Francis Meyrick

Ch 4. LAKE GENEVA

The beautifully manicured hands, fingers spread, underwent a minute inspection, that lasted a long time. A very expensive after shave fragrance was added to the atmosphere, and the exquisite crystal and gold framed mirror recorded a slick face, with the eyebrows knotted slightly, as if the owner was calculating, or deep in thought.
Yes…
He was already rich. Rich beyond the wildest dreams of ordinary, little men. But he was no little man. On an impulse, he strode across to the window, his silk dressing gown rustling discreetly. He pulled back the curtains, and gazed out on the beautiful waters of Lake Geneva. On the rolling lawns of his gleaming white mansion, where a team of gardners, their backs bent, were already, at this hour of the morning, hard at work manicuring even his lawn to green lustered perfection. He watched his chauffeur washing the Rolls Royce Corniche in the drive, and smiled as he thought of the Charity Ball he would attend that night, the donation of ten thousand dollars he would make, the wild applause he would bow humbly to, the stupid little society girls who would gaze at him with their big calf eyes, and jostle bitchily with each other to be in the picture with him. He laughed quietly. He could have any one of them, any time he wanted…
Yes, he was rich. Super rich.
Not, however, rich enough. Money was the greatest game in town. The only game. And he knew how to play it to perfection. This latest scheme, planned into the minutest details, should net him an easy one hundred and fifty million dollars. For a minimal risk outlay. The two and a half million dollars in premiums for the additional insurance he had taken out, and the half million dollar cash advance to that broken nosed psychopathic thug…
He frowned very slightly. Any enterprise carried risk. There was the slight chance the scheme might fail. But the stakes were so high, as to make the three million dollar stake money pale into nothing. Besides, the man was good. Very good…

Closing the window, he strolled back over to the marble fireplace, and selected a cigarette from a carved ivory box. Reflecting quietly on the instrument of his scheme, he lit the cigarette with rock steady hands, and blew out a satisfying cloud. The man was efficient…
He had used him three times before, always through a third party, to avoid the risk of blackmail. Always, the brute had delivered. Usually in half the allotted time span, with a minimum of fuss. He was a truly excellent psychopath to have on a – very – long leash. Especially when some other fool was willing for peanuts to hold firmly on to the other end. A ripple of laughter went around the room as he thought of the leash-holder, Rene Schultz. The picture of the fat, overdressed little man, with the absurdly foppish silk handkerchief, and the perpetually perspiring forehead floated through his mind. The cheap extortion racketeer, the Bremen dockside smuggler in contraband with his band of minor league thugs with high opinions of themselves. Schultz, with his phony warehousing front, was the fall guy who held the beast with little more than a string. If the psychopath turned, tried anything, Schultz stood in the firing line.The funny thing was that the little worm did not even know the identity of his employer. Essential communication took place from telephone boxes, and the bulky envelopes, stuffed with hundred or thousand dollar bills, arriving anonymously through the post, left no trail. Certainly, the little fat wheeler dealer might guess one day. Put two and two together. Perhaps be tempted to drop names. But that eventuality had also been addressed. It had not been too difficult, through one of his many subsidiaries, to do some trading with Mr Schultz. A few hundred tons of crated wines and liqueurs. With some deliberately poor stock control. No questions asked. Schultz had soon taken the bait. His gambling debts had him often dangerously desperate for ready cash. At first it had been small quantities that failed to arrive, with crudely forged paperwork. As time had passed by, the forgeries had become better, and the missing quantities larger and larger. Until now, the shortfall stood at over one hundred and seventy thousand dollars. More than enough, if Mr Schultz ever got to be a liability, to do a sudden stock take. Call in a team of accountants. Pile up evidence of a corrupt little conman. Allegations? What allegations? His attornies would dive in like sharks, hitting little Mr Schultz for everything he had; they would portray the man as a vicious little petty crook, trying to besmirch the honor of good men,
in order to deflect attention from his own wrongdoing…

