The Strode Venturer (37 page)

It was a question of the future of the island under international law. At the moment it was
terra nullius
in the sense that it was newly emerged and open to occupation by anybody. He couldn’t claim it as an individual or on behalf of Strode & Company—the days for that sort of thing were long since past. In any case, to effectively establish title in international law the claimant must satisfy two requirements: first, the intention to occupy, signified by some formal act of declaration such as the planting of the national flag to give other powers notice that the territory is no longer
terra nullius
; and secondly, a continuing and effective occupation. As an Englishman, the correct procedure, according to a friend he had contacted in the Foreign Office, was for him to notify the British Government of the island’s location and ask them to take formal occupation. “It would then have the status of a British colony.” He said it without enthusiasm.

“And you want it for the Adduans?”

“Yes. Don Mansoor discovered it. It’s their island. Besides,” he added, “in view of the behaviour of the Malé Government over the Gan lease I don’t think there’s any doubt that if this place were annexed by Britain it would be for strategic purposes.”

I knew he was right there. An uninhabited island belonging to nobody—it was the dream of every major power. If we got hold of it, we’d undoubtedly establish a base and clamp a security guard on the place.

“I doubt whether we’d even be allowed to exploit the manganese. Certainly no Adduans would be permitted to
land.” We had reached the hut now and he paused before
going
in, looking round him at the long, bare sprawl of the island. The sun was rising over the back of it so that it had a warm glow. “That’s why I made sure Reece wouldn’t be able to report its real position. All these months—it’s been like sitting on a time bomb. At any moment a stray ship—the Navy, for instance, or an aircraft like that Shackleton—worse still, a Russian trawler——” He had turned and was looking towards the bay where the
Strode Venturer
lay reflected in the calm waters. “So you think they could be here to-day?”

“The Adduans? Yes,” I said, “if the breeze gets up with the sun.” But I was more concerned now with what was happening back in London, and I told him about the extraordinary general meeting called by Strode Orient and what Ida had told me in that letter. “Somehow we’ve got to find the means of reaching London before the twenty-fourth.”

But though we discussed it for almost an hour in the stuffy, sweat-rancid atmosphere of that hut, we could think of no form of transport that would get us there in time. The only aircraft that could pick us up was a flying boat and we knew of none that we could charter. The only ship we had was the
Strode Venturer.
To use her was out of the question if we were to deliver our first consignment of ore on time. Even the voyage back to Gan would cost her nearly a week and she would then be short of fuel. In any case, there was no certainty that Canning would be able to get us on a Transport Command flight. Finally Peter said, “Well, we’ll just have to play it from here and hope for the best.” But he knew as well as I did that wireless contact was no substitute for our physical presence at Strode House.

It was in a sombre frame of mind that we went back down the road to join the last of the shore party going out to the ship. Our only hope was that the news that the island still existed would have its impact and enable Whimbrill to support us, possibly Felden, too.

There was nothing to do then but wait as the sun climbed to its zenith and the sea took on the brassy glare of midday heat. The shore party were fed and stayed on board, cluttering up the deck. The breeze was very light and Peter became more and more morose as the hours ticked slowly by. No point now in stockpiling ore for without the barge and the landing craft we had no means of ferrying it out to the ship.

Fields, in command now of a vessel that had no purpose, stayed in his cabin and drank alone. The only man who had anything to do was Weston, who sent out a stream of messages as we drafted them—to Whimbrill, to the Strodes, to Ida, Felden, the Dutch agent who had negotiated the contract for the sale of the ore, and also to Canning to thank him for diverting the Shackleton on his own responsibility. Finally we sent out a report on the situation and prospects for Whimbrill to circulate to all Strode Orient shareholders. Later, messages from the outside world began coming in, messages of congratulation, replies to our own communications, and then shortly after lunch a stream of cables from newspapers, not only in London, but all over the world.

