Treasure Hunters

by Allan Baillie

  11 / lump

  Matt opened his hands. ‘Nothing to do with us.’ ‘Never mind that you almost started a war here,’ Col said.

  ‘Okay, I got a little bit hot. But I tell you, after seeing that ape I’m barracking for the flag mob. Bring on the independence.’

  ‘Yeah, great! Fix him!’ Pat punched the air.

  ‘No, they can’t do it ’’ Col shook his head. ‘They don’t understand what they’re facing. Madness.’

  Pat dropped his fist in disappointment. Col should be on their side.

  Col clicked his tongue and stabbed his finger about him. ‘They are all around us. Kalimantan, Aceh, Timor, Irian Jaya, Ambon – they want to break free from Jakarta too. Well, they didn’t want to join the Dutch, Portuguese and German empires that led to Indonesia either. But they had no option when the empires’ soldiers marched up the street, and Jakarta has learned from the empires. Jakarta rips off Aceh’s oil, tears the heart out of the forests of Kalimantan and jams Javanese farmers where Dyaks used to live in their jungle and it is the same in Irian Jaya. And East Timor? Jakarta simply invaded the country ’

  ‘The island is in the same situation. Haven’t they seen what has been happening? Jakarta won’t allow another piece of fabric to tear away after East Timor and many of the generals have a hand in timber and mining. They won’t allow a vote for independence, not even a rebel flag. That patrol boat could be very bad news.’

  Matt sucked his lip, watching the shrinking boat. Then he shrugged. ‘Can’t do anything, can we? But we can do things here. Did you find anything down there?’

  Pat nodded.

  ‘But not iron,’ Matt looked at Col.

  ‘No,’ Col said. ‘I said iron for the officer, just in case he got interested. I think it’s bronze, but I haven’t the faintest idea what it is.’

  ‘It’s buried in the sand,’ Pat said.

  ‘Can we use the box?’ Matt said.

  ‘I think so. The thing isn’t too deep.’ Col nodded.

  Pat started the winch to lift the anchor – by pushing a black button until the machinery coughed into life – while Matt moved the Tub a little closer to the yellow buoy, then Pat dropped the anchor again. Meanwhile Col was connecting the crane cable to a large wooden box. He winched the box from the deck and dropped it into the water. The box had no top or bottom and its sides were reinforced with strips of lead. Without the cable it would have sunk to the bottom like a rock.

  ‘We’re going to excavate,’ said Col.

  ‘Oh,’ said Pat wisely.

  Matt took over the crane and released the box slowly while Col pushed it to the stern. Col carefully put the box over the Tub’s propeller, and then he tied ropes from the box to the Tub’s rails. The Tub looked like a horse with a feeding bag.

  ‘Got it?’ said Col.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Pat, but he hadn’t.

  Matt locked the crane and walked over to the wheelhouse. Matt saw Col waving a thumb at him so he started the engine. The propeller kicked in the box, the water shook against the four sides for a moment, then rushed out of the open bottom. The Tub moved slowly to the furthest reach of the anchor chain then Matt increased the power.

  The stern lifted a little, water bubbling around the box. For a moment the sea remained clear green, but then it became the colour of a muddy river. A cloud of grey water erupted round the stern and spread as the Tub strained on its anchor.

  ‘So?’ Col said to Pat.

  ‘So, simple.’ Pat had worked it out. Normally the propeller created a wake behind the Tub to push it forward, but that box changed the propeller’s direction. The thrust of the propeller was now angling down to the seabed, to move the sand. As if they had sent down a team of shovellers.

  Matt worked the engine for half an hour and then turned it off.

  ‘What do we do now?’ said Pat.

  ‘What we do now is wait,’ Col said. ‘You wouldn’t like to swim in that soup, would you?’

  Pat glanced at the grey and brown water and shook his head.

  ‘I have tried diving with the box turned on and it was like walking through a sand storm. Not fun.’

  ‘We’re not in a hurry. Coffee.’ Matt poked a finger at Pat as he strolled from the wheelhouse.

  Col started the air compressor and filled the tanks while Matt and Pat leaned on the rail, like a father and son yarning. Or trying to.

  ‘Well, how’s it been?’ Matt said.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘How’s school? How’s Robbie? Anything interesting?’