The dry little self congratulating chuckle bubbled up again, as he thought of his attorney. Another triumph… It was all a matter of finding the right man. In this case, dear Mr Mayer, with his fondness for young boys. Dear avuncular Mr Mayer, with his grandfather spectacles, his winning ways, and his sordid little secrets. A man who could be utterly destroyed at a moment’s notice. With the help of some photographs he did not even know existed…
Dear Mr Mayer… a brilliant legal mind, who would answer any question in wonderful detail, going into case histories with a memory so clear he could rattle of names, dates and details of submissions forever. All you had to do was ask the question the right way. You didn’t ask: “If I do this, can they catch me? ” Instead, you said things like:
“Dear Mr Mayer, I worry about what a vicious distrustful world this is, and how much damage a legitimate businessman can suffer at the hands of the gutter press… If somebody tried to blackmail me, for instance by alleging I had committed a serious insurance fraud, or some other fraud, how best would I defend myself? ”
They would go into breathtaking details, set up holding companies, set up offshore banking accounts, set up colossal complicated chains of command, elaborate smoke screens, and generally the sort of legal tangle that would drive a team of investigators round the bend.
Another approach had been to claim he was trying to write a detective novel, and that he needed some help.
“What if my character, a famous detective, is fighting a crook, who has successfully committed the following fraud… ”
And they would sit up all night discussing the scenario, whilst Mr Mayer licked his lips at the thought of his next bill. Which was of course always instantly paid, without a quibble.

He yawned, stretched luxuriously, and rang for breakfast. While the maid scurried in and out, he debated what he should wear. Something expensive, obviously, that showed his high breeding, but nothing ostentatious. The newspapers would be there, the fashion magazines, and the gossip columnists. He had to polish his public image to perfection…
The beautifully manicured hands, fingers spread, were raised up to the light again, and closely examined. The perfectly cut nails, pink and healthy, the long sinewy fingers, like a piano player’s, stretched out luxuriously, and a thumb fondled the solid gold ring that supported the nugget on the ring finger. The light caught it, and sharp rays sparkled in rainbow colours around the lavish room.
Beautiful fingers, that twisted, and coiled, and manipulated…

F.M.
(c)

3. THE CADDOCK LAMBS

All her friends and family felt she should have been a vet. Such were her patent abilities with animals. Her father’s dairy farm afforded her many opportunities to work with animals of all kinds. Cows, sheep, chickens, dogs, cats, geese, ducks and a lone tortoise all seemed to thrive under her care. Not to mention the odd hedgehog, rabbit, or bird. And of course, Billy, the moody old goat with a penchant for yellow oilskins hung out to dry.
The old folk would comment that the sheep, normally the most shy of animals, would run to the fence only for her. The retired farmers would shake their heads in amusement, and pronounce it highly unusual for a whole herd of sheep to display such obvious enthusiasm for their mistress.
If the truth be known, it was the old caddocks that led the rush, those sheep who as young lambs had been left abandoned, or whose mothers had died giving birth. Who, shivering wet, hungry and bewildered, had found themselves alone on a hillside some foggy, wet, March or April morning at early dawn. In a world of strange sounds, smells and colors, and surrounded by swooping Blackbacks. These large birds, with a three foot wingspan or more, would quickly locate a lone newly born, and swoop at its head, terrifying it. Then they would land, like a gang of street thugs, and form a circle around their victim. They would puff themselves up, and hop steadily closer. The lamb would cower, defenseless and utterly distraught. The blackbacks would hop a little closer, sensing the vulnerability of their victim.
Then one would lunge forwards, and cruelly peck out one of the lamb’s eyes. The lamb would jump back in pain and horror, momentarily galvanized into flight. But soon it would sink to its knees again, gazing around pathetically out of the one good eye, whilst the sight of the bloody socket drove the blackbacks into a frenzy of excitement. It would not be long before another tormentor would seize his opportunity, and swiftly slide in from the other side. The sight in the one good eye would be obliterated in a second as well, and instantly the gang of killers would fall on their still quaking victim, and tear viciously at the quivering flesh. A last tiny strangled sound would be heard, a whimper of despair, a final plea for mother to come, and then another new born life would slowly, slowly, painfully, slip away…

