Uncharted Seas (34 page)

Arm in arm the two men crossed the park-land in the pale light of early morning; the young islander babbling away with considerable cheerfulness upon the respective merits of blondes and brunettes. It was quite evident that, although he was extremely fond of Yonita, Corisande held first place in his thoughts, at all events for the moment.

When they reached the house Basil spoke of returning to the ship and asked if he could be called at nine o’clock.

‘Plague take you for a restless fellow,’ laughed Sir Deveril amiably. ‘Here, you can stay up all night or in bed all day. Everyone does what they like in reason as you will soon find when you settle among us. Time, I believe, is a thing of moment in your strange great world, of which we know nothing, except what we have learned from the books and stories handed down to us; but here we set precious little store by it. Season drifts into season; providing the crops are sown and harvested, time is of small importance. Fresh settlers here, so my father used to tell me, invariably manifest a witless desire to add to their own toil by a multitude of pointless labours, but soon they become sensible of the futility of their exertions. We have abundant food, comfortable homes and work enough to prevent our becoming slothful. One of the German sailors who reached us in 1904 had some books by a man named Marx. He would talk for hours, I’m told, about a thing called a “Proletarian State”, but nobody here comprehended very fully what he had in mind although his description of the way in which the lower orders lived in European countries was curiously grim. His strange preoccupation with this subject became a harmless enough hobby, since, despite his attempts to upset everything here at first, he soon settled down like the rest of us to plough his few acres and drift quite happily from day to day. But I digress. If you wish to rise at nine o’clock, by all means do so. I will leave a message to that effect.’

When Basil woke, however, he found by his watch that it was nearly twelve, and when he reproached the old manservant who answered his ring with not having called him the man did not seem to appreciate the cause of his annoyance. He said he had
found his master’s message written on the slate, but thought it best that Basil should sleep on after being up so late. Moreover, he himself had only got up half an hour before.

Basil recalled Sir Deveril’s remarks earlier that morning and was forced to realise that in this land where there were no telephones, posts, offices and business hours, time was honestly considered of not the least moment, but fresh fears for Unity urged him to spring out of bed and inquire if De Brissac were up.

‘No, no,’ replied the man with a cheerful smile, ‘Mistress Yonita left word on my slate that she and the Captain were not to be called until they woke.’

Basil looked at him with blank astonishment, his mouth a little open at this extraordinary announcement, but he thought it hardly right to discuss the matter with the servant and directly the man had gone went to the door of De Brissac’s room, on which he knocked gently.

As there was no reply he knocked again, then opened the door a crack, to find that the bedroom was unoccupied and the bed had not been slept in. Utterly bewildered by this strange conduct of his friend in Sir Deveril’s house, he shaved, dressed himself and ran downstairs. The young baronet was not about so Basil made further inquiries of the old manservant, upon which he learnt that Sir Deveril had also left instructions that he was not to be called, and the man did not think it likely that his master would put in an appearance until the late afternoon.

‘Is—er—Captain De Brissac—er—in Miss Yonita’s room?’ Basil inquired hesitatingly.

‘Assuredly,’ said the man. ‘Did I not tell you so a moment back?’

‘Perhaps you will show me where it is then,’ Basil said, and the servant promptly led him down a corridor to it.

After repeated knockings Yonita’s voice came sleepily and with a touch of temper from within. ‘What wish you? Did I not say we were not to be roused? Begone!’

Basil then explained who it was and with some diffidence asked if she knew where De Brissac was.

‘La, sir. Most certainly. He’s here,’ she said angrily. ‘Be off with you. Are you not ashamed to disturb people’s slumber in this unmasterly fashion?’

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ Basil shouted through the door, ‘but it’s getting on for one o’clock, and we simply must get back to the ship.’

There was a loud yawn and then De Brissac’s voice. ‘
Mon ami
! have you no discretion? Leave us in peace, I beg. What does an hour or two matter? Be generous, my friend. We will go this afternoon, but do not bother me till then.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Basil grumbled as he turned away. There seemed nothing else that he could do, so he set himself to possess his soul in patience and wandered out into the grounds.

