Collection 1980 - Yondering (v5.0) Read Online Free

chain. Many of these islands are quite mountainous and rugged of aspect .
    They are heavily forested. Both alluvial and reef gold have been found there, as implied in the story .
    Until a few years ago the natives among the eastern islands were reputed to be cannibals, but according to the latest reports this is no longer true, if it ever was .
    It is a rarely beautiful chain of islands, picturesque and relatively untouched .
     
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    I T WAS A strip of grayish-yellow sand caught in the gaunt fingers of the reef like an upturned belly except here and there where the reef had been longest above the sea. Much of the reef was drying, and elsewhere the broken teeth of the coral formed ugly ridges flanked by a few black, half-submerged boulders.
    At one end of the bar the stark white ribs of an old ship thrust themselves from the sand, and nearby lay the rusting hulk of an iron freighter. It had been there more than sixty years.
    For eighteen miles in a northeast and southwest direction the reef lay across the face of the Coral Sea. At its widest, no more than three miles but narrowing to less than a mile. A strip of jagged coral and white water lost in the remote emptiness of the Pacific. The long dun swells of the sea hammered against the outer rocks, and overhead the towering vastness of the sky became a shell of copper with the afternoon sun.
    At the near end of the bar, protected from the breaking seas in all but a hurricane, a hollow of rock formed a natural cistern. In the bottom were a few scant inches of doubtful water. Beside it, he squatted in torn dungarees and battered sneakers.
    “Three days,” he estimated, staring into the cistern, eyes squinting against the surrounding glare. “Three days if I’m careful, and after that I’m washed up.”
    After that—thirst. The white, awful glare of the tropical sun, a parched throat, baking flesh, a few days or hours of delirium, and then a long time of lying wide-eyed to the sky before the gulls and the crabs finished the remains.
    He had no doubt as to where he was. The chart had been given him in Port Darwin and was worn along the creases, but there was no crease where this reef lay, hence no doubt of his position. He was sitting on a lonely reef, avoided by shipping, right in the middle of nowhere. His position was approximately 10°45′ S, 155°51′ E.
    The nearest land was eighty-two miles off and it might as well be eighty-two thousand.
    It started with the gold. The schooner on which he had been second mate had dropped anchor in Bugoiya Harbor, but it was not fit anchorage, so they could remain only a matter of hours. He was on the small wharf superintending the loading of some cargo when a boy approached him.
    He was a slender native boy with very large, beautiful eyes. When the boy was near him, he spoke, not looking at him. “Man say you come. Speak nobody.”
    “Come? Come where?”
    “You come. I show you.”
    “I’m busy, boy. I don’t want a girl now.”
    “No girl. Man die soon. He say please , you come?”
    Dugan looked at his watch. They were loading the last cargo now, but they would not sail for at least an hour.
    “How far is it?”
    “Ten minutes—you see.”
    A man was dying? But why come to him? Still, in these islands odd things were always happening, and he was a curious man.
    The captain was coming along the wharf, and he walked over to him. “Cap? Something’s come up. This boy wants to take me to some man who is dying. Says not to say anything, and he’s only ten minutes away.”
    Douglas glanced at the boy, then at his watch. “All right, but we’ve less than an hour. If we leave before you get back, we’ll be several days at Woodlark or Murua or whatever they call it. There’s a man in a village who is a friend of mine. Just ask for Sam. He will sail you over there.”
    “No need for that. I’ll be right back.”
    Douglas glanced at him, a faint humor showing. “Dugan, I’ve been in these islands for fifty years. A