some protection. Roth’s pony dawdled as he sang, and Kenny’s horse Sydney nipped it on the rump. The pony surged forward as Roth roared, ‘
Do dah, do dah
.’

As the day progressed, the insects quietened, the country steamed and shifted, and Roth fell silent.