He may have been big, and besotted by her body, but he wasn’t stupid.
Moving at an easy speed through the light swell, we headed out towards the trawler, Judy dropping the two diving knives overboard as soon as we reached deep water. Sebastian ordered us to stop fifty yards out from the Sally May, calling Henry out on to the back deck.
He must have been able to see what was happening back at the beach, and known that things had gone wrong. If it had been Rick or me on the trawler we would have raised the anchor and headed out to sea to think things out; but Henry didn’t have the experience to handle the boat on his own, and the thought probably hadn’t even entered his head.
Sebastian made me reverse the dinghy over the last fifty yards, using Rick and I as a shield in case a spear-gun suddenly appeared in Henry’s hands.
I was certain that Henry would remember Rick’s shotgun lying in the food cupboard behind the two sliding doors. It must have stared him in the face a dozen times over the past few days. If it was me, I would have had the gun hidden on the other side of the bulwark; ready for instant action the moment Sebastian’s attention was distracted.
But he hadn’t done anything about that either. Henry wasn’t the type to take unnecessary risks.
“What’s the score, Andy?” he asked, voice trembling, his face pale, hands empty.
I pointed to the shotgun in Sebastian’s meaty hands as Judy stepped up on to the trawler. “They want the chest, my friend, and, I suspect, the trawler as well.”
Judy turned. “You always were a smart bastard, Andy.”
Sebastian herded us down by the stern and went into a huddle with Judy. It gave us our first chance of doing some private talking as well, so I told Henry about the lies I had fed them about the depth of the chest and the diving hazards; but before I could ask him about Rick’s shotgun there was a roar from Sebastian.
“Hey, you bastards! Move away from each other! Come on! One of you in the middle, and the other two out on either side of the stern!”
He sat on the lip of the brine tank and waited while Judy went inside the saloon, holding the gun on us until she returned a good five minutes later.
“There’s nothing but a couple of small sharp knives in the cutlery drawer,” she called to Sebastian as she stepped back out through the doorway. Then she shouted down to me. “Where’s the good carving knife, Andy?”
“Broken.” I didn’t tell her how it had come to be that way.
Why hadn’t she found Rick’s shotgun? Had she been so certain that the Customs officer had taken both guns that she hadn’t even bothered to search? The two gun-racks on the side of the fo’c’sle hatch were empty, so perhaps she just believed what she saw.
“Okay,” she said, beckoning us forward. “Come inside. Henry, are you really as good a cook as they said you were on the Mary II?”
He didn’t reply.
“Never mind,” she continued, patting him on the shoulder as he walked past. “You can still fix us something for lunch.”
Sebastian stepped well back as we trooped along the deck and into the saloon, then directed us across to the dining table. He pointed at Rick and me. “You two sit along the wall while Henry gets the food.”
Henry didn’t seem to know quite what to do. I was in no doubt at all.
“What do you want to eat, Jude?” I asked, levering myself up off the bench. “There’s nothing fresh left, but there’s plenty of canned stuff. What would you like?”
“What have you got?”
“There’s tinned ham, coleslaw, corn, potato salad, beetroot.” I didn’t have a clue what we had, but kept on talking. “Mixed bean salad, peas, or maybe something hot: sausages and vegetables?”
“Good God, no! Not bloody sausages and vegetables! Anything but that!”
I stepped on to the top rung of the ladder leading down into the fo’c’sle, my whole body trembling at the thought of what I had to do. What piece of foresight had warned me to make certain Rick had loaded both barrels before putting the gun in the cupboard? There would have been no time for me to load the thing. There mightn’t even be enough time to yell hands up and hope that Sebastian would comply; there would only be enough time to aim it in his direction and pull both triggers.
If he moved over to the hatchway and watched as I turned back from the cupboard towards the ladder I wouldn’t even get a chance to straighten up. With a gun in my hands, I didn’t think he would hesitate to shoot.
