Dead Reckoning

by Ralph Stock

DEAD RECKONING

By RALPH STOCK

I HAVE killed a man because he disagreed with me.

Anything more futile it is hard to imagine in cold blood, for by killing him I have proved nothing. He still holds his view. I know it because I have spoken to him since, and he still laughs at me, though softly, compassionately, not as he laughed on that night when the absurdity happened.

Perhaps I am mad, but you shall judge. In any case, that is of no great importance, for by the time you read this, my confession—if, indeed, it is ever read—I shall have ceased to encumber the earth.

He was young, and strong, and filled with that terrible self-assurance of youth that sets an older man's teeth on edge. During his short term of tuition in the schools of the South there was nothing that he had not learned to do better (in theory) than a man of fifty years' experience; and obstinate—— But I must not let myself go. It is my duty to set down here precisely what happened, without prejudice, without feeling even, if that were possible. Yet as I write my pulse quickens—I will wait a little. It is unfair to him to continue at present.

Here on this reef off the Queensland coast there are unbelievable quantities of fish. Even I have never seen so many, nor of such brilliant colouring. It is possible to wade into the tepid water and catch them with the hand. I have caught hundreds to-day, for lack of something better to do—and set them free; for I will have no more blood on my hands, even that of a fish. Besides, what is the use? There is no drinking water here, nothing but blinding sunlight, a ridge of discoloured coral cleaving the blue mirror of the sea like a razor edge, and myself—a criminal perched upon it as upon a premature scaffold.

But I have overlooked the pickle bottle. It came to me floating, not quite empty, and corked against the flies, just as he and I had left it after the last meal. When the wreck sank, it must have risen from the fo'castle table and up through the hatch—it is curious that nothing else should rise—and it occurred to me that by its aid, and that of the little notebook with pencil attached which I always carry, it would be possible to set my case before the world. I must continue, or there may not be time to say all.

I am what they call an old man on Thursday Island, for none but blacks live to any age in the neighbourhood of this sun-baked tile on the roof of Australia. But I come of Old Country stock, and blood will tell.

I have mixed little with others, preferring the society of my only child, a daughter, to the prattlers and drinkers of a small equatorial community. Perhaps I have been too circumscribed, too isolated from my fellow-creatures. I only know that until he came I was content. My small weather-board house ashore, the ketch in which I brought sandalwood from the mainland coast, were my twin worlds. In each all things were conducted according to my wishes—according, rather, to the methods I had evolved from long experience, and that their merits were borne out by results none could deny.

The house, with its small, well-tended garden, was the best on Thursday Island. My daughter, dutiful and intelligent, managed it according to my wishes, so that it ran like a well-oiled mechanism. And the ketch—that was my inviolable domain. Above and below decks, although only a twenty-ton cargo-carrier, she would have put many a yacht to shame. There was nothing superfluous, nothing lacking. Everything aboard had its place and its use; that is how I contrived to work her single-handed for nearly ten years.

They called me a curmudgeon and a skinflint, but I could afford to smile. My cargoes were not so large as theirs, and took longer to gather, but while they were eating into their profits by paying wages and shares to lazy crews, mine came solely to myself, and never in all those years did I have a mishap. Trust an owner to look after his craft, say I, and trust none other.

Then, as I have said, he came. How he gained entrance I have never known, but he had a way with him, that boy, and when one evening I returned from a trip, he was sitting on the verandah with Doris. She was evidently embarrassed.

"This is Mr. Thorpe, father," she said, and went in to prepare the supper, which was late for the first time that I could remember.

"Indeed?" said I, and remained standing, a fact that Thorpe appeared to overlook, for he reseated himself with all the assurance in life.

"Yes," he said in a manner that I believe is called "breezy," "that is my name, Captain Brent, and I'm pleased to make your acquaintance. Have you had a good trip?"

"Passable," said I. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I must go in and change."

"Oh, don't mind me," returned Thorpe, spreading himself in the cane chair and lighting a cigarette; "I'm quite comfortable."

For a moment I stood speechless, then went into the house.

Doris was preparing the meal, but turned as I entered. Never before had I seen the look that I saw in her face at that moment—fear battling with resolve.

"Who is that boy?" I asked her.

