Pearls

by Colin Falconer

  Pearls

  Colin Falconer

  BROOME, 1913

  'I cannot die unless

  it is my day to die.'

  saying of the Japanese

  pearl divers of Broome.

  Chapter 1

  Lascepede Reefs

  off Point Lagrange

  When Nosiro Tanaka reached the surface he was as good as dead.

  He hung motionless on the lifeline, the monstrous canvas arms of his diving suit limp at his side, streaming seawater. Wes unscrewed the face plate of the helmet, shook his head when he saw the watery blood streaming from the diver's mouth and ears. He removed the helmet from the corselet, and Tanaka was hauled up. He lay on the decking inside the monstrous suit, the only movement the spastic twitching of his fingers.

  Cameron McKenzie frowned, his hands on his hips. 'Well?'

  Wes stood up. 'He be dead, skip.'

  'How the hell did it happen? Did you nae stage him, like I told you to?'

  'Maybe his luck run out, skip.'

  'You know I do nae believe that nonsense!' He stared at Tanaka for a moment, then made up his mind. 'Put his helmet back on!'

  'You doan send him back down, skip?'

  'Do as I tell you, man!'

  There was a buzz of protest from the crew, who were mainly Koepangers and Malays.

  'He be dead, skip,' Wes repeated.

  'He's nae dead yet. His fingers are moving, dammit! Do it!'

  'Maybe you is better lettin' a man die when it's his day,' Wes mumbled. But he nodded to the crew and, grumbling, they hauled Tanaka's body back over the side of the China Cloud. Wes screwed the helmet back onto the corselet.

  'When you've finished doing that, you can help me into the spare diving dress,' Cameron said.

  'You is better lettin' a man die,' Wes repeated, but he said it softly, so that Cameron would not hear. They lowered Tanaka back into the water and the crew went back to work on the hand pumps. Wes fed out the hose and the line over the port gunwale.

  ***

  Cameron did not see the sun go down. He hung suspended six fathoms - eighteen feet - below the hull of the China Cloud. The water slowly lost its luminescence and the silent alien world of the sea closed around him.

  Fear settled like cold lead in his gut. Once a huge sickle-mouthed monster appeared for a moment in the chill green to disappear silently again into the underworld mist. He felt like bait on the end of a line.

  He could hear the steady clack-clack of the compressor engine, sniffed at the galley smoke filtered down his air pipe. When he looked up he could see the weed-encrusted hull of the China Cloud above him, surrounded by the mercury skin of the sea.

  It slowly faded into the gathering gloom ...

  ***

  After an hour at twenty fathoms Tanaka regained consciousness; Cameron saw his eyes flicker open through the face glass then widen in panic and confusion. He screamed, dead silent.

  He had tied Tanaka's hands with rope, knowing that when he came round he would instinctively close his air valve and head for the surface. Instead, as soon as Tanaka was conscious, Cameron signalled on the lifeline for Wes to bring them up to staging depth. He regulated Tanaka's air valve himself. After a while the Japanese stopped struggling, accepting that he was helpless.

  Cameron signalled to him through the face glass. It will be all right now, it will be all right.

  Cameron McKenzie knew better than any man on the pearling grounds the nature of the diver's disease and its causes. While the Japanese divers relied on cadgeput oil and paper charms to ward off the dreaded diver's sickness, Cameron preached the gospel he had learned in the Royal Navy: stage, stage, stage.

  Five years before since he had volunteered from the ranks to join the Deep Water Diving Commission of the British Admiralty. Before the trials in the ice-gloom of a Scottish loch they had taught him how nitrogen was absorbed into the blood at depth, how it expanded and bubbled in the joints and heart and brain when a diver returned too rapidly to the surface. Cameron became one of the first to prove the Navy's theories about 'staging', the name they gave to the practise of waiting at a certain depth underwater to allow the accumulated nitrogen to disperse naturally from the body.