  ‘It’s not much ’’ Tell him how it was in the first months after he had left? That was like being a fish that’s been washed up on the beach for a week, a bit on the nose. Nobody touches you just in case you break down and bawl. And even now you catch Mum staring at the wall. Not a chance.

  ‘There’s got to be something.’

  Pat scratched the back of his head. ‘I caught a fish but a kookaburra pinched it. I found a seahorse on a seaweed sprout when I was in the scuba course. It was as little as my thumb ’ It sounds dull now.’

  ‘No, it sounds great. I haven’t ever seen a seahorse. How’s Beth – Mum? She sounded bristly on the phone.’

  Pat looked away.

  ‘A bit lonely, is she?’ Matt shook his head quickly. ‘Doesn’t matter. Skip it.’

  ‘She looks forward to your coming back.’ Like me, shut up.

  ‘Yeah, when I get over the accident, right?’

  Pat watched Matt’s face. ‘Must have hurt when the boulder hit the car.’

  Matt hit the rail softly with a fist. ‘No, it was never that. Pain – even a broken leg – goes and you can’t remember how bad it was. No, it’s when you have to think about it afterwards, that’s when it gets tough.

  Pat waited.

  But Matt opened his fist and waved his hand away. ‘No, we all have our black holes. Col has his Sorrento, I’ve got the accident, and it’s best to leave them alone.’

  Pat looked down at the deck and mumbled, ‘Okay.’ Why the hell can’t he talk about it?

  Col banged two tanks on the deck behind them. ‘About that time, I suppose?’

  ‘Fine.’ Matt stepped from Pat to release the cable drum on the crane.

  After togging up, Col picked up a coil of rope, took the crane cable’s hook from the box and jumped into the water letting the crane cable slither after him. Pat dived behind, feeling flat as he followed the anchor chain to the bottom.

  Everything looked different now. The grey sand had been swept aside, leaving only skeleton strands of the seaweed jungle clinging to outcrops of bleached coral. There were a few fish, nothing else.

  Nothing that looked like a wrecked ship, nothing that had come from a ship.

  Pat wanted to kick a rock.

  But Col was towing the hook around as if there was something here to use it on. And that tiny yellow buoy was bobbing overhead.

  Pat watched Col take the hook towards a large lump. He eventually settled beside it and pulled the coiled rope from his shoulder. The lump reached as high as Col’s chest.

  Then Pat looked again at the yellow buoy and realised it was connected to the lump with the fishing line. Before using the Tub’s angled propeller, that line had been tied to a low piece of coral, but now the coral had become a boulder. He finned across to Col and opened his hands. What on earth is it?

  Col shrugged his shoulders. I haven’t the faintest idea.

  He placed a rope carefully around it, Pat working from the other side. They were wrapping it like a Christmas present and a couple of fat fish wandered over to see what they were doing. Col finished, swam round to inspect the rope, adjusted it in places, then put the cable hook into a loop of the rope. Finally he told Matt to start the crane by jerking the fishing line, which pulled the yellow buoy under the surface.

  Pat kicked away from the lump as the crane cable began to tighten. As the cable straightened and began to shiver in the water the footprint of the hull drift sideways until i
t was almost overhead.

  Col yanked the buoy down some more while he ran his fingers over the rope where it cut into the coral. He then released the buoy, and the cable vibrated like a thick violin string. Col waved Pat further away.

  Finally the lump began to suck at the sand below it. Tiny fountains of muddy water circled the base for a long moment until the sand let go and the lump leaped free. It swayed on the cable and began to slide towards the sunlight.

  ‘It looks like a lump of coral,’ Matt said, walking around it on the deck.

  Pat nodded as he laid his tank down. Yeah, doesn’t it?

  ‘It’s something.’ Col had shrugged off his gear but he didn’t have enough patience to get out of his suit. He pulled off the rope and raised a glinting chisel and a small mallet.

  ‘Now, watch it,’ Matt said.

  Col held the chisel at an angle to the coral and glared at Matt.

  ‘Just in case it’s worth something.’

  Col grunted and tapped softly at a clump of white coral. And the clump sheered from the lump, crashing down on the deck. There was a dark round shape with a dull sheen where the coral had been.

  Pat blinked at it and he suddenly realised it was an eye. An angry eye staring at him.

