Treasure Hunters

by Allan Baillie

  Matt had told the story while he was preparing to dive, and Pat could still see the gleam in his eyes. The Flor do Mar was the other side of the Malacca token, the story that Col didn’t tell ’

  Diego walks into the wharves of Goa, India, on a steamy afternoon to his new ship, Flor do Mar. Several months ago he sailed with Diopo Lopes de Sequeira – ‘Old Sec’ – and Ferdinand Magellan – ‘Blackbeard’ – to Malacca. And limped back to India with nineteen men left in the Sultan’s dungeons and two ships abandoned.

  Old Sec went straight to Lisbon to tell the King what had happened, but Diego didn’t go with him. Instead he spent those months helping repair ships, eating curries so hot his eyes wept and wishing that he was in his father’s stone house eating his mother’s lamb stew. But things got a little better when Magellan became captain of his own ship and wanted Diego to steer it. Diego often told the crew that he had taught Magellan how to sail a caravel. Sometimes they actually believed him ’

  And maybe that’s why Greybeard then grabbed him from Magellan for his ship, Flor do Mar.

  Diego stops on the wharf. Probably, he thinks. Why don’t you ever keep your big mouth shut?

  Hey, Greybeard, Alfonso de Albuquerque, is the Viceroy of Portuguese Territories of India, not just a soldier pretending to be a ship’s captain, like Magellan. He is almost as powerful as the King – no, here he is more powerful than the King. The King is a long way away. Greybeard attacked the Indian ports of Calicut and Goa because he wanted to, and now he’s taking a fleet to Malacca because he’s angry with the Sultan. Never mind the King.

  You’re going back to Malacca with the best ship, the most important officers. It’s going to be a fine voyage.

  Diego strides towards the Flor do Mar, past two Sikhs lashing hardwood butts to cannon barrels. He skips round casks of water, flour, salted meat, biscuits, gunpowder and a group of soldiers slouching against their long pikes and watching a lean Indian unloading firewood from a cart. And then he hears the roaring.

  A frightened cow is bellowing while being lowered into the open hold and a grey-bearded man’s angry screams are muffling the cow’s. Greybeard is standing on Flor’s quarterdeck, letting loose.

  Diego shivers. No, it won’t be a good voyage with him, it is going to be murder.

  Greybeard is only shouting about that cow now, but nobody can ever remember a time when he wasn’t angry. He was furious when he attacked Calicut and Goa, and he’s been spitting chips since he heard about the Malacca ambush.

  Diego drags his feet towards the Flor and wishes that he were still on Magellan’s ship.

  But the captain of the Flor is standing next to Greybeard and, seeing Diego, motions him to hurry. Diego jogs up the boarding plank and reaches the ship’s tiller in the shadows.

  It’s all right, Diego thinks. I’m here in the darkness and Greybeard is above me. He doesn’t see me, and with eighteen ships sailing to Malacca full of two thousand seamen and soldiers,

  I am not going to be noticed.

  A ship in front of the Flor moves slowly away from the wharfs with a single small sail on the bowsprit catching a lazy breeze. Greybeard roars, and casks, firewood and cannons are rushed into the Flor, soldiers tramp up the boarding plank and the ropes are thrown off the wharf bollards.

  An old ship’s carpenter settles on the steps, he listens to the captain on the quarterdeck and begins to bark the captain’s orders at Diego. ‘Hold Southwest. Steady.’

  No, nothing changes, Diego thinks, as he pulls the heavy tiller towards the wharf. The Flor begins to glide into the flow of the river. The seamen on the thick flax ropes are chanting while they open the big main sail, showing its crusader cross. And then he hears the pumps being worked.

  He keeps on hearing that slow pumping down the Malabar Coast, past Calicut, past Ceylon and into the Indian Ocean. He hears it through a howling storm that plunges one of the fleet’s ships down to the bottom. He can hear those sucking pumps as he’s getting some salted beef stew from the cook’s portable stove on the deck. They seem to be a part of the seamen’s songs, like the rhythm of the tambourine. He can even hear it when two soldiers slaughter the cow in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

  Greybeard’s flagship may be carrying more cannon and soldiers than the others but Flor is a very old ship. Diego doesn’t like the constant pumping, but he can’t stop it, so he shrugs and forgets about it.