Sometimes however, the gang of killers, forming a circle around their intended victim, beginning their final death dance, would suddenly be disturbed. A hundred yards away, a tousled black mop of hair would appear. Followed by a panting, rain lashed face. The eyes would search, focus, and open wide. Then there would come a ringing cry of:
“Get away you bloody bastards…! “
And a figure, rain soaked, wrapped unflatteringly in a blue anorak, leggings and wellington boots, would come hurtling forwards, yelling, cursing, throwing stones, tripping over rocks, falling into ditches, tangling with barbed wire fences, but all the time advancing, clamoring against the world, determined to reach the scene. The unmistakable voice of a young woman, high,angry, determined, would startle even the hungriest Blackbacks. It reverberated around the valley, leaving no doubt as to the intensity of feeling. As the young men locally, many of whom eyed her with interest, would say:
“Nice face,great figure,smashing knockers, but… not quite feminine. ”
Perhaps not…
She had a ringing voice, that could travel far when needed. Thus it was that some of the local ladies complained quietly to her father, that the expression…
“BUGGER OFF YOU FILTHY SHITEHAWKS!!! ”
…was perhaps a little over the top?
Her father, having thought for a second, was rumored to have replied:
“Sure that’s fuckin’ nothing! You want to hear her when she’s really pissed! ”

* * *

Life would improve dramatically for the rescued little lamb, if only it could cling to life for a day or two. It would find itself picked up, stuck inside an anorak, where it would be warm for the first time. It would be bounced up and down for an hour or more, and a strange voice would keep up a constant stream of encouragement. Then it would see daylight again in a nice, warm kitchen, with plenty of warm milk.
It would live in a cardboard box, all comfortable and snug, and its new mother would come and feed it regularly, chatting away in the same
happy, chirpy voice. The lamb’s life would be simple again. Eat and sleep, and enjoy being stroked and tickled and fussed over.

Her determination was inexhaustible. Time and time again, when she was very young, her father would come in and look into the cardboard boxes to see what his daughter had rescued this time. He would shake his head, and say things like:
“That one will never make it through the night. Waste of time… ”
His daughter would sit up all night, feeding, stroking, cajoling and loving the wet little bundle of scrawny wool. More often than not, her father would come down early the next morning, and find his daughter still sitting there. And a little face peeping out at him, taking tiny sips at a warm bottle of milk. “Well, I’ll be… “, he would say, scratching his head. Then he would take off across the early morning hills, tramping the sheep farmer’s spring vigil.

Perhaps it was small wonder then, that the caddocks would come racing across the field to her, bringing the rest of the gang along with them. She would laugh and stroke them, and feed them slices of turnip.
And on market days, when many of them were packed off to market and eventual slaughter, she would hide herself away, not bearing to see them, and cry.
Christina O’Dwyer, ‘Chris’ to her friends, was a tough broad on the outside.
…and soft as butter on the inside.

* * *

He hit the starter button, and the big piston engine turned over a few times, wheezed, coughed, and stopped.
Not now, baby, not now…
Three hundred yards off the port side, he could clearly see the massive foamer, the dark shapes darting about, and the swooping sea birds preying on the tiny anchovy. There was a two hundred ton haul out there, begging to be caught. The presence of anchovy was a huge plus. It
meant the tuna would be gorging themselves, and less likely to be distracted by the purse seiner’s propeller, or that of the skiff boat. They were also unlikely to dive deeply when threatened.
Come on darling…
He pressed the starter again. The engine caught, backfired, ran on for a second, and cut out with a disappointing ‘phut!’.
Oh, sheeeit…!
He had been hauled from his cabin by an excited deck boss, and the rapid call to ‘standby’ had quickly energized the ship to fever pitch. The skiff boat crew had legged it to their post, and climbed hurriedly over the waiting net to the secondary boat. Carried high on the stern of the fishing boat, piggy-back style, the skiff could be slid down a steep ramp by the release of a pulley. It would hit the water with a splash, with the three men inside holding on for dear life. There it would bob patiently, serving as an anchor point for one end of the massive net. The purse seiner herself would continue steaming around the foamer, with the three quarter mile long net and the associated chains and rubber floats playing out noisily over the stern of the ship. It was for all the world like a curtain being slowly drawn in a four hundred meter circle around the -hopefully- unsuspecting fish. Slowly, slowly, the ring would encircle the foamer. After a few minutes furious steaming, the ship would slow down again as it approached the skiff boat. Cables would be thrown across quickly, and now the ring had closed…

