The Stone Dog

by Robert Mitchell

  “Did they say anything about being brothers?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Did one of them call the other Baiya?”

  “I ... I ... I can’t remember.”

  “Did either of them have names?”

  He looked at me and shook his head again. “Andy, for God’s sake. I can’t remember a thing!”

  I helped him up and out into the fresh air before giving him the rest of the story. He turned green when I described how Baiya had hit the fo’c’sle floor and blood had seeped from his eye socket. Five seconds later he dashed to the side of the boat and vomited into the sea.

  “Never again, Andy,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes. “Never again. That’s it. No more booze. I’m off it for life.”

  The truth of it was that I believed him.

  “God, Andy!” he cried after a moment of silence. “They were going to kill you!”

  “Right.”

  “I nearly got you killed!”

  “Right again.”

  “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But the damage has been done, and saying sorry isn’t going to get us out of this mess.”

  “What will we do?” he asked.

  “Wait for Rick to get back,” I replied, “and then decide on a course that we all agree upon, just like we’ve always done; and I don’t want to hear any more talk from you about spitting up!” His eyes gave a nervous twitch and he looked away. I went on: “As I see it, we can do one of three things.”

  “What are they?”

  “We can hand the bodies to the police and forget about von Luckner’s chest; forget about everything in fact; or we can dump the bodies at sea and run for home.”

  “What’s the third?”

  “Dump the bodies and go find the chest.”

  ******

  The three of us sat around the table arguing the pros and cons. Rick agreed that the police would find it hard to believe my story. Why hadn’t I simply thrown them off the boat if they had come on board without weapons? Had it really been necessary for me to kill T-shirt? Henry wasn’t too certain. He believed in the infallibility of the law.

  “We’re not in Australia, now,” Rick pointed out.

  Henry finally capitulated. We would get rid of the evidence.

  I was inclined to dump the bodies and head for home. If they were ever found, which wasn’t at all likely, nobody would know for certain when they had died, or where, or who had any reason to do it; and if we were two thousand miles away, in another jurisdiction, would they even bother to check us out?

  Rick disagreed. “We’ve got to look at the possibilities. The taxi driver who brought them down to the Tradewinds might remember them; that’s if they came by taxi. One of their mates might have dropped them off. It would look pretty damned suspicious if we fled from here the day after they were last seen alive. After all, we were supposed to be staying in Fiji for a couple of months. We can’t clear the country after less than two weeks, for no reason at all. If they ever asked the girls about our departure, which I admit isn’t likely; they’d have more circumstantial evidence than they needed.

  I couldn’t fault his argument.

  “Okay,” I agreed, but not happy with the alternative. “We go after the chest, but we go as soon as bloody possible.”

  “Now,” Rick said. “Why not go now? There’s nothing stopping us. The fuel tanks are full, and so are the fresh-water tanks. We could do with a bit more fresh food, but that’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Right,” I agreed, and caught Henry’s slight nod.

  “Okay, Henry,” Rick continued. “Go down and switch the batteries over so I can start the mains. Andy, get out there and stand by the anchor windlass.”

  There were a few mumbled words from Henry.

  “What’d he say?” Rick asked as Henry disappeared out through the doorway.

  “He said he’s off the booze for life.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see.”

  ******

  We had a late lunch soon after moving out through the harbour and into the open sea. Neither of the others seemed to have much of an appetite, but my stomach was still rumbling from the ravages of the fish curry, and I knew I had to put something into it or suffer.

  “Better wait until after dark I suppose,” Rick said, tilting his head towards the direction of the hold. “What do you reckon?”

  Henry looked back out to the rolling swell, trying not to think of what had to be done.

  “Yes,” I replied, moving over to the wheel. “Why don’t I take it from here and you two go below and see what you can find in the hold to weight them down with.”

  They looked at each other and then back to me. I wasn’t going back down into the hold again if I could help it.