We were news and I took full advantage of it, sitting in my cabin, the sweat rolling off my naked body, as I wrote eye-witness accounts of my return to the island, of what it looked like, what the shore party had been doing, the glowing future of the place as a major source of manganese. And all the time Peter stayed on the bridge, searching the hazed horizon to the west. But there was no sign of the vedis. About three o’clock in the afternoon he burst into my cabin. “This has just come through.” It was from one of H.M. ships—a frigate. It asked for confirmation of the position of the island as given by the Shackleton and added:
Our instructions are to take formal possession. We are now approximately
250
miles away. Expect arrive
1600
hours to-morrow.

“I have told them to save their fuel, that the island belongs to the Adduan People’s Republic. But that won’t
stop them.” And he added, “It’s just what I feared—a land grab that will cut the Adduans out and possibly ourselves, too. Your bloody Navy would have a ship in the vicinity.”

Just twenty-four hours. Tea was served. The sun sank. The air was deathly still and I could picture those two vedis lying just below the wild glow of the horizon, motionless, their sails limp, their reflections mirrored in the long Indian Ocean swell. With night coming on it was pointless taking the
Strode Venturer
to sea in search of them. “We’ll leave at dawn.” But I could see Peter thought the chances of finding them and towing them into the anchorage before the frigate arrived were remote. For all we knew they might now be aground on the shallows where the
Strode Trader
had struck.

The waiting was bad for all of us, a sense of anti-climax, of life temporarily suspended. Sunset faded into night, with Peter pacing the narrow confines of my cabin like a man jailed. I got out a fresh bottle of Scotch and gave him a drink, and once he’d started he didn’t stop. Yet it made no difference to him. His nerves burned up the alcohol as fast as he swallowed it.

By midnight we had finished the bottle. He was sharing my cabin and he had just curled up like a dog on the floor when the watch we had set knocked at the door. “Plenty wind coming now, sah.” We went up on deck. There was a wrack of cloud to the south of us, very black and stormy looking against the moon riding the ragged gap. It was blowing fresh from the south-west and in the pale light we could see the waves breaking on the shoals. The ship was beginning to come alive under our feet, a slow, trembling movement as she tugged at her cable. We stayed on the bridge about an hour, the sweat drying cold on our bodies as we strained our eyes seaward. But though the cloud gradually drifted away southward and the moon was bright we saw no sail, only the sea flickering white as the waves broke.

It was still blowing fresh when we went below about one-thirty. It was pointless standing there for there was
nothing we could do till dawn broke. I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow and the next moment the light was on and Peter was shaking me. “They’ve seen something—a sail, they think.”

The time was 0455. Out on deck the moon was falling to the west, still bright, but in the east, beyond the dark back of the island, there was the first greying of the light before the coming dawn and the stars were beginning to lose their brightness. At first I couldn’t see it, only the dead line of the horizon on to which my eyes, straining into that strange ghostlight, superimposed imagined shapes, even the glimmer of lights which were too ephemeral to be real. Peter handed me the glasses. “I think it’s a sail, but I can’t be sure.” The horizon seen through the glasses was both clearer and less distinct, blurred by magnification. I swept the area slowly, gradually fastening on a pale blotch that might have been a trick of the light except that it was there each time I searched that section of the sea. “We won’t know for certain till dawn breaks,” I said. “Another hour, probably.”

The wind had fallen, light to moderate now, but still strong enough to drive a ship under sail. We stood there watching through the glasses, neither of us feeling like going back to bed, and as the sky paled in the east and the moon’s light dimmed we lost sight of even that vague blur. Our tired eyes played us tricks and soon we were no longer certain that we had seen anything at all.

Dawn came milky white, a pale glimmer that grew imperceptibly. The island, at first a remote silhouette, gradually came closer as details became visible—the gleam of a crevice, the shape of the road, the ore pile and the machines stationary on the plateau. Finally we could see it all, the familiar pattern of it clear, and the sky behind it taking on the first tints of the sun’s spectrum. In contrast, the west had dimmed, the stars, even the moon, pallid now, the horizon gone.