"I have already told you, father," she answered; "he is a young man named Thorpe—Edward Thorpe."

"Ah," said I, momentarily at a loss, "a young man—named Thorpe. And why does he come here?"

"To see me," returned Doris in her quiet, even voice, but I saw that she trembled.

I took her by the arm.

"Girl," said I, "tell me all."

"We love one another," she told me, looking full into my eyes with no hint of timidity; "we are engaged to be married."

I could not speak. I could not even protest when, at no invitation of mine, this youth had the effrontery to come in to supper. The world—my twin worlds—rocked under my feet.

It was a terrible meal: I, speechless, at one end of the table, my daughter, pale but courteous, at the other, and this clown set between us, regaling us, as he no doubt thought, with anecdotes of life down South.

And this was not enough, but he must come into the kitchen afterwards and help to wash up. He said it made him feel more at home. Now, it has been my custom, ever since leaving a civilisation that I abhor and finding comfort in this far corner of the earth, to help wash up when I am at home. The thing is part of the routine of life, and as such demands proper management. A nice adjustment of the water's temperature is necessary, for if too hot it may crack glass and china and ruin knife-handles; and if too cold, in spite of a certain amount of soda, it fails to remove grease. Then, too, it is my invariable habit at the end to turn the wash-bowl upside down to drain, and spread the dish-cloth upon it to dry. It occurs to me that these may appear small matters to some, but is not life composed of such, and do they not often turn out to be the greater? And our uninvited guest disorganised the entire routine by pathetic efforts at buffoonery such as tying one of Doris's aprons about his waist, making a napkin-ring climb his finger by a circular motion of the hand, and laughing openly at what he evidently regarded as our fads.

The spreading of the dish-cloth on the wash-bowl appeared to amuse him most of all,

"I suppose you always do that," he said.

"It is the custom in this house," said I.

"And when you come to think of it, why not?" he reflected, with his handsome head at an angle.

"There are many things one has to come to think of before one knows anything," said I.

And at that he laughed good-naturedly. He always laughed.

At length he went. From my easy-chair in the living-room I heard the last "Good night" and his assured footfall on the verandah steps. Doris came straight to me. I knew she would. Perching herself on the arm of my chair, as she used to when a child, she encircled my shoulder with her arm.

"Do you hate him, father?" she asked me.

I answered her question with another.

"Do you fear me, Doris?" For the look in her face that evening had shocked me.

"I used to sometimes," she said, "but not now."

"And what has worked the transformation?"

She leaned over and whispered in my ear.

I held her from me and studied her as though for the first time. She was young, beautiful, fragile, yet she was stronger than I. I am no fool. I knew that nothing I could do or say would have one particle of weight with her now. She loved and was loved. So it is with women; and such is this miracle of a day, an hour, a fraction of time, that shatters lifelong fealty like glass.

"Then I have nothing to say," said I.

"Nothing?" she questioned me, and again presently, "Nothing?"

And at last I heard myself muttering the absurd formula of wishes for their happiness.

It was bound to come some time. It had come, that was all, and I made the best of it. Of an evening that boy would sit with us and make suggestions for the betterment of the business—my business. He pointed out that new blood was needed—his blood. By Heavens, how he talked! And there is an insidious power in words. Utter them often enough, with youthful enthusiasm behind them, and they resolve themselves into deeds.

I cannot explain even to myself how it came about, but this was the plan—to take my ketch to Sydney, where she would apparently realise an enormous sum as a converted yacht, and buy another, installing an auxiliary motor-engine with some of the profits. With an engine, and this new blood, it seemed, we were to make a fortune out of sandalwood in three years.

I wanted neither engine, new blood, nor fortune, yet in the end I gave way.

So it was that, rather late in the season, we let go moorings, he and I, and set sail for the South. For the first time in my life I had a crew. My inviolable domain was invaded. What with the thought of this, and the unworthy mission we were engaged upon, it was all I could do to look my ketch in the face. Those with the love of ships in their bones will understand.

More than once I caught Thorpe smiling at one or another of my own small inventions for the easier handling of the boat, or the saving of labour or space below; but he said nothing beyond calling them "gadgets," a word that was new to me.

"Not a bad little packet," he said, after the first hour of his trick at the tiller.

