Treasure Hunters

by Allan Baillie

  Matt banged a couple of air-tanks on the deck in front of them. ‘They’re done.’

  ‘But nineteen men were not saved from Malacca’s wharfs,’ said Col, getting up. ‘They had been grabbed by the Sultan’s troops and when Sec tried to negotiate for them the Sultan wouldn’t have a bar of it.’

  Col motioned Pat to get his gear on and started to pull on his own fins. ‘So de Sequeira killed two of his captured knifemen to show that “the King of Portugal avenges the treason of his enemies.” He left two of his five ships in flames and sailed with the other three for India, or Lisbon.’

  Pat stopped taking off his shirt. ‘Um, is there something else?’ He was looking at Matt’s Cheshire cat grin.

  ‘There are stories and stories,’ Matt said.

  ‘Oh yes, there’s always something else. And that guy I called Blackbeard, the soldier who was interested in ships. He came back to Malacca as a captain. He sailed to the Philippines, then he was on another captain’s ship when it was wrecked off India, fought the Moors in Africa but he was thrown onto the scrapheap by his King in Portugal. But he had been thinking about Columbus and Malacca all the way round the world. He offered one of the world’s greatest voyages to the King of Spain instead of the King of Portugal.

  ‘Well, the King of Spain gave him five old ships and Blackbeard took them across the angry Atlantic to South America, down the wind-blasted coast to find a narrow strait, which now has his name. He lost ships but he made it into the Pacific, across to the Philippines – very close to where he had sailed before. This made him the first man to sail around the world. He died there and only one of the five ships that left Spain with him sailed around Africa to make it home, but his voyage proved that ships could sail around the globe. The world had begun to shrink.’

  ‘Magellan?’ said Pat.

  ‘Yep. Blackbeard, Ferdinand Magellan.’ Col tapped the token. ‘Maybe he even touched this little token.’

  But Matt was winking at Pat.

  As if there was something else, something that Col didn’t know about the token.

  9 / fright

  Pat adjusted the lead belt and slapped his fins on the deck. ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘Okay, let’s see.’ Col looked up from flicking his large watch.

  Pat spread his arms before him and he knew he looked like a skinny toad. Well, there were the long, long yellow fins, reaching out into tomorrow; the black and yellow neoprene suit which covered him from the neck to his big toe; the lead belt which he put on like it was a saddle, and then there was the BCD, the Buoyancy Control Device, and that looked like a life jacket, which made the toad fat. The lead belt pulled him down but the BCD pulled him up – great.

  The BCD had a heavy air-tank strapped to it with four black lines of air sprouting from the top. One line squirted air into the BCD when needed. A second line was connected to a round instrument consol to tell Pat how much air was in the tank – other gauges on the console told him how deep he was and when he had to leave the water. The third line was connected to a regulator for his mouthpiece – his lifeline. The fourth line did nothing. It led to another regulator with a mouthpiece clipped to the BCD. It was a second emergency line, just in case the first regulator broke down or someone else was in trouble down there. It would probably never be used, it was a late addition to the black lines at the top of the tank, but it changed the look of the other lines. Before, those three lines just looked like three lines but four black lines looked like a crouched octopus on the top of the tank – so much so that the last line was called the octopus.

  And there’s Pat’s watch, the knife and the yellow mask. In the water he would put the mask on his face but now he was wearing it round the neck – not on his head because that would mean he was in trouble. And of course, the snorkel. The snorkel was to breathe at the surface instead of using the precious air in the tank.

  The only equipment Pat needed from the Tub was the tank, the rest he had brought from Sydney. But he did think that he could leave the neoprene suit in the cabin. The suit was far better than the rubber outfits that the old divers used to wear, since the neoprene absorbed just enough water to allow the body to warm it, holding the warm water. That was fine in the cold water off Sydney, but here? But Matt had told him that he would need it ’

  ‘I think he’ll do. What d’you think?’ said Col turning to Matt.

  Matt scratched his stubble. ‘Okay, kid, you look all right. You do need the suit down there, even when the water is almost blood-warm. If you get scratched you could have troubles.’

