THE noon sun was blazing on the canvas canopy; so we carried Pat Mitchell up to the big tent in the shade of the trees. Leaving Johnny to settle her, I walked outside to change into dry clothes—and to prepare my opening gambit.
When I came back she was alone, propped up on the stretcher with a small vanity-case in her hand. I looked at her and saw that she was beautiful. Her cheeks were no longer yellow with sickness but tinged with brown from the sun, and lit from within with the growing fire of health Her hair was no longer lank and matted but brushed soft and shining, drawn away from the face so that you could see the fine bones of the cheek and the small proud lift of the firm chin. Her eyes were dark but veiled in shyness. Her hands were capable and controlled on the coverlet.
She was all woman, this one, small, rounded and perfect like those statuettes of golden girls out of antique times. The stretcher creaked as I sat down on the foot of it. I took out a cigarette and offered her one, but she refused with a gesture. I lit up, smoked for a few moments to steady myself, then started to speak.
“Miss Mitchell . . . Pat. . .”
“No, Mr Lundigan, let me say it.”
She bent forward and spoke earnestly, carefully, as if she were afraid to forget the lines she had rehearsed, as if the lines once spoken should fail to convey their meaning.
“What I said to you this morning was unpardonable. It was unnecessary and cruel, and I don’t know why I said it. Or rather I do. It was because . . . because you had seen me with my clothes off, and you hadn’t any right and . . . well . . . that’s it and I’m sorry and I’ll go away when ever you want me to and nobody will ever know that I have been here . . . nobody.”
Then she lay back on the pillows as if exhausted. She looked at me as if afraid of what I might say or do. I tried to smile but it wasn’t a very successful effort. The smile is a sign of confidence. I was far from confident. I said, “I’m sorry, too. This is the first time I have been back to this island since. . . since my wife and I were here together. I can’t explain how I felt about it. It was like—like a homecoming. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else. . . .”
“Intruding?”
“Yes—I must say it—intruding. But it wasn’t your fault —it was mine. You couldn’t know, even, that the island was mine. You were ill. You. . . . Oh, to hell with it! I was a bloody boor. I’m sorry. Now can we talk about something else?”
She was smiling now, the breach was healed. She asked me for a cigarette. I gave it to her, lit it and our talk led us away from the old dangerous grounds.
I told her how I had heard about her on the mainland. I told her of the young chemist who had lost his heart to her. I told her how she had impressed the islanders—a solitary girl putt-putting between the islands in a tiny work-boat. She laughed at that.
“Impressed? They thought I was crazy.”
“I think you are, too. That’s no sort of a boat for deep waters.”
She shrugged. “It’s all right if you’re careful and wait for the weather. I’ve been lucky most of the time.”
“Most of the time?”
She nodded. “I had my worst moment when I came here. The wind was high and the sea was freshening. I wasn’t particularly worried. I was so dose inshore. Then I couldn’t find a channel.”
“What did you do?”
“Rode up and down the reef until I found it.”
“Dangerous.”
“Yes, very. There was nothing else to do. Even when I got into the tide-rip it was like trying to ride a bucking horse, but we got through all right.”
I looked at the small firm hands on the sheet. Her mouth was firm, too—firm and smiling. A girl with heart and courage. I found myself beginning to warm to her. I thought that could be dangerous, too. I asked her some more questions.
“You’re a naturalist. That’s an odd job for a woman, isn’t it?”
Her chin went up at that.
“I don’t see why. I like it. I’m good at it. It pays fairly well, and leaves me free to do the things I like.”
“Such as—this?”
“That’s right.”
“What are you working at now?”
“A doctor’s thesis. The ecology of Haliotis asinina—mutton-fish to you, Renn Lundigan.”
She had popped me back in my box and closed the lid with a bang. I couldn’t help but be amused. Then it was my turn to be questioned.
“What about you, Renn? What are you doing now?”
“Johnny told you. Learning to dive.”
“For pleasure?”
“For pleasure. Anything against it?”
“No. It makes a fascinating holiday, but what are you going to do afterwards, Renn? For a living, I mean. You can’t beachcomb here all your life.”
