The Three Sirens Read Free Page B

lately my pecuniary fortunes have been low. I do not make myself out more than I am. My day-to-day life now is a struggle to make ends meet. I have growing competition from native dealers. Valuable artifacts are increasingly difficult to come by. Therefore, whenever there is an opportunity to supplement my meager income from the shop, I cannot disdain accepting it. Even though Mr. Trevor’s expense budget was limited, his final payment was considerable, certainly more than I profit in an entire year from my shop and other enterprises. I had no choice but to accept the assignment.
    After I had received my full instructions, and Mr. Trevor had flown back to Australia, I immediately set out to charter a private seaplane. The number that were available in Papeete—for example, the two flying boats of the RAI which taxi tourists to Bora Bora—were all far too expensive for private use. I continued making inquiries, and when I mentioned my problem to the bartender in Quinn’s, he told me that he knew just the man for me. He said that one of his customers, Captain Ollie Rasmussen, whom I remembered hearing about, owned an old amphibian flying boat that he had bought from an American firm after World War II. The bartender said that Rasmussen owned a cottage and Polynesian wife on Moorea—which, you know, is a stone’s throw away from us—and that he had a warehouse just below the Quai Commerce.
    Rasmussen was an importer, the bartender thought, and he used his seaplane for freighting. In any case, he came into Papeete at least once a week, and I would have no trouble seeing him.
    Within a few days, I had met Captain Rasmussen and his copilot, a native in his twenties named Richard Hapai. Rasmussen had whiskey on his breath, and also profanity, and his appearance was disreputable, and I had some misgivings. He did own an aged Vought-Sikorsky—a clumsy, creaky twin-engined plane with a maximum cruising speed of 170 miles an hour—and I found it clean and well cared for, and this engaged my respect again. Rasmussen was colorful and voluble, deploring at length the necessity of giving up his old pearl schooner in 1947 for a flying boat, but I think he liked the flying boat more than he would admit. He took trips through the islands every week, for two days at a time, yet he had spare time enough and had no objections to chartering his seaplane and services to me. We haggled for an hour, and at last he agreed to take me on three scouting flights, two short ones and one longer one, and to land no more than three times, for $400.
    Two weeks ago, with Rasmussen and Hapai in the nose cockpit, we took our first exploratory trip. Captain Rasmussen, I must say, knew the area between Samoa and the Marquesas better than I did, and he directed me to a fair number of uninhabited atolls, which you had always suspected might exist but were on no maps. However, not one was suitable for Intra-Oceania Flights. A few days later, a second scouting expedition proved equally unprofitable, although I directed Rasmussen to one landing and visit ashore. I was disheartened—I saw that I might not earn the $3,000 offered me—but still retained hope that the third and longest flight might uncover what I wanted. Then, for a number of days, this final trip was delayed. Rasmussen was absent from Papeete, and was nowhere to be found. At last, he presented himself at my hotel, five days ago, ready to take off at dawn for what was to be a two-day survey, interrupted only by fueling stops, an overnight stay on Rapa, and my own orders to land whenever I sighted a good possibility.
    There is no need, Dr. Hayden, to have you suffer the desperation of that last empty excursion aloft. The first day was fruitless. The second day, leaving Rapa at dawn, we ventured south, flying high and low for hours, far afield from the beaten ocean paths, examining coral islands one after the other. None was suitable for Mr. Trevor’s purposes, and there was no use in deluding