  “And make sure it’s good and heavy,” I continued before they could argue. “Something we can wire on. We don’t want them rising to the surface in a day or so; and make bloody certain it’s something that couldn’t lead the law back to us.”

  They moved to the doorway, reluctantly.

  “And empty their pockets,” I called. “If there’s anything that’ll burn, then burn it. Anything else, then toss it over now, as long as it won’t float.” Then, as an afterthought, added: “I just hope to hell nobody knows where those two bastards were headed to last night.”

  Rick weighted the sea-grass matting with an old tin of paint that had gone hard, and tossed it over the side.

  Three and a half hours after leaving the relative calmness of Suva Harbour we dropped the bodies overboard.

  “Shouldn’t we say a prayer or something?” Henry had asked.

  “What for?” Rick had replied. “The pair of bastards were probably bloody heathens.”

  I had swung the trawler on a course well out from the coast, giving Nasilai Reef a wide berth. The two brothers had gone over the side a good ten miles from the nearest piece of land, both of them wired together to a short length of rusty chain that was wound tightly around both torsos. Baiya had a heavy shackle wired to his left foot as well.

  Rick had suggested that maybe it would be a good idea to stab them both in the stomach.

  “Why?” I had asked, astounded.

  “To let the build-up of gasses out,” he had replied. “It’s the gasses that bring bodies back up to the surface.”

  “You do it then,” I had said.

  He had looked hopefully at Henry who had already been turning green at the sight of the two bodies lying at his feet. There had been no more smart suggestions.

  They had disappeared from sight in seconds, and for a moment it seemed as though it had all been a bad dream. It wasn’t, but I knew it would give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

  I wondered how long it would take for the flesh to decompose on the sea floor, and how long it would take the sharks and the crabs to do their work of cleaning up after the acts of man.

  I felt happier with them off the boat. The thought of the brothers see-sawing to the sea floor through two thousand feet or more was one of relief. Out of sight was not quite out of mind, but it helped.

  Henry was still off colour, and blaming it on the rolling sea, but I knew he was a better sailor than that. We all needed a good night’s sleep to get over the shock, me more than the others; but I was certain that it would be many more nights before the memory might start to fade and some of the horror disappear.

  Neither of the others had much of an idea where they wanted to spend the night; our thoughts had been concentrated on getting rid of the bodies; so I set course for Leleuvia, the island where we had spent the previous week. It wasn’t all that much off the course to Wakaya, and we knew where the best anchorage was and should be able to find it at night. I had estimated between six and a half to seven hours steaming time from Suva and was only fifteen minutes out in my calculations. It was five minutes to eight as the chain rattled up from the locker and the anchor finally took hold on the sandy bottom.

&n
bsp; Henry had slept for five of those hours, and Rick hadn’t been much behind him. I stayed at the wheel the whole way, more to have something to do than from consideration for my two partners and their hangovers. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I would have to be totally exhausted before I could do that.

  “Feel like a beer, Rick?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “Why not? What about you Henry?”

  “No bloody fear. I’m making a cup of coffee. If I had my way I’d throw the whole bloody lot overboard.”

  I started to laugh, at first only a nervous giggle but then breaking out into a roar as I saw the martyred look on Henry’s face and remembered his many attempts at being contrite, at trying his best to be brave but sounding as though his whole world had come to an end, as though this was his last voyage with us.

  Maybe it was that look on Henry’s face, or maybe it was the pent-up fear and panic finally breaking free from my subconscious mind. The psychologists would have a name for it; but whatever it was, it broke the barrier that had come between the three of us, a barrier that had slammed down when I had flown into Henry the previous night, a barrier that had brought a cautiousness between us, making us phrase our words carefully, making us think before speaking, trying not to offend; guarded politeness. It had blocked out the ease of communication which had existed before, that feeling of togetherness.

  Rick punched me playfully in the chest and grabbed Henry by the shoulders, shaking him, none too gently.

