Later that afternoon when Keith was at the helm and Jack below, beginning the preparations for supper, he happened to glance up through the hatch. Immediately he stopped what he was doing and came out on deck, and stood looking at the sky. Keith asked him what he was looking at.
‘Frigate bird,’ said Jack. ‘That’s the third I’ve seen.’
Keith followed his arm pointing and saw the bird, very high, flying or gliding on a straight course. ‘That’s a gull, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘Frigate bird,’ said Jack. ‘Much bigger ’n a gull. See his forked tail. He’s going home some place.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘That sort don’t spend nights at sea. They go way out, but they go back to land each night. He’ll be down by sunset.’ He glanced at the sun. ‘Hour ’n a quarter, hour ’n a half. There’s land that way, forty, fifty miles. That’s the third I see, all going the same way.’ He laid a horny, dirty hand vertically across the binnacle, looking up at the flight of the bird and down at his hand. ‘Just a tiddy bit south of east,’ he said. ‘Get them charts of yours ’n see what land that is.’
Keith went below and got the chart and brought it up on deck quickly before he was sick. He put the Pacific Islands Pilot down on it with the edge pointing a little to the south of magnetic east. ‘Must be Hawaii,’ he said. ‘If we’re on course that should be about sixty miles away.’
Jack thought about it, watching the bird now disappearing to the east. ‘I dunno as he’d fly so fast as that,’ he said. ‘Reckon we’re up to windward just a tiddy bit.’
Chapter Eight
The D.C.6b flown by Captain Fielding landed back at Blackbushe about midday on Thursday, just a week after leaving for Honolulu. They could have flown to Speke from Frobisher, which would have been more convenient for Mr Adams, but the landing fees for the aircraft at Speke far exceeded Mr Adams’ fare by rail from London to Manchester, so they took him to Blackbushe with them. They landed back into the cold foggy drizzle of a January day in England; after the languorous sun and warm trade winds of Honolulu the change was little to their liking. ‘Half-inch thick underwear, fires in the living-room, and hot buttered crumpets for tea,’ said the navigator thoughtfully. ‘Well, I dunno. I suppose there’s something to be said for it.’
The crew were tired and ready for a rest. They had flown the best part of their maximum permitted allowance of flying for a month in one week, finishing up with thirty-six hours on end. For most of them there was employment or instruction on the ground in the installations of Blackbushe until they were rostered for another flight, but all were entitled to three days of rest. Dick King would start again upon the overhaul of engines in the shops on Monday morning, but having turned in his log books and written his report he was free to go home.
He telephoned to his wife, Ethel, to bring the car to Blackbushe to fetch him. He lived at Egham in a house off Stroude Road convenient both for Blackbushe and for London Airport in case he wanted to change his job, and convenient for Ethel for shopping in Staines. He had brought back little gifts from Honolulu for his wife, a lei of frangipani blossoms in a polythene bag and a bracelet of coloured tropical nuts, unusual in Egham. ‘I haven’t got anything particular for tea,’ she said as he got into the car. ‘Anything you fancy?’
He shivered a little in the unaccustomed, raw chilliness of the early dusk. ‘Sausages,’ he said. ‘Pork sausages and fried potatoes.’ He thought of the navigator. ‘And crumpets. Let’s have lots and lots of crumpets. Got the fire lighted?’
She looked surprised. ‘I didn’t light it yet - it’s not very cold. Are you cold?’
‘A bit. We’ll light it when we get in.’ Half way home he thought of Keith Stewart’s letter in his pocket, and they stopped and posted it, and bought sausages and crumpets.
When they got home he gave her his presents, and she exclaimed with pleasure at the bracelet and the lei, which was satisfactory to him. While he was lighting the fire and putting the car away she picked the lei to pieces and put the flowers in water in an endeavour to make them last a little while in January England, and then she started in to cook the potatoes and the sausages and crumpets. ‘I never asked if you had a good trip,’ she said.
‘Pretty fair,’ he replied. He paused, and then he said, ‘You remember me telling you about Keith Stewart of the Miniature Mechanic, who was coming with us?’
She nodded. ‘I remember. Did you bring him back?’
