I was certain that Mere would take care of things in her own way when the time came. A few more beers, the gentle slap of wavelets against the side of the hull and the soft moonlight filling the wheelhouse would soon stir his urges. All I had to do was to get him up there. I knew that if he sent Mere away, the others would probably follow.
“Yeah, okay,” he agreed reluctantly. “But any more funny business from that fat bird and I’m sleeping out on the back deck.”
During the late afternoon Rick and I rigged a square of canvas down the middle of the fo’c’sle that would give us each some semblance of privacy, provided we kept our ears tuned the other way. At one point I looked up to see Henry taking a hefty belt at the whisky bottle – Dutch courage.
I had been trying to keep his alcohol intake down, knowing that he just couldn’t take it. If he was going to enjoy himself with Mere, even though he wouldn’t admit that it might happen, I was going to make certain he at least remembered what it had been like afterwards. Every time he passed his glass across for a refill, I topped up the last inch or so with lemonade. He hadn’t complained and, after a while, he probably didn’t even notice.
The afternoon drifted into the evening and we all seemed to retire early to our respective domains for the night, even Henry, who by this time had graduated to putting an arm around Mere every now and then and giving her a gentle squeeze.
“See you guys in the morning,” he called down from the wheelhouse, sounding nervous, and just a little drunk.
There was no reply from Rick. I could hear the giggles coming from the other side of the canvas as I slid the shirt I had loaned Kini up over her shoulders; and then my thoughts were on other things, my mind concentrating on nothing but what was happening in my own little world.
******
I thought I was the first to wake in the morning, until I climbed up into the saloon and found Henry in the galley, humming quietly to himself as he poured a cup of coffee. His back was towards me as I crept up behind and whispered in his ear: “How did it go?”
Five
He spun around, a grin from ear to ear, eyes directed to the floor, his face going a deep shade of pink as he spluttered; “Great! Just great!”
I slapped him on the back and heaved a sigh of relief. We weren’t going to have any more problems with Henry.
I was to remember that thought with regret in the days to come.
He turned back to the small gas stove resting on its gimbals and placed the kettle back on its burner.
“Want a cup of coffee?” he asked over his shoulder, still not happy about meeting me eye to eye.
“Yes, please,” I replied. “What’s the time?”
“Just after seven. That bloody sun woke me up.” There was a slight pause and then: “Christ but I feel fit!” Then he went quiet again.
“Where’s Mere?” I asked.
“Still asleep. The sun’s shining full on her face through the rear door and she hasn’t even stirred.”
Kini was the same: not a worry in the world and sleeping like a child, covered only by the sheet I had pulled up over her shoulders as I had rolled off the bunk. As I had slowly climbed the ladder, trying not to wake Rick, I hadn’t been able to resist a quick glance down over the top edge of the canvas divider. Their sheet had slipped to the floor and I marveled at Sai’s slim brown body: two hard pointed breasts aimed at the deck-head. As my eyes had started their steady movement down her torso I quickly shook my head and looked away.
“Give them another hour,” I said, “and we’ll haul them out of the sack. Come on, bring your cup out on to the back deck and enjoy some of this crisp, early morning air.”
We strolled outside, and sat on the two aluminium chairs out by the stern, watching as the sun took hold of the day, drying up the night’s rain and building up the humidity. I went inside and brought the binoculars out, focussing them on the yachts moored to the sea-wall, hoping to catch some young thing parading on the foredeck in her pyjamas, but it was still too early for the yachties to be moving about. They would have been partying in the Tradewinds until the early hours and then drinking on each other’s boats. I had heard music drifting across from the hotel the previous evening, moments before sinking into a deep satisfied sleep; and the noise hadn’t been able to penetrate that peace.
“Beautiful, isn’t it,” Henry said, interrupting my thoughts. “See how the sun’s reflection seems to shimmer across the water?”
