Chapter Six** 1*

It was good to be at sea again, pounding along under the unfailing impulse of the trade wind. It would take about six days to sail to Tonga and we soon settled into shipboard routine.

Geordie was up and about. Although his face looked like the map of a battlefield he was fit enough otherwise, and took over the command from a reluctant Ian, who had gloried in his brief spell as skipper. The fresh wind blew away the last taint of Tanakabu and everyone benefited, and Kane's disappearance had lifted the last reserve of secretiveness. They were all in the know now, including Geordie's own crewmen, as we felt that it was only fair to warn them all of possible danger ahead, though none had taken advantage of Geordie's offer to pay their fares home if they wished to leave us.

And Paula was still with us. Somehow that had been taken for granted and she had fitted in so well to shipboard life that there was no sense of surprise in her having agreed to come along. She and Clare set one another off nicely.

I immersed myself in text books and charts. I wanted to study currents, so I asked Geordie for pilot charts of the area. 'Not that they'll be any great help,' I said. 'The currents might have changed considerably in the last fifty thousand years.. That's why Mark worked with Norgaard – he was an expert at that sort of thing.'

The pilot charts only have the surface currents,' said Geordie. 'Who knows what goes on under the surface?'

There are gadgets that can tell that sort of thing, though I haven't one with me. And they can't tell us what went on fifty thousand years ago, more's the pity.' I expounded. 'Here is Fonua Fo'ou. There's a warm offshoot of the South Equatorial Current sweeping south-west past the island. That should mean that any nodule deposits will also be laid down south-west of the island. But it's a surface current – there may be other currents lower down, going in different directions. That we'll have to check, if we can.'

I frowned at my own words. 'The thing is, have those currents changed direction in those last fifty thousand years? I don't know, but I shouldn't think so. It's not very long.'

Geordie snorted.

I put my finger on the chart. 'What I'm really worried about is this spot here. That's the Tonga Trench – our dredge will only go to 30,000 feet, and Horizon Depth in the Trench is nearly 35,000.'

'Quite a bit of water,' said Geordie dryly. 'That's over six and a half miles – a man could drown in that depth of water.'

'If the high-cobalt nodules have formed at the bottom of the Trench we're wasting time,' I said, ignoring his baiting. 'You could dredge them up, but it wouldn't be an economic proposition – it would just amount to pouring money into the sea. By the way, I haven't mentioned this to the boss. It would only cause alarm and despondency, and it might never happen.'

'I won't tell him,' he promised.

But I did seek out Campbell for another reason, and found him on deck in his favourite spot reading a book. We chatted for a few minutes about the ship and the weather, and then I said, 'Is it true what Clare said – that you're a crack shot?'

'I'm not too bad,' he said modestly if a little complacently.

'I'd like to learn how to shoot. I didn't get off a shot back there at Tanakabu, and those bastards were popping off all over the show.'

He grinned. 'What happened?'

'I think I forgot to release the safety catch.'

'I thought that might be it,' he said. 'It's obvious you don't know much about the game.'

'I don't know anything,' I said positively.

'Good. Then you won't have any bad habits to get rid of. Stick around. I'll get the pistols.'

He came back with four guns and laid them on deck. Three I'd seen and one which was new to me, but a twin of the one I'd handled. I didn't ask him where it had been hidden. He said, 'I didn't know what kind of trouble we'd be running into, so I took out insurance and brought along these two. 38s for you and Geordie.'

'What about yours?'

'Oh, I like this, the. 22. They're for me and Clare – she's a pretty good shot, if in need of practice.'

'I've always thought that a. 22 was useless against a man,' I said.

'You're like the cops. They always think you can't use anything but a. 38 or bigger,' said Campbell contemptuously. 'Look at it this way – who are the men who habitually use handguns?'

I thought about it. 'The police, the army, criminals and hobbyists – like yourself.'

'Right. Now, an army officer doesn't get much time for practice, nor the wartime officer – so they give him the biggest gun he can hold, one that packs a hell of a wallop – a. 45. With that gun he doesn't have to be a dead shot. If he only wings his man, that man is knocked flat on his back.'

Campbell picked up a. 38. 'Now the police get more practice and they're usually issued with, or equip themselves with, these. A nice handy gun that will fit inconspicuously into a holster out of sight, but because of that the barrel's too short, resulting in some loss of accuracy. You've got to have a lot of practice to be good with one of these.'

He exchanged it for a. 22. 'With this you have definitely got to be a good shot; the bullet is small and hasn't any inherent stopping power, so you have to be able to put it in the right place. But the gun is deadly accurate – this one is, at any rate. If you meet up with a man who habitually packs a. 22 steer clear of him, especially if he's filed away the front sight, because that means he's a snapshooter – a natural shot.'

I said, 'What's the range of these guns?'

'Oh, they've all got a hell of a range, but that's not the point. What counts is the accurate range, and with any hand gun it's not very much. A guy who is an average shot will stop a man at ten yards with the. 38. A crack shot will stop his man at twenty yards. And I'm not talking about target practice on the range – I'm talking about action where the other guy is shooting back.'

He waved the long-barrelled. 22. 'With this gun I'll kill a man at thirty yards – maybe a bit further.'

I asked curiously, 'You once said you had killed. Was it with this?'

'Yes, in South America once. The jungle Indians don't like trespassers.'

He said no more about it, and I let it lie.

So he began to teach me how to shoot. He started with the basic principles, stripping the guns and explaining the action. Then he showed me how to stand, and eventually how to hold a gun.

'I'm not going to waste time with you on the classic stance,' he said. 'That's for the police and championship target boys. If you tried you'd be filled full of holes before you sighted on your man. I want you to start with snapshooting. It's something you have or you haven't – let's see if you've got it. Point your finger at the mast.'

I did so and he followed the line of direction. 'Not bad. If your finger had been a gun barrel – a steady one – you'd have made a hole in the mast just a little off centre. Do it again.'

So I did it again – and again – and again. Then he gave me a. 38. 'Now do it.'

I pointed the gun at the mast and he shook his head. 'You'd miss by a foot. Put your forefinger alongside the barrel and do it again.'

I pointed the gun again with better results. 'You won't have your finger there when you shoot,' he said. 'It might be cut off by the action. But I want you to be able to point that barrel just like you point your finger.'

He drilled me for four hours every day on the voyage to Tonga. The rest of the crew crowded around at first, all asking for lessons, but Campbell declined, saying that one pupil at a time was his limit and that in any case there were no spar. guns. Geordie endorsed this. Those of the crew who did have guns did a little target practice but no one had much ammunition to spare and soon they left us to get on with it.