‘No. He got off in Honolulu. Tell you all about it after tea.’
He did so as they washed the dishes in the kitchen, and as he recapitulated to her what had happened in Honolulu the unease grew on him again. It was absurd, of course, and that he realised, because Keith was his own master and if he chose to go to sea with a man like Jack Donelly in a ship like the Mary Belle, well, that was that. Moreover, it was all ten thousand miles away, and no concern of his. Yet he was still worried.
Something of his unease communicated itself to her as they sat before the fire. ‘We got him fixed up with a sextant and the ship’s officers showed him how to use it to take a latitude sight,’ he said. ‘I hope to God it’s going to work out all right.’
‘Doesn’t the captain have to do that?’ she asked, puzzled.
‘This one couldn’t. He was just a sort of fisherman. American,’ he added, in ultimate disparagement.
‘Doesn’t the captain of a ship have to pass exams, like in an aeroplane?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Maybe if the ship is small enough you don’t. I shouldn’t have thought that this chap could read or write.’ He thought for a moment. ‘He was a good woodworker.’
‘However small the aeroplane, you’ve got to have a licence and pass exams before you can fly it anywhere, haven’t you?’ she asked.
‘That’s so. It may be different with ships. This chap couldn’t navigate at all. He got to Honolulu from San Francisco by following the aeroplanes.’
She was puzzled. ‘But they fly to all sorts of places, don’t they? How would he know that any aeroplane he saw was going to Honolulu?’
‘It’s the only place they can go to,’ he said. ‘They all put down at Honolulu to refuel. You get out in the Pacific west of San Francisco and you see one flying to the west, it’s going to Honolulu.’ He sat in brooding silence.
Presently she asked him kindly, ‘What’s the trouble, Dick? Are you afraid that they won’t get to this place he’s going to? What’s the name?’
‘Tahiti,’ he said. ‘That’s about the strength of it. It’s the hell of a long way - more than two thousand five hundred miles of open sea. Nearly as far as from here to New York. And at the end of it, to find one tiny little island in among a lot of coral reefs you could get wrecked on, like his sister was. To think of starting off upon a trip like that in a sailing ship without an engine, with a skipper who can’t navigate!’
‘There’s nothing you can do about it,’ she said at last.
‘No …’ He turned to her. ‘I was with him all the time in Honolulu. We shared a room in the hotel. I’ve never shared a room with someone who was somebody before — I mean, well known. You know.’ She nodded. ‘He’d never been outside England before,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘For so famous a man — he didn’t know a thing, really. Never seen a shower before, or foreign money. He didn’t even know how to sleep properly in hot weather.’
‘Was he nice?’ she asked curiously.
‘Just like you or me,’ he told her. ‘We got on fine.’ He sat in an uncomfortable silence. ‘I ought to have stopped him going on that ship,’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t quite know how.’
She comforted him. ‘It’ll probably turn out all right,’ she said. ‘You see.’
‘I hope it does.’
He spent a restless night, much to her discomfort, weighed down by a sense of imminent disaster. He did not know what to do, but he knew that if Keith were to lose his life he would be associated with the tragedy in some small measure. Towards
morning it occurred to him that anyway he should not keep his grim forebodings to himself. Two heads, or several heads, were better than one. If he shared his apprehensions with other people someone might pull some rabbit out of an unthought-of hat, might make some suggestion that would somehow make Keith’s journey to Tahiti safer. But who to talk to?
He talked to everyone that he could think of over the week-end, and he talked to all and sundry at Blackbushe when he started work again on Monday, but no rabbit was extracted from any hat. On the Wednesday, when he had been back in England for nearly a week, he took a batch of exhaust manifolds for repair to a firm in Croydon, travelling with them to suggest a welding modification that would prevent certain cracks from starting. He rode with the driver in the truck, arriving in the middle of the morning. He did his business in the welding shop and had lunch in the firm’s canteen.
By the time he had disposed of his lunch and his work it was getting on for three o’clock. There was little sense in going back with the truck to Blackbushe for at most an hour of work before knocking-off time, and Keith Stewart was still uneasily in his mind. He rode with the truck driver to Croydon station and took a train to Victoria. An hour later he was walking into the editorial offices of the Miniature Mechanic in Victoria Street.