But still the fish could escape. For the bottom of the purse was still open. All the tuna had to do was dive deep, one hundred and fifty meters or more, and they could escape the curtain slowly draping down. But time was now at a premium. The moment cables were passed from skiff boat to mother ship, the winches noisily started their work. Hauling in on steel cables, the bottom of the net would be slowly drawn together. Slowly, slowly, the potential escape area underneath would be reduced. The winches would strain, cables would creak, the minutes
would pass. Then, maybe twenty or thirty minutes later, the moment would come: the purse was closed. No escape was now possible, except for the odd fish lucky enough to find a damaged area of net. Now it was only a matter of time. Two hours, sometimes three of four if it was a big catch, would go by before the net was back on board and the last fish deposited down the one-way slide to the super cooled sea water and the freezers. Escape was impossible once the purse closed.

Of course, things could go wrong, and often did. The mother ship would drop its piggyback sibling off the stern, and then steam away from the skiff boat as fast as possible. The encircling movement would start, and then, for no apparent reason, the tuna would suddenly head off towards freedom. Before even the ring could be closed, never mind the purse, every last fish would be well clear, hundreds of yards away, swimming strongly into the sunset. There would be nothing left to do but continue to close the ring, draw the purse cables, and begin the
massive labor intensive task of hauling the net back in, in the certain knowledge that it was all a complete waste of time. This could happen time after time, sometimes for days or even weeks at a time. The crew would shake their heads in disappointment, and mutter their frustrations.
Crazy damn fish…
Or maybe they would blame the captain.
What a bad set… he let go too late!…
what a clown…
It was small wonder that the experienced captains would rack their brains as to methods to contain the fish until the ring was closed. Speedboats would race around in circles in the open area of the ring, trying to hem the foamer in. The slower net boats would assist, and each
ship usually carried three of those. The noise and the propellers churning up the water might deter the fish from heading out to safety. Sometimes it seemed to work, more often it didn’t.
Another trick was throw dozens and dozens of small bags of colored dye into the water. As the bags sank down, bright luminescent green clouds would pour forth, turning the water murky. The fish would turn away from the dye… or dive underneath…
Even dynamite had been tried. And many were the hair raising stories told of sailors losing their fingers.
The favorite device though, the most mobile, the noisiest, the quickest to respond to a weak area in the defenses, was always the helicopter…
The chopper could race ahead of the school of fish, and pirouette, tail-spin, hover three feet above the water, and generally scare the leaders into turning around…
If you turned the leaders, you had turned the pack. It was a simple as that. Sometimes.
Provided, as Bob grimly reflected, the bloody thing would condescend to start. He pumped the throttle twice more, and winced as he heard the distant commands and the crash as the skiff boat slid down the ramp. The captain was ‘setting’, unable to wait any longer for the helicopter, and Bob hadn’t even got the damn thing started yet…
“Come on, baby, PLEASE…
NICE helicopter… ”
He spoke the plea out loud, held his breath, and touched the starter button again. A loud backfire resulted this time, the blades turned a desultory two or three rotations, and then everything died once more. His patience suddenly worn thin, Bob turned the heads
of some of the crew members leaving the crow’s nest at the top of the tower with a loud:
“START…! You bloody BITCH! For FUX SAKE!! ”
The witnesses grinned to one another. They knew their Irish helicopter pilot’s routines quite well by now. There followed a loud bang, a cough, and then the healthy roar of a six cylinder Lycoming engine. The blades turned, faster and faster, and Bob sighed with relief. On the bridge below, the Fishmaster, turning the wheel as he started around the ring, also breathed more easily.

The race was on…

F.M.
(c)

2. THE CONTRACT

The light in the dingy room was subdued, coming as it was from a single dim bulb that hung precariously from a cracked light fitting. The room was sparsely furnished, with an old desk, a few decrepit chairs that looked as if they had been used in a bar room brawl, and a dusty, rusting filing cabinet. There was no carpet, and even the floorboards were cracked and moldy. The floodlights on the harbor quay outside did their best to add some light, battling with a miserable, drizzling rain, and a dark, moonless night. One of the window panes was cracked, and the steady drip of a leaking drain pipe quietly invaded the silent room.

