The Mystery of Swordfish Reef. Arthur W. Upfield
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“Going to be a dirty night,” he murmured, summing up all these weather signs. “Ah!”
Coming towards him, to pass his office on her way home, was Marion Spinks. The wind on the headland had blown her hair into disorder. Even here in the street it teased the hem of her skirt.
“Any sight of the Do-me, Miss Spinks?” he asked her.
She shook her head.
“I’m going home to make tea and take it to mother,” she said. “She won’t leave the headland. She won’t come home and wait.” Her control gave way at last under the long strain, and in her voice was a sob. “Oh, Mr Blade! I’m afraid … I’m afraid.”
“But, Miss Spinks, this wind will bring the Do-me to port somewhere.”
“Yes, I am hoping that about the Do-me. I am afraid now for mother. She’s taking on so. I can’t do anything with her, and she won’t come home. She says she must stop on the headland looking for the Do-me.”
“Have you both been up there all day?”
Marion nodded her head, dumbly miserable, even desperate. Blade was quick to make a suggestion.
“Well, then, while you are home getting the tea, I’ll slip off home and ask the wife to go with you and persuade your mother to come home. Mrs Blade once was a trained nurse, you know, and she would know how to manage your mother.”
“Oh, if Mrs Blade would!”
“She will, I’m sure. I’ll have her here when you pass with the tea,”
Blade smiled encouragement at the girl, and she went on her way. Looking after her, memory of her eyes big with dread stayed with him, but he could not help noticing her poise and dignity.
His wife was with him in the office when Marion returned carrying a basket and a billy of tea. He stood in his doorway watching them pass along the street, pass the hotel, gain the end of the road and take the path to the summit of the headland.
The first of the launches in this evening was a smart craft named Vida; its owner reported that the sea was rising before the wind and predicted a stormy night. He had no news of the missing launch and, as the other launches were all hurrying in, he thought no news of the Do-me had been gained.
The last launch in was the Myoni. Williams, her owner, told Blade that he had taken his angler as far south as Bunga Head, and that he had not sighted the Marlin since nine o’clock that morning. This was shortly after six when the roar of the surf was louder than the whine of the wind about the mast stays of craft moored to the sheltered jetty. The river’s mouth was foaming, and now and then the sea on the bar and beyond it lifted high above the water in the channel.
“Another easterly making,” complained Alf Remmings, his moustache salted by sea spray, his darkly tanned face brightened by the spray’s stinging lash. “Why can’t it blow from any other quarter but the east? Looks like we’re going to be kept in for days. If Jack Wilton and Joe don’t soon turn up in the Marlin they won’t risk the bar and they’ll have to punch away out to Montague and shelter there.”
“Trust them two to look after themselves.” said Burns, as he was about to pass on his way to his home. “They went down south and they’ll likely enough run in to Eden for the night. And that’s where the Do-me is going to turn up, too, under her sail. This wind’ll bring her in even if she drifted fifty miles out.”
A little after seven o’clock the anxious Mrs Wilton was relieved of growing anxiety by a telephoned message stating that the Marlin had reached Eden and would stay there the night.
Her son and Joe had seen nothing of the Do-me.
At seven-thirty Edward Blade locked his office and went home to find his wife absent and no dinner prepared. He changed into warmer clothes and walked to the headland. The sea was a restless pattern of black and white. The sky was ribbed with black cloud streamers, pointing to where the highlands made a bold silhouette against the sunset glow. The endless procession of rollers, surmounted by a film of spray, swept past the headland into the great bay, their left flanks wheeling into the inner bay to smash with ghastly whiteness against the promontory protecting the river, their centres rushing onward to hurl themselves far up the sand slopes beyond.
Blade’s wife was with Mrs Spinks and Marion. Mrs Blade was almost beside herself, the girl tearfully beseeching her mother to abandon the vigil.
Mrs Spinks was screaming:
“Leave me alone! I’m staying here to see the Do-me come home. I won’t go. I tell you I won’t go down. My Bill’s out there, and I won’t go home.”
The woman’s appearance shocked Blade. His wife and Marion could do nothing to pacify her, and his own efforts were of no avail. He hurried back for Constable Telfer. They were obliged to use force. All the way down the path to the road Mrs Spinks continued to scream. She screamed until the doctor came to her house and administered morphia.
Chapter Three
Flotsam
The predictions of the local weather experts were wrong. On the following morning the sun rose in a clear sky and a light southerly already was having effect on the ugly white-capped rollers. Day was breaking when Joe called his partner to the breakfast he had prepared on a primus stove.
“Weather’s cleared, Jack, me lad,” he announced. “We can get away any time.”
An hour later the Marlin was running up and over the water mountains, both men standing in the shelter of the glass-fronted structure protecting the wheel and steersman, the cockpit and cabin entrance. The wind was cold. The sea had the appearance of having been washed, for the valleys were dark blue, the mountain crests light blue, and the breakers brilliantly white. Astern, beetling cliffs bore the everlasting attacks of the foaming breakers. Above the cliffs were green caps of grass. Beyond rose dense timber, and farther back the distant blue-black highlands.
Wilton had interviewed the police at Eden—some forty miles south of Bermagui—for possible news of the Do-me. There was no news from ship or shore station, no discovery of any wreckage. In his heart this morning hope was almost dead: in Joe’s heart hope was a corpse.
“She’s foundered, Jack, that’s what she’s done,” he growled, hands lightly resting on the wheel-spokes, teeth biting upon the lacerated stem of one of his two pipes. “All yesterday we looked for the Do-me. Today I reckon we’d better look for oil and flotsam.
Wilton nodded, saying nothing, his eyes stern, his face seemingly fixed into a mask. Presently he passed into the cabin. A glance at his barometer told him that the pressure was steadily rising. He adjusted the engine running to maintain a steady seven knots, greased the bearings of the propeller shaft. On rejoining Joe, he said:
“We’ll look for oil and flotsam. You’re boss today. The general current is setting to the nor’ard. When d’you reckon it changed?”
“Not till some time after midnight. I was up then and the wind was still easterly.
“Well, I’ll leave the course to you. You’re better able to nut out the currents working south from Swordfish Reef from the time the Do-me was last sighted by the Gladious. It would give me a headache, and then I’d be wrong.”
“All right,” assented Joe.
Wilton rolled a cigarette, lit it, inhaled deeply. Then he clambered for’ard past the protruding shelter structure, and stood against the mast, his feet planted far apart. This day he would be the mate and would have to maintain a constant look out, not for a fin but for relics of a tragedy which had surely engulfed his lifelong friend and might engulf his own hopes of happiness centred upon that friend’s sister. He left in charge at the wheel a man whose knowledge of the sea off this coast, its feminine whims and its masculine habits, was almost uncanny. They had looked for the