The Golden Reef (1969)

by Pattinson, James

  The yawl slipped away from her moorings in the early morning when few were awake to see her go. She went under engine power until the wind came to fill her sails and sweep her out of the Channel towards the great rollers of the Atlantic. And thus, quietly, without fuss or publicity, she dropped the coast of England astern and set out on the long voyage to where a fortune in gold bars beckoned seductively from a lonely reef in the heart of the wide Pacific.

  Chapter Three

  Limpets

  When Keeton stepped ashore in Sydney he had a feeling that at last, after all the hazards and discomforts of the long drawn out voyage to the South Atlantic, round the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean, he was once again almost making contact with the treasure of the Valparaiso. For it was here that the ship had loaded her gold and from here that she had gone to her final resting place. In Sydney, if anywhere, the ghosts of the Valparaiso’s crew might be expected to walk, treading the hot pavements and gliding into the bars, the restaurants, the places of entertainment.

  It was strange to think that here perhaps, walking these same streets, were women who had known those seamen and taken their money. Did any of them remember? Or had the crew of the Valparaiso slipped away into the forgotten past even as the ship had slipped away? Keeton hoped so. He wanted to stir no memory, cause no publicity.

  And then two men fell in beside him, matching their steps with his.

  ‘So you finally got here, Charles,’ Smith said. ‘We was getting fed up with waiting. We began to think you might be drowned.’

  Rains laughed. ‘And we wouldn’t want you drowned, Keeton. We think a lot of you.’

  Rains was sun-tanned. He was wearing light grey trousers and an open-necked shirt that revealed the black hair on his chest. His belt was of crocodile leather and had a silver buckle. Smith’s skin was yellow; he had a sickly, jaundiced look.

  ‘How did you get here?’ Keeton’s voice was bitter. He thought he had got rid of these two, and here they were, just waiting for him. It was enough to make any man feel bitter.

  ‘By sea,’ Rains said, and laughed again. ‘How else would a pair of seamen travel from England to Australia?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A drink. That’s what we all want. It’s hot.’

  ‘I’m not drinking with you. I don’t want anything to do with either of you.’

  Smith gave a lop-sided grin. ‘No? But we want something to do with you, Charles, and that’s the truth. Why else would we be here? It’s a long way to come for half a dozen words. And we’ve been waiting the devil of a time too. You made a slow passage. That’s the worst of sail. It’s out of date.’

  ‘Now come along, boy,’ Rains urged. ‘A drink won’t hurt you. And what harm can it do to listen to what we have to say?’

  Keeton saw the logic of that; no harm could come from listening. He could still keep his own counsel.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll have that drink.’

  Rains nodded. ‘That’s more like it. Now you’re beginning to play.’

  ‘I’m not playing. I’m just going to listen.’

  ‘You’re a tough kid, Charles,’ Smith said. ‘I don’t know how you got to be so tough.’

  ‘Maybe it was dealing with people like you.’

  ‘Come along,’ Rains said impatiently. ‘I’m thirsty.’

  Later, with a glass of beer in his hand, he said to Keeton ‘So you were fooling all the time.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ Keeton said, and stared into Rains’s slightly bloodshot eyes.

  Rains wiped sweat off his forehead with a grimy handkerchief. ‘Ah, come off it, boy. You know what I mean well enough. About that loss of memory game. You never lost your memory any more than I did.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, Keeton, no. You were sly though. No sailing away to foreign parts while we were in sight. But as soon as our backs were turned you were up and away. Well, that’s how we figured it’d be. But we kept in touch; we had our spies. And when we heard you’d weighed anchor we knew just where you were headed; so we got here first.’

  ‘You’re clever,’ Keeton said.

  ‘Oh, we’re clever right enough. That’s why you’d better change your mind and let us in on the deal.’

  ‘What deal?’

  Rains’s patience began to wear a little thin. ‘Now, don’t act dumb. We know you’re heading for the Valparaiso, so you’d better take that as read. If you don’t let us in at the front door we may sneak in at the back. There wouldn’t be any half-share for you then. You might even meet with a nasty accident; maybe a fatal one.’