“Mmm,” I agreed. “Bloody poetic, but you’re right. It certainly is beautiful. I wonder what it’s like when a hurricane hits.”
“Christ!” he said. “Don’t go saying things like that.”
“Don’t worry,” I replied. “We’ll get plenty of warning of anything in the area.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. You know, it almost seems a pity to leave all this, the girls and that, and go looking for treasure.”
“Quiet!” I hissed. “Christ! One word that we’re here to look for the chest and we’ll have half the yachties shadowing us everywhere we bloody go.”
With the auxiliary generator closed down for the night there was no noise to cover his voice, and no wind to blow his words away. I crept up the outside steps to the wheelhouse doorway, but Mere was still sound asleep, and there were no noises coming from the galley. I walked back and slumped down into the chair again.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No problem,” I replied. “It probably wouldn’t have made much sense to them anyway.”
He lowered his head to mine. “Do you think we’ll really find it?” he asked.
“If it’s still there, we’ve got a good chance.”
“You reckon somebody else might’ve already found it?”
“It’s possible,” I replied. “But I don’t think so. None of those guys on the Seeadler’s motor-boat would’ve had the funds to come back and look for it, and von Luckner had more money than he needed. There would be no sense in him coming back. He only hid the chest to keep it out of British hands until he had a chance to retrieve it.”
“What about the locals?”
“The Fijians?”
“Yes.”
“If they’d found it, the whole world would know. They wouldn’t be able to keep it quiet. No, I think we’ve still got a bloody good chance of finding it. I just hope it’s all going to be worth it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for all we know there might only be a few hundred pounds in old paper currency. It might have been worth a lot back in 1917, but not worth a pinch of bird poop nowadays.”
“Yes,” he whispered again. “But if it were in gold sovereigns, say, with each one having a face value of one pound, then a hundred pounds’ worth of sovereigns could be worth five thousand dollars at today’s gold prices, maybe even more.”
“Yes, well,” I replied. “Let’s not count it until we’ve found it, okay?”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”
We sat in silence, each with our own thoughts, although I knew where Henry’s were. Mine were on the dusky maiden down in the fo’c’sle. I had almost made up my mind to sneak back down when my thoughts were interrupted by a couple of snorts from behind me, and the sound of trickling water. I turned to find Rick urinating over the rail into the sea, the sound of the splashing somehow seeming quite natural in the peaceful surroundings.
“How about taking the boat out for the day?” he called over his shoulder.
“Where to?” I asked.
He yawned again. “Sai was saying that there’s a small island a couple of miles away around the coast.” He rearranged his shorts and stuck his head through the cabin doorway. “Hey, Sai!” he yelled. “Come up here for a minute!”
His loud voice was enough to stir both Mere and Kini from their sleep of the dead, and suddenly the peace and tranquility was destroyed, lost until the next sunrise could be caught in peaceful solitude. The three chattering females joined us on deck, by now each of them dressed in lon
g work shirts, the tails flapping around two pairs of shapely bare legs – Mere had managed to get into a pair of somebody’s faded shorts: probably Henry’s.
“Sai?” Rick asked. “What was the name of that island again?”
“Nukulau.”
It took him three or four tries before he got the pronunciation right, but it still sounded more lyrical when she said it. He turned to Henry.
“Be a sport, mate, and get the chart from your boudoir.”
Henry went pink again and scuttled off to the wheelhouse, eyes cast down to the deck. He was back a minute later, the blush gone from his face but his eyes still averted, the British Admiralty chart for the main island of Viti Levu in his hand. He passed it over to Rick, who had taken his chair. Rick opened the chart out on his knees and folded it around to the relevant section.
“There it is,” Sai said, her head over his shoulder and one coffee-coloured finger touching the thick paper.
He passed the chart across to me, Sai’s finger still firmly implanted on the island as she leaned over towards my chair. I caught one quick flash of pointed breast before I dragged my eyes to the chart.
