The Navigator

It was the time he loved: the long quiet swing of the middle watch, with the wind fair abeam, the vessel loping comfortably across the swell, the wake a runnel of phosphorescence, the stars so low that he could reach up and pluck them like silver fruit.

They were reaching south-east, across the trades and the north equatorial current into the doldrums, where the winds dropped and the counter-current ran eastwards and they would churn along under motor until they picked up the south-east winds and began beating down to the Marquesas. It was the traditional route of his ancestors when they made the passage from Nuku Hiva to Hawaii, and home again, sailing northwards towards the zenith of Arcturus and south towards the rising of Sirius.

They had sailed in a craft, miraculous in its beauty, the Va’a Hou’ua, a great double-hulled canoe whose sternposts were carved into long graceful sweeps, and whose sail was like the wing of a sea-bird. When the wind dropped, they paddled, chanting to the sea-gods to send them wind, and rain to fill the water-gourds. They carried the fruits of the land, taro and coconut and bread-fruit paste and bananas. They brought figs and fowl and little dogs which had no bark, and ate vegetables, and which could be eaten in their turn. They fished the sea with sennit lines and hooks made of clam-shell, and dried their catch by hanging it to the mast.

Why had they travelled so far and at such perils? The answers handed down were always embroidered with legend, but the facts were fundamental: a quarrel among the clans, a shortage of food, a sudden plague which decimated a small island and left it accursed …

From his place at the wheel, Gunnar Thorkild looked down across the canted deck where the Kauai men and their wives sat singing softly to Simon Cohen’s guitar. On the foredeck, braced against the stays like some giant figure out of a legendary past, Adam Briggs, the dark man from Alabama, kept watch for passing ships. They could relax tonight. The swell was regular, the wind was light, but steady. The Frigate Bird was sea-kindly. The cadence of the music was like the cadence of the old life, languid, monotonous, infinitely soothing.

The voyage had begun well. Magnusson’s welcome to his motley contingent had been cordial; but he had left no doubt about his own command, or the kind of ship he ran. On every bunk there were laid three sets of uniforms, provided at his expense, white cotton T-shirts, white shorts for the men, blouses and skirts for the women. With the clothing was a formal request that uniforms be worn on entering and leaving harbour and at the evening meal. There was a printed roster of watches and other sea-duties, a note about the conservation of fresh water, the care of the ship’s plumbing, the disposal of waste, and precautions against sunburn and heat exhaustion. The ship’s officers were listed as Carl Magnusson, captain; Gunnar Thorkild, mate; Peter André Lorillard, communications; Sally Anderton, medical; Martha Gilman, writer to the captain; the bosun was Charles Kamakau. The captain requested that his officers meet him each evening for drinks at seven and dinner at eight, weather and sea-duties permitting. It was old-style, and formal, but shrewd management as well. The young ones had made jokes about it at first; but after four days at sea, they had settled to the routine and were open in their praise of the old man and his methods.

The newcomers were a curious pair. Sally Anderton was a tall, statuesque woman in her middle thirties, handsome rather than beautiful, who seemed to survey the world with good-humoured irony. In the day-time, Magnusson monopolized her; and she, for her part, was clearly the captain’s consort, a little withdrawn from the rest of the company, careful to raise no jealousies. Peter André Lorillard, Lieutenant U.S. Navy was old South, agreeable but formal, with a ready smile, a nicely calculated deference and an unshakeable faith in the civilizing mission of the Service. Martha Gilman found him attractive. Thorkild found him more than a little of a bore and was vaguely irritated by his arch secrecy about what he called ‘his boxes of tricks’.

It was too early yet to see how the community would shape itself. Some were still queasy with motion-sickness. The languor of the sea had settled on them all; and their attention was dispersed over a huge, empty horizon where a cruising shark or a school of porpoise provided the only focus of interest. Still, there were changes. Magnusson had assumed a grandfatherly interest in the boy, Mark, and was teaching him the rudiments of helmsmanship and navigation. Franz Harsanyi, the linguist, and Cohen, the music man, had made friends with the crewmen from Kauai. Yoko Nagamuna was setting her cap at Hernan Castillo the Filipino. Adam Briggs had developed a consuming passion for the arts of seamanship and a touching solicitude for Jenny who seemed perfectly happy to spend her days peeling potatoes and slicing vegetables for the galley.

For Thorkild himself it was the season of sea-dreaming. There was nothing to plan, nothing to decide. He had only to run the ship and sail her and open his mind and wait for his past to flow into him and his future to declare itself through the mouth of Kaloni Kienga the Navigator.

Sally Anderton came up the companion-way carrying two cups of coffee and a plate of sandwiches. It was the first night she had appeared after midnight and Thorkild was mildly surprised at the visit. She explained it without embarrassment:

‘Carl’s asleep. I was restless. I thought I’d make supper for the helmsman.’

‘It’s a very old one. I think it comes originally from Puka-Puka. It starts “Ke Kave ’u i toku panga…I shall sleep on a pandanus mat outside her father’s house…Thus we promise ourselves to each other, my special woman and I”…Old island custom signifying betrothal.’

‘That’s beautiful…Like the Bible…“I sleep but my heart watches”. Did you spread your mat too?’

‘No.’ Thorkild gave her a boyish self-conscious grin. ‘I played with the unmarried, which was fun, but something different.’