  ‘Bronze.’ Matt rubbed at the eye.

  ‘I told you that before.’

  ‘Very old bronze.’

  ‘Maybe as old as the token ’’

  Matt looked away, as if to hide his own eyes.

  12 / opening up

  Col frowned at Matt then gently tapped his chisel again at the lump. A barnacle spun away.

  Matt yawned, possibly too much. ‘Well, I got things to do. Give us a yell when you get it out in the open.’ He shuffled away.

  But Pat stayed and stared at the angry eye. ‘Is this thing a great find?’

  Col jabbed the chisel in the direction of Matt. ‘He thinks so. Would be great if he’d let us into his secret.’

  So Col thought so too? Pat grinned.

  Col tapped and a strip of coral came away below the angry eye, showing a flat cheek, thick lips and the gleam of a few teeth.

  ‘Maybe an animal?’ suggested Pat.

  Col took a step back and smiled at Pat. ‘Now I feel like Michelangelo.’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘The sculptor. He said that he saw his great statue David inside a twisted hunk of marble in the quarry. Said all he had to do was free David from the marble. That’s what I’m doing, except I don’t know what I’ll find here.’

  Pat cocked his head. ‘What’s Sorrento?’ Maybe he could get rid of some of Matt’s secrets right now!

  ‘Who?’ Col tapped and a roll of carved hair appeared.

  ‘Matt said you had Sorrento, like his accident.’

  ‘Oh he did, did he?’ Col belted his chisel and a chunk of coral spun against the wheelhouse. ‘Why doesn’t he concentrate on his business instead of mine?’ He attacked the lump as if it was Matt.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ Pat fumbled back.

  Col stopped hammering when a long coral growth dropped to the deck, revealing a muscular shoulder. ‘Ah ’’

  Pat stood in silence for a long moment, then: ‘Coffee? Would you like a coffee?’

  ‘Coffee? Ah yes, coffee, thank you.’ Col was looking with a slow frown at the angry eye.

  By the time Pat returned Col had uncovered a smooth back. ‘It’s beginning to look like something,’ he said to Col.

  Col turned to Pat. ‘Yeah. I didn’t mean to bite your head off just then. It’s just that Matt shouldn’t repeat things from our late night yarns. Sorrento and the accident, Tom and Jerry, like they’re linked. Well they’re not, and I still don’t understand Matt. He’s out here chasing a wreck at the end of a rainbow when he has Beth and you at home.’

  Pat shrugged. ‘Yeah, well ’’

  ‘If I’d been him I would have left his mad mate on his boat and stayed at home. Talked out the accident with Beth. She’s good at listening.’

  ‘But ’’ Pat waved around the Tub, groping for words.

  ‘Why am I here? Just Ana.’ Col put down the coffee and tapped carefully at the lump. ‘She was the school librarian, but she painted too – I have a great portrait of me in oils – she’s funny, laughs like a little bell and wrinkles her nose at me. We spent long nights talking about everything and we were planning to go up the Amazon ’ But.’

  Pat tried to visualise his scowling school librarian wrinkling her nose but it couldn’t be done.

  Tap, tap. ‘Nothing really dramatic. One day Ana met a builder who climbed mountains in his free time and that was it. I guess I was too dull.’

  A slab of coral dropped from the lump, showing a hind leg folded against the body, like a dog sitting.

  ‘I was a bit miserable. Hah! Compared with me the Titanic was a giggle. Anyway I buried myself in history and found Lady Jane – or thoughtI’d found it. I started to get one of the salvage companies to follow it up, then I thought hey, I do scuba, why don’t I do it myself? Anyway, I wanted to get away from the school and everything. And here I am.’

  ‘With Matt.’

  ‘Yeah, well ’’ Col looked at the lump, frowned slightly, and his face changed, almost as if the lump had said something to him. He dropped to a squat and chipped away at the coral that touched the deck.

  Matt strolled from the stern of the Tub, drawn by the sudden flurry of work.

  Slowly, Col lifted the coral to show a paw resting on a large ball. He sucked in his cheeks and his hands were trembling slightly.

  ‘Something?’ said Matt mildly.

  Col shook his head. ‘Leave me alone,’ he muttered, and began to attack the lump.