To occupy the time of waiting he walked down to the hall. It was deserted, with the big doors standing open and the remnants of the previous night’s feast still not cleared away. Not a single house that he could see showed any sign of activity. They all lay drowsing in the sun, and it was quite clear that, like Sir Deveril and Yonita, their occupants had no thought of work on this morning after the big party.

Under the minstrels’ gallery, in the big hall, he found another room which proved to be a library, and for some time he amused himself by going through the extraordinary collection of miscellaneous literature it contained. Evidently the islanders had made it a common depository for all the books which had been saved from the numerous ships that had reached their shores.

Upon one wall was a big chart of the two islands in the weed sea. Evidently the amateur cartographer had only a vague idea about the geography of Satan’s Island; its nearest coastline was charted clearly, but the others were only roughly outlined. In its centre the word ‘forest’ was printed; about three-quarters of the way along it the native village was marked, and beyond that came a thick line cutting off the whole of its southern end against which was written ‘THE GREAT BARRIER’. The other island was etched in with the most detailed care. Its shape was that of a crucifix and they had landed at its foot. The village was in its centre and in a bay under its eastern arm, about two miles from Sir Deveril’s house, Basil noticed that a number of wrecks were charted.

Having made a picnic meal off the abundance of cold foods that were still lying about on the tables and opened himself a fresh bottle of cider, he decided he would make a visit to the bay of wrecks, and set off at a leisurely walk.

When he came to the shore he saw that a long, low promontory forming the left arm of the cross stretched out for over a mile into the weed, and it was this evidently that caught the ships which were carried down the channel in the current. Opposite, about four miles away to the north-east, he could see the low
coastline of Satan’s Island and, to its south, much clearer than he had seen it from the
Gafelborg
, the higher ground like a sheer cliff that rose at the far end of it; evidently ‘the great barrier’ marked on the map. It looked as though a sort of flat mountain occupied the whole of that portion of the island.

For a long time he stared at the numerous wrecks which had brought the colonists to Yonita’s island. There were many more than she or Sir Deveril had mentioned, and he assumed that these were the ones which had arrived with only dead men on board.

As no serious storms ever agitated this tideless sea few of the wrecks had gone to pieces; many of the older ones were no more than hulks a few hundred feet out from the shore and had been entirely overgrown by the bright-green weed. Some of them had masts still standing, but of the majority the masts had been snapped off short by the hurricanes the ships had encountered before being driven into the weed sea.

One old hulk had an outline that, from its great, many-decked poop, suggested a Spanish galleon, and another quite near in to the shore, which for some obscure reason had no weed upon it so that its high, ornamented prow could still be seen, conjured up the almost impossible idea that it was the remains of a Phoenician or Norse galley. Basil did not think that even the stoutest timber could have withstood such aeons of time when partly submerged in water. Little of it remained, except the ribbed timbers of the hull and the great prow, and he was inclined to suppose that it might be the remnants of a ship from early Plantagenet times; a Moorish corsair, perhaps, that had got swept out from the African coast into mid-Atlantic and drifted down to the weed sea, months, or perhaps years, after its crew had died of thirst and starvation.

The more recent ships, including the small German gunboat, the American whaler and a dismasted barque, had not much wood upon them, but beastly patches of whitish mould showed here and there, giving their hulls a blotched, leprous appearance. A number of ships had curious structures above their decks of rotting canvas or broken planking, partially covering them in. Basil guessed these must have been erected to protect their crews from the octopuses, as Yonita had said that sometimes ships drifted for weeks, embedded in the weed, before beaching on the island.

Leaving this strange graveyard of the seas that accounted for
so many missing vessels long since written off in the musty ledgers of old shipping companies, many of which were, perhaps, no longer in existence, Basil walked slowly back to Sir Deveril’s house, and was extremely glad to find that its inmates were at last up and dressed.

