The Sun Is God (9 page)

They had cleared the bay now and Will looked south into the Solomon Sea. Old Freddie Clinker, two plantations over, and a keen fisherman, claimed that you could see nine-thousand-foot-high Mount Balbi in Bougainville from around about here, but even squinting and holding his hand above his eyes, all Will could see was the southern part of New Ireland and beyond that only the vast blue emptiness. The day was as fair a day for viewing as there could be, but there was not even a trace of a mountain.

Will should have known it was a likely story.

Miss Pullen-Burry prodded Will on the arm. “Are you distressed, Mr. Prior? Cold? I have a blanket in my valise.”

“No, thank you. Quite the reverse, ma'am.”

Indeed the temperature was probably up into the seventies on Fahrenheit's scale. Warmer than he had been expecting on the open sea. To prove the point he took off his waistcoat and set it behind him. Now he was clad only in shirt, canvas trousers, and riding boots.

Miss Pullen-Burry was dressed for a wake in some sort of black crinoline number, reminiscent of the late Queen. A worried looking Kessler was wearing a long sou'wester and the pilot, as befitted a navy man, was shoeless and shirtless.

Will's stomach grumbled. Somehow in all the preparations breakfast had been forgotten about.

“Don't you find the sea air bracing, Mr. Prior?” Miss Pullen-Burry asked him.

Not especially, no, he wanted to reply, but even ten thousand miles from Greenwich, the social niceties prevented this reply.

“Charming, I'm sure,” he said.

“You grew up by the sea, I believe,” Miss Pullen-Burry persisted.

Who had told her that? And what else had people been saying about him?

“No ma'am. Leeds. In Yorkshire.”

“Oh, indeed? My cousins, the Leigh-Browns, have a little place near Ripon. Do you know the Leigh-Browns?”

“No, ma'am,” he said after a significant pause, which he hoped would communicate his desire to terminate this conversation.

“Oh, you would adore the Leigh-Browns. Not at all what you would think from the size of their estate. Don't give themselves airs. My cousin Emily rides with the Badsworth Hunt. Always the head of the chase. They say that she could have been a jockey. Thin as a willow and twice as strong. Worth three thousand a year and risks her neck with the best of them. Beautiful too, a regular Venus don't ya know? You would adore Emily, all men do, such a joy, “ Miss Pullen-Burry said.

“Indeed.”

“Oh yes. I shall mention your name in one of my letters. Do you get back to Yorkshire often, Mr. Prior?”

“Never.”

“Such a shame, one must always keep in touch with one's homeland. I was in Jamaica several years ago and I met a few families who had never been home at all! I put them in my book. Received the most obliging letters. Can you imagine never getting home at all?”

“Perhaps they were home.”

Miss Pullen-Burry looked baffled. “I do not follow you, sir.”

“Perhaps they considered Jamaica to be their home.”

Miss Pullen-Burry laughed. “Jamaica? No, no. It is not like Australia or America, Mr. Prior. A mere veneer of civilization. It is much more like the situation here in New Guinea. I shall explain it all in my book.”

Kessler coughed significantly. “No books about this, Miss Pullen-Burry, with all due respect, last night we made it clear that—” Kessler began but she interrupted him with a slap of her hand on the deck.

“Oh don't fret, Hauptman Kessler. I shan't mention anything about this little . . . whatever this is. If you are worried, I shall send the entire manuscript to Governor Hahl for his approval. No, no, my book will be about the German colonies in the Pacific in general: Samoa, New Guinea, New Britain. I shall endeavor to enlighten my English readership, such as it is, about the feats of our cousins in these foreign climes.”

Will nodded at Kessler and gave him an
I told you so
look, which the German ignored.

“For we
are
cousins, are we not?” Miss Pullen-Burry went on. “We have so much in common. Germany and England are natural allies. Not England and France. My book will attempt to sow the seeds of amity between the two nations,”

“Ah, I would very much like to read
that
book,” Kessler said.

“Whale!” the pilot said suddenly, pointing to starboard.

