by Dudley Pope
“We ought to proceed with scientific precision,” Yorke said mockingly. “If one or two people who know the poem just walked around the island looking for possible sites and checking the ‘three by three’ part, we might save a great deal of time and effort.”
After supper when the table had been cleared, Ramage spread out some paper and made a rough sketch of the section of Snake Island he already knew. He shaded in the area the men had worked on during the day, and those where Colon’s men had been unsuccessful.
“Which would you prefer?” he asked Yorke. “Search or dig?”
“Search!” Yorke said promptly.
For three days they searched the island, Ramage taking Jackson, Yorke accompanied by Stafford and Bowen with Rossi. Slowly they worked their way over the lower foothills on the east and north-east sides of the island. From Cabeza de Perro, the headland on the east side of where the rafts had landed, Ramage was sure they were getting warm: just opposite, half a mile away, was a small island, Culebrita, with another to the northwest. There were two sections of beach which fishermen obviously used as landing places, and there were several flat areas like platforms close by in the low hills. But there was nothing near the platforms that answered the “three by three” description.
Late in the evening Ramage and Yorke were sitting on the low wall outside their house and looking down at the reflection of the stars on the mirror-like surface of the bay.
“It could take a year,” Yorke said.
“It could,” Ramage said stubbornly. “But that wasn’t the intention of whoever hid the treasure.”
“I’ve been trying to picture him,” Yorke said. “After all, who buries treasure, and why?”
“People like us a century or so ago.”
“How do you mean?” Yorke asked, and suddenly sprang up and gave a bow. “Madame.”
Maxine had walked to the wall from her parents’ house.
“Are you talking affairs of state, or may I sit and listen?”
Yorke left Ramage to reply.
“You are always welcome; I’ll get you a chair.”
She gestured for him to remain seated. “I will sit on the wall with you.”
She sat between them and arranged her skirt. Then she turned to Ramage and gave an impish smile.
“We’re trying to look into the mind of the corsair who buried the treasure,” Ramage said.
“How fascinating. Please continue, I shall feel important if I can help.”
They had been talking for several minutes when Maxine asked Ramage to repeat the clue. When he had done so she commented: “I would expect five lines. Peut-être … did someone forget a line?”
“By jingo!” Yorke exclaimed. “I think she’s right.”
And Ramage knew she was. Colon had fooled him.
“If you’ll excuse me for a few minutes,” he said.
He collected Jackson and Stafford, gave them instructions and took them to the hut being used as a prison. In a sudden fit of pique Colon had refused to give his parole, so Ramage had to keep him locked up and guarded.
Jackson led the way, carrying a lantern, reassured the sentry and followed Ramage into the room.
Colon, eyes blinking in the light, looked wary.
“The poem,” Ramage said abruptly. “You forgot to tell me one of the lines. I hope you made no other mistakes.”
Colon shook his head. “I told you everything.”
“I saved your life,” Ramage said.
“Do you usually murder prisoners?”
“Listen carefully,” Ramage said, not troubling to keep the bitterness from his voice. “Since the Inquisition, you people have had a bad reputation where prisoners are concerned. Now, think like a man. If I fell into your Colonel’s hands, and he discovered I knew a poem which was the clue to the whereabouts of a treasure trove … you know what he would do!”
“He would behave like a gentleman.”
“Rubbish!” Ramage exclaimed angrily. “He would torture me, and you know it—just as the Intendente tortured that family in the first place. You can even guess how he would torture me!”
Colon’s silence told Ramage he had been lucky in choosing the Colonel as an example.
“Now,” Ramage said ominously, “all I have to do is to imitate the Colonel. Then you can have no complaints.”
Colon was beginning to perspire. Tiny beads of sweat mottled his brow and upper lip. His eyes jerked from side to side so much that Jackson stood with his back to the door.
“Send these men outside so that I can talk!” Colon whispered.
“They speak no Spanish.”
“How can I be sure of that?”
“You can’t,” Ramage said unsympathetically. “You have to take my word for it.”
