The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (24 page)

This was no place for a man. It was a place for the wind and the gulls, yet there was a little water, there was a little food, and while a man lived, there was always a chance. It was then that he looked up and saw the schooner.

It was tacking, taking a course that would bring it closer to the reef. He shouted and waved a hand, and somebody waved back. He turned and walked toward the wreck.

When the dinghy came in close to pick him up, he waded out and lifted his bag of gold into the boat. Then he climbed in. There were two men in the dinghy, and they stared at him. “My—my water—it was about gone. You came just in time.”

The men stared at the sack, then at him. The place where the sack rested against the thwart had dented the sack. Only sand or flour or something of the kind would make such an impression. And the sack had been heavy. He couldn’t say it was shells or clothing. They’d know he lied.

Yet it was not until he came alongside the schooner that he realized how much trouble he had bought for himself. He glanced at the schooner’s name and felt a chill.

The
Dancing Kate.

Bloody Jack Randall’s schooner. Of course, he was never called Bloody Jack to his face, but behind his back they knew him by that name. He had killed a man in a saloon brawl at Port Moresby. There’d been a man shot in Kalgoorlie, but insufficient evidence released Randall. He was reported to have broken jail in New Caledonia after killing a guard.

After he was aboard, it was Randall’s mate, a lean, wiry man with haggard features, who kicked the sack. “Hey? What you got in there? It looks mighty heavy.”

“Gold.”

It was a sullen, heavy day with thick clouds overhead and a small sea running. Kahler’s eyes went to the sack again. “Gold?” He was incredulous.

“Yes.” He slid his knife into his hand, point toward them, cutting edge uppermost. “This weighs about a pound. I measured the weight by this, and it is more than they thought.”

“They?”

“A man in Misima asked me to deliver it to his granddaughter in Sydney.”

“What kind of a damned fool would do that?” Kahler asked.

“A man who knew who he could trust.” He glanced at Randall. “Where you bound?”

Randall hesitated. “East,” he said finally. “We been scouting around.”

“How about Woodlark? I’ll pay my passage.”

“All right.” Randall walked forward and gave the change of course to the Bugi seaman. There were four of the Bugis, some of the best sailors among the islands; there was Randall himself, Kahler, and the big man who rowed the boat. That would be Sanguo Pete, a half-caste.

Taking his sack, he walked forward and sat down with his back against the foremast.

Kahler came forward. “We’ll have chow pretty quick. One of those Bugis is a first-rate cook.” He glanced down at him. “How’d you survive on that reef? You must be tough.”

“I get along.”

“By this time they probably figure you’re dead,” Kahler said.

“Maybe.”

He knew what they were thinking. If something happened to him now, no one would know any better. Well, he promised himself, nothing was going to happen. He was going to meet Douglas at Woodlark.

When they went below to eat, he let them go first. He paused for a moment near one of the Bugi seamen. His Indonesian was just marketplace talk, but he could manage. He indicated the sack. “It is a trust,” he said, “from a dying man. He has a granddaughter who needs this.” He gestured toward the reef. “The sea was kind,” he said.

“You are favored,” the Bugi replied.

“If there is trouble—?”

“We are men of the sea. The troubles of white men are the troubles of white men.”

He went below. There was a plate of food at the empty place. Randall had not begun to eat. Coolly, before Randall could object, he switched plates with him.

“What’s the matter?” Randall demanded. “Don’t you trust me?”

“I trust nobody,” he said. “Nobody, Mr. Randall.”

“You know me?”

“I know you. Douglas told me about you.”

They exchanged glances. “Douglas? What do you know about him?”

“I’m his second mate. I’m joining him at Woodlark. Then we’ll arrange to get this”—he kicked the sack—“to that girl in Sydney.”

“Why bother?” Kahler said. “A man could have himself a time with that much gold.”

“And it will buy that girl an education.”

“Hell! She’ll get along—somehow.”

The food was good, and when supper was over, he took his gold and went on deck. Randall was a very tough, dangerous man. So were the others, and it was three to one. He could have used Douglas or Hildebrand. Or Charlie—most of all, Charlie.

The sails hung slack, and the moon was out. There was a Bugi at the wheel, another on lookout in the bow. These were tricky, dangerous waters, much of them unsurveyed. He settled himself against the mainmast for a night of watching.

The storm that had wrecked his boat had blown him east, far off his course. It could be no less than a hundred miles to Misima and probably a good bit more.

