Blue Meridian by Peter Matthiessen

Blue Meridian by Peter Matthiessen

Author:Peter Matthiessen [Matthiessen, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 1997-06-30T16:00:00+00:00


next morning the film crew’s nerves were tense, and growing tenser. Diégo-Suarez was thirty-six hours away, but in order to get there at dawn on July 8, it was necessary to sail at noon, since the ship had to stop at Astove for a crucial zoom-lens battery that Jim Lipscomb had left behind. Gimbel wanted the divers to drift underwater through the swift tide channel of East Pass, which abounded with fish and might produce a shark, but first the shore crew would take advantage of an early tide to enter the shallow lagoon and film the rookeries. Both small boats were required in the lagoon so that Lipscomb, in one, could record the explorations of the other. Meanwhile, the divers were stranded.

The Aldabra lagoon is a pale waste of white tide flats and clear mangrove creeks where nests of frigate birds and red-footed boobies overhang the water on all sides: in the mangrove green, the red throat pouches of the male frigate birds gleamed like apples. Fairy terns and the blue pigeon raced overhead on the sunny wind, and white-eyes and drongos came confidingly to the low branches.

This tranquil scene was marred almost immediately by Homo sapiens. Cody, straining to record the wind-thinned nackering of frigate birds, became furious at Lipscomb, who broke into the sound track with a question about frigate-bird plumages that could have been asked later. In the course of a loud argument Lipscomb told him to grow up, whereupon Cody dropped his earphones and switched boats. Tom Chapin, who usually played straight man in Valerie’s escapades ashore, took over on the sound machine, and Lipscomb remained in the lagoon long enough to shoot a second magazine. By the time the boats got back to East Pass the tide was already slackening, and the divers, who had been stranded aboard the Terrier, arrived at the channel too late to film the tide-run sequence that Gimbel wanted.

Peter was incensed, and could not hide it. “Jim, yesterday you said I was getting desperate, and I am! You know how badly we need the underwater stuff, and you kept those boats in there, and now we have to get back to Diégo, and lose still more time stopping off at Astove for your bloody battery!”

Lipscomb received this calmly, without comment, merely frowning a little as if Peter had spoiled his concentration on something else; he is an intent man, a professional, and a survivor. Jim is affable and handsome, and a stalwart in the boisterous camaraderie of the messroom, where he is often called “Big Jim.” But in the hearts tournament that takes place almost every night, the shaking of his hands when he holds good cards suggests the intensity behind his easy manner. One of his friends feels that Jim does not trust people; his answer to any question is apt to be preceded by a brief stare, as if he were measuring a risk.

Gimbel, bitterly frustrated, could barely be persuaded to take a quick look at the tortoises.



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