  After the storms Diego has an easy time. While the old carpenter is running about repairing the pumps and boiling tar for leaky timber, he only has to adjust the ropes that hold the tiller on course. He sees the rolling mountains of Malaya and talks with Juan while the soldier is polishing his armour and the spearhead on his long pike. Juan is only seventeen but he has seen a few things that Diego hasn’t, and sometimes he sounds like an old man.

  ‘Are you worried before the battle?’ Diego asks Juan. Diego had been in a battle in Malacca but then he hadn’t had the time to worry about it before it started. This time was different, he’d had weeks to think about it.

  ‘Worry?’ Juan shakes his head. ‘Fighting is my job. It doesn’t help to worry. I think of gold.’

  Diego twitches a smile at Juan as he loosens the ropes on the tiller. Well, he thinks, if he is not worried and he’s going to be in the middle of the battle, then you don’t worry about a thing! You’ve got great walls of oak round you; all you have to do is duck, okay?

  The old carpenter crouches on the steps and begins to shout at Diego. Diego thinks for a moment, he’s the captain’s parrot. The captain should use a real parrot, it’s got to be smarter.

  Diego glimpses junks and fleeing sampans as he turns Flor into the harbour. Greybeard runs up his colours and fires his cannons into the city. Diego feels the Flor shake through the soles of his feet. Juan is grinning at him and clashing his pike with another soldier.

  Very soon a boat comes from the Sultan, waving a flag of truce. Greybeard is told that the Sultan is very sorry about the trap last time. But anyway it was the Chief Minister’s fault and he is now dead.

  Greybeard tells the Sultan he will not attack the city if the Portuguese captives are released and a payment is made for the lost ships and men.

  The Sultan promises to return Greybeard’s men but delays doing it.

  Greybeard orders his fleet to burn other ships, turning the harbour into a blazing lake. Very quickly the Sultan releases the nineteen men.

  For three days the Portuguese fleet is anchored quietly. Diego and Juan tell ancient jokes. They are getting very bored. Meanwhile Greybeard listens to what the nineteen men say about how they were treated and what Malacca is like. Then a few captains from the junks in the harbour visit him.

  Juan stomps around Diego. ‘Come on, come on, you angry old man. We can’t be finished, not after sailing all that way?’

  But Diego wouldn’t mind. He has watched the Sultan increasing his city defences with every hour since the fleet arrived. Apart from the high walls on both sides of the river, there are ramparts, many brass cannons and the bridge has a heavy stockade on both ends. Okay, Greybeard has a fleet of eighteen ships, eight hundred Portuguese soldiers and six hundred Indian archers, but maybe it would be a good idea to go back to Goa now. After all, he has rescued his people ’

  Suddenly the sails are hauled up and the carpenter calls Diego to the tiller. What, he thinks, we are leaving?

  But while he steers the Flor he sees Juan grinning as he helps other soldiers prepare the cannons. He shivers a little as he realises that Greybeard is attacking. The carpenter is calling instructions from the captain but Diego can hear Greybeard shouting over the carpenter and the roar of the cannons. The Flor’s cannons are firing so often that their hardwood cradles are smouldering. He steers past a blazing dhow.

  The Flor moves closer to the bridge that links the two centres of Malacca. The sails are put away, the anchor is dropped but the cannons are still firing. Diego has finished with the tiller and helps to lower boats on the other side of the
barrage; Juan winks at Diego and climbs down to the boats with other soldiers.

  The soldiers must capture the bridge to control the city and now they are leaping from the boats into the shallows with a roar, their armour glinting as they wave their pikes, swords and crossbows. Supported by the Indian archers, they look and sound frightening. But the Sultan’s men are waiting in the stockades – with war elephants.

  From the safety of Flor Diego shivers at the size of the elephants, even before they begin to move. Many of them are wearing the Sultan’s bright crimson and gold trappings with boxes full of spearmen on their backs. But others are plain grey elephants; probably they have been hurriedly brought in from the forest, but they look bad enough.

  And then they move. They charge at the soldiers, shaking the bridge, scything their long tusks into the men as the spearmen thrust from above. But worse than all of that is their terrible sound, a long angry blast echoing down an icy mountain pass. The roar of a dragon.

