Uncharted Seas (24 page)

Basil glanced at Unity and, catching her faint nod, he said what he felt expressed her wish: ‘I think I’d better since I agreed to do it. It’s hardly fair to back out now. There’s not much risk and I’m the obvious person to go with De Brissac. Vicente’s hardly got over his mauling by the octopus yet and you’ll want Hansie and Largertöf for jobs about the ship.’

‘O.K. then. Let’s get going. There’s a bit of a mist coming up; not much to worry about but I’d like to see you well on your way before it has a chance to thicken.’

As they followed Luvia out of the deck-house they saw that the farther island, to which Basil was going, was now no more than a smudge on the horizon and hurried along to the lounge where a high tea had been prepared for him.

Luvia had examined the balloons left by the Negroes after the fight that morning. Two of them had been shot through and had deflated but, including Yonita’s, there had been ten altogether and the remaining eight appeared to be in perfectly good condition. De Brissac and Corncob, already equipped with the strange gear, were making a preliminary trial fifty yards away from the ship.

Twenty minutes later, just as Basil was finishing his tea, Luvia came into the lounge. ‘Come on, Sutherland, make it as snappy as you can, there’s a good guy.’

‘Why—what’s the hurry?’

‘De Brissac’s anxious to get off before the mist thickens.’

‘Right-oh! just two minutes and I’ll be there.’ Basil kissed Unity very tenderly, and went out on deck. A balloon was strapped on his back and he made the circuit of the
Gafelborg
, finding the ski-sticks and stilts much easier to manipulate than he had expected.

It was nearly a quarter to six by the time Yonita went over the side to join the men, and another ten minutes were occupied in getting the party roped together at thirty-foot intervals on a long line. Sunset was not due for over an hour and a half yet but with the coming of the mist the westering sun had disappeared behind a bank of clouds and twilight was creeping down upon them. The mist had thickened slightly, almost obscuring Yonita’s island, but
it did not look as if they would have any difficulty in reaching the shore before the light had gone.

Watched by the whole ship’s company and sent on their way with hearty shouts of farewell the four who were to make the journey set out in a string, with De Brissac leading, across the dree, eerie weed sea into the shadows of the coming night.

De Brissac found the balloon-jumping a delightful experience. They did not make as rapid progress as he had expected from having watched the Negroes’ advance that morning; their pace was only about twice as fast as a man could walk; but there was something extraordinarily exhilarating in propelling oneself up into the air and floating gently forward through it. The feeling was something like that of a dream he had had once or twice in which he had felt himself to be gliding effortlessly along a few feet off the ground, right down the little street of the village which lay near his home in Gascony.

They had not gone very far before his thoughts were occupied with much more serious matters. All about them the dead-flat sea of weed seemed as though it was smoking, little curling wisps of mist were rising from it and ahead of them Yonita’s island had now become entirely obscured. Mentally he cursed the delay which had prevented their starting earlier. They should have set off promptly at five o’clock, but Basil had disappeared and Luvia had spent quite a time hunting the ship for him. Basil had had to have a meal and there had been the further business of getting into their strange equipment and trying it out before they had set off, so, after all, they had not started on their journey much before six. De Brissac reckoned the seven miles to Yonita’s island as only an hour’s journey, but now the twilight of the summer evening added to the difficulty of seeing through the rapidly increasing mist.

Basil, bringing up the rear, was hardly conscious of the changing of the conditions in the light and atmosphere. His heart was too full of happiness from having so recently discovered that Unity loved him. His only thought was to get this job of seeing Yonita home over as quickly as possible so as to be free to return to the ship.

Before they had gone two miles De Brissac was really worried. Glancing over his shoulder he saw that the ship was now entirely hidden behind them and that they were utterly alone on the open weed, hedged in by the damp, grey shroud which had risen all about them. He was a brave man, but, like all good commanders, cautious, and he never ran any unnecessary risks. If the ship had still been visible he would certainly have turned round and gone back to it, telling Yonita that, sorry as he was, her friends must grieve for her until the following morning; but he realised that if he turned round he might miss the ship, upon which they would be faced with the awful fate of staggering round and round above the weed all night until they were too exhausted to propel themselves farther and fell into it.