‘Bully for you…Would you like me to take the wheel while you have your coffee? I know what to do.’

As he ate and drank, he watched her and approved what he saw: the easy stance, the steady hands, not fussing with the wheel but nursing it quietly, eyes intent on the luff of the sail and the set of the waves under the bow. She was wearing a long cotton muu-muu, green and gold, and her hair was tied back with a green ribbon. She was fresh as if she had just stepped out of a bath and her perfume was like lemon flowers, faint and astringent. She was silent for a space and then apropos of nothing at all she said:

‘I advised him against this trip; but he insisted on making it. His blood pressure’s very high. If he has another incident, on board, it could be the end of him.’

‘I’d enter it in the log, you’d sign a certificate. We’d bury him overside.’

‘He thought he was in love with me once. After his third wife divorced him he asked me to marry him.’

‘Not so obviously. We were lovers for a while, but he’s a very dominating man, and I’m not made for the kind of possessive relationship he wanted. We parted but remained good friends. I treated him during his illness. When this trip was mooted he offered me a year’s earnings to come and hold his hand: I was due for a long vacation. It meant I could put in a good locum. So, here I am…Problem is, Carl still thinks I can put the clock back for him. I can’t. No one can.’

‘His wife is a cool, intelligent lady, who does everything a good wife could be expected to do, and stands to inherit ten million dollars.’

‘Oh yes. I married a boy who graduated with me from medical school. It turned out he had a passion for football players.’

‘It happens. One recovers. From what I hear you have no interest in football…’

‘The middle watch is the mate’s job. You need a good man on the bridge if the rest of the ship is to sleep quietly.’

They both laughed then and the momentary tension relaxed. Thorkild reached across and snapped out the binnacle light.

‘Steer by the stars for a while. That’s Procyon, the little dog, half-way up the forestay. Hold on him for a while. He’s a little east of our course, but we’ll make up some leeway while you’re on him.’

‘You’ve told me why you take the middle watch. You haven’t told me why you sleep alone.’

‘I’m a guest on another man’s ship. I’m responsible for the safety and discipline of a mixed bag of people, most of them with no sea experience at all. I can’t afford to play hole-and-corner love games.’

‘I believe you. I was just wondering how Martha Gilman feels about your sea-change.’

‘If you have you’d better press them. Our friend Lorillard is mighty interested. And she’s not blind to his douce southern charm.’

‘You’re shivering. There’s a chill in that wind. If you want to stay topside, go and put on a wrap.’

‘Do as you’re told, like a good girl. We can’t have the doctor going down with the grippe…Oh, and while you’re below, how about making more coffee for Briggs and the rest of the deck-watch!’

‘They do. But they might appreciate a thought from Lady Bountiful…If you want to join the middle watch you have to pay for the privilege. On your way woman!’

She went, with a laugh and a toss of her ribboned hair, but her perfume lingered and he wondered what kind of wounds Sally Anderton nursed in her own night watches, and whether she was content to sit holding the hand of an old pirate with the clocks set against him.

Two days later, as they were running down into the doldrums, he had his first real quarrel with Magnusson.

He should have been prepared for it. He had been at sea long enough to know that doldrum weather was tetchy and unpropitious. The wind, the steady cheering wind of the north-east trades, had fallen away to light and fickle airs. The groundswell was long and greasy. The decks were like oven-plates, and had to be hosed every hour to make them tolerable to the feet. The Frigate Bird was under motor, with only steadying canvas to damp the roll; and the smell of diesel wafted across the deck from her exhausts.

Awnings were spread across the main boom, and, as he made his afternoon round, Thorkild handed out salt-tablets and issued new warnings to the unwary about the dangers of sunburn and heat exhaustion. At four in the afternoon, when the dog-watch took over, he was summoned for a conference with Magnusson and Peter André Lorillard.

Magnusson’s cabin was air-conditioned, and after the swelter of the open deck, the cool was grateful. Lorillard’s mint juleps were made with an expert hand. Magnusson was relaxed and cordial; and the discussion began in a desultory, informal fashion, with no hint of danger at all.

‘Well, gentlemen, it’s been a pleasant run, so far. Everything’s shaken down nicely. Anything to report from your watch Thorkild?’

‘No. We’re on course and on time. The engine-room’s O.K. We’ve filled the batteries and they’re charging evenly. We’re making almost enough water for daily consumption. Oil pressures are steady.’

‘Let’s talk about schedules then. Today’s Wednesday. We’re making twelve knots under motor. So, Saturday morning we’re in Nuku Hiva. We’re pratiqued into French Territory. We take on fuel, water, and fresh food. From Nuku Hiva it’s a twelve-hour run down to Hiva Oa where we pick up your grandfather. Then it’s Papeete, which is our real starting point for the enterprise and our last port for bunkering and topping-up supplies. After that, we’re on our own, until we find our landfall…or we break off the expedition and head for home. So…let’s talk about what happens from Hiva Oa, onwards…You first, Thorkild. Your grandfather will come on board. He will tell you where he wants to go …’

‘Let’s be clear.’ Thorkild cut him off in mid-speech. ‘What my grandfather tells me, and how he tells it, will be quite different from what you imagine. He will not lay a course as we do, and tell the helmsman to sail it. He is a kapu man, dealing with a secret thing, a privileged knowledge. He will take the wheel and set his own course. When he tires, he will call me, and show me where to steer until he wakes. He will explain nothing, give no reasons. We have to trust him. He has to know that we trust him…You talk about going to Papeete. He may not choose to take that route. We cannot, we must not interfere.’