“I will tell you,” Colon said. “I told all of it except for the first line.”
“Well, go on,” Ramage said when the Spaniard paused, and then saw he was concentrating, as if anxious to get it right this time.
You see the three,
By the sound of the sea
And my memory,
Three times three
A tree above.
“That’s all, I swear,” Colon said. “It makes no sense with or without. It is useless. The finest brains in Spain have tried to solve it. And there’s the legend that the treasure lies no deeper than the height of a small man.”
“Is there anything more to tell me?”
“No, señor,” Colon said, “I swear it.”
At last, Ramage thought, he was speaking the truth. Leaving Jackson to lock the door, Ramage strode back to his room with the lantern, took out his copy of the earlier version of the poem, and then began changing the new version to fit the modified translation. He wrote:
You see the three
and hear the sea
and remember me.
Then three by three
Beneath the tree.
He could hear Maxine and Yorke talking quietly outside, and he joined them. They both turned towards him expectantly.
“You were right, Madame, and thank you.”
“Presumably you now have the missing line?” Yorke asked.
Ramage nodded. “It doesn’t help much,” he said, and repeated the poem.
“You stand somewhere and you see three things and hear the sea,” Maxine said, as if thinking aloud. “Three what? Trees, hills, capes?”
“Headlands!” Ramage exclaimed. “Quick, let’s look at the chart!”
They went into the house and Ramage unrolled the chart, but it was too small in scale to be of much use.
“A local fisherman?” Yorke suggested.
There was a chance. He called for his steward and sent him to find the slave Roberto. He would know the most reliable fisherman.
Half an hour later a thin, middle-aged and frightened fisherman stood before Ramage, wide-brimmed straw hat in his hand. The man’s skin was the colour of mahogany, the result of a coloured forebear and a life spent under a tropical sun.
“Please be seated,” Ramage said quietly, indicating a canvas-backed chair.
The man sidled towards the chair, as if fearing some trap, and finally sat down.
“I wish for your help,” Ramage said in Spanish. “A small matter concerning the island.”
The fisherman stared at him.
“The names of the bays and headlands,” Ramage said. “You know them all?”
The fisherman nodded.
“That’s all I want to know,” Ramage said. “Just the names.”
“Where do I start?”
“The entrance of this bay. Imagine we are sailing out of it and round the island with the sun. Round by the west.”
“Dakity,” the man said. “Ensenada Dakity, that’s the first. It’s a bay. Then Malena next to it. Then Punta del Soldado—that’s the tip of the island. There are no more names until you get to Punta de Maguey, and Punta Tampico, with Bahia Linda in between.”
As the fisherman paused to think, Ramag
e knew he was wasting his time; but since the fisherman was now reassured it was easier to let him go on than to shut him up.
“Punta Melones, that’s next. No, Bahia de Sardinas first, then Melones. Then Bahia Tarja—that’s a long bay, all the way between Punta Melones and Punta Tamarindo Chico.
“It’s very rocky off Tamarindo Chico, but it has lobsters. Then comes Bahia Tamarindo, Punta Tamarindo—that’s the other end of the bay—and then Punta Tamarindo Grande. There are no more names for a long distance, until you get to Punta Noroeste—”
Yorke interrupted to ask Ramage: “Didn’t he just give three or four places with the—”
“I’m letting him go on so he doesn’t guess we attach importance to them.”
Yorke nodded, and Ramage waved for the fisherman to continue. Name after name followed—Molinos … Flamenco … Manchita … Playa Larga … Perro … Manzanilla … Vaca … Mosquito.
Finally the fisherman intoned, “Punta Carenero, Punta Padilla. Punta Cabras—and then you are back here.”
“Thank you,” Ramage said. “They have interesting names. Why do you suppose Punta del Soldado was so named? A garrison perhaps?”
“Yes, long ago,” the fisherman said. “My grandfather mentioned it.”
“And Bahia de Sardinas—good for sardines, no doubt?”
The fisherman snorted. “Never one in that bay!”
