******
The days drifted into weeks and the weeks into months; and the prawns kept coming over the back deck – our nets full most times and the freezer bursting to capacity. Our good luck of the previous two seasons continued and Henry was overjoyed. Rod had been certain our good fortune couldn’t last, just as he had been certain that he was doing the right thing in getting out, in listening to Judy.
We landed more prawns than the average trawler, and none of the other boats could understand our luck. They would trawl alongside us and come up with less than half our catch. Perhaps it was fate, perhaps just coincidence again.
And with the prawns, the money rolled in. We had cash in the bank, cash for which we didn’t really have any pressing need. Life was no longer a struggle; there were no more battles with the bank manager about the overdraft, no more sleepless nights.
But by September the catches began to fall off. The prawns had moved away. The catches now only paid our way, paying for the fuel and the maintenance, and for the new deckie’s wages. Cathie had been Henry’s choice, and I wondered why the boys on the Mary II hadn’t been upset at losing her. Rick and I soon found out. Her coolness didn’t worry Henry, for he didn’t seem to get the urge that usually hit Rick and I after the second day away from land.
Cathie left us half way through the month, heading south for easier work and more money. It wasn’t much of a loss. She had been a sloppy cook and careless on deck and I think we were all glad to see the last of her.
We went out for one last trip. We could have stayed in the pig-pens and prettied up the Sally May, but that would have left us with nothing to do during the lay-up months: December to February – the cyclone season. The catch was even smaller, not even covering the cost of the fuel. By the time we got back to Cairns we were grumbling amongst ourselves, with Rick and me cursing at having let the deckie go, still certain that our charms would have won her over in the end.
We dropped off the prawns and headed back around to the pig-pens.
“God, I’m bored!” Rick mumbled as he finished hooking up the shore power, running his hand through dark hair that hadn’t been cut for the last six months. Henry and I didn’t bother to reply, both feeling the same. “Let’s go and have a beer,” he added. “Somewhere quiet and peaceful, where there’s a few good-looking women.”
Thirty minutes later we were seated on the verandah of the Pacific, our normal drinking hole, lolling back in plastic chairs, gazing out over Cairns harbor, out over blue water touched here and there by a lone white-cap, watching one of the large tourist launches surging towards Green Island lying away in the misty distance.
“Where’s all the crumpet?” I asked of no-one in particular.
“Good question,” Rick replied. “We’re either too early or too late.”
We sat quietly, each with his own thoughts; mine on the long-legged brunette striding down the stairs with one arm linked through that of her boyfriend.
“Why don’t we give up prawning for a while?” Rick asked.
“And do what?” I tossed back.
“I don’t know. What about some diving; or we could anchor off Green Island Resort for a week or so and see what we can find amongst the southern females.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, but I had a better one. “Why not do the rounds of the diving schools and see if we can find three amenable young ladies who might be willing to go off searching for the Pandora for a month.”
“Not that again,” Rick laughed. “I told you, it’s only a rumour!”
The Pandora had been the ship sent out from England in 1790 to search for the infamous Bounty mutineers. She found fourteen of them in Tahiti and then sailed for home after failing to find the rest. In August 1791 she hit the Great Barrier Reef somewhere up north, and sank. There were documents to prove that it happened, but nobody knew exactly where, although a few people had a pretty good idea.
“Yeah?” I said. “Maybe as much of a rumour as von Luckner’s loot, eh?”
I looked across at Henry to find him staring at me with that funny gleam in his eyes once more. Rick caught the quietness as I realized what was in Henry’s mind. Maybe it had been in mine as well and I simply hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“What are you two buggers thinking about?” Rick asked.
“The Sea Eagle,” Henry whispered across the table.
“Seeadler, Henry,” I said out loud. “For Christ’s sake, give the bloody ship her proper name!” I lowered my voice. “And anyway, it wasn’t the Seeadler that they lowered the iron chest from. It was the Kronprinzessin Cecilie, the ship’s motor-boat.”
“Details, details,” he replied, pushing his towelling hat back over sun-bleached hair. “But why not? Why not take a few months off and go to Fiji? We can afford it. God, we’re losing money trawling around here as it is! We might as well go somewhere and enjoy ourselves if we’re simply trying to burn up fuel.” His head swivelled to Rick and then back to me. “Well, why not?” he asked again. “Why not go and look for the treasure?”
I looked at Rick and he looked at me.
“Yes, Rick,” I said. “Why not?”
“Don’t look at me, mate,” he replied. “I didn’t say we couldn’t go.”
******
It was as simple as that. There was no prolonged discussion about the pros and cons of an expedition, no debate on whether or not we could afford the fuel, and no real concern about whether we would even find the chest. It was merely something to do, something interesting; and it was nearly the end of September in any case – the prawn season usually only lasted another two months. If we didn’t find the chest, and got sick of Fiji, we could always motor across to Noumea, or Vila, and get amongst the French mam’selles.
We sat drinking beer for the rest of the afternoon and managed to coax three young southern tourists back to the trawler for the evening. We took it in turns to use the fo’c’sle cabin, the only one on board with bunks, and finally put the girls in a cab about midnight, sending them back to their hotel with promises of a trip out on the trawler in a few days’ time.
