Wealth of the Islands

by Isobel Chace

  Gregory struggled painfully to his feet. “Leave her alone, Helen,” he said. “You could have put in the order yourself if you’re really worried!”

  “But that’s what you pay her for!” Helen insisted.

  “Then you can leave it to me to see that I get my money’s worth,” he retorted. “For heaven’s sake, stop bickering, and get on with making the tea!”

  Helen did so in a stony silence. She had been going to mention the peculiar stillness of the world up on deck, but now she thought better of it. She wouldn’t talk to either of them if she didn’t have to! She drank her tea in great gulps, the scalding liquid settling in a great hot ball on her stomach. She haughtily refused to sit down when Gregory invited her to do so, reminding him that someone had to go up on deck and take the Sweet Promise out of the harbour.

  “Are you sure you can manage?” he asked her dryly, so that she couldn’t be sure if he was joking or not.

  “I’ve been managing all week!” she reminded him swiftly.

  He smiled faintly, wincing at the pain in his leg. “Well, I hope you manage it today,” he said. “I want to be back for Miss Corrigan’s party tonight, even if you don’t!”

  Helen forbore to reply. It was a long time since she had felt so angry, or indeed so humiliated when she had done nothing to deserve it, or nothing that she could see. She was glad to get back up on deck, even though there was not a breath of wind anywhere to fill the sails. They would have to use the engine all the way, she thought, and Gregory would probably find fault with that as well. It would all be her fault, of course! She could see it now even before it happened!

  Taine-Mal grinned at her cheerfully. “Ready to go?” he asked her. “It’s good to have the Boss back on board!”

  “Yes, we’re ready to go,” Helen agreed grumpily.

  The Polynesian looked at her with laughing eyes. “I can see that the typhoon has already arrived in your heart!” he told her.

  Helen grunted. “Meaning what?” she asked him.

  He pointed out to the sea. “You see how calm and still it is,” he said. “And on the Islands too, there is no wind today. And it is quiet. Too quiet to be ordinary. Did you not notice?”

  Helen was immediately concerned. “Yes, I noticed,” she said. “But I hadn’t realised that it meant anything. Does it really mean a typhoon?”

  Taine-Mal shrugged. “Too early to tell,” he admitted.

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t go out today?” Helen suggested uncomfortably.

  “Okay to go out now,” he answered her. “Today, nothing; tomorrow, maybe nothing; next day, probably something!”

  Helen tugged nervously at her fingers. “Then we ought to get the gold up before then,” she said. “That ship will never stay on the ledge through a storm, let alone a typhoon!”

  Taine-Mal’s eyes grew dark and round. “You will tell the Boss,” he said flatly.

  But Helen shook her head. “Not just now,” she said firmly. She managed to refrain from adding that nothing would have induced her to say anything to Gregory just then. Taine-Mal wouldn’t understand that anyone might have reservations about passing on information to Gregory at any time, let alone when he had just come back from the jaws of death to go out with them.

  “Everyone will know at the party tonight,” the Polynesian said nonchalantly. “He’ll know!”

  “If he comes up on deck, he’ll be able to see for himself!” Helen added with a confidence she was far from feeling.

  “He’ll come,” he said. “He’ll come when he’s ready.”

  Helen started up the engines and watched for her moment to slip the engine into gear as Na-Tinn cast off the ropes fore and aft. They slipped out of the harbour as easily as if Gregory himself had been at the controls. Helen grinned to herself, wishing that he could have been up on deck to see for himself. She had learned quite a lot about the Sweet Promise while he had been incapacitated. And she would learn more! She wanted to be a part of the ship as he was, to feel the water beneath her feet and the wind in her hair, to hear the slapping of the sails in the wind and to smell the salty tar smell of the ropes. Only in this weather they wouldn’t be able to haul up the sails at all. There wasn’t a breath of air to carry them.

  Helen didn’t hear Gregory come up on deck. She was lost in a world of her own, full of dreams that she couldn’t for the life of her have described to anyone. So the shock of his sudden presence was all the greater, making the backs of her hands tingle and doing funny things to her breathing.

  “You startled me,” she said.

  “So I did!” he agreed. “You must have been a long way off not to hear me coming! It wasn’t exactly a silent approach.”

  “No, but I was thinking,” she said.

  He watched her handling the wheel in silence for a long moment, then he said: “I came up to find out why you weren’t using the sails.”

  “There isn’t any air to carry us,” she told him.

  He looked about him, a slightly startled expression on his face. “I wasn’t paying attention,” he admitted. “It looks nasty. It’s going to make a fine mess of our chances, isn’t it?”

  She was concerned that he should look so worried. “Taine-Mal says nothing will happen today or tomorrow,” she said.

  “It will mean my going down with you,” he said slowly.

  Helen looked as appalled as she felt. “You can’t!” she said flatly.

  “I can try,” he retorted.

  He made as if to go back below, dragging his stiff and still painful leg behind him.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  “I don’t see it as any of your business, but I’m going to get ready,” he told her.

