02 South Sea Adventure (2 page)

‘Suppose I quit supposing,’ said Hal severely to himself and tried to dismiss the subject from his mind.

‘How she scoons!’ cried Roger as the fishing schooner, Lively Lady, sped out of San Francisco Bay between the pillars of Golden Gate Bridge and into the Pacific on the first lap of her ‘downhill run’ to the South Seas.

For Roger recalled the story that someone had exclaimed, ‘How she scoons!’ when the first craft of this sort put to sea. The owner had replied, ‘A scooner let her be.’ And from that time on this type of vessel was known as a scooner or schooner, from the old verb scoon, meaning to skip or skim.

And certainly the ship the boys had chartered seemed to skip and skim now as she flew wing-and-wing before the wind.

She had been built for speed to get a tuna catch to port before her rivals. She carried the fastest sail in the world, the triangular Marconi sail, instead of the gaff mainsail usually seen on schooners. This triangle of sail put her in a class with racing yachts, and indeed she had competed successfully more than once in the annual cup races.

But she was different in other ways from the ordinary schooner. Between the two masts, in place of the usual foresail, she carried two staysails, while forward of the foremast billowed a giant jib.

There was an auxiliary engine but it was only to help the ship through narrow passages when the wind failed. Given a fair wind, her sails could push her along at twice the speed that could be wrung out of her engine. Right now she was doing seventeen knots with ease.

Hal and Roger strode the deck with mighty pride. Temporarily at least she was their ship although the money with which they had chartered her came from John Hunt and his wealthy client and she still carried her real owner on board, Captain Ike Flint.

He served as skipper, for the boys as yet knew too little about sailing to handle a sixty-foot ship. The skipper’s crew consisted of two brawny young seamen, one of them a rough, hard-bitten character nicknamed Crab who refused to be bothered with a real name, and the other a handsome brown giant named Omo, a native of the South Sea isle of Raiatea. He had come to San Francisco as a hand on a trading ship, had been bewildered by the rush of American life, and was now well content to be heading back towards the Polynesian islands.

Captain Ike and his men would sleep in a snug cabin under the forward deck. Hal and Roger would occupy a still snugger cabin aft. Space had been stolen from it to afford more room for the huge specimen tanks that had been installed amidships. These filled the hold between the two cabins.

It was not possible to use one giant tank for all specimens, for the big creatures would devour the little ones. They must be kept separate. And that meant many tanks, large and small. These various aquariums were covered with removable lids. Even when these covers were battened down air was admitted to each tank by a valve in the lid so devised that while it would allow air to go in it would not permit water to come out even in the roughest weather.

In a tiny galley was a Primus stove and a stock of food. A storeroom was stuffed with supplies including equipment needed for gathering specimens, seines, gill nets, tow nets, scoop nets, poles and lines, and harpoons.

High on the crosstrees of the mainmast was a platform that would serve as a crow’s-nest where a lookout might sit and watch the sea for game.

Out ahead of the ship on the tip of her bowsprit was a pulpit - the sort in which a fisherman stands, harpoon in hand, watching for swordfish. It was thrilling to stand here with nothing but the sky above and the rushing sea beneath.

From this point you could look straight down into water still undisturbed by the ship. If anything interesting came along you were in a position to get a preview of it.

And who could tell what discoveries the two young explorers might make? The professor had said, ‘Probably more than half of the living things of the Pacific are still unknown to science.’

This enormous ocean, eleven thousand miles across at its widest part, averaging three miles deep and at some points six times as deep as the Grand Canyon, sprinkled with tens of thousands of islands of which only three thousand have yet been named - what secrets it must still hold locked in its mighty deeps.

Captain Ike stood at the wheel. His small blue eyes, as sharp as the eyes of a fox, peered out of a brown leather face at the wavering needle of the compass in the binnacle before him. He held the ship to a course southwest by south.

‘With luck,’ he said, ‘we could slide downhill all the way to Ponape.’

‘Why do they call this the downhill run?’ asked Hal.