As he entered the lounge he came upon De Brissac teaching Yonita to foxtrot while Deveril struggled to play on the harpsichord the jazz tune the Frenchman hummed. They were all enjoying themselves to the utmost and, to Basil’s relief, their host appeared not to bear the least resentment at the extraordinary conduct of his amorous guest.

‘Well, what about it?’ Basil asked.

‘You impatient fellow,’ laughed De Brissac, ‘but I will hold you no longer, since you are so desperately anxious to get back to your Unity. After all, I shall only have to postpone Yonita’s dancing lessons until tomorrow.’

‘I hate to drag you away,’ Basil said generously, ‘but you insisted that I should not go on my own, and honestly, I
am
anxious about our friends.’

‘Right then, we’ll set off immediately we’ve had tea. Sir Deveril has decided to accompany us. He can do so by using Yonita’s balloon and he wishes to welcome the others to his island.’

There was no further delay this time. After a quick meal they set off for the coast accompanied, as before, by quite a number of the islanders. As they topped the rise which hid the centre of the island from its northern shore, De Brissac halted to glance back at the view. The park-land in the valley had a blissful quiet, an ineffable peace, which made him recall Yonita’s words about God having set his sign, even in the midst of these evil seas, as a refuge and protection for poor shipwrecked people; had De Brissac known that he was never to look upon that fair vista again he might have paused longer.

A quarter of an hour later they had recovered the balloons from the spot where they had cached them and were getting into their harness. De Brissac was a trifle worried as it seemed that they had lost a little gas in the two days since they had been captured from the Negroes; but all three of the white men weighed considerably less than the blacks who had originally owned them and, after trying one out on the foreshore, De Brissac declared himself satisfied that the balloons would support them.

The day was bright and sunny, the time four o’clock, and
there was no trace of the nightly mist arising as yet, so it seemed that all was set fair for their journey. After affectionate farewells to Yonita and the rest the three men took off, this time quite easily as they were able to bound down the slope of the cliff and gain plenty of height before reaching the weed.

The going seemed much heavier than before and by the time they were a quarter of an hour out all three of them were acutely anxious. The balloons had lost more gas than they had supposed and were now barely sufficient to support them. With each bound they took their stilts and ski-sticks sank heavily into the dreaded weed and they had to exert all their strength to force themselves up again.

De Brissac was half-inclined to turn back. He would have had it not been for Basil and a little feeling at the back of his own mind that he really ought to have made more effort to hurry matters the day before so that they might have reached the ship the previous evening. If they abandoned their present attempt the balloons would lose still more gas and become completely useless. Then there would be no chance of getting to the ship until it beached upon the island, and none of them knew what might have been going on there. He set his teeth grimly and continued to advance.

They passed the island of the giant crabs, and all three men, now breathless and perspiring with their efforts, looked at it longingly, but they knew its terrible dangers far too well to think for a moment of taking refuge there for the night. Even if they had, once their balloons had further deflated they would have had no means of leaving it or their friends of rescuing them.

Grimly they pressed on, pushing and prodding at the weed, their ski-sticks sinking deeper with every stroke they made; the strain upon their muscles became appalling and the sweat trickled in rivulets down their faces.

Basil’s mind was partially diverted from his danger by a fresh anxiety about the occupants of the
Gafelborg
. He had naturally supposed that somebody would be on the look-out, eagerly awaiting them. In any case it was strange that no one was to be seen about the ship’s bridge or decks on such a pleasant, sunny afternoon.

De Brissac noticed the absence of a look-out too, and wondered about it. The
Gafelborg
was still nearer in; for which he thanked all his gods as he ploughed heavily along, rising no more than ten feet above the weed with every hop he took. The vessel lay
there in the bright-green weed apparently lifeless and deserted. He began to fear that some new fatality must have overcome its survivors during the previous night, and reproached himself more than ever for having failed to join them the evening before.