NINO and I stretched on mattresses under the canvas awning amidships. Pat served us cool beer and cigarettes, while Johnny, singing in the galley, prepared the pashas’ meal—fillets of red emperor, caught while we were at the bottom of the sea, fritters of sliced bully-beef and saratoga chips, canned peaches and preserved cream, fresh from the ice-box. We must eat well, rest well. So Nino had ordered, so it was done.
And, as we lay there in the warm shade, rocked by the gentle swing of the sea. Nino read me lesson number two.
“You are a damn fool, Renn. After all I tell you about the way to work under water, you scrabble and scratch like a child looking for a lost toy. You work slowly, man . . . slowly. You save your air and your strength and you keep the nitrogen poison down as low as possible. Think you are making love to your girl here.” He cocked a wicked eye at Pat, who blushed and retreated to the galley. “. . . Gently, gently. You reach the same end in the same time. And the going is much more pleasant.”
“All right, Nino. Round one to you. But why the blazes couldn’t we have stayed down a little longer. We’d have had that box clear in ten minutes.”
Nino heaved himself up on his elbow and jabbed an accusing finger at me. His eyes flashed. His anger was theatrical.
“So! The young cock wants to crow his own song, eh? Let me tell you something, smart one. You know how long it will take us to uncover that box? Fifteen—twenty minutes. You know what would have happened if we had stayed down? We would have needed another twenty minutes to stage up, another hour to rest. And still no box. Why? Because there was no sling ready to lift it up. When we go down this time, the sling follows us; and if we are lucky—if we are lucky, I repeat—we may get the box up in time.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then we leave it,” retorted Nino. “Do you think the fish will eat it? Do you think a mermaid will tuck it under her flipper and walk off with it?”
He clapped his free hand to his forehead with a gesture of contempt and despair and rolled back on to his pillow. There was a roar of laughter from Pat and Johnny who had watched Nino’s triumphant little drama from the safety of the cockpit.
Then dinner was served and, while we were eating, Pat put the question direct to Nino Ferrari.
“This box you’ve found. Is there any chance of its being a treasure-box?”
Nino shrugged eloquently.
“Who knows, signorina? Maybe yes—maybe no. In my experience of these things, it is generally no. It is as well not to build up too many hopes. From the look of that cabin down there I should say we will not find too much. If we went scavenging through the rubbish we might find small things—a drinking-cup, a knife, a pewter plate. But they would be hard to distinguish under the growth and not worth the trouble.” He grinned engagingly. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, signorina, but this business of treasure-hunting is one long disillusion. I knew a man who made a fortune when he salvaged a load of plastic sheets. I knew another who found a treasure-ship—a real one, too—and lost his whole fortune because he couldn’t pump the mud away as fast as the sea could spread it.”
Johnny Akimoto nodded his approval. This small, dark fellow from Genoa was a man after his own heart. The sea had spawned them both and they were both wise in her ancient ways. Then Johnny’s face clouded with sudden recollection. He hesitated a moment, then he spoke.
“Renboss, Miss Pat thought I should not tell you this while you are working. I think now that I should tell you.”
“Let’s have it, Johnny.”
“While you were working down there, the aeroplane came again.”
“The same plane?”
“The same plane. The same movement. Round the island twice, three times. Then home again.”
“Hell and damnation!”
I leapt up from my mattress. Nino Ferrari pulled me down again.
“If you want to go down this afternoon you stay where you are. What has happened that is new? You know this Manny fellow will spy on your work. No sense to spoil the work because you are angry with the spy.”
Reluctantly I lay down again. I was boiling with anger. Johnny’s next words echoed my own thought.
“I think this time it is more serious than the last.”
“Why, Johnny?”
It was Pat’s voice this time, questioning, earnestly.
“Because, Miss Pat, this time he sees the Wahine instead of the work-boat. He knows that we have begun to work the wreck. He knows that whatever he plans to do must be done quickly.”
I turned to Nino. “Johnny’s right, you know. Manny can’t delay too much longer. We’ve got to move faster.”
Nino waved an eloquent hand. “Can we work any faster than we are working now? Can we do any more than we have planned to do? No. So why spoil your own digestion and mine? Today we work the cabin. Tomorrow we work the hold. We keep on working until this Manny fellow turns up——”
“Sure, sure! And what do we do when he does turn up?”
