‘You’ll never get it lit,’ Appleyard grinned.
A pair of giant petrels came over the water, and separated when they got close. As they swept low on either side of our party and went by, I noted the downturning bill and scavenging eye, and the flash of white along the body between head and tail. They circled back on dark brown wings, flying lower on their hunt for food, scissor-beaks set for us. I wielded a surveying pole, but they went odoriferously by, wings clicking into a thermal lift at sensing we were dangerous. When they alighted behind some tussocks up the watercourse, Appleyard let off the safety catch of the rifle: ‘I ought to get something tasty for the pot.’
‘Shoot, and you’ll be for the pot – for the big chop, in fact.’ Rose lit his pipe. ‘It’ll make so much clatter that everybody for a hundred miles will be on our necks. And that’s not what the skipper wants, believe you me.’
‘It’s too much of a stinker, anyway,’ said Bull. ‘It walks on water, so it stinks.’
‘What have we got a rifle for, then?’
‘In case somebody comes up on us.’ He fastened his clothes against the wind. ‘I knew we had a sea-cook among the crew, but not a poacher.’
‘I’m supposed to look after our bellies. We can’t live out of tins forever.’
I observed Bennett’s interminable booting at the sand. An insane person would have given up by now.
Rose spoke with the pipe in his mouth, a line of smoke from his injured face. ‘He was always one for taking his time about things. Straight through the flak on our flying bombrack. He never wavered.’
‘None of us did,’ said Appleyard. ‘We were with him.’
‘All the way,’ said Bull. ‘That’s why we won. It was all or nothing.’
Where the beach turned north, Bennett fell on his knees, and bent over to scrape at the gravel with both hands. The wind took his shout out of our direction, but I picked it up like a wireless signal half murdered by atmospherics. Two skuas cried their way by, eyeing us hungrily. ‘He wants us to go to him.’
Rose ordered Bull and myself forward. We crunched over the gravel, the effort sweating and winding us as if we hadn’t walked for years. Bennett looked up when we stopped halfway. ‘What the hell are you crawling for? Run!’
Quickening the pace, we got off the beach and went through mossy grass and a sort of dirty brown plant. Our boots slopped into the pools between, so we returned to the gravel which at least was dry.
He laid his cap on the ground and pointed to a ring of steel by his feet. A circle of sand had been cleared from the few inches of unmistakable fixture. He scraped mould and rust from the rim of the wide calibre pipe with his penknife, like discovering traces of a factory on the moon. He stroked the edges without looking: ‘Bull, go to the dinghy and bring a surveying pole. Adcock – you stay here.’
He pulled off his silk scarf to wipe sweat and rain from his face. He was so pale I thought he was cast in lime, and not of the slow sort. His hand shook as he lit a white cigar with the third match, holding a cupped flame close till a whiff of smoke for a moment civilized the air. ‘This is the first point of the base line. I allowed us a day, and we find it an hour after touching the beach.’ He stood, and rested his boot on the circumference of the pipe, but gently in case it was pushed under and never found again. ‘The other point is three hundred metres away at 109 degrees. A piece of cake, Sparks. We’re in luck.’
Frozen and foot-soaked, I was glad to hear it. He bellowed again into my ear. ‘When Bull comes back, slot the pole into this pipe. Get it absolutely upright, then fix it firm with rocks and sand. Do you understand?’
At three hundred pounds a month, plus an unspecified amount of bonus yet to come, I had no thought of neglecting to do exactly as I was told.
‘When the two points are flagged up, and the theodolite gets the cross-bearings, we’ll be right on target.’
He set off with head down, counting paces at such a rate he almost beat Bull to the dinghy. A wall of mist moved upwater as if pushed from behind by a mob. The flying boat off shore was soon covered, as was the dinghy on the beach, and Bennett in his rapid walk towards it.
If silence was trapped under my feet I need only move to release noise. Reason told me to do so and go back to the others, but I wanted to be alone. Every action needed a decision, so I did nothing, and unwittingly obeyed instinct. A circle of gravelly sand was visible, and the half-buried pipe in which the surveying post would be fixed. If I walked, and kept the hiss of water to my left, that shape and area would remain behind. Not to move would leave me with a known pattern of gravel and moss within whose misty circumference I was safe. Familiarity induces a comfort which prescribes its own duty – that it shall not be glibly abandoned.
Should weather come from glacial heights to rampage in earnest, I might follow the beach back to the others, but in the meantime I was a target marker, and until the ten-foot pole was fixed in place I would not leave, in case gravel, water and natural subsidence covered it again.
There was the sound of birds, and the noise of cascading water, and the crunch of boots as I walked a tight circle around the embedded pipe to keep warm.
2
Only a fool, on an uninhabited island, would take it for granted that he was alone, and to pass the time till the mist cleared and Bull came back I played a mental tactical game, using the disintegrating aspect of the island’s map as a board, a picture-map as splashed out as if someone had thrown a coconut full speed at a watermelon. Bull, seeing the map on Bennett’s table, had likened it to a patch of vomit on Saturday night outside a pub.
For tokens I had the Aldebaran, the ship I had contacted, and the vessel which was to meet us at our anchorage with high octane fuel. Manoeuvres became a game of dodge-and-run in numerous places of concealment. Throws of dice concerned bad weather, or colliding head-on while getting closer to the buried gold which I, naturally, was the first to find.
Another factor in the game came without any wanting, and caused a shudder which sent me more cold for the moment than climate ever could. Intuition placed Shottermill as a vital counter among the players. He stood before me, and in one move dominated the board. The question as to why a ship was waiting could be answered only by him. I hadn’t realized – perhaps because I had not been sufficiently alone to meditate with advantage – that he was playing his hand for more than one side. Bennett thought it beneath his dignity to distrust a mere chandler who sold rotten cigars, but at least I hoped – the notion made me colder still – he had kept Shottermill away from any information as to where our landing place would be. He knew little more than that we were going to the Kerguelen Islands, and when. Bennett’s caution was only fully operational when he was actually flying. On the ground he was easier to deceive. No wonder Shottermill was worried by a wireless operator being carried, who could give early warning of anything heard.
My eyes were closed but I was wide awake, hearing boots on gravel when the wind had lessened its howl, and the snort of an old man about to talk. At a shuffling in the mist I looked for the rifle I had not brought. I must have been heard leaping to my feet.