The Copper Treasure

by Melvin Burgess

  It was awful. He was there somewhere, we could free him if we could only find him. But the water was murky, you couldn’t see. I had this terrible fear that he was under there and he might grab my ankles as I swam past and drown me, too. We dived and dived again and again. It was minutes now. I started looking for the big bubbles when his lungs gave out but I never saw them. We must have been far away from where he was.

  We kept going down and coming up and going down even when we knew it was all over, even when we knew he must have run out of breath minutes ago. We didn’t want to give up.

  At last Davies grabbed hold of some wood floating past. I watched his eyes like panes of shining glass.

  “Ten Tons!” he yelled, but his voice cracked and he began to cry. I was shattered. I was exhausted and terrified. I kept thinking of Tens under there reaching out for my legs as I swam past. I set out for the bank. Davies screamed up to me to come back.

  I shouted back, “He’s dead!” and carried on swimming. Davies was floating away from me. I could hear him crying as I swam.

  It wasn’t far to the bank. I got out and trudged through a margin of mud out onto the edge of a pasture. I turned back to watch Davies. He was miles away, floating downstream, crying his heart out.

  There was no one ever like Ten Tons. He was our friend. We should have looked after him better. I lay down on the mud and I began to cry, too. My voice sounded strange to me and I never wanted to breathe again.

  I stayed there for ages. Slowly the light came up. The dawn seemed to make everything colder. I was freezing cold and shaking and shivering. I turned away from the whole thing and headed back upstream on the long walk back.

  Eight

  Ten Tons Marks the Spot

  I woke up with sunlight on my face.

  I was in the barge. I lay there blinking, listening to the calls of the boatmen and the thumping of the tugs making their way up and down the river. For a moment I thought I must’ve gone to have a doze in the hulk while the tide was high but then I remembered …

  Ten Tons was dead.

  I got up. I couldn’t bear to think about it. I wanted to go home to my mother but what good would that do? To get a whipping? Anyway, I was too ashamed. I walked down to the water at the end of the hulk and splashed my face and had a drink. The tide was in. I went outside to find a boat and pick up sticks to burn.

  * * *

  I worked very hard all that day. I wanted to work it all away. I kept expecting Davies to turn up. Every few minutes I’d lift my head to look over to the barge but he never came.

  What were we going to do now? I wanted Davies to come so much but he stayed away. It was like I was the only one left alive. I thought how Davies had been the one who tied Tens to the copper in the first place, trying to make him safe. I was scared that maybe now he’d just let the river take him away and dump him in the sea to drown. I wouldn’t have minded doing that myself.

  Even when the light failed I kept at it, feeling in the mud for dropped coals with my feet. I filled my basket twice. When it was too dark to see anything I picked up my bundle of sticks and went back to sleep in the barge.

  It was horrible. We were just children who’d messed with things, and now one of us was dead. Davies didn’t come back the next day, or the next. I made up my mind he was dead or gone away and that I’d never see him again. I never felt so alone in all my life.

  Next morning my sister Joan turned up.

  I slept late and I woke to her voice at the edge of the barge. I almost jumped out of my skin. It was funny … I was scared of her although she’s smaller than me. It was like my whole family was there in her. She was angry at first because my mother and father and all of them had thought I was dead until someone told them I’d been seen. I just sat shivering while she scolded me. Then I told her, “Ten Tons is dead,” and she cried, “Oh, Jamie!” and gave me a hug. I cried in her arms and said I was sorry, and she told me my tears were a man’s tears, like my father’s when our brother Sam died two years ago.

  Joan told me to come home, but I said no … not until I’d earned enough to make up for the missing days. Then she got cross again, but she was only pretending. She said they all missed me and they’d welcome me back. I knew it was true, but I said how our father’d whip me, anyway.

  She said, “Yes, but only because he loves you,” which is what my mother always said. That made us both laugh. Then she said she had to go, so I gave her two pennies to give to Mother, and promised I’d come that evening after work. But I never did.

