The chest? Or another rock.
Feverishly, hand over hand, I followed the cord.
Fifteen seconds later it was there – the altar!
It loomed before my face-mask with a stark suddenness, standing proudly in its own small clearing, surrounded by the green impenetrableness of the unknown, like some ancient temple freed from the final vestige of dense foliage cleaved from some Amazonian jungle.
The pillars stood stark and strong, the chest still firmly cemented to their shoulders, the wire loop bound tightly around the Sea Devil’s treasure. The wire had been Henry’s suggestion. It had held the line.
It would take a week before the current would sweep this turbid water down into the depths of the ocean, leaving the area clear and bright once more. It might have taken days before we found the chest; and at some time during those days we might have given up the search and departed.
I took the new coil of rope from my jacket, this one twice as strong as the other, and tied it carefully to the wire, holding the rest of the coil tight in my hand. I would only have to drift ten feet to lose sight of the chest completely.
Where were the tools? I searched around the base and found two hammers, the miner’s pick, but only one of the chisels, the others had either fallen into cracks and crevices or been covered by debris broken from the reef. No matter, we had others.
Hitting the surface with a splash, I held the cord high in the air and screamed at the trawler. I saw Henry leap to his feet and go racing inside for Rick, and then the pair of them came sprinting out along the back deck yelling with excitement.
“Bring... the... bloody... dinghy!” I shouted.
“You beauty!” Rick yelled at me five minutes later as they bow-waved to a stop. “Bloody terrific!”
I knew what he was feeling; although my stomach had stopped its churning by the time they had reached me.
“Where’s that spare buoy?” I asked.
I tied it to the rope just five feet below the surface this time so that we could easily find it in the morning. I wasn’t certain whether visibility would improve over the next couple of days, or get worse.
“Gee!” Henry said. “That was lucky.”
“Luck didn’t come into it, my friend,” I replied. “I just knew where to look.”
“And if you believe that,” Rick muttered. “You’ll bloody believe anything.”
“Come on you two,” I laughed. “Let’s get back to the trawler. Has there been anything else on the radio about Bebe?”
From the way we were talking about the old bitch you would have thought she was an old and favoured friend, instead of a vicious killer.
“Not much,” Rick replied. “They’re treating it as finished, blown out.”
“Thank Christ for that. What’s for dinner, Henry?”
“Special treat.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yep. Found a couple of pounds of steak in the bottom of the freezer. It’s been there at least three months, but it’s okay, and a packet of frozen peas, and one of beans as well.”
“Sounds good,” I replied. “Any spuds?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?”
“You remember those strange-looking root vegetables Sekove and his mate brought on board?”
“Christ, not those?”
“Yep. Smells quite good actually.”
******
I won’t admit that he was right. The smell was a bit off-putting, but the taste wasn’t all that bad, and it certainly filled the gaps; but even so, three thick slices of the slightly sticky blue-white boiled vegetable were enough for me. The pot was still half full of the sliced dalo at the end of the meal.
“It’ll keep,” Henry said.
“Yeah,” Rick muttered. “Until the next time we need a storm anchor.”
******
I took the first watch that night and Rick sat out the next four-hour stint, leaving Henry awake from three to seven the following morning. Even though the radio didn’t regard Bebe as any further threat, we weren’t taking any chances. We were anchored far too close to the shore reef.
By six in the morning Rick and I were both wide awake, and sent Henry to his bunk for an hour while we knocked up coffee and breakfast for ourselves. Our stomachs satisfied, we hauled the rest of the tools and diving gear out of the storage hold. Petrol fumes still hung heavy in the air.
“I reckon Henry and I ought to go down first,” Rick suggested. “We can clean up the area we were working on before that hell-cat came screaming across the ocean.”
“Okay,” I replied. “That makes sense. You’d better take a few more chisels and another light hammer. I could only find the two heavy ones.”
“Yeah, right.”
We woke Henry and handed him a cup of coffee, not out of kindness, but as the only way to get him back into the land of the living.
The dinghy churned across the water at a sedate speed, with Henry letting the gentle swell run in under the hull as he motored at half throttle over dark water not yet touched by a sun still hidden behind the rim of cliffs. The previous afternoon we had bounced and crashed over the wave-crests in a mad rush to find out whether the chest was lost.
We had decided to anchor the dinghy by the buoy. We didn’t think the islanders would waste time watching us. They would be far too busy repairing their grass huts and corrugated iron houses.
There was nothing for me to do but sit on the trawler and wait, nothing, that is, except for the greasy dishes that Henry had left for me.
I was halfway through those damned dishes when I realised that we hadn’t refilled the diving bottles that had been used on the last dive before the hurricane warning had come through. I left the rest of the dishes in the sink and worked my heart out lifting the compressor up from the storage hold, almost wrenching my back in the process. There was more petrol on the floor where the compressor had been standing, at least half a pint of it. I soaked it up with waste rags and wrung it out over the side. How much more might there be floating around, hiding in pockets formed by the ribs running along the steel floor?
