Page 14 of Dauntless

“But if you want myopinion,” Mavis said, “John Coldwell was very upset yesterday when he came to tell me about the diary.He didn’t even let me tell him first!”

“John Coldwell was very upset this morning too,” Joe said evenly, and added a roll of Fruit Tingles to his stash.

“Yes, well,” Mavis said agreeably.“John’s always had this idea that he’s more a Nesmith than a Coldwell, on his mother’s side.”

“Does that matter?”I asked curiously.

“Well,” Joe said, “it matters tosome.Josiah Nesmith was an officer and a gentleman, a lieutenant under Captain Hawthorne, while Robert Coldwell was only an ordinary seaman.”

I had to think like an anthropologist, not a historian.The mutiny might have been two centuries ago, but it shaped the way this tiny society operated.

Mavis hummed and folded her arms over her bosom.“And John’s always talking up his connection to the Nesmith name above the Coldwell name, isn’t he, Red Joe?”

“He is,” Joe agreed.“And what’s your opinion on Henry Jessup’s diary?”

Mavis looked pointedly at Joe’s growing collection of junk food, and he added another roll of Fruit Tingles.

“I think,” she said, when Joe must have paid an acceptable tribute, “that sometimes the past is better left undisturbed, and that nothing good ever comes of digging through dead men’s graves.You mark my words, Red Joe.You mark my words.”

Joe nodded at that, paid for his junk food, and ushered me out of the shop.

* * *

Joe said that we were going to visit Short Clarry the mayor next, but on our way to his cottage we were stopped by a gangly young man with sandy blond hair.

“Red Joe!”he called out, jogging up the street.

“Little Harry.”

The young guy tugged his ear buds out of his ears as he reached us.“Dad says can you come down the jetty?He’s found the laptop!”

* * *

The Dauntless Island jetty was built into the curve of the little village harbour.It was a relic of the Second World War, built by the US Navy, Joe told me as we walked towards it, and jutted out 800 feet into the ocean.Apparently Short Clarry the mayor had visions of ferries full of tourists coming from the mainland, but Joe said the jetty was in dire need of repairs before that could happen.

He wasn’t wrong.The boards creaked and shifted underfoot as we walked down to meet Little Harry’s dad’s boat.Hiccup bounded in front of us for a moment and then, heedless of the cold, launched herself off the edge of the jetty into the ocean with a splash.

“She’ll be fine,” Joe said in answer to my horrified look.“She’s part seal, I think.”He nodded at a boat that was tied up at the jetty.It might have been some sort of small trawler?I had no idea, but there seemed to be a lot of poles and shit sticking up from the deck, like pens bristling from a mug.“Here’s Fisher Harry.”

A bear of a man in a bright yellow oilskin was unloading crates of fish onto the jetty.

“Found your laptop,” he said, and gestured to a battered bucket.

The laptop, or at least the screen, was sitting in a couple of inches of salt water.The hinges that would have held it to the body were snapped off, and the screen was smashed.

“Found it over round the point,” Fisher Harry said.“Under the lighthouse.”

I reached into the bucket and drew the screen out.Water dripped out of the casing onto the jetty.“Um, thanks?At least I’ll have something to show my insurance company.”

It was pretty clear that whoever had assaulted me hadn’t been after the laptop after all.They’d been after the diary, without knowing I kept it on my person.

Joe thanked Fisher Harry, and then we turned and walked back along the jetty.I tucked the dripping laptop under my arm.

“Why wasn’t the diary in your pack?”Joe asked.

A seagull hopped along the jetty in front of us, keeping just out of reach but too lazy to actually bother flying away.

I shrugged.“The rain, mostly.I was paranoid it’d get wet or damaged somehow, however good the tent was, and however well wrapped it was.So I put it in my shirt before I went to sleep.I figured if the rain came through the tent, it’d wake me up before the diary got wet.And I didn’t want to leave it where I might step on it.”I tapped the laptop.“I probably should have done the same with this.”

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