The Snow Tiger / Night of Error (56 page)

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. ‘We’ve had enough of this nonsense with Minerva.’

‘It’s not quite the same thing,’ said Geordie.
‘Récife de Minerve
was a shoal – exact position unknown. Falcon, or Fonua Fo’ou, has had its position measured to a hair – but it isn’t always there.’

‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ Campbell exploded.

Geordie grinned and said to me, ‘You’d better tell them – you’re the expert.’

‘Falcon Island is apparently the top of a submarine volcano of the cinder type,’ I said soberly. ‘Every so often it erupts and pumps out a few billion tons of ash and cinders, enough to form a sizeable island.’ I referred to the
Pilot.
‘In 1889 it was over a mile square and about a hundred and fifty feet high; in April 1894 there wasn’t anything except a shoal, but by December of the same year it was three miles long, one and a half miles wide, and fifty feet high.’

I pointed to the pages. ‘There’s a long record of its coming and goings, but to bring it up to date – in 1930, Falcon was one and a quarter miles long and four hundred and seventy feet high. In 1949 it had vanished and there were nine fathoms of water in the same position.’

I passed the book over to Campbell. ‘What seems to happen is that the island gets washed away. The material coming out of the volcano would be pretty friable and a lot of it would be soluble in water.’

He said, ‘Does this tie in with your theory of nodule formation?’

‘It ties in perfectly. If these eruptions have been happening once every, say, twenty years, for the last hundred thousand years, that’s a hell of a lot of material being pumped into the sea. The percentage of metals would be minute, but that doesn’t matter. The process of nodule formation takes care of that – what metals there are would be scavenged and concentrated, ready to be picked up.’

Campbell looked baffled. ‘You come up with the damndest things,’ he complained. ‘First a reef that might or might not be there, and now a goddam disappearing island. What’s the present state of this freak?’

I looked at Geordie.

‘I don’t know. I’ll check up in the
Pilot
supplements – but they’re often printed a little behind the times anyway. The locals may know.’

‘Where is Falcon or Fonua-whatsit – when it’s available?’

‘In the Friendly Islands,’ I said. Clare smiled at that. ‘The Tongan group. It’s about forty miles north of Tongatapu, the main island.’

He frowned. ‘That’s a long way from Rabaul, and that’s where the Suarez-Navarro crowd is. And it’s a long way from here, where Mark was.’

I said mildly, ‘It’s halfway between.’

He nodded thoughtfully and we all chewed on it for a few minutes. After a while I spoke up. ‘In the light of this information, I think it would be worth concentrating on Falcon – if you’re carrying on, that is?’ I looked enquiringly at Campbell.

‘Yes, of course I am,’ he said energetically. His optimistic side was gaining steadily. ‘You really think this will be worth trying?’

Clare supported me. ‘I was sure those drawings meant something.’

‘Minerva meant two months of wasted time,’ Campbell said. ‘What do you think, Geordie?’

Geordie looked at me but with conviction. ‘He’s the expert.’

Ian Lewis waited with courteous patience. He was prepared to go anywhere, and do anything that was wanted of him. In spite of the horror of Tanakabu he was having a wonderful time, away from the dullness of home life.

The issue was settled for us while Campbell ruminated. A vagrant breeze from the open port flipped back a page or so of the
Pilot
and I happened to glance down. I looked at the page incredulously and began to laugh uncontrollably.

Campbell said, ‘For God’s sake, what’s so funny?’

I dumped the book into Geordie’s hands and he too began laughing. I said, ‘It seems we looked at the wrong
Minerva. Look – Minerva Reefs, two hundred and sixty miles south-west of Tongatapu – that puts them only about three hundred miles from Falcon Island.’

‘You mean there’s
another
Minerva?’

‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

Geordie handed him the book. ‘They’re fully mapped. They’re on a plateau twenty-eight miles long. It’s hard ground – shell, coral and volcanic cinders, at a depth of eighteen hundred to thirty-six hundred feet.’

‘Just like Falcon Island but much, much older and well established,’ I put in.

‘There’s no mention of nodules,’ Campbell said.

‘These are naval records and the navy wouldn’t dredge for them. They’d just take soundings using a waxed weight to sample the bottom material. A nodule – even a small one – would be too heavy to stick to the wax.’

There was a rising air of jubilation in the small cabin.

Campbell said, ‘Well, that does it, I suppose. We go to Tonga.’ He looked at us all fiercely. ‘But this time there’d better be no mistakes.’

So it was settled what we’d do after we left Papeete – if we left Papeete.

It seemed a long time.

Apparently a patrol boat had gone to Tanakabu and returned three days later, during which time things had got a little easier for us, but not much. All the crew members had been allowed to go ashore in batches, but Ian, the Campbells and I were still confined, as was Geordie for slightly different reasons. Paula managed to be allowed ashore mainly because she seemed to know everyone, including the policemen, but she only went under Jim or Taffy’s escort and didn’t stay
ashore for long, having little faith in Hadley’s having truly disappeared.

