On the Road to Amurang

First published in Thrilling Adventures, October 1940. Reprinted in the collections West from Singapore and The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Vol 4.
"With plenty of contacts but few actual customers Jim Mayo must be ready to compete for every cargo … cargos that, with the beginning of warfare in Europe, are getting harder and harder to find. The Semiramis eventually winds up in Balikpapan, an oil town on the east coast of the island of Borneo. She is tied up at the Punchar Wharves without enough cargo to pay her way to the next port. A series of mysterious sinkings has dried up all the shipping and confounded the local authorities. When Major Arnold finds Mayo at the Balikpapan Dutch Club he offers him a cargo from Li Wan Chuang … if Jim will investigate the sinkings. Li is the only merchant desperate enough to risk shipment via the Molucca Passage and Mayo gets himself embroiled in a hijack attempt and a bit of revenge from his old nemesis Pete Lucieno. The Semiramis soon finds herself in trouble while steaming along the Celebes coast east of Himana Bay and negotiating the reefs off Tanjung Banka."