‘With great respect, Professor. It’s a lot of ship and a lot of people to trust to an old man.’

‘It’s the deal I made,’ said Magnusson calmly. ‘It’s the deal I’ll stand on. However, we do have certain insurances. We have on our navigational aids, radio, radar, direction finders, the log and our daily sunsights. While the Professor and his grandfather are sailing their course, you Lorillard, and I will be plotting it on our charts. We won’t interfere, but we won’t be blind either…Fair enough for you Thorkild?’

‘Which brings me to Mister Lorillard here and what he’ll be doing for us, and for the Navy. He’s got all his boxes of tricks set up, and he’s ready to start work. First he’ll work a daily, coded, radio schedule with the Navy; he’ll be reporting our positions, sightings of French naval units, and more especially on the incidence of radio-active atmospheres in the areas of the Tuamotus and the Societies. Second, he’s brought some very sophisticated gadgets in the shape of marker buoys which emit a radio signal over a long range. When your grandfather leaves us to make the last leg of his voyage, alone, we want you to persuade him to carry one of these markers, and drop others along his course. That way, both we, and, when the time comes, the Navy can home on them. Even if your grandfather were lost at sea, we’d have his last position…’

‘I’d like to know.’ Thorkild was ominously calm, ‘why the Navy was prepared to involve itself with expensive hardware and a ranking specialist like Lieutenant Lorillard.’

‘Let me read you something.’ Magnusson leaned back in his chair, pulled a volume from the bookshelves and opened it at a marked page. ‘This is Hall on International Law … “A State may acquire territory through a unilateral act of its own, by occupation, by cession consequent upon contract with another State or with a community or single owner or by gift, by prescription through the operation of time, or by accretion through the operation of nature”…Now!’ He closed the book with a snap and set it down on the table. ‘That’s a nice clear definition of what we’re going to do. We’re sailing in my ship, under my command, to find and take possession of an island, which we shall occupy, and whose sovereignty we shall cede by contract to the United States of America, in the person of Lieutenant Lorillard here. In return for that promise of cession by contract, the Navy will aid, comfort and protect us on our voyage and guarantee our safe possession of such lands and territories as we may chance to find. Objections?’

‘Plenty!’ Thorkild slammed his fist down on the table. ‘But I’ll make them to you, in private.’

‘You’ll make them now.’ Magnusson was cold as a hanging judge. ‘Before a witness.’

‘No. I’ve got a tape recorder. We could record the talk and certify a typescript later.’

‘Would you mind making me another drink? You look as though you could use one yourself.’

‘Have I? Let’s wait till we get it down on the record. And by the way, let’s be clear that this is the record, Thorkild; and I’ll hold you to every goddam word of it, right up to the Supreme Court!’

‘No. It’s your case, Thorkild. You make it. I’ll cross-examine as we go along.’

‘The matters under discussion on this tape were transacted during the month of June of this year between Carl Magnusson and Gunnar Thorkild of Honolulu in the State of Hawaii. There is no contention as to date, only as to substance and interpretation. Do you agree that, Mr Magnusson?’

‘I, Gunnar Thorkild, approached Carl Magnusson to charter his vessel, the Frigate Bird, for a voyage to the South Pacific to confirm the existence of an island, called in legend the Island of the Trade-Winds or the Island of the Navigators. Mr Magnusson refused to charter the vessel but agreed to accept me and guests nominated by me and to defray the costs of the voyage. It was agreed that, for political reasons, the voyage should be called a study cruise, but its original intent remained the same. Correct?’

‘Mr Magnusson raised the question of the annexation and colonization of the island, if we should find it. He suggested that we should annex the island to the United States while claiming land rights to ourselves. I agreed this with the proviso that no attempt at annexation or colonization should be made, if the island were occupied by an indigenous population. Mr Magnusson accepted this. I reserved also my right to withdraw from the enterprise if it should appear that I were infringing upon any kapu, affecting my grandfather or his people, who are also mine. Mr Magnusson reserved his right to continue the enterprise and to use, to this end, any knowledge which he had acquired, directly or by deduction, from me or my grandfather.’

‘Correct. Now will you agree that our arrangement involved a partnership in which I would supply the vessel and the physical resources of the voyage, while you would provide the knowledge and information which were the basis of the expedition? Will you agree also that you disposed to me certain rights of publication and exploitation of information arising out of the voyage; and that you would share in the rewards, if any?’

‘You also agreed that I should captain the vessel, and that you would serve as mate?’

‘Thereby giving me sole responsibility under maritime law for the safety of the vessel and the souls who travelled in her?’

‘Four days out from Honolulu. You, Mr Magnusson, announced to me that you had made an arrangement with the U.S. Navy, whereby certain equipment was installed on board and an officer to run the equipment. You further informed me that you had made, unilaterally, a deal whereby the U.S. Navy would receive, in the name of the United States, a contract of cession of sovereignty over any new land which we might discover.’

‘Correction. I informed you before our departure that I had asked the Navy to supply personnel and equipment.’

‘Now that you have heard them, would you not say that they offer an additional safeguard to the ship and the passengers?’

‘As to the act of cession, we had already agreed this, subject to your original reservation.’