It was not a large office, and it was not modern or well furnished. In the outer office there was a girl and a young man, and two vacant desks littered with bits of miniature machinery, photographs, and pulls from blocks. He asked the girl if he could see the editor.
‘Who shall I say?’ she asked.
‘Mr King,’ he said a little awkwardly. ‘Mr King of Albatross Airways. He won’t know me. Tell him it’s about Keith Stewart.’
She went into the inner office, and came out followed by the editor. He went up to the engineer. ‘Mr King?’ he said with outstretched hand. ‘My name is McNeil. You’ve come about Keith Stewart?’
‘That’s right. I thought you might like to know how he’s getting on.’
‘Come into the office. Like a cup of tea?’ He turned to the girl. ‘Make us two cups, Daphne.’
They went into the office and the editor gave him a chair. Dick King said, ‘I’m the flight engineer of the crew Mr Stewart went to Honolulu with. We left him there when we flew back last Tuesday. I thought you might like to know how he was getting on.’
‘I certainly would. He told me he’d got a flight with you to Honolulu and he wanted to get down to Tahiti. He had to go there to see about his sister’s death.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did he manage to get a passage on to Tahiti? He wasn’t quite sure about that when he left.’
Dick King said, ‘He did get a passage, of a sort. That’s what I wanted to tell you about, really and truly. He was going on a sort of fishing boat. She hadn’t got an engine even — just the sails.’
Mr McNeil opened his eyes. ‘That doesn’t sound like Keith. Couldn’t he get anything better?’
‘Apparently not. We were all a bit worried about it, but he made up his mind, so there wasn’t anything that we could do.’
‘It’s a very long way, isn’t it?’
‘About two thousand four hundred miles.’ He hesitated. ‘Sea miles, that would be — knots. Close on three thousand land miles, I suppose.’
‘And he’s gone on that in a fishing boat — sailing?’
‘That’s right.’
The tea came. When the girl was out of the room the editor said, ‘Tell me just what happened, Mr King.’
The engineer considered how to tell his story. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it was like this. There was this crew of the Cathay Princess, the officers, I mean, the ship we took the generator rotor to.’ Launched on his story he had little difficulty in going on in his own way, and the editor had little difficulty in getting the essentials of the tale. ‘The chap was kind of simple,’ said the engineer, describing Jack Donelly. ‘He built the boat himself and made a good job of her. He’s a woodworker by trade, or else a fisherman. He could be a bit of both. But I don’t think he can read or write, and he certainly can’t navigate.’
Mr McNeil was puzzled. ‘If he can’t navigate, how’s he going to find Tahiti?’
‘That’s the trouble,’ said the engineer. ‘Captain Davies — he’s the captain of the tanker we took the generator rotor to - he said they wouldn’t get there at all. The first officer, he said he thought they’d get there in the end, but they’d take the hell of a long time.’ He paused. ‘It was all a bit of a mess-up, if you get me,’ he said unhappily.
‘But he went off on this ship, did he?’
‘I suppose he did,’ said the flight engineer. ‘We took off at dawn last Tuesday and they were going to sail the same day. I don’t know for sure that they went, but I suppose they did.’
‘How long was the voyage to take?’
‘Mr Fairlie said six weeks. You’d make it in ten hours in a D.C.6., but that’s the time he said it would take.’ He paused. ‘He did teach Mr Stewart how to take a latitude sight, and we got him a sextant. And Captain Davies, he fixed them up with food and that.’
The editor pursed his lips. It sounded absolutely crazy, and it probably was. He had private troubles of his own that concerned Keith Stewart. It was barely a fortnight since he left England, but already his absence had been felt very much by the staff of the Miniature Mechanic. Every other day a batch of letters arrived from Katie that Keith normally would have answered, and which now had to be answered by the editor himself. They were letters from all over the world. Jim McNeil had not fully realised till he had the job of answering these letters from Edmonton and Bulawayo, from Gateshead and Hong Kong, how widely Keith’s influence had spread, in what high regard he was held by modellers all over the world. He was uneasily conscious that Keith’s salary was perhaps too small; after all, it was only one third of his own, yet which of them did more for the circulation of the magazine? The overseas subscriptions were increasing every day. The air fare from Honolulu to Tahiti might not be more than the book could stand, a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds. Keith had been on the staff now for twelve years. It might be reasonable to stand him that.
