The Stone Dog

by Robert Mitchell

  “Well, where do you reckon it is?” Rick asked, a magnifying glass held above the chart.

  “Haven’t got a clue,” I replied. “All we know is that it must be on the western side, and that gives us about six miles of coastline to cover.”

  “Yes,” Henry interrupted, “but all we really need to do is find the rock shaped like a dog that you told us about.”

  I had let them know about the begging hound back in Cairns, when we had been discussing the possibility of making the voyage. It had been the deciding factor.

  “Right again, Henry, old son,” I replied. “And I reckon there’s one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If it was close to one of the ends of the island I think Uncle Max would have mentioned the fact; so our search area should limit itself to no more than the middle four miles.”

  “Do you think it’ll still be in one piece?” he asked.

  “Well, if it was iron like Uncle Max said it was, then it should have stood up fairly well. God only knows where they got it from; probably a strong box from one of the ships that they sank. Just as well it wasn’t made of timber or steel. We’d be wasting our time if it was. The whole thing would have rusted or rotted away years ago. The contents would’ve been spread around the bay by the currents, and probably buried beneath the sand forever.”

  “Is it still there, you reckon?” he asked again.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “That’s what we’re here to find out,” I said. “Do you guys still want to go after von Luckner’s treasure?”

  The gleam in two pairs of eyes told me that it had been a ridiculous question to ask.

  ******

  An hour later we headed out through the Moturiki Channel, the widest passage through the main fringing reef in the whole area, passing a yacht making its way in under power.

  “Hey!” Henry exclaimed, his head poking out the cabin doorway. “That’s the same one we saw when we were here last time.” He waved, but the guy at the helm was too far away to notice.

  “Come up and get the glasses, Henry!” I called down to the saloon. “See if he’s got any talent on board.” I laughed. “He might have a couple of birds to spare.”

  He took the binoculars from the top of the chart drawer and focussed them across the five hundred or so yards separating us.

  “Can’t see any,” he said. “But there’s the top half of a fairly skimpy bikini hanging from one of the mast stays, so he’s got his home comforts all right.”

  “Lucky bastard,” Rick murmured.

  I gave a blast on the trawler’s hooter and the helmsman gave us a wave in return.

  “Not a bad life, I suppose,” Henry said with just a hint of envy. “Forty feet of yacht, a bit of crumpet, and unlimited time to enjoy them both.”

  He was right. It was only idiots like us who sailed around the South Pacific without female company on board. Only four days out of Suva and already I was missing Kini’s good-humoured romping.

  ******

  “Hey!” Rick shouted from the roof of the wheelhouse. I poked my head out of the door.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “There she is! Wakaya!”

  I switched the Sally May over to auto-pilot and joined him on the roof. He passed the glasses over.

  “Right on the button,” I said. “Hey, Henry!” I yelled. “Come up and have a look.”

  There were hurried footsteps along the deck and a couple of thumps as he jumped on to the saloon roof and climbed up to us. We stood smiling at each other, staring at the hazy piece of land which had held our attention for the past month or more, and that had fascinated me for decades.

  Wakaya.

  ******

  “Where’s the best anchorage do you reckon?” I asked Rick as we sat down with the chart again.

  “Probably around the eastern side, inside the reef,” he replied, pointing to the chart. “Up at the north end. It’ll be the place the locals use.”

  The reef on that side stretched out in a great semi-circle from the southern end of the island to far above the northern tip.

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” I agreed. “But it’s a bit of a bugger. It’ll mean steaming right back around the bloody island before we can get down to doing any work.”

  “Why not anchor on the western side?” Henry suggested. “Be more protection from the south-easterlies.”

  “Too bloody deep for the anchor chain, mate,” Rick replied. “Just look at those depths. The shallowest seems to be four fathoms, twenty-four feet, and that’s right against the shoreline amongst the coral. The average seems to be well over a hundred and fifty feet. It’s much shallower inside the reef on the eastern side. I want to sleep at night, mate, not be up every half-hour checking to see whether the anchor is dragging and we’re drifting on to the coral.”

  Even if we found the dog rock on the first day it could still take two or three days of diving before we found the chest, so we had to have somewhere secure to come back to each night. It was only three or four miles from the safety of the anchorage back to the western side of the island.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s find this bloody stone dog, this begging hound. Head for the southernmost point of the island and we’ll do a slow pass up the coast.”

  Rick took the wheel while Henry ducked down into the saloon and started making ham sandwiches for lunch. The bread had been in the freezer since leaving Cairns, but we had his word that it would still be as fresh as the day we had purchased it. He was almost right.

  An hour later we came to the southern tip of the island, turned to port, and began a slow run along a coastline covered in low thick scrub, not as green as that around Suva; with me up on top of the wheelhouse roof sweeping the binoculars along the shoreline, and Henry up on the point of the bow, keeping his eyes peeled for any rocks or coral outcrops that weren’t marked on the chart. Rick cut the speed down to a little under three knots, just enough to give us steerage-way.

  We had enough daylight left to make two passes along the rocky coastline, one up and one down, and then we would have to head back up the island, find the passage through the reef and check out the best place to anchor for the night.