‘Yes. But I ask now, in the presence of the Naval representative, was my original reservation communicated to the Navy?’

‘I’m sorry sir. I’m a junior officer under orders of secondment. I have no knowledge of upper echelon communications.’

‘No. The Navy is a service, not a sovereign state. They supplied facilities on the basis of our intent to make a contract. The contract would still have to be ratified by the State Department.’

‘Therefore, Mr Magnusson, I submit that you have acted without due consultation or regard for my rights as a partner, and have in fact placed those rights in jeopardy. I state now that I reserve my position and may in fact withdraw from the expedition.’

‘And I state, Professor Thorkild, that by the non-exercise of your rights you have passed the responsibility for their exercise to me. I further state that, should you withdraw before your rights have been actually infringed, I shall sue for recovery of the costs of this expedition, and for contingent loss and damage.’

There was silence then. Lorillard switched off the recorder and looked from one to the other.

‘I’m finished.’ Thorkild stood up. ‘Do you want one of my girls to type it?’

‘Martha Gilman will do it. No point in spreading our quarrel round the ship. I’m sorry Thorkild, but I did warn you. I play rough when I’m pushed.’

‘Go play with yourself!’ said Thorkild bitterly. ‘Life’s too short for children’s games!’

Lieutenant Peter André Lorillard said nothing at all. The Navy had taught him well. The silent ones got the stripes, and the talkers ended with a mouthful of bilge-water.

That evening Thorkild absented himself from the dinner-table. He scribbled a brief note of excuse to Magnusson, ate a sandwich with Molly Kaapu in the galley and returned to his cabin to read and rest until midnight. His anger had subsided. He had humour enough to know that he had allowed himself to be gulled into a trap. What troubled him was his own confusion, his almost pathological sensitiveness to anything that touched his tribal relationship.

In all logic and legality, Magnusson was right. Any territorial discovery must involve the sovereign state of which one was a citizen. Every expedition, to the top of Everest or the bottom of the sea, was a testing ground for new equipment; and the custom of the trade, the usages of patronage and sponsorship, prudence itself, dictated a close co-operation with the services which controlled the funds and the gadgetry.

The roots of the dispute went much deeper. They were tangled in his own psychic life, that shadowy domain of dreams and memories and legends in which his identity – if he had one – ultimately resided. It was this domain which Magnusson had invaded and whose confines he would continue to harry, until Gunnar Thorkild could define and defend them adequately. So far the definition had eluded him. For all his scholarship he lacked the words or the images to make it clear even to himself. As he lay on his bunk, listening to the throb of the engines, the creak of timbers, the chatter of the wash along the skin of the hull, he felt like a man groping through a fog, blind, half deaf, choked with dank emanations.

Then, slowly, the fog solidified two shapes; two men, very much alike, yet quite different, one from the other. Both were old, both had reached that moment of life when death stood plain before them, not beckoning but waiting, patient and inexorable, for them to come forward to the encounter. Both were committed to make the last passage by sea. Each stretched out a hand to Gunnar Thorkild, inviting him to join them in the final rite; but for each the rite was different, and the pieties they demanded were in contradiction.

Carl Magnusson was rich, sceptical, proud, a taker and a ruler. He had fought for power all his life. He had surrounded himself with its panoply. He would hold it, until it dropped from his dead hands. Even then, his testament would bind his heirs and assigns; his will would dominate their dispositions long after they had sealed him in the vault.

Kaloni Kienga would go out, naked, in a small boat, which he had built with his own hands. He would carry nothing but food for the last journey. He would leave nothing but a knowledge which he had received in trust from the high gods, and which he would pass on in trust to blood-kin.

To each of them, Gunnar Thorkild was bound: to Magnusson by gift and largesse, which must be repaid, to Kaloni Kienga by blood and the mana that flowed with the blood. But how to reconcile the duties, when Magnusson, with his politics and his perversities, intruded into a spiritual relationship which he did not understand at all? Conclusion for Professor Thorkild, scholar and ethnographer: how the devil can he understand it if no one has the grace or the time to explain it? …

There was a knock on his door and Martha Gilman came in with a handful of typescript. She was unhappy and abrupt:

‘Mr Magnusson asks you to read and sign these. One copy for him, one for you.’

‘This is my business. You invited us on this trip. Magnusson accepted the three of us without question. He couldn’t have been more generous. He’s so kind to Mark. And you…you start this sordid little feud that can poison the whole ship.’

‘Of course not! Whatever else he is, he’s a gentleman. But Peter Lorillard was there and he told me …’

‘What was it like, sweetheart? Tut-tut-tut and a lift of the eyebrow and dear madam, don’t let these vulgarities distress you? Grow up Martha!’

‘You’re the one who should grow up! You’re like a big selfish child who wants everything his own way. Carl Magnusson’s given you the chance of a lifetime and you …’

‘O.K., let’s talk about him. He’s a pleasant friendly man who’s paid me some attention. Which I’m glad to have; because I’ve had damn little from you on this trip.’

‘From where I stand, you haven’t needed it. You’ve got a Navy doll to play with.’

‘Isn’t it? You burst in here like the angel of the Lord and deliver your little judgement on matters you know nothing about, except by hearsay. I don’t need that. Certainly not from Peter bloody Lorillard, U.S.N.!’

