I had to learn how to point the gun when standing, sitting lying down and lastly, after a sudden turn. Then he concentrated on the trigger finger, making me squeeze the trigger gently without a jerk. He filed the sear of the trigger until:: clicked at a very slight pressure and then made me practice. draw, snapping off the safety catch, pointing the gun and squeezing the trigger all in one flowing motion.
On the third day I fired my first shot.
Campbell set up a rough target in the bows and when I stood near the foremast and squeezed that trigger I was certain that I had missed. But he led me to the target and pointed to a hole only two inches off centre. 'You'd make a pretty fair ten yard man,' he said. 'Give me another year or two and I'll make a good shot out of you.'
He took his. 22 and, standing at the same distance, loosed off six shots in as many seconds. 'Now look at the target. he said.
He had put a neat circle of small holes round the larger one made by my bullet. 'Give me time and you'll be able to do that,' he said in reply to my honest praise.
'I doubt if we'll have time. Not if I run up against Kane and company in the near future.'
'You think we will? The Suarez-Navarro ship is still up in Rabaul as far as I know.'
'I don't think it will stay there,' I said. They'll be on out trail.'
Campbell suddenly seemed depressed. 'How do we know it's the right trail? We're only going on a wild hunch – a hunch that a couple of doodled drawings do mean something.'
He turned and went below, the pistols dangling heavily in his hands.* 2*
We raised the island of Tongatapu on the morning of the sixth day out of Papeete. Nuku'alofa, the southern port of entry for the Tongan group, is on the north side of the island, so Geordie changed the heading of Esmerelda. He said to me, There's a paragraph in the Pilot that says you have to keep a sharp lookout for undersea volcanic activity and new shoals in these waters.'
I smiled. 'Sounds good from my point of view.'
'Not so good from mine. I have to skipper this ship.'
But we entered the anchorage without sighting anything unusual, tied up and settled down to wait for the port officials. Nuku'alofa was a typical Pacific island town; the wooden houses with their galvanized iron roofs forever frozen in a late-Victorian matrix. At one time it had looked as though Nuku'alofa was going to be the chief trading port and coaling station of the Western Pacific; but Suva, in the Fiji Islands, eventually came out on top, possibly for no more profound reason than that it was an easier name to pronounce. At any rate, Nuku'alofa lost its chance and relapsed into a timeless trance.
Once free to go ashore Campbell headed for the post office as usual. I went off with the two girls who were going to book in at an hotel. Clare announced that she was tired of salt water showers. 'My hair's in a mess and I can't get the salt out. It needs cutting,' she said. 'I want fresh water and luxury for a while.'
I said thoughtfully, 'It looks as though we may be based on Nuku'alofa for some time. Maybe I'd better do the same – get a room for me and see if Geordie wants one. A ship's all right if you can get off it once in a while.'
Paula felt happier here too, with Hadley a remote risk and nobody else around whom she knew either. It was a lot more relaxing for all of us than our second visit to Papeete. We arrived at the hotel and Clare said, 'My God, look at all that gingerbread!' It was a museum piece sprouting galvanized iron turrets and cupolas in the most unlikely places; inside it was pleasantly cool and dark with big electric fans lazily circulating the air.
At the reception desk we ran into trouble when we asked for five rooms – they had only three, one single and two doubles. I said to Clare, That's all right if you don't mind doubling up with Paula again. Geordie and I will share and your father can have the single.'
The receptionist was most apologetic. There had been an unprecedented rush on accommodation just recently. I left the desk feeling that perhaps Nuku'alofa was going to give Suva a run for its money after all.
I arranged with the girls to meet them in the lounge in an hour or so and went upstairs to soak in a hot bath, and to lay schemes for getting Clare away by myself somewhere that evening – the first chance I would have had since Papeete. When I came downstairs I found them already in the lounge with tall glasses of beer in front of them, frosted on the sides. 'That's a good idea,' I said and looked at the label on the bottle. It was Australian beer – Swan. For a moment I was back in London on a wet dull day a million years ago. 'That's Kane's favourite tipple. Maybe he'll be around for a drink.'
Clare looked past me. 'Here comes Pop.'
Campbell came over to the table with a sheaf of correspondence in his hand and the inevitable worried look on his face. Clare said, 'Have a cold beer, Pop. It's just the thing for this weather.'
He dropped heavily into a cane chair which creaked protestingly. 'I think we've come to the wrong place,' he said abruptly.
I signalled to a hovering waiter and ordered a couple of beers. 'What's the trouble?'
He unfolded a cable. The Suarez-Navarro crowd have moved again to Noumea in New Caledonia.'
I raised my eyebrows, 'Interesting, but not very informative. I wonder what they're doing there?'
'I don't know but it doesn't look too good to me. According to what we've figured they don't know where the stuff is, so what the hell are they drifting round the Pacific for? It looks as though they're as lost as we are.'
Clare said thoughtfully, 'Maybe Mark gave them a bum steer before he died.'
I shook my head. 'No, if he'd done that they would have been out testing for it, and we know they haven't. But we're not lost – at least we don't think so. We're here for a purpose.'
I glanced through the door of the lounge and saw the receptionist working at his accounts. I said, 'Excuse me for a minute,' and went into the foyer where I had an interesting little five-minute chat with him, which included the passing of a discreet backhander across the counter. I went back into the lounge, sat down and took a long, lingering draught of cold beer. Then I said, 'We're in the right place.'
They all stared at me. 'How do you know? How can anyone know?'
I said, 'One Ernesto Ramirez has booked half a dozen rooms in this hotel. He hasn't turned up yet.'
Campbell looked startled and Clare let out a yelp of pure joy. Paula, on the other hand, visibly shrank back in her chair, and I made a quick mental note of that. I said, 'I thought it a bit odd that the hotel should be so full right now, so I checked up on it. Ramirez booked the rooms and paid handsomely for them in advance; he wrote that he didn't know exactly when he was coming, but that the rooms must be kept free.'
'I'll be damned,' said Campbell. 'But what's he been doing in Noumea?'
'I think he's been stooging around in this area all the time, getting slowly closer to wherever we were, and waiting to see where we'd go without being too close, so that he could follow easily from a distance.'
'But now he is coming here, and we've not been in a day,' said Clare. 'How could he know? And why come so close now?'
'We saw several ships as we came across, and we made no secret of our destination. My guess is that he's been fed the information somehow. As to why he's closing with us, that I can't guess. But what he doesn't know is that we know he's coming, and we have a head start on him – we're here.'
'He must know we've arrived,' said Campbell soberly. 'He's sure to have left a man here. I'll bet they're in touch right now.'
'We're not going to be in for long,' I said. 'We'll be off dredging soon. But we could put it about that we are leaving for somewhere else – that might help draw him into the net. At close quarters we can at least do something.' It was all very dubious though, and we weren't at all sure what was happening around us.