The Golden Reef (1969)

The boat was a dark speck in the centre of a wide disc of pale blue water. The Pacific shimmered in the tropical sun, and the boat moved lazily on the gently undulating surface.

There was no apparent life in the boat. From a spar that served as a mast a weather-beaten sail hung limply in the windless air, forlorn as an old scarecrow. In the bows a canvas awning had been erected to provide some shelter from sun and rain; but this, like the sail, had become worn and bleached by exposure, crusted with dried salt and a little frayed at the edges. A rope trailed in the water like some slimy maritime growth, and over the starboard side an oar crutch dangled at the end of a lanyard.

On board the freighter
Southern
Queen,
outward bound from Sydney, it was the second mate’s watch. Mr Watkins was a young man and an observant one; he was the first to notice the speck in the distance.

It was on the starboard bow and he moved at once to the extreme end of the starboard wing of the bridge and focused his binoculars on this piece of flotsam. The speck became larger; magnified by the powerful lenses it swam into his vision in clear and definite outline. Mr Watkins knew a ship’s lifeboat when he saw one, and this boat seemed to be in a bad way. Excited by the idea that he might be instrumental in the saving of human life, Mr Watkins would gladly have handled the operation entirely on his own. Reluctantly, however, he came to the conclusion that Captain Rogerson had better be informed.

Rogerson was in his day cabin with the chief officer, Mr Brett, when the information came to him, and he was immediately interested. Ships’ boats drifting about the high seas were not nearly as common as they had once been; and that not so very long ago. The
ending of the Second World War had made a sailor’s life less hazardous, but nature still had ways of sinking a ship even if man had ceased to employ his talents in this direction.

Rogerson, a florid, thick-set man of about fifty, got up from his chair and grabbed his cap from a peg.

‘Come along Ned. Let’s see what young Watkins is shouting about.’

‘If it is a boat it’s an awful long way from land.’

They went up to the bridge, Rogerson leading and the lanky chief officer close at his heels. Mr Watkins had already altered course a few points to starboard and now the boat lay directly ahead, an object that grew larger moment by moment as the gap between it and the ship’s bows steadily narrowed.

‘See any life in it, Mr Watkins?’

The second mate shook his head. ‘Nothing, sir. No movement. Looks like an empty shell.’ He sounded regretful.

Captain Rogerson examined the boat through his own binoculars, standing on the wing of the bridge, feet wide apart and the sun beating down on the white crown of his peaked cap. The boat appeared to sweep towards him as he adjusted the focus; he saw the tattered sail, the bleached and ragged awning, the dangling rowlock, the painter trailing in the water and an oar lying across the thwarts. But, like Watkins, he could detect no sign of life, nothing that might have been a man, a survivor.

Only between the ship and the boat was there a flash of movement, a glitter in the sunlight.

‘Sharks,’ Rogerson said.

Brett and Watkins had also seen the sparkle of water on the dripping fins.

‘Filthy devils,’ Brett said. ‘I hate sharks.’

Rogerson grunted. ‘I never knew anyone who liked ‘em.’

The gap narrowed rapidly. Soon they could see the faded paint, the crusted salt, a water breaker, the loops of the lifeline fastened just below the gunwale of the boat, two ends hanging loose where it had been broken.

Watkins was still peering through his binoculars. He said, controlling his excitement with difficulty in front of the older men: ‘There’s something else in the boat. Sticking out from that
shelter for’ard. Something dark.’

A breath of wind, no more than a cat’s-paw, fluttered the ragged sail and the boat heeled over slightly, listing towards the ship as though to exhibit its contents.

Watkins said, this time unable to disguise his excitement ‘It is something. I believe it’s a man’s foot – two feet. There’s somebody under that awning. Alive or dead, there’s somebody there.’

Rogerson spoke briefly to his chief officer and Brett went quickly down the bridge ladder shouting for the bo’sun.

The bo’sun, a small man with a scarred cheek and the light step of a dancing master, was there almost at once. He also had seen the boat.

‘There’s a man,’ Brett said. ‘Get ready to hoist him aboard as soon as we draw alongside.’

‘Is he alive, sir?’

‘How should I know?’ The mate spoke impatiently. ‘Either way, we’ll want to have him aboard so we can take a look at him.’