‘On the contrary. I think you’ll be good for each other. To me he’s just a stuffed shirt – and, through no fault of his own, a bloody nuisance.’

When she had gone, he got up, signed the documents, tidied himself and walked along to Magnusson’s stateroom. The old man was still up, playing gin-rummy with Sally Anderton. His greeting was less than cordial:

‘No, thanks. I won’t keep you from your game. First I’ve signed the papers, so that there can be no question I’m ducking the issue between us. Second I want to apologize. I was hasty and rude. I forced us both into an argument which was irrelevant to the real matter of contention. I had never defined it properly to myself. I had certainly never exposed it clearly to you. I want to try to do so now – if only to avoid further dissension and discomfort for other people. May I?’

‘There are two aspects to this venture. I have confused them – for myself and everyone else. We’re all embarked on what we hope will be a voyage of discovery, which, if it succeeds, will have certain consequences; for me the vindication of my scholarship, for you a territorial acquisition, for my students a chance to participate and learn. In respect of all those things, what you have done is advantageous and proper. I might wish it otherwise; but I have no real ground of complaint. The other aspect is more difficult to explain. In respect of my grandfather and my people, I am engaging in a ritual act. I have no right to invite or procure the intrusion of any other parties into that sacred area. Nevertheless, I have done so, by the mere fact of accepting your generosity. The idea of asking my grandfather, in his last days, to participate in a naval exercise is as repugnant to me as it would be for a Christian to defile the sacrament. So, I am in dilemma. I cannot ask you to resolve it. I do not yet know how to resolve it for myself. So, if I infringe your rights, you have the right and the document to call me to account. You may not understand my motives. I hope you will accept that they are not base. That’s it I guess. Again, I apologize.’

Carl Magnusson gathered up the cards with his one good hand, and pushed them across to Sally Anderton to shuffle. His tone was flat and formal.

‘Thank you Thorkild. I’ll think about what you have said. Your apology is accepted. While you’re on watch tonight would you have Charles Kamakau check the injectors? We seem to be running a bit rough on the port engine.’

‘He rubbed my nose in it.’ said Gunnar Thorkild bitterly. ‘He sat there, let me go through it all, and then rubbed my nose in the muck. Oh brother…!’

Briggs was at the wheel and Thorkild was standing at the midships rail with Sally Anderton, staring down at the luminescent wash that curled away from the planking. Sally Anderton linked her arm in his and drew him away.

As they paced the deck, grateful for the silence, they passed Malo and Tioto, the men-lovers from Kauai, stretched on the hatch-cover, talking in low tones, embracing sometimes, giggling like children over some private joke. They saluted Thorkild without embarrassment and assured him that they were awake and watchful. See! The sails were stowed neatly, halyards were cleated, sheets were coiled and tidy.

‘You’re lucky. Some people never learn. They live all their lives in one idiom, one little set of convictions…Like tonight, with Magnusson…I might have been talking Urdu for all he understood.’

‘I was there, afterwards too – long afterwards. I saw a stubborn old man who knew he had missed a beautiful moment, because he’d never learned to bend, even for an instant in his life. When you left we played one hand. Then he threw down the cards and burst out. “Hell Sally! Does he have to think I’m a monster? Does he want me to cut my heart out and show it to him on a dish. I know what he means – better than he does, maybe! But he throws a goddam document in my face, and says he’ll answer to it if I want! Why does he have to be so formal? Why doesn’t he call me Carl? He’s a man in his own right. He’s got more of everything than I’ve got, except money. And what the hell does that mean…!” I settled him down and dosed him. I lay down beside him and held him till he was calm. He wanted me to make love to him, but I couldn’t and he shouldn’t. He’s so lonely sometimes, my heart bleeds for him. That’s the penalty of power. He knows it; but the payment comes heavy…Don’t ever let him know I told you all this. He’d never trust me again.’

‘You go ahead and make it. I’ll join you in the galley when I’ve finished my rounds.’

He made his tour of the deck, talked a moment with Adam Briggs in the wheelhouse and then went down to the engine-room to check the gauges and write up the engineer’s log. On his way back to the galley he passed through the cabin area and heard Martha Gilman’s voice, and, after it, a man’s suppressed laughter. He stopped in his tracks, then shrugged and passed by, frowning. A moment after, he saw the humour of it and grinned sourly. The sea-change was working and there was no mate or master who could stop it.

In the galley, Sally Anderton was cutting sandwiches and waiting for the coffee to percolate.

‘Here’s something else for the log…I’m signing on for the middle watch.’ ‘You’ll be welcome.’

She put down the knife, wiped her hands on a paper towel, then leaned against the bench, looking at him.

‘When I saw you face Carl tonight, I saw a man I could respect and maybe love. But whatever it is, respect, love, friendship, I don’t want to play out the whole silly scene. I loathe coy women. I don’t like bitch-games. So let’s get the flirtation over and done. There’s something good between us. I feel it. I think you feel it too. Whatever grows out of it, I want it easy and open. And so long as Carl’s alive and I’m his doctor, he has to know…’

‘The rules of the game, eh?’ Gunnar Thorkild stretched out his hands and drew her to him. ‘This time, I spread my mat outside her father’s door?’

‘Or you tell me goodnight and pass by; but let’s be able to smile at each other when we meet.’

