I stand the whole way to Fremantle on the train even though there are plenty of empty seats, then we walk the short distance from the station to where the Black Dragon is moored at the end of the long jetty. Each step feels like I have pants full of razors slicing into my poor, butchered bum.
Two large steamers are tied up along the way, their stacks lazily leaking smoke, and ahead of them, several high masts of windjammers point to the sky with flags fluttering in the afternoon sea breeze. Overhead, seagulls swoop and squawk shrilly.
At the mouth of the river nearby, cranes, dredges, steam piledrivers and swarms of men work like frenzied ants to create a new Fremantle Harbour. The noise close up must be deafening as even from this distance, it is loud.
‘Men,’ announces the Captain when we are finally on board the Black Dragon, ‘we’ll chance staying here for a few days. I can’t imagine that fool magistrate will take any action, but we’ll keep a lookout, just in case. He can be a vindictive cove. We’ll run up a yellow quarantine flag. The thought of a shipboard pox like typhoid or cholera should be enough to scare off any nosy coppers. It’d scare me off. If you come back from town and see the yellow flag isn’t flying, then you know we have trouble. Stay away.’
The men nod.
‘Off you go then,’ he commands, ‘and I’ll see you back on Sunday morning. We sail at dawn. Me, I’m over to the Esplanade. Red, you are off to your hammock below.’ He pauses. ‘No, in fact, you can use my cabin until I get back. Ask Sam Chi for something to ease the pain and help with healing. I’m sure you have the right ointment in your box of secret potions and concoctions, eh, Sam?’
‘I do, Captain. A recipe from my honourable grandmother, from my father’s side. Very ancient. From China. It could sting a bit.’
I screw up my face at the thought of more pain.
‘I dunno,’ declares Mr Smith. ‘Young’uns these days are gettin’ soft. After a dose of the cat-o’-nine-tails in the olden days, we’d toss a bucket of saltwater over ’is back. That’d clean the cuts and stop infections in one swoop. Now, that stung a bit. A lot, actually. Worser than the beating. And then it’d be back to work for the miserable blighter.’
The Captain returns on Friday evening just as the sun sets over the far outline of Rottnest Island on the horizon. A few of us sit by the hatch cover playing cards. So far, I have lost one shilling and sixpence, an absolute fortune.
‘Bosun Stevenson, Red,’ he calls as he strides across the gangplank. ‘Join me and Mr Smith for dinner, gentlemen, if you would be so kind. I’ve had a few thoughts I’d like to discuss as to our next ad … voyage.’
I swear he was about to say adventure. I must also say he looks surprisingly tired, considering he has just had nearly a week off work. I am more than happy to join the men in the Captain’s cabin though. It will be a slap-up feast, I’m betting. After six months of the small, rank meals at school, I plan to eat everything I can get my hands on, especially as Sam will be cooking it.
About an hour later, the four of us sit around the Captain’s polished jarrah table. He pours a glass of claret for Bosun Stevenson, Mr Smith and himself and one for Sam Chi who arrives a few minutes later carrying a tray laden with a steaming hot lamb roast, a mountain of vegetables and a jug of mint sauce. Delicious. There is no claret for me, but instead, I get a goblet of Sam Chi’s home-brewed ginger beer. It feels good to be invited to share dinner with the men. Their conversation is so much more interesting than the purile chatter of the boys in the school dining room.
‘Normally,’ says the Captain, ‘gentlemen gathered like we are this evening for dinner would drink the first toast to the Queen, but as we are so often at odds with the dear lady and her avaricious tax collectors, perhaps that might be a tad hypocritical. Can I suggest, instead, the first toast this evening be to Master Red Read, scourge of ill-tempered and aberrant schoolmasters and protector of small children. Red, we are all proud of you and what you did,’ he pauses and beams at me, ‘and we are pleased to have you rejoin the Black Dragon. To Red!’
‘Hear, hear!’ add the others.
I feel my face redden, but I am also as proud as punch. And then I hop into the roast until my plate is bare and shining like a new coin.
‘Captain?’ I ask later in the evening after the plates have been cleared away, by me, while the men smoke and sit relaxed.
He looks up. ‘Red?’
