East of Outback (2 page)

Up from the galley drifted the aroma of sliced onions. Ariel was hard at work on supper. Salt pork, no doubt.

Blister. A hemispherical bump interrupted the glistening hard inner surface of this shell. Colin laid it aside and picked up the next oyster. Blister and baroque—oddly shaped mother-of-pearl—were to be kept separate.

The captain came topside presently, and stood a moment watching Colin at work. Wherever he stood, Captain Foulard towered, huge and boisterous, with warm brown skin and black, wavy hair. His polyglot French/Islander accent challenged Colin’s ear almost as much as Dizzy’s Spanish, Sake’s Japanese inflections, and Ariel’s Koepanger gibberish.

The captain smiled. “You, Colin Sloan, you not like most fellers work de pearl fishery. Different. More school, mebbe. What you think about, you sit here all dese hours doing dis?”

Colin shrugged, mildly embarrassed. “Lots of things.”

“Like?”

“Like, uh, how different Broome is from Sydney, where I grew up. And how the people here are different, too. The way of life—everything. And working. I like working, doing something with my hands.” He grinned and raised a hand. “Even when the work does things like this to them.”

The skipper chuckled and flopped down on the deck beside the shell pile. “Live in Sydney, huh? Papa got lotsa money, hey?”

“Yeah, might say that. He’s a commodities broker. He and Mum never went in much for flash—no fancy parties and touring cars and such—but they got enough money, and then some.”

“And you don’ like Papa’s money.” There was a twinkle in the captain’s voice. He was teasing, but just how much?

“There’s money and there’s money. I ’bout starved when I first got to Broome, but I’m making enough now.”

“When you come to Broome?”

“Coupla months ago. Five months now, I guess. November last year, 1924. Just as the boats were coming in for the lay-up season. I thought I missed the action, but there was plenty of work building boats, and refitting and rousting on the pier.”

“Why you come up here to Broome? Why not someplace else?”

Colin had to think about that a moment. “’Bout as far as you can get from Sydney, I guess,” he chuckled.

The captain slapped Colin’s shoulder. “Mebbe your Mama ain’ flahsh, but she raise a good kid. Good worker. Glahd you aboard, lahd.” He rose quickly and headed for the galley.

“Thank you, sir.” Now what was that all about? In the month Colin had worked aboard this pearling lugger, this was the first time the captain had singled him out for conversation.

He froze. His probing fingers had felt what they always looked for. Pearl! Only twice before had he discovered the hard little knot in the slimy oyster meat. This was by far the biggest of the three. He pinched and squeezed, separating the pearl from its gooey matrix. He dropped it in his shirt pocket, cleared the shell, and tossed the meat into the water.

Ever since his arrival in Broome, Colin had been hearing whispered tales of the fortunes in undeclared pearls that changed hands in the booming, open town. Snide pearls, they were called, pearls pocketed by the shell openers and never reported to the lawful owners. It was said that thousands of pounds changed hands in the illicit snide trade.

True, Colin would earn a share of the proceeds of this vessel, come lay-up season. But it would be a small share, a minuscule share, for he was no more than a casual hand, a laborer at the very bottom of the complex pyramid of the shell fishery. This pearl, this one pearl, could keep him nicely through the four months’ lay-up and beyond.

It isn’t yours!
his mind screamed.
It is now
, boasted his heart.
Isn’t! Is! Isn’t. Is!
The frenetic argument within him roared away all afternoon and into the evening. The pearl, nestled snug in his pocket, seemed to burn there. He ended up with a basher of a headache.

An hour before sundown. Sake surfaced on his own air and came aboard. Colin helped Dizzy remove the helmet and assist him out of his diving suit.

Sake’s bronzed face beamed, as it so often did after a good day. “How did we do?” he asked, looking right at Colin.

“Lots of good shell won today,” he replied, his conscience gouging at his aching forehead. Not only Captain Foulard would lose if he did not declare the pearl; Sake worked on shares, too.

“See more sharks?” Dizzy hung the limp suit to dry.

“One. But, I do not think it was the same that stopped by earlier. It sniffed about and went away.”

Colin shuddered. He spent the few minutes left before dinner opening the last of the shell Sake had won. Won at what price? The little diver could be dead or mutilated by now. It happened, and not infrequently. And what price the pearl?

