by John Hunt
Jeff surveyed the situation as he tucked his pistol back into his belt. He was alive, and unwounded. Elisa was unharmed. Evan Harrigan, injured as he was, would heal. He tossed his pistol to Poll, and said, “I apologize for the ruse, everybody.” Then he threw his arm around Diego, the man who had a moment before been holding a gun to his head, a man who had lost much of his hair in the several years since they had last been together. With a wave of his free arm, Jeff made a short announcement to the small crowd of bewildered observers.
“Allow me to introduce my brother.”
58. Treasure Ship
PETUR LISTENED INTENTLY to Joseph. The two men were sitting in the rooftop restaurant once again. The others were busily making further arrangements for the expected onslaught of shipwrecked Mexicans, while Marcos’s yacht, with Jeff Baddori firmly in command, made its way back to Paradise 1. The Royal Navy was not far behind. The Brits would be reaching the islands in less than three hours.
“Petur, this journal was a godsend, I tell you! And to think they had it all along!”
“They had been sworn to secrecy, you say?”
“That’s what Josiah Young, the innkeeper on Pitcairn, told me. He said that only a handful of the mutineers’ descendants have been allowed at any one time to know of the existence of Christian’s log. This group of men serves in some sort of protective capacity. They have a sworn duty to keep the secret of the Bounty’s mission.”
Petur suggested, “It’s like a brotherhood.”
“More than you can imagine. It turns out that they’ve been monitoring me for over a decade because of my interest in the Bounty’s logs. They’ve been keeping shockingly close tabs on you ever since you first went to Pitcairn. The evening you and I first met is when they started to have some real concerns. At first they tried to prevent you from setting up the Island Project here. Having failed in that, they had been hoping I would give up my search out of frustration. They even had been counting on the Mexicans to expel us from the islands in order to prevent me, or others, from ever finding proof of my theory. I wouldn’t put it past them to have been involved in this whole Mexican affair. I got the impression that they knew about the Mexican plans long before we did. Their reach seems vast. I think they have great wealth, Petur. And their commitment is intense.”
“And yet they let you read his log!”
“Well, the rules change when the circumstances change. When I appeared on Pitcairn with the Bounty’s lamp, I suppose they realized that the Mexican takeover of the islands was not going to prevent the Bounty from being found someday. Plus, now they knew I would never give up. I think these Pitcairn Islanders knew their cause was lost. So, they cut me a deal.”
“A deal?”
“I will tell you about that in a bit.”
Petur held the leather-bound book tenderly. Old and beaten, it had not weathered the years well. “I thought you said you had sent the original off to the States?”
Joseph laughed. “How the hell was I supposed to do that? I only got back to Paradise an hour or so after those damn Mexicans came ashore. It’s not as if there are any planes leaving this place to carry mail. And Jack Gaimey has… well, had the only plane that carried mail off Pitcairn. I didn’t have time to mail anything. I faxed a few pages to the British Admiralty from Pitcairn. It’s my fax that got the Royal Navy sent here!”
Petur was confused. “How did you hook up with Jack Gaimey to get back from Pitcairn? I thought you went there on the Elijah Lewis, and that Jack Gaimey was in the Australian outback fishing.”
“I did go on the Elijah Lewis. None of us on the ship had any idea what was going on up here. Fusion, terrorists, the Mexicans. No one bothered to call us on the boat.”
Petur shook his head. “Don’t you watch the news?”
“I guess nobody did for a few days. We didn’t know what was going on until the folks on Pitcairn told us. As soon as we heard, the ship started hustling back at top speed. I left later with Jack Gaimey. What he was doing on Pitcairn, I have no idea. But there is more to him than just being a pilot, Petur. He seems to work closely with this group of mutineer-descendants. Jack Gaimey apparently got in a lot of trouble for taking you to these Islands.”
Petur did not respond to that. Instead, he said, “So, where’s the Elijah Lewis?”