  Col dropped to the landing, helping Pat down from the Tub’s deck.

  ‘Hey,’ Matt was passing the long fins to Col. ‘You look after my kid.’

  Col grunted. He and Pat slipped into the sea.

  ‘You’re okay?’ Col reached for the hand-held metal detector from Matt.

  ‘No worries.’ Pat washed his mask out in the water so it wouldn’t fog.

  Col checked the lead weights on Pat while Pat fiddled with the BCD, blowing air into it, releasing the air, until he had neutral buoyancy – which meant he could float in the water anywhere between the seabed and the surface without moving a fin. Finally Col waved his long metal detector at the bottom.

  Seeing the anchor cable below him, Pat dipped through the green water to plough into a swaying forest of seaweed. The bottom was no more than twelve metres from the surface, but it looked a long way. Initially, he was disappointed by what he was seeing. Most of the seabed was almost flat apart from a shadowy ridge in the distance and that was it – there was no wreck, no ribs clawing through clumps of coral with fish darting between them.

  Col slid in front of him, catching a sun pattern across his tank. Pat followed, moving his legs almost casually and the fins pushed his body through the water like a shark. A cloud of small, silver fish swept about him. He reached out for them but they swirled around his arm, flashed crimson and whirled away.

  He grinned around his mouthpiece. Suddenly he felt lucky. They were going to find something. Col might like thinking about some day five hundred years ago but he’d settle for today. This dive.

  While Col put the metal detector earphones on and began to sweep the seabed with the disc, Pat moved into the seaweed, pushing the thin stalks sideways, shaking tiny bubbles from the grey strands. Small, bright fish darted around him, like red and yellow sparks. But he couldn’t see anything in the sand.

  They moved slowly from the seaweed to areas of white sand and clumps of bleached coral and then towards a high ridge of thick seaweed and coral growth. Pat watched Col turn and stare up at the Tub’s hull, maybe using it as a marker. The Tub was surprisingly distant, looking like a black footprint in the bright rippling surface.

  You should have told them about the clicks last night, it might have helped.

  Pat moved slowly across the changing sand, from white to grey, watching it swirl slightly under the passing of his fins.

  Suddenly a broad slab of seabed immediately below his nose began to tremble.

  Earthquake! Pat thought wildly as he became perfectly still in the water. He hung half a metre above the sliding sand and he could not think what to do.

  But ’ There were eyes in the sand.

  Two eyes in the sand and as wide apart as the tips of his ears.

  He was drifting slowly down to the eyes, too afraid to flick a single fin to move away. He could see large holes near the eyes, two low bumps and a long ridge disappearing into the sand. There were black splotches on the sand, like a Dalmatian’s coat. But it was not sand at all ’

  In an instant, as if he had been looking at a 3-D puzzle, he saw the giant reef ray a touch away. A metre-wide pancake lifted at its edges, quivering the long, thin tail out of the sand. There were two poisonous spines at the tip of the tail. If the ray whipped those spines into his body he would die ’

  But the ray shook sand from its edges and simply scudded away.

  He kicked himself from the sand as a mass of bubbles
erupted from his regulator and twisted towards the surface. For a moment he clawed after them, but then he stopped and turned back, looking for Col.

  Hey, hey! Did you see that? I was just about to scrape noses with the greatest monster ray ever ’

  But how do you say that underwater?

  And anyway there was Col twenty metres away still staring at his metal detector. He hadn’t seen anything.

  With a sigh and a shrug, Pat slowly kicked towards him. He accelerated when Col grinned over his mouthpiece and waved him over. Col was holding the disc above a shapeless bump in the sand; the needle in the meter near his hand was banging at the end of the gauge. He passed the earphones to Pat to hear them clicking in fury.

  Col scooped away at the sand for a few minutes but the water became cloudy. He frowned and attached a light line to the bump and released the attached yellow buoy.

  Pat watched the buoy wobble to the surface. Then he saw another footprint – a larger hull creaming towards the Tub.