On the fourth day we were taken ashore, Campbell and I, and driven to the police station where we were ushered into the same office as before. M. Chamant was awaiting us.

He was quite pleasant. ‘Our findings on Tanakabu are consistent with your statements. I note that M. Trevelyan called off the search as soon as he found that the man Kane was armed, which is a point in your favour. I also found that you saved many lives at the hospital, and it is known that you were all aboard your ship when the doctor was shot and the fires started. Also your photographs were helpful.’

It was good news, and as near to an apology as we’d ever get.

‘When can we leave?’ asked Campbell.

Chamant shrugged. ‘We cannot hold you. If we had Kane and Hadley here you would be expected to stay and give evidence at their hearing, but …’

‘But you haven’t found them,’ I said bitterly.

‘If they are in French Oceania we will find them. But the Pacific is large.’

At least they seemed convinced of Hadley and Kane’s guilt, which would have come out sooner or later anyway. Hadley had been seen ashore and recognized by several of the people on Tanakabu, and it made me wonder all the more why they had stopped in Papeete to put the police on a false trail, instead of picking up their heels. But I thought that perhaps Hadley, whose mental processes were not as evident as his brutality, really thought that we would be found guilty of his crime, and so out of his way forever. It was impossible to try and read his mind. Now, if they were being hunted by the law themselves they would have less time to go after us, and we had already agreed to act as if they didn’t exist, otherwise we’d get nowhere.

‘You can go whenever you want, M. Campbell.’

‘We’re going west as we originally said,’ Campbell told him. ‘We’re heading towards Tonga. If we see them out there we’ll let the authorities know.’ We were being cooperative now, wanting no further opposition to our going about our own business.

Chamant said, ‘Very well, gentlemen. You may go. I will send instructions for the police guard to be withdrawn. But you will take care to be on your best behaviour for the remainder of your stay here, and I also strongly suggest that you leave these waters soon. Your family – ‘ He pointed to me. ‘Your family seems to cause trouble here, whether or not you intend to. And we do not want trouble on our hands.’

Campbell closed a hand firmly over my wrist. ‘Thank you, M. Chamant. We appreciate all you have said. And now can you arrange transport back to our ship, please?’

He was reluctant on general principles but finally we got a ride back to the docks and a short run out to
Esmerelda
, to carry back the welcome news of our release. Everyone deserved a couple of days off, and neither Campbell nor I begrudged them the time. The radio had been repaired and we had a lot of planning to do before we could set sail for the Friendly Islands, one of which might be there, or might not.

It was good to be at sea again, pounding along under the unfailing impulse of the trade wind. It would take about six days to sail to Tonga and we soon settled into shipboard routine.

Geordie was up and about. Although his face looked like the map of a battlefield he was fit enough otherwise, and took over the command from a reluctant Ian, who had gloried in his brief spell as skipper. The fresh wind blew away the last taint of Tanakabu and everyone benefited, and Kane’s disappearance had lifted the last reserve of secretiveness. They were all in the know now, including Geordie’s own crewmen, as we felt that it was only fair to warn them all of possible danger ahead, though none had taken advantage of Geordie’s offer to pay their fares home if they wished to leave us.

And Paula was still with us. Somehow that had been taken for granted and she had fitted in so well to shipboard life that there was no sense of surprise in her having agreed to come along. She and Clare set one another off nicely.

I immersed myself in text books and charts. I wanted to study currents, so I asked Geordie for pilot charts of the area. ‘Not that they’ll be any great help,’ I said. ‘The currents might have changed considerably in the last fifty
thousand years. That’s why Mark worked with Norgaard – he was an expert at that sort of thing.’

‘The pilot charts only have the surface currents,’ said Geordie. ‘Who knows what goes on under the surface?’

‘There are gadgets that can tell that sort of thing, though I haven’t one with me. And they can’t tell us what went on fifty thousand years ago, more’s the pity,’ I expounded. ‘Here is Fonua Fo’ou. There’s a warm offshoot of the South Equatorial Current sweeping south-west past the island. That should mean that any nodule deposits will also be laid down south-west of the island. But it’s a surface current – there may be other currents lower down, going in different directions. That we’ll have to check, if we can.’

I frowned at my own words. ‘The thing is, have those currents changed direction in those last fifty thousand years? I don’t know, but I shouldn’t think so. It’s not very long.’

Geordie snorted.

I put my finger on the chart. ‘What I’m really worried about is this spot here. That’s the Tonga Trench – our dredge will only go to 30,000 feet, and Horizon Depth in the Trench is nearly 35,000.’

‘Quite a bit of water,’ said Geordie dryly. ‘That’s over six and a half miles – a man could drown in that depth of water.’

