Dead Reckoning by Parkinson C. Northcote Page A

craft? The objection to that lay in the choice of passages. No, the better plan was one based on the fixed point, the place (if he could find it) to which Chatelard must return. He had narrowed that down to a definite stretch of coastline. What he lacked, however, was a man who knew the country—someone perhaps like Father Miguel. He would need to ask questions and could hardly do so without an interpreter. He himself had a few words of Malay but he realized that a knowledge of Dutch would have been of more immediate use. He turned to the chart again and put himself in Chatelard’s place. “If I still commanded a privateer and wanted a safe harbour on the west coast of Borneo, where should I begin to look for it?” At Sukadana or Padang? Or up north around Mempawak or Singkawang? No, it would be better to find a complex estuary with islands and creeks among which to hide. This thought brought him back to the confused coastline between Pontianak and Djawi, a mere hundred miles of it. That would be the first place to look; and there, incidentally, if anywhere, he might expect to find his missing brother. He wondered whether there was really any point in finding Michael, who probably needed no help and was happy in his own fashion, but he was still fascinated by the way that inclination and duty were leading him in the same direction. IfChatelard had a base for the Subtile, Michael was the very man to know all about it.
    A week later the Laura sighted Borneo just north of Pontianak and began a cautious approach through poorly charted waters. With the leadsman in the chains and with barely enough canvas to have steerage way, Delancey brought the frigate to what should have been, by all reckoning, the mouth of the Lava River on which Pontianak is placed. He finally dropped anchor opposite a belt of canebrake and mangrove and sent the launch in to investigate. Completely hidden to view from a distance, the river-mouth was finally located by the rush of fresh water and the Laura brought to a new anchorage near by. Pontianak was some ten miles inland but Delancey decided against taking his ship up the river. He took the launch instead and was able to sail for most of the way. When the breeze died away his men rowed the last mile or so under a hot sun, Delancey reflecting that Pontianak was almost exactly on the Equator.
    When he sighted the place, sited in the angle between two confluent rivers, he was astonished to see that Pontianak was a city as well as a seaport. In the city proper was the Malay settlement centred on the Sultan’s palace and this was faced by two Chinese towns, one on either riverbank. Opposite this metropolis were moored a cluster of Chinese junks with two enormous vessels towering over the rest. Guided by a Malay prahu, the launch was brought to a landing-stage opposite the palace, where Delancey, Northmore, and Stock were met by a Malay chief, who presently showed them into the Sultan’s presence. The principal reception hall was of great size and centred upon a carpeted dais. On the dais stood a long table at which Delancey was presently seated, being offered tea and sherbet by way of refreshment. Hiselderly and richly dressed host, the Sultan, was polite and voluble but Delancey’s few words of Malay did not serve the purpose of a serious discussion. As interpreter the Sultan produced a Chinese youth who spoke Dutch and Delancey came to understand that Pontianak was under Dutch protection and that the only men-of-war which called there were under the Dutch flag. All efforts at interpretation failed at first but there finally appeared a Malay boy who spoke English and who asked, on the Sultan’s behalf, why his visitors did not speak Dutch. Delancey admitted, in reply, that his ship was not Dutch but claimed that he was friendly with the Dutch—a people with whom he was actually at war. The interpreter evidently explained to the Sultan that his visitors were French for the