It was going to be a deliberate cold-blooded killing on my part, considered, not done in the heat of the moment as had happened with the two Indians; but then, for all I knew, he might be a killer himself. He might already have decided to do away with us as soon as we brought the chest up.
I took my foot off the last rung and crossed over the steel floor, certain that I could still see bloodstains under the fresh coat of paint Henry had applied.
I slid the cupboard doors open with my bare toes. This was the moment of truth, for once I knelt down and stretched my arm into the cupboard and reached for the gun there was no turning back.
I started to go down on my haunches, my shaking hand moving forward, feeling for the gun, ready to snatch up the well-polished stock. Terror froze my fingers as I sensed eyes boring into the back of my head. I turned: Judy; leaning in through the open hatchway, her bare foot on the top rung, staring straight down past me into the now open cupboard and blocking my field of fire; my hand almost to the gun. If she dropped her head those few more inches she must see it lying on the shelf.
It was too late to turn back, too late to close the cupboard and retreat. Her foot moved down to the next rung.
I froze, waiting for the scream.
Nineteen
“What the hell are you doing down there?” she asked, and then yelled: “What’s that?”
“What?” I spluttered.
“There! Right in front of your blasted nose. The large tin! The ham! That’ll do.”
I dropped to my knees and stared into the cupboard. All I could see were tins, stacks of tins; tins piled three high, crammed almost to the edge of the shelf where the shotgun should have been.
The gun was gone!
I grabbed the ham and a couple of other tins, and climbed back up into the saloon, dropping them on the table, not game to hand then to Henry. My arms were shaking, my throat dry.
******
“What do you think the treasure’s worth, friend?” Sebastian asked fifteen minutes later through a mouthful of ham.
I wondered what weird and wonderful story she had spun to drag him this far from his mooring in the Brisbane River.
“I wouldn’t have a clue,” I snarled. “But certainly not enough to warrant blasting a hole in someone with that gun of yours. The chest isn’t all that big.” I held my hands apart, reducing the size of the chest by about thirty percent. “I wouldn’t expect half a ton of gold if I were you.”
“Jewels?” he said, eyes shining. “You reckon it might be jewels?”
“I doubt it,” Rick muttered hoarsely, holding his rib-cage as if it pained him to talk. I knew that there wasn’t anything wrong with it, apart from a couple of ugly black bruises. “Might only be a heap of pocket-watches von Luckner pinched from those poor bloody crews he captured.”
Sebastian pointed his fork at Judy. She stood in the doorway holding the shotgun on us while we ate. “She said there would be gold coins, and even a few gold bars and banknotes; and maybe some diamonds even!”
“She was bullshitting you, mate!” Rick laughed, and then saw the anger begin to redden Judy’s face. “But you never know,” he went on hurriedly. “Most of those ships would be carrying a couple of hundred English gold sovereigns or American double-eagles to pay for provisions. I don’t know how many ships von Luckner captured and scuttled, but there must have been more than a dozen. There’s possibly gold down there, but it’s not going to be a king’s ransom.”
It satisfied Sebastian, and it satisfied Judy. Her bearded friend coul
dn’t be tricked, but he could probably be led; and yet Judy was the one I was worried about. If we could outmanoeuvre her, we would have him under control as well.
The rest of the afternoon was spent staring at each other, waiting for time to pass. Henry prepared stew for dinner, using the last of the meat left in the freezer and the sticky boiled root vegetable that the Fijians had given us.
I was tired, but nowhere near as exhausted as Sebastian must have been, for neither of them would have had much sleep since the hurricane had started. The heat of the afternoon was already making him drowsy, and Judy had to dig him hard in the ribs on more than one occasion; the last time only a split second after I had decided to make a lunge for his gun. I changed my mind.
******
The sun sank slowly, the twilight disappearing soon after. Rick looked at me and flicked his eyes towards Sebastian’s drooping lids, telling me that if we could force him to stay awake and make him lose concentration, we might get our chance; but he wasn’t giving due credit to Judy. At eight o’clock they herded us out on to the back deck where we stood and waited while she climbed down into the storage hold and lifted the three spear-guns out. Sebastian tossed them over the side.