The hours dragged. A light breeze had come up, and the vessel was moving along at a good clip. The moon climbed to the zenith, then slid down toward the ocean again. He dozed. The warmth of the night, the easy motion of the schooner, the food in his stomach, helped to make him sleepy. But he stayed awake. They, of course, could sleep by turns.

At one time or another there had been a good bit of talk about Randall, Sanguo Pete, and Kahler. They had a hand in more than one bit of doubtful activity. He was half asleep when they suddenly closed in on him. At one moment he had been thinking of what he’d heard about them, and he must have dozed off, for they closed in quickly and silently. Some faint sound of bare feet on the deck must have warned him even as they reached for him.

He saw the gleam of starlight on steel, and he ripped up with his own knife. The man pulled back sharply, and his blade sliced open a shirt, and the tip of his knife drew a red line from navel to chin, nicking the chin hard as the man drew back.

Then he was on his feet. Somebody struck at him with a marlin spike, and he parried the blow with his blade and lunged. The knife went in; he felt his knuckles come up hard against warm flesh, and he withdrew the knife as he dodged a blow at his head.

The light was bad, for them as well as for him, and one might have been more successful than three; as it was, they got in each other’s way in the darkness. The man he had stabbed had gone to the deck, and in trying to crawl away, tripped up another.

He had his gun but dared not reach for it. It meant shifting the knife, and even a moment off guard would be all they would need.

One feinted a rush. The man on the deck was on his feet, and they were spreading out. Suddenly they closed in. The half-light was confusing, and as he moved to get closer to one man, he heard another coming in from behind. He tried to make a quick half turn, but a belaying pin caught him alongside the skull. Only a glancing blow, but it dazed him, and he fell against the rail. He took a cut at the nearest man, missed but ripped into another. How seriously, he did not know. Then another blow caught him, and he felt himself falling.

He hit the water and went down. When he came up, the boat was swinging. The Bugi at the wheel was swinging the bow around. As the hull went away from him, the bow came to him, and there were the stays. He grabbed hold and pulled himself up to the bowsprit.

For a moment he hung there, gasping for breath. He could see them peering over the rail.

“Did you get him, Cap?”

“Get him? You damned right I did! He’s a goner.” He turned then. “You cut bad, Pete?”

“I’m bleedin’. I got to get the blood stopped.”

“He got me, too,” Kahler said. “You sure we got him?”

Randall waved at the dark water. “You don’t see him, do you? We got him, all right.”

After a moment they went below, and the tall yellow seaman at the wheel glanced at the foremast against the sky, lined it up with his star. His expression did not change when he saw Dugan come over the bow and crouch low.

There was no sound but the rustle of bow wash, the creak of rigging, and a murmur of voices aft. He moved aft, exchanging one glance with the Bugi, and when he was close enough, he said, “Thanks.” Not knowing if the man understood, he repeated,
“Terima kasi.”

He knew the Bugi had deliberately put the rigging below the bowsprit in his way. The wonder was that even with the distraction of the fighting Randall had not noticed it.

His gun was still in the side pocket of his pants, and he took it out, struggling a bit to do so, as the dungarees were a tight fit. He put the gun in his hip pocket where it was easier of access. He did not want to use a gun, and neither did they. Bullet scars were not easy to disguise and hard to explain when found on rails or deck houses.

Sanguo Pete loomed in the companionway and stood blinking at the change from light to darkness. There was a gash on his cheekbone that had been taped shut, and there was a large mouse over one eye. He hitched up his dungarees and started forward, a gun strapped to his hips. He had taken but two steps when he saw Dugan crouched close to the rail.

Pete broke his paralysis and yelled, then grabbed for his gun. It was too late to think about the future questions. As Pete’s hand closed on the butt, Dugan shot him.

Randall loomed in the companionway, but all he saw was the wink of fire from Dugan’s gun. He fell forward, half on deck.

Pete lay in the scuppers, his big body rolling slightly with the schooner.

The Bugi looked at Dugan and said, “No good mans.”

“No good,” Dugan agreed.

One by one he tilted them over the side and gave them to the sea.

“My ship is waiting at Woodlark Island,” Dugan said.

The Bugi glanced at him. “Is Cap’n Douglas ship. I know.” Suddenly he smiled. “I have two brother on your ship—long time now.”

“Two brothers? Well, I’ll be damned!”