  I worked hard all that day again and was up early the next day. I ate almost nothing, but I still hadn’t made up the money. But even so I thought to myself, tonight I’ll go home. Sleeping alone in the barge every night, thinking about Ten Tons down in the river with the mud in his mouth and the water inside him … I’d had enough of that.

  And it was then, of course, when I’d decided to go back home, that Davies turned up.

  I saw him come out of the barge and tread through the mud toward me. I went round into the shadows. I wanted to hide … I don’t know why. It was something to do with what had happened to Ten Tons. It felt like we’d murdered him, somehow. Or maybe I wanted no more trouble. But he followed me, and he put his hand on my shoulder.

  It was the same old Davies, with his long crooked jaw, his twisted face, his dirty rags, his lungs squeaking away and his face full of snot. He said, “It’s still on, and you’re still in with me, Jamie. You gave me your word that we were one man together, in Jesus’ blood.”

  I pushed his hand away. He was mad if he thought I was going to touch that copper again! But he seized me by the arm.

  “You’re with me,” he told me.

  “No.”

  “You gave me your word,” he insisted.

  “We don’t even know where it lies,” I said, and I tried to twist away. But Davies held me and grinned and nodded.

  “I know where it lies,” he said. “Ten Tons showed me.”

  I shivered right up and down my back then. He really was mad. Ten Tons was dead! But he stood there grinning at me, as if he knew something about dead people that I didn’t.

  “I tell you, Jamie, he showed me. You know how it is with the drowned men. On the third or fourth day they float to the surface. Well, I knew more or less where we went down. I’ve spent these last days waiting for him. Yesterday he came back up. See? He was two feet under at low tide, face down, floating with his arms and legs stretched out. He looked like he was flying, Jamie … you should have seen him! Flying like a kite. His rope led all the way back down to the copper.” He nodded again. “So I know where it is, see.”

  I could feel my mouth hanging open. I said, “Is he still there?”

  “I cut him loose. He’s in the sea by now. But I tied a piece of wood to his rope to mark it, and I dived down yesterday. And there it was … our copper. I’ve tied the ropes back on and floated them on planks, same as he did. At low tide we can get the ropes up to the bank and drag it out. Do you see, Jamie? It won’t be clear of the water but that doesn’t matter. It’s by a good field, and there’s even horses waiting for us … and there’s a marine-store dealer only a few hundred yards away.”

  I just looked at him. Was he mad … or would it still work?

  “But what about Ten Tons?” I asked.

  I could feel his hand trembling on my arm. “Ten Tons is dead, Jamie, we can’t do anything for him. But he was working with us in his death. Do you see? He marked the spot. Do you think he’d wish us to leave that copper there? It’s his plan. Jesus, Jamie, don’t let him die for nothing. Don’t let him die for nothing.” Davies stood there looking at me and shaking his head, and I watched his eyes fill with tears.

  “And when?” I asked.

  “Tonight. Low tide. It’s all set.”

  I thought of the copper lying down there waiting to be pulled out and sold, and how my father would forgive me anything if I came back home with gold tied up in my coat. I thought of the boa
t that might carry me round the world if I could only pay my way for a while. I thought of Ten Tons tumbling through the water, on his way down to the sea.

  Davies was right. Ten Tons was helping us even now, when he was dead … showing us the way to the sea. He never gave up. He’d never want us to give up. And so I agreed to go along with it.

  Nine

  The Copper Treasure

  Davies was as proud as anything with himself. “I worked it all out,” he kept saying. What he’d done was copy Ten Tons, but he’d done it well. He had ten good strong ropes tied to the copper. He’d even spent his spare time while he waited for Tens to come up making halters for the horses.