There were five men either sitting in the tired armchairs, or leaning against the wall. Three of them smoked, one obviously nervously. Nobody spoke.
One chair was conspicuously empty, and it faced the desk. Four men were arranged around the vacant seat in such a way that it promised to be the focal point. The fifth man, the nervous one, florid, expensively dressed, sat behind the desk. He frequently mopped at his forehead with a white silk handkerchief. Nobody else moved.

The telephone rang shrilly, almost obscenely, and the nervous one practically suffered a stroke on the spot. He grabbed the receiver off the hook, paused, composed himself with a superhuman effort, and managed a fairly tight ‘Yes?’. Some words were spoken at the other end. The others in the room could not make out what was said, but they guessed the content. The nervous one replaced the receiver, mopped his forehead again, and announced quietly: “He’s coming… ”
Once again, silence returned, but one could sense a heightened air of anticipation. The nervous one caught himself drumming his fingers on the desk, and forced himself to stop. He wanted to impress his men with how cool he was, and how much into the big time of things he had gotten. The leaking drain pipe took over the accompaniment where he left off, and the steady drip continued once again as the only sound.

A few minutes later, foot steps could be heard on the creaking stairs. The handle on the door turned slowly, and two very large men in long raincoats entered. One, carrying a small black brief case, sat down in the vacant chair, whilst the other assumed a position behind his left shoulder. Still not a word had been spoken, and no greeting intimated by either gesture or speech.
It was the nervous one who broke the silence first. He was ill at ease.
“As agreed… ”
His hand trembled as he reached into his inside pocket, and produced a large, bulging envelope.
“Expenses and up-front money… ”
He handed it across to the newly arrived occupant of the chair in front of him, who accepted the package without comment. There was a click as the small briefcase opened, and then another as it shut. The silence returned, with the steady drip the sole player once more.
Nobody moved.
Once again it was the nervous one who broke the silence. This was the moment he had been expecting. The moment he could make a little speech, to impress his men that they were no longer small-time fraudsters. They were up in the super league now, where millions counted as mere pocket money.
“And if I may say… ” He coughed nervously.
“We all feel… ”
The white silk handkerchief came out again.
“As you will be leaving tomorrow… ”
Suddenly all his lines were lost. The silent mountain in front of him unnerved him. His carefully prepared speech seemed futile, and a sudden inexplicable rage against this figure welled up inside him. The words were out before he could stop himself.
“Dammit, man, I just hope you know how much is riding on this… ”
There was no response, and he plunged on recklessly:
“My clients are not men to be trifled with! We’re talking millions of dollars here! Just remember… ”
His voice trailed away, as the head in front of him moved very slightly. The light fell clearly on the granite jaw, and the grotesquely broken nose. The nervous one stopped in his tracks, and watched, transfixed, as the solid jaw moved, and the thin lips pulled back into a mirthless smile. The lips parted, and white teeth flashed for an instant. But there was no warmth.
The voice, when it came, was soft, almost sibilant.
“Goodnight, gentlemen… ”

The two newcomers left quietly, leaving the room in silence. The steady drip seemed louder.

“My word! “, the nervous one sighed at last.
He shivered, vaguely aware that he had failed to come across anywhere near as tough as he would have liked.
He looked at the others, as if for support.

“He’s actually looking forward to it. I swear. He’s going to kill twelve men and enjoy every second of it… ”

F.M.
(c)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on December 25, 2008, 11:07 am

1. THE EMPTY QUARTER

Alone above the Pacific Ocean, just south of the Equator, the tiny speck in the immense sky seemed lost and out of place. It circled, hung around for a while, and then popped off to look at another interesting piece of ocean. Slowly, it grew in size, and became a Bell 47 piston helicopter.
For the hundredth time, the lone pilot checked his instruments. His gaze traveled quickly across engine and rotor rpm, engine oil pressure, oil temperature, cylinder head temperature and electrical load. Without any surprise he recognized normality, and then he transferred his left hand to the cyclic stick, releasing his right hand to move to flick over the temperature switch. It was a clumsy system, but only in this way could he check the main rotor gearbox temperature. The only alternative was to reach across to the switch with his left hand, a peculiarly uncomfortable maneuver, and one he chose to reject. The main rotor gearbox temperature came up in the green also, slightly cooler than the engine oil.
He sighed quietly, and swapped hands on the cyclic stick again. The old Bell 47 helicopter rumbled and grumbled quietly on, nothing in her performance attesting to her twenty seven years of faithful service.
For countless thousands of hours, her pilots had variously babied or abused her, appreciated her classic lines and old style quirks, or roundly cursed them. It was all the same in the end, and steadily she droned on, her rotors playing tricks with the scorching sunlight.