All heads turned and after a moment they saw a spout of white water and a dark head fifty or sixty yards from the boat. “How wonderful!” Miss Pullen-Burry exclaimed, reaching into a hidden pocket in her dress, producing a notebook and pencil, and sketching the brute with surprising dexterity. Her draftsmanship was the first thing Will had admired about Miss Pullen-Burry since he had met her.

“It may not be so wonderful if the creature sinks us!” Kessler said nervously and turning to the pilot added, “Can you keep the monster away from us?”

The pilot ignored him and kept on precisely the same course for Kabakon Island. No Bavarian
army
officer was going to tell him how to run his ship. The whale kept in a parallel course and then disappeared from view, possibly because of the large number of small grey sharks that were now following the
Delfin
.

“Oh, shall thou draweth Leviathan with a hook!” Miss Pullen-Burry exclaimed in raptures.

“Or in your case with a pencil,” Will added.

Miss Pullen-Burry smiled at him and wrote down the remark.

Well that's my place in history assured
, Will thought
.
He reached into the scuppers, pulled out one of the dead butterflies, shook off the excess seawater, and placed it on her notebook. “Butterflies and whales. You could be a regular Mr. Wallace, Miss Pullen-Burry.”

“Lovely!” she said, delighted and began drawing the butterfly too until Klaus showed her how to press and preserve it intact between her notebook's pages.

Kabakon now occupied more than half of the horizon. It looked flat, dull, small, and brown. It certainly wasn't Will's idea of Paradise. Why the Sonnenorden couldn't have bought the much larger landmass of New Ireland itself was beyond him. You could get thousands of people on New Ireland. You could make it into a little nation if you wanted.

They were steering for a bay on the south shore whose crescent shape became more pronounced with every passing minute. Everyone was nervous now.

When he was about a kilometer out the pilot tapped Will on the shoulder and pointed at the tiller. Will nodded and took the polished wooden steering rod while the pilot examined a chart, presumably checking for reefs. There were none, but seeing that Will was enjoying himself, the pilot got up and took in the main and let Will steer the
Delfin
into the half-moon-shaped cove.

“Keep going?” Will asked.

“Ja, ja,” the pilot said and Will took them all the way through the surf, the pilot only grabbing the tiller again as the
Delfin
's keel shuddered up onto the beach.

“Careful, Miss Pullen-Burry!” Kessler shouted as the
Delfin
skidded up the volcanic black sand and began to lean over alarmingly. Kessler seized Miss Pullen-Burry's arm and held her steadfastly.

“I am perfectly all right, Hauptman Kessler,” Miss Pullen-Burry replied, somewhat put out by this overt gallantry.

Will hadn't had such a thrilling experience in a long time and he grinned broadly as the young pilot dropped the mainsail and its boom onto the deck and nodded at Will as if to say “well done.”

The pilot then took a rather feeble looking anchor and threw it up the beach. “Ladies and gentlemen, would you kindly disembark,” he said.

Will grabbed his sea bag and stepped off onto the sand.

Kabakon looked even worse close up than it had from the water. Mosquitos in swarm, huge red assassin crabs, a few scraggly looking coconut and banana trees. No one was on the beach. There were no footprints, no sign of civilization or smoke from fires deeper among the palms. Perhaps a more impressive settlement lay beyond the shoreline with Polynesian girls, rum, cornucopias, but it seemed most unlikely.

Behind him Miss Pullen-Burry refused Kessler's hand and climbed off the boat by herself. The pilot unceremoniously dumped her trunk and Gladstone bag next to her. Kessler was last off the
Delfin
, carrying a little leather valise and his own enormous steamer trunk.

“Well, we made it across,” Will said to Kessler.

“You were skeptical?” Kessler asked.

“The Kaiserliche Marine isn't the Royal Navy, is it?” Will said, but Kessler knew this was a rather feeble attempt to get a rise out of him.

“I must put off immediately if I am going to make this tide,” the pilot said to Kessler, giving him a curious sort of half-salute, perhaps in acknowledgment that terra firma was the dominion of the German Army.

“The tide? Oh, yes, by all means,” Kessler said. “But make sure you are back tomorrow.”

The pilot nodded, gathered his anchor, placed it on the deck, and began pushing the boat back into the surf.

“Ah, a real desert island at last! “Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground,” Miss Pullen-Burry said, waxing poetic.