  We pinched a boat and floated down from Blackwall in the very black of night. Then we had to spend another hour rowing up and down in the dark trying to find the ropes Davies had set up. Once we had them, we took them to the shore, stuck the bits of wood they were tied to into the mud to hold them, and set out to catch the horses. The tide was still on its way out, but the light was already at the edge of the sky. We didn’t have long before the world woke up.

  I say horses. One of them was an old donkey. The second was okay but the other was a boney old nag that looked too tired to pull grass. The old donkey was the worst. Half the time it was him chasing us. He bit, he kicked, he stamped on your feet. Then we got a rope around his neck, and Davies gave him a few licks with a rope end, and that quieted him down a bit.

  We got them roped up to the copper easy enough. Then it was a matter of driving them up the field with the metal behind them. Well, it doesn’t take long to talk about.

  The nag was useless. He just stood there straining away like a paper bag for all the difference he made. The donkey was even worse. He had his head down and his ears flat, watching us all the time from his yellow eyes. If you grabbed him he bit you. If you let him go for a second he ran away down to the water and stood in the mud. If you looked away he edged sideways for a kick. Oh, he was a vicious brute, that donkey.

  At last we struggled a few yards up the bank, with the good horse pulling away well … and then the nag suddenly lay down on the mud and went to sleep. Davies ran to it and the donkey twisted sideways and lashed out with its hooves. It knew how to move if it wanted to. It caught Davies a blow on the thigh and knocked him flying across the mud. He was weeping with pain.

  After that, Davies got it into his head that the nag and the donkey were in it together trying to trick us out of our copper. He got the donkey in a corner and flogged it till it cried. It was an awful noise. I told you … he gets carried away, Davies, although it was no worse than the donkey deserved. It was used to it, I expect.

  We pulled and flogged at first one beast then the other. Inch by inch they dragged the copper from its bed in the mud. We were falling and slipping and the beasts were slipping and furious with us for making them work at night. Inch by inch by inch … until at last a great shadow appeared out of the water, dark against the silvery moonlit mud.

  We ran to and fro with handfuls of water to splash on it … and there it was, under the ooze, as glorious and bright and golden red as the morning sun itself. Our copper, raised up on land. We stretched out on it and rolled on it, kissed it and rubbed up on it. It was ours!

  But it wasn’t a celebration. Davies held out his hand. “Here’s to Ten Tons,” he said. “It’s thanks to him.”

  Then it was back to the struggle … slipping, falling, slipping, whipping, slipping, fighting inch by inch …

  We had it out of the river, out of the mud, across the grass. On the grass it was easier. We were going at a walking pace. We were getting there … but the sun was up. There was the gate, there was the road that led back down to a rackety wooden pier and the dealer.…

  We got to the gate and opened it up. On the road it would be plain sailing. We were almost singing as we drove our beasts out of the gate. The copper followed … and then it got stuck.

  Would you believe it? The gate was too small.

  We stood and stared at it in disbelief. Beaten by a gate? It was impossible.

  We found some poles under the hedge and tried to lever the copper up and over, but it was far too heavy. We were running out of time. There was pale light downriver; dawn. We stared and stared and stared, but there was no way that copper was going through that gate.

  “What are we going to do, Davies?” I begged. It was just then we could have done with Ten Tons.

  Davies said, “Smash the gate.”

  I thought, he’s mad. There was a brick pillar on each side of that gate. But nothing was stopping Davies. He grabbed hold of a lump of stone and whacked it down on the capstone. A piece broke off.

  “Smash the gate to bits!” yelled Davies. I grabbed a brick and I caught the capstone an uppercut and it went flying off. Then we got to work on the bricks, one at a time.

  And you know what? It worked! The pillars weren’t as solid as they seemed at first, all the mortar was crumbling away. We were there like a pair of madmen, pounding away brick by brick, lump by lump, till our arms ached. Poor old Davies was wheezing away so much I thought he was going to collapse, but we kept at it. It was getting light, and soon enough someone’d come along and steal our prize off us. We got it down to half size, and then quarter size. Then we lashed the animals but it was still no use, so we lumped and banged and pounded again.