Where, he wondered, were all the Tuna gone?

For nearly two hours now he had circled the mother ship in ever widening circles, and now he was thirty six miles north-north-east of the only landing site available to him. Below, in all directions, spread the awesome immensity of the Pacific Ocean, horizon to horizon, with not a single ship in sight. His mother ship was way out of sight over the horizon, and no human life signs showed themselves.
He was completely alone.

In the early days, he reflected wryly, it had worried him.
He had gazed out anxiously many a time, always hoping to spot another ship on the horizon. It would make him feel better to know that help, however intangible, was at hand if a sudden mechanical problem forced him down amongst those hungry waves. Whenever he had found himself totally alone, he had worried. Stories would come back to him about tuna spotting helicopter pilots who mysteriously failed to return. Who simply disappeared…
An emergency call would go out, and tuna helicopters would rush in from every direction. They would search for days on end, but never find a trace. No machine, no bodies. No wreckage. Nothing.
When he remembered stories like that, he would nervously finger the tab of his inflatable life jacket, and mentally go through the emergency ditching procedures. It had taken him some time to settle down.
Now, with over two thousand flying hours tuna spotting behind him, he knew he was more relaxed, although not totally. It still, like this day, gave him a vaguely chilly feeling to be alone like this, a thousand miles from the nearest land, flying along at only eight hundred feet, searching the waves for the Signs of the Tuna…

There had been times he had seriously considered quitting permanently, and going back to instructing helicopter and airplane flying in California. That was a more stable life, more regular, as opposed to the cramped, noisy, at times very insular life aboard a Taiwanese tuna ship, where few of his shipmates spoke more than a few words of English. He would complete a six month tour, go home for a few months, grow restless, and come back for another six months. He only vaguely understood the reasons. Certainly, the financial incentives were excellent. He was remarkably well paid. Qualified as both a pilot and a helicopter maintenance technician, he combined two jobs in one. His employer was fair, and treated Bob McCann well. His company knew him as a stable pilot, an average mechanic, but above all as an employee who somehow never got on the wrong side of some of their more mercurial client captains. They rewarded him accordingly.
To Bob however, there was more to it than just money. In the vague restlessness he felt after a month or two back home on holiday, he sometimes half fathomed his longing to get back onto another tuna boat. He, almost uniquely amongst tuna pilots, actually liked hanging alone above the Ocean…

It was a strange love affair, that had started on almost his first reconnaissance flight, three years earlier. He had been flying with a Taiwanese observer, Yang, who had spent almost the entire flight peering through binoculars, and barking out compass headings.
“You fly two-seven-zero, quick-quick! ”
Bob had obediently swung the helicopter around, and then had peered into the distance, puzzled at the little Taiwanese’s obvious urgency. He had noticed nothing.
“You see? White water. Foamer! You see? ”
Bob had not seen. He had looked hard, but seen only white topped waves, and spray blowing back.
Then, amazingly, they had arrived overhead, and he had seen. The foamer. White water. The purpose of his new employment…

