The Devil's Eye by Ian Townsend

skipper of the Zoe , was aft, looking like a large grey grub sitting in the shade of the mainsail. He’d already suited up, but despite the delay he was calm. Many skippers would have been infuriated, shouting by now. Willie wasn’t like that. He had a lazy faith in fate. He told himself that the fixing of the pump would take as long as it took and his life depended on it being fixed well, so they could take their time.
    Anyway, it was the tender’s job to worry. When the Singapore man Charley Brain dropped the same nut for a third time the Zoe ’s tender and cook,Sam, did a little dance of frustration and then slapped him on the back of the head.
    ‘What’s wrong with you?’ shouted Sam.
    Charley looked up at Willie and shrugged. ‘Samting bugarup.’
    ‘See. Something’s buggered up,’ said Willie. ‘It’s not Charley’s fault. Why don’t we have coffee? We’ll have coffee and the pump will get fixed.’
    ‘Coffee. Good idea,’ and Sam gave Charley another light tap to the head. Charley stood without unfolding and made his bent way to the galley. He emerged with a silver pot and went to the transom to wash it in the sea. One of the flat, bored-looking fish that hung around the luggers came to investigate and Willie heard Charley coo to it: ‘ Salamat pagi. Apa khabar ?’
    The rest of the crew worked slowly on the pump with their shirts off, four shades of brown. The light breeze was steady but the best time for diving had already been lost.
    Well, what could he do? Willie leant back on an elbow. He could see the seabed ten fathoms below as if through the bottom of a gin bottle. There was sand, a dark bed of seagrass, white patches that marked coral. Perhaps the lack of real wind wasn’t a bad thing. The current might take him through the weed this time and there’d be shell there, for sure.
    ‘We’ll drift over the weed,’ said Willie.
    ‘Not likely,’ said Sam, standing above the men who sat scratching their heads over the dismantled machinery.
    ‘What about the patience of Job?’ said Willie. ‘Isn’t that what you keep telling me?’
    ‘ We count them happy which endure ,’ said Sam, watching Charley set the pot on the deck stove. ‘But what will you tell Captain Porter when we turn up with one crate of wormy shell? “Patience master. No beat poor Tanna boy, me find more shell next time.”’
    ‘Captain Porter has never beaten anyone.’
    ‘He will when I tell him that we spent three days on a patch that’s produced less than a dozen pair, and most of them wormy.’
    That wasn’t true and it was Sam who had insisted on diving here, but Willie let it pass.
    ‘We’ll clean up today,’ he said.
    ‘That’s what you said yesterday.’
    ‘The patience of Job.’
    Sam looked up at the sky and mouthed a prayer. He then came over and sat heavily next to Willie, putting an arm around the shoulders of the diving suit. ‘Do you want to get out of the suit?’
    ‘I think they’ve nearly fixed it.’ Willie nodded at the men who seemed to be putting the pump back together, but so slowly it was agony to watch. He looked off to the horizon. There were a few boats under sail, but most of the fleet was no doubt over the horizon and awash with shell.
    Sam whispered in his ear. ‘God will guide you. Do you feel His presence?’
    ‘No,’ said Willie. It unnerved him when Sam talked like this.
    ‘You want to go back to Tanna Island and have a wife, children, a garden?’
    ‘No.’
    Sam pretended to be surprised. ‘God wants you to have babies and wives.’
    ‘Why?’
    Sam took his hand away and stood, shouting, ‘Well, get drunk then! Fornicate! I don’t care.’
    The men at the pump turned around and laughed and Sam shouted at them to get back to work. He sat down again.
    He said, quietly, ‘We’re all relying on you, but you have to listen to God’s voice. It’s very important. He will show you.’
    Willie said he’d try, ‘But if God doesn’t help the boys put that pump