"I am glad to hear you say so," said I, with an irony entirely lost on one of his calibre.

"But she ought to sail nearer the wind than this," he added, staring up at the quivering topsail. "Six points won't do. Under-canvased, that's what she is. By the way, when we get through the reef pass, what's the course?"

"Sou'-sou'-east," said I.

"And Where's your deviation card?"

"Never had to bother with one," I told him.

He seemed thunderstruck.

"Of course, she's wooden," he began, "but surely——"

"The course is sou'-sou'-east," I repeated, and went below.

From then onward he took to reeling me off parrot-like dissertations on devioscopes, new pattern compasses, and what-not, until the sound of his voice sickened me. Amongst his other accomplishments, he had sat for a yachting master's ticket, and passed, though everyone knew, it appeared, how much stiffer were the examinations nowadays than in the past, when half the men called ship's masters had no right to the title, nor even knew the uses of a chronometer.

"Yet they managed to circumnavigate the globe," I pointed out.

"By running down their latitude!" he scoffed.

"Perhaps," said I, whereat he burst into a gale of laughter, and expressed the devout hope that I would never expect him to employ such methods.

"I expect you to do nothing but what you are told," said I, exasperated beyond endurance. "At the present moment you are not getting the best out of her. Give her another point, and make a note of time and distance in the scrap log hanging on yonder nail."

"Dead reckoning," he muttered contemptuously.

"Just that," said I, and left him.

Why did I "leave him"? Why did I "go below"? At all costs I must be fair. I did both these things because I knew that he could argue me off my feet if I remained, that he knew more of deep-sea navigation than I, that I was one of those he had mentioned who are called ship's masters and have no right to the title, nor even knew the uses of a chronometer.

Such a confession is like drawing a tooth to me, but it is made. And as vindication I would point to my record—ten years, single-handed and by dead reckoning without mishap. Can an extra master show better?

As day succeeded day, the tension grew. Often I would sit on a locker gazing on my familiar and beloved surroundings, and ask myself how long I could suffer them to be sneered at and despised. Trust small craft for discovering one man to another. Before three days and three nights had passed, we stood before each other, he and I, stripped to our souls. His every movement was an aggravation to me, especially when he played with the bespangled sextant and toy chronometer he had brought, and when each day, on plotting out my position on the chart according to dead reckoning, I found his, by observation, already there. I rubbed it out. I prayed that there would come such a fog as would obscure the sun and stars for ever.

And it was as though my prayer were answered, for that night we ran into a gale that necessitated heaving to. Luckily it was off the shore, and for forty-eight hours we rode it out in comparative comfort, until it died as suddenly as it had been born, and was succeeded by a driving mist that stilled the sea as though with a giant white hand.

"You see," said Thorpe, "dead reckoning is all right up to a point, as a check, but how do you know where you are now?"

"Can you tell me?" said I.

"Not until this mist clears," he admitted.

"Well, then——" said I.

He flung away from me with an impatient movement.

"These are the methods of Methuselah," he muttered.

"Nevertheless," I returned, the blood throbbing at my temples, "I know our position at this moment better than any upstart yachtsman."

He turned and looked at me strangely, then of a sudden his mouth relaxed into a smile. At that moment I could have struck him.

"There is no call for us to quarrel," he said gently, "but how—how can you possibly know where we have drifted to in the last forty-eight hours?"

"I have my senses," said I, "and to prove them we will carry on."

"In this mist?"

"In this mist," I thundered. "The wind is fair, the course is now south-half-east, and you'll oblige me by taking the tiller."

He seemed about to speak, but evidently changed his mind, and turned abruptly on his heel.

In silence we shook out the reef and got under way. In silence we remained until the end of his watch, when the mist was dispersed by a brazen sun. Thorpe at once took a sight, and again at noon, and when I had plotted our position on the chart, he was still poring over volumes of nautical tables.

Towards dusk he came to me at the tiller.

"Are you holding this course after dark?" he asked.

"That is as may be," said I.

"Because if you are," he went on, as though I had not spoken, "you'll be on the Barrier Reef inside of five hours."

"I thank you for the information," said I, and he went below.