He saw that they must go on but he felt a constant, gnawing anxiety that in the fog they might miss the island by going either too far east of it or too far west. It was vain for him to reproach himself with not having brought his prismatic compass which was stowed away with his other military gear in his cabin. With that he could have taken a bearing of the island before they started and gone forward with complete confidence, but with every jump he took he feared now that, in spite of his concentrated effort to move only in a straight line, they might be making a curve which would carry them away from their destination. When serving in Algeria with the French African forces he had been lost on one occasion with a small party in the Sahara; he remembered then how they had gone up and down interminable sandhills thinking that they were moving east but all the time going round in a circle until at last they stumbled upon their own tracks. During his service in Madagascar, too, he knew that people who got lost in the bush almost invariably went round in a curve, however hard they endeavoured to keep moving in a straight line.

They had been going for something over half an hour when he spotted a rise in the weed just in front of him and shouted a warning to the others. Next minute he was floating down, not on to weed but on to a smooth rocky shore that rose out of it. Dropping his ski-sticks he put out his hands to save himself and landed with an awkward tumble. A moment later Yonita descended on top of him, and, before they could get up, Corncob and Basil had joined the tangled heap.

Owing to the gentleness with which their balloons let them down none of them was hurt, and, sorting themselves out, they
sat up in a row with the long stilts attached to their feet stretched out in front of them.

De Brissac heaved a sigh. ‘What luck! We should all thank
le bon Dieu
for this piece of fortune.’

‘Piece of fortune!’ Basil echoed in protest. ‘I don’t see much to be thankful about. One of us might have hurt himself darn badly on these rocks. It’s not going to be so easy getting off again either with stilts on our feet and these footballs at the end of them.’

‘We’re not going to get off again,
mon vieux
,’ De Brissac said quietly. ‘Not till tomorrow morning, and, believe me, I am heartily glad that we should have stumbled on this piece of
terra firma.
’

‘Is we goin’ to stay in dis place orl night, Bass?’ Corncob inquired anxiously. ‘Dis ain’t no place for a guy to sleep at all.’

‘Maybe not,’ De Brissac told him, ‘but we’re going to stay here just the same.’

‘No! no!’ little Yonita protested quickly. ‘These rocks are evil like all the land that is near the weed. I vow I should die of fright if we must stay here through the night.’

De Brissac put out a hand and patted her shoulder. ‘Please don’t worry, Mademoiselle. It will be uncomfortable, I know, but we will take good care of you.’

‘But damn it all,’ Basil expostulated, ‘why should we stay? This must be the third island, the little one about four hundred yards long, that we spotted from the ship this morning. We’re half-way to Yonita’s island now—another half-hour and we’ll be there. The mist’s a bit nasty, I know, but it’ll probably clear soon after sundown, and I was betting on being able to get back to the ship by moonlight tonight.’

‘I am sorry,’ De Brissac said firmly, ‘but you do not realise the danger we were in ten minutes ago. Like a fool I never thought to bring a compass, and there isn’t a man living who can keep his direction over a distance of several miles without landmarks or heavenly bodies to guide himself by. If you remember, this small island is quite a bit to the westward of the other, and had we not had the good fortune to come right on it we should have curved away, missing Yonita’s island by at least a mile, and gone floundering on all night, utterly lost, until we dropped in this foul weed from sheer exhaustion. I am in command of this expedition. We are not moving from this place until daylight; and not
even then unless we can see the coastline of Yonita’s island with much clarity.’

‘But we must go on, indeed we must!’ Yonita insisted. ‘We are too near the weed here to be safe for the night. We know the position of my island from this one and can start out from it in a new direction which will bring us safely to the shore.’

De Brissac shrugged: ‘We know the position of this island from the ship and from yours in daylight when we can see all three places, but are you so certain that we can judge its position accurately now that we can see neither of the others? Just show me where you think the ship is.’

‘ ’Tis out there,’ she said decisively, pointing to their front.

