her, what makes you think you’ll do better as her owner than you’re doing as my mate?”
The clear brown eyes had become stern and the old grey eyes shifted their gaze back again to the jetty.
“Might,” Joe answered.
“You wouldn’t,” Wilton assured him earnestly. “Running a fishing launch is the same as running a farm or a business. You’ve got to put back into her a lot of what you take out of her. You’re too easy-going, Joe. You’d take all out of the Do-me and put nothing into her as repairs and overhaul. You wouldn’t escape worrying, Joe. As my mate you don’t have to do any worrying at all, and you don’t have to put back into the Marlin anything of the quarter-share you take out of her. Besides, Joe, we’ve been mates for a long time.”
Grey eyes determinedly gazed at the jetty. A grunt was born deep in the massive chest beneath the blue pullover. Quite abruptly the grey eyes moved their gaze to cross swords with the brown eyes, blinked, and then as abruptly shifted back again to the jetty.
“Ha—well! Reckon you’re right—about us being mates for a long time, an’ about me being too easy to make money like an owner,” Joe agreed, still truculent. “Any’ow, where’d you be if I did have a launch of me own? Lost, that’s what you’d be. All you know about this coast, and the fish swimming off it, is what I’ve taught you, you young, jumped-up, jackanapes.”
“Agreed, Mr Know-all.”
“What’s that?”
Wilton laughed, white teeth flashing in the amber of his face, and Joe snorted and mumbled something like:
“Know-all! Me? Too right I know all there’s to know about this coast and the ruddy sea.” Then more distinctly, he added: “Well, do we stay here till the tide’s high, or do we go ’ome for some tucker?”
“Home and tucker it is, mate-o’-mine.”
“Mate-o’-mine!” Joe echoed, witheringly. “You’re going to the pitchers too much, that’s what you’re doing. There’s the Gladious first home.”
Into their view slid a roomy launch, its white hull and brown-painted shelter-structure protecting the wheel and the cabin entrance. The owner was steering, and in the cockpit two anglers were dismantling their gear.
Joe and Wilton stepped into their dinghy and Joe rowed round the stern of the Gladious, as she drew alongside the head of the jetty to permit her catch to be weighed, and pulled in alongside an ancient tub which provided a step upward to the jetty. They were watching the heavy tuna being weighed, their interest in fish eternal, when a smart craft hove into sight beyond the bar. The Edith was gently lifted higher than the river, appeared to be powered by a force much stronger than her engine which rushed her forward over the bar and then deserted her. Like a gull she came swimming towards the jetty. Behind her, still to cross the bar, was a heavier craft named the Snowy.
One after the other the launches delivered up to the club secretary their biggest fish to be weighed—twenty, thirty, forty-pounders, and one after the other were moved to their usual berths alongside the jetty. The anglers hurried away to their cars parked ashore and drove round to the Bermagui Hotel. The day visitors sauntered to their cars, to gather wife and children preparatory to the home journey. Joe rolled homeward, leaving only Remmings of the Gladious and Burns of the Edith to tidy their craft before dinner. Wilton called down to the two women who were sitting on the hatch combing of the Lily G. Excel.
“Bill’s a bit late getting in, Mrs Spinks,” he said to the elder of the women. “Mr Ericson may have decided to fight a shark on the way home. What d’you think of the Marlin? We finished up on her today, and we’re refloating her tonight.”
“She looks very nice in her new dress of paint, doesn’t she, mother?” replied the younger woman, stepping lightly from launch to jetty to stand beside Wilton. He flushed faintly, and his eyes became veiled when he glanced at Marion Spinks. Gallantly he assisted the mother to the jetty, and she said, brightly:
“Yes, she certainly does. The clean-up will add a knot to the speed, Jack. Hasn’t it been a wonderful day? It must have been as flat as my irons outside. There’s hardly any surf at all.”
Both these women were dressed with that severity and neatness which is the hall-mark of home dressmaking. Both were a fraction above average height, but further than a resemblance in mouth there were no traces of kinship. The elder woman was blonde, and hard work and the years had made her body angular. Marion was a brunette and strongly built. Her shapely figure had gladdened more than one artist, and Wilton thought her the most beautiful thing in his world of ever-changing beauty.
“Well, I must be getting along for dinner,” he said, a hint of reluctance in his voice. “Do we travel part of the way together?”
“Not now, Jack,” replied Mrs Spinks. “We’re to give Mr Ericson an answer to his proposal.”
“About working for him when his house is built?”
“Yes. He wants to know this evening so that he can forward his business. If Bill decides to go with him, we’ll be doing the same. We all think a lot of Mr Ericson, and I’m sure we’d be very happy.”
“He’s a very decent man,” agreed Wilton, regarding Mrs Spinks and Marion alternately. “I think you’ll be wise to accept his offer. Bill will have a regular crew all the year round, while you two will have an easier time. Well, I must go alone if you intend to wait for the Do-me. What about the pictures tonight, Marion? Coming?”
“If you’d like to take me,” she replied, looking directly at him.
Wilton was optimistic as he walked the road to the township and his home. There were moments when he was exceedingly pessimistic, for Marion Spinks was not able to make up her mind sufficiently to surrender to the idea of marrying him.
He was dressed in his good blue suit when he heard his mother talking with someone in their kitchen-living-room. It was half-past seven and the evening was advanced. Through the open window of his bedroom came a cool draught of air, soft and fragrant with flowers growing in the tidy garden. Beyond the window the evening was quiet, unusually quiet. It was strangely empty of sound—the omnipresent sound of surf.
With his mother was Marion Spinks.
“Hullo! What’s up, Marion?”
“The Do-me isn’t home yet.” she replied, her eyes troubled.
“Not home! Well, there’s plenty of time for her to get home without you worrying.”
“That’s what I tell mother. But you know what she is, Jack. And—and …”
Her voice died away as rainwater vanishes in droughty earth. Her face was tautened by unease of mind. Mrs Wilton echoed her son’s remark about there being plenty of time still for the Do-me to reach port before the need for worry. Wilton crossed the room and stood close to the girl.
“Well?” he asked softly.
Into the wide blue eyes entered an expression of entreaty. Her right hand grasped his left arm.
“I haven’t felt too good all afternoon, Jack. Now I feel that there’s something wrong with Bill and young Garroway and Mr Ericson. You know how it is with me and Bill.”
“But what could be wrong?” argued Wilton. “The sea all day has been as calm as a park lake. It’s not yet fully dark, and even if it was as black as the ace of spades Bill could navigate the Do-me across the bar and up to the jetty.”
“Still …”
The blue eyes now were compelling. The small nostrils were slightly distended, and the hand which grasped his arm was now clasped by her other hand.
“I feel—I know—I feel that something’s happened to the Do-me,” she said, slowly and softly. A strange power seemed to emanate from her which he felt.