Wilton said, gazing into the fearful eyes regarding him pleadingly:
“There may be something in what you say. I don’t think it’s likely, though. Bill knows his engine, from sump to tank. Tell you what! If the Do-me isn’t home when we come out of the pictures I’ll get Burns and Remmings to go out and patrol. The Marlin not being ready for sea, I could go with one or other. But—still—by that time the Do-me will be home. Hang it! Bill’s one of the best launchmen here.”
The girl bit her lower lip.
“I wouldn’t enjoy the pictures. Jack, thinking, thinking—”
“All right! If that’s how you feel I’ll change back into my sea clothes and go after Burns and Remmings now. You slip back home and stop your mother worrying.”
“Yes, dear, that’s best,” Mrs Wilton said in support. “You can leave the rest to Jack.”
An hour later the three launches, Edith, Gladious and Ivy, crossed the bar and slid like shadows over the bay swell towards the tip of the headland and the ocean. Marion and her mother waited at home until their anxiety would permit them to wait there no longer. It was close to midnight when they walked along the road to the jetty.
There they found the Snowy, with other launches moored against the jetty, and they went aboard her and took possession of the two uncushioned anglers’ chairs. They could see nothing, but it was comforting to sit there.
The familiar sounds of the river were infinitely more soothing than the empty silence of their home—the cry of a gull, the honking of swans far up the river, now and then the plop of a small fish followed by the surface movement of heavier fish chasing it. All about them life was unseen but prolific, familiar. Outside, the ocean was as quiet as if it had been withdrawn to the very stars that gleamed in the velvety sky. From it came no sound save the faint music of surf on sand. It was not the voice of the sea they knew so well—the heavy pounding and thudding of league-long rollers.
At 2am the Edith came in with Eddy Burns and Joe Peace on board. They reported that they had patrolled up and down Swordfish Reef without sighting the Do-me. At daybreak the two women were still on the jetty when the Edith went out again, after which they hurried home for a meal and then walked to the front of the great headland protecting the township. At noon all the searching launches returned to port. The Do-me had not been sighted, nor could her wreckage be observed on the coast. Silently, Marion and her mother were eating lunch when Wilton entered their kitchen-living-room.
“It’s no use worrying,” he told them. “A wire may come through from somewhere.”
Marion crossed to him, for the first time to hold out her hands for him to take.
“Tell us, Jack, what you and the others think,” she pleaded.
“We think that the Do-me’s engine broke down when they were trolling along Swordfish Reef,” he answered frankly. “As the current’s been setting to the south’ard for more than twenty-four hours, the Do-me would have been taken south. We think she might have been taken past that trawler that’s been working off Bunga Head since yesterday morning, and by now she ought to be somewhere off Eden.”
“Oh! Then what had we better do?” urged Mrs Spinks, whose face was white and drawn and in whose eyes was a strange light.
“I was thinking of getting Constable Telfer to telephone the police at Eden to ask one of the launchmen there to make a special trip to sea to look for the Do-me. Remmings spoke the trawler early this morning, but they haven’t seen the Do-me. Still, she must be down south somewhere, and Joe says that as there’s been no wind the currents wouldn’t have taken her ashore.
“Anyhow, it’s no use you two worrying. I’m taking the Marlin to sea directly we can get her loaded with oil. We mightn’t be back tonight, because Joe is going to follow the currents down from Swordfish Reef till we do find the Do-me. Excepting for a broken engine the Do-me must be all right. The sea’s like a pond. Haven’t seen it so calm for years. Some ship or other is bound to sight Bill and give him a tow to port, or at least wireless his position.”
“It’s good of you—and the others, Jack,” Marion said.
“It is that,” added Mrs Spinks. “We’ll never be able to repay you all, I’m sure.”
“Yes, you can,” Wilton told her, and then stared at Marion. “You can repay us by not worrying. And, remember, Bill would be the first to go out after any of us. Well, so long! And no worrying, understand.”
He stood for a moment regarding the girl’s haunted face with lifted eyebrows and a smile that was forced. Impulsively she squeezed his hands, and he felt himself rewarded for a night’s vigil. He wanted badly to draw her to him and kiss her, to wipe away from her blue eyes the expression of dread. He said to her:
“How do you feel now about Bill?”
“He’s in great danger, Jack. I know he’s in great danger.”
Wilton nodded. He said nothing more. He knew that Marion and Bill Spinks were twins.
Chapter Two
No News Is Bad News
Having been honorary secretary of the Bermagui Big Game Anglers’ Club from its inception, Mr Edward Blade had at his finger-tips a wide knowledge of game fishing in the waters off the south coast of New South Wales, and of men, launches and tackle. It is doubtful if anyone better could have been found for this position, for Blade was that rarity among men, a born club secretary combining a business education with charming social qualities. His life at Bermagui was of even tenor, due more to his personality and temperament than to outside influences such as the non-arrival of important gear or the difficulty in fitting an angler’s application for a launch into an extended busy period. This, of course, was prior to the disappearance of the Do-me.
It was first realized by Mr Blade that something most serious had happened to the Do-me when Constable Telfer entered his office at four o’clock in the afternoon following that night of vigil conducted by the two Spinks women. Constable Telfer, big and tough and red of face, accepted the chair offered by the club secretary who was shorter in stature, pink-complexioned and quick in movement.
“I don’t like this Do-me business,” was Telfer’s announcement.
“It will probably be cleared up about sundown when the Do-me comes home with the other launches,” Blade said. “Spinks is a good boatman, a good seaman, and a good fisherman. He wouldn’t take risks with an angler aboard the Do-me. Likely enough, he’ll report that owing to trouble of some kind the Do-me had to spend the night in some cover or other.”
“Why?” bluntly asked Telfer.
“Engine trouble. Or exhausted petrol supply.”
The policeman removed his cap and set it down beside the typewriter on the paper-littered table. While his heavy fingers pressed tobacco into the bowl of an ancient pipe his prominent dark eyes noted the details of the room as though it were the first time he had been in it. He was acquainted with every picture on the wall—pictures of swordfish leaping high above water, of sharks being weighed at the head of the jetty, of world-famous anglers who had sat in the chair he now occupied. He knew the contents of heavy leather cases—huge ball-bearing, geared, still reels capable of taking nine hundred yards of number PS-cord, and that inside the long cylinders resting on wall hooks were heavy rods which even he found difficulty in bending against a knee. He had never once been out after the giants of the sea, being too fearful of sickness, but he was a fishing enthusiast on the river.
“Alf Remmings, of the Gladious, tells me that Spinks yesterday morning took on board enough fuel to keep the Do-me’s engine running for thirty hours,” he said deliberately.