I needed notice of that question. This was no playtime girl to be put off with fatuous back-chat. I shrugged and made my little rueful mouth, and said, “Well, I can’t teach any more. No university would have me. But I’m not a bad historian and there is enough material around this reef to make a book or two. You know”—I waved my hands in a vague all-embracing gesture—“you know, the early navigators, the blackbirders, the pearling days . . . none of it’s ever been properly documented.”
Her eyes brightened, she leant forward with eager professional interest.
“That’s good, Renn, That’s very good indeed. This is the Barbary Coast of Australia, you know. There’s all sorts of material here—piracy, violence, romance . . . everything. If I could write, that’s what I’d like to do. Look, I’ll show you something.”
She snapped open her vanity-case, tilted the lid back, lifted out a small tray and took out a small round object which she laid in the palm of my hand. For a long moment I stared at it, not daring to raise my eyes.
It was an exact replica of the old Spanish coin which Jeannette and I had found on the reef. I felt the blood drain from my face. My lips were dry. My tongue was too big for my mouth. I closed my eyes and saw my dreams blown down like a house of cards. I opened them again. The coin stared up at me from my palm, a golden eye, unblinking. I looked at Pat Mitchell. I asked her softly, “Where did you get this?”
Her explanation was eager and guileless. “Here, Renn. On the reef. It was the second day. I was poking round in a rock-pool when I saw what looked like a piece of dead coral, fiat and round. I don’t know why I picked it up, except perhaps that its shape was a little unusual. When I did, I saw that there was metal underneath—tarnished, of course, and overgrown. I brought it back to the tent, cleaned it up and . . . that’s the result.”
“I see.”
“But you don’t seem to understand, Renn.” She was puzzled by my sudden change of manner. “You don’t seem to realize what that coin means. It confirms the theories that the old Spanish navigators came down this way and that some of them were wrecked on the reef islands. You’re a historian, Renn, surely you see the significance of it?”
I saw it all right. I couldn’t fail to see it. I saw that this girl would go back to the mainland and tell her little story and flourish her antique coin until some bright press-man saw it and made a filler paragraph out of it, and then the jig would be up. Every damned holiday-maker on the coast would descend on my island in search of buried treasure, unless. . . .
I must have spoked the word aloud, because Pat Mitchell laid her hand on mine and quizzed me with anxious puzzlement.
“Unless what, Renn?”
I was caught between the devil and the deep. To fob her off with a story would bring the world to my doorstep. To tell her the truth would make her an unwanted partner in my enterprise—an arbiter of my fortunes and my destiny.
Involuntarily I closed my fingers on the coin. I felt the edges of it biting into my palm. Then I thought of Johnny Akimoto and what he had said to me. “She is a good one, that; what she promises she will do.” If I trusted Johnny, I should trust Pat Mitchell also. My fingers relaxed. I looked at her again. Her eyes were full of grave concern. She said quietly, “Have I said something wrong, Renn?”
I shook my head. “No, nothing wrong. I want to show you something.
I walked over to my bed, pulled my bag from underneath it and took out the bracelet I had bought from the girl in Lennon’s Hotel. Then I laid it in Pat Mitchell’s hand.
“There’s the mate to your gold piece.”
Her eyes widened. She held the two pieces together, examining them closely. When she spoke again her voice was a small breath of wonder.
“Is this yours, Renn?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you get it?”
“My wife and I found it on the reef, years ago. Probably in the same place that you found yours.” “What—what does it mean?”
The words came out slowly and deliberately, like coins dropping into a pool.
“It means, my dear, that the treasure-ship Dona Lucia, bound from Acapulco to the Philippines, was wrecked on this island in 1732. And Johnny Akimoto and I have come here to find it.”
There was a long, long silence. The two coins lay unnoticed on the white sheet between us. Neither of us looked at them. We were looking at each other. Then Pat Mitchell spoke, quite calmly.
“Thank you for telling me, Renn. You did me a great honour. You have nothing to fear from me. When I am better I shall go away as I promised. I’ll leave my coin with you. Nobody else will ever know.”
I said nothing. On the face of it, what was there to be said? I felt tired and spent. My eyes ached. I buried my face in my hands and pressed the palms hard against the lids . . . in the old familiar gesture of the harassed student working by night-light. Pat Mitchell reached out, took my hands away and tilted my face up towards her.