  ‘You’re threatening me again.’

  Smith nodded emphatically, his sharp nose prodding. ‘You bet your sweet life we’re threatening you. So you’d better co-operate.’

  Keeton looked at him contemptuously. ‘Do you think you can frighten me, you little rat?’ He turned suddenly on Rains. ‘And you; what kind of man are you? What kind of man would abandon a ship and leave his own captain on board – helpless? Tell me that.’

  Rains was taken aback by the unexpected attack. He looked uneasy.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about Captain Peterson.’

  ‘He was dead. He was dead before we left the ship. Smithie can vouch for that. That’s so, isn’t it, Smithie?’

  ‘You said he was dead,’ Smith answered. ‘That’s what you told everybody. I ain’t no doctor. I don’t know about things like that.’

  Rains’s thick, rubbery lips were moving as though in a snarl; but he kept his voice low. ‘Of course he was dead. He was stone cold; no doubt about it.’

  ‘He lived two days after you took off,’ Keeton said. ‘There was a cat too. But I don’t suppose you could be expected to worry about a cat’s life when you didn’t care two pins for a man’s.’

  Rains was silent for a few moments; then he began to laugh softly, his chin quivering. ‘So you’ve found your memory, Keeton. So you finally admit that the Valparaiso didn’t sink. Well, that’s something.’

  ‘It won’t do you any good,’ Keeton said. ‘You’re not going to make anything out of it. And if you’re thinking of causing trouble, just bear in mind what I said – Peterson lived for two days. He was alive when you took to the boats to save your own lousy skin. Remember that. And I’m warning you here and now, keep out of my way. That goes for you too, Smith. Stay clear of me.’

  He set down his empty glass and walked out of the bar and into the street. The sunlight hit him like a spear but he scarcely noticed it. He was wondering what Rains and Smith would do now. What he had revealed to them made little difference; they simply knew for certain now what they had guessed before. They could not use the information to force his hand, since to reveal it to others would be to spoil their own chances of laying hands on the gold. And Rains would certainly not wish to revive any official interest in the loss of the Valparaiso.

  So what could they do? To prevent his sailing would not serve their purpose. They could of course hunt for the ship themselves, but without knowledge of how long the derelict had been adrift they could have little hope of finding her. He gave a laugh: Rains and Smith were helpless and he could dismiss them from his mind.

  ‘Let them do what they like,’ he muttered. ‘They’ll get none of my gold.’

  When he returned to the yawl he found a man waiting for him on deck, a lean, sinewy Australian whose face was as bony as his own.

  ‘Name’s Ferguson. I represent the Star.’

  Keeton ignored the proffered hand and asked coldly: ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A talk.’

  ‘What about?’

  Ferguson looked down into the cockpit of the yawl. ‘Why don’t we go inside? I’d like to take a look at your living quarters. It’s my job to be inquisitive.’

  ‘I don’t like reporters,’ Keeton said; but he went into the saloon and did not try to prevent Ferguson from following.

  Ferguson looked roun
d the saloon with interest. He sat down on the settee on the starboard side, fanned himself with his hat and nodded slowly, as though approving what he saw.

  ‘Pretty snug. Galley through the doorway there. Fine. I understand you sailed from England single-handed. Quite an achievement.’

  ‘It’s been done before. It will be again. I don’t claim to be unique.’

  ‘You are in one way,’ Ferguson said.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Picked up from a ship’s boat in November 1945, suffering from loss of memory. Survivor from the S.S. Valparaiso which was sunk by a Jap submarine nine months previously. Not every man can say that.’

  Keeton took a cigarette from the packet Ferguson offered. ‘Seems you know a lot about me.’

  ‘We check up. Especially when there might be a story.’

  ‘What story would you get out of this?’ Keeton asked warily.

  Ferguson drew smoke from his own cigarette and allowed it to drift slowly from the corner of his mouth. He had bright, keen eyes that seemed to be trying to probe into Keeton’s mind. His voice had a metallic quality.