  By the end of the first run my eyes were watering and stinging from the reflected glare of the sun on the sea, and they hadn’t found a thing.

  “Well?” Rick asked, his head poking out of the wheelhouse doorway as he turned the Sally May out to sea, away from the island. “Where’s this bloody begging dog?”

  “Christ only knows!” I replied, shaking my head. “But the bloody thing’s got to be out there somewhere. Here, you take the glasses this time. You’ve got better eyes than I have. Mine are just about stuffed.” I climbed down from the roof and turned to Henry. “You’d better stay up on the bow. I’ll take the wheel this time.”

  But it was the same result.

  “I haven’t seen a damn thing that even faintly resembled a bloody stone dog,” Rick mumbled in frustration as we reached the southern tip again. “Are you certain that uncle of yours wasn’t bullshitting you?”

  “It’ll be there,” I replied. “Just have faith.”

  It was too late to try another slow run so we motored out to sea for a few hundred yards and then followed the coastline up to the northern end, entering the big reef-fringed lagoon through the passage marked on the chart.

  “Why not anchor over in the boat harbour?” Henry asked as a small jetty came into view.

  “I’d rather we kept away from the locals if possible,” I replied. “We wouldn’t want them getting too friendly and maybe following us out in the morning.”

  “A trip ashore might do us all some good, though,” he continued.

  “Some other time, mate,” Rick said with finality. Henry shrugged his shoulders, looking wistfully at the small sandy beach and the coconut palms dotted above the tide line.

  We dropped the anchor in about eighty feet of fairly calm water about a mile away from the jetty.
I reckoned a mile was enough to keep the curious away.

  “I can’t understand it,” I muttered as Rick and I sat down to our meager beer ration. Henry sipped at his coffee. “That bloody begging hound should’ve been easy to find.”

  “Yeah,” Rick replied, disgruntled, rubbing eyes that were red.

  “Come on!” I said. “Cheer up. It’s early days yet. You knew we weren’t going to sail in and pick it up in a day.”

  “You know something?” Henry asked.

  “What?” I replied.

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Great,” Rick interrupted sarcastically. “Henry’s been thinking again.”

  “No, listen,” Henry went on, ignoring Rick’s attempt at humour. “Your Uncle Max sailed along this coast in a ship’s launch, right?”

  “Right,” I replied. “Something like a large life-boat, I guess.”

  “Well, you and Rick were both up on top of the wheelhouse looking for this dog rock, but your uncle would have been much closer to the water, looking straight in to shore. You two were looking down on it. It could have made a difference.

  “He could be right, Rick,” I said. “Uncle Max would’ve been looking up at a pile of stones. It might be the answer.”

  “It had better be.”

  “Oh, drink your beer and cheer up!”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he replied, stifling a yawn. “I guess I’m just tired of staring at rocks and trees.” He thought for a moment and then said, “Why don’t we use the dinghy tomorrow. We can take the trawler out and anchor it somewhere about halfway along the coast. One of us can stay on board while the other two go out searching in the dinghy.”

  “Good idea,” I replied. “We can get in closer with the dinghy and we wouldn’t have to use the glasses. If the sea stays as calm as it was today we should be okay.”

  There was a gentle swell running but nothing that would bother the dinghy.

  “Okay,” I said. “Who’s staying on board tomorrow?”

  “We take it in turns,” Henry said quickly before we both elected him for the full-time job. “I’ll go first if you like.”

  “Right,” Rick said, raising his stubbie and draining the rest of the beer in one gulp. “Here’s to an early start, and to Uncle Max’s begging hound. Now, what’s for dinner?”

  Twelve

  “Are either of you two buggers still asleep?”

  The question had come from the bunk at the other side of the cabin: Rick.

  “Not me,” I replied.

  “Me neither,” was Henry’s reply from the bunk behind the ladder.

  I looked at my watch in the early morning gloom – ten past five. I passed the information on to the others.

  “Christ, is that all?” Rick moaned.

  “Anybody feel like a cup of coffee?” Henry asked.

  “Yes, why not?” I replied. “There’s no way I’m going back to sleep with you two talking all the bloody time.”

  I rolled out of the bunk, stretching and yawning. I must have been awake for at least an hour; and from the sounds of tossing and turning that had drifted across the fo’c’sle from Rick’s bunk for most of that time, he must have been awake even longer.

  There was no doubting that we were keyed up, each of us anxious to get back out along the coast and search for Uncle Max’s dog. It was no longer visions of the Sea Devil’s chest that kept running through my mind, but a large pile of rocks resembling a begging hound.

  Uncle Max had talked of it so often, but he had usually called it der felsige Hund – the rock dog; although sometimes it was der Hund aus Stein – the dog of stone. He had never said whether it resembled a Doberman, a poodle, a spaniel, or what. Was it tall and standing high out of the water, or squat and only a couple of feet high and perhaps partly hidden by other rocks standing nearby? I had never thought to ask.

