East of Outback Read Free

were saying then it was the last storm of the season. That’s why all the luggers lay up over summer, isn’t it? To avoid the storms?”
    “ Mais oui . But who gunner tell daht willy-willy it’s a month late? Dis is why no insurance house touch de luggers. Storms don’t know how to read cahlendars. You go below now, make sure nutting gunner move around down dere. Don’ want no cargo shifting.”
    “Yes, sir.” And he hurried below, thankful for something to do.
    Colin started sweating instantly in the hot, dank, stinking hold as he dragged sacks of shell about, laying them down flat. He thought about the monument he’d seen in Broome’s cemetery, erected by Japanese mourners to commemorate their brethren lost in the cyclone of 1908—just three months before Colin was born. Seventeen years ago this very month. A chill ran down his spine despite the heat.
    Sake appeared in the gloom beside him. He stuffed his diving gear and helmet into a little locker in the stern. “I give you help with these things.” His smooth, slim hands, as strong as any other man’s, gripped a filled sack and dragged it down among the others.
    “Sake, were you out during that storm in aught eight?”
    The Japanese diver paused, studying infinity again. “Three schooners lost. Three other ships. Thirty-nine luggers. Over a hundred men, forty of them Japanese.”
    “So you were there.”
    “No. I was but a lad, working in the sorting sheds. My father, though—he was one of the forty.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “It is the price paid for shell. For beauty.” The bronzed man straightened and smiled suddenly, his teeth bright in the darkness. “Diamonds, sapphires—so cold, lad. Brittle. But a pearl is living, soft, like a woman. Diamonds are stones, flashing like a wanton woman. But the pearl, it glows gently, like a woman of virtue. Men lose their lives every day, some way or other. Serving pearls—like virtue— is good a way as any, right?”
    “Yes, sir.” Colin hesitated. “You think we’ll die tonight?” He was surprised at his own casualness at discussing the subject.
    “Perhaps,” he sighed. “Perhaps.”

C HAPTER T WO
    P EARL OF G REAT P RICE
    There is one thing worse than impending doom—a feeling of utter helplessness to prevent it.
    Inexorably the storm bore down upon them. Its squall line hit Grade two hours past sunset.
    The little lugger lurched. She heaved. Caught in the screaming wind she lunged forward, breasting unimaginable waves. They battened down as best they could. They threw out their jury sea anchor, a huge canvas cup kept in shape by spars. They cast all her anchors with as much chain and hawse as she had aboard. The anchors and her dragging sea anchor kept her tail to the wind. But for the lightning that occasionally ripped between heaven and hell, all was blackness.
    “To the pumps, lahds!”
    Colin groped his way through the darkness, hands on the cabin, hands on the lifeline stretched amidship. He and Dizzy took one side of the bilge pump bar, Sake and Ariel the other. In total darkness, in wind that could push a man over, in slinging, drenching rain Colin worked the bilge pump, up and down and up and down.
    The little boat jerked, a motion somehow apart from her pounding leaps. Colin barely heard a pung .
    “What’s that?” he gasped, choking a scream.
    “One of the anchors snagged. The chain’s parted!” Sake yelled.
    The chain’s parted? Colin thought. Welded links over an inch long parted, and the storm is just beginning!
    Despite the backs of four strong men, the pump worked heavily, sluggishly. A massive presence stepped into the blackness beside Colin. Captain Foulard put a hand to the pump. “Hull must’ve sprung; we’re pumping green water!”
    Green water? Colin could see nothing, not even Dizzy working hard beside him. No doubt green referred to more than color, something ominous.
    Under normal circumstances on the flat sapphire ocean, the captain’s voice rang loud enough