‘There’s also ritual rape.’ Thorkild mocked her gently. ‘The lover anoints himself with coconut oil, creeps into the hut, lies down beside the girl and hopes she’s willing. If she screams, he bolts for the door and his pursuers can’t hold him for the oil on his body.’

He kissed her then and the kissing was warm and easy with the taste of love in it; and, when he went back on deck to resume his watch, he found himself singing the chant of the young bachelors:

‘Today my son is happy,

He has bound his body with sennit cord,

He is hard in bone and flesh

And full of a man’s seed …’

They had cleared Nuku Hiva and were coasting down past the atolls to Hiva Oa, before he found the words or the courage to talk to Carl Magnusson. It was a bright morning, but the wind was already fresh and they could see the surf piling up on the distant reefs. Magnusson was at the wheel, and Thorkild was working over the chart tables. Magnusson was raw-tongued and irritable:

‘These blasted French! They kept us two hours late with their paperwork, and charged us an extra day’s harbour dues for the privilege. Now we won’t make Hiva Oa until dark, and we’ll have to stand off all night. There’s no way we’re going to run the reef in darkness.’

‘The new moon rises at eight. We’ll be off the channel at eight-twenty. I’ll take her in for you Carl.’

‘Relax Carl. I know the channel like the back of my hand. Besides my grandfather will be waiting for us. He’ll have beacon fires lit on the beach, like they do for the homing fishermen…What’s the alternative? Twelve hours running up and down waiting for sunrise, and an uncomfortable night for everyone. Come on Carl! You know me. I’m not going to risk your ship or your passengers!’

‘Very well. I trust you…But how can your grandfather possibly know you’re arriving tonight?’

‘He knows. He’ll be waiting. And Carl, when we’ve dropped anchor, I’m going ashore, alone. I want you to hold everyone else on board until morning. This meeting is important to me, and to him.’

‘Afterwards,’ said Carl Magnusson deliberately, ‘I want to meet him in private. What languages does he speak?’

‘This is important to me too. Would you believe I’m scared?…Me, Carl Magnusson, scared to meet an old boatman on a little island in the middle of nowhere!’

‘There’s nothing to be scared of Carl. It’s a moment for respect. That’s all.’

‘I have respect. I have it for you too, though I’ve been a long time saying it.’

‘She was mine once.’ Magnusson was suddenly harsh and abrupt. ‘She’s had other lovers and a no-good husband as well. If that matters, you’d better come to terms with it now.’

‘Among my people,’ said Gunnar Thorkild quietly, ‘there was never a cult of virginity. In the old days the maiden was deflowered, in a public act, by the chief, and sometimes by her own father. It wasn’t a damage. It was a rite of passage to womanhood.’

‘I think you do. I’m nearly home. I was begotten on my father’s ship, in the lagoon where we’ll drop anchor tonight. It’s another world, with other ways. The high man is respected, and his rights are accepted without question. You’re a high man too, Carl. I think you and my grandfather will understand each other.’

‘Get off my bridge!’ growled Carl Magnusson. ‘Before I make a goddam fool of myself!’

On the white beach, under the sickle moon, Gunnar Thorkild sat with Kaloni Kienga the Navigator. They had eaten together, fish cooked on the hot stones of the pit. They had drunk whisky, which Thorkild had brought from the ship. The old man had sat in silence, while Thorkild laid out for him, in words and symbols, the story of his coming, and the why and the how of the bargains he had been forced to make to ensure his arrival.

When he had finished, he too fell silent, because it was proper to wait upon the judgement, and not plead for it or pre-empt it. If he had spoken the truth, the old man would know it from his communion with the ancestor gods; if a lie, then the gods would dispose of the liar in their own fashion.

Kaloni the Navigator seemed to be asleep. His eyes were closed, his head sunk on his breast, his hands slack upon his knees. But Thorkild knew that he was not sleeping. He was closing out the land and the sea, and opening himself to the timeless past. Finally he raised his head, and opened his eyes and said simply:

Gunnar Thorkild gave a long exhalation of relief. It was as if a storm cloud had lifted and the sea was bright again and the landfall in sight. He said gratefully:

‘I shall be dead and you will find me in the high place. That is all I have been told.’

‘They will be yours, not mine. I have no people now, only you; and, when you send me to the ancestors, you will be alone…Now there is a thing to be done. Come!’

He stood up and, with Thorkild at his heels, walked down the beach, and through the coconut fringe, past the taro patches and along a narrow path, scarcely discernible in the tropic undergrowth. The path rose steeply along the shoulder of a valley, deep as an axe-cut in the hills, and then it opened suddenly into what had once been a clearing, but was now a kind of chamber, arched with living trees, and floored with moss and rotting leaves and low undergrowth. When his eyes became accustomed to the near-darkness, Thorkild saw the shapes of tumbled carvings, with great heads and stumpy bodies, and short dwarfish legs. Beyond the carvings were the stone platforms from which they had fallen. Kaloni Kienga pointed to one of the platforms:

He sat down, and ran his hands over the surface of the stone. It was clear of moss, and the surface was covered with glyptic symbols which he could feel but could not see. The old man came and sat beside him.

Thorkild took the old man’s hands in his own. They were cold and clammy as chicken skin; he felt himself shivering at the touch.

‘For that which comes and abides. For that which passes from me and is given to you.’

‘In this place there is nothing to fear…Afterwards, we will go down and put to sea.’