  What had gone wrong in Tanaka's case he could not be sure; perhaps the tide had risen faster than Wes had anticipated, or the Japanese had already pushed his body too far. It was not an exact science. Tanaka had been a diver for thirteen years in an industry where most survived no more than five. Whatever the reason, there was now only one way to save him. They could never get him back to Broome and the new Heinke decompression chamber in time. The sea itself would have to serve as the cure.

  Night fell over the Lascepedes. The light faded from the water. Occasionally a luminous shape would dart through the black sea, huge and quick and terrible. Cam fought down his fear, the urge to signal 'come up, come up!' It was too soon.

  Wes had his instructions. Another five hours.

  Cam had vowed he would never lose one of his divers to the paralysis. In the Navy the captain's responsibility was not only for the ship but to the men that he commanded. In his view that was as true on a pearl lugger as one of His Majesty's frigates.

  Another five hours, nothing for a man to do but listen to the air compressor and the sound of his own heartbeat.

  They hung on the end of the line.

  Chapter 2

  The deck of the China Cloud was bathed in silver; it was a full moon, almost blue, a 'pearler's moon', and so bright after the dark sea it was like coming out of a mine into full sunlight. Cameron blinked as Wes unscrewed the face glass.

  'Orright, skip?'

  'Aye, Wes, I'm okay. How's Mister Tanaka?'

  'He's alive, skip. You put voodoo on him?'

  'No voodoo, Wes. Just Royal Navy science. Now get this damned helmet off me. And tell Curry-Curry to get me my dinner. I've nae eaten since lunchtime!'

  ***

  Wes helped him out of the diving suit, and Curry-Curry, the Malay cook-boy, put a steaming mug of coffee in his hand. He stared at the churning blackness of the sea and shivered. Christ, those five hours were like a lifetime.

  He went down the scuttle. Tanaka lay on his bunk, his eyes fixed on the planking over his head.

  'How are you feeling, Mister Tanaka?' Cameron said. 'Much pain?'

  'Bit. Not much.'

  'You'll nae be diving again for a while. You're lucky to be alive, man!' Cameron took a bottle of square-face gin from a trunk in the corner. He splashed some into the coffee in his enamel cup. 'A wee drink, Mister Tanaka?'

  Tanaka shook his head, his face expressionless.

  'You might at least thank me.'

  'Not my day to die, boss.'

  He leaned on the bunk. 'It was your day to die, Mister Tanaka. You've tried the patience of your Shinto gods a little far, I think.'

  Tanaka closed his eyes. 'I dive for you again tomorrow, boss.'

  'There's nae more diving for you, Mister Tanaka. If you want to kill yourself, it will be on another man's lugger. I'll nae send a man down to die.' He felt bone weary, the tension of the last few hours draining out of him. 'We're sailing for Broome. You're alive only thanks to the good graces of the Royal Navy and Cameron McKenzie. I just pray you'll walk again.'

  He lifted himself onto the top bunk. He groaned and closed his eyes.

  'I owe you, boss,' he heard Tanaka whisper. 'One day I pay you back.'

  'Aye, and maybe one day I'll collect,' Cameron said. Within minutes he was asleep, and in his dreams a massive black eyed monster came out of the deep with its jaws gaping and he woke wide-eyed just a few minutes later in a slick of sweat.

  He heard a cockroach scuttle across the deck. Sleep would not come.

  ***

  The next day Tana
ka was stretchered off the boat and carried to the Japanese hospital. He could not be replaced; good divers were impossible to find in the middle of the season.

  Few of the European owners dived their own boats; the Japanese were far better divers than the whites or even the Malays. They did not suffer so badly from 'squeeze', or from ear bleeds, and they could stay down longer and dive deeper.

  But he had no choice. At least he was better trained for it than most. He tried not to think of what lay ahead, up at dawn each day to climb shivering into the wet canvas suit and heavy lead boots. He would never let anyone know how it terrified him, the stink of wet canvas, the panicked feeling of suffocation as they screwed the helmet into place. 'You fooking cry like a baby,' he heard his father say long ago as he took off his leather belt and wrapped a loop around his knuckles. 'You and your brothers. When will you learn to be a man?'

  You can do it, Cam, you've done it before.

