Curley Green had declared this day, the day of our landing on the island, to be a holiday — but, what with one thing and another, there wasn’t much holiday about it. It reminded me — when I had time to think about it — of the old windjammer jingle quoted by Charles Dana in his Two Years Before The Mast:
“Six days shalt thou labour and do all that thou art able — And on the seventh holystone the deck and chip the cable …”
There were the buildings to be cleaned out — the shed and the three smaller huts — and they needed it. Crudely built they were, of badly corroded corrugated iron, and their previous occupants had not been house-proud. In fact it was doubtful if they had been house-trained. (And what had happened to those previous occupants?) There were the soggy, mildewed mattresses to be put out in the sun to air. There were repairs to be made, under Curley Green’s direction, to roofs and walls — not that he bothered much about the smaller buildings. The shed, which was to be his headquarters, received most of our attention. Not only was it made weatherproof — it was made practically impregnable. Green had even found a rusty old padlock, complete with key, and a can of grease. He got it working again, and then fitted hasp and staple — the porpoises seemed to have pushed an astonishing assortment of junk ashore — to both the inside and the outside of the doorway.
It was almost sunset when we were finished. Green went into his now tidy storeroom, came out with an enamel bucket and an armful of cans. He dropped them to the ground with a clatter. “Here you are,” he growled to Sally. “Rustle up some tucker.”
“We are all capable of using a can opener,” she said coldly.
“I know that. But I want a hot meal. Build a fire. Make a stew in the muckin’ bucket. It’s clean enough.”
“And how am I to make a fire, Mr. Green?”
“Cor stiffen the bleedin’ crows, you’re as bad as Petey here. You could rub a coupla dry sticks together, but I’ll be kind hearted for this once. Here!”
He threw a match towards her. I picked it up. It was a lifeboat match, one of those carried in watertight containers and that will strike on any rough surface, that will burn even in a high wind.
Green went back into the shed, saying, “Call me when you’re mucking ready.”
Sally looked rather helplessly at the raw materials. She said, flushing, “This sounds damn silly Peter, but I honestly haven’t a clue …”
“Let Mary do it,” I suggested.
“Yes,” said the Samoan girl. “Yes. Let me.”
“No. I’ll cope, somehow. He wants to humiliate me, and if I turn out something not too bad it’ll backfire on him …” She was speaking almost in a whisper so that Green could not overhear. She drew me further away from the hut. “But what do I do?”
I stirred the pile of cans with my foot. The labels were still on them and, although sea-stained, were still legible. “There’s corned beef,” I said. “And beans, and tomatoes, and sausage. Not a bad beginning. Of course, we should have onions and garlic and spuds to throw in — but we shall just have to do without them. As we shall have to do without pepper and salt …”
“Stop it!” she wailed. “We’ve got nothing …”
“We’ve got salt …” I said.
“But where?”
“The sea’s salt,” I told her. “I’ll nip down to the beach while it’s still light and fill two of the empty cans with sea water. The other cans — those that we had our lunch from — Mary can wash in the stream. They’ll do for mugs. And while you’re at the stream, Mary, you can fill the bucket with fresh water …”
“But the fire …” said Sally helplessly.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll see what I can manage.”
Luckily there were plenty of stones around, and a few of them were of convenient shape and size. Without too much trouble, I was able to build a grate of sorts, one upon which the bucket could stand securely. While I was so engaged I told Sally to get dry wood, plenty of it, and dry leaves. I finished the grate before the others were back — John had gone with Mary to the stream — and then, picking up two empty cans, hurried down to the beach. I didn’t want to have to negotiate that cliff path in darkness.
When I was down to the sea I waded well out so as to be sure of getting my two cans full of water and not a mixture of water and sand. The fairly heavy swell of the morning had gone down, I noted. The sea was glassily calm and only slightly undulant. Overhead the darkling sky was clear, and the first stars were visible. Jupiter I identified, and Saturn, and there was another one, as bright as Jupiter, that I could not place — until I realized that it was in motion. Standing there, thigh deep in the warm water, I was struck by the irony of it all. Here was I, reduced to the level of primitive man — a lower level, for primitive man took orders from no other species — watching a construction of metal and plastic, put into orbit by my own kind, sail by, hundreds of miles overhead.
But dime store philosophy would get me nowhere. Ignoring the distant satellite I stooped to fill the cans. I cried out and almost dropped them when something nudged my leg.