The bo’sun turned away and started giving orders to the seamen. A Jacob’s ladder was pushed over the bulwarks and unrolled itself down the side of the ship. It hung there with its lower end trailing in the sea.

The
Southern
Queen,
her propeller no longer turning, drifted towards the boat. Captain Rogerson had walked to the end of the bridge and was looking down at the smaller craft as the ship nudged gently against it, so gently in fact that only a slight grinding sound gave evidence of the pressure of steel on wood. The impact pushed the boat away, but it moved sluggishly, like a half-saturated log. Water swilled about inside it, lapping at the two human feet that projected from beneath the shelter of the awning. But the feet did not move.

A seaman had gone down the Jacob’s ladder and was hanging on it just clear of the water. Mr Brett shouted to him from the steamer’s deck.

‘Catch hold, man. Don’t let her go.’

The seaman jumped for the boat and landed on a thwart, recovered his balance and caught the end of a rope thrown down to him from the ship. He made it fast to the stern and the boat swung slowly round until it came to rest alongside the ship’s hull.

‘Stand by, below there,’ Mr Brett shouted. ‘I’m coming down.’

He climbed over the bulwarks and went down the Jacob’s ladder with the agility of a gymnast. A moment later he was standing in the boat with the water over his ankles, staring at the patched and battered timbers. To him it seemed a wonder that such a wretched craft should have stayed afloat at all; it was even more amazing that it should have been found floating here in the lonely wastes of the greatest ocean in the world.

Mr Brett allowed his breath to escape in a low hiss. He stepped over a thwart, avoiding the ragged apology for a sail and splashing through the stagnant water.

‘No tiller, sir,’ the seaman remarked suddenly, as though an irresistible urge had come upon him to say something, no matter what.

Mr Brett stopped with his long legs straddling the thwart. ‘What’s that? What did you say?’

The seaman pointed towards the stern. ‘They lost the tiller.’

The mate glanced back over his shoulder and saw that it was so. The tiller had gone, but the rudder was there swinging idly on the pintle.

‘Not that it’d make much difference with this carcass,’ the seaman muttered. ‘You wouldn’t sail this nowhere, except maybe to the bottom.’

He appeared nervous, as though he were thinking that at any moment the boat might indeed go on that last downward voyage, and he with it.

‘It’s certainly been in trouble,’ Brett said.

On the port side a gap had been torn in the boards, and this gap had been mended, not without a certain skill. It was a rough repair, but effective. A boat-builder might have done it better, but it was probable that whoever had carried out this work had done so without the facilities of a boat-yard, making do with the tools and materials that came to hand.

There were other holes, smaller ones, that had been plugged with timber and canvas, then daubed over with tar. A galvanised iron bowl that had perhaps served as a bailer lay in the water, its wooden handle projecting above the surface. The gunwale on one side was scarred and blackened, as though it had been scorched by
fire; and on one of the thwarts were some brown stains like paint.

‘Here’s a fine how d’you do,’ the seaman muttered.

He glanced at the bare, blackened feet sticking out from the cover of the awning, at the skinny legs, visible only as far as the knee, and his gaze shifted away again. He seemed scared to investigate further, even with his eyes, appalled by the thought of what he might see.

Mr Brett said harshly: ‘Get that canvas off. Let’s have a look at him.’

The seaman obeyed. He slipped a thin knife out of its pigskin sheath and severed the cords that were holding the awning. Mr Brett thrust the canvas to one side and stared down at the body which lay, face upward, on a rough mattress soaked in sea-water.

It was the body of a big man, perhaps six feet tall, but so emaciated that the ribs could be seen beneath the sunburnt skin of the chest like the framework of a basket. But for a pair of stained drill shorts, he was completely naked, and his black hair, long and unkempt, came down to join the matted beard. He had a strong, rather beaked nose and his thin mouth was marked by a white rim of salt. There was salt too on his hair, his beard and his eyebrows. His eyes were closed.

The seaman’s voice was low, hushed in the presence of this evidence of so much suffering. ‘Is he dead, sir?’

Mr Brett bent down and put a hand on the naked chest. The skin had been coarsened by exposure; it was covered with sores. Mr Brett lowered his head and put his ear close to the salt-rimmed lips. He could detect no sound of breathing. Perhaps the last breath had already been expended.