“What do you reckon?” Rick asked. “Take her up the inside, or out through the reef?”
I smiled at Sai and she straightened up. I could be tempted there, I thought to myself.
The island seemed to be about fifteen to twenty acres in area, and situated something under ten miles to the east of us as the crow flew, but with the Suva peninsula barring our way it would be a trip of twelve to thirteen miles around the outside of the reef. The inshore channel threaded its way between the rocky shore and the inside of the reef, but at low tide we would come fairly close to some of the shallower areas. I didn’t feel inclined to risk having the Sally May become stuck on an unmarked sand patch while we waited for the tide to turn again. It might draw attention to us: people staring at the huge trawler high out of the water. I wanted to keep as low a profile as possible. We could do without our picture in the local paper.
“Around the outside,” I said. “It’ll be about five miles further, but we should be able to move faster. What’s the weather look like out to sea?”
There wasn’t much wind in our small bay and the harbour looked fairly calm, which meant that the open sea should be smooth enough. I wasn’t worried about the three of us; but three sea-sick females would be of no use to anybody.
“Should be okay,” Rick replied. “We can always turn back if it comes up rough.”
“Right,” I agreed.
“What’s on this Nukulau, anyway?” Henry asked.
“There’s a sandy beach,” Kini said with a rush. “And coconut palms; plenty of grass to walk on, and fresh water. Can we please go?”
Who were we to turn down such a request? I looked at my two partners. They both nodded, Henry wearing a pleased grin.
“Okay,” I said. “We go; but what about togs for you three?”
“Togs?” Mere asked.
“Yes,” Henry replied. “Togs, swimming trunks, bathing suits, bikinis, whatever.”
“Oh!” Sai smiled. “If you lend us the money, we can each buy a sulu at the Tradewinds’ shop.”
“What’s a sulu?” Henry asked, just beating me to the question.
“Don’t ask,” Rick interrupted. “Just give them the money.”
I handed Kini a twenty-dollar note.
Henry ran the three girls ashore in the dinghy and waited while they spent the money. They returned proudly displaying three lengths of brightly coloured cotton material, each about three feet wide and six feet long, covered in birds, fish, shells, and various Fijian motifs. Kini passed a couple of dollars back to me as they trooped down below to try on their purchases. There was much giggling before they reappeared, each with a length of material wrapped around her body just beneath the armpits and reaching down to an inch or so past the knees. Mere’s fell a little further, but the hibiscus flower she had plucked from the hotel garden and placed behind her left ear more than made up for the difference.
“Sarongs!” Henry burst out, and his eyes lit up. He was finally seeing the beauty that less tolerant eyes would deny.
“Hey, terrific!” Rick cried out. “We’ve finally hit the South Seas. Coconuts and dusky maidens!”
There were laughs and giggles all round.
“Let’s get this show on the road!” I shouted above the uproar. “We’re wasting precious time!”
******
Nukulau was everything Sai and Kini had said it would be, and then some; but we weren’t the only ones there. By the time we had arrived and anchored close in to the deeply shelving beach it was almost ten o’clock. Three small speed boats were already anchored at the beach, their passengers now seated on woven mats spread out on the sand. We had seen the low-hulled vessels bouncing along inside the reef as we had ploughed our way steadily out through the open sea.
Back towards the curve of the Suva peninsula I could see two other boats making their way through the inshore beacons, both of them launches, maybe twenty to thirty feet in length, moving at six or seven knots, knowing that they had the whole day before them.
By midday the crowd had increased to more than fifteen individual craft of all shapes and sizes, most of them occupied by families of European descent; and just after one o’clock a large glass-bottomed launch arrived with at least fifty tourists on board. I presumed it was glass-bottomed, for that’s what the wording along the side said. It only stayed an hour and a half, the camera-slung tourists walking around the island, staring at the few locals, and watching one of the Fijian boys from the glass-bottomed boat as he climbed a coconut palm and threw down several of the large nuts. They had taken photographs as he had shinnied up the trunk and were still clicking away as he prised the smooth green husk off and sliced a hole in the top of the pale-brown coarse nut revealed beneath. Only a few of them could be enticed into drinking from the young nut, and those that did weren’t saying much.
