"Five 'undred fathom—three 'undred fifty fathom," he read laboriously as his tarry forefinger cruised along the tiny rows of dots and figures indicating soundings. "Three 'undred fathom—two 'undred fifty fathom—one bloody fathom! By Gawd, W'itney, we're 'igh an' dry already! This bally chart says they's only one fathom uv water on this kerblasted coral patch, an' the cutter draws two feet mor'n that."
But he never luffed her, never altered her course a fraction of a point. "More she 'eels the less she draws," he muttered philosophically, sitting down on the weather rail of the cockpit and starting to whittle at the end of a stick of tobacco with his clasp-knife. "Save a lot of wig-waggin' if we do pile up," he continued presently, rolling the shaved-off blackjack between his palms. "Ol' 'Choppy' Tancred never giv' the go-by to even a nigger dugout he could len' a han' to." Then he lighted his pipe, whoofed two or three whirling jets of blue smoke to leeward as he brought it to a proper draw, and settled comfortably back in puffing contentment. Ten minutes later he unrolled the chart again, produced a greasy stub of pencil from the band of his koui-leaf hat, and wrote with great care the letters "P.D." across the dotted expanse where curving lines of figure "1s," like the graphic representation of telegraph lines on a bird's-eye map, indicated six feet of water where the eight-feet-draught cutter had just crossed without a bump.
"As I figger it," Jackson observed drily, rolling up the chart and tossing it down the companionway as a thing whose usefulness was ended,—"as I figger it, a bloke's only manifestin' proper conserv'tism w'en 'e marks as 'Position Doubtful' a reef that ain't tangibl' enuf to stop 'im w'en 'e 'its it." Then, presently, between puffs, as he stretched himself and sidled along to take the wheel as the cutter began to close the slowing steamer: "Wonder 'oo the bally cove'll be 'oo bumps a mis-charted reef w'en 'e thinks 'e's got four 'undred fathom uv brine 'tween his keel an' the bottom uv the Pacific." The notorious inaccuracy of the South Sea charts is a continual source of amusement or wrath—according to whether a misplaced shoal or passage has spelt comedy or tragedy to him—for the man who sails their reef-beset waters.
It was Captain Tancred himself who came tumbling down from the Utupua's bridge to greet me as I clambered up the Jacob's ladder thrown over from the forecastle head. Hearing of him often before, this was the first time I ever set eyes on one of the best-loved characters in the South Pacific. He was a red-faced, blue-eyed, sandy-haired Scot, with a heart as big as his fist, and as soft as his voice was rough. Square himself as his own broad shoulders, and strictly law-abiding personally, he was credited with an amiable weakness for befriending every man who had run afoul of the statutes. I had heard them yarn by the hour at Kai of the way he had smuggled this one out of Australia, and that one into New Guinea; of how he had all but bumped South Head while standing-off-and-on in a "Southerly Buster" one night, on the off chance of picking up a jail-breaker, whose only claim upon Tancred had been that the latter had once before performed a similar service for the reprobate when he had forced his way out of the jug in Suva. Several of the push at Jackson's claimed actually to owe their lives to the bluff old Scot; many of them their liberty. "Choppy" Tancred—so called from his sun-washed red-brown mutton-chop side whiskers—was the nearest thing to a patron saint Kai ever had—that is, until the Rev. Horatio Loveworth hove up on their skyline some years later and converted the lot of them (just about) with the knuckles of his brawny fists.
The last thing Jackson had said, as he steadied the ladder for me to swarm up the Utupua's side, was to the effect that I ought to consider myself dead lucky to be stacking up with "Choppy" Tancred; "or, leastways," he qualified, "you would be if you was in any kind uv a mess 'e could fish you out uv."
"Don't give up hope, Jack," I chaffed back, clawing round a projecting ventilator; "I may land in a mess yet."
"Then don't be forgettin' ther'll allus be a refooge for the errin' on the banks an' brays uv Kai Lagoon," he sang back, taking in the mainsheet as the cutter came up to the wind; "an' that 'Choppy' Tancred'll be the cove to give you a first leg-up on the way back there."
Except for his very evident disappointment over the fact that I disclaimed any need of his help in getting ashore in Australia, Captain Tancred seemed not in the least put out over being stopped and boarded so high-handedly. He had carried many queer birds in his time, so that a man eccentric enough to take a case of drinkables with him on the return trip from the Islands didn't worry him as much as it might have some others. He was also kindly charitable about my "exclusiveness" of evenings (when all normal beings expand and grow sociable at sea), and even good-naturedly tolerant of my weakness for having breakfast in my cabin. I made it up to him to the best of my ability in my "quickened" hours of the afternoon, and we became good friends.... Really good friends. I felt that I could count upon him in a pinch.
The grounding of the company's Port Moresby steamer somewhere along the Barrier Reef was responsible for the fact that the Utupua, this voyage, had been ordered to pick up freight at both Cooktown and Cairns, instead of proceeding direct to Townsville on her regular schedule. This set her back two days, and brought us into the offing at Townsville twenty-four hours after—instead of twenty-four hours before—a sun-blistered, foul-smelling labour-recruiting schooner, with a dead Captain and a score or more of dying niggers, was brought to anchor off the Quarantine Station by the Mate, who, immediately the hook was let go, collapsed on the deck and went to sleep. The empty hulk of the Cora Andrews, swinging lazily to the turning tide, was one of the first things to catch my eye as the Utupua steamed in and tied up to her buoy.