The Mystery of Swordfish Reef. Arthur W. Upfield
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The trawler had vanished, having left for Sydney to unload her catch. The coastal steamer, Cobargo, was coming south to call at Eden, whilst far at sea a trader was making for Melbourne, smoke from her solitary tall stack lying low upon the water astern of her.
Noonday found the Marlin fifteen miles north of Eden and some ten miles off land. The trader had been captured by distance and the Cobargo had gone in to Eden to unload and pick up cargo. The sea was empty. Even when the Marlin was atop a water mountain Wilton could see nothing afloat. The rollers were becoming mere swells, shrinking fast under the energetic influence of the low chop set up by the southerly wind.
He went aft to bring back his lunch and tea thermos. He ate whilst sitting on the forward hatch, his gaze never on his food, always on the sea. Once he saw the fin of a mako shark, and now and then a shoal of small fish whip-lashing the surface in frantic effort to escape bigger fish. A school of porpoises came to gambol about the bow, grey-green symbols of streamlined speed.
Having disposed of his lunch, he repacked the basket and took it down below. Only a minute did he give to tending the engine and then gained Joe’s side to take a trick at the wheel.
“Keep her there for a bit,” Joe said. “I’ll go for’ard with me grub and keep a look-out. Might alter course from time to time so’s to come in to the tail of Swordfish Reef from the east. Keep an eye on me.”
Wilton heard him moving heavily beside the shelter structure, saw him waddling forward to sit on the hatch-covering he had just vacated. Joe’s thin grey hair was whipped by the breeze, but his body seemed as immovable as a rock. He was a man of whom a first impression was always bad and always in error.
In his turn he was repacking his tucker basket when he paused to stare landward, and then to thump the decking with one calloused hand. Through the glass Wilton saw him pointing to the west. He heard him shouting but could not distinguish the words, and he left the wheel to raise his head above the shelter structure by standing on the gunwale.
“Aireyplane,” shouted Joe, again pointing.
Wilton saw the machine. It was flying low above the sea, and its course quickly informed him that it was on no normal flight. It was searching for the Do-me, or its wreckage.
So the fact of the Do-me’s disappearance had been broadcast, for the plane must have come down from Sydney. Although it was a twin-engined machine, the pilot was taking a chance by flying so far from land. It was coming towards them now on a straight course; Wilton was able to watch it and steer the launch with his left foot on the wheel-spokes.
Joe stood up to wave, and when the machine had passed over and began to circle there could be seen two men, one of whom waved back whilst he examined the Marlin through binoculars. After that, like an albatross, it “drifted” northward.
Joe came aft with his lunch basket.
“Sooner be here than up in that thing,” he said, with the conservatism of the sailor. “Shift her four points to starboard, and we’ll follow up a current running between two reefs.”
“Telfer must have got to work reporting the absence of the Do-me,” surmised Wilton, again standing before the wheel and obeying his partner’s order. “That plane’s from Sydney all right. She’s an Air Force machine.”
“Hell-’v-a-’ope of sightin’ the Do-me now,” grumbled Joe. “And not much chance their sighting oil after last night’s weather. Any’ow if they seen a patch of oil they couldn’t tell if it came from the Do-me or a steamer.”
“How do you think to tell it if we come across any?”
“If we come across oil, Jack, the chances are that it came from the Do-me. ’Cos why? ’Cos we’re follering tight the sea-drift from where the Do-me must have gone down. Oil anywhere away from the drift would be steamer’s oil, likely enough, any’ow, after last night’s weather it won’t be easy to look at from aboard here, let alone a plane, low as that one was working. Better let me take the wheel. I’ll have to do a bit of dodging about. If there’s anything to be found it will be within a mile or two of this position.”
Wilton was standing beside the mast when, some forty minutes later, he abruptly turned aft and raised both his arms. Instantly Joe pushed the engine clutch into neutral, and raised himself to look over the shelter structure. Wilton was pointing to the sea about the launch.
“What d’you make of it, Joe? Is it oil?”
Joe’s eyes widened. Then he sprang down into the cockpit, bent low to bring his eyes on a level with the gunwale to squint across the low chop-waves on the slopes of the greater swells. Perhaps for half a minute he remained thus before clambering for’ard to join his partner in staring downward at the surface of the water. Then:
“Yes, that’s oil, Jack. Film’s thinner than ordinary due to last night’s rough weather. It’s oil, all right, and it’s in the drift coming from Swordfish Reef. Now lemme think.”
His face became a study of mental concentration, the expression not unlike that of a schoolboy trying to remember a lesson. In fact his brain was working on a problem that would have defied a professor of mathematics, for he sought the answer to the question: How far from an oil patch which offers exceedingly slight resistance to wind might be found flotsam from the same craft from which came the oil, when the velocity of the wind was such and such for so many hours, when it blew from such a quarter before changing to such a quarter, when this current would flow at so many knots to the hour, and that at so many knots, to join another current moving at such a speed?
“We’ll move on a bit,” he said sharply. “You stay here and keep a look-out. Don’t pass by as much as a splinter of wood.”
The aeroplane was still out over the sea, out from Bunga Head, ten miles south of Bermagui. The Marlin was six miles south of the great headland and seven miles off the small settlement called Tathra. They could this clear day see the hotel at Tathra.
Joe brought out from the cabin a petrol drum, and standing on this he could see on all sides above the shelter roof whilst he steered with his naked feet. He sent the Marlin forward at a mere two knots to the hour, scanning the coast about Tathra and taking constant bearings from Bunga Head. The upper part of his body rested on the roof of the shelter and his hands protected his eyes from the near light. Apparently undirected, the Marlin began a series of zig-zags, curves and giant circles.
Steadying himself by holding to the mast and the port mast stay, Jack Wilton ceaselessly scanned the sea with greater mental concentration than ever he had watched for a fin. His craft’s extraordinary antics perturbed him not at all, for his confidence in his partner was supreme when it was a question of the currents controlled by the wind and the reefs far below the surface. He did not permit himself to gaze landward, or to watch the plane, giving every second of time to the surface of the glittering sea.
The wind was dying. The chop from the south was falling fast, and the now unopposed swells were flat topped and smooth sloped. Minutes mounted to an hour, the hour grew to two hours, and still Joe stood on his drum and steered with his naked feet. He watched not the sea but the land and Bunga Head, for that Head and points of the land gave him his constantly changing positions.
The plane had at last gone from the sea. There was a launch far away to the nor’-east, its hull below the horizon, its mast standing stiffly on the horizon like a hair on the head of a bald man.
Both Wilton and Joe were confident that if the Do-me had gone down there must be flotsam and oil to betray its fate. The oil they had passed over was more likely than not to have come from the Do-me, for Joe was following an invisible road to Swordfish Reef above which the missing launch was assumed to have sunk. On this same invisible road would be objects which would float away from the Do-me if and when she sank; objects such as the angler’s chair-cushion, the wooden bait-fish box, hats, lunch basket and wooden tucker box, thermos flasks and milk bottles. If the door giving entry to the engine-room cabin was open at the time of the catastrophe,