It was one of the porpoises. He surfaced and snorted and grunted angrily, but I was determined to carry out what I had come to do. He butted me roughly and went on making his unintelligible noises. Unintelligible? No, not quite. I began to make out the semblance of words. “Back,” he seemed to be saying. “Back.”
I said sarcastically, “I hope you won’t begrudge me two cans of your sea,” and turned to wade ashore. The brute followed me in almost to the beach, striking me quite painfully every time that I faltered.
So there were sentries posted, I thought. That was understandable enough. But surely, I told myself resentfully, such sentries must know that a man could never escape from the island by swimming — unless, of course, he wished to escape from life itself. They must know that only a man in a boat or on a raft would represent a danger to themselves. Then, as I felt the dry sand underfoot, I laughed. There have been times when human sentries have not exhibited outstanding intelligence, or any intelligence at all. Why expect any higher standards from a porpoise? I began to feel a lot better. Somehow I had come to think of the sea beasts as being superhuman, but they weren’t. They were just different — and, possibly, not so very different in their mental processes. After all, they were oxygen breathing mammals.
I climbed back up the cliff in the last of the brief twilight, saw that Sally had succeeded in getting the fire going, also that a warm, yellow glow was showing through the open door of the shed. I remembered that there had been a boat lantern there, and a couple of the gallon cans of colza oil that are standard lifeboat equipment. Curley, obviously, had made himself at home.
I walked to inspect the fire. Rather to my surprise, it was burning well. Sally was just lifting the bucket to stand on top of it. I looked at it, looked at the open cans. “You’ll not need all that water,” I told her. “Empty about a third of it out.”
She did so. Then — “What do I do now?” she whispered.
“Put in the salt,” I told her, handing her the two cans. She emptied them into the larger vessel.
“And now?”
“Open the tins. Throw in the meat and the beans and all the rest of it. Bring to a boil, and then simmer.”
“This isn’t a gas stove,” she told me sharply.
“I thought that you didn’t know anything about cooking,” I countered.
“I don’t. But sometimes, when I’ve had nothing better to do, I’ve read the entries for our weekly cooking competition …”
“When the fire dies down a little you’ll get your simmering,” I told her. “Of course, if the fire gets too low you can shove in a few more sticks …”
As we talked she was wielding the can opener, throwing the meats and vegetables into the bucket. She looked at the result dubiously. “But shouldn’t this be stirred? We have no spoon …”
“Use a stick,” I said. “It’ll add a little flavour, perhaps …”
Somehow the meal got cooked. It didn’t smell at all bad. I dipped one of the empty cans into the seething mixture, tasted it as soon as it had cooled sufficiently. It didn’t taste as good as it smelled, but it was edible. And, I thought, there must be herbs in the bush that we can use on future occasions …
At this moment Green poked his head out through his door. “When’s this muckin’ tucker goin’ ter be ready?” he demanded.
“It’s ready now,” said Sally.
“So I see. An’ I see that yer’ve let yer muckin’ boy friend have first dig at it.” He laughed coarsely. “Well, it shows that it’s not muckin’ well poisoned. I’ll have ter make yer the official taster, Petey boy … Pour me out a coupla cans, will yer, an’ make sure that there’s plenty o’ meat in ‘em. Then leave ‘em just outside my door.”
So Curley would not be giving us the pleasure of his company at dinner. He did not want to risk a mug of scalding stew in the face. It was his own fault. By virtue of his skills and abilities he was the natural leader once we were on the island; there had been no need for him to take possession of our only firearm. Now that he had it, he was finding it a liability rather than an asset.
It was a pity, I thought a little later, that Bible Bill was not also averse to company. He was a messy eater, and a beard makes messy eating so much messier. And throughout the meal he maintained a vindictive diatribe against Curley Green, recounting in detail the engineer’s past sins, harping on his present sins and speculating on his future ones. I expected Green to come charging out of his shed, gun in hand, to put an abrupt stop to the slander. But, as his bursts of raucous laughter made obvious, he was amused rather than otherwise.
And then, having eaten, we retired. There was nothing else to do.
The two Samoans had one of the huts. Sally had a hut to herself. And I, to my disgust, had to share with Bible Bill. And I felt more than disgust when suddenly, on the very verge of sleep, I realised that old man was quite possibly a murderer.
What had happened to the previous occupants of these huts?