“I think maybe if we use our brains instead of our bottoms we give him the surprise of his life.”
Nino chuckled and closed his eyes and not another word could I get out of him until it was time to go down again.
We checked the pressure in our air-bottles and tested the regulators, and while Pat helped us to harness up, Johnny tied the ballast-net on the end of the long slingcable. This would go down with us. We would carry the cable-end over to the wreck and dump the ballast-bag inside the door of the cabin. Then, when we had uncovered the box, Johnny would haul it to the surface while we were staging up. Before I put on my mask Pat kissed me on the lips and said, “Good luck, Renn. And try not to be too disappointed.”
“I won’t. There’s a treasure topside, even if there’s none below.”
Then I followed Nino Farrari over the side and felt the shock of the water on my skin, warm after its two-hour broiling on the deck. The ballast-bag followed us down and we carried it between us as we swam over the now familiar deck and up to the door of the cabin.
The dark held no terrors for me now. The staring fish-eyes, the secret scurrying movements in the shadows, were all forgotten as I knelt with Nino on the rough floor and began steadily, rhythmically, to scrape away the sand from the sea-chest. Nino watched me shrewdly and nodded his satisfaction when he saw that I had learnt my lesson.
Try to bury a kerosene-can in your kitchen garden. You’ll be surprised at the size of the hole you have to dig. Try to get rid of the same can six months later and you’ll find you have double the work on your hands. Tackle it on a wet week-end and you’ll be up to your knees in slush within ten minutes. Imagine two men attempting the same task in sixty feet of water, shifting with their bare hands two hundred years’ accumulation of fluid sand and trailing seaweed and coral growths. You will understand that Nino had not exaggerated the size of the job.
I was working on the underside of the box, Nino on the upper. No sooner had I scraped away one handful of sand than more flowed down into the hole to take its place. The water around us was full of drifting particles which blurred our masks and vexed our patience. We had been working for, perhaps, fifteen minutes when Nino tapped my shoulder and beckoned me to look at his side of the box.
I saw it—and my heart sank. The top of the box had been stove in, probably on the night of the wreck, and the inside of it was full of sand.
The brass strips which had bound it were corroded and broken, the metal studs still left in the spongy wood were coated with coral cells and tiny molluscs. They scraped our hands as we plunged them into the box, screening the liquor sand for any trace of gold or jewels or ornaments.
My hand closed round something hard, but when I brought it up it proved to be a corroded buckle—brass probably or pinchbeck. Nino brought up a broken, rusted knife. This too was of common metal. When he found another buckle, larger than the first, he made a rueful mouth behind his mask and signalled me to stop. His miming told me only what I knew already.
The box was a very ordinary sea-chest. It had held nothing more valuable than its owner’s shore-suit and his buckled shoes and his sea-knife. The voracious sea-organisms had eaten everything but the knife and the buckles of his hat and shoes.
For a moment we stood looking down at our pitiful find. Then Nino motioned me to help him and we lugged and heaved the rest of the box clear of the sand, and tipped its contents out among the seaweeds on the floor. We found nothing more than a pitted metal handle with a piece of porcelain still fixed to one end.
Then we heard the smack of the bullet on the water. We tossed the box on the pile of sand in the comer and watched it settle weightlessly among the weeds.
Clutching our few childish relics in our hands we made our hesitant way to the surface.
“Tired, Renn?”
Pat and I were sitting on the forward hatch-cover while Johnny steered us home through the channel and into the lagoon, and Nino, calm as a cat, was asleep on one of the bunks. Pat’s hand was in mine. Her dark head was resting against my shoulder.
“Yes, sweetheart, I’m tired. Nino was right. It’s wearing work.”
“Are you disappointed, Renn?”
“Yes. It’s crazy and childish and I don’t want any sympathy. I’m new to the business. I’ll have to learn to be patient. That’s all.”
“Nino says you’ll start working the hold tomorrow.”
“That’s right.”
“Will it be difficult?”
“No more difficult than the cabin. Except that there’s a lot more of it and the sand is ten times deeper.”
“It doesn’t sound very promising, does it?”
