The Strode Venturer by Hammond Innes

that were nowhere more than five or six feet above sea level. There was nothing thereto attract the attention of a trading concern like Guthrie’s—the islands were far too poor, far too remote. And if he had been going there for purely scientific reasons why ship as crew in circumstances that suggested a desire for secrecy?
    The element of mystery surrounding his journey distracted me from my personal problems. The man was beginning to fascinate me and this mood of fascination was still with me in the morning when Movements rang up shortly after ten to say that a seat would be available for me on the flight leaving at 1600 hours. Jilly Symington very kindly drove me out to Changi after lunch and an hour later I was in the air.
    The flight from Singapore to Gan crosses Sumatra and the off-lying islands; after that there is nothing but sea. At first the sky was clear. But as the sun set in a blaze of flaming red, thunderheads of cu-nim began to appear black like anvils along the horizon ahead. Darkness closed in on us and the oil-flat surface of the sea below faded as wisps of cloud swept across the wings, obscuring the blink of the navigation lights.
    My first sight of Addu Atoll was a cluster of red lights in the blackness of the night. These marked the radio masts of the transmitter on Hittadu, the largest island of the group. The lights vanished abruptly, obscured by rain. We were over the lagoon then, but though I strained my eyes into the darkness I could see no sign of the Strode Venturer. There wasn’t a glimmer of a light visible anywhere. The plane tilted, the angle of descent steepening. The runway lights appeared, fuzzed by rain. It was sheeting down and as our wheels touched a great burst of spray shot up into the glare of the landing lights. The humid, earthy smell of that tropical downpour had seeped into the fuselage before we finished taxi-ing and when the doors were finally opened we were swamped by the equatorial warmth of it. And then suddenly the rain stopped as though a tap had been turned off and as I went down the steps to be greeted by Jack Easton, the station adjutant, I was overwhelmingly conscious of two things—the isolation of the place and the feel of the sea all about me. A breeze had come up behindthe rain, salt-laden and full of the smell of exposed reefs.
    “Is the Strode Venturer still here?” I asked.
    “Yes, she’s still here.” He had an R.A.F. Land-Rover waiting and as we drove off, he said, “Would you like to go out to her straight away?”
    I nodded. “If that’s possible?”
    The control tower loomed up in the light. The road was tarmac, everything neat and ordered; it might have been an aerodrome anywhere—except for the equatorial warmth and the smell of the sea. “I arranged for Corporal Slinger to stand by with the launch—just in case.” Easton glanced at me curiously. “I think the C.O. would appreciate it if I could give him some idea of why you’re here. All we’ve had so far is a signal saying you’re interested in somebody on board the vessel.”
    “That’s all I can tell you at the moment.”
    He nodded as though he had expected that. “We feel a little isolated here sometimes. Hence our curiosity. Anything out of the ordinary has an exaggerated importance for us.” We swung left and then right; long, low buildings and the green of well-kept grass. “Do you know the Strode Venturer ?” he asked.
    “No.”
    “She’s an odd vessel. Damned odd.”
    “How do you mean?”
    He laughed. “Oh, I wouldn’t like to spoil your first vivid impression of her. But when you’ve been on board I think you’ll understand our curiosity.”

II
ADDU ATOLL
    T HE Strode Venturer lay anchored about half a mile out from the jetty. Beyond her were the lights of another vessel—the Wave Victor, a derelict old tanker used by the Navy as a floating bunker for ships in the Indian Ocean. Far away across the blackness of the lagoon the red warning lights of the Hittadu