Daylight and an overcast sky found us even keener to take off after the chest. The three girls had relieved our tensions; and the beer our minds; and in the sober light of day, it was still a good idea.
“Do you think we should ask Rod?” Henry asked as we sat down to a breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast.
I had been hoping that he might mention Rod’s name, for I felt that somehow the chest, if we found it, and if it did contain something of value, would belong to the Sally May; and Rod had been a part of her even longer than I had. He and Rick had been struggling partners for almost three years before I had come along with my meager inheritance and dreams of a fortune to be made from prawns. The two of them had been as different as chalk and cheese, which probably explained why they had got on so well together: Rick rough and outspoken, broad shoulders, an ever-ready grin and tousled thick hair to match: Rod thin, quiet, a planner, just on six foot and taller than Rick by an inch or so, serious, unsure of himself and the future.
“I’ll go and give him a call,” I replied.
Rick had rung Rod two or three times since he and Judy had gone south, but not during the last month or so. The wedding had come and gone, and not even Rick had received an invitation, something that still upset him.
I got through to Rod at the high-class restaurant he had purchased with the money Henry had paid for the share in the Sally May. It was a far from happy man on the other end of the line. At first I thought that maybe Judy had told him about that morning on the boat the day before they had left, and all the other times as well. She was capable of it, and capable of twisting it around, making it seem as though I had tried to seduce her instead of the way it had actually happened; but as I talked to him I sensed that it was not me that he was upset with, but Judy herself. I fed coin after coin into the box and listened to his tale of woe. Judy had talked him into buying the business and extending the lease, and was now
treating it as her own, playing the well-heeled hostess; but she wouldn’t lift a finger to help, unless it was assisting one of the patrons to finish off a bottle of wine, and more often than not it was a complimentary bottle she herself had brought out from the cellar. She agreed to credit where Rod would have chopped a patron off, telling him it was necessary to keep the patrons happy; but Rod could see the bills mounting, the overdraft creeping further into the red.
Towards the end I got the impression that somehow he believed it had been our fault; mine and Rick’s; that he had married the blonde bitch, inferring that perhaps we should have stopped him, told him what he could expect if he went ahead and married her. Not that it would have done any good. He wouldn’t have listened and there would have been even worse blood between us than there now appeared to be. We said goodbye on a sour note and I strolled back to the trawler feeling deflated, the thrill of the adventure somehow reduced to a sordid thing.
“What did he say?” Rick called out eagerly, certain that Rod would have jumped at the proposal.
“Not interested,” I replied as I climbed down the ladder and jumped onto the back deck.
“Huh?”
So I told him what Rod’s problems were. He shook his head and walked away, but I knew he was bitterly disappointed. I had seen the smile light up across his face when Henry had made the suggestion.
******
A week later we cleared Customs from Cairns and headed out through the channel, out into the open sea, bound for Suva, the capital of the Fiji Islands.
It had taken a lazy week to get the Sally May ready for the voyage, stripping the boat of equipment we wouldn’t need and which might only be in the way. The removal of the fish-sorting box and prawn cooker to shore gave us more freedom around the back deck. We loaded the trawl-boards and racks on to Rick’s utility with the rest of the loose gear, and stored it all in a friend’s yard until our return. Henry had suggested taking the booms down, but they were too much trouble and it wasn’t worth the effort, and besides, in a rough sea they were good stabilizers.
There were now ten drums of diesel strapped to the bulwarks on the back deck, five on each side. Travelling at nine knots, the Sally May would use nine gallons of fuel an hour, and it would take nine or ten days to reach Suva. The fuel tanks held two thousand gallons. The drums gave us a leeway of five hundred gallons, just over two days’ steaming. Fresh water was no problem. We had a thousand gallons of that, enough to last two months if we had to stretch it.
We had spent a thousand dollars on new diving gear: two new regulators and another couple of tanks. The air compressor needed to fill those tanks cost another two thousand.
******
Several days before we were due to leave, a message came from the Fisheries Wharf saying that there had been a call from Brisbane for me. They would be phoning back at seven that evening. I walked around at six-thirty and waited.
Judy.
I had been expecting it to be Rod.
“Hi, Andy,” she said, as though we were still the best of friends.
“Hi, Jude.” There was no use in reminding her that she hated my guts. “What’s up?”
“I was wondering if the offer is still open.”
“Sure,” I said. “What made the big restaurant owner change his mind?”
“Rod’s not coming,” she replied. “Just me.”
“No deal, Jude.”
She hung up in my ear.
******
Nine and a half days later, three bronzed, semi-bearded, ex-prawn fishermen and a salt-stained ex-prawn boat arrived off Suva, a tribute to Rick’s navigation and to the two Gardner engines which had never missed a beat. We went through the narrow passage in the reef just on midday, in a calm sea, glad that we hadn’t had to line up the markers on a wild night and run in on the crest of a wave. The trip had been uneventful, long, but no more exciting than any we had made before, other than the fact of von Luckner’s iron chest being at the other end.
“Bloody hell!” Henry exclaimed in my ear as I picked up the next beacon and turned the wheel a few degrees to port. “Will you look at that!”