As with all else, there was ceremony. Thorkild, the inheritor, must be presented to the chief and the villagers. Kaloni’s boat must be loaded with provisions for his journey: with water, dried fish, bananas, coconuts and breadfruit paste wrapped in pandanus leaves. No matter that there was food and water on the Frigate Bird; the navigator must carry his own viaticum. He would not share quarters with anyone; he would sleep on deck, on his own mat, in the belly of his own boat, sheltered from the weather by a covering of woven palm leaves. Because he would be a guest, he must bring a gift for the captain – a wooden bailing-scoop whose handle was carved in the shape of a kneeling woman…

When they paddled out to the Frigate Bird they were accompanied by a flotilla of small craft, and a score of swimming children. While the canoe was being hoisted inboard and lashed on deck, Thorkild presented his grandfather to Magnusson and the rest of the group. It was a moment, curiously grave and formal, in which the old navigator seemed to measure each man and woman, before delivering the greeting for Thorkild to translate.

When Magnusson thanked him for his gift he said, ‘Tell him I am grateful that he has brought you to me; that I shall remember him when he makes his own journey.’ To Jenny he said, ‘One day you will bear a chief’s son,’ and when she blushed and giggled, he smiled gravely and said, ‘There is more than one fruit on the trees.’ With the boy, Mark, he was strangely moved. He looked at him a long moment, then laid a hand on his head, looked up at Thorkild and announced: ‘Hold this boy close. He is the one who will remember …’

Franz Harsanyi, who was standing close by, gave a small gasp of surprise and said, ‘He’s right by God! The kid’s got a memory like a computer.’

To the others he offered only a simple greeting; but when Adam Briggs was presented he said to Thorkild: ‘This one will read the water,’ and when Lorillard nodded a greeting the old man murmured a phrase of contempt: ‘Sucker-fish…the little one who swims with the big shark.’

‘Just a greeting,’ said Gunnar Thorkild. ‘He recognizes you and salutes you.’ He turned to Magnusson. ‘Do you want to talk with my grandfather now or later, Carl?’

‘Forget it!’ said Carl Magnusson. ‘He needs no words from me. Lash down and secure for sea. That wind’s getting up and I’d like to get the hell out of here.’

It was Kaloni Kienga who took them out, through the boil of the channel and the big rollers beyond it, until they could set sail and head south across the wind to the tail of the archipelago. Standing at the wheel, grey-haired, naked except for his skirt of tapa cloth, he looked like an apparition from the great past, the past of Kaho, the blind one, and Tutapu, the fierce pursuer, and the men of the high family who were called fafakitahi, the feelers of the sea. Gunnar Thorkild felt a surge of pride and elation as he watched the Frigate Bird settle to the sea, and heard Carl Magnusson’s aside to Lorillard:

As he made his round of the deck he heard the Kauai men gossiping and caught the awe in their tones as they described the aura that hung about the old man. Martha Gilman, who was propped against the mast, sketching, looked up as he passed and asked calmly:

‘Yes. I’m glad he’s come. By the way, I’m sorry about the other night.’

‘Forget it. I should have minded my own business. What did your grandfather say about Mark?’

‘I know you didn’t.’ He grinned at her and laid a hand on her hair. ‘It was…an event, a psychic event. Before it, I was afraid. Afterwards, very calm…Can I tell you something?’

The most curious reaction came from Monica O’Grady, the horse-faced girl from San Francisco, who came up to smoke a cigarette with him on the afterdeck. She said in her brusque bawdy fashion:

‘I’ve never seen you look so relaxed, Professor. Did you get laid last night?’

‘No, but I wish to Christ I had – or could. I don’t know what it’s doing for anyone else, but the sea-air makes me randy.’

‘I know. You’re bespoke. It’s all over the ship. Anyway I didn’t come up here to talk about my sex life …’

‘That old man, your grandfather. When I shook hands with him, I had the strangest feeling…I can’t shake it off. It’s the Irish in me, I guess. My own grandmother was supposed to have the second sight…But it was almost as though he were warning me about something – some threat, some danger. It reminded me of a thing my father used to say, which always gave me goosebumps: “Never come to land when the sea-birds are leaving it”…Don’t laugh at me now, or I’ll spit in your eye!’

‘I’m not laughing, girl,’ said Thorkild soberly. ‘I spent last night in a sacred place, where the mana of the ancestors is very potent. I, too, felt things that I can’t put into words, for all the scholarship that’s been drummed into me. But I can tell you, from my own experience, the feeling’s one thing and the meaning may be quite, quite different. Don’t brood on it; otherwise you’ll haunt yourself with phantoms out of your own head.’

‘Maybe you’re right; but, don’t bullshit me Professor! Do you believe in mana or not?’

But what he could not tell her, what he could hardly admit to himself, was that her hands were cold as his grandfather’s; that, even as he spoke, his mouth was full of the salt taste of blood, and in his ears was the echo of the old chant:

‘I see her among the stars,

Dancing,

Dancing with voyagers long dead.’

Three days sailing, with stiff winds and a favourable current, brought them past the Islands of Disappointment and down among the Tuamotus, that long string of coral reefs and low islets and atolls whose names were made of music: Mataiva, Kaukura, Taharea, Nengonengo. It was a region of sudden beauties and small surprises, the shape of clouds, the flight of sea-birds, the flurry of shoaling fish. There were dangers too. The currents that set around the atolls were strong and irregular; and there were reefs and shallows still unmarked on the charts.