  The donkey brayed, the horses tossed their heads … and at last the whole great roll of the copper grated and clattered over the scattered bricks and started to grind its way out of the field.

  We were on!

  It was the very last leg. We were pushing our beasts as fast as they could go. They were as exhausted as us now, but we showed them no mercy … we were nearly home. The copper made the most awful racket, grinding and rattling on the road, and already there were people gathering to see what was going on. Beggar boys and girls, men on their way to work, a couple of young girls hurrying to get on with the milking or something. Some of them were yelling at us for taking the nags … I reckon they worked for the farmer. But they didn’t stop us. I reckon it was too much of a sight for them to stop us.

  And at last, there it was … the marine dealer. We got the copper right up to the gate. The nags stopped and hung their heads, panting and sweating foam, and me and Davies flung ourselves at the wooden gate and we pounded and banged and banged and pounded as if our lives depended on it.

  “I’m coming! What is it at this unearthly hour!” Then the gate swung open and a short man in a red great-coat stood there staring at us. He saw the copper and his eyebrows shot up into his hair.

  “By hell. Where did you get that? And what’s farmer Alan’s nags doing tied up to it?”

  Ten

  The Alice May

  Well, that’s my story told. All you’ll need to know is this: We did it.

  We had a job getting our money off that dealer, though. First he made out we’d stolen the horses and tried to send us off. Then he tried to fob us off with half a sovereign each for all our work. Davies asked for ten and he started laughing at us. Then he got angry and told us to just cart the copper away and see how far we got. He thought he had us in the palm of his hand.

  Davies was in a state … wheezing and bubbling and coughing and trying to shout. I thought he was going to pass out on us.

  I said, “Listen.” I was shaking myself … with fear and lust for the money. I said, “We floated this stuff up from the bottom of the river. We spent four days and our friend drowned down there, drowned dead. We did it for one thing … to get ourselves a berth on a ship and learn a trade. If you can’t pay us enough to get that, you keep the copper and we’ll go straight back and tell the ship owners where it is, and that’s everyone out of a profit. So you can keep your sovereign. We want enough to buy us our berth, or we’ll have nothing at all.”

  Davies was bent over double, coughing, but I could see him look at me and nod.

  The dealer’s eyebrows went down to his nose, then back up into h
is hair. He’d thought we’d do anything for a few coppers, but we’d set our sights high.

  He jerked his head. “You better come this way, lads.” He took us into the yard, away from the little crowd who had gathered around. Then he put his hands in his pockets and looked down his nose at us.

  “Well, my lads,” he said softly. “I worked my way up from nothing to own this yard. And I admire what ye’ve done. So … I’ll pay you six guineas for it … and that’s a fair price,” he warned when he saw Davies about to complain. “God knows how I’ll shift all this copper, stolen and all. But I know what it is to be poor and no way out of it. So long as we understand, I’m only doing this out of the goodness of my heart.” And he slipped into our hands six golden guineas.

  “Now run home with it, for God’s sake, before someone robs you!”

  * * *

  I’d never seen gold before. Neither had Davies. We couldn’t believe that so much copper turned into so little gold. But it was money, all right. It was enough money to live on for a year.

  We got back to the barge, trying to look like two men who had nothing in the world. The dealer was right … there were plenty who’d slit our throats for less. Once we got back we sat and counted it for an hour or so, and weighed it and polished it and put it in and out of our pockets. And then … would you believe this? Davies wanted to give Ten Tons his share.

  I could feel my heart sink.

  “He can’t spend it where he is,” I said.

  “He gets his share, same as us. It’s up to him what he does with it,” insisted Davies. And you know, he was ready to take two of those guineas and fling them into the river after Ten Tons. I had the devil’s job talking him out of it … at least until we’d made sure we had our berths sorted out.