He bagged the new shell. With part of it he topped off the three-hundred-pound hessian sack they had commenced filling two days ago. He sewed it shut with huge clumsy stitches. Monk’s cloth, sackcloth, burlap, hessian—whatever you called it, the stuff was scratchy and hard. He could imagine a penitent wearing it as punishment.

Punishment.

With the small amount of shell still left he started another sack.

Captain Foulard cried out. From the galley, from below, everyone ran to join him on the stern. A thick, black cloudbank squatted against the flat line of the sea to the northwest.

Dizzy crossed himself. “We far ’nuff from shore we gunner ride it out, you think?”

“Gunner hafter be. You and Ariel strip dis boom, get de spare out. We build a sea anchor, slow us down mebbe.”

The two seemed to require no further orders. They hurried off.

Colin could not take his eyes off the burgeoning, black storm cloud. “Last month, sir, when that cyclone ripped up Port Hedland, they were saying then it was the last storm of the season. That’s why all the luggers lay up over summer, isn’t it? To avoid the storms?”

“
Mais oui
. But who gunner tell daht willy-willy it’s a month late? Dis is why no insurance house touch de luggers. Storms don’t know how to read cahlendars. You go below now, make sure nutting gunner move around down dere. Don’ want no cargo shifting.”

“Yes, sir.” And he hurried below, thankful for something to do.

Colin started sweating instantly in the hot, dank, stinking hold as he dragged sacks of shell about, laying them down flat. He thought about the monument he’d seen in Broome’s cemetery, erected by Japanese mourners to commemorate their brethren lost in the cyclone of 1908—just three months before Colin was born. Seventeen years ago this very month. A chill ran down his spine despite the heat.

Sake appeared in the gloom beside him. He stuffed his diving gear and helmet into a little locker in the stern. “I give you help with these things.” His smooth, slim hands, as strong as any other man’s, gripped a filled sack and dragged it down among the others.

“Sake, were you out during that storm in aught eight?”

The Japanese diver paused, studying infinity again. “Three schooners lost. Three other ships. Thirty-nine luggers. Over a hundred men, forty of them Japanese.”

“So you
were
there.”

“No. I was but a lad, working in the sorting sheds. My father, though—he was one of the forty.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It is the price paid for shell. For beauty.” The bronzed man straightened and smiled suddenly, his teeth bright in the darkness. “Diamonds, sapphires—so cold, lad. Brittle. But a pearl is living, soft, like a woman. Diamonds are stones, flashing like a wanton woman. But the pearl, it glows gently, like a woman of virtue. Men lose their lives every day, some way or other. Serving pearls—like virtue— is good a way as any, right?”

“Yes, sir.” Colin hesitated. “You think we’ll die tonight?” He was surprised at his own casualness at discussing the subject.

“Perhaps,” he sighed. “Perhaps.”

C
HAPTER
T
WO

P
EARL OF
G
REAT
P
RICE

There is one thing worse than impending doom—a feeling of utter helplessness to prevent it.

Inexorably the storm bore down upon them. Its squall line hit
Grade
two hours past sunset.

The little lugger lurched. She heaved. Caught in the screaming wind she lunged forward, breasting unimaginable waves. They battened down as best they could. They threw out their jury sea anchor, a huge canvas cup kept in shape by spars. They cast all her anchors with as much chain and hawse as she had aboard. The anchors and her dragging sea anchor kept her tail to the wind. But for the lightning that occasionally ripped between heaven and hell, all was blackness.

“To the pumps, lahds!”

Colin groped his way through the darkness, hands on the cabin, hands on the lifeline stretched amidship. He and Dizzy took one side of the bilge pump bar, Sake and Ariel the other. In total darkness, in wind that could push a man over, in slinging, drenching rain Colin worked the bilge pump, up and down and up and down.

The little boat jerked, a motion somehow apart from her pounding leaps. Colin barely heard a
pung
.

“What’s that?” he gasped, choking a scream.

“One of the anchors snagged. The chain’s parted!” Sake yelled.

The chain’s parted? Colin thought. Welded links over an inch long parted, and the storm is just beginning!

Despite the backs of four strong men, the pump worked heavily, sluggishly. A massive presence stepped into the blackness beside Colin. Captain Foulard put a hand to the pump. “Hull must’ve sprung; we’re pumping green water!”