‘When I was in the lock-up, I noticed these marks on a wall. You can only see them by lamplight at night. Not in the daylight, and normally no one goes in the cell at night. It’s not really a cell, more like a storeroom.’
‘What marks are those?’
‘These.’ I take the folded piece of writing paper that Constable Kelly gave me and on which I had copied the marks as accurately as I could.
He flattens it out on the desk and moves his lantern close to it. My copy of the drawing of the long-haired man is a bit amateurish.
‘I copied it because of that word, bulyon. It sort of reminded me of bullion, like in gold bullion. I thought you might be interested and might know what it all means.’
The Captain studies the paper for a long time and then says, ‘Mr Smith, you old sea dog, what say you?’ the Captain asks, pushing the paper towards him.
‘I’d say this was writ by someone who uses sounds to write, not proper English, like what I use,’ he says, thoughtfully. ‘Listen. Wil-yum dam-peer, buly-on, kokonut i-lind. It’s obvious. William Dampier, bullion, Coconut Island. Then N tip Hom, 100, 100, 100. North tip Home. Duk duches priz guam? 1710. I don’t know what the three hundreds means, but duk could be Duke, so Duke, Duchess, then Prize. Guam, Guam Island, and 1710 is still 1710, obviously.’
He stops and scratches his head. ‘Het kerkhof der europeanen? Nope. Doesn’t make any sense.’
‘I know that one,’ says the Captain, slightly excited and pleased with himself. ‘It’s Dutch. The graveyard of the Europeans. It was what everyone called Batavia. It was built on a swamp. Every deadly disease that ever existed could be found there. Pesthole of the Orient. You know Batavia. Northern Java.’
‘I know the final words,’ interrupts Mr Smith, ‘kersd be wornd? That would have to be, cursed, be warned. From that, I’d say the treasure is cursed.’
‘It always is,’ laughs the Captain. ‘Always. Every single lost treasure I have ever heard of is supposed to be cursed. Red, who’s your friend, the bookseller in High Street?’
‘Mr Shepherd?’
‘Yes, that’s him. As soon as Mr Shepherd opens his bookshop tomorrow, I want you in there to buy every book you can find on William Dampier. Any book that even just mentions him. Got it?’
Oh, good. I wonder what else I might be able to buy at the same time. Shepherds must have had a lot of new books in since my last order. Some boy at school had mentioned a new book called Dracula. It sounded good and gruesome and is about a vampire that drinks blood. I wonder if they will have that in stock.
I can almost see the wheels turning in the Captain’s mind as he works out a plan. I know him well enough by now. I’ll lay odds we will be heading off towards Batavia before seven o’clock Sunday morning, come hell or high water, curse be damned.
‘Another glass, Sam Chi, while I consider this. William Dampier’s bullion, eh? I vaguely remember reading about him in the Illustrated London News once. The man was a famous explorer. Sailed all over the world. Landed on our coast and even named Roebuck Bay in Broome after one of his ships. But in his early days, he had been a pirate in the West Indies. One of the most successful ones ever, by all accounts. He stole millions, literally millions in gold and jewellery and coins. Everything he could lay his hands on. Bled the Spanish dry by looting their South American cities and pirating their ships.’ He smiles and sits back in his chair.
‘William sounds just like your sort of cove,’ says the Bosun. ‘I think you two would have got along famously.’
‘What exactly are you implying, Bosun?’ laughs the Captain. ‘Now, Coconut Island. I’ve not heard of such a place. Have you, Bosun?’
‘Can’t say I have, Captain,’ he answers. ‘Coconuts? It must be in the tropics. South Seas?’
I know about the South Seas. The place is reportedly infested with cannibals. I am glad we have avoided that area so far. Can you imagine? I don’t want to be an islander’s lunch.
The Captain reaches forward for his glass of claret but then sits bolt upright and smiles knowingly. ‘Veni, vidi, vici! I should have twigged immediately. It is Latin. Coconut in Latin is Cocoes. I’ll wager Red’s chastity that Coconut Island is the Cocos Islands, way out in the Indian Ocean. The place is just about sinking under the weight of all the coconuts. Red, the first thing I want you to find when you get the books tomorrow is if Dampier ever visited the Cocos Islands. I’m betting he did.’