Coffee was brought to us and we leaned against the steel of the bridge housing, smoking, our eyes drawn to the east
where colours were beginning to flare. The blaze of that tropical dawn had us mesmerized so that it was some minutes before we looked again towards the west. And suddenly they were there, clear and distinct, a splash of white canvas—not one ship, but two, sailing so close their spars and sails seemed one. It seemed incredible to us that we hadn’t seen them before, for they were quite close, barely a mile off. And as the sun thrust its red rim over the horizon beyond the island, their sails took on a rosy glow and every detail of the vessels was suddenly clear.

They were vedis all right. The snub-nosed stems with the blunt attempt at the clipper bow where it was shaped to take the bowsprit, the fat buxom hulls and the squares’l yard trimmed to the quartering wind. They came on steadily under their full press of canvas, bright now in the blinding glare of the newly-risen sun—a rare, proud sight as they stood in to the island that was to be their home.

Peter reached for the siren cord and gave them three long blasts, and then we hurried aft as the deck of the
Strode Venturer
became alive with men tumbling from their sleep. The vedis were bearing down to pass astern of us, the windward gunn’ls crowded with Adduans. They were almost naked, teeth and eyes agleam with the excitement of their landfall. There was no shortening of canvas. The vedis came down on us under full sail, heeling to the breeze and the water bone-white in front of their blunt bows. They were doing a good six knots and as they came abreast of us, so close we could have tossed a coin on to their decks, their crews began to sing—a sad, strange chant. Both ships were flying the blue, green and red flag of the Adduan People’s Republic and when they were past and showing us their blunt, dhow-like sterns, the crews moved to their stations. They stood in as far as the first shoal, and just beyond it they turned as one with their bows facing into the wind and the sails came down with a run as the anchors were let go.

I shall never forget the arrival of those first two vedis. It wasn’t just that they looked so magnificent, coming in
like that without engines, their decks littered with the bits and pieces of the boats they had brought with them. It was the behaviour of their crews. After such a long and dangerous voyage they might have been expected to rest or embark on a leisurely exploration of the island. Instead, they went to work at once unloading gear and stores, getting their dhonis launched. Their urgency and enthusiasm was so immediate that we just stood there, watching spellbound, so that it was some time before we got into a boat and went across to them.

A gangway had been lowered on the leading vedi and Don Mansoor met us at the head of it, immaculate in a clean sarong and a khaki shirt, a cheerful smile on his face. “Nine days we are sailing here—no very bad, uh?” Then he turned to the island with a wave of his hand: “Is changing very much.”

“It’s grown a bit, that’s all,” Peter said. “But there’s nothing to worry about.”

Don Mansoor nodded, still smiling broadly. “All men having more land now.” Cans of grapejuice were opened, a celebration, with Don Mansoor talking of the voyage, of the storm that had driven them too far south. “The aircraft from Gan very kind. Is flying over us some time to show us what course we must steer.”

All the time he was talking I could feel Peter’s impatience growing. Finally he told him about the frigate. And as soon as Don Mansoor understood what was involved he had an extra spar they were carrying lowered into our boat and we took it ashore and erected it as a flag pole just back of the quay.

The ceremony took place at ten-thirty in the presence of the Adduans, the shore party and most of the crew of the
Strode Venturer.
Peter addressed the gathering, first in English and then briefly in Adduan. He was followed by Don Mansoor who named the island Ran-a-Maari because he said it was born of the white water, of the struggle of the imprisoned land against the power of the great ocean—good emerging out of evil. The Adduan flag was then run up on
the spar they had brought from Midu. It was an impressive, very colourful flag—blue, green and red in horizontal stripes with white stars in opposite corners and a white star and crescent in the centre. Peter then produced a new ship’s log book and everybody signed their name in it as witness to the formal annexation of the island by the Adduan People’s Republic.

As soon as the ceremony was over Peter went back to the ship and drafted messages to the outside world. The first, sent out by Weston at eleven-fifteen and addressed to Reuter, simply announced the formal occupation of the island and gave its name and location. This was followed by a fuller account, including passages from the speeches that he and Don Mansoor had made. Finally, messages were sent to
The Times
, the
Daily Telegraph
, the
New York Times, Tass
and
Paris Match.