He asked the engineer, ‘How could we find out if he’s actually left?’
Dick King rubbed his chin. ‘Well, I don’t know. I think he probably did sail the day we left.’
‘I’d like to know for certain.’ The editor paused. ‘If I’d known that he was in this difficulty we’d have given him some help, I think. I’d have to put it to the Board, of course. But I think we’d have helped him with the air fare, rather than see him get into a mess like this.’
‘You can’t fly direct,’ said the engineer. ‘You’ve got to go by Samoa.’
‘Have your firm got an agent in Honolulu that I could cable to?’
‘Not that I know of,’ replied Mr King. ‘There’s Mr Yamasuki. He was agent for the ship, the Cathay Princess.’
‘Any good?’
The engineer thought for a minute. ‘I don’t think he’d do much for a stranger unless there was money in it for him,’ he said at last. ‘He didn’t seem to want to be mixed up in it at all. It might be worth a try …’
‘I’ll think it over for an hour or two,’ said the editor. ‘I might think of something better.’ He took Mr Yamasuki’s name, talked to the engineer for a few minutes longer, and thanked him for coming in. Finally Dick left the office to catch a train to Staines and so to Egham.
Back in his office after seeing the engineer off the premises, Mr McNeil sat deep in thought, smoking pipe after pipe. Something would have to be done about Keith Stewart; he should have realised that earlier. He should have realised when Keith first proposed his most improbable journey that his value to the magazine was such that he must be assisted to complete it quickly and get back to work again. True, he had made a halfhearted offer of an advance payment if Keith should be in any difficulty; it now seemed to him that in view of his very small salary that offer had been quite inade
quate.
He should have offered him assistance with the airline fare to Tahiti and return — especially the return, because he wanted Keith back at work. It would have been quite a shock to his Board, but he could have pushed it through. Indeed, he would have to push it through now, whether the Board liked it or not. The effect of his penny-pinching was that his best contributor, the man who attracted correspondence to the magazine from all over the world, had had to go off on a crazy trip in the Pacific, on a fishing boat sailed by a skipper who didn’t know how to navigate …
If Keith Stewart were to lose his life, the effect upon the magazine would be disastrous …
He sat in brooding silence. No good crying over spilt milk now. Constructive action was required; the first thing was to find out whether Keith was still in Honolulu or whether he had in fact left upon this fishing boat. Whom did he know or correspond with in Honolulu? He searched his mind. There was nobody he could think of. There must be modellers in Honolulu; probably the mail department of the printers could produce half a dozen subscribers to the Miniature Mechanic in Honolulu if you included the armed forces. But he knew none of them.
Well then, Americans … Americans who might have contacts there. Professor O’Leary leaped to his mind. Professor O’Leary was Professor of Mediaeval Literature at Ann Arbor University in Michigan, just outside Detroit. Perhaps as a reaction from the mediaeval literature, he made models. They had published an article by him once — was it in 1952? - on the construction of his 4¾-inch-gauge locomotive model of one of the old wood-burning 4-4-0 engines of the Northern Pacific railroad of 1880. Two years ago he had visited England and Mr McNeil had lunched with him and with Keith Stewart. He was then completing a model of a Case traction engine, acknowledging a considerable debt to Mr Stewart for his articles upon the Burrell. He had shown them photographs of a very well equipped workshop in the basement of his home in Ann Arbor, with the oil-fired air-conditioning plant in the background, which had interested them as much as the model. Mr McNeil and Keith had kept in touch with this pleasant reader, who was now engaged on the construction of Keith’s Congreve clock. A Congreve clock is an antique clock mechanism in which a steel ball rolls upon a zig-zag path down an inclined plane and takes half a minute to do so, when the incline of the plane reverses and the ball rolls back again.