Treasure Hunters

by Allan Baillie

  They reached the buoy as a light drizzle drifted across them, but Pat hardly noticed the cool dampness on his face. Matt secured the buoy in the dinghy and toppled into the sea. Col passed him the metal detector and his long torch to clip to his belt, followed by two coupled tanks with regulators. Matt slid below the surface and a heavy rope uncoiled after him until a knot jerked at the bow. Col helped Pat put double tanks onto his back – a crushing weight.

  ‘You right?’ Col said.

  Pat swayed to his feet. ‘Um, Col ’ I won’t do stupid things down there.’

  Col nodded. ‘Just you tell us the moment you want to get out. Before you feel bad. Okay?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do it.’

  Pat looked around and saw that the Tubhad disappeared like the island. The dinghy was alone in the grey. Then he put his hands on his mask and mouthpiece and slowly fell backwards into the water.

  He swam towards the light line that led from the dinghy to the depths of the chasm. Matt was attaching the spare tanks to the light line below him. Now the heavy rope carried the weight of the tanks, but the tanks would be there when he, Col and Matt followed the line from the black deep. Pat had not used the tanks like this – he wasn’t qualified – but he knew the reason for them. Coming out of the immense pressure of the deep, they would have to stop in the water to allow time for their bodies to come back to normal. Get the nitrogen out of the blood. So you exchange the mouthpiece from the emptying tanks on your back for a mouthpiece from these tanks. Nothing to worry about, it’s just the last station on the way out.

  Matt tied his torch to the line, turned it on and wobbled two fingers at Pat with a wink. See, there’s no risk with good old Dad. If the long line breaks in the deep then the torch will bring us home.

  Pat wobbled a thumbs-up. Right.

  He waved the detector and pointed down. Charge!

  But Matt led them slowly down the line into the silent chasm.

  They swam down through a shower of silver fish, past a drowsy shark, until Col tapped Matt on the shoulder and showed his depth indicator. Matt pulled Pat into the line and they all stopped, hanging onto the line while their bodies got used to the increased pressure of the deep water.

  Like people hanging in a train, Pat thought. He looked up and saw a shining light where the line faded to nothing, where the tanks became a bump below the small thumbprint of the dinghy. But he couldn’t see the Tub. Too far away to see.

  Col glanced at his watch and waved his thumb. They swam slowly as the cliff slid towards the line, showing shrunken coral brains and flares. But as they moved further down, the coral and the small fish around them were leaching colour. Red and yellow had gone, green had become deep purple, and what had been a rich flower garden of coral was now a dull wall with some clumps of black shells. The coral petered out, leaving the cliff barren and dark.

  Matt took Col’s torch from him and turned it on. The beam brought some of the colour back, but not much. Pat followed, flicking the beam of his own light down into the dark, but Col waved a finger to stop him.

  Save the battery until it’s worth it. We only need one torch at the moment.

  Pat turned it off as he swam into an icy current. He had noticed the water had been getting colder as he drifted down but this was like swimming round an iceberg. He was flexing his numbing fingers when Col saw his face – always Col, never Matt – and wobbled his hand at him.

  Are you all right?

  That’s because Matt knows you can handle it, Pat thought. He waved a thumb. It’s okay.

  Col and Matt continued to swim down as if they could not feel the cold at all.

  It’s fat, Pat thought. These old blokes have fat all over the place and you have nothing ’

  Matt wandered the torch beam around the cliff and found the end of the line. Pat flicked his light on, looked about quickly but there was little to see. No sunken sailing ship, no treasure chests, nothing at all except the bottom of the chasm.

  But Matt was marching the beam along the base of the cliff, spotlighting boulders and a few white fish. He nodded at Pat and waved the beam pointedly but he might as well have turned off the torch. There was nothing.

  Col put his hand on Pat’s arm, guided his beam, and scudded it sideways to a black area.

  Oh. That wasn’t the bottom. That was just a ledge.