“Look at what?” I asked.
“The harbour! It’s just like Cairns.”
He was right, if you were prepared to give a little leeway that is, for there was that same green mountain range behind the harbor, but this one much closer to the water, and maybe with more clouds hanging about overhead, and the peaks lower than those of the Atherton Tableland back home; but it was there all the same; and, like Cairns harbor, Suva harbour was an enclosed bay, calm, and with city buildings right to the shore, but there wasn’t the expanse of flat land that surrounded Cairns. The steep, close-lying mountains prevented an urban sprawl. The rest of the city would be over the other side of the range, and around the long curving arm of the bay.
It took Customs two hours to realize we were sitting at the quarantine buoy; two hours while we sweated in the humidity and twiddled our thumbs, anxious to get ashore, to finish this first stage of our voyage.
“You reckon we’ll have any trouble?” Henry asked.
“Don’t think so,” Rick replied. “They’ve got no reason not to believe us. Why shouldn’t we be interested in taking pictures of coral and tropical fish?” It was our excuse if we needed one. Henry nodded his head.
We only had the one underwater camera – a Nikonis II, and a couple of different lenses; but the underwater flashlight with its batteries and bright red cowling looked impressive enough. Rick was nonchalantly cleaning it as the two Customs officers finally came on board.
There was no problem. We didn’t have any nets on board and no long-lines for trawling, so it was obvious we weren’t going fishing; but they warned us just the same. We would need a licence to fish, they told us, and in the same breath said it probably wouldn’t be granted in any case. We all laughed at the joke. They checked the storage hold, the medicine chest and the booze locker – empty; and took the only rifle that we had on board: a shortened Lee Enfield we kept to shoot at sharks. We could have it back when we cleared port they said, handing us a receipt. They gave us a permit to stay for six months, but no fishing. If we wanted to stay longer, we would have to clear Fiji, make a landfall somewhere else; Tonga for instance; and then they could give us another six months if we came back. Crazy, but that’s the system.
“Okay,” Rick said. “Where to now?”
I stepped out of the door and shouted down to the senior of the two Customs officers as he was about to step over to their launch: “Where can we anchor for a couple of days?”
“Over there!” he shouted back, pointing towards the western side of the harbor. “Over in the Bay of Islands, but keep well clear of the yachts!”
“What about fuel?” I yelled again.
“The main wharf!”
There was a wave and he jumped down into the launch and motored back towards the wharf.
“That suit you, Rick?” I asked. “The Bay of Islands?”
“Anywhere will suit me,” he mumbled. “Just as long as I can get ashore and get stuck into a cold beer. Come on, I’ll drive, you get the bloody anchor up.”
Henry laughed and turned back to the sink and the lunch dishes. I walked up forward to the bow, hit the switch on the anchor windlass and watched as the muddy chain came up slowly over the point of the bow to disappear down the spurling pipe into the chain locker.
The Bay of Islands it was to be, a place that still comes back to me, bringing cold sweats in the night.
Three
We motored quietly across the harbor and away from the main wharf; our fuel tanks full once again and the fresh water overflowing; and glided past the old explosives magazine standing on cracked concrete piles above the water several hundred yards out from shore; well away from ships unloading at the wharf; its square high-pitched corrugated iron roof and fading red paintwork now only a memory of far more important decades – the days of sailing ships and iron-hulled steamers.
&nb
sp; Following another line of beacons we slipped through a narrow passage formed by two arms of the mainland and into the small bay known locally as the Bay of Islands, but marked on the chart as Draunibota Bay. The name the locals had given was the more attractive, reflecting the beauty of several small islands dotting the area – one of them no bigger than twenty square yards, but an island nevertheless.
We were closer to the mountains here; not lofty ranges like the Australian high country, but steep all the same, and covered in a lush greenness that spoke of a constant dampness: and over in the distance, inland from the coast, towards the east, stood a huge sharp outcrop of rock thrusting up from the jungle like some jutting finger, completely devoid of foliage, grey and stark, rough, pitted, a volcanic upsurge left behind after the rains of ten thousand years had worn away the surrounding topsoil.
I stood on the bow and watched as the anchor chain rattled up out of the chain locker and splashed down into the cloudy water, water dirtied and soiled by mud washed down from the surrounding mountainside. The book said that Suva had an average rainfall of one hundred and twenty-five inches, and most of that fell during the summer months.
At sea the air had been dry and cool, but here it was warm and thick, and laden with moisture that the overworked sun could not coax up to those white clouds gathering high above us. I looked down at my chest, at the beads of perspiration clinging to the sun-bleached hair.
A minute later the engines cut out for the second time that day, the second time in nearly ten days, and stillness roared into our presence.
Henry climbed up out of the engine room and joined us on the back deck as the trawler gently swung around on the anchor chain.
“What do you reckon?” I asked Rick.
“Peaceful,” he replied.
“What is?” Henry asked, wiping his hands on a piece of oil-stained cloth.
“This place,” I replied. “No noisy prawn boats. No drunken deckies staggering along the jetty after a session at the pub; and no smell of fish.”
The Stone Dog Page 3