“On her way back. I hope she’s safe. She must have been hit by the waves when Paradise 5 disappeared.”
“I’m glad you came by plane.”
“Well, I had to get this info to you. I knew it would be important in the negotiations with the Mexicans.”
Petur replied, “Some negotiations they were! It was mostly they punching us. But your information could not have arrived at a better time. It was perfect.”
Joseph replied, with a grin. “Just protecting my investment, Mr. Bjarnasson. That’s all.”
The leather journal felt warm in Petur’s hand. He looked at Joseph hopefully. “Can I open it?”
“You know, Petur, I don’t see why not. Young knew I was faxing it to the Brits, so I suppose the cat is wholly out of the bag! Besides, you’ll discover something rather exciting. Go ahead and turn to the end. Gently. Now count back four pages. Start from the top there, on the left.”
Petur obeyed, studying the handwriting laid on paper by Fletcher Christian himself more than two hundred years earlier. The brittle yellow paper held intact as he turned the pages, and now, unlocked, it gave up its written treasure. He read aloud:
The Maori had me pinned. I have never seen such anger in men before. Their eyes were on fire. They demanded my blood. It must have been through the Grace of God that the most powerful wind then came upon us. And with it, rain as if the sky and the ocean were one. From nowhere, the seas suddenly were as high as the topgallant.
The ship was repeatedly thrown to the side. I, being the only Englishman aboard, immediately took over command once again. The Maori’s anger had been replaced with fear. For the gale that was upon us tore through sail and yard and plank. We had more sail up than was right, and with only the three of us to sail the ship at that. The two Maori climbed the rigging, brave men they. Both were hurled into the sea then and there.
The Bounty broached, over and over. The mizzen caught the peak of a wave, and broke free. The main top soon followed, but still too much sail flew. The ship was swamping and about to founder, for certain. When the mainmast buckled, I must have been struck on the head, for I know not what subsequently passed.
Through what force of nature or God, I know not, an unseen and unheard-of island saved me. But the Bounty it did not save, rather keeping her for its own. For when I awoke, I found myself on the Bounty’s aft deck. All the masts were gone, yet the Bounty still floated, ‘tho barely. But never would she move from that place.
Both I and Bligh’s ship were secured in a cove. There was no egress, for a formidable reef encircled the place. Indeed, I know not how we entered. A forceful wave must have taken the whole ship over the ridge. No such waves could come to get her back out.
The beach near where the Bounty rests is notable. Striped like a raccoon’s tail, but darker yet. I have never seen the like.
Petur looked up from the journal at the smiling eyes of Joseph. “Zebra Beach?”
“Yes, Petur, I’m sure of it. The Bounty must still be right there! But let’s not go running off. There is more to read.”
Petur obligingly continued:
The chest I had taken from Otaheiti was still secure aboard the Bounty, and, heavy as it was, once again I could move it only with great effort. The little cutter, my only chance of seeing my family again, has been a blessing. It helped me take the chest to a place where it would be safe.
I have left clues to direct those who understand the globe to find the chest in which it is contained, to the end that only those who sent me on this mission, a mission I no longer have the means to complete, will ever be able to find it.
And, I pray that earnestly even they will not find that chest. It might be
best if no one should ever recover it again. For what it contains, not the globe, but the others, is assuredly the devil’s work. If the world could be destroyed by other than God, it would be with such as these.
There was no date by which my mission must be completed. Therefore I have arranged that much time should pass.
Humanity will slowly but inexorably consume the planet on which we dwell, with no thought to the future. It may be a thousand years before mankind lives upon these islands, ‘tho mark me well, someday man will be pressed into living everywhere on Mother Earth. But in those thousand years, perhaps man will mature. Perhaps he will be ready for what I have seen. The first clue is hidden well. In a thousand years, it may be found. May God save mankind then.
Petur turned the page. The next was the last, and it contained only those lines that Joseph had read earlier, claiming the Paradise chain for the king. “He didn’t trust anyone, did he?”