Will ignored her and took Kessler by the arm. “Hold on a minute, chum. Don't let Captain Slocum over there leave us. Make him wait here.”

“He must catch his tide.”

“Have you ever been around sailors? They're always talking about tides and currents. It's a load of rubbish. Make him wait for us. You're in charge, aren't you?”

“What is the matter, Will?” Kessler asked kindly.

“We don't know what we're dealing with here on Kabakon. We might need to beat a hasty retreat.”

Kessler stroked his mustache and waved to the young pilot who was back on board the
Delfin
now. “This time tomorrow, my good fellow!” Kessler shouted.

The pilot nodded, hoisted the mainsail, and began tacking the
Delfin
away from the shore.

“Well now you've done it. We're stuck here for at least a day,” Will said.

Kessler ignored him and went to help Miss Pullen-Burry with her trunk.

“Thank you, Hauptman Kessler,” Miss Pullen-Burry said, taking one handle, while he took the other. They began carrying it across the black sand toward the coconut palms.

Will caught them up and took Miss Pullen-Burry's side of the trunk. She thanked him with a whispered “bless you” and took a moment to catch her breath.

“Look around you, Klaus, where is everyone?” Will said. “How do we know they're not all dead of some terrible plague?”

“A plague? Nonsense! We would have heard,” Kessler said.

Will looked out to sea. The
Delfin
was three hundred yards from the beach now and there was no hope of calling it back.

They carried Miss Pullen-Burry's trunk to the shade of the palm trees and then went back for Kessler's and Will's gear. Will slung his bag over his shoulder and took one of the handles of Kessler's trunk.

“Christ! What have you got in here? One of Mr. Wells's cylinders?” Will asked.

“A few changes of clothing, a small supply of food.”

“Clothing? I don't think you fully appreciate the Cocovore charter.”

“A German officer does not remove his clothing in front of civilians. And there is Miss Pullen-Burry to be considered.”

When they returned from this second luggage foray, Miss Pullen-Burry was rather surprisingly talking in German to a very thin, tanned, blonde young man who in fact was completely naked.

“Good morning!” he said, smiling happily at them.

“Good morning,” Kessler said and introduced himself and Will.

“Heinrich von Cadolzburg at your service,” the young man replied with a little bow.

“Nice to meet you, Heinrich,” Will said.

“Everyone calls me Harry.”

“Harry then.”

Although the young man was handsome, his distinguishing feature was not his bright blue eyes nor his unkempt beard nor his skeletal ribcage. In fact all three of the newcomers found that they were staring at Harry's penis, which dangled down to an inch above his left kneecap. It looked a little like the albino stoat Sergeant Mulvenny had kept as a rat-catcher in South Africa except that it seemed to have a bit more life than Mulvenny's stoat, which had distained rats and lived exclusively on porter from the sergeants' mess.

A macaw screeched in the trees above them and, startled, Miss Pullen-Burry said: “Herr von Cadolzburg, may we see your, your, uh, settlement, your . . . camp?”

“Harry, please,” the young man insisted and then added. “I suppose you've come to join us then, have you?”

Miss Pullen-Burry gave a noncommittal shrug and before Will could say anything Kessler blundered in: “On the instructions of Governor Hahl, we have come to investigate the death of the late Maximilian Lutzow.”

“Lutzow? Oh, yes, Lutzow,” Harry said sadly. “Poor fellow, it is a shame. He could have become one of the pillars of our community.”

“Shall we go over to the
community
, I'm finding it rather close under the trees here and would enjoy sitting,” Miss Pullen-Burry said, and then somewhat unsure of herself added: “If you have seats?”

“We have the finest furniture from Germany. Our houses too are German. They were prefabricated and shipped to us from Bremen. I think you will be amazed!” Harry said.

“I am sure we will be,” Miss Pullen-Burry replied.

“Is it far?” Kessler asked.

“No, not far, it is just through the trees, but leave your luggage, we shall have one of the Kanaks bring it,” Harry said.

“Ah, so you are not exclusively German, then?” Miss Pullen-Burry inquired.

“Nearly, there are only two of the little devils left, the rest have been sent back to New Ireland. They will keep eating fish, which August has strictly forbidden.”