“No more than there are tamarinds in Bahia Tamarindo!”
“Ah,” the fisherman said knowingly, “plenty of tamarinds there, just at the back of the beach. Beads,” he said. “I collect the pods and we empty out the seeds. Then I soak the seeds in boiling water until they get soft and I can stitch them. Make necklaces for the lady?” he asked, looking at Maxine. “Would she like to buy them? I can make to whatever pattern she wishes.”
Quickly Ramage seized the chance, speaking to Maxine in French as though asking her a question. Then he said to the fisherman: “The señora would like to buy. She wishes me to go to the bay tomorrow to select the seeds.”
“Certainly,” the fisherman said, “I have no seeds in stock. How many necklaces does the lady require?”
“Many,” Ramage said. “For herself and her mother.”
“Ah,” said the fisherman, “it will be a pleasure.”
Ramage told him to report next morning at dawn, and the man left after bowing to Maxine with the natural manners of an honest man.
Yorke raised his eyebrows. “Reveal to us the secrets of the Tropics, O Governor with the Spanish tongue.”
Maxine laughed when Ramage drew himself up and took a deep breath, like a politician about to harangue a crowd.
“Tamarind,” he said gravely. “Vote for the tamarind, known to our Spanish brothers as the tamarindo, and our French sister as the tamarin.”
“It has our vote,” Yorke said equally gravely. “But what we want to know now is, will it win the election, will it reduce taxes and bring us peace and prosperity at no effort?”
“We’ll know by tomorrow,” Ramage said, and explained what the fisherman had told him. “There are three ‘Tamarind Points’—and that’s unusual anywhere—with a ‘Tamarind Bay’ for good measure.”
“Why three points?” Yorke asked.
“Well, the one in the middle is plain Punta Tamarindo, with Bahia Tamarindo to the south down to Punta Tamarindo Chico. Chico can mean ‘small’ or ‘short’. The one to the north, Punta Tamarindo Grande, is just the big one.”
“And now …” Yorke asked.
“We sleep, and at dawn the fisherman takes us there to gather tamarind seeds.”
“Oh good, I must admit I was running short of them,” Yorke said.
“I guessed that,” Ramage said. “By the way, the trees are the wild tamarind. The seeds can be strung together as beads or shaken as a musical instrument.”
Next morning Ramage, Yorke, Jackson and Stafford stood on Punta Tamarindo while the sun rose behind them. The air was dry and aromatic and already the heat had set the shrubs buzzing with insects, while humming birds inspected the blossom. The fisherman tapped Ramage’s arm.
“It is beautiful, eh?”
Ramage nodded, and the man pointed to a cone-shaped island in front of them.
“Cayo de Luis Peña,” he said. “Just goats there now. Good fishing—grouper, snapper, lobster … And the little cays beyond—Las Hermanas. And beyond them, towards Puerto Rico, I don’t know their names. There”—he pointed to the long, low island to the south-west—”that is Vieques. The priest lives there,” he added. “He visits us twice a year.”
Ramage nodded, wondering when to steer the conversation back to where they stood, but the fisherman needed no prompting. He pointed southwards, to their left.
“There, Bahia Tamarindo. The water—have you ever seen it so blue? Then Tamarindo Chico at the end.”
“The point beyond Chico?”
“Ah,” the Spaniard said, with the pride of a shopkeeper displaying an item he knows a wealthy customer will not only admire but buy at the right price. “That is Punta Melones and in line beyond it, the most distant of all, Punta del Soldado.”
“Beautiful,” Ramage said.
The fisherman turned to the north, pointing to his right. “Tamarindo Grande,” he announced. Ramage nodded appreciatively and, turning to Yorke, said in English: “Any comments on the scenery?”
“Yes. For what it’s worth, Tamarindo Grande, the Melon—or whatever it was the fellow called it—and Punto del Soldado are in line. Two miles from each other and a geometrically precise straight line passes through the western tip of each one.”
“And that,” Ramage said, “seems to put paid to our ‘three by three.’”