“Does it mean so much to you, Renn?”
“Everything, I think.”
“The ship went down two hundred years ago, Renn. You may never find her.”
“I know that.”
“What then?”
“I don’t care to think about it.”
“One day,” she said softly, “one day you may have to think about it. I hope for your sake you will not be too unhappy.”
She lay back on the pillows and closed her eyes. She looked very small and very tired and very, very desirable.
I brushed her cheek with my fingertips and left her.
Johnny Akimoto was bending over the fire, stoking it with driftwood. He straightened when he saw me. His calm eyes were full of questions. I told him bluntly.
“She knows, Johnny.”
He looked at me, wondering. “Knows what, Renboss?” “Why we are here—about the treasure-ship—everything.”
“You told her?”
“I had to, Johnny. She found this on the reef.”
I spun the coin in the air, caught it and slapped it into his palm. He looked at it for a long time without speaking.
“I had to tell her, don’t you see, Johnny? If I hadn’t . . .”
He looked up at me. His dusky face was beaming. “I understand, Renboss.
I understand very well.”
“Did I do right, Johnny?”
“I think, you did right, Renboss,” said Johnny Akimoto. “Now there are three of us.”
It was easier now that there were no secrets between us. Every morning Johnny and I carried Pat down to the beach and made her comfortable under the awning. She was growing stronger now and the area of infection was receding down the calf towards the ankle. Soon she would be able to hobble about, but for the present she had no choice but to lie on the stretcher under the canvas and read or doze or write up her notebooks or watch the small bobbing shape of the dinghy, where Johnny and I were diving.
We were working the outer fringe of the reef now—the small narrow shelf where the anchor hit sand at ten fathoms. We had not yet begun our search for the Dona Lucia. I was still training, adapting body and brain to new conditions of depth and pressure. I was learning the art of decompression—staging slowly to the surface ten or fifteen feet at a time, resting after each ascent to prevent the accumulation of nitrogen in the bloodstream. At first I clung to the anchor-cable, measuring my ascent as if on a notched stick. In the fantastic underwater world is seemed at first like a link with reality, and in my first contacts with the strangeness and terror of deep waters I clung to it desperately, while I struggled to regain my self-control.
I made new acquaintances, too. Acquaintances who might become enemies, but who seemed content for the present at least to regard me as a curious phenomenon in their undisputed territory: the long, slim Spanish mackerel with his predatory saw-toothed mouth; the big groper, huge and bloated; the scarlet emperor; the big snapper whose flanks are striped with the broad arrows; and now and again a cruising shark.
As first I was terrified. Then I learnt to lie still, suspended in the blue water, while the fish stared at me coldly and then whisked off when I blew out a stream of bubbles or clapped my hands in the fashion of a child.
Johnny said little until he saw me gain confidence and then he talked to me calmly, logically, about danger.
“There is always danger, Renboss. Never forget that. We do not know how a fish thinks, so we cannot tell what he will do. A dog—yes, a horse—yes. They belong to our world. They have lived with us for thousands of years. But a fish—who knows. One day a shark may come at you. You will have little warning. He will swim towards you. He will stop. He will circle. Then go away, perhaps. And the next second he will be coming at you like a bullet.”
I grinned sourly. “What then, Johnny?”
He shrugged. “You are in the world of fishes. You must fight like a fish—by swimming, by twisting and turning away, by trying to frighten him.”
“And if he won’t be frightened?”
“You have a knife. You must try to strike him in the belly. There is no other way.”
Always it was the same lesson—conquer fear by understanding. Conquer danger by courage and common sense. Naked in the underwater world a man has no other weapons.
Sometimes Johnny himself would come down with me. I would see him swimming about fifty feet above clad in nothing but a mask and a breech-clout and a belt with a long knife in a leather sheath. I would lie on my back and watch him. I would see his dark body double up like a jack-knife, then stiffen into a long, shearing dive that brought him down eight, nine fathoms in a matter of seconds. Then I would see how the pressure of the water squeezed his belly and his lungs and his rib-case until I thought the bones must crack under the enormous strain, but he would still swim with me a little and grin behind his goggles and raise his hand in a comical gesture before he slanted upwards into the sunlight.