I had one diving bottle half filled by the time they surfaced, which was better than nothing. We only had the five tanks.
“How’s it going?” I shouted as they swung alongside.
“Good,” Rick called back. “I reckon another dive might just do it. Give me an hour to warm up again and we’ll get stuck into it.” He looked across at the compressor chugging away. “Oh, shit. We forgot something, didn’t we.”
I didn’t bother to reply. I could still feel the pain in my right shin where I had bashed it on the lip of the hold.
“By the way,” I said to both of them. “I found some more petrol down there, so be careful.”
I was eager to get down into the water, but I knew Rick needed the surface interval. I wasn’t concerned about nitrogen build-up, for he wouldn’t be doing more than two dives in a row; but it was cold down there at sixty feet, and he needed time to warm his body again. The hurricane had somehow managed to lower the water temperature several degrees.
He sipped on the cup of coffee I had handed him and looked up. “We need a couple of those finer-bladed chisels to get into the corners.” His hands had stopped shaking, the sun beating down on his bare back. “It might be an idea to take the oil drums down with us and see if we can shake the bastard loose before we try to bring it up.”
“Good idea,” I agreed, and called across to Henry as he stood by the saloon door, drying his hair on a towel. “By the way, Henry, I left the rest of those dishes for you.” He mouthed an obscenity so I added: “But at least I made a start.
******
As I reached the bottom I could easily see the progress they had made, for visibility had improved considerably since the previous afternoon. It was now about fifteen to twenty feet, and not so spooky. On the first dive after the hurricane I had been hard pressed to see much past the tips of my flippers and had kept thinking abou
t water snakes, and the big barracuda that had come in several times during previous dives. I wasn’t exactly worried about them, more wary than anything. They had teeth that could cut through a wire fishing-trace, but usually wouldn’t attack unless something drove them to a feeding frenzy.
It was almost possible to see the entire dark outline of the iron chest where it rested on the stone pillars. A few flakes of blackness had peeled away as a chisel-point had hit wide of the mark, slicing into the brittle metal. I gave the top of the chest a light thump with the hammer. It sounded tough enough to survive the ride to the surface.
We had tossed around the question of whether the chest was airtight after all those years. Rick thought it would be. I wasn’t so certain.
The wide strip of tar that had been melted around the seam where the lid met the rim of the chest was still firmly in place, and we hadn’t found any point where it had been separated from that seam; but there might be a pin-hole that had let water seep in, driving the remaining air up into the lid, holding it under pressure. If we raised the chest too quickly that air would expand; and if it couldn’t push the water back out through the pin-hole fast enough, the chest might burst, sending the contents scattering out into the murky water as it rose to the surface.
“Well, why don’t we punch a few holes in the top and let the air out?” Rick had said.
“And what if there wasn’t any water in there in the first place?” I had replied. “We could ruin whatever might be in the bloody thing.”
In the end we decided to let fate have its chance. If the chest contained air, and if that air was under pressure, it might only force the lid open.
The chest had been watertight when it had gone down. The sight of the black tar strip had brought back the memory of Uncle Max telling me how they had tied a large rock underneath to take it to the bottom. To recover it, I now remembered him telling me, they would send a free-diver down with a sharp knife to cut the rope, letting it rise to the surface of its own accord; but had they known it was so deep?
The large rock was still there, the rope long since rotted and gone; but not before the coral had done its work and cemented the chest to the two pillars.
Maybe it might even now float up unaided.
I looked up to see Rick above my shoulder holding the oil drums and a coil of heavy rope. He dumped them to one side, placing lumps of coral on top to prevent the current from rolling them away, and we got down to work again.
Within minutes the old aches had returned to my arms and shoulders as I swung the heavy hammer - one minute of swinging and one of rest; the groove in the coral gradually inching further along the rock.
With five minutes left of our allotted time, and only three hundred pounds in my tank, we lifted the oil drums up on top of the chest, looping the coils of rope around the chest and through the drum handles five or six times, pulling them tight and making certain that they wouldn’t come loose. Rick had more air than me and discharged his regulator under the spouts of the drums while I held them steady. The rope stretched tight around the chest as both drums strained for the surface.
We wedged our flippered feet against the two big rocks and heaved; but although the crack between one end of the chest and the pillar widened, the other end stayed firmly cemented along a ten-inch strip. Ten minutes more and we could have chipped it free. Ten minutes and we might have had it at the surface and been gone. We were out of air; there was no more time.
I signaled to Rick and we drifted up the cord to the surface.
“What a bastard!” he breathed. “We nearly had it.”
“Yes,” I replied. “But we’ll get it on the next dive.”
I threw my weight belt up into the dinghy, rolled my back-pack and tank up over the gunwale, and floated in the water on my back, looking up at the clear blue sky, at the few wispy white clouds drifting lazily where only two days ago there had been a terrifying blackness. Had it only been two days?
The nudge in my back told me that I was daydreaming again.