  As soon as Tanaka was on his way to the Japanese hospital he ordered full sail and the China Cloud headed back out to sea, determined to finish the season himself. His pearl - the perfect beautiful wondrous pearl that would sell for a prince's ransom and change his life - was out there waiting for him somewhere.

  In fact, it was just days away.

  Chapter 3

  A fight to the death led him to it.

  Like all oyster shells it was not easy to find in the green gloom of ten fathoms. A russet tree of sea fern was growing on it, making it almost indistinguishable from the mass of coral around it. Cameron did not see it; but another sea creature was more diligent, and had begun stalking it with exaggerated care.

  The sentinel fish that lived in the oyster's mouth had not as yet detected the danger. The octopus was small, its tentacles barely a foot long. A chameleon of the sea, it altered the colour of its body as it crept towards its quarry, changing from dun-yellow to green to orange as it swam from sand to weed to coral. The unblinking eyes were fixed on the oyster shell, waiting its opportunity.

  As the oyster breathed it opened its shell a fraction to filter the sea for food through the fleshy curtain of its lips. Just at that moment the octopus darted forward, plunged its long arms inside the shell, and began to prise it apart.

  The oyster tried to shut tight, but the octopus clamped its other tentacles on the coral to gain leverage, while those inside the oyster's mouth strained to wrench apart its victim's abductor muscles and render it helpless.

  The life and death struggle made the sea fern tremble and threw up tiny puffs of sand on the reef; it immediately caught Cameron's attention. By the time he had lumbered across the octopus had won the battle and was contemplating its succulent and hard-earned meal.

  Suddenly its prize was snatched away. Outraged, it squirted a cloud of ink at the bubble-headed monster that had deprived it of its trophy and darted away.

  Cameron placed the shell in the bag around his neck and moved on. It was just another shell, part of that day's dread labour. He had no sense of premonition. He had no idea that the tiny octopus had just altered irrevocably the entire course of his life.

  ***

  It was late afternoon and the sun hung low and fat and copper on the horizon. The rigging was festooned with shellfish hung out to dry, like washing. The crew would get thirty shillings a bag for them, landed in Singapore.

  The Koepangers were forward, leaning on the rigging, chattering and laughing among themselves. Cameron worked on the catch alone, the empty shells thudding onto the deck as he finished with each one. He was wearing only a Malay sarong at his waist. Unlike most of the Europeans in this part of the world his skin had burned mahogany over the course of a season at sea. He was tall, three inches over six feet with a slightly battered face. He had boxed for the Royal Navy. After all these weeks at sea the beard and the knife in his sarong gave him the look of a Malabar pirate.

  Cameron work steadily, mechanically; opening shell was monotonous work. Only one shell in a thousand provided a pearl, and few of those were of any great value. The smell of kerosene and boiling rice hung over the calm blue ocean. Cameron looked up. 'Cook-boy! What's for dinner tonight?'

  The Malay's head bobbed out of the galley, perfect white teeth framed against a nut-brown face. 'Curry-curry, tuan,' he said.

  Cameron grinned at Wes. It was an old joke. Curry-Curry had not earned his nickname for nothing.

  He picked up another oyster, working the thin blade of the knife through the muscle. The shell fell apart, and he felt with his fingers under the slimy meat for a pearl or 'blister' on the shell. You could sell the barrack by the carat to the buyers.

  He stopped, felt his heart leap in his chest.

  Something, something there.

  Sweat broke in little blisters on his forehead. He drew out a pearl, rolling it between finger and thumb like one of the marbles he had played with as a child. 'Good God Almighty,' Cameron murmured. It was huge.

  He looked up. Wes was staring, open-mouthed. Then he rolled his eyes in his head and made the sign against the Evil Eye. The rest of the crew had all stopped, hushed in awe.

  'You be a rich man now skip,' Wes whispered.

  It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his whole life. It shimmered like the moon. Good God Almighty. He had found what he was looking for; he was holding all his dreams right there in his hand.

  ***

  Cameron was below in his cabin with Wes. Curry-Curry brought them their dinner but Cameron was too excited to eat. He put the pearl into a small leather pouch looped on a thong around his neck, and every few minutes he would put his hand to his throat to touch it, to convince himself he was not dreaming.