  We sat out on the bow in the coolness of the early morning and watched as the sun’s rays slowly spread their colour above the eastern horizon, bringing with them the promise of a warmth that would soon heat up the day. The distant shoreline lay in the grey mist of dawn, spotted here and there with the lights of small fires as villagers boiled water for early morning breakfasts of tea and whatever else they ate. Inland, above the curve of the harbour, and sweeping upwards to the high places, the bush rolled on in an unbroken carpet of dense dark forest, with here and there a plantation of coconut palms, their motionless tops standing tall above the surrounding trees.

  The sun rose unaided as we sat in silence, waiting for it to climb high enough to shine down into the water and show up those hull-piercing coral outcrops. There was nothing to be gained by leaving too early. The cool land breeze died and the air became slowly still.

  “Looks like she’s going to be a hot one,” Henry muttered. “Sticky too.”

  “What time do you think we should get moving?” I enquired of no-one in particular.

  “What’s the time now?” Rick asked.

  “Just on seven,” I replied.

  “Seems as good a time as any,” he said. “I guess we’d better eat on the way. We mightn’t get much of a chance if we strike it lucky on the first run.”

  “You’d be a dreamer,” Henry laughed.

  “Okay, Henry,” I said. “You just volunteered to cook breakfast again.”

  Henry was a better cook than any of the deckies had ever been, and he seemed to enjoy it, as long as we helped to do the washing up, which only seemed fair; but this morning he would have to do the lot.

  I raised myself up off my haunches, threw the coffee dregs overboard, and turned to Rick.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get the scuba gear out and give the outboard the once over. I don’t want the bastard stopping a couple of miles from the trawler and one of us has to row the whole way back.”

  I didn’t want Henry to have to come after us in the trawler unless it was absolutely necessary. In these waters it needed someone up on the bow to keep watch.

  I left Rick with the outboard and conned the Sally May out through the narrow passage and round on to the western side of Wakaya. Henry brought my breakfast up to the wheelhouse as we cleared the entrance, and took the wheel while I ate.

  I looked out through the wheelhouse window at Rick standing on top of the saloon roof, staring down at the sea ahead through polaroid sunglasses. The polaroid cut out the reflected glare of the sun bouncing off the surface, allowing him to follow the light as it cut down into the water, down to the darker colours of reefs and shoals.

  “Not the safest of areas,” Henry said by way of making conversation.

  “No,” I replied. “I wouldn’t want to get stuck out here on a dark and stormy night. It’d be bloody hell.”

  I took it easy, moving at a steady three to four knots, reaching the start of our run down the coast about an hour after we had raised anchor.

  “Right, you two!” I called out. “One more run in the trawler before we give the dinghy a go. Henry, get down to the stern on one of those aluminium chairs, keep as low as you can and see if you can pick up Uncle Max’s dog. Try and keep the binoculars just above the level of the gunwale. I’ll take her in closer than we did yesterday.” I poked my head out through the open window. “Rick, you stay up there and keep your eyes on the water ahead.”

  They both acknowledged and I swung the wheel to port, moving much nearer to the shore reef than prudence would normally dictate – about four hundred yards. I had the echo sounder whirring away, giving me a constant read-out of the ever-changing sea-bed, but it wouldn’t do much good if we came to a bommie – one of those solid mushroom-shaped coral outcrops that could rise out from nowhere to within one or two feet of the surface. The Sally May drew five and a half feet.

  I dropped the speed down to two knots, a little slower than walking pace, and concentrated on steering, leaving everything else to the other two.

  “See anything?” I heard Rick call down.

  “Plenty of rocks!” Henry shouted back.
“But nothing that looks the slightest bit like a bloody dog.”

  “Just keep your eyes on the water ahead, Rick!” I yelled through the doorway. “Let Henry worry about the bloody dog.”

  “Get stuffed!”

  “Gladly, now keep your bloody eyes open!”

  I called out to Henry every five minutes; and each time I got the same answer. If he found it he would have shouted anyway, but I kept asking him just the same. We drifted along for half an hour, and then for another half, but still nothing. An hour and a half later we had reached the other end of the island.

  “Okay!” I called out. “We’ll give it one more run, but this time you guys can change places. Rick might see something you’ve missed, Henry.”

  I swung the wheel hard to starboard and pushed the throttle forward, kicking the stern around, sending our wash rolling towards the shore, now not more than a hundred and fifty yards away. I had been too busy concentrating on Henry and hadn’t noticed how fast we were drifting in, and instead of easing off on the throttle I kept her half open to send us out into deeper water. The depth sounder was reading fifty feet.

  “Hard to port!” Rick screamed; and then: “Full throttle!”

  I swung the wheel hard around, asking no questions as the wheel spun, and pushed the throttle levers up to the stops.

  Again, two seconds later: “Hard to starboard! Dead slow ahead!”

  I spun the wheel with one hand and pulled the levers back to neutral with the other, and leaned out through the wheelhouse window in time to see a monstrous coral outcrop slide past our starboard side at a speed of five knots, its crown only two feet under the water, missing us by no more than four; but it wasn’t the bommie that was moving, it was us. The bommie was sitting motionless, a massive solid sentinel waiting for some stupid fool like me to test its strength.