"You mean they found the boat?" I interrupted hopefully.
"I believe so," he said. "Ecuador, as you know, owns the Galapagos Islands, well off the coast, and for many years a favorite out-of-the-way retreat for all sorts of people. Now Ecuador claims fishing grounds a great distance off her coast and around the islands. This has led to a lot of international incidents and sometimes to confiscation of fishing boats stopped inside these limits by Ecuadorean gunboats and charged with poaching. Well, these annoying rules proved very useful yesterday. A spotter plane found a black cannery ship flying a Japanese flag in the waters off the Galapagos. That vessel is now anchored in the main harbor—I forget the name—under the guns of a patrol boat."
"Wonderful," Pat breathed. "What about the crew?"
"I haven't any information about them but I do have a request from the Department of State of the U.S.A. that you fly down to Ecuador and, with their consular officials, and I suppose the Ecuadorean authorities, go to the Galapagos to see the ship and crew. This is necessary because it must be kept secret. We don't want the Communists, if that's who they are, to get suspicious. This must look like a simple arrest for poaching, at least for the present."
"Do both of us go?" I said.
"That was the intention, since you both saw the men and the boat," the Inspector smiled, "and of course all expenses will be paid."
"Oh boy!" I looked at Pat. "Christmas this year is going to be a summer vacation ... the one we didn't get."
We flew south to Quito in one of the fast new jets of the Canadian Pacific Airlines and from there to the Galapagos in a much less comfortable Ecuadorean Air Force transport plane. The air-strip on Baltra Island, so busy during World War II, lay neglected and forlorn among the lava blocks and scrub. From it to the Governor's house on Chatham Island, we rode first by motor launch and then in a rusty old jeep, probably another relic of that war or subsequent lend-lease.
"I wish I could see a tortoise," I said, clinging desperately to the struts of the canvas top as we bounded through clouds of dust from the jeep ahead.