  Matt swam to the edge of the ledge and Pat followed. Matt drifted into the chasm, turned and smiled around the mouthpiece at Pat. He reached out, took Pat’s hand and slowly sank down.

  Pat trailed Matt, like a pennant in the wind, with his fins almost motionless in the still water. He was so close to the rock he could see fissures with living white stains spreading from them. Suddenly the rock fell away from him, revealing a wide, open cavern. He turned on his torch, picking out what Matt and Col had seen the night before, while the patrol boat had been destroying Kite far above them.

  But it wasn’t much.

  Pat wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting to see. Maybe a hulk of rotten wood, with great gaps with schools of fish swimming through, the stumps of masts, seaweed, anemones and barnacles growing everywhere?

  But he saw only a thin black piece of wood leaning on the rock face. Nothing else.

  Matt grinned at him, as if he was expecting Pat to carry on like a circus seal, and even Col was crinkling his eyes.

  Pat looked again, but it was still a hunk of driftwood. Nobody would pay any attention to it if it were washed up on a beach.

  But it wasn’t on a beach. It was two hundred metres from the surface of the sea and Matt was making fists in excitement.

  Col glanced across to read Pat’s face. He placed his hand over Pat’s torch arm, beginning to steer the beam like a lecturer’s rod, wandering over the wood then slowly away from it. The beam caught a shapeless lump behind the piece of wood with shadowed lines on either side.

  Something, something ’ Pat stared into the oval of the beam, trying to see beyond the stark fragments in the grey sand.

  Matt added his beam to Pat’s, then wandered the beam back. Another bump, clumps of barnacles, shadows, broken lines. No, there was nothing.

  If the ship had been iron or steel there would be things to see, the broken hull, the huge engines, the funnels, the rails, but what does a five-hundred-year-old wooden ship leave? Nothing at all.

  The wrinkles around Matt’s eyes began to fade into a frown.

  You can’t see it?

  It’s a piece of wood. What?

  Matt swam down the piece of wood, waving Pat to follow.

  Pat drifted down after him, seeing the deep furrows on the black wood and the small plants moving slowly in the current. It was as thick as his leg, longer than his leg, but that was it.

  And then Matt slapped his rump.

  Pat blinked at him. A bottom? A ship’s bottom?

  Matt moved the torch in front of Pat as if it was a toy boat. He tapped the torch at the edge of its base. The black piece of wood is the solid thick base of an old wooden ship. The heart of a ship, carved from the heart of an old oak tree. It would carry the massive rudder, the long keel and the ship’s skeleton.

  Pat looked again at the black wood. But it was so fragile and thin.

  Because it has been rotting slowly, grain by grain, for five hundred years.

  Pat moved his eyes from the black wood to the shadow lines and suddenly he saw the ship, the Flor do Mar, as if it was a 3-D puzzle. The lines were a ghost image, framing a thirty-metre caravel. There had been three stout masts, carrying five sails and Diego would have been slightly above him where the massive tiller plunged into the rudder. Above Diego would have been the highest deck, the quarterdeck, from where arrows and cannonballs fired at the enemy. But of course there were no cannons firing in its death. It died from a slow leak on a calm sea.

  He nodded at Matt and the wrinkles came back around Matt’s eyes. He lightly slapped Pat’s shoulder. You have it!

  Col swung around the black wood, movi
ng very gently. He clicked his finger and thumb in front of his mask. We should have brought a camera!

  Matt opened his hand. Doesn’t matter. He began to glide to the nearest hump in the ship’s lines.

  Pat reached out to touch the ship’s black wood, feeling a roughness for a moment. Then it bent before his hands, quivered and dissolved, like a wisp of smoke. He looked back at Col in guilt.

  Col spread a hand in regret and followed Matt.

  Pat stayed by the drifting smoke and watched the light of the torches shrink down to a small hump. The ship’s outline had gone in the dark with the last traces of the wood fragments.

  There was no sign of the ship and it was hard to believe that he had seen it.