Yorke shrugged his shoulders.
The fisherman had walked fifty yards away and was beginning to pull the long flat pods from the tamarinds, crack them open and shake the seeds into his sack.
Ramage and Yorke looked around the short headland. There was a scattering of trees, the most prominent being a tall, lacyleaved casuarina, and they strolled towards it.
“Seven trees,” Yorke said. “The significant thing is that seven has no possible connection with three, or three times three!”
“I know,” Ramage said. “I’m getting to the point where things only exist for me if they’re in multiples of three.”
Yorke laughed and bent down to pick up a large sea shell. It was sun-bleached and worn by the sea and the sand.
“How do these things get up here?”
“Birds, probably,” Ramage said. “They find them alive and bring ‘em ashore to eat the animal inside.”
“It’s a pretty shell.”
“A flame helmet.”
“What is?” Yorke asked in surprise.
“That shell. A type of conch—you’ve seen the natives eating the Queen conchs. They cut a small slot here”—he pointed to one end—”and that severs the animal’s anchor so they can pull it out. The birds haven’t learned the trick. This one is a cousin of the Queen conch. You can see it’s shaped something like a helmet.”
“Haven’t seen one before,” Yorke said, turning it in his hand. “I’ll take this one back and present it to Madame.”
The fisherman joined them, his sack of seeds slung over his shoulder.
“You take him back with you,” Ramage said. “Jackson and I will just have a look over the other two Tamarinds.”
Yorke said doubtfully: “I’ve got a feeling the trio of tamarinds is just a coincidence.”
Ramage grimaced. “We might as well clutch at a tamarind as a straw …”
With that Yorke, Stafford and the fisherman began the long walk back to the camp while Ramage and Jackson went northwards to Tamarindo Grande. It was barren; just a few trees and boulders. Then they walked back past Punta Tamarindo to Tamarindo Chico.
Jackson kicked a small stone in anger.
“It isn’t as though the Spaniards deserve to find it, sir!”
“No more or less than us,” Ramage sai
d mildly.
“I suppose not. Do the admirals get a share, sir?”
That’s an interesting point, Ramage thought. “I’ve no idea. Probably not treated like prize-money.”
“But it’s the same thing, isn’t it, sir?”
“It most certainly isn’t! Only a ship can be condemned as a prize. You wouldn’t get a penn’orth of prize-money for capturing this island, for instance.”
“Not even a reward, sir?” Jackson asked hopefully.
“You might get something. Don’t spend it until you’ve received it though, just in case!”
In silence the men started back to the village.
As he walked down the slope to the houses Ramage heard the sound of women’s laughter and found Yorke and St Cast sitting with the St Brieucs on the balcony of their house.
Maxine waved gaily when she saw Ramage and beckoned to him to join them. He would have preferred to go to his own room and sit alone for an hour or two: the visit to Punta Tamarindo was a bigger disappointment than he cared to admit. He’d spent the night and all the time they were walking there thinking that the three headlands called tamarind must fit the poem. His hopes had strengthened when he found three headlands in line, and now he felt flat. His feet were sore from the long walk; his eyes ached from the sun’s glare; his mouth was dry and gritty from the dusty tracks, and mosquitoes and sand-flies had bitten him freely.
“Come!” Maxine called,”We have limonade ready for you.”
As she stood facing him, her eyes sparkling and her hands outstretched, he wanted to take her in his arms. Instead he climbed the steps to the balcony, bowed to the St Brieucs and nodded to the others.
“Such a long face!” Maxine exclaimed.
“Someone knocked his sand-castle down!” Yorke said.
Maxine looked puzzled. “Sand-castle?”
“Mr Yorke likes talking in riddles.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Alors—he has given me a beautiful present.”
Ramage was jealous but said quickly: “Don’t tell me what it is—I’ll guess. Now, let me see—a coronet studded with diamonds and rubies?”
She shook her head and laughed. “Not exactly.”
“A tiara, then—of gold, mounted with a huge emerald and one hundred perfect pearls.”
