On the Reef

The water was warm and crystal clear. I swam back to the boat and retrieved a pair of flippers, a diving mask and a snorkel. William splashed around in the shallows for a while, teasing a few crabs, but he stayed out of the deeper water.

I dipped my head beneath the surface and I almost forgot to breathe – it was so pretty! An aqua­r­ium of colourful creatures flitted around the coral. A cloud of small blue fish was suspended above a protruding rock, and a huge eel peeped from his cave below. Miniature fish were hiding between the lobes of soft corals, watching me cautiously.

I quickly learned how to dive down to the bottom to make closer inspections if something particular caught my attention. Between two rocks, just to the left of a lovely red coral, I saw a dull gleam. I managed to extract a curious round object from its crevice and treaded water to better inspect it above the sunlit surface.

Everything looks much bigger under water, and above the surface my find turned out to be just large enough to fit into the palm of my hand. It was a perfect disc. Some miniature molluscs had settled on one side, and a thick layer of muck covered the other, but where it had scratched against the rock I caught the unmistakable gleam of gold.

I nearly had an asthma attack, I was so excited! I quickly swam to the shore to tell William, but halfway there I turned back, struck by the thought that there may be more of what I had just found.

But search as I might, I couldn’t find the exact spot again. After a while I gave up. I wondered if the metal detector would work under water.

But William was nowhere to be found.

Then I heard his bark from somewhere at the other side of the island. I pocketed my treasure and trotted off in that direction.

There he was, facing the largest crab I have ever seen!

The crab was waving its pincers menacingly. William was hopping around him, barking like mad.

“William!” I scolded. “Leave that crab alone. He’ll pinch off your nose if you give him half a chance!”

He calmed down. “You know that I am actually a hunting dog,” was his excuse, and he looked slightly embarrassed by his uncontrolled behaviour. The crab quickly disappeared into the shrubbery.

“Well,” I conceded. “He would have made a great dinner.”

The sun was setting. I had noticed before how quickly the sun set in the tropics. One moment it would be high in the sky, but the next it would plunge down to the horizon as if in a hurry to get to the other side of the world.

It seemed that William also became aware that time was ticking. “Let’s see if we can find that trea­s­ure before dark.”

We followed my rough map and criss-crossed the island with our metal detector.

Nothing!

“Are you sure we’ve covered the whole island?” William asked.

“Positive.”

Defeated, we flopped down on the soft sand. The waves were lapping the shore in slow lullaby rhythm and a cool breeze was blowing from the sea. We wolfed down the remaining sausages in William’s backpack and I still felt hungry.

I leaned back and let my thoughts wander to the sky above us where the stars where shining like scattered diamonds.

Suddenly I heard footsteps approaching.

A cold chill ran down my spine.

A man dressed in a loose white shirt and old-fashioned knee britches was approaching. In the faint light of the stars I could vaguely see his dark, scraggy beard and wild hair. He came up very close to me and then his laugh, long and loud, grated through the stillness of the night.

“Ha, haa! You trust too much on modern gadgets, my boy. Use your head! What would you have done if you were me? Where would you have buried the treasure that you worked for so long and hard, for which you spilled so much blood and sank so many ships to gather? Where would you have hidden it so that it was safe from the onslaught of the tide? Use your head!”

“Who are you?” my voice was shaky. “How did you get here?”

The stranger casually sat down next to me and leaned forward so that his head blocked out my view of the night sky. His skin appeared to glow with a strange fluorescent light, and I could see his face clearly. His skin was deeply wrinkled by the sun. A patch covered one eye and a thick golden ring glimmered in his left ear. He smelled like salt and stale rum.

“I am a man of the sea. I belong to the ocean. I shall be here, always!”

The pale blade of a dagger glimmered ominously as he clutched it to his chest.

“You may find my treasure, but I shall only allow you to take it from this island if you are worthy. Then I’ll allow you to live, but if you fail the test . . . ”

He laughed again, raising cold sweat from my brow.

Something wet prodded my cheek.

“Why are you fussing so, Alex? Wake up!”

I started upright. William was standing at my side, his tail wagging. I grabbed the flashlight. The beach was deserted, but next to me there was a distinct dent in the sand, as if someone had sat there very recently.

All of a sudden I knew exactly where we would find La Buse’s treasure.