“Sorry, boys,” she said smugly. “It certainly stinks of petrol, but that’s where you’ll have to spend the night. Seb and I are just too buggered to look after you any longer.”
The bitch was ahead of us again.
The hatch clanged down. I heard the padlock snick on the other side of the thick steel plate as I reached up in the darkness and turned on the light, forgetting for the moment the explosive potential of the fumes.
“Bloody hell!” Rick snapped. “We could do without those bloody petrol fumes. It’s going to give me one hell of a headache. You reckon there’s another pocket of fuel down here somewhere?”
“No,” I said. “It’s probably just what the ropes soaked up.”
“Well, Andy?” Henry asked a few silent minutes later. “What now?”
“Yes,” I replied. “What indeed!”
“Huh?”
“What about your Fijian mates?” I asked. “When are they due to turn up?”
“What Fijian Mates?”
“Sekove.”
“Sekove?”
“Yeah, bloody Sekove! You don’t think I didn’t notice you sit up when he mentioned his sister living in Suva? The one who stays at home with an uncle; and don’t try to tell me that you and Sekove were swapping recipes in the stern of that punt. You two were planning something! His sister has to be Mere!”
“No way,” he replied. “Mere hasn’t even got a brother, two sisters, that’s all.”
“Well, what the hell were you and Mere up to then? God, we all saw the frightened look on her face when you both came out of the wheelhouse the afternoon before we went and had that bloody awful curry.”
His face went red. “I was certain you knew,” he mumbled.
“Knew what?” Rick asked, not really certain what was going on.
“Well ... that we were ... you know ... experimenting.”
“Experimenting!” I gasped as the full import of the words and his downcast eyes reached my enraged mind. “You mean you and Mere were getting a bit kinky?”
“Yes,” he replied in a small voice.
“Is that all it was? Is that why she was frightened?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what the hell were you talking to Sekove about?”
“I was trying to line up a couple of birds when we went for that meal he invited us to. I told him you fancied Fijian girls. I told him you were thinking of maybe marrying one.”
His eyes were fixed on the steel floor, his ears pink with embarrassment.
“Shit!” I exclaimed.
“What were you thinking, Andy?” Rick demanded.
“Nothing,” I replied, shocked at how low my mind had sunk, and hoping Henry wouldn’t guess what I had nearly accused him of. “Has anybody got any bright ideas how we can get out of here?” I asked, changing the topic, defusing the situation.
“Nope,” Rick muttered, shaking his head, still trying to puzzle it out. “It’s a pity that shotgun of mine isn’t still under that pile of rope you two have got your backsides on.”
“Speaking of shotguns,” I said. “Henry, where the bloody hell is Rick’s Greener? I nearly died of fright when I turned to find Judy looking down into the fo’c’sle.”
“Why?”
“Because, you idiot,” I replied. “I was going to blast Sebastian to hell and back. I had my hand in the cupboard reaching for the shotgun and turned around to see Judy staring over my shoulder. I was certain she would spot the bloody thing before I had a chance to use it!”
“Oh,” he said.
“So where is it?” I asked again.
“It’s still there. In the cupboard, I mean; but it’s behind the tins.”
“Where did the rest of the tins come from?”
“From down here. I was watching through the binoculars and realised it was Judy as soon as she raised the brim of that bloody big hat. It was her in the market, wasn’t it?” We both nodded. “Yes, well, as soon as I saw the gun in Sebastian’s hands, I reckoned they’d be coming out to the boat, so I figured that I had to do something. I didn’t think they would give me a chance to use Rick’s shotgun, so I decided that the best thing to do would be to hide it somewhere near to hand. We had a few cartons of stores down here, baked beans and things, so I pushed the gun to the back of the cupboard, carried the cans up, and stacked them in front.”