Brett was not an imaginative man, but it occurred to him that this was a terrible way to die – alone in the centre of a vast desert of sea with no friend to mark the going, to give a last grip of the hand, a last word of hope and encouragement. Nowhere was there such utter loneliness as the loneliness of great waters.

And then the man’s right eyelid twitched.

Mr Brett got up and said softly: ‘He’s alive. We’d better get him on board.’

He looked up and saw the faces peering down at him; he saw Captain Rogerson and Watkins on the bridge; and he could
sense the question that lay behind the silence of them all.

He answered this unspoken question with a shout, exulting suddenly in the thought that perhaps here was one more life that might be snatched back from that old, relentless enemy, the sea.

‘He’s not dead – not yet.’

The man lay on a bunk in the ship’s hospital and stared at the white deckhead above him. There was no expression on his face, no indication that he was seeing the painted iron or the line of rivets. His eyes were dull; he might have been staring only at an inward picture, a panorama of long drawn out suffering, of pain, of fear, of treading upon the very threshold of death.

A fan whirred ceaselessly, stirring the oppressive air in the cabin, but there were beads of sweat on the man’s forehead. They stayed there like drops of oil, motionless.

Captain Rogerson sat on a chair by the bunk and Mr Brett stood behind him. Mr Brett had his cap under his arm and his hands behind his back. He stared at the man on the bunk with curiosity not unmixed with pity.

‘And you can’t remember anything?’ Rogerson asked gently.

The man’s voice was like the sighing of a distant wind in the trees, incredibly faint; it seemed to come from a long way off, a reluctant sound dragged painfully out of the depths of his body.

‘Nothing.’

‘Your name is Keeton,’ Rogerson said. ‘Does that mean nothing to you?’

‘Nothing.’

The name was engraved on the identity discs looped about the man’s neck by a length of dirty tape. There was a number, the name – Keeton, C. H. – and the letters C.E., indicating that he was, ostensibly at least, of the faith of the Church of England.

On his left forearm was the tattoo of a rope twisted into the shape of a question mark. It seemed not altogether inappropriate in the circumstances.

‘Have you heard of a ship called the
Valparaiso
?’

‘Never.’

Rogerson turned his head and looked at Brett; there was meaning in the glance they exchanged. On the gunwale of the
lifeboat near the bows the inscription
Valparaiso
I
had been carved. Mr Brett had taken note of it before casting the boat adrift. It was a clue to the mystery. But in some ways it was a clue that served only to make the mystery even more intriguing.

‘We found you in number one lifeboat of the S.S.
Valparaiso,
’ Rogerson said gently but insistently. ‘Can’t you remember how you came to be in it?’

The man turned his head slowly on the pillow, grimacing as though the movement pained him. His dull eyes peered at Captain Rogerson. He seemed to be excessively weary, exhausted of all strength, all energy, all emotion.

‘I can remember nothing.’

Rogerson got up. ‘Perhaps after you have had a good long sleep it will be different. We’ll leave you now.’

The man did not answer.

Back in his own cabin Rogerson punched a hole in a can of chilled beer and poured it into a glass. The froth rose like whipped cream; he buried his nose in it, took a long draught and set the glass down.

‘I knew a ship called
Valparaiso,
’
he said. ‘You ever come across her, Ned?’

‘Can’t say I ever did,’ Brett admitted. He helped himself to beer. ‘What class of ship was she?’

‘Six thousand tons, thereabouts. Sampson Chandler line. Sunderland built if I’m not mistaken. Goal-post derricks and a long funnel.’

‘You’ve got a good memory.’

‘You don’t forget a ship you’ve sailed next to in convoy. Especially a bad convoy.’

Brett fished a pipe out of his pocket and began to fill it, pressing the tobacco down with the ball of his thumb. He appeared to be absorbed in this task.

‘Wonder where she is now?’

‘I don’t wonder,’ Rogerson said. ‘I know.’

Brett stopped tamping tobacco and stared at his captain ‘You didn’t tell me that.’

‘I couldn’t be certain at first. It seemed so unlikely. Thought my memory must be playing tricks. That’s why I looked it up.’