  ‘Occurred to me you might have got some of that memory back. The Valparaiso was news. Had a stack of gold on board.’

  ‘So I’ve been told,’ Keeton said drily.

  ‘You mean you still don’t recall any of it yourself?’

  ‘Nothing, Mr Ferguson, nothing.’

  Ferguson stared up at the white deckhead; he seemed deeply interested in the way the tobacco smoke spread itself out above his head. Keeton noticed that there were shallow depressions on each side of Ferguson’s face just above the cheek-bones, as though the skull had been hollowed out, and the skin above his nose had a heart-shaped patch of discoloration like a brand that had been stamped there. The scragginess of his neck was emphasised by a shirt collar that was at least two sizes too big, and the prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down when he swallowed.

  ‘A pity,’ he said at last. ‘We could maybe have done a deal.’

  ‘What kind of deal?’

  ‘Well, look at it this way. Suppose you had remembered something about the Valparaiso or about that time between the ship going down and you being picked up. Nine months. That’s a whole lot of time unaccounted for. And again, suppose you were on your way back to the scene of the events hoping to pick up some threads, maybe even to trigger off that lost memory. That would be a story, you know.’

  Keeton stared at Ferguson without expression. ‘What would the deal be?’

  ‘You could give me the story – exclusive. And I could help you in various ways. The paper might be willing to pay your expenses on certain conditions.’

  ‘There is no story,’ Keeton said.

  ‘Why are you here then?’

  ‘I’m sailing round the world.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For fun.’

  Ferguson stared at Keeton’s hard, unsmiling face. ‘You don’t look like you were getting a hell of a lot of fun out of it.’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘I agree.’

  Ferguson’s left eyelid fluttered, and Keeton thought at first that it was a wink. But the eyelid continued to flutter and he came to the conclusion that it was simply a nervous tic. He did not trust Ferguson. He had a suspicion that behind the hope of a story was something more. Ferguson knew all about the Valparaiso’s gold, and gold had a fascination for all kinds of people.

  The journalist’s next words convinced him that he had reason to be suspicious.

  ‘Funny thing,’ Ferguson said; ‘we’ve got two other survivors from the Valparaiso in town.’

  ‘Oh,’ Keeton said.

  ‘That’s so. Mr Rains and Mr Smith. Maybe you’ve run across them.’

  ‘Maybe I have.’

  Ferguson drew more smoke out of the cigarette and appeared to drink it. It was a long time coming up again, as though it had been on a journey to distant places.

  ‘Bit of a coincidence, the three of you being here all at the same time. Could be you arranged it like that.’

  ‘No,’ Keeton said.

  ‘You have seen them, though?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen them. I had a drink with them.’

  ‘You don’t make it sound like a great pleasure. I sort of gathered you weren’t as pally with your old shipmates as you might be.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I had a talk with the other boys.’

  ‘Rains and Smith?’

  ‘That’s so.’

  ‘What did you get out of them?’

  ‘Not much,’ Ferguson admitted. ‘Not yet anyway. But I’ve got a nose for a story and I scent one here.’

  ‘There is no story,’ Keeton said again. ‘Not from my side anyway.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll have to go back to the others.’

  ‘Maybe you will.’

  Ferguson leaned back on the settee and half-closed his eyes. ‘What’s up with you, chum? You sound like something was eating you. You got a grudge against me?’

  ‘I don’t like snoopers.’

  ‘I’m no snooper. I’m just an ordinary newspaperman.’

  ‘Sounds like the same thing to me.’

  ‘I just ask questions,’ Ferguson said. ‘If a man doesn’t want to answer, that’s all right; he’s entitled to keep his mouth shut. But there’s no law against asking.’

  ‘Well, you’ve asked. That’s your job finished. Suppose we call it a day.’

  Ferguson picked up his hat. He was about to go up the companionway to the cockpit when he paused and turned again to Keeton.

  ‘Let me give you a word of advice. Don’t go around looking for trouble. It’ll come quick enough. But don’t go hunting it.’