Rick spat out his mouthpiece. “Come on, mate,” he spluttered. “Get your backside into the bloody dinghy and help me get rid of this bloody gear. I’m freezing.”
I laughed and hauled myself on board, reached down for his back-pack, and heard a shout from the trawler. I looked up to see Henry yelling and pointing towards the shore.
There was a man and a woman on the beach: the man standing, waving when he saw us turn to look, beckoning us; the woman sitting behind him, legs crossed, perched on the large rock that had been the begging hound’s haunches.
“Shit, mate!” Rick exclaimed. “She looks a bit of all right!”
They were both Caucasian: the man well over six feet tall, solid, bearded, faded jeans and a dark green army disposals shirt, hatless, an unruly mop of hair; the girl wearing light brown shorts high in the waist, a yellow T-shirt and large floppy hat drooping down over her face to block out the sun’s burning rays. Even from a distance it was clear that she was something to be appreciated, in spite of her face being in shadow.
“You reckon they could be in trouble?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” Rick replied. “Who do you think they are?”
“Could be someone from the administration.”
“What?” he replied. “Dressed like that? A bird like that?”
“Well, who then?”
“Christ, how the hell should I know!” he paused. “No, hang on a minute. Isn’t that the guy we saw on the yacht near Cagalai? She could be the pair of boobs that filled the yellow bikini-top Henry saw drying on the mast stay.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I think you might be right. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. We can’t just ignore them. Maybe his yacht’s been wrecked and they need help. It’s going to look bloody peculiar if we don’t go in and see what they want.”
“What if they want to come on board?” I asked. “What if they want a lift back to Suva?”
“No hope. We give them some food and water, and point them in the right direction for Sekove’s village around by the harbour. They look fit enough to me, and it’s only a couple of miles across the island.”
“So we go in and find out what they want then?”
He paused again before replying. “Yes, okay, but there’s something not quite right about this. I don’t know what it is, but I’m not happy.”
“Rubbish,” I said, thinking of that yellow bikini top, and pulling the starter.
There was nothing in the dinghy to give us away except for a couple of chisels. We had several more on the trawler so I dropped them over the side as we moved towards the shore.
“What do we tell them?” he asked.
“Same as we told everyone else. We’re sport diving, looking for interesting things to photograph, such as the effects of a hurricane on the reef. Christ, stop worrying!”
I eased off the throttle as we neared the rocky shore, and then shut the motor down, letting the dinghy ride gently forward until it crunched up onto the shingle. Rick stepped out and took hold of the bow.
Neither of them had moved; the woman’s legs were still crossed; the man’s hands now on his hips. I thought they would have at least walked the few yards to the water’s edge as we hit the beach.
“Hi!” I called out.
“How’s it goin’?” the man replied.
“How’s what going?” Rick answered aggressively.
“The divin’.”
“Fine,” I replied. “What’s your problem?”
“We haven’t got one now,” he replied, and his face curled into a satisfied grin.
The feeling that had been troubling Rick suddenly communicated itself to me. The diving knife was still strapped to my calf, but Rick had taken his off. It lay in the bottom of the dinghy under the anchor chain. I saw him turn and look down at it.
A quiet snigger escaped the woman’s lips; the broad-brimmed hat still pulled low over her face; silent communication passing between her a
nd the man.
There was something familiar about the set of her shoulders, and the pale colour of the short blonde hair swinging across the top of those shoulders, and the shape of those proud jutting breasts. I knew what it was the instant she reached behind the rocks and swung the sawn-off shotgun towards Rick’s chest, her fingers curled around both triggers.
Eighteen
“Hello, guys.”
She smiled, the sparkling near-perfect teeth I had known so well glistening in the sunlight.
“Jesus Christ!” Rick groaned, more astounded than surprised.
“Not quite Him, Richard,” she laughed, tilting her head towards the bearded man. “His name’s Sebastian.” She turned back to me, but with the gun still aimed at Rick. He was closer to her than I was. “How’s the treasure hunt going, Andy?”
I couldn’t answer. I sat in the dinghy, deflated, my hand on the throttle controls, the engine silent, my mouth wide open. She was the last person I had expected to see: Judy, our old deckhand; Judy, Rod’s wife.
“Where’s Rod?” I heard Rick ask.
“The bastard’s back in Brisbane,” she sneered.
There was no sense in staying in the dinghy. Judy wasn’t much of a shot, but I knew she couldn’t miss a sitting target. If we were both going to make a run for it the only way was along the open rocky beach, and if I jumped from the dinghy when Rick made his move I would probably fall flat on my face.
I stepped out into the shallow water.
Sebastian leaned down fast for a big man, snatching the gun from Judy’s hands. We were lucky her fingers hadn’t jerked the triggers. Or rather, Rick was lucky.
“That’s far enough!” he snapped.
“What the hell’s going on!” I snapped back.
“All in good time, friend,” he replied. “All in good time.”
The Stone Dog Page 23