Kaloni the Navigator used neither chart nor compass. For him, the journey was plotted by other symbols, written in the sky, and in the sea itself. The high gods had made an orderly world. The sun, the moon, the stars, moved in courses that were set from the beginning of things. The sea, calm or turbulent, had a law of its own: the currents were bent in a regular fashion by each island they encountered; the grounds wells told the path of storms, near or distant; driftwood told of land to windward; sea-weed spoke of a reef, up-current. The light itself was at the service of the knowing ones. The green of a distant lagoon was reflected from the base of a cloud and back again to the sea. The clouds that were pulled by the updraught were better landmarks than mountains. The birds themselves, terns and frigates and boobies and migrating curlew, pointed the way to land.

Withal, the navigator himself must co-operate. He must be confident in the high ones; but never arrogant or boastful. He must observe the rituals that indicated his respect for the gods and his dependence on their favour. He, too, had his place in the order of things; and, if he ruptured the order, he must inevitably perish.

While Kaloni the Navigator sailed his own course, Magnusson and Lorillard plotted it on their charts by their own mathematics of sunsights and radar and radio. Even Lorillard was forced to admit that the difference was minimal, and that the margin of error was generally against him, because the Pilot Book would not tell him how the current ran round a small atoll or how the updraught swung the wind from hour to hour. Still, he had the grace to admit it; and his attitude to Thorkild and to the old navigator took on a new shade of deference.

Magnusson too had changed. He was less abrupt, less irritable, more withdrawn, as though the presence of the old navigator were a constant reminder of his own mortality. On the evening of the third day, when they had passed Makemo Island and were reaching down to Motutunga, he came up to join Thorkild at the wheel. He asked:

‘Two hundred and ten magnetic. There’s a big compass variation here, nearly twelve degrees.’

‘If we stay on this course, that’s the last land we’ll see for five hundred miles.’

‘We’re coming down into your empty triangle. Has your grandfather said when he wants to leave us?’

‘Water, fine. Fuel, we’re almost full. We’ve sailed most of the time and the generators don’t eat much. We’re a bit light on fresh fruit and vegetables; but there’s plenty of canned and frozen stuff. The boys have been catching enough fish for one meal a day all round…Something on your mind, Carl?’

‘We’ve been lucky. The further south we get, the more chance of a big blow.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I mean…Oh hell! What’s the use of hedging. Everything you told me about your grandfather is true. I’ve seen it, sensed it. Now, I have to believe that the island is true, too. Has he given you a course for it yet?’

‘Not a word, except that night on Hiva Oa when he promised that we would come to it.’

‘He wouldn’t, Carl. He came to terms with it long ago. Now, in a sense, he’s already involved in the act.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you, my boy, I’m so goddam jealous of every day; I hate to see the sun go down…Sometimes, I’m so resentful of those young ones down there on deck, I can hardly bring myself to be civil. Crazy, isn’t it? It might be easier if I had some of my own brood around. But, then again, it mightn’t. I’d be riding herd on them the way I always did…Anyway I didn’t come up here to sing you a jeremiad. I want to tell you something. When your grandfather leaves us, I want you to take command of the Frigate Bird.’

‘In the log we’ll show medical reasons. In fact I’m tossing you a hot potato. Blame yourself. You told me you found something obscene about turning your grandfather’s death into a naval exercise. Now, I find it that way, myself. I can’t break faith with my friends in the Navy; but you have no commitment to them. When you’re in command you can order Lorillard to break off communications and resume them at your discretion …’

‘I know it. I used to enjoy it…There’s another thing. If anything should happen to me, you’ll find money in the ship’s safe, enough to complete the voyage home.’

‘Shut up, man, and listen! You’ll also find a sealed envelope addressed to you. It’s a deed of gift, signed and witnessed. The Frigate Bird, and everything in her, will belong to you.’

‘Why? She’s mine. I can do what I like with her. I’d rather you have her than anyone else.’

‘It’s done. There’s no discussion. How you dispose of her afterwards is your own business.’

‘Because she’ll make the same fuss you did. She expects me to be bright and breezy and Jack-me-hearty, every day and all day. I don’t feel like that. I feel bleak and old; and I’d give every damn dollar I’ve ever earned to go out the way your grandfather’s going, with no enmities, and one of his own blood to set him on the way …’

‘Carl, what can I say? If you want friends you have them: Sally and me. If you want a shoulder to lean on, use mine. But for God’s sake, man! It comes free…Believe that!’

‘For a man like me, that’s the hardest thing in the world to believe. Here! Let me have the wheel for a while. They’re making music on deck. Go find your woman and join them.’

He was glad to go, glad to be freed from the plague of pity and the shame that a man should be reduced to buy it with a gift. Then in a rush of recollection the words of Flanagan S.J. came back to him:

‘… The mana will come; but you will suffer from it. People will lean on you; you will fall under their weight. You will try to flee them, but they will never let you escape …

When he walked forward, he saw his students and the Kauai men gathered round Ellen Ching and Molly Kaapu and Yoko Nagamuna, who were dancing a hula to Simon Cohen’s guitar. They shouted for him to join them. He peeled off his shirt and stepped into the ring, beating his hands to the rhythm, feeling the sap rise in his loins, glad to shut out the lone gull-cry of age and discontent.

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