He knew ship's discipline; I'll say that for him. He might consider myself and my methods archaic, but he recognised my authority and carried out instructions. I am aware that up to the present my case appears a poor one, but I can convey no idea of the pitch to which I was wrought by these eternal bickerings, by the innovation of another will than my own, and the constant knowledge that he was laughing at me up his sleeve.

But it was a little thing that brought matters to a climax. It is always the little things.

With a fair wind, and in. these unfrequented waters, it has always been my habit to lash the tiller and eat in comfort. We were washing up after supper, or, rather, he was washing and I was drying, for the dryer puts away the utensils, and I knew better the proper place for each. At the end he tossed the dish-cloth in a sodden mass upon the table and turned to go.

"The dish-cloth, if you remember," said I, "is spread on the wash-bowl to dry."

He turned and looked at me, and in his eyes I saw a sudden, unaccustomed flame leap to life.

"It'll do it good to have a change," he said.

"I do not think so," said I.

"Naturally," he returned, "but I do."

"And who is the master of this ship?" I asked him.

"As for that, you are," he admitted, "but a dish-cloth is another matter." Suddenly he dropped on to a locker and laughed, though there was a nervous catch in it. "Heavens," he giggled, "we're arguing over a dish-cloth now!"

"And why not," said I, "if you don't know how to use one? Will you be so good as to put it in its proper place?"

He did not answer, but sat looking down at his naked feet.

"This is impossible," he muttered.

"As you will," said I.

"It can't go on; I can't stand it."

"Do you imagine it is any pleasanter for me?" I asked him.

"And who's fault is it?"

"That is a matter of opinion," said I, "but in the meantime things are to be done as I wish. Kindly put the dish-cloth in its proper place."

Again he did not answer, but when he looked up it was with compressed lips.

"You are a frightful old man," he said. Those were his words. I remember every one, and they came from him in deliberate, staccato sentences. "You are that, though no one has dared to tell you so until this minute. You have lived in a rut of your own making so deep and so long that you don't know you're in it. That is your affair, but when you drag others in with you, it is time to speak. I rescued Doris—bless her!—just in time. Why, man, can't you see? There's no light down there; you can never take a look at yourself and laugh. You have no more sense of humour than a fish. If you had, this absurd quibble could never have come to a head. We should have been sitting here laughing instead. Think of it—a dish-cloth! You are my senior; I ought not to be talking like this to you, but I am; it's just been dragged out of me, and you can take it or leave it. Why not open up a bit—do something different just because it is different, admit there may be something others know that you don't, fling the dish-cloth in a corner.…"

Those were some of the things he said to me, and I stood there listening to them from a—from my future son-in-law on my own ship. It seems incredible to me now, but I was dazed with the unexpectedness of his attack. All that remained clearly before me was the issue of the dish-cloth. In the midst of his endless discoursed repeated my command, whereat he burst into another of his inane fits of laughter.

"You find it amusing," said I in a voice I scarce recognised as my own.

"Amusing!" he chuckled. "Think—try and think—a dish-cloth!"

"And one that you will put in its proper place," I told him.

"What makes you think that?" he said, sobering a little.

"Because I say so."

"And if I refuse?" His face was quite grave now. He leant forward, as though interested in my reply. Somehow the sight of it—this handsome, impertinent face of his—caused a red mist to swim before my eyes.

"You will be made to," I said.

"Ah!" was all he answered at the moment, and resumed the study of his feet. If he had remained so, all might have been well. I cannot tell. I only know that at that moment one word stood for him between life and death, and he chose to utter it. "How?"

I tried to show him, that was all. I swear that was my sole intention. But he was obstinate, that boy. I had not thought it possible for man to be as obstinate as he.

My weight carried him to the floor; besides, I am strong, and the accumulated fury of days and nights was behind me. He was like a doll in my hands, yet a doll that refused to squeak when pressed. There is a sail-rack in the fo'castle, and we were under it, my back against it, my knee at his chest; and I asked him, lying there laughing up at me, if he intended to do as I had ordered. He rolled his head in a negative. It was all he could do, and the pressure was increased. I must have asked him many times, and the answer was invariably the same. At the last something gave beneath my knee, and his jaw dropped, and no movement came from him, even from the heart.