“Certainly not those who mutinied with him. How could he? He had concealed things such that only after the islands were populated might someone find the hidden lamp, and then, only if they knew of the sphere would the chest ever be found.”
“He was off on his dates for populating these islands.”
“He didn’t know about antibiotics, hand washing, and all the things that have conspired to make the population explode.”
“What do you think he means by ‘the others’ in the chest, Joseph?”
Joseph frowned. “I don’t know. But the chest was much bigger than necessary to contain just a sphere — or a ‘globe’ as Christian called it — that was no bigger than a man’s head. There must have been other objects in it, Petur. And I cannot begin to speculate on what they could be.” He paused for a moment. “I told you I made a deal with the mutineers’ descendants, Petur. It was the only way I could get anything from them. If we find it…if we find the chest…we can keep the antigravity sphere. But the other items in the chest I agreed would be hidden, under their control. Forever. And we never, ever, will know what they are.”
The black and white sand, in a striped pattern strangely formed by the action of the gentle surf on two different types of volcanic minerals in the small inlet, was not only on the beach, but also extended to cover the floor of the cove. On three sides, almost encircling the beach, were high, sharply peaked, and tree-covered ridges that slowly settled out to a gently sloping terrain as they approached the sand. Mist and spray from the waves that sliced into the low sharp reef perpetually surrounded the place, and served well to obstruct both the view of the ocean, and the view of the island from it. The reef took all the power out of incoming waves, leaving only tempered and contented ripples to continue on the final short trek to the shore. That same shallow reef sealed off the place completely, so that no boats could ever enter.
But a vessel once had entered the hidden cove.
Petur and Joseph struggled along the beach, examining the ripples, the contours, and the rock outcroppings. It looked different than it had when they had last visited. The destructive tidal waves from the Paradise 5 affair had overwhelmed the reef with ease, crashing up the shore. Fallen trees and torn-up brush littered the terrain. Water, temporarily trapped in depressions on the shore, had struggled to return to the sea, and in so doing had carved Lilliputian canyons in the sand.
The sands, so carefully sculptured by nature, had been tossed about destructively by similar but more powerful forces. The zebra stripes had lost their careful delineation, blurring together in intermediate shades of gray. Mounds of sand, taller than a man, lay interspersed among crevasses and valleys where water either moved slowly or pooled silently. The shape of the cove had changed, for much sand below the water had been shuttled from one side of cove to another by the temporary, but rapidly eddying, currents. Even the shoreline itself had been moved.
Joseph carried with him a metal detector. Simple and inexpensive, it could nonetheless detect metallic objects with reasonable certainty up to more than a meter below the surface. As it turned out, there was no need of it. For on the far northeastern corner of the beach, where earlier there had been a sandy peninsula extending into the little bay, there was now something else. Awash in the gentle ripples of the cove, mostly covered with sand but free of any visible marine vegetation, was a wooden pole. It was almost entirely submerged, although approximately a meter stood up out of the water, pointing at a shallow angle toward the rocky cliffs. It was blackened, and old, and had clearly been the home and food for generations of tiny wood-consuming worms. Dotting the dry end of the pole were four rusty iron fittings.
Joseph broke into a run as soon as it came into view. Petur jogged along behind, his heart was beating at an uncountable pace, his face flushed, and his stomach felt as if he had just won his heart’s desire after years of cautious romance.
Joseph was beyond excited: he was giddy. When Petur caught up to him, he stopped at the water’s edge, looking out in front of him. Then, almost blindly, despite shoes, socks, and long pants, he strode into the water. He was up to his waist by the time he reached the pole, and Petur could tell that a different sort of water, just as salty, covered his face as he reached out and touched the object. In a choked voice, tears streaming, Joseph said to nobody in particular, “The Bounty. This is the bowsprit of the Bounty.”