Green water?
Colin could see nothing, not even Dizzy working hard beside him. No doubt
green
referred to more than color, something ominous.

Under normal circumstances on the flat sapphire ocean, the captain’s voice rang loud enough to call in distant buoys. In this storm his voice carried three feet at most. “You lahds know what to do if she breaks up. Grahb yourselves anything daht floats, aye?”

Colin’s arms were ready to fall off, but not in a million years would he dream of letting up! Somewhere above him a loud
crack
snapped above the howling.

“Down, lahds! De mahst!”

The boat shuddered, throwing Colin to his knees. Behind them a horrendous crash hit the deck and cabin. He heard the port gunwale give way with a crushing sound. Suddenly
Gracie
lurched alist to port, her deck so steep Colin slid into the bilge pump.

The boat lurched again. Scraping, thudding—the ragged mast end whipped close past Colin, tearing his sleeve. In the darkness Dizzy screamed.

“We’re broaching! Every mahn for himself!”

The lugger had cast herself broadside against the sweeping wind and waves. She rolled. Colin felt himself lifting off the deck.

The captain’s long arm wrapped around his waist. Desperately Colin clung to that arm. They flew through the searing, rain-thick air together.

Colin choked. He gagged. He was bobbing in the wild water and that robust arm still held him.

“Grahb on here, lahd! Y’re not done yet.”

He grasped at nothing, at a straw. His arms hit a spar and he latched on to it. His nose and lungs burned with salt water.

The captain’s arm disappeared. “I’m gunner cut the cahnvas free; hang on!”

Colin hung on. His arms, already weakened by that stint at the bilge pump, threatened every second to let go. He wrapped around the spar, crossed his wrists and gripped his forearms. It gave his arms a rest, but the bounding waves kept smashing his face against the boom.

A voice called out in the blackness, but Colin could not identify it. He heard rushing and gurgling. Something struck his spar heavily and nearly Shook him loose from it. The very waters sucked him under, spar and all. He swirled in the black ocean, clinging. He was on the surface again, his ears so full of water that even the shrieking wind sounded distant.

How did he manage to stay afloat? He had no idea. How many hours passed? He had no idea. What had become of the others? He had no idea, not even of Captain Foulard’s fate.

The storm lightened. Although the rain beat harder, the wind seemed to relax a bit. And the sky grew lighter.

______

Just past dawn, Colin saw a man in a snappy little sulky driving across the waves. His pony’s white mane billowed. “Come, lad,” he called. “Get in with me and I’ll take you ashore.”

“I must bring my spar. Do you think it’ll fit?”

“No, lad, you must leave that.”

“No. I think not. G’day.”

The cart whipped silently away over the leaping water.

Captain Foulard’s voice behind him called, “Here, lahd! Leave daht boom and take an end of my gahff here. ‘Tis easier to hold on to.”

“No. I think not. G’day.”

Time passed unmeasured. Rain. Torrents of rain. Wind. Heaving, cresting, pitching seas. The sky grew dark. Colin bobbed again in a black and formless world.

“Listen, lahd! Breakers! Y’ hear ’em?”

He could hear something in the distance, though his sodden ears refused to tell him what.

“Let loose, lahd! We can swim for it; I’ll help.”

“No. I think not. G’day.”

Bobbing. Blackness. Timelessness.

Something brushed his foot. Colin groped with a toe. Sand! A wave lifted him high, crashing him down—onto sand! Struggling, kicking, he got his feet under him and pulled at his spar, dragged it forward. He must not let loose this boom. Surging surf yanked him about and tossed him up and down, but he would not let go of the float.

He stumbled, flailing his free arm, and then was upright. He might be on land, wonderful land, or he might be out on a spit at low tide, to be washed away when the tide returned. He must not forsake the spar. He dragged it as far up the sand as he could and collapsed across it.

The world seemed to laugh at him. A sea gull was surely laughing. The distant surf was spewing and spitting its mockery. And Captain Foulard was laughing.

Colin took a deep breath and coughed viciously. But no matter how hard he coughed, his chest rattled and wheezed, waterlogged. A huge hand pounded his back.

At last Colin opened his eyes. A pink crack at the base of the leaden sky told him dawn had come, and between Colin and that pink crack stretched a continent of solid land.