  10 / the officer

  Col saw the approaching hull and motioned Pat to rise slowly as he kicked himself away from the grey sand. He didn’t seem to be worried about this other boat, hardly moving his fins to drift towards Tub’s sunbeam halo.

  There is nothing to worry about, Pat thought as he worked his legs. There are no men with krises hiding in boats, not in this century.

  Above him the other hull swept round the Tub, etching curved lines on the surface, then it slowed and stopped very close. Col hesitated for a moment then swam to the other side of the Tub. The big grey hull had only a few barnacles compared with the coral garden of the Tub’s hull. The Tub’s landing was being pulled up, allowing the boats to almost touch. As Pat slid from under the grey hull he caught a glimpse of something leaping from the other boat to the Tub.

  When he broke water on the other side of the Tub he could see Matt’s head and an officer’s brown cap above the deck. Behind them there was a high grey superstructure, with a mast and a radar dish, but Pat couldn’t see anything else of the other boat. Matt was talking to the officer’s brown cap, which seemed to be pointing down at Matt’s feet. Col was still in the sea, listening.

  ‘We’ve been in this water for almost a year now. We like it here,’ Matt was saying.

  ‘Salvage, is it?’ The officer looked up and Pat could see his eyes, hard and hostile.

  ‘We’re trying to.’

  ‘Treasure hunters,’ the officer said in disgust.

  Pat remembered how cool Matt had been in the rush of the mob and thought: He’ll handle this. No worries at all.

  Matt was silent for a long beat. Then he forced a smile. ‘If we get lucky.’

  ‘I know you. All of you,’ bit the officer. ‘You are a pack of thieves.’

  ‘Read the licence.’

  ‘Means nothing. You are a thief. I know you are a thief; everyone on my ship knows you are a thief. You are born a thief!’

  ‘Take it easy.’ But a tic had begun to throb in the corner of Matt’s right eye.

  ‘You have been stealing from our islands for hundreds of years. White pigs. You are here to steal from us and I know this.’

  Matt’s face darkened. ‘I am not a bloody hundred years old. I am bloody legal to be right here, right now!’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’ Col doubled in the water and grabbed his fin.

  ‘The thieves around here are your bloody government and its grasping clerks!’ Matt’s face was black with anger. ‘We have to pay a fortune to look in the water, and if we find anything it’s Captain Blood!’

  ‘Then you have found something?’ There was an edge to the officer’s voice.

  Col crashed his fins on the deck. ‘Hey, give us a hand!’

  Matt hesitated, jerked sideways, saw Col, and for a moment he looked guilty. He looked back at the officer and bowed his head a fraction. ‘No, nothing. Excuse me.’ He stepped across to Col and yanked him and the metal detector out of the water like Col was a cod. ‘The General, here, wondered if we’ve found anything.’

  The officer was staring intently at the detector.

  ‘Well, we might have found something, sir. Just a moment please.’ Col turned and pulled Pat out of the water and tumbled him before the officer.

  The officer cocked an eyebrow at Pat.

  ‘Oh no, not him.’ Col laughed lightly.

  Pat stared at the officer. Dark brown face with a clipped moustache and a curled lip, a gold chain around his neck, brown short-sleeved shirt with a battery of medal ribbons, a polished belt, razor-sharp creases on his trousers, gleaming black boots. On his belt there was a holster carrying an automatic. He was running his fingers over the flap of the holster, opening and closing it as Col talked.

  Suddenly Pat realised what he was seeing. He wants to shoot us!

  But Col didn’t seem to notice the danger. He slung his air-tank casually onto the deck and lifted the detector towards the officer. Something hard and metallic clicked on the grey boat. Col stilled his hand and watched the eyes of the officer.

  ‘This is a metal detector, you know it?’ Col was talking slowly and gently. ‘It only finds metal, nothing else. Look ’’ He moved the disc slowly towards Pat’s depth gauge and showed the officer the needle.

  Pat looked beyond the officer, at the massive patrol boat with its missile sets, machine gun, anti-aircraft gun, single turret gun and many young soldiers. They were carrying automatic weapons and three of them were pointing their weapons at Col. Pat crunched his fingers together in the silence.