  The soldiers are stumbling back from the bridge, screaming in terror. Greybeard is shouting for more cannon fire, hammering his fist on the rail. For a while Diego cannot see through the fog of billowing gun smoke, then he glimpses the soldiers gathering to attack again.

  In the long day the soldiers slowly take the bridge and by blood-red sunset they have captured a mosque on the other side of the river.

  But Diego can see Greybeard on the quarterdeck pulling his long, grey beard and shaking his head. Greybeard has seen the elephants; he can imagine what the night will bring. He orders his soldiers back to the ships.

  Back on the Flor, Juan sprawls like a dead man on the deck with the other wounded, exhausted soldiers. Diego is giving him water as they hear the Sultan’s men cheering and blowing horns of triumph as the retake the bridge.

  ‘We have lost,’ Juan says heavily. ‘I can fight men, but not these monsters from hell!’

  ‘You captured the bridge ’’ Diego says.

  ‘But not at night. No, never at night!’ Juan widens his eyes.

  War elephants were enough horror in the bright sunlight; at night they would be a nightmare. Grey shadows lumbering out of the dark, eyes glittering from the fires, blaring their trunks, lunging with those white tusks, and the massive feet crunching ’ no man should face that.

  Diego can hear heavy banging from the bridge long into the night. The Sultan’s men are rebuilding the stockades at both ends. The terrible fighting of that day has given the soldiers nothing at all.

  ‘Tomorrow it will be over,’ Juan says bleakly. ‘We will fight the monsters again, and we will fail. Greybeard will have to scurry home with his tail between his legs.’

  But late at night Diego sees a captain from one of the junks come aboard the Flor and leave with many cannon and many of the ship’s soldiers – crossbowmen, Indian archers and pikemen, including Juan. At first light a junk edges past the Flor and drops its anchor in front of the bridge. The junk is now a floating fort, pouring arrows and cannonballs into the stockades as the other ships move closer. Then it rams the bridge and the soldiers charge onto it.

  By mid-afternoon they are pushing the Sultan’s men from the last stockade. Pikemen are moving past elephant carcasses to beat down small fires on the bridge. The cannons are beginning to stop firing.

  Greybeard and most of the sailors join the soldiers to help in the fight, but Diego stays aboard the Flor – just in case of an attack on the ship. The battle for Malacca takes nine days, fighting street by street, lane by lane, shop by shop. Diego can see the progress of the battle by flares of fire and clouds of black smoke.

  Then suddenly the fighting is over. The Sultan and his army have fled into the mountains and Greybeard’s men come back to the ships, staggering with their load. Half of them seem to be bleeding but they are grinning and laughing.

  As Diego helps a limping Juan onto the Flor the battered soldier winks and flicks a shiny token to him. ‘That is just the beginning.’

  Pat shifted his eyes to the island’s dark cloud and plumes of smoke, stroking the worn token.

  Suddenly the water beside the Tub erupted.

  16 / the fight

  Matt burst from the water, spat the mouthpiece out and ripped the mask from his face. ‘The hell of it!’

  Pat sagged a little. ‘No good?’

  ‘Bloody lousy.’ Matt lurched out of the water like an old crocodile and snorted at the spreading grey cloud. ‘And that would be right.’ He flapped his fins on the deck while he shrugged off his tank.

  Col twisted in the water and thudded heavily on the landing. ‘It’s not all that bad.’

  ‘It is. Don’t you ever get sick and tired of being right?’

  ‘Come on ’’ Col pushed himself onto the Tub.

  ‘There’s nothing down there!’ Matt spat the words aside to Pat.

  ‘There are a few things ’’

  ‘Nothing at all. What a bloody waste of time!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, if you’re going to keep on carrying on like that ’’

  ‘Carrying on like what?’

  ‘A mad gorilla!’

  ‘Gorilla! Give you gorilla!’ Matt leaped to his fins, waving his fists around.

  Col flung his tanks from his back and slapped a fin towards Matt. ‘Yeah, yeah, come on then!’

  Matt swung a clenched fist at Col’s head.

  ‘Hey, guys ’’ Pat hissed.