‘No, no, missie,’ Corncob disagreed. ‘De ship’s way over to de left dere. I’se sure of dat ’cos we was comin’ right from her an’ I fell sideways on dis rock.’

‘There you are,’ De Brissac smiled to himself. ‘Two of you do not even agree exactly on the direction from which we were coming when we all fell down here in a heap. The curve of the shore here puts you out a bit, I expect. Anyhow, if you are not certain about that, I certainly would not trust myself to guess just where that narrow headland of your island is we wish to reach. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid there’s nothing else for it. We must stay here the night. Let’s see if we can find any kind of shelter.’

They unlaced the stilts from their legs and De Brissac got out his torch to lead the way inland. He switched it on but muttered an inaudible profanity as it failed to light. Shaking it beside his ear he heard a faint tinkle and knew that the electric bulb had broken in his recent fall. None of the others had a torch upon them so they had to hop and drift gently forward in the foggy semi-darkness, dragging their stilts and ski-sticks behind them.

First they made the circuit of the island’s low, rocky shore to ascertain its extent and found it to be, as they had supposed, about four hundred yards long by two hundred yards wide. They then moved diagonally across it. There was not a single tree or shrub of any kind on the whole of its barren surface. It was just bare, inhospitable rock, but here and there the higher ground towards its centre was split and broken into fissures. The thickness of the mist limited their range of vision and as the sun, hidden from their view by the gloomy pall, sank to the horizon, darkness closed in; but before the failing light finally disappeared they
succeeded in finding a shallow cave among the bigger rocks in the island’s centre.

Stowing away their cumbersome balloons, ski-sticks and stilts and carefully weighing them down with loose rocks so that they should not be blown away, they settled in to try to make themselves as comfortable as they could in the deepest portion of the cave.

The business was a far from happy one as there was not even a little sand on the floor of the cave to soften the hard stone upon which they had to sit; their only comfort was that they had the gas balloons to lean against. Basil had a box of matches but the island contained no wood or dried sticks with which to make a fire, and, as they had counted upon dining with Yonita’s people, they had brought no provisions with them. De Brissac, being an old soldier, had a flask of brandy and a packet of chocolate on him. They passed round the flask and divided the chocolate, nibbling it slowly to while away the time since it was still early and none of them felt like sleep.

The mist was all about them, thick, dank, and oppressive. In the shallow cave they could only just make out each other’s form for a little time and soon dead night had descended on them, wrapping them in Stygian blackness.

For a while they talked, encouraging Yonita to give them further descriptions of life on her island and her friends among the people there; not only out of genuine interest but to try to keep her thoughts from the discomfort and uncertainties of their position which showed little likelihood of improving for the best part of ten hours to come.

After a time their conversation flagged and each of them might have been utterly alone. De Brissac would not allow smoking for fear a leak in one of the gas balloons might lead to an explosion, so they had not even the glow of each other’s cigarette-tips to comfort them in the darkness.

As night deepened the dead silence of the horrid weed world gave way to occasional queer little noises—a soft plop as some creature moved under the green jungle that obscured the face of the sea—a little hissing noise, faint but insistent and quite inexplicable—the fall of a pebble upon the rocky foreshore, making them suppress a start and turn their heads in the direction of the sound, fearful that some vile thing was creeping upon them out of the deep.

Corncob, a healthy child of nature, untroubled by the subtle
imagination of the more sensitive whites, had buried his head in a balloon, and, curled up into a ball, had gone off to sleep in spite of his strange surroundings. He began to snore with a long, low, nasal trumpeting, the monotonous repetition of which irritated the others, yet they had not the heart to wake him, knowing that he might not be able to get off to sleep again.

De Brissac declared his intention of staying awake all night to watch. There was no land animal of any size on the island, as, had there been, they would almost certainly have seen it during their tour of the small barren space, in spite of the mist. They could think of nothing which could possibly come up out of the sea to attack them, yet this terrible, eerie waste was so utterly unlike any ordinary shore that they were filled with a sinister foreboding. Much as Yonita and Basil would have liked to have slept, both protested that they would find it impossible.