‘Because we’re in the path of the trades. That doesn’t mean much to a steamer but it’s everything to a sailing ship. With the trade winds behind us we’ll make fast time. O’ course here in the horse latitudes they’re a bit temperamental, but when we get past Hawaii they ought to be mighty steady - barring accidents.’

‘What accidents?’

‘Hurricanes. They can spoil the best of plans.’

‘Is this the season for them?’

‘It is. But no telling. We might be lucky. Anyway,’ and he gave Hal a sharp glance, ‘what you’re after is worth the trouble.’

Hal was suddenly suspicious. Was the captain fishing for

information? Or did he already know more than he was supposed to know? He had been told only that they were after marine specimens. No mention had been made of pearls.

Hal turned away and walked the deck. The buoyant exhilaration he had felt as the ship raced before the wind was dulled by worry.

He had almost ceased to think of the menace that had threatened the expedition before it left home. There had been no sign that anyone had shadowed them at the airfield or on the plane or during the days in San Francisco. When they sailed out into the great freedom of the Pacific he felt that all evil plots had been left behind and that there was nothing ahead but delightful adventure.

Now he wondered about Captain Ike. He wondered about the rough fellow named Crab. He wondered about Omo - being from the South Seas, might he not have picked up some information about the professor’s experiment?

‘What’s eating you?’ demanded Roger, noting his brother’s worried look.

Hal laughed. He wouldn’t worry Roger with his ill-founded fears. ‘Just wondering if we were going to have a change in the weather. See that cloud?’

‘It looks as if it meant business,’ said Roger, looking up at the black cloud passing above. Presently a few drops fell.

‘Rain!’ exclaimed Hal. ‘That means a bath to me. Here goes to get off some of that sweaty dirt I put on in the city.’

He dashed down into the cabin and came up a few moments later stripped naked, with a cake of soap in his hand.

As the raindrops wet his skin he vigorously soaped himself all over until he was covered with a white lather from head to foot. He waited for the rain to increase in volume and wash him clean.

Instead, the rain ceased abruptly. The black cloud passed over and not another drop was squeezed out of it Hal stood like a pillar of soap, waiting patiently, and considerably embarrassed under the gaze of the captain and crew. He consoled himself with the thought that there were no ladies on board and none within dozens of miles.

But his mischievous younger brother, much amused, had a sudden flash of inspiration. He went down to the storeroom and opened the slop chest. He had already seen a woman’s dress and hat in this chest and when he had asked about them the captain had explained that his wife sometimes accompanied him on his voyages.

Roger hastily slipped the dress on oyer his shirt and slacks. It was big enough for a couple of boys his size. The hat was fortunately very large and droopy, effectively concealing most of his face.

Hal knew that Captain Flint’s wife often went along but it had been distinctly understood that this time she would stay home. So he was completely stunned when he saw a female figure rise from the cabin companionway and step out on deck.

He looked for a place of hiding and made a move to get behind the mainmast. At the same moment the lady saw him and the sight was too much for her delicate sensibilities. She screamed to high heaven and fell face downward on the deck.

The poor soul, she had fainted! She might even have killed herself striking her head on the deck. Hal forgot his embarrassment. He ran to her aid, soapsuds flying. He lifted the limp form. He pushed back the big hat and looked into the face of Roger who burst into a mighty guffaw in which he was joined by the captain and Crab.

Laughing always made Roger weak. Hal took advantage of that weakness. He draped his impish brother over his soapy knee and administered a sound spanking. Roger quit laughing. Hal might have known that that

was a sign of more mischief. Only a low rail stood between the deck and the sea. Roger pretended not to have a muscle in his body. But his drooping hands were close to Hal’s foot.

Suddenly he clutched the foot, reared up, and heaved his brother into the ocean.

‘Enough of that nonsense,’ bawled the captain as he threw the wheel hard over and smartly brought the ship about. He crawled up on the starboard tack, close-hauled, to where Hal, now quite unsoaped, lazily splashed in the water. As the ship bore up to him, Hal reached for the bobstay that held the bowsprit to the stem, and clambered aboard.

His skin tingled with the shock of the cold water. ‘Thanks a million, Roger,’ he said. ‘That was grand.’