Kahler was lying on the bunk when he went below. His body had been bandaged, but he had lost blood.

“We’re going to Woodlark,” Dugan said. “If you behave yourself, you might make it.”

Kahler closed his eyes, and Dugan lay down on the other bunk and looked up at the deck overhead. The day after tomorrow—

It would be good to be back aboard, lying in his own bunk. He remembered the brief note in the Pilot Book for the area.

This coral reef, discovered in 1825, lies about 82 miles east-northeast of Rossel Island. The reef is 18 miles in length, in a northeast and southwest direction. The greatest breadth is 3 miles, but in some places it is not more than a mile wide. At the northeastern end of the reef there are some rocks 6 feet high. No anchorage is available off the reef.

Wreck. The wreck of a large iron vessel above water lies (1880) on the middle of the southeastern side of the reef.

If they wanted to know any more, they could just ask him. He’d tell them.

Off the Mangrove Coast

T
here were four of us there, at the back end of creation, four of the devil’s own, and a hard lot by any man’s count. We’d come together the way men will when on the beach, the idea cropping up out of an idle conversation. We’d nothing better to do; all of us being fools or worse, so we borrowed a boat off the Nine Islands and headed out to sea.

D
ID YOU EVER
cross the South China Sea in a forty-foot boat during the typhoon season? No picnic certainly, nor any job for a churchgoing son; more for the likes of us, who mattered to no one, and in a stolen boat, at that.

Now, all of us were used to playing it alone. We’d worked aboard ship and other places, sharing our labors with other men, but the truth was, each was biding his own thoughts, and watching the others.

There was Limey Johnson, from Liverpool, and Smoke Bassett from Port-au-Prince, and there was Long Jack from Sydney, and there was me, the youngest of the lot, at loose ends and wandering in a strange land.

Wandering always. Twenty-two years old, I was, with five years of riding freights, working in mines or lumber camps, and prizefighting in small clubs in towns that I never saw by daylight.

I’d had my share of the smell of coal smoke and cinders in the rain, the roar of a freight and the driving run-and-catch of a speeding train in the night, and then the sun coming up over the desert or going down over the sea, and the islands looming up and the taste of salt spray on my lips and the sound of bow wash about the hull. There had been nights in the wheelhouse with only the glow from the compass and out there beyond the bow the black, glassy sea rolling its waves up from the long sweep of the Pacific…or the Atlantic.

In those years I’d been wandering from restlessness but also from poverty. However, I had no poverty of experience and in that I was satisfied.

It was Limey Johnson who told us the story of the freighter sinking off the mangrove coast; a ship with fifty thousand dollars in the captain’s safe and nobody who knew it was there anymore…nobody but him.

Fifty thousand dollars…and we were broke. Fifty thousand lying in a bare ten fathoms, easy for the taking. Fifty thousand split four ways. A nice stake, and a nice bit of money for the girls and the bars in Singapore or Shanghai…or maybe Paris.

Twelve thousand five hundred dollars a piece…if we all made it. And that was a point to be thought upon, for if only two should live…twenty-five thousand dollars…and who can say what can or cannot happen in the wash of a weedy sea off the mangrove coast? Who can say what is the destiny of any man? Who could say how much some of us were thinking of lending a hand to fate?

Macao was behind us and the long roll of the sea began, and we had a fair wind and a good run away from land before the sun broke upon the waves. Oh, it was gamble enough, but the Portuguese are an easygoing people. They would be slow in starting the search; there were many who might steal a boat in Macao…and logically, they would look toward China first. For who, they would ask themselves, would be fools enough to dare the South China Sea in such a boat; to dare the South China Sea in the season of the winds?

She took to the sea, that ketch, like a baby to a mother’s breast, like a Liverpool Irishman to a bottle. She took to the sea and we headed south and away, with a bearing toward the east. The wind held with us, for the devil takes care of his own, and when again the sun went down we had left miles behind and were far along on our way. In the night, the wind held fair and true and when another day came, we were running under a high overcast and there was a heavy feel to the sea.

As the day drew on, the waves turned green with white beards blowing and the sky turned black with clouds. The wind tore at our sheets in gusts and we shortened sail and battened down and prepared to ride her out. Never before had I known such wind or known the world could breed such seas. Hour by hour, we fought it out, our poles bare and a sea anchor over, and though none of us were praying men, pray we did.

