The Curious Affair of Scuppers Bilgewater and the Lesser Speckled Dunk Island Scrub Hen Read online

  THE CURIOUS AFFAIR OF SCUPPERS BILGEWATER AND THE LESSER SPECKLED DUNK ISLAND SCRUB HEN

  Copyright Lindsay Johannsen 2014

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication Data:

  Author: Johannsen, Lindsay Andrew

  Title: The Curious Affair of Scuppers Bilgewater and the Lesser Speckled Dunk Island Scrub Hen

  Cover art and design bungled by the author.

  A novel: "McCullock's Gold"

  Short stories: "Uncle Jasper and the Eighty Acres"

  "A Bushman's Tail"

  To order the paperback version of McCullock's Gold or contact the author please visit

  www.vividpublishing.com.au/lajohannsen

  THE CURIOUS AFFAIR OF SCUPPERS BILGEWATER AND THE LESSER SPECKLED DUNK ISLAND SCRUB HEN

  A ripping tale of adventure on the high seas - salt air, flying spray, mutiny, keelhauling and snuggling.

  ...Snuggling?!!

  Well, yes, now that it's been mentioned: "Snuggling". I was about eleven years old, as I recall, and one night found myself sitting in the back row of the cinema next to Blush O'Flaherty. You remember Blush O'Flaherty; the red-haired girl with the sister who...

  But I digest. After all, these recollections are supposed to be nautical, not naughtycal.

  -And yet! (?disregarding the diversion caused by a chance typophragical error), it might well surprise you to learn that I am not, in fact, without a bit of your actual smuggling to grace my CV. Oh yes. Why, in one's younger days one was quite the dashing young salt around the Cairns and Townsville waterfront fleshpots.

  "Dapper Dan" I was known as. Mothers would warn their daughters about me, something I found quite helpful, and local toughs would blanch at mention of my name. Now though, as the years mount, one's dashing is mostly confined to a hurried search for a Gents.

  In those days seawater flowed in my veins and my soul was bound hand and foot - or would be were I to miss any more payments on the boat (as the several large gentlemen in tight black suits, small hats and welding-grade dark glasses explained to me one afternoon while nailing my T-shirt to the bulkhead ... with me still in it).

  Such goings-on are water under the bridge now, of course - not that the old "Pigbucket" actually had a bridge. Yet for a time the scurvy wreck was my home and livelihood, and the adventures we enjoyed together and the tales we could tell would simply astound you.

  But hold there, shipmates. Let us not sail blindly into those dark and stormy waters, lest things are revealed which others might, in their own way, find um? "Interesting". Or advantageous. Or conclusive, even.

  Instead let me confine this discourse to the circumstances of our final voyage; that is to say, our crossing to Dunk Island through the wild and treacherous waters of Mission Beach Straights.

  "Mission Beach Straights?!!" I hear you gasp.

  "Indeed," I reply - a wry devil-may-care smile playing about my finely chiseled lips. Yet this was no ordinary act of desperation; this was an undertaking of singular purpose - though I have to admit that the purpose-singular was not mine and the voyage was very much an unplanned, spur-of-the-moment affair.

  It all began around mid-morning a depressing number of breakfasts back, when a self-attaching, harbour-hangout frequenting, alleged so-called associate of mine arrived somewhat unexpectedly on the Pigbucket's fore deck.

  I knew the raddled old wretch as Scuppers Bilgewater, though it wasn't a name he answered to automatically. If queried about his lack of response he'd claim hardness of hearing, but if you offered to shout him a beer in a crowded bar he'd hear that all right ? from the outside beer garden behind the pub across the street!

  We were at our usual mooring when he first approached me about making the journey - in Bootleg Creek, around the corner from Cairns, tied up alongside that little half-abandoned jetty at Robber's Rocks. I was asleep at the time, too, as events transpired, the result of having hosted a jolly evening's umm? "light entertainment", amidships.

  Scuppers was never invited to these affairs, of course, but he always seemed to hear about them somehow. And, invariably, he would manage to weasel his way aboard and merge into the throng without my knowing. That achieved, he'd set about plundering the Premium OP or the Dewers Single Malt in his usual dedicated fashion - until such time as his braying drunken laughter betrayed his presence.

  The problem by that stage of the evening's proceedings, was that confrontation and attempted eviction was pointless, what with his loud declarations of my being "the best friend a sailor could ever wish for", his bonhomie and back slapping, and the encouragement and applause of his newly won coterie of friends.

  On this particular occasion the last few die-hards had gone ashore or fallen overboard by around four a.m. (I was later informed), with me being left to sleep where I lay. And so, as a result, I was blissfully unaware of Bilgewater's mid-morning return.

  Something else I was unaware of at the time was that, on coming aboard, the fellow had stumbled over a loose foc'sle into an open hatchway, and had only just succeeded in making his way topside again from the hold, moments prior to waking me. But Scuppers was, if nothing else, indestructible, and despite the cuts and bruises and a goodly amount of blood and lost skin he was still in good spirits.

  (You'll have realised by now, of course, that all this was pretty much Situation Normal for Mr Scuppers Mains'l Bilgewater, so you'll understand my reasons for paying his condition so little heed on finally noticing it.)

  "I got the Pigbucket's battery out of hock and charged it up!" he shouted cheerfully between attempts at waking me. "Today is the summer equinox! Let's weigh anchor and get ourselves across to Dunk."

  I stared at his bare feet through a haze of empty bottles. The bottles were mine, nominally; but whose feet were they? ?And what was that funny talking sound hammering at my brain?

  Suddenly my upper portion was hauled to the vertical and I was dragged across to a bulkhead. There I was leant against a belaying pin, following which my face was slapped left and right sharply.

  "Maaate?" the voice continued. It seemed anxious and tinged with barely suppressed excitement. I rotated my head upward slowly and tried to focus on its source.

  Ugh. It was Scuppers Bilgewater. And he appeared to be sober!

  "?the Lesser Speckled Dunk Island Scrub Hens!" he was babbling, his eyes wide with urgency. "It's the day they gather moss in preparation for their annual nest-building!"

  About then my vision began adjusting to the general glare about the place. Either a supernova was occurring somewhere nearby or it was morning. Then I noticed that my assailant was staggering a bit. Maybe he wasn't sober after all, my brain suggested painfully.

  The reason for his unsteadiness eventually became clear, however. His one hand was now holding the ship's battery by its straps, the other the handle of a jerrycan full of fuel. Also, strapped to his shoulders was a fairly substantial backpack. Neither of the two former items appeared damaged in any way and neither was leaking essential fluids, indicating that he must have set them on the deck before venturing down the hatchway.

  ?Aye aye, Cap'n, I thought. Dead-slow ahead here, matey. This is Scuppers Bilgewater; he'll be up to something, that's for sure. I mean until then the scurvy rat had shown no interest whatever in things ornithological - except for robbing the occasional mutton bird nest, that is. But as you've probably guessed by now, old Scup could be full of surprises.

  And so it was, my friends, that not a great dea
l later - after taking on board a few provisions and the essentials absolute (and totally against my nagging better judgment) - we slipped our moorings and set sail for Gropers Gully Cove.

  You'll know the place; it's that little hidden inlet in the lee of Dunk Island's northern end - on the larb'd side of the neck of land called North Point. The ocean side of North Point Ridge is where that big new privately owned nudie beach resort was recently established. You'll know the one; Nudiebeach Resort, it's called.

  Before long we'd cleared Bootleg Creek and had reached the open ocean. By