  'Dat pearl worth a fortune, skip,' Wes said, scooping another heaped spoonful of rice into his mouth. 'What you do with all that money?'

  'Where there's one pearl, there's more. This is the lynchpin of my future, Wes. With this I can buy my own fleet. I'll build my destiny on pearls.' He clapped a hand on the other man's shoulder. 'Stick with me, Wes. You'll nae go poor.'

  Paddy Mick, the bosun, appeared on the scuttle. He put a hand on Cameron's shoulder. 'Storm she come,' he murmured. 'More better you look him.'

  Cameron put down his plate and followed Paddy Mick up onto the deck. The wind was coming from the south east and a mist of rain had begun to fall. He checked the aneroid. It always fell in the afternoon but by now it should have recovered. It was still stuck on seven.

  Wes shook his head. 'Willy willy season come soon now, skip. Must be close to lay-up.'

  'Aye, looks like it. We'd better head for shelter.'

  A few minutes later the China Cloud set sail for the pearler's camp at Barred Creek, and the sudden end of dreams.

  Chapter 4

  Cameron stood on the prow of the China Cloud, dressed in a flowing white shirt and canvas trousers. He shivered against the cold of the sudden night. Above him, the stars blinked their indecipherable Morse between low darting clouds. A quickening breeze salt on his skin and his breath tight in his chest. Twenty five years old and the world at his feet. Nothing could stop him now. He would not be poor again.

  'Weigh anchor!'

  The riding lights of four other luggers bobbed in the darkness, another fleet seeking shelter from the uncertain weather. Cameron could hear the twang of a guitar from the deck of one of the boats.

  Cameron turned to Wes. 'Tell Curry-Curry to get the men's dinner. We'll anchor here tonight and take another look at the weather in the morning.'

  'Aye skip.'

  Cameron turned away, put a hand to the pearl under his shirt. It was tempting to make the run home for Broome - but there might be a few more weeks in the season yet. Time enough to find more.

  He heard the click of rowlocks. A whaleboat. It emerged from the darkness into the arc of light thrown by the kerosene lanterns on the port side.

  'Ahoy there, China Cloud!'

  Cameron leaned over the port rail. 'Ahoy!'

  'My mastah belong Koepang,' the voice shouted, in
pidgin. 'Send him compliments. Say askim you come longa me for dinner longa him, orright?'

  It was a common courtesy at sea, the chance to talk with another white man after weeks, perhaps months, on the pearling grounds with only native crew for company. And, for Cameron, a welcome opportunity to eat something different from Curry-Curry's infernal stews.

  'Aye,' Cameron shouted back, 'all right!'

  ***

  The sparse silver strands of hair were combed taut as guitar strings across the balding brown head, He had several day's growth of white stubble on his chin and his breath reeked of gin. He thrust out an enormous paw and clapped Cameron on the shoulder with the other. 'Welcome aboard the Koepang! The name's Patrick Flynn, late of Donegal, Ireland, bless her green rolling hills, and more lately of Broome, and pleased to see another white face after six weeks at sea! And who do I have the pleasure of addressing?'

  'My name's McKenzie, sir, Cameron McKenzie.'

  'A Scot! Well praise the good Lord for that then, there I was thinking I'd have to try and be pleasant to another damned Englishman all night. You look like a drinking man to me. Would you care for a little gin?'

  'As long as it's nae too little.'

  Flynn slapped him hard between the shoulder blades. 'Not on the Koepang it won't be! Come down to the stateroom and we'll oil your throat!'

  If it wasn't a stateroom in the grander sense - at least, not as would be found on one of Her Majesty's fleet, Cameron thought - it was a welcome change from the verminous constraints of the China Cloud. If the tablecloth was not exactly spotless, it was at least a tablecloth, and there was polished silver on the table.

  There were two carved mahogany chairs - Cameron usually ate on the edge of his bunk or squatting on the deck - and when Flynn clapped his hands a Malay steward appeared, in white ducks. They were stained, but it was still an impressive display.