  He worked on the lump for four hours, without a break. He worked so intensely that when Pat swept the fallen coral around his feet he didn’t even notice. Matt wandered away to repair a few things around the Tub and came back for a coffee in the late afternoon. Pat put another coffee beside Col but he didn’t touch it. The coffee lost its last wisp of steam, and a brown skin slowly formed.

  Finally, as an immense orange sun sank, Col put the chisel and the mallet aside. ‘Okay,’ he said, flexing his fingers, surprised at the small cuts on his knuckles. He then picked up the coffee mug, staring in the twilight at the thing he had uncovered.

  It was a squat monster, with a square head, large eyes and a curled sneer. The body was built like a tree stump and one clawed paw rested on a ball. It seemed to be saying: You want the ball? Come on, take it. I’m waiting ’

  ‘Maybe a lion,’ Matt said gently.

  Pat stared at Matt. He knows what it is. He is pushing Col slowly to work it out by himself.

  ‘Yeah. Col said.

  ‘Very old bronze lion.’

  Col was sipping his cold coffee.

  ‘I’ve seen lions like that,’ said Matt. ‘In China. In Beijing. In the Forbidden City.’

  Col rubbed his thumb across the bronze lion, staring at it in silence.

  ‘And we’ve got the Malacca token,’ Matt said, nudging.

  Col looked at Matt’s face and blinked, as if he could not understand Matt’s words.

  Matt sighed. ‘Don’t worry about it. Tomorrow we’ll see.’

  ‘I want to do some reading.’ Col lurched towards his books in the wheelhouse, then suddenly tapped his feet together and wobbled his knees. He turned and smiled at Pat. ‘Hey, who’s dull?’

  13 / taketigra

  Pat opened an eye in the semi-darkness. Something had woken him, but he couldn’t see anything unusual.

  Col had finally turned off the light in the wheelhouse, Matt was snoring like a creaking boat and the Tub felt as solid as a barn. Not another sound, nothing at all, except maybe the splash of a fish leaping for the moon. He dozed off.

  There was a dull thump on the side of the Tub.

  Matt stopped snoring. Pat jerked awake and stared across the cabin at Matt’s darting eyes.

  There was a light slap on the deck outside and the Tub moved very sl
ightly.

  Matt slid to the floor, glanced at Pat and touched his lip with a single finger, then gave a sign to stop. He crouched and pulled a gleaming spear gun from under his bunk.

  Pirates! Pat felt his throat contract. No, no. It’s the officer and his twitchy army. And Matt is going out to tackle them with a miserable spear gun ’

  He seized his bag and pulled out his small pocket-knife.

  Col flitted past Pat and caught Matt by the arm. Matt turned his head, showing anger in his face as he shook Col’s hand away.

  Pat heard a low murmur from outside. A few words in Indonesian.

  Matt hefted the spear gun and moved towards the open hatch.

  ‘Captain Matt ’ are you there?’ A light boy’s voice.

  Pat knew that voice. The boy on the pier – Ali.

  ‘Oh,’ Matt said.

  ‘Are you going to spear fish, Captain Matt?’

  ‘Ah, well ’’ Matt passed the spear gun hastily back to Col.

  ‘You don’t need to spear fish today, Captain Matt. We have many.’

  Pat kicked out of his bunk and peered past Matt to see Ali and a grinning old man waving several fish. He dropped his pocket-knife into his bag. Matt waved at the old man and at someone Pat couldn’t see. ‘Be right with you, just give us a minute.’

  Matt and Col grabbed their raggedy shorts and yesterday’s shirts while Pat tried to get dressed between the large, heaving men. He felt like a frog between two hippos in a mud pool. It couldn’t have been a lovely sight, but Ali stayed by the open hatch and watched in fascination.

  ‘Okay,’ Matt marched almost through Ali with Pat clambering after him.

  A wave of fish smell hit Pat as he stepped onto the deck. He blinked, stepped back onto Col’s foot and stumbled against Ali.

  Ali danced back, rocking his head and flexing his shoulders. ‘Hey, you want a fight, eh, eh?’ he said, but he was grinning.

  The old man had disappeared but his fish were dangling on a wire near the Tub’s wheelhouse. For an instant Pat thought this was where the smell was coming from, but he soon realised the real source was lying next to the Tub.