Shock Wave(149)

"The former tenants left a messy campground," said Giordino, kneeling to examine a small gas-driven generator for charging the boat's batteries, which had operated the electronic navigational instruments and radio equipment scattered about the campsite.

"Maybe they're still in the hut," murmured Maeve.

Pitt smiled at her. "Why don't you go in and see?"

She shook her head. "Not me. Entering dark and creepy places is man's work."

Women are indeed enigmatic creatures, Pitt thought. After all the dangers Maeve had encountered in the past few weeks, she couldn't bring herself to walk into the hut. He bent under the low doorway and stepped inside.



After being exposed to bright light for days on end, Pitt's eyes took a minute or two to become accustomed to the interior darkness of the hut. Except for the shaft of sun through the doorway, the only illumination came from the light seeping through the cracks between the logs The air was heavy and damp with the musty smell of &l and rotted logs.

There were no ghosts or phantoms lurking in the shadows, but Pitt did find himself staring into the empty eye sockets of a skull attached to a skeleton.

It lay on its back in a berth salvaged from the sailboat. Pitt identified the remains as a male from the heavy brow' above the eye sockets. The dead man had lost teeth. All but three were missing. But rather than having been knocked out of their sockets, they appeared to have' fallen out.

A tattered pair of shorts covered the pelvis, and the bony feet still wore a pair of rubber-soled deck shoes. There was no flesh evident. The tiny creatures that crawled out of the dampness had left a clean set of bones.

The only indication of the dead man's former appearance was a tuft of red hair that lay beneath the skull. The skeletal hands were crossed above the rib cage and clutched a leather logbook.

A quick look around the interior of the hut showed that the proprietor had set up housekeeping in an efficient manner, utilizing the fixtures from his stranded boat. The sails from the Dancing Dorothy had been spread across the ceiling to keep out any wind and rain that penetrated the branches laced in the roof. A writing desk held British Admiralty charts, a stack of books on piloting, tide tables, navigation lights, radio signals and a nautical almanac. Nearby there was a standing shelf stuffed with brochures and books filled with technical instructions on how to operate the boat's electronic instruments and mechanical gear. A finely finished mahogany box containing a chronometer and a sextant sat on a small wooden table beside the bunk. Sitting beneath the table was a hind bearing compass and a steering compass that had been mounted on the sailboat. The steering helm was leaning against a small folding dining table, and a pair of binoculars was tied to a spoke.



Pitt leaned over the skeleton, gently removed the logbook and left the hut.

"What did you find?" asked Maeve with burning curiosity.

"Let me guess," said Giordino. "A humongous chest full of pirate treasure."

Pitt shook his head.' "Not this trip. What I found was the man who sailed the Dancing Dorothy onto the rocks. He never made it off the island."

"He's dead?" queried Maeve.

"Since long before you were born."

Giordino stepped to the doorway and peered inside the hut at the remains. "I wonder how he came to be so far off the beaten track."

Pitt held up the logbook and opened it. "The answers should be in here."

Maeve stared at the pages. "Can you make out the writing after all this time?"

"Yes. The log is well preserved, and the hand wrote boldly." Pitt sat down on a rock and scanned several pages before looking up. "His name was Rodney York, and he was one of twelve yachtsmen entered in a solo nonstop race around the world, beginning in Portsmouth, England, and sponsored by a London newspaper. First prize was twenty thousand pounds. York departed Portsmouth on April the twenty-fourth, 1962."

"Poor old guy has been lost for thirty-eight years," said Giordino solemnly.

"On his ninety-seventh day at sea, he was catching a few hours' sleep when the Dancing Dorothy struck" Pitt paused to glance up at Maeve and smile-- "what he calls thèMiseries.' "

"York must not have studied Australian folklore," said Giordino.

"He quite obviously made up the name," Maeve said righteously.

"According to his account," Pitt continued, "York made good time during his passage of the southern Indian Ocean after rounding the Cape of Good Hope. He then took advantage of the Roaring Forties to carry him on a direct course across the Pacific for South America and the Strait of Magellan. He figured he was leading the race when his generator gave out and he lost all contact with the outside world."