“I bet the bitch found it,” Rick said through gritted teeth.
“No,” Henry replied. “It’s still there. I had a look when I got the can of peas out for the stew. It’s still cocked as well.”
“Maybe she’s taken the cartridges out?” Rick suggested.
“No,” Henry said. “She would’ve had to have moved at least half of the cans to get at it, and they don’t look like they’ve been touched.”
“Thank Christ for that!” Rick breathed. “Now, just how do we get our bloody hands on it without them knowing?”
******
We sat there for the next three hours, trying to think of a way to coax Sebastian away from the fo’c’sle long enough to allow one of us to wrap his hands around the Greener. Rick and I both knew that Henry couldn’t be the one, but we didn’t say it. Henry was no coward, but we both knew that he would hesitate if it came to having to pull the trigger. The slightest hesitation would be fatal for him, and probably for us as well.
So far Sebastian hadn’t let any of us out of his sight, and the gun was never out of his hands, except when he had eaten, or had gone outside to relieve himself; and at those times Judy had the short-barrelled gun pointed straight at us, with fingers on both triggers.
We came up with nothing other than the faint hope that he might become careless if we managed to drag the whole exercise out for at least another day.
“It’s no use thinking about it any longer,” Rick said at last. “The smartest thing we can all do is to get some sleep. You don’t think that big oaf is lying on a bunk worrying about us, do you?”
“No,” Henry replied, yawning. “The ugly bugger is probably too busy screwing Judy and hasn’t even given a thought to us poor bastards cooped up down here.”
“Henry!” I exclaimed. “I do believe you are envious!”
“Bullshit!”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, mate,” Rick said to him, forgetting for the moment that Henry had already sampled Judy’s delights. “Andy and I have been to the well more times than we can both remember and, believe me, after the first time it wasn’t all that magic.”
He shifted his back against the steel bulwark, smiling at some of the memories. They hadn’t been all that bad. In fact, from what I could recall, they had been mostly good.
“She’s a tart, mate,” he continued. “Tough as nails. Don’t let those brown eyes fool you. Young Judy is only after what’s good for
young Judy; and don’t you ever forget it. She couldn’t give a bugger for anybody else.”
“Yeah, all right,” Henry muttered, lapsing into silence for a minute or two. “Hey!” he suddenly blurted out. “What about those three we left in Suva! They were bloody good fun, eh?”
“Henry?” I said.
“Yes?”
“Shut up and go to bloody sleep.”
I turned the light out and lay silent for another hour or so before troubled sleep finally took me away.
******
Hot, stuffy, stale air. The smell of sweat and the pungent stink of petrol.
Weary. Seven o’clock by the luminous dial of my diver’s watch. The other two still dozing. I let them sleep on.
Hard coils of rope pressing into my back. They had woken me at least an hour earlier.
Bare feet slapping on the deck above my head. The rattle of the padlock.
The hatch cover was lifted and thrown over against the deck; the resounding crash reverberating through the hull-plating, rattling my brain. A brilliant column of dazzling sunlight shot obliquely through the square opening. Sebastian’s booming voice followed the clanging. “Okay, you buggers! It’s time for breakfast, and I’m hungry!”
I remembered the old adage about the condemned man being allowed to order his last meal. Having to cook it as well was a bit much.
******
“Right then,” Judy said, finishing the last of the sausages and tomatoes, both out of tins, which Henry had cooked for breakfast. She was no domestic, at least not any more. “Tell me again. How long before you can get the chest up on deck?”
“Three dives,” I replied.
“So you’ll have it on board sometime this afternoon then?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Two dives today and one tomorrow morning.”
“Why not do three today?”
“Because,” I said, again relying on their limited knowledge. “We dive in pairs, and Henry is not experienced enough to do more than one dive in a day; and I’m damned if I’m going to do three.”
“And that goes for me as well,” Rick added. “My bloody ribs hurt like hell. I don’t reckon I’m going to be much use down there.”
The Stone Dog Page 25