Two hours later, Petur, Heinrich Poll, and two of his engineers were diving on the wreck. Jeff Baddori was tied up keeping an eye on the Mexican soldiers. The yacht was being kept offshore, out of sight of the shipwrecked crowds of Mexican sailors. The British were highly efficient, and soon, Elisa, Sophia, Standall, and Otto would be free to come to Zebra Beach to see the famous sunken ship. For now, though, they all had to make do with occasional radio reports.
In the quiet of the shallow water, Petur listened for a moment to his own breathing. He had to be very conscientious of his breathing underwater. This had been the case each time he had dived, and was even more of an issue now. With the scuba equipment gently forcing air into his mouth with each breath, he always had a tendency to hyperventilate. The general excitement of the moment induced the same tendency.
The bowsprit sprung from a great mound of sand, the underwater residua of what had once been the larger peninsula of the beach. None of the bow could be seen at all. The water, murky from the turmoil caused by the giant waves that had crashed over the reef many hours earlier, had poor visibility. He flipped his fins slightly and propelled himself along, back in the direction the rest of the ship might lie. For a time, there was nothing visible but the sand. Then the sand started melting away, and suddenly emerging from within it, like an incorporeal spirit sliding through a wall, were the clearly delineated surfaces of the topsides of a ship. Gunwales, rough and tired, but still intact, stood high around the sand-strewn planking of a deck.
Fragments of tired rope from the ancient, long-collapsed rigging were still tied to stanchions. Petur was amazed that any rope — any rope at all — could still be intact. The sands that had covered it for two hundred years must have protected it from the rampages of hungry sea life. The wood had not been so lucky. The same tiny creatures that had decorated the bowsprit with thousands of tiny grooves and tunnels had obviously proliferated in the salty environment in which the ship lay. The copper sheathing used by the builders was not sufficient to repel the worms for two centuries. Although preserving its shape, Petur doubted the wood could hold much weight. He watched as the sand moved slowly but inexorably to again cover those decks. The minimal effect of each tiny ripple on the surface was enough to move one sand grain a centimeter. The combined effect of all of the surface-water motion would within days bury the ship completely once more.
The sandy bottom dropped down suddenly. The water became cooler, as Peter came into the effluent of an underground stream. Redirected by the sudden change in the sand’s topography, the cool water, which came from the surrounding ridges and worked its way underground to the sea, seemed to be keeping the progression of sand at bay here. His view im
proved dramatically and he could see that the whole stern section of the ship was free of the volcanic sediments, jutting outward at a slightly downward angle.
He dove down along the planking of the starboard quarter of the ship. Following the path of a man being keelhauled, he swam directly under the ship near the stern. The uppermost portion of the rudderpost was visible, although the rudder itself was gone. In the poor visibility, the ghostly form of the ship above him seemed to close in, falling downward. Petur gave a strong kick and propelled himself out from under her. He scratched the back of his leg on the ancient hull and realized that that contact was the first time he had touched her.
He turned left, and swam upward, exhaling as he rose. The ship’s transom was completely free of silt and stood strong and bold. Three men — Heinrich and two surviving engineers — were floating behind it. Heinrich was augmenting the gradually diminishing sunlight with his own small underwater flashlight. Petur joined them. The light panned slowly along the stern of the vessel. The letters were dimly visible, only dark impressions on the gray wood. None of the color of the initial calligraphy remained. Dim though they were, the tall letters, each almost half a meter high, still proudly proclaimed the name Bounty.
Heinrich popped his head above the surface, inflated his buoyancy-control vest, and spit the regulator out of his mouth while flipping his diving mask down below his chin. He bobbed easily on the gentle waters. He swam in to shore until the water was too shallow, then pulled off his fins and weight belt. Joseph helped him with his equipment.
Heinrich said, “The sand is covering most of the vessel still, and what is exposed is already beginning to be covered up by the sands again. You can watch the sands moving themselves back into position. I bet in another few days, only the bowsprit will be visible.”