The ripple of water past the ketch's sides brought me back to the present. I rose and stood looking down on him. As I live, it seemed that there was a smile still upon his face!

Of the rest I have no clear recollection. At one moment I was standing there trying—trying to realise what I had done; the next I was flung against the bulkhead as the ketch struck and rose—I can describe it in no other way—struck and rose. Even as I rushed on deck to be caught by a roller and hurled headlong, it seemed to me that a mocking voice called after me: "Dead reckoning!"

It was the Barrier Reef.

And for me it is the Barrier Reef to the end, which is not far off. When I came to, the ketch had sunk, and I tried again to think. I have been trying ever since, and I can get no further than that I have killed him—for a dish-cloth; that if by some miracle I am rescued, such is the message I shall have for Doris.… Is it comedy or tragedy? I am not so sure now. He seemed to find it amusing to the very end, and he was right in some things. Perhaps he is right in this.

I never laugh? Did I not catch myself laughing aloud just now? Perhaps I am developing, somewhat late in life, to be sure, the "sense of humour" he tells me I lack.… I have finished. It is for you to read, and judge.

******

The foregoing, with such editing as was necessary to render it intelligible, is the message I found in a pickle bottle firmly wedged amongst the mangrove roots of a creek in the Gulf of Carpentaria. It must have been there for years.

I was duck shooting at the time, but somehow, after happening on to this quaint document besmeared with pickle juice, my interest in the sport flagged. I wanted to know more, and there is only one way to do that on Thursday Island—ask Evans. Consequently that evening found me, not for the first time, on his wide verandah, discussing whisky and soda and the impossible state of the shell market.

"By the way," I ventured presently, "did you ever know a Captain Brent?"

"Still know him, for the matter of that," said Evans. "Why?"

"Then he—I mean he still lives on T. I.?" I stammered like a fool.

"Certainly. I used to buy his sandalwood. Buy his son-in-law's now."

"His son-in-law's?"

Evans rolled over in his chair and grinned at me.

"What's the game?" he questioned good-naturedly. "I never saw such a fellow." He rolled back again. "But, come to think of it, there might be something in him for you. The old man's ketch is the first thing I ever heard of to jump the Barrier Reef. I thought that'd make you sit up. But it's the truth. Ask Thorpe—he was aboard when she did it. He and the old man were going South for something—I forget what—and they took the Great Barrier bow on at night. It's been done before, you know, but never quite like that. Must have struck it in a narrow place or something. Anyway, Thorpe says that ketch jumped like a two-year-old, slithered through rotten coral for a bit, and plumped into deep water beyond, carried by the surf, I expect, and nothing more to show for it than a scored bilge—oh, and a couple of broken ribs—Thorpe's, not the ketch's. He was beaten up pretty considerably when we took him ashore. Is there anything else I can serve you with to-day, sir?"

Evans is a good fellow, but provokingly incomplete.

"Yes," said I. "What happened to the old man?"

"Oh, he rushed on deck at the first shock, it seems, and was promptly bowled over the side by a breaker. But there's no killing him. He just sat on the reef, thinking his ketch sunk and Thorpe dead, until someone came and took him off. Shook him up, though. He's never been quite the same since—which is all to the good, most of us think."

The next evening I took occasion to wander down T. I.'s grass-grown main street, through its herds of cavorting goats, and up the galvanised hillside to where a neat little weatherboard house stood well back from the road.

In the garden, enjoying the cool of the evening, were four people, a white-bearded man seated in a cane chair, a bronzed giant prone and smoking on the grass, and a woman beside him, sitting as only a woman can. Curiously enough, their eyes were all turned in the same direction—to where, in short, the fourth member of the party was engaged in the solemn process of learning to "walk alone." His progress towards his mother's outstretched arms was as erratic as such things usually are—a few ungainly steps, a tottering pause, and an abrupt but apparently painless collapse.

"Seven!" exclaimed the white-bearded man, with an air of personal accomplishment.

"I made it five," grinned the giant.

"I said seven," boomed the other, and I left them at it.

They were Captain Brent and his son-in-law, and somehow I wanted to preserve that picture of them intact.

That, too, was partly why at the summit of the hill I tore my quaint, pickle-stained document into minute fragments and scattered them to the four winds of Torres Straits.