The Golden Reef (1969) Read Online Free

there. Maybe it’s gold.’
    ‘I never thought it was anything else,’ Keeton said. ‘Nobody but a dim-wit like Hagan would swallow that secret machinery guff. It’s gold all right. We’ll dump it in Uncle Sam’s pocket and then we’ll catch an Atlantic convoy and take the wool to England.’
    Bristow scratched the back of his neck, his eyes bright.
    ‘What a lovely little fortune, hey? Must be thousands of quids’ worth. Suppose it was ours, Charlie. Just suppose it was ours.’
    ‘You can suppose what you like,’ Keeton said. ‘But it never will be.’
     
    They steamed out into the South Pacific with the morning sun glittering on the water. They left behind them the great steel bridge and set their course eastward for Panama, a long and lonely haul between the islands and the coral reefs, over the carcasses of dead ships and the white bones of long forgotten mariners.
    A light breeze was rustling the Red Ensign when Keeton went on watch at noon. He climbed the steel ladder from the gunners’ quarters, went down from the poop and crossed the afterdeck which was now washed clean of the garbage that had accumulated in dock. He was carrying his life-jacket slung over one shoulder and he was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a khaki drill bush shirt that he had bought from one of the army gunners. He did not believe that he would ever have cause to wear the life-jacket, but he carried it because Petty Officer Hagan was fussy about such things.
    The Valparaiso was armed with two 20-millimetre Oerlikons, two .50 calibre Browning machine-guns and an old 4-inch breech-loader on the poop. Keeton had never fired a gun in anger. Since stepping on board the Valparaiso he had not seen a single enemy plane and had never heard a depth-charge explode. He had fired guns in training, but at this late stage in the war he did not think he would ever be called upon to do more than that. Everywhere in the Pacific theatre the Japanese had been pushed back and on the other side of the globe the Battle of the Atlantic had been won. Keeton would go on watch because that was what he was ordered to do, but his private belief was that gun watches were now no more than a token, a hangover from that time when the war at sea had been fierce and bloody and merciless.
    He met Hagan at the foot of the ladder amidships. The petty officer was coming down from the accommodation deck and he looked at Keeton with the sour expression of a man who is always prepared to discover a fault.
    ‘Where’s your tin hat?’ Hagan asked.
    Keeton said: ‘I left it in the cabin. I didn’t think I needed it.’
    ‘You didn’t think! Let me tell you something, my lad you’re not paid to think. You’re paid to obey orders and orders says you carry a tin hat on watch, see?’
    ‘I see.’
    In Keeton’s opinion Hagan was a jumped-up little Hitler. Just because he had crossed anchors on his sleeve he threw his weight about as if he owned the ship. Keeton would have liked to tell the petty officer just what he thought of his orders, but there would have been no sense in doing so; it would only have meant trouble for himself.
    ‘I’ll let it pass this time,’ Hagan said, as though he were conferring on Keeton an immense favour, ‘else you’ll be late relieving. But another time remember it.’
    Bristow began to grumble as soon as Keeton stepped into the Oerlikon box on the starboard wing of the bridge.
    ‘You’re late. It’s gone eight bells.’
    ‘The P.O. stopped me,’ Keeton said.
    ‘All right for him. He don’t do watches. What did he want?’
    ‘Chewed me up for not bringing my helmet.’
    ‘He wants his nut seeing to. What’s he afraid of – sun stroke?’
    ‘You’d better ask him.’
    Bristow went away and Keeton settled down to the long boredom of the afternoon watch. Astern the coastline of the Australian continent had vanished below the rim of the sea; ahead the ocean stretched away into the blue and placid distance. A seabird