‘If the high-cobalt nodules have formed at the bottom of the Trench we’re wasting time,’ I said, ignoring his baiting. ‘You could dredge them up, but it wouldn’t be an economic proposition – it would just amount to pouring money into the sea. By the way, I haven’t mentioned this to the boss. It would only cause alarm and despondency, and it might never happen.’

‘I won’t tell him,’ he promised.

But I did seek out Campbell for another reason, and found him on deck in his favourite spot reading a book. We chatted for a few minutes about the ship and the weather, and then I said, ‘Is it true what Clare said – that you’re a crack shot?’

‘I’m not too bad,’ he said modestly if a little complacently.

‘I’d like to learn how to shoot. I didn’t get off a shot back there at Tanakabu, and those bastards were popping off all over the show.’

He grinned.’What happened?’

‘I think I forgot to release the safety catch.’

‘I thought that might be it,’ he said. ‘It’s obvious you don’t know much about the game.’

‘I don’t know anything,’ I said positively.

‘Good. Then you won’t have any bad habits to get rid of. Stick around. I’ll get the pistols.’

He came back with four guns and laid them on deck. Three I’d seen and one which was new to me, but a twin of the one I’d handled. I didn’t ask him where it had been hidden. He said, ‘I didn’t know what kind of trouble we’d be running into, so I took out insurance and brought along these two .38s for you and Geordie.’

‘What about yours?’

‘Oh, I like this, the .22. They’re for me and Clare – she’s a pretty good shot, if in need of practice.’

‘I’ve always thought that a .22 was useless against a man,’ I said.

‘You’re like the cops. They always think you can’t use anything but a .38 or bigger,’ said Campbell contemptuously. ‘Look at it this way – who are the men who habitually use handguns?’

I thought about it. ‘The police, the army, criminals and hobbyists – like yourself.’

‘Right. Now, an army officer doesn’t get much time for practice, nor the wartime officer – so they give him the biggest gun he can hold, one that packs a hell of a wallop – a .45. With that gun he doesn’t have to be a dead shot. If he only wings his man, that man is knocked flat on his back.’

Campbell picked up a .38. ‘Now the police get more practice and they’re usually issued with, or equip themselves
with, these. A nice handy gun that will fit inconspicuously into a holster out of sight, but because of that the barrel’s too short, resulting in some loss of accuracy. You’ve got to have a lot of practice to be good with one of these.’

He exchanged it for a .22. ‘With this you have definitely got to be a good shot; the bullet is small and hasn’t any inherent stopping power, so you have to be able to put it in the right place. But the gun is deadly accurate – this one is, at any rate. If you meet up with a man who habitually packs a .22 steer clear of him, especially if he’s filed away the front sight, because that means he’s a snapshooter – a natural shot.’

I said, ‘What’s the range of these guns?’

‘Oh, they’ve all got a hell of a range, but that’s not the point. What counts is the accurate range, and with any hand gun it’s not very much. A guy who is an average shot will stop a man at ten yards with the .38. A crack shot will stop his man at twenty yards. And I’m not talking about target practice on the range – I’m talking about action where the other guy is shooting back.’

He waved the long-barrelled .22. ‘With this gun I’ll kill a man at thirty yards – maybe a bit further.’

I asked curiously, ‘You once said you had killed. Was it with this?’

‘Yes, in South America once. The jungle Indians don’t like trespassers.’

He said no more about it, and I let it lie.

So he began to teach me how to shoot. He started with the basic principles, stripping the guns and explaining the action. Then he showed me how to stand, and eventually how to hold a gun.

‘I’m not going to waste time with you on the classicstance,’ he said. ‘That’s for the police and championship target boys. If you tried you’d be filled full of holes before you sighted on your man. I want you to start with snapshooting.
It’s something you have or you haven’t – let’s see if you’ve got it. Point your finger at the mast.’

I did so and he followed the line of direction. ‘Not bad. If your finger had been a gun barrel – a steady one – you’d have made a hole in the mast just a little off centre. Do it again.’

So I did it again – and again – and again. Then he gave me a .38. ‘Now do it.’

I pointed the gun at the mast and he shook his head. ‘You’d miss by a foot. Put your forefinger alongside the barrel and do it again.’

I pointed the gun again with better results. ‘You won’t have your finger there when you shoot,’ he said. ‘It might be cut off by the action. But I want you to be able to point that barrel just like you point your finger.’

He drilled me for four hours every day on the voyage to Tonga. The rest of the crew crowded around at first, all asking for lessons, but Campbell declined, saying that one pupil at a time was his limit and that in any case there were no spare guns. Geordie endorsed this. Those of the crew who did have guns did a little target practice but no one had much ammunition to spare and soon they left us to get on with it.

I had to learn how to point the gun when standing, sitting, lying down and lastly, after a sudden turn. Then he concentrated on the trigger 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 rate, 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 Nouméa 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.’