“No. It’s a matter of luck, that’s all.”
She hesitated a moment, then went on, “Renn, I’ve been thinking.”
“About what?’’
“About the coins on the reef. Do you think it’s possible that any of the crew reached the island?”
“And took the treasure-boxes with them?”
“Yes.”
“Sweetheart,” I said patiently, “we’ve been over all this before. You heard what Johnny said about it. I tell you, I’ve been over the whole island. There’s not a trace of any such happening.”
“Aren’t there any caves?”
“Nary a one. There are a few rockholes and overhangs on the cliff-side. But they’re either too shallow or too high up in the wall. There’s a sort of narrow cleft up on the eastern horn. Jeannette and I looked at it once, but it was so dank and musty and full of goat-smell that we didn’t go inside. Apart from that, nothing . . . nothing at all.”
She sighed and made a little rueful mouth.
“Well, so much for my fine theory. Looks as though it’s up to you and Nino, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s up to us.”
Johnny was slacking off now and we were sliding in to anchorage. I stood up and walked forward to be ready with the hook. Pat followed me up.
“Ren?”
“Yes.”
“Johnny’s worried about something.”
“Did he say what it was?”
‘‘No, but he wants to talk to you tonight, Renn . . . after dinner. Alone.”
I tossed the anchor overboard and the cable went whipping down after it. Then the cable tightened. The Wahine stopped drifting and her stem swung round into the current. The first day’s work was over. We were home again.
Dinner was over. The stars hung low in a soft sky. Nino squatted beside the fire, carefully taping the hose-joint of his aqualung and crooning happily to himself. Pat had gone down to her tent to write up the thesis that would make my brown girl, incongruously, a Doctor of Science. I saw her shadow cast by the lamp against the glowing canvas of the tent. JOHNNY was going back to the Wahine to sleep. I walked down with him to the beach.
When we were out of earshot of the others Johnny told me, “Renboss, I am scared.”
“Of what, Johnny?”
“Something is going to happen with this Manny Mannix.”
“We know that, Johnny. We’ve always known it.”
“Yes, Renboss, but. . . .” He stumbled and groped for the words that would frame the thought and make its urgency clear to me. “How can I explain it, Renboss? It is like the old days on the trochus-beds. Word would go round that this one or that one had found a new place and was working it quietly. When he walked into the bar the others would watch him silently, with greedy eyes. They would measure his strength and his courage and the loyalty of his crew. If he were strong and his men loved him, they would fawn and smile and offer him drinks and try to wheedle his secret out of him. But if he were weak or cowardly or unloved, then they would growl and mutter. Someone would start a fight. A bottle would be thrown and the shell-knives would come out, and they would fight like animals. . . . This Manny is animal. Renboss. That is the way he will fight.”
I nodded gravely. Johnny was right. Manny Mannix was an animal with an animal’s courage. But Manny was a business-man and where money was concerned Manny would take no chances. If he moved at all he would move in strength. And if you stroll round the waterfronts of the north with money in your pocket you will find plenty of tough characters who are not too particular how they earn it. Johnny watched me with troubled eyes.
“You agree with me, Renboss?”
“I agree with you, Johnny.”
“What are you going to do, Renboss?”
“What do you want me to do, Johnny?”
He considered the question a long time before answering.
“For myself and for you and for this diver fellow, Nino, I would say we stay and fight. But there is the girl.”
I saw the point. There was the girl. If there were violence, she would be caught in the midst of it. She would be there when the animals began to rend and tear each other. And afterwards . . .? It was not a thing that should happen to any girl; and this was the girl I had come to love. There was only one answer.
“All right, Johnny. We send her back in the morning. If it’s fiat weather she can take the work-boat. She needn’t go to the mainland. There are two or three islands where she can put up and wait till it’s over.
Johnny Akimoto straightened up. It was as if a great load had slipped from his shoulders. He smiled and shook my hand.
“Believe me, Renboss, it is best. You will not want her to go, I know that. But when she is gone you will be able to fight with free hands. . . . Good night, Renboss !”
I watched him push off the dinghy, step lightly over the stem, and scull out to the Wahine with long, easy strokes. I turned away and walked up the beach to Pat’s tent.
