There is someone banging on my door. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, it takes me a few seconds to realise I am in the big white house in a room on the top floor. Through the window, the first light of dawn is just visible. The door swings open. ‘You up for this then, Red?’ demands Captain Bowen. Even though I am still half asleep, I see he holds two shovels.
We make our way quietly to the graveyard and immediately begin digging. The sand in the grave is compacted but not too difficult to shift. The dirt comes out in clumps, but by the time we have dug a hole as deep as my waist, we are both wet with sweat in the humid air.
Clang! Suddenly, my shovel hits something hard.
‘That is not a coffin!’ exclaims the Captain.
I squat and push the sand away with my hands, revealing a metal box with iron straps crossing it both ways and studded with boltheads.
‘Captain!’
Breathlessly, I push more sand away until all the top is uncovered. The box is the size of a seaman’s chest and has a clasp but no lock, but it is rusted shut, and no amount of effort from me is going to budge it.
‘We’ll have to dig it all out,’ says the Captain. ‘I’ll keep going. You go get Rowdy. He’s the strongest. Bring some rope too.’
I scramble out of the grave and back up to ground level.
Rowdy is asleep on the deck of the Charlotte, in a hammock strung between the rail and the mainmast. He is snoring like a trooper. I shake him by the shoulder, but then quickly step back. As he opens his eyes, his right hand comes up holding a knife.
‘Rowdy, the Captain wants you, but be quiet, and we need some rope and a bar or a spike.’ I almost laugh. This must be the first time anyone has had to tell Rowdy to be quiet.
It takes another half an hour to free the metal box, but when we haul it up, sadly, it lifts far too easily.
‘Oh, speak!’ quotes the Captain. ‘Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life extorted treasure in the womb of earth, for which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, speak of it. Stay and speak!’
I can see Rowdy getting impatient. I bet he is thinking, less Shakespeare, more action, more treasure. I certainly am. The Captain does go on sometimes.
We prise open the lid using a spike and rock and stand in silence as Rowdy forces the cover open. It squeaks and groans in protest. I hold my breath in anticipation. The chest could easily contain a dead body, decayed and gruesome. This is a grave we are robbing after all.
‘Well,’ exclaims the Captain, sighing a little. The box is not quite empty, but it might as well be. There are a few gold coins scattered on the bottom, still as shiny as the day they were minted, a broken string of pearls, and a rolled-up tube, probably made from goatskin by the look of it. It is discoloured, almost black in a few places, and looks ready to disintegrate at any second.
‘What do we have here? Could that be what I think it is?’ asks the Captain, smiling. ‘A real honest-to-goodness treasure map?’
Rowdy grunts. ‘You been reading Red’s adventure books, Cap’n?’
‘We’ll take this back to the house and see about unwrapping it,’ says the Captain, half ignoring Rowdy. ‘Maybe some steam from a kettle and a little gentle persuasion.’
The steam has softened the hide, and we gently uncurl it and manage to lay the map flat, but the mess of scrawls and squiggles are faded almost to invisibility.
‘Inside by lamplight?’ I suggest. ‘That’s how I saw the Dampier marks on the cell wall. You could only see them in the lamplight.’
We gather around the table in the formal dining room, and Rowdy pulls the curtains shut. The Captain sits and, using a pen, recreates what he sees onto another large sheet of paper. For the next hour, he squints, shifts the lamp and turns the goatskin map around trying to catch the more subtle light.
Eventually, he stops, places his pen on the desk, leans back in the chair and says with a satisfied smile, ‘I think we deserve a drink. How about you do the honours, Red.’ He nods towards a sideboard where a range of well-filled crystal decanters sit on a tray. ‘Our host, the late and seemingly not very lamented, Mr Carstairs has no further use for it, so we’ll be doing him a favour.’
‘Captain?’ I ask placing a tumbler of Scotch and a glass before him.
‘I’m almost certain it is Christmas Island, Red. Five or six hundred miles from here. Due east, maybe, north-east slightly. Mr Stevenson will know.’
‘I can’t see an X or a path through a swamp and all the other stuff you have on treasure maps,’ I say.
‘No, but there are measurements and all sorts of clues to the location of a bay that seems to be important to our Captain Dampier. From what I remember Christmas Island is almost inaccessible. The coast is all high stony cliffs straight down into the deepest sea. There is a rock-strewn bay called Flying Fish Cove on the north-east of the island where there is a small settlement and a phosphate mine, but that is all. Dampier hints there is a little sandy beach not far from there. Vertical cliffs on each side. A sea cave nearby. From what he’s drawn here I’d say the beach is not more than a dozen feet wide. There’s a reef protecting it, with the bottomless sea after that. Deepest ocean on the planet, I believe. Nowhere to anchor for a full-size ship. He was no fool, our William. I remember the jungle is thicker than anything I’ve ever seen anywhere. It is, frankly, all but impenetrable.’
The Captain looks up at me. ‘Well, Red, what do you reckon? Worth a look on the way home?’
I laugh. It is not a real question. We both know our luggers will be heading to 10.44° S, 105.69° E, the minute we leave this island.
‘The sou’-westerly, ten to fifteen knots, every afternoon should take us straight there,’ he adds. ‘A week, or so.’
After the shipwreck, the slog for survival and then all the preparation for the battle with the wreckers, it is good to see the Captain getting back some of his thirst for adventure again. Me, I just want to relax and feel safe again, but as one of Captain Bowen’s crew, that is not likely to happen. The chances of me relaxing are about the same odds as me being crowned King of England.
‘But why bury the map here, Captain?’ I ask, genuinely puzzled.
‘You’ve read his journal. What do you think?’ he asks.
I think about it for a few moments. ‘I’d say Dampier buried his treasure on his first voyage, and then dug it up on the third to take it back to England, but ran into some sort of trouble. That captain, Read, the one with the same name as me, he sounds like he may have been a dangerous threat. Dampier needed to get away from him and decided to hide the treasure again somewhere only he knew about. He did discover Christmas Island and name it, after all. That’s where I would have hidden it. And he must have told someone, otherwise, how did that old boy Rembrandt know the location and scratch it on the cell wall?’
‘That sounds like a reasonable theory to me, Red. This time next week and we’ll find out if you are right,’ he says.
I sure hope I am. I rub my hands together in eager anticipation. Imagine finding a great big strongbox full of treasure. Jewels and pearls and rubies and diamonds. And gold. Lots and lots of gold. And maybe lots of silver coins.
‘I wonder if Prince Edward would sell Buckingham Palace for the right offer? I can just imagine living in a big place like that with loads of servants to do all the chores Ma sets me,’ I say, almost giggling.
‘He’d have to ask his mother, Queen Victoria,’ laughs the Captain. ‘A life like that’d suit you, eh, Red? One of the idle rich?’
‘Too right, Captain,’ I reply, eagerly. ‘I’m sure I could get used to it.’