Suddenly Ghote felt the tugging strain on his arms cease. The unsmiling fisherman and his tubby, self-righteous son had grasped him under the armpits and were carefully easing him over the side of their frail craft. He had won.
Once he was aboard and the danger to the narrow little boat had been averted, the two fishermen let him flop like a sodden sack down near the prow and turned their backs on him. For some minutes he was content that they should do so. He wanted only to be left alone. If he could just have time to ease the wrenched muscles of his arms and sides, he felt, nothing else mattered.
But soon he began to feel better and started to look about him. The fisherman had by now hoisted their tall, thinly triangular white sail, patched here and there with old flour sacks. The wind was beginning to fill it out and send the little boat skimming through the slightly choppy sea, heading out away from the creek and the fishing village towards the distant blue line of the horizon.
Ghote noticed his notebook lying in the bottom of the boat near three plump pomfret left there after the morning’s catch. He gently pushed himself off the hard beams of the thin gunwale and reached for it. It was soaked with cold, salty water but looked as if it would be salvageable. He pressed the covers together so that a thin stream of water, slightly blue from ink that had run, trickled out. Then he pushed the wet mass into his pocket, where it thumped heavily against his side.
He lay back and thought.
At least he had achieved his first object. He had stuck close to the two fishermen at what was obviously the start of a trip to pick up something smuggled. The signs had been too plain to be anything else. The trip out to sea at this time of day when the routine was to leave before dawn and come back on the wind that could be relied on to sweep in from the sea during the morning. The two men’s obvious keenness to leave at a certain time and to have got rid of him before they went. No doubt some sort of rendezvous had to be kept. The patent excuse of needing extra money because the morning’s catch had been poor when these three plump evidently eatable fish had been actually left in the boat.
So now the task was to watch the two of them like a cat to see what it was they had come out to sea to do. One thing was in his favour already. Evidently the old fisherman had decided that in spite of his presence the rendezvous must be kept.
Ghote stretched forward and began trying to wring the heavy seawater out of his trouser legs. In the stern of the narrow boat, cleaving its way swiftly through the little waves, the two fishermen talked together in muttered voices over the long steering oar. Ghote pretended not to notice. It would be hopeless to try to overhear them. The thing to do was to lull their suspicions.
He sat up straighter. The fresh wind, laced with spray, chilled his face. He envied the close-fitting caps the other two wore.
‘Well,’ he said in a loud voice, ‘I think it is most important to have an idea how a boy like your son would earn his living.’
From the other end of the long, narrow boat the old fisherman looked at him sourly.
‘Yes,’ Ghote went on, shouting a little in case his words were being whipped away by the breeze even before they reached the stern of the skiff, ‘Yes, someone like me has to know just what it feels like to work the way the boys we help will have to.’
He warmed to his theme.
‘When I saw the very hut the boy lived in,’ he said, ‘I realized already much more about him. The damp walls, the palm leaves on the roof. Do they let in the rain?’
For a little he thought his question was going to go unanswered. But the lure of all this pity was too much for Tarzan’s brother.
‘Yes,’ he said at last, making his way forward a bit, ‘always the rain comes in when it is heavy. But we have no money for a better roof. We work so hard. We get up while it is still dark and set out to sea, and then the merchants give us so little for our catch. It is not fair.’
Ghote edged along the boat towards him. At the stern his father, taking no notice, threw out a long baited line and watched it unblinkingly.
‘This is what I want to hear,’ Ghote said. ‘I want to know the way you live. To see how to help your brother. That is why it was so important for me to come out to sea with you.’
The young man nodded gravely.
‘That boy,’ he said. ‘He must not be helped. He has run away from home when he should be working with us. He should be sent to prison.’
‘But no,’ said Ghote loudly, carried away by his role as social worker. ‘That is not the way. When a boy runs off from home, we have to ask what made him do it. To see if we can put that right.’
The runaway’s brother looked at him solemnly.
‘The boy is bad,’ he pronounced. ‘He left us. We have to do the work. And we have so little money. Even this boat may be taken from us for the money we have borrowed. He should be locked up.’