She got up when I entered. We kissed and dung together for a moment, then I sat her down in the chair again and perched myself on a packing-case beside her. I said flatly, “Sweetheart, I’m sending you away tomorrow. There’s going to be trouble. You’ll take the work-boat and go over to South Esk or Ladybird Island and stay there until we come for you.”
She looked at me a long time without speaking; there were tears in her eyes and her lip trembled; then she took hold of herself and asked me, calmly enough, “Do you want me to go, Renn?”
“No. I don’t want you to go. I think you should go.”
“And Johnny?”
“Johnny thinks the same.”
She turned her face away and dabbed at her eyes with a small handkerchief. When she faced me again her mouth was firm and there was a proud lift to her chin. There was a note in her voice that I had not heard before.
“You are going to fight, aren’t you, Renn?”
“Yes.”
“For the treasure-ship?”
“Partly . . . yes. But not only for that.” Slowly, painfully, I tried to piece out for her the thought that had been growing in my mind for the past days. “I know now that we may never find the cargo of the Dona Lucia. There is still a chance, of course. There is an even greater chance that it may be buried so deep under the sand that we could never come to it in a million years. In that case the fight would be a monstrous and costly folly. But don’t you see? It’s not only that. It’s all the other things. It’s this—this life, my friends, this island. For the first time in my life I’ve stood a free man with my own land under my feet. I’ll fight for that, sweetheart. I think, possibly, I will kill for it.”
“And your own woman, Renn?” The words came out in a whisper. “I am your woman, aren’t I?”
“You’re my woman, Pat. From now to crack o’ judgment.”
I stood up. I reached out to draw her to me, but she pushed me gently away.
“Then I’m staying with you. You’re my man, and you can’t send me away.”
I tried to argue with her and she closed my mouth with kisses. I tried to threaten her and she laughed in my face. I tried to charm her to submission and she dismissed me, reluctantly.
“Go to bed, Renn. Tomorrow’s a working day. When this is over we’ll have all the time in the world—till crack o’ judgment, as you say.”
I was shorn like Samson. I kissed her again and went back to my tent.
Nino Ferrari was still squatting by the fire, tinkering with the delicate mechanism of the regulators. He looked up when he heard me and gave me a crooked smile.
“A fine girl you got yourself there. She’ll make a good wife for a diver. A deep-water man needs plenty of sleep.”
I grunted irritably and squatted down beside him. He flipped me a cigarette.
“Something on your mind, my friend?”
“Yes. We’re going to have a fight on our hands. Johnny thinks so. I think so.”
Nino cocked his dark head and whistled soundlessly.
“So! It is going to be like that, eh? I have seen these things before, with the sponge-fishers in the Aegean. They can be ugly. When the wine flows and the long knives come out.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in a significant gesture. “What about the girl?”
I shrugged. “I wanted her to go, she refused. Short of running her off the island by force, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Nino tightened the last screw in the regulator and folded it carefully in clean cloth to keep the sand away from it, then he put the whole apparatus back in its case and snapped the lid.
“First rule for a lung-diver,” he said irrelevantly. “Clean the regulator after every dive. If it fails in deep water you are a dead man.”
There was a silence between us. I heard the cheep and clack of insects in the bush behind us. I watched the dipping flight of a bat. Then I turned to Nino again.
“Out there, this morning, you said you had something we might use against Manny Mannix when he comes. What is it?”
His dark eyes gave me a long, sidelong stare. Then he bent his head and seemed to be studying the backs of his hands. When he spoke his voice was level, without emphasis.
“My friend, one does not put a knife into the hands of a child, nor a loaded pistol into the fist of a man who is angry. The knowledge that I have came to me in a sad time, a time of violence and bloody destruction. If it is necessary to use it again, I will do so. Even though you are my friend, I will say what is to be done and how, and for the consequences, I will take the responsibility. I am sorry but this is a thing that I feel deeply—here in my heart.”
And with that, I had to be content. I grinned, got up, clapped him on shoulder and took myself off to bed. I dreamt of a war-time beach-head with dead bodies rolling in the backwash and a man pinned down in a fox-hole by machine-gun fire from the palms.
The man in the fox-hole was myself. The man behind the gun was Manny Mannix.