  “Henry, old mate,” he said. “Next time be a little more careful, eh? Andy’s not much, but he’s the only partner us two bastards have got.”

  “Come on, Henry,” I said, smiling. “One small beer?”

  “No,” he replied. “I meant it. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I really like the taste of the stuff, only the effect.” He turned to the refrigerator. “But let me pour you guys one.”

  “Welcome back, Henry,” Rick said.

  I raised my still empty glass and agreed.

  “Well,” I added, “At least we’re safe out here. No bastard’s going to come paddling up in the middle of the night.”

  “Yeah,” Rick replied. “But even so, who wants to give me a hand to shift that coil of rope and get the Greener out?”

  “Good idea,” I said. “I’ll feel much happier with that shotgun of yours lying somewhere nice and handy. What I wouldn’t have given for the shark rifle to have been sitting in the rack.”

  Rick spent the next half-hour lovingly cleaning and polishing the gun, oiling the barrels and rubbing wax into the fine-grained stock. There was no shortage of ammunition; we often used it to shoot at beer cans tossed astern of the trawler as we headed back after a successful trip. He hid the three boxes of ammunition amongst the spare blankets, sheets and towels; and the gun in front of the tinned goods stacked in the food cupboard under the lower port bunk, ready to be grabbed at a moment’s notice; both barrels loaded with the largest shot he had – number 3’s.

  “Reckon we need to keep a watch?” Henry asked.

  “No,” I replied, yawning. “But I’ll sleep a lot better with the doors locked just the same.”

  Eleven

  It was another restless night, although nowhere near as bad as the previous one. I had gone out on deck perhaps five or six times, checking the mooring and listening to the wind. Several times during the night I sensed one of the others climbing out of their bunk; and had lain awake waiting for their return, keyed up, listening for the loud strident cry that might come at any second.

  But it was habit, a subconscious concern for the safety of the trawler more than the fear of being boarded again in the depths of darkness. I don’t suppose we ever slept for more than two hours at a stretch, unless we were tied up in the pig-pens in Cairns.

  We would hear the intruders coming the next time, not that I thought there would be such a time. They would need a motor to get out to us and the sound would carry across the still night air for miles.

  I slept late the next morning and was the last to rise, waking to the aroma of grilled lamb chops, eggs and bacon.

  “Why don’t we stay here for the day?” Rick suggested, his mouth half full. “And then move off to Wakaya early Monday morning. We don’t want to look like we’re running away from anything.” He laughed. “Except maybe from the girls.”

  Henry and I agreed. I think Henry would have agreed to anything. At the mention of the girls he seemed sad. I think he would have liked to have given a proper farewell to Mere.

  “Why Monday?” I asked. “Why not Tuesday, or Wednesday for that matter?”

  We decided to stay until Wednesday morning and then head off to Wakaya. The island was no more than twenty miles away, an easy three hours. There was frozen food on board sufficient for another two weeks, canned goods for another four, and enough fresh water to last two months; if we made do with salt-water showers under the deck-wash hose.

  Time wasn’t the problem. It was the feeling of being trapped in Fiji until we could sail away without being considered as having left in a hurry. We had to drag our feet, for once we had the chest on board the temptation to clear Customs from Suva and sail straight for home would be too great. Staying at Leleuvia those few extra days might make the difference between our being allowed to leave without question, or coming under suspicion.

  ******

  By the Wednesday morning we were eager to go chasing the Sea Devil’s chest. There had been a reticence before, an unvoiced feeling that maybe we should be heading back to Cairns and safety. We didn’t have to clear through Suva. We could have gone around to the other side of the main island of Viti Levu and departed from the port of Lautoka. The disappearance of two obviously crooked Indians wasn’t going to start a nationwide manhunt.

  But three days of diving around Leleuvia and the excitement caused by the fish that Henry kept bringing back on the end of his spear wiped away most of the gloom, and all of the doubt, leaving us comfortable with each other again, knowing that each could be relied upon to back up the others.