  30 / climbing back

  Matt swept his metal detector over the hump, again and again. He nodded at Col, turning the detector so Col could see the red light flashing as it moved. Then he took the torch and detector away from the hump so he could attack it with his long knife, as if it were a cow carcass. His knife churned the thick silt, clouding the water until he began to disappear in a fog.

  Col tapped Matt’s shoulder, shaking his head and flattening his hand. Take it easy.

  Matt jabbed his watch. We’ve got no time to take it easy.

  Col poked his mask with two fingers and moved his hand around. Yes, but we have to see what we’ve got.

  Matt pointed his knife down to another part of the hump and jabbed a few times. Get on with it, and leave me alone.

  Col shrugged, settled on his knees and worked slowly with his knife, moving the silt very carefully.

  Pat drifted over the men, placed the torch to shine at them both and began to work with his knife at the edge of Matt’s hump. He tried to move the silt like Col was but he was too impatient and the water clouded.

  But it doesn’t matter, Pat thought. The ship has been down here for five hundred years. Five hundred years of rotting and the silt piling up. We’re not going to find anything until we dig and dig.

  Col leaned back and held up something.

  Pat peered across as Matt took a fragment of black wood from Col’s hand and flicked it angrily away. What the hell are you doing?

  Pat lowered his head and scooped the silt. It fanned from his hands, glinting in the torchlight as if it was gold dust, almost blinding him.

  It doesn’t matter if you can’t see; you have to feel.

  His knife snagged in the silt and he pulled the blade out at an angle. On the point there was a small piece of shapeless material – leather?

  Already? If that is leather it could have come from a bag. And a bag would have something in it.

  He stuck his knife in the silt and shovelled with his hands like a dog. When the tips of his fingers touched something he scratched about in the murk until he could feel lumps in soggy material. Then he sucked in a breath and pulled. It was as if he was pulling a battleship; it was not moving at all. Then suddenly the silt shifted and released a black pouch into his fingers in a haze of gold dust.

  But the pouch disintegrated in his hand. He caught a glitter of red, green, fires of white, and then it was gone. Disappeared in the fog of the silt.

  Pat opened and closed his hand, as if trying to bring back the moment.

  That was stupid, very much stupid, he thought. It was like that piece of black wood. You see and touch things five hundred years old – and then you destroy them. All you had to do was take it easy, like Col. But there is something lying on the silt now.

  He bent forward, spread his fingers over the soft silt, hardly enough to touch it. And he found something. A hard pebble, a dull red pebble with angles. Maybe that was enough.

  He turned to show the red pebble to Matt, but Matt was concentrating on dragging a small-link chain from the silt.

  Then for a moment they looked at each other’s prize and erupted together in an explosion of bubbles. Matt clashed his chain against Pat’s pebble in a silent cheer.

  Col was waving his hand between Matt and Pat. He had grabbed Pat’s torch to shine for emphasis at his watch, jerking his thumb towards the surface. All right, that’s it, we have run out of time. We have to start to get out.

  Matt tilted his head and glared at Col. Oh, go away.

  Col tapped two fingers on the glass of his watch and his lips became white around his mouthpiece. I am not kidding about this.

  Matt blinked at him, then turned back to Pat with his eyes wide open. Almost as if he had forgotten who Pat was.

  Pat realised that he was shivering all over.

  Matt hunched his shoulders for a moment, then nudged Pat and pointed up.

  Fumbling the red pebble into his lead belt, Pat pushed away from the hump, and looked back at the two men standing together as the silt swirled around their legs. Col kicked off, giving the ship a quick sweep of his torch, allowing Pat a final glimpse of the shape of the Flor do Mar.

  Pat twisted his body and stared up into the blackness. There was nothing to see, not even a moving shadow and there was no sign of the line to show the way home. He felt a tightening around his stomach.

  Are you swimming in the right direction? You can’t feel what you’re doing ’

  Then a beam swung across his body and showed the gnarled underside of the ledge. He was about to bang into a jutting rock.

  Stupid kid.