Kini yelled out something to the boy and he called back. Without even a backward glance she was over the side and swimming the few yards into shore. There were a few seconds of banter between the two of them, more laughter, a playful slap from Kini, and then he knocked the top off another nut and handed it to her. She strode back to the water, her head held high as the tourists stared at the thin wet cotton sulu clinging to bare skin, and swam out on her back, the prized nut held high.
Sai bent low over the rail, displaying more than just the backs of her thighs; causing Henry to shake his head in disbelief at what was happening to us; and passed the nut up.
“Here,” she said. “Wai-ni-nui, coconut milk. Try it. It’s good. It’s sweet and cool.”
She was right. I passed it over to Rick.
“Mmm,” he said. “Not bad. Be great with a bit of gin. It’s a pity we’ve only got whisky. Here, Henry, get some of this into you.”
******
We had a couple of beers with lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon swimming and frolicking in the water with the girls, ducking them and roaring with laughter as they screamed and came after us. They were naturals, the water their second home. I soon got used to the dark looks from some of the women sitting on the beach with their children and ever-attendant husbands, the husbands sneaking envious glances our way from time to time.
******
The speed boats and the Sally May were amongst the last to leave the island. The heavier launches and their slow-revving inboard engines had drifted off as soon as the shadows had started to lengthen. It would take them an hour or more to get back to the Royal Suva Yacht Club, and they would want to be there for the last few drinks of the day.
We ate dinner on the way back: cold roast chicken, rice and some of the green leafy vegetable Sai had persuaded Rick to buy at the market the previous morning. The girls cooked it in juice squeezed from the meat of a ripe coconut that Kini had found on the island. Mere had been delegated the task of husking it, and laboriously scraped the
meat from the shell with something she had found in the tool locker.
“Hey!” Henry said. “This is terrific. What’s it called?”
“Roro vaka lolo,” the girls replied in unison.
We gave up trying to repeat it.
It was approaching dusk as we glided back to our anchorage in the Bay of Islands. I felt Kini brush beside me as I watched the anchor chain rattle up from the chain locker and splash down into the water.
“Andy?” she said, tittering again. She couldn’t stop giggling whenever she said my name. It had annoyed me at first until the girls explained that in Fijian it meant princess or lady.
“Yes, coconut girl?”
She giggled again. “We have to go soon.”
“Oh,” was all I could say. I had thought somehow that they would be with us for a few more days at least.
“Why?” I asked at last.
“Sai has to be at work early in the morning and I am on duty at eight tonight.”
It was then I remembered that they were both working: Kini a nurse at Suva’s Colonial War Memorial Hospital and Sai a housegirl for some Australian family. Mere had said that she stayed at home, whatever that meant.
“Can’t you both take a day off sick?” I asked.
“Sai already has. She should have been at work yesterday morning. If she doesn’t turn up tomorrow she might lose her job; and if I don’t go soon I will get into trouble with the matron.”
“Well,” I said quietly, placing my hand softly on her shoulder. “You don’t have to go right away, do you?”
It was the first time I had seen her embarrassed as she read my meaning. “No,” she said in a whisper, her head turned downwards, a smile on her lips. “But soon.”
“Come,” I said, kissing her gently, taking her by the hand and leading her into the saloon towards the fo’c’sle ladder.
“Where are you two sex maniacs off to?” Rick quipped. “As if we didn’t know.”
“The girls have to go soon,” I said out of the side of my mouth, and kept on moving down the short ladder.
Two minutes later there was further movement on the steps as Rick and Sai succumbed to the balmy evening.
The Stone Dog Page 7