  Henry had been as good as his word and not a drop of beer had passed his lips. It pleased Rick and me, as beer was the one thing in short supply. We put ourselves on a ration of two stubbies per day; and even at that rate it wouldn’t last more than a week. By the end of those three days the alcohol Henry had consumed during his wild nights in Suva had leached out of his system and he was back to his previously sharp-minded self.

  I took the chart showing the position of Wakaya out of the drawer: British Admiralty Chart number 905 – Suva Harbour to Levuka. It was the first time it had seen the light of day since we had left Cairns. We sat around the dining table and looked down at the island that had brought us two thousand miles and had cost two lives.

  “Do you reckon we’ll find it?” Henry asked for at least the fiftieth time since arriving in Fiji.

  “We’ve got more than an even chance,” I replied, by now my standard answer.

  The only problem that kept coming back to my mind with monotonous regularity was that someone might already have beaten us to it. I was certain that Count von Luckner – the Sea Devil – had never been back to the area. He had escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp in New Zealand and been recaptured near the Kermadec Islands, but they were situated halfway between New Zealand and Tonga, and still a good eight hundred miles from Fiji and the island of Wakaya.

  I had read somewhere that he had revisited New Zealand in the 1930’s, sailing around the world on his private yacht. Uncle Max had tried to get over to Auckland to see his old commander, but the times had been hard and he hadn’t been able to raise the money for the fare.

  “Uncle Max?” I had asked him once when I was about ten or eleven. “Do you think the Count might have gone back to Fiji for the chest?”

  “Nein,” he had replied in that guttural voice I knew so well. “Der Graf von Luckner was a wealthy man. He had many estates. He didn’t need the money; und he was a gentleman. If he found the chest agai
n he would have handed those things back to the countries we took them from.”

  Uncle Max thought it would still be there, and so did I; sitting in sixty feet of water, too deep for most free divers and not likely to be spotted by the locals.

  Von Luckner had taken careful bearings from the shore and the outstretched headlands before ordering that the iron chest – Uncle Max had been certain that it had been iron – should be lowered into the small bay on the western side of the island. The launch had been carefully manoeuvred before he gave the order, with the chest hanging over the side on the rope as they rowed first one way and then another until he was satisfied.

  The bay was in the form of a broad letter V, with the tips of the rounded arms a little over three hundred feet apart. Ein hundert Meter, my uncle had said – one hundred metres. He was certain it had been dropped at a point almost exactly in the middle of a line drawn from the outside edges of both tips of land; but even so, von Luckner had lined up the rocks of the begging dog against a scar high up on the cliff face, the fracture from where those rocks had fallen.

  The only things Uncle Max hadn’t told me was the state of the tide and how far the two arms of the bay extended out to sea. It could have been twenty yards or two hundred for all I knew. The whole of Wakaya was maybe five miles from one end to the other. The map of the island on our chart was a mere two inches long, a scale far too small to show indentations along a coastline such as we were looking for.

  “Not my idea of a treasure island,” Henry announced with something of a smile.

  “What would that be?” I asked.

  “Like something out of Robert Louis Stevenson,” he said laughing. “Perfectly round, white sandy beaches, a hundred acres in size, and with one big rock in the middle shaped like a skull.”

  “Maybe next time,” I replied.

  Wakaya was anything but what Stevenson had written about. I didn’t expect to find much in the way of sandy beaches. Most of the shoreline would be rocky, and some of it steep. On the western side, about halfway down the main part of the island, according to the chart, stood a steep hill of some six hundred feet in height. The island itself was in two parts, joined by an isthmus no more than a hundred yards wide at its narrowest point, with the southern lower part of the island only perhaps a tenth of the size of its big brother. They each had separate names, the top being Wakaya and the lower, Wakaya Lailai – Little Wakaya. The whole was shaped something like a whale, with Wakaya Lailai being the spread of the tail.