I was proud of my new-found skill, but Johnny’s was an older one and a greater one. I could breathe. I had air in bottles on my back to keep me comfortable for an hour or more, but Johnny had nothing but two lungfulls and his own strength and skill and calm courage. Then, when the lessons were over, we would row back to the beach, totting the small sums of my new knowledge. And when the shadows lengthened we would sit beside the fire and eat the meal Johnny had cooked, while Pat Mitchell lay on the mattress and added her small, wise voice to the quiet flow of our talk.
One evening in the warm darkness she gave voice to a thought that had vexed me for a long time.
“About your treasure-ship, Renn. . . . ”
“What about it, Pat?”
“I’ve thought about it a lot these last days. It was wrecked outside the reef, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. “I think so. I think it must have been. When I was away from the island I used to believe there might be a possibility that she had been flung onto the reef itself and broken up. The finding of my coin seemed to confirm that. Now that I’m here, I’m not so sure.”
Then Johnny Akimoto spoke.
“I think it was outside, Renboss. I am sure it was outside.”
“What makes you so sure, Johnny?” asked Pat.
“I will tell you, Miss Pat. This Spaniard—she is a bigger ship than my Wahine, yes?’’
“Much bigger, Johnny,” I said. “Two hundred tons—three hundred, maybe.”
“So. . . . Now look at the Wahine. She is a small boat, yet she draws five feet of water. It takes a big sea to lift a boat like that and throw it into the middle of the reef. More likely I think, that your Spaniard drove straight onto the outer reef, stuck there, perhaps, until the water and the wind hauled him off and he sank on the ledge.”
“It reads all right, Johnny,” I said, “but how do you explain the coins in the rock-pool?”
“That’s the point I was making, Renn.” Pat’s voice was eager and full of conviction. “It wasn’t the ship. It was the men.”
“The men?”
“Yes. Think of what happens in a wreck. They are out of control in uncharted waters. They know there is land but they have no idea whether it is inhabited or not. It’s the natural instinct of men in danger to cling to whatever possessions they have. The ship strikes. They know she must founder. The boats are useless on the reef. They jump and try to swim to the island. What would a man take with him when he jumped?”
Johnny Akimoto’s voice came out of the darkness.
“I can tell you that, Miss Pat. His knife and his money-belt.”
And there it was. A neat hypothesis, certainly. A piece of logic that gave me new respect for this small brown girl with the proud chin and the dark, flashing eyes. But there were other things I wanted to know.
“If that’s the way it happened, some of them must have reached the shore. I’ve been all over the island and I’ve never seen any traces of them.”
“No, Renboss,” said Johnny. “If the ship broke up on the night of the storm, none of them would have survived. The surf would have rolled them over the reef and tom them to pieces. After that, there would be the blood and the sharks. You see?”
“Yes, Johnny. I see. I see something else, too. If your theory and Pat’s are right, then we’ve an even-money chance of finding the Dona Lucia on the outer shelf.”
“That is if she did not break up, but foundered immediately.”
“That’s the even-money chance.”
For the moment nothing more was said. It was a working theory. We should have to test it. And to test it, Johnny Akimoto and I would have to dive over hundreds of yards of shelf outside the reef, ten fathoms down. Deeper, perhaps, because the shelf was narrow in places and the Dona Lucia could have slid and rolled down the sloping edge into the blue depths of the ocean. And if she did, I would have to go down alone, because the limit of Johnny’s dive was ten fathoms higher than mine.
Johnny Akimoto stood up and began to pile more brushwood on the fire. I went into the tent and brought back a blanket for Pat’s shoulders. When we were seated again she made a small announcement.
“I walked today.”
“What?”
“I walked. It was painful at first, but after I’d hobbled about for a while it wasn’t too bad.”
Johnny’s deep voice chided her.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Miss Pat. You can’t afford to take chances.”
“It wasn’t a chance really, Johnny. The swelling’s gone down—most of it, anyway. If I do a little each day, it won’t hurt me. . . .”
I caught the odd note in her voice and looked towards her; but her eyes were in shadow and I saw only the defiant lift of her chin.
“So now you can send me home any time you like.”