He tilted his chubby chin and looked away out to the far horizon. In the distance the faint blur of the smoke from the steamer Ghote had noticed before was still visible. The old man hauled in his line. A pomfret was jerking and wriggling on the end of it. He tugged it off the hook and flung it forward.
‘Or he should be well beaten,’ the young man added.
Ghote found nothing more to say.
For some while Tarzan’s brother sat where he was, evidently waiting for some further understanding comments on his lot from this heaven-sent professional sympathizer. Ghote let him wait.
Eventually the youngster seemed to realize that the source had dried up. He gave Ghote a sudden glare and made his way, swaying slightly to the narrow boat’s motion, to throw out a second line beside his father’s in the stern.
He put his head close to the old man’s and indulged in a long muttered tirade.
The old man turned and looked at Ghote along the length of the frail boat. He seemed to be weighing him up.
Ghote looked down at the sea slipping past the sides of the craft. A big patch of yellow, sun-bleached seaweed slid up, swept by a yard or two away and slowly disappeared.
The choppy waves began to grow higher and the boat dipped and rose with an unpleasant, regular motion.
The boy put his head near the old man’s again and added something to what he had been saying before. It was obviously a forceful plea. The old man shrugged his shoulders and seemed unable to make up his mind. He brought in another flopping, fat pomfret.
The boy added one more sentence. And then brought his clenched first sharply upwards in an unmistakable punching gesture.
Ghote was unable to prevent himself looking hastily all round. They were far out to sea now. The low coast was barely visible behind them. Beyond it the distant, jagged outline of the Western Ghats could be seen dark grey against the blue of the sky. Ahead and to each side the sea stretched blankly and ominously out, flecked here and there now by a white cap of a wave. Only on the far distant horizon was there a sign of human life, the last tiny smudge of smoke from the rapidly disappearing steamship.
Ghote looked along the length of the skiff at the two fishermen squatting together in the stern. The boy was fattish, but hefty. His father, though lean, was wiry and had a decidedly ugly look to him. If it came to a struggle, the odds would be very much on their side. And even if he won, he would still be left with two prisoners to keep subdued, miles out to sea in a boat he had no notion how to sail. He felt sick.
The son had caught a fish now. As soon as he had dealt with it and baited his line again he once more urged some action. The old man took another searching look at Ghote. The inspector felt very sick. The sweat rose up on his brow in spite of the salt spray which was coming more heavily off the bobbing waves with every moment that passed.
Suddenly Ghote realized that he felt sick for a very good reason. The little boat was bouncing on the waves with altogether too much speed. Much though he wanted to outstare the two fishermen in the stern he had to let himself look downwards into the sea for a moment’s respite.
A bladdery, iridescent Portuguese man-of-war sailed by right under his nose, its evil purple filaments trailing out behind. Ghote closed his eyes. But the image remained. He was sick.
He forced himself up and glared down the boat at the two others.
Only to see in the eye of the impassive old man a glint which was purely and unmistakably sardonic. He nudged the boy and said something terse. The boy looked down the skiff at Ghote. He burst out laughing. The old man said something more. Suddenly he leant his whole weight against the long steering oar. The little craft veered swoopingly. Ghote felt burning hot all over. The boy roared with laughter. His father swung the boat back to its former course.
But only for a moment. For what seemed after this an eternity to Ghote he swung the tiny vessel to and fro so that it dipped and plunged like a wild thing. Soon Ghote had to lean over the side again and be even more sick. By the end of it he hardly knew or cared where or what he was. And all the while the old man went on impassively fishing, cynically, it seemed, tossing the gaping mouthed catch up the boat towards Ghote.
He stared dully at their great, staring cold and horrid eyes. In the rigging of the slim mast the freshening wind whined and sang.
Suddenly the boy grabbed his father’s arm and pointed away to his left. The old man stopped swinging the boat. He stared in the direction the boy had pointed, shading his eyes with a lean hand. The easing of the tossing motion revived Ghote a little. He looked at the two of them in the stern with the dispassionateness of an extremely distant observer.
And then at the very back of his mind a tiny signal started up. This was what he was here for. Not simply to fight against the overwhelming sickness and misery that had invaded every part of him. But to pursue a police investigation.