He went down and dressed. The fun with Roger and the cold bath that had ended it had restored his high spirits. If there was any menace waiting at the end of the downhill run he felt he would be a match for it.

It was night on deck and there was no lantern near enough to read by. And yet Hal was reading.

His only light was a fish!

Swimming about the small tank between the two boys, it threw out a stronger glow than that of a forty-watt bulb.

‘Do you find it in the manual?’ asked Roger.

‘Yes, here it is. A lantern fish. A good name for it!’

The fish has a row of lights along each side, like the lighted portholes of a steamer. Then there were other lights thickly sprinkled over the back. All these lights burned continuously. But most startling were the tail lights which flashed on and off.

Hal had just spent an hour out ahead of the ship on the tip end of the bowsprit. Standing in the pulpit and hanging onto the curved rail which half-surrounded it, he had watched the scudding sea a few feet below him. When he saw anything interesting, his hand net flashed down and up. It was in one of these strikes that he had caught the lantern fish.

‘What do you suppose it wants with all those lights?’ asked Roger.

‘Well,’ explained Hal, ‘it’s a deep-sea fish. It comes to the surface only at night. During the day it lives away down where it is always dark, night and day. So it needs lanterns to find its way about.’ ‘But the sun can shine through water,’ objected Roger.

‘The sunlight only goes down a thousand feet or so. Below that, if you did any deep-sea diving, you would need a lamp. On down to the bottom, a distance of a mile to six miles, there is total darkness - or would be if the fish didn’t carry lanterns.’

‘But what’s the idea of those flashing tail lights?’

‘Probably to blind enemies. Just as you would be blinded if I flashed an electric torch in your eyes. When I turned it off you wouldn’t be able to see me and I could escape.’

‘Pretty smart fish,’ marvelled Roger.

Every day a net was towed behind the ship. Sometimes it was a surface net, sometimes a deep-sea trawl which collected specimens from a depth of a quarter-mile or more.

These denizens of the deep Hal had put together in a small aquarium.

‘Let’s put the lantern fish in with his friends,’ suggested Roger.

Hal scooped it up with a small net and transferred it to the deep-sea tank.

Immediately there was wild commotion. The lantern fish was pursued by a slightly larger fish which was also sprinkled with lights. Even its fins were illuminated. From its chin dangled brilliantly lighted whiskers.

‘Its name is star-eater,’ said Hal.

‘It sure looks as if it had eaten plenty of stars,’ said Roger, following the movements of the star-spangled fish, ‘and it will eat some more if it can get that lantern fish.’

Suddenly the lantern fish flashed its blinding tail lights. The confused star-eater stopped and its quarry escaped to hide in a far corner of the tank.

Some of the fish gave out a green light, some yellow, some red. One carried what looked like a small electric bulb suspended in front of its face.

But one had no lights. Hal found its description in his manual. It was blind, therefore it could not use lights to see where it was going. Instead, it was like a blind man walking down the street and tapping with his cane ahead of him. Only in this case there were about twenty canes - long feelers that spread out in every direction like reaching fingers. With these the fish could avoid bumping into unpleasant neighbours, and find its food.

But some of the specimens were not in the manual. Hal wrote descriptions of these and made careful drawings. Perhaps they were new to science. He was their discoverer. Some of them might be named after him.

It seemed a little absurd to Hal and Roger that they should be finding things unknown to the scientists.

‘But it could be.’ said Hal. ‘Last year the Smithsonian Institution made a study of fish near the Bikini atoll. Of four hundred and eighty-one species studied, seventy-nine were new. That’s one out of every six. If the same proportion holds here, one out of every six kinds of fish in that tank has never been named or described or had its picture taken until tonight.’

Wham! Something hit the lower staysail just over Hal’s head, then fell to the deck. Wham! Wham! Two more.

‘Flying-fish!’ cried Hal. The tank of luminous fish cast a glow on the staysail. Flying-fish, attracted by the light, were flying on board.

I’ll be catcher!’ said Roger, and planted himself in front of the sail. This was as good as baseball. A dark object came hurtling towards him. He caught it neatly and passed it to Omo who had come to gather up the fish. They would be served at breakfast. Flying-fish make fine eating.