  Col swayed away from the fist and smirked at Matt – but then his eyes began to widen in alarm. His legs were trying to dance away from Matt; floating like a butterfly, Ali would say. But this butterfly had frog feet. Col was shuffling his fins backwards to stop himself from tumbling over, while Matt’s swing had become a helpless grope in the air.

  In horror, Pat felt the edge of a smile on his lips. This was serious!

  ‘Ah, hah!’ Col’s fins had caught up with his tottering body and he was pulling back a fist.

  Pat stared at them in frozen fascination. How do you stop mad guys from killing themselves? Jump overboard and scream? No, they wouldn’t notice.

  Col was moving forward into attack, but Matt’s right fin was planted on Col’s left fin. Col wobbled precariously, flapping his hands. He clutched Matt’s arms in desperation, but Matt tried to push him away.

  And for a moment Pat was watching a pair of seals dancing. Their fins slapped on the deck, their bodies swayed as they held each other. Their neoprene suits squealed as they moved, as they panted at each other. Then they slowly toppled into the sea.

  Pat clambered over the discarded tanks to the edge of the Tub. ‘Hey, please stop.’ He knew that the words were feeble as he said them.

  The two men bobbed to the surface below him and looked at each other – and began to laugh. Heavy laughter, hooting, a roaring that shook their bodies. Matt laughed so much that he slipped below the surface, and bubbled under the water until Col grabbed his hair and yanked him up.

  Col looked up, holding Matt’s head like a trophy, and grinned at Pat. ‘Don’t mind us. We do this often ’’

  Pat looked at them for a long moment and slowly began to smile. Okay, Robbie, I’m stuck on this creaking boat in the middle of the ocean, with a general who wants to kill me, with fishermen who just about do that with their rotten stew – and the crew here are a bunch of maniacs. It’s not dull ’

  Col was watching the falling rain as Pat brought the tea. He was leaning on one of the fuel drums at the bow with his eyes fixed on the sea. Single raindrops were pocking the polished lead surface of the water.

  He tilted back his ragged straw hat and nodded. ‘How long’s this been going on?’

  Pat hunched his shoulders. ‘Wasn’t watching ’’ Then he realised that Col was looking through the scattered rain at the island. The black plume on the mountain was bigger now, an exclamation point and there was a small puff near it. ‘I saw that when you were diving.’

  ‘Our general?’ Matt slouched on the rail.

  ‘It’s got to be.’

  ‘You can’
t fix it,’ Matt grimaced. ‘And you can’t fix things down below either.’

  Col dipped his head, almost apologetically, to Pat. ‘It wasn’t that we didn’t find anything down there. We did.’

  ‘But ’’ Matt said.

  ‘We found three cannons like yours, Pat, and a couple of cannonballs. There’s probably a lot more of them in the sand.’

  ‘But in the wrong place,’ said Matt.

  The raindrops made brief patterns on the surface of the sea.

  Pat said quietly, ‘They were thrown overboard, then.’

  ‘The crew saved their ship,’ Col said flatly.

  ‘It got away,’ Matt said. ‘It was here. It was stuck on that reef, ready to sink, but they threw off the cannons, and the lion, a few bags of sand ballast and they’re off. Gone forever.’

  A long curtain of rain trailed across the flat water to pass over the Tub. Neither of the men moved for shelter: Col threw back his head, opening his mouth, but Matt endured in silence while his hair was plastered onto his skull. Pat started to dodge the downpour, but stopped and let his skin feel the cold.

  Col wiped his face with his hand. ‘So that’s what fresh water feels like.’

  ‘We could pull those cannons out of the water,’ Pat suggested. ‘They must be worth money.’

  Col nodded. ‘Oh yes, we will. Eventually. And yes, there’s money there.’

  Matt grunted. ‘Enough to pay for half of our equipment, just a grain of sand compared to what it might have been.’

  ‘The Flor, you mean? You’re mad, you know,’ Col said.

  Matt opened his hand. ‘Now we’ll never know.’

  Pat looked back at the lion, its crumpled face flooding from many streams but the eyes still angry. As if it was angry with him. As if there was something he should know ’

  He glanced at the dappled water, at the yellow buoy where the lion had been found, and looked at the one that marked his cannon.