The sea had erupted into life. Quick bursts of white foam were appearing all over. He had the immediate impression of a garment tearing, of a beautiful translucent emerald green dress being ripped full of holes. When he looked down again, he could clearly see hundreds and hundreds of small, agile shapes darting about, some leaping high up out of the water, before satisfyingly crashing back down in a shower of spray. They were like a bunch of out of control schoolboys making mischief. The surface of the sea was being torn open, and brilliant white gashes criss crossed the green surface. The white scars seemed to bunch together in five or six groups, each group maybe twenty or thirty meters across. Then two of the foaming, vibrant, living groups were joined together as yet more tuna surfaced to join the wild party. Impossible as it seemed, even more vivid white gashes were opening up, as yet more raving party goers made a grand entrance. Within a minute, the five or six groups had merged into one huge white foaming frenzy, some two hundred meters or more in diameter. Spellbound, Bob could only stare down from the circling helicopter, his eyes opened wide in awed amazement. There had to have been hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of fish down there…
“You see, Yellow Fin. All together. Foamer. White water. Is good. Many fish. You understand? ”
The calm voice of Yang, unperturbed, matter-of-fact, had snapped Bob back to reality. He had stared at his observer for a whole second, amazed that this man did not share his own awed breathlessness…

Bob had understood all right. On that day, he had fallen in love with one of Nature’s more spectacular displays. Foamer. White water. To him, it was life itself in such abundance, with such a gay abandon that it was hard not to regard the Tuna as having fun. Having a ball, in fact. The more rational explanation that they were surface feeding, and chasing small anchovy, seemed wholly inadequate to convey the sheer dynamism of the event. It seemed much more appropriate to think in terms of the Tuna frolicking, playing, erupting out of the deep with such force that they sailed clean out of the water, sometimes several feet into the air, landing back with a bursting white splash. He could never shake off an impression of the boys showing off, playing for devilment at who could jump the highest. Who could make the biggest splash. Who could jump the highest wave. Who could make the most white water…

After that, he had become an avid Tuna watcher. He had learned to recognize the foamer from afar. From fifteen and twenty miles away he had been known to spot the ‘white water’, when the erupting Tuna turned the ocean into a boiling cauldron. He had learned to recognize the ‘breezer’, or ‘black water’, a phenomenon much harder to capture at first. It occurred when the Tuna stayed below the surface, but packed together in such dense schools, that they affected the wave action. The result was an area that looked as if the waves had suddenly died down. A relative calm would exist where waves should have held sway. When the helicopter flew over the top, and the pilot looked down, he could see the shadows of the submerged fish.
Black water…

And finally, one evening after sunset, when he had stood alone on the very bow of the ship…
When the engines had been stopped, and only the generators disturbed the peace, just before nightfall, a foamer had welled up beside the silently rolling ship, only yards from where he alone stood witness.
One moment he was alone on deck, peering through the twilight to the far horizons, with not another ship to be seen. Feeling alone, mournful, missing he knew not what…
The next moment, he was witnessing the first ‘jumpers’ erupting, vanguards of the main formation, only yards from where he stood in silent introspection. That was the night when he realized that a foamer also has its own sound. Its own music. The cry of the circling, diving, hungry birds intermingled with a soft splashing of thousands of busy fins. The surprisingly loud ‘smack’ as the erupting Tuna re-entered the water. The struggling, desperate sounds of small fish shooting across the surface, eagerly pursued by the hungry Tuna. It was like no sound he had ever heard before. With the sound of wind and waves forming the accompaniment, here was Nature in its purest, unspoiled as yet by Man, and he had wished only for all extraneous noise on the intruding killer ship to cease…

He shook himself, and changed course slightly, as if to banish the memories of those early days. At least for now… he needed to concentrate on the task in hand.

Where were all the Tuna gone?

He worried, when it was like this. Were the Tuna under threat? Was he unwittingly just a tool in the hands of the exterminators? Would the Tuna go the way of so many other species?
He sensed already the entry in his flying logbook for that day’s flying. ‘E.Q.’
It stood for: ‘Empty Quarter’. The name of that region of Saudi Arabia where no-one lives. Where dry, hot desert sand stifles life.
The Empty Quarter.
That entry in his logbook signified: ‘Nothing seen. No life. No sign of the Tuna.’

He looked around the Pacific Ocean, from horizon to horizon, and tried hard to shake off the illusion of a dead sea, a strangled ocean, where human avarice and shortsightedness had destroyed all life. It wasn’t that bad – yet. But still the nightmare haunted him.
It was easy to imagine that he was a flier in the year A.D.3000. Flying his space ship over a moribund watery desert.
Officially named…

The Empty Quarter…

Francis Meyrick
(c)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on June 30, 2009, 7:18 am