We shipped water and we bailed and we swore and we worked and, somehow, when the storm blew itself out, we were still afloat and somewhat farther along. Yes, farther, for we saw a dark blur on the horizon and when we topped a wave, we saw an island, a brush-covered bit of sand forgotten here in the middle of nothing.

We slid in through the reefs, conning her by voice and hand, taking it easy because of the bared teeth of coral so close beneath our keel. Lincoln Island, it was, scarcely more than a mile of heaped-up sand and brush, fringed and bordered by reefs. We’d a hope there was water, and we found it near a stunted palm, a brackish pool, but badly needed.

From there, it was down through the Dangerous Ground, a thousand-odd miles of navigator’s nightmare, a wicked tangle of reefs and sandy cays, of islands with tiny tufts of palms, millions of seabirds and fish of all kinds…and the bottom torn out of you if you slacked off for even a minute. But we took that way because it was fastest and because there was small chance we’d be seen.

Fools? We were that, but sometimes now when the fire is bright on the hearth and there’s rain against the windows and the roof, sometimes I think back and find myself tasting the wind again and getting the good old roll of the sea under me. In my mind’s eye, I can see the water breaking on the coral, and see Limey sitting forward, conning us through, and hear Smoke Bassett, the mulatto from Haiti, singing a song of his island in that deep, grand, melancholy bass of his.

Yes, it was long ago, but what else have we but memories? For all life is divided into two parts: anticipation and memory, and if we remember richly, we must have lived richly. Only sometimes I think of them, and wonder what would have happened if the story had been different if another hand than mine had written the ending?

Fools…we were all of that, but a tough, ruddy lot of fools, and it was strange the way we worked as a team; the way we handled the boat and shared our grub and water and no whimper from any man.

There was Limey, who was medium height and heavy but massively boned, and Long Jack, who was six-three and cadaverous, and the powerful, lazy-talking Smoke, the strongest man of the lot. And me, whom they jokingly called “The Scholar” because I’d stowed a half-dozen books in my sea bag, and because I read from them, sometimes at night when we lay on deck and watched the canvas stretch its dark belly to the wind. Smoke would whet his razor-sharp knife and sing “Shenandoah,” “Rio Grande,” or “High Barbaree.” And we would watch him cautiously and wonder what he had planned for that knife. And wonder what we had planned for each other.

T
HEN ONE MORNING
we got the smell of the Borneo coast in our nostrils, and felt the close, hot, sticky heat of it coming up from below the horizon. We saw the mangrove coast out beyond the white snarl of foam along the reefs, then we put our helm over and turned east again, crawling along the coast of Darvel Bay.

The heat of the jungle reached out to us across the water and there was the primeval something that comes from the jungle, the ancient evil that crawls up from the fetid rottenness of it, and gets into the mind and into the blood.

We saw a few native craft, but we kept them wide abeam wanting to talk with no one, for our plans were big within us. We got out our stolen diving rig and went to work, checking it over. Johnson was a diver and I’d been down, so it was to be turn and turn about for us…for it might take a bit of time to locate the wreck, and then to get into the cabin once we’d found it.

We came up along the mangrove coast with the setting sun, and slid through a narrow passage into the quiet of a lagoon where we dropped our hook and swung to, looking at the long wall of jungle that fronted the shore for miles.

Have you seen a mangrove coast? Have you come fresh from the sea to a sundown anchorage in a wild and lonely place with the line of the shore lost among twisting, tangling tentacle roots, strangling the earth, reaching out to the very water and concealing under its solid ceiling of green those dark and dismal passages into which a boat might make its way?

Huge columnar roots, other roots springing from them, and from these, still more roots, and roots descending from branches and under them, black water, silent, unmoving. This we could see, and beyond it, shutting off the mangrove coast from the interior, a long, low cliff of upraised coral.

Night then…a moon hung low beyond a corner of the coral cliff…lazy water lapping about the hull…the mutter of breakers on the reef…the cry of a night bird, and then the low, rich tones of Smoke Bassett, singing.

So we had arrived, four men of the devil’s own choosing, men from the world’s waterfronts, and below us, somewhere in the dark water, was a submerged freighter with fifty thousand dollars in her strongbox.

Four men…Limey Johnson—short, powerful, tough. Tattooed on his hands the words, one to a hand,
Hold—Fast.
A scar across the bridge of his nose, the tip of an ear missing…greasy, unwashed dungarees…and stories of the Blue Funnel boats. What, I wondered, had become of the captain of the sunken ship, and the others who must have known about that money? Limey Johnson had offered no explanation, and we were not inquisitive men.