With an effort that brought the sweat back to his forehead in huge drops he forced himself round to follow the line of the old man’s concentrated gaze.
At first he could see only the hateful dark sea with its ominous lacing of white crests. Then suddenly for a second’s glimpse he made out something else. A tiny orange speck.
He let himself slump back on to the bottom of the boat again.
Under his veil of misery he forced himself to think. There could be no doubt that the orange speck he had seen was what the two of them in the stern had been looking at. What would it be? The orange was the colour of rescue dinghies he had seen being used as swimming rafts up at Juhu Beach sometimes. The colour was one that could be seen from the maximum distance.
And then he had it. The steamer he had noticed before. Someone on board had dropped the gold to be smuggled off it attached to a float in that bright orange. It was the task of the old man and his son to pick it up.
No wonder the Customs people had not had much success rummaging ships when they had rounded Colaba Point to the south and come up into Bombay Harbour.
Abruptly the little boat began to swing and swerve again. Ghote looked up. In the stern the two fishermen were looking at him intently. And he could not look back. He let his head sway forward and was terribly sick once more.
It was about this time, he later worked out, that they had picked up the orange float. He had had a glimpse of it, in fact. Or had he imagined it? An oddly-shaped balloon of tough orange cloth, like a huge drop of liquid the wrong way up. He certainly had not simply imagined the length of thin cord and the quite small package tied to it. They had dropped the incriminating orange bag over the side and the sea had sucked it down, but the fine line they had kept. It would be useful for catching fish. And might have come from anywhere.
What had happened to the package? He had not seen it being undone. Tacking their way shorewards again with the bobbing little craft dipping and swinging if anything even more wildly than before, he had done his utmost to watch this part of the process. But the odds were against him. He had to fight the drain on his strength. He had to see, if he was to see, without letting them realize that he had. It would still be quite easy for them to attack him in this state of weakness.
So he had missed getting even a glimpse of the little bars of gold. He just had to assume their existence.
As they neared the shore the wind backed and they got a good run in. In the little boat’s stern they seemed to have decided that Ghote was no longer a danger. They let him lie in the prow, looking backwards to the wide sky and the dark sea. They made no further attempt to swing and sway the boat.
He began trying to work out how to catch the two of them red-handed. It was obvious that on his own like this he was not going to be able to impound the whole vessel when they touched the beach. He would have to rely simply on keeping his eyes wide open. But he reckoned that he had the advantage of surprise on his side. The fisherman and his son thought they had been too clever for him. Well, they would see.
He sat trying to regain his strength.
Above him the narrow white triangular sail was stretched taut to the wind. The boy got up and untwisted a rope. The sail quivered and a series of horizontal ruckles slid down it. Then, quite quickly, it collapsed into the boat. The momentum carried them smoothly forward. It was a neat piece of seamanship. The skiff came up to the low slope of the beach with its speed dying gently away and touched bottom as softly as a falling leaf reaches the ground.
The boy jumped out. He caught hold of the worn wood of the bow beside Ghote and ran sharply forward. Underneath them the sand grated harshly. Then the skiff stuck fast. From the family hut the Paramour came waddling hastily to meet them, laughing contentedly to herself. On her head she carried a big, flat basket wider at the bottom than the top.
‘Did you like your trip to sea?’ she greeted Ghote as he scrambled out on to the warm, blessedly firm sand. ‘I am glad to see you back safely.’
She dropped the basket on the sand and laughed with her head thrown back.
Ghote looked at her angrily.
‘Oh, there are many whirlpools out there, and dangers,’ she said.
Her stepson picked up the basket and held it in his outstretched arms just at the edge of the boat. His father caught hold of a couple of the fish lying in the bottom of the boat and lobbed them neatly by their tails one after the other into the basket. Ghote watched, his eyes darting from the man stooping down to pick up the fish to the boy standing holding the broad basket. One by one the fish swung gleaming through the air and landed with a smack on the others already in the basket. Not one seemed any different from the next.
At last the old man straightened up. The boy put the basket on his head and set off across the sand with its litter of broken white shells, ribbons of seaweed and little humps of wormcasts. He was heading for the curing yard at the far end of the cluster of shacks that made up the village.
Ghote watched him go.