  He rammed his hat on his head and went out into the hot afternoon. Keeton felt the yawl heel over as he jumped from the deck.

  Next day the Star had a story. Keeton bought a copy and swore when he saw the headline: ‘Reunion of Treasure Ship Survivors.’ He began to read what Ferguson had compiled.

  ‘When Mr Charles Keeton sailed into Sydney harbour in his yacht Roamer he little expected to meet two former shipmates, Mr Stephen Rains and Mr Bernard Smith. But so it turned out. Mr Keeton had navigated Roamer all the way from England single-handed via the Cape Verde Islands, Cape Town and various other ports of call. Mr Rains and Mr Smith, starting from the same point, chose a less hazardous and more rapid form of transport: they came by ship. What adds a touch of piquancy to the story is the fact that these three men are the only survivors from the S.S. Valparaiso, sunk by a Japanese submarine somewhere in the Pacific in January 1945.’

  Keeton read on, fuming. Ferguson had done his homework thoroughly; he had all the details. There followed a brief description of the Valparaiso, an account of the picking up of Rains and Smith, and then, months later, the astounding reappearance, apparently from the dead, of Keeton, with no recollection of anything that had occurred. Ferguson had omitted nothing; he had thrown it all in. In addition he had stepped up the value of the gold to five million pounds, possibly in the belief that this inflated figure would give the story more attraction in his readers’ eyes.

  ‘I spoke to all three men,’ the report went on. ‘Mr Keeton in the snug little cabin of his yacht was guarded. Laughingly he referred to me as a snooper and said that I would get nothing out of him. “I am sailing round the world,” was all he would say when quizzed about his plans. Had the meeting in Sydney really been accidental or had it been arranged? Mr Keeton was not telling; but he did admit that the three survivors had had drinks together. No doubt these heroes of the War at Sea had much to talk over, although Mr Keeton’s loss of memory unfortunately blacks out much of his own past.’

  ‘Damn him,’ Keeton muttered again. ‘Damn his filthy eyes.’

  He came to the last paragraph. ‘Surely the thoughts of many of our readers will be with this modern Captain Slocum as he sets out on his lonely voyage across the wide Pacific, for who knows what dangers may lie ahead of hi
m in the vastness of those great waters?’

  Keeton crushed the paper into a ball and flung it away.

  ‘Damn their thoughts! Damn them all to hell!’

  The last thing he had wanted was this publicity.

  Chapter Four

  Setback

  Keeton had hoped to leave Sydney as unobtrusively as he had slipped away from England. But, thanks to Ferguson, this was no longer possible. A royal yacht could scarcely have had a more enthusiastic send-off than that which was given to the Roamer. Ships hooted, sailors cheered, and a swarm of little craft, under power and sail, accompanied him on the first stage of his voyage.

  ‘Confound Ferguson,’ Keeton grumbled. ‘And confound all these bloody idiots with nothing better to do than get in my way.’

  He wondered how long they would maintain contact. Suppose some fanatic, inspired by his example, should decide to keep him company across the Pacific. But when he considered this idea in the cool light of reason he saw that it was not a possibility. However much another yachtsman might have wished to keep in touch, he would not have been able to do so; in the very first night the two vessels would inevitably draw apart.

  He need have had no qualms; when the next day dawned he was alone. He looked towards the horizon beyond the bows of the yawl and already he could almost feel the gold in his hands. Now it was only a question of time – time to reach the reef and time to lift the treasure from the strong-room.

  In the event it took just three weeks to get there. It was a day of clear skies and calm sea – perfect for his purpose. Years had passed since he had last been near this spot, and often in the course of those years he had been tormented with the fear that somebody else might have discovered the Valparaiso and might have taken the gold. But always he had consoled himself with the thought that the wreck was so small and the sea so vast; the chances were a million to one against its being sighted.

  He saw the reef at last; he saw the surf creaming over it just as he had seen it so many times; just as he had remembered it. Only one thing was missing to make the picture complete – the ship.