  He swam diagonally to clear the ledge as the others joined him. Col instantly picked out the line with the beam, guiding Pat to it, but when they reached it he turned his torch off. Matt kept his on until all of them had their hands on the light line, then clicked it off too. Pat was shuddering in the cold, clinging to a thin line in total darkness.

  Why the hell haven’t they kept the lights on? Pat thought.

  Matt reached down from his leading place on the line to rub Pat’s hair. Right?

  Pat nodded as he began to slide up the line.

  Very soon he could see the fluorescent light on the instrument consoles, Matt’s above him, his own floating about his waist and Col’s below. Pat began to feel he was in a safe cocoon in the dark. A cold cocoon, but you can’t have everything ’

  All right, Pat thought, the consoles were why the torches were turned off – and to see the other torch.

  Eventually Pat saw a tiny point of light, like a single star in a black sky, but it was a very long way away. The cocoon was slowly evaporating and he could hear a slight tremble in his breathing.

  Col touched Pat’s leg and patted the water in the green glow of the consoles, as if there was a dog there. Take it easy.

  He can hear you!

  Pat closed his eyes and concentrated on slowing his breathing.

  Just so long as Matt doesn’t hear you too ’

  Pat worked with the rhythm of his fins and the breathing slowed down to no more than a normal walking rate. The single star was now a shining pea.

  But Col stopped the ascent. He tapped his watch, showed fingers and shrugged. Sorry guys, we’ve been too deep too long. Now we have to pay for it.

  Col and his navy charts, Pat thought. Nobody can be that exact. It’s always slow on the way out. What happens if he’s wrong to keep us here? Then we’re safe from the bends – but what happens if your tank runs dry down here because of this?

  Pat looked at the men drifting around him. What would happen is you would breathe from Matt or Col’s octopuses - the secondary air that Ali had used to get out of the wreck of his fishing boat. Stop carrying on.

  Matt used the time to inspect his chain, shining his torch closely onto the links and rubbing his thumb hard on the metal. Almost immediately there was a glint of warm colour, of gold. He winked at Pat as he took away his mouthpiece to nibble softly at the chain.

  Pat thought of having a look at the red pebble, but his fingers were still stiff from the cold water in the deep and he didn’t want to fumble and lose it. The pebble stayed in the belt.

  Before putting back the mouthpiece Matt grinned at Pat, slapped his hand on the back of Pat’s neck, drew Pa
t’s head to the chain and tapped it onto his mask. Hey, hey! How do you feel now, partner?

  Okay, okay. And actually the chill of the water was easing off. The shivering had stopped.

  We’re almost there…

  Col finally gave the nod and the climb continued. The black water began to give way to dark blue, the suspended torch began to grow again and Pat felt his body warming a little.

  Just a step home. You can see the hull of the dinghy now, and you can sort of see the rope the torch was hanging from ’

  Something’s wrong.

  Col thrashed past Pat, a fin almost scored Pat’s head. Then he stopped.

  The suspended torch was moving easily in a lazy current, the end of rope wafting under the torch. But there were no tanks.

  31 / the race

  Pat bit into his mouthpiece as he swam towards Col and the torch.

  He thought: That’s it. If we go up to the surface we’ll get the bends, and we can’t stay down here without air. But our tanks are going to run out of air in a few minutes – just look at the air gauge in the console. We were going to wait around the hanging tanks and breathe from them while our bodies fixed up the nitrogen in our blood. But now there are no hanging tanks. Go up and you die in agony; stay here and you wait to die. And there is no other choice.

  Pat went up to Col, looking for some reassurance in his face, anything that would tell him that he was being stupid. As usual. But Col’s face was white and his eyes were wide. When he realised that Pat was looking at him he turned away.

  Oh hell, hell, hell ’

  Matt turned around to touch Pat’s shoulder. Take it easy. He was trying to make his face casual but there was a sharp line between his eyes.

  Col reached the rope end, holding it out as if he was still expecting to find the missing tanks there. The end of the rope was bitten through and had frayed so the three strands unwound into a bird’s claw.