And Long Jack, sprawled on the deck looking up at the stars? Of what was he thinking? Tomorrow? Fifty thousand dollars, and how much he would get of it? Or was he thinking of the spending of it? He was a thin, haggard man with a slow smile that never reached beyond his lips. Competent, untiring…there was a rumor about Macao that he had killed a man aboard a Darwin pearl fisher…he was a man who grew red, but not tan, with a thin, scrawny neck like a buzzard, as taciturn as Johnson was talkative. Staring skyward from his pale gray eyes…at what? Into what personal future? Into what shadowed past?

Smoke Bassett, powerful tan muscles, skin stretched taut to contain their slumbering, restless strength. A man with magnificent eyes, quick of hand and foot…a dangerous man.

And the last of them, myself. Tall and lean and quiet, with wide shoulders, and not as interested in the money. Oh, yes, I wanted my share, and would fight to have it, but there was more than the money; there was getting the money; there was the long roll of the ketch coming down the China Sea; there was the mangrove coast, the night and the stars…there were the boat sounds, the water sounds…a bird’s wing against the wind…the distant sounds of the forest…these things that no man can buy; these things that get into the blood; these things that build the memories of tomorrow; the hours to look back upon.

I wanted these more than money. For there is a time for adventure when the body is young and the mind alert and all the world seems there for one’s hands to use, to hold, to take. And this was my new world, this ancient world of the Indies, these lands where long ago the Arab seamen came, and where the Polynesians may have passed, and where old civilizations slumber in the jungles; awaiting the explorations of men. Where rivers plunge down massive, unrecorded falls, where the lazy sea creeps under the mangroves, working its liquid fingers into the abysmal darkness where no man goes or wants to go.

What is any man but the total of what he has seen? The sum of what he has done? The strange foods, the women whose bodies have merged with his, the smells, the tastes, the longings, the dreams, the haunted nights? The Trenches in Shanghai, Blood Alley, Grant Road in Bombay, and Malay Street in Singapore…the worst of it, and the best…the temples and towers built by lost, dead hands, the nights at sea, the splendor of a storm, the dancing of dust devils on the desert. These are a man…and the solid thrill of a blow landed, the faint smell of opium, rubber, sandalwood, and spice, the stink of copra…the taste of blood from a split lip.

Oh, yes, I had come for things other than money but that evening, for the first time, no man gave another good night.

Tomorrow there would be, with luck, fifty thousand dollars in this boat…and how many ways to split it?

No need to worry until the box was aboard, or on the line, being hoisted. After that, it was every man for himself. Or was I mistaken? Would we remain friends still? Would we sail our boat into Amurang or Jesselton and leave it there and scatter to the winds with our money in our pockets?

That was the best way, but with such men, in such a place, with that amount of money…one lives because one remains cautious…and fools die young.

A
T THE FIRST STREAKS
of dawn, I was out of my blankets and had them rolled. While Smoke prepared breakfast, we got the diving outfit up to the side. We were eating when the question came.

“I’ll go,” I said, and grinned at them. “I’ll go down and see how it looks.”

They looked at me, and I glanced up from my plate and said, “How about it, Smoke? Tend my lines?”

He turned to me, a queer light flicking through his dark, handsome eyes, and then he nodded.

A line had been drawn…

A line of faith and a line of doubt…of the three, I had chosen Smoke Bassett, had put in him my trust, for when a man is on the bottom, his life lies in the hands of the man who tends his lines. A mistaken signal, or a signal ignored, and the diver can die.

I had given my life to Smoke Bassett, and who could know what that would mean?

J
OHNSON WAS TAKING
soundings, for in these waters, chart figures were not to be trusted. Many of the shores have been but imperfectly surveyed, if at all, and there is constant change to be expected from volcanic action, the growth of coral, or the waves themselves.

When we anchored outside the reef, I got into the diving dress. Limey lent me a hand, saying to me, “Nine or ten fathoms along the reef, but she drops sharp off to fifty fathoms not far out.”

Careful…we’d have to be careful, for the enemies of a diver are rarely the shark or the octopus, but rather the deadline and constant danger of a squeeze or a blowup. The air within the suit is adjusted to the depth of the water and its pressure, but a sudden fall into deeper water can crush a man, jamming his entire body into his copper helmet. Such sudden pressure is called a squeeze.