  ‘I know what it is. It is nothing.’ The officer waved the detector away and the guns were lowered.

  ‘Yes, it’s nothing at all. A plaything.’ Col nodded with a smile. ‘But we have found something down there today. Maybe you have brought us luck.’

  ‘I do not give you anything.’

  Pat tightened his fingers. It’s bad again.

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘What is it that you have found?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it’s bigger than the boy, maybe it’s iron.’

  ‘Iron?’ The officer laughed at Col.

  Hey, hey, Pat thought. This is good, isn’t it?

  ‘Iron? Iron is nothing. Worthless. We have sunk many iron ships just for fish to breed.’ The officer looked around the Tub. ‘You have not brought anything from the seabed. Nothing at all.’

  ‘We select,’ said Matt. The tic had died and the flush on his face was fading.

  Pat relaxed his fingers. Okay, we’re getting there.

  ‘We’ve pulled things up and thrown them back. Like they were small fish.’ Col smiled and shrugged.

  ‘I think you do not look for wrecks.’ The officer narrowed his eyes. ‘I think you are running guns.’

  ‘What?’ Matt said sharply.

  Pat swallowed.

  Col glanced at Matt pointedly as he laughed very lightly. ‘You are making a joke of us. This old boat is so slow it would be running bows and arrows ’’

  ‘No, you are running guns to the bandits on the island. You are friends with the bandits.’

  Pat stared at Col. Can you stop it, somehow!

  ‘Would you like a look around our boat, sir?’ Col opened the door to the wheelhouse, showing the row of glowing green screens and resting needles on papers. ‘These give us an idea of the bottom ’’

  ‘Maybe I should call my boys and see what you’re carrying below.’

  Col moved to the cabin. ‘By all means, sir. But there’s not a single gun anywhere on this boat. They will find nothing – except maybe a spear gun.’

  The officer stepped towards the cabin, glanced at the confusion around the bunks and hesitated.

  ‘I am sorry about the mess.’ Col reached inside the cabin and pulled out his wallet.

  ‘Maybe I have got more important things to do.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Col pressed some money into the officer’s hand. ‘Please, our apologies for causing any trouble.’

  The officer pocketed the
money without looking at it and stepped quickly back to his boat.

  And that’s it? Pat twitched a weak smile.

  Col leaned heavily on the wheelhouse as the patrol boat drifted away. ‘Oh boy,’ he said weakly.

  Pat watched the soldiers as they stepped aside for the officer. Then he realised that there were two separate groups on the boat. The main group were the soldiers, sharp young guys wearing red berets and scarves over the usual uniform and carrying gleaming submachine guns. But there were a small number of men right up on the bow by themselves, no berets, no scarves, just casual shirts and baggy trousers. Most of them had long hair but never a beard or moustache. They didn’t look like soldiers but they carried weapons, a few old sawn-off rifles, and some machetes. One of them, wearing a silver chain about his neck, noticed Pat looking and pointed his machete at him without any trace of expression.

  Then the stern of the patrol boat burrowed into the sea and kicked the bow high onto a foaming ridge. The Tub rocked in the wake and pulled frantically at its anchor line for a few seconds.

  ‘How much did that cost us?’ Matt said.

  ‘Not so bad,’ Col shrugged. ‘Fifty American dollars. That’s all that wallet had.’

  ‘Oh, that wallet. The “in case of” wallet.’

  Pat frowned. ‘So we are carrying guns?’

  ‘No bloody fear,’ Col said. ‘If we kept a gun your dad would have shot his foot off a long while ago. Or he would have shot that officer, right?’

  Matt rubbed the side of his nose. ‘Yeah, sorry.’

  Pat looked around in surprise. He had never heard Matt apologise for anything.

  ‘That’s all right. We fixed it. This time.’ Col peeled himself from the wheelhouse. ‘But what is that about?’

  ‘He wanted to show his boys how tough he was,’ Matt said.

  ‘Not that, that.’

  The patrol boat with its cargo of soldiers was curling towards the island.