“Well, that won’t last long, in my opinion,” observed Mr. Hawkins.
“Why not?” the captain asked.
“Because we’re not in full warm season, Gibson, and the Pacific does not have the reputation of justifying its name, which was given to it a bit in jest.”
“I agree, old friend. Yet, even during this season, ships remain becalmed several days. That could happen to the James Cook, and I wouldn’t really be surprised.”
“Very fortunately,” replied the shipowner, “we’re not in the days when Norfolk Island contained a population of bandits. Then it would not have been wise to anchor nearby.”
“You’re right. We would’ve had to be on guard.”
“In my childhood,” continued Mr. Hawkins, “I heard about those criminals that no system of correction at any prison had been able to discipline, and so the government decided to transport the whole colony to Norfolk Island.”
“They were no doubt well guarded, on the one hand,” Nat Gibson said, “and, on the other, how could they escape from an island that no ship dared approach?”
“Well guarded, yes, they certainly were, young man,” replied Mr. Hawkins. “A difficult flight, indeed! But, for criminals who don’t retreat before anything when it’s a question of recovering their freedom, everything is possible, even what seems not to be.”
“Were there frequent escapes, Mr. Hawkins?”
“Yes, Nat, and even incredible ones! Either convicts managed to get hold of some government boat, or they secretly made one with strips of bark, and they didn’t hesitate to try to escape.”
“Having ninety chances out of a hundred of dying,” declared Captain Gibson.
“No doubt,” Mr. Hawkins replied. “And, when they met some ship like ours in the island’s waters, they jumped aboard in no time and rid themselves of the crew. Then they’d go off plundering through the Polynesian archipelagoes, where it wouldn’t be easy to track them down.”
“Well, there’s nothing more to fear now,” affirmed Captain Gibson.
One might rightly notice that everything Mr. Hawkins had just said, and which was true, coincided with the plans formed by Flig Balt and Vin Mod. Although they were not locked up in Norfolk Island, they had the criminal instincts of convicts; they only asked to do what convicts would have done in their place, changing the honest brig of the Hawkins firm, in Hobart Town, into a ship of pirates, and then to exercise their brigandage throughout the central regions of the Pacific Ocean, where it would be hard to catch them.
So, if the James Cook had nothing to fear at the moment as they approached Norfolk Island since the prison had been transferred to Port Arthur, it was no less threatened by the presence of Dunedin recruits, resolved to carry out the plans of Vin Mod and the bosun.
“Well then,” Nat Gibson said, “there’s no danger. Father, would you allow me to take out the dinghy?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Go fishing at the foot of the rocks. We’ve still got two hours of daylight. It’s the right time, and I’ll keep in sight of the brig.”
It was no trouble to grant the young man’s request. Two sailors and he would be able to string their lines straight down by the coral banks. These waters were teeming with fish, and they would not return without making a good catch.
Besides, Mr. Gibson thought he should drop anchor there. The current bearing rather to the southeast, he sent down the anchor with thirty-five fathoms of chain to a sandy bottom.
After readying the dinghy, Hobbes and Wickley got ready to accompany Nat Gibson. They were, as we know, two trusted sailors the captain was proud of.
“Hop to it, Nat,” he said to his son, “but don’t stay out until dark.”
“That I can promise, Father.”
“And bring us something good to fry up for tomorrow’s lunch,” added Mr. Hawkins, “and also a bit of wind if there is any left on shore!”
The dinghy was filled, and with the vigorous pull on the oars it had soon crossed the two miles separating the brig from the first coral banks.
Their fishing lines were dropped. Nat Gibson had not needed to toss his grapnel on the reef. No current, not even surf. The dinghy remained motionless once the oars were pulled in.
On the island side, the sandbanks stretched about a half mile. As a consequence, less than in the south toward Philip Island and although the coast was no longer lit by the sun which was hidden by the mass of Mount Pitt, one could still distinguish the details of the island’s topography: narrow banks among the rocks of yellowish limestone, closed creeks, rocky points, numerous streams flowing toward the sea, thousands of them crossing through the heavy forests and the verdant plains of the island. This entire coastline was deserted. Not a cabin among the trees, no smoke rising from the foliage, not one canoe beached upside down or pulled up on the sand.
The movement of life was not lacking, however, in the region between the crests of the sandbanks and the land. But it was due uniquely to the presence of aquatic birds, which filled the air with their discordant cries, crows with whitish down, coucals in green plumage, kingfishers whose body is aquamarine, starlings with ruby eyes, the flycatcher, without mentioning the frigate birds that swiftly flew by.
If Nat Gibson had brought along his gun, he could have taken some good shots at them—shots that would’ve been purely wasted, it’s true, for they are inedible. It would be better, in preparing for the next meal, to ask of the sea what the air could not give, and all in all the sea would show itself to be quite generous.
After an hour at the edge of the banks, the dinghy was ready to bring back enough food for the crew for a couple of days. The fish were numerous in this clear water, prickly with marine plants, under which swarmed crustaceans, mollusks, shellfish, lobsters, crabs, shrimp, snails, and barnacles—whose numbers were clearly inexhaustible since the amphibians, seals and the like consumed them in vast quantities.5
Among the fish that struck the lines and that represented an enormous variety of species rivaling each other by splendor and color, Nat Gibson and the two sailors brought back several pairs of blennies. The blenny, a bizarre animal, has eyes open on the top of his head, practically no jaw, and is linen gray in color. It lives in the water, runs along the shore, and leaps on the rocks with kangaroo-like movements.
It was seven o’clock. The sun had just gone down, and its last purple gleam was flickering out on the peak of Mount Pitt.
“Mr. Nat,” Wickley said, “isn’t it time to return on board?”
“That would be wise,” added Hobbes. “Sometimes an evening breeze rises, coming off the land, and if the brig can take advantage of it, we mustn’t keep it waiting.”
“Pull in the lines,” said the young man. “Let’s go back to the James Cook. But I rather doubt we can bring the wind Mr. Hawkins asked me about.”
“No,” Hobbes declared. “There’s not enough wind to fill a beret!”
“Out at sea, there’s not a single cloud,” added Wickley.
“Let’s head back,” ordered Nat Gibson.
But before leaving the bank, he stood up in the stern of the dinghy and cast a glance along the edge of all the reefs that circled the northeast point. The disappearance of the schooner that had not been heard from came back to his mind. Would he not perceive some debris of the Wilhelmina, some remnant that the currents might have borne toward the island? Wasn’t it possible that the hull of the boat, not having been entirely demolished, some part of the carcass would still be visible north or south of the point?
So the two sailors looked up and down the coast for a distance of several miles.