  She stood at the wheel, her eyes blinded with tears, wondering what she could do to prevent him. It was no use pleading, she thought. One might as well plead with a stone! She turned to face him, licking her lips to give her courage. The Sweet Promise faltered in her course, but Helen didn’t care. Gregory put a strong hand on the wheel and brought her back sharply.

  “Why don’t you look where you’re going?” he asked her gruffly.

  Helen abandoned the wheel altogether. “Isn’t one death enough?” she said through stiff lips. “Is the gold really worth so much?”

  His face looked stony and unyielding. “It wasn’t gold that brought about your husband’s death, Mrs. Hastings,” he said at last. “It was crass carelessness.”

  Helen drew herself up stiffly. “Oh yes,” she said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that—”

  “The subject is closed!” he retorted sharply.

  “Why?” she insisted sharply. “Because you wrote a letter to his mother explaining how it happened? A letter that I didn’t even see?”

  “I wrote it to Michael’s wife. Why didn’t you see it?”

  “My mother-in-law is Mrs. Hastings,” she sighed. “Naturally the letter came to her hand. Michael belonged to her, after all, so why should I have interested?” she concluded bitterly.

  “So that’s why you came?” he said more to himself than to her.

  “More or less,” she muttered.

  He looked at her, and she wished more than ever that she could tell what he was thinking, but there was no clue to be found in his expression.

  “Did you love him so much?” he asked at last.

  She shrugged her shoulders. She was beginning to think that she had never loved him at all! “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what I felt about him!”

  She was surprised to notice that Gregory was grinning. “Interesting!” he grunted.

  “Oh, very!” she retorted, angry because on top of everything else she thought she was going to cry. “Well, do you mean to tell me?”

  “Tell you what?” he asked innocently.

  Helen stamped her foot with sheer rage. “What happened to him?” she said.

  “If you really want to know. He went down when I had told him to wait for me. The frigate was more firmly on th
e shelf then, but rolling badly in the currents. Michael had cut some kind of an opening on the other side from where we are working now. He managed to pull himself inside. The frigate got caught up in the backlash of some storm, which was why I had told him not to go down alone. She rolled over, cutting off the exit. When we finally got to him it was too late. As it was, we had to rock the frigate dangerously on her perch. She very nearly fell off the shelf altogether. Another storm and she probably will! Satisfied?”

  Helen felt devastated. She would not allow herself to dwell on how Michael must have felt as they were trying to get him out. It had been his own fault that he had died, but he had probably never admitted that, even to himself. She wished she could mourn him properly, as a true wife should, but she had no tears left. She had a fleeting vision of his laughing face, and shuddered inwardly at the weakness that his charm had hidden from her for so long. Then his face was gone from her again and, try as she would, she could not recall his features with any clarity at all. He had, gone from her for ever.

  “He thought he was a better diver than people gave him credit for,” She said faintly.

  “I’d say he thought he was a better man than he proved to be,” Gregory added. “Optimism is a poor stand-in for character.”

  “That’s a cruel thing to say!” she objected quietly.

  “It’s the truth,” he said firmly.

  She nodded, turning her back on him as she grasped the wheel again and made a pretence of looking down at the navigational aids to see where they were going.

  “The truth can hurt,” she said finally.

  “Would you rather live with a lie?” he retorted sharply.

  “But he’s dead. I was his wife. If you knew his mother—” The words jumbled up in her mind. If only he wouldn’t look at her like that, almost as if he were waiting for an apology from her. “I must have loved him!” she ended bleakly.

  He was silent. He leaned against the rails of the deck, watching her. She would never know what he was really thinking!

  “I suppose you think a man should make his own way, no matter what his mother is!” she snapped at him.

  “Anita seems able to,” he pointed out quietly.

  “Perhaps,” Helen said without commitment. “Perhaps she hasn’t been tested yet.”

  “Perhaps not, but she has enough love in her to meet most challenges. She has a strength that her brother lacked.”

  Had Michael lacked love? Helen didn’t know. She would never know now, she thought. They had been married for such a short time, and in some ways she had never known him at all.

  “I tried to love him,” she said.

  Gregory looked at her for a long moment. “He was luckier than he knew,” he said so gently that she was surprised. “And very much luckier than he deserved!” he added thoughtfully.

  Helen hugged the compliment to her. “Oh, do you think so?” she gasped, blushing faintly at the rush of feeling within her.

  He reached forward and brushed a lock of hair that had escaped from her eyes. “I’d better get back down below,” he told her. “Anita will be wondering what’s happened to me. Can you manage up here?”

  She grasped the wheel firmly with both hands, wondering at her disappointment at his going. “I’ve managed before!” she said dryly.

  He grinned. “Good,” he said. “I knew I could rely on you!”

  She felt lonely when he had gone, but then she had to get used to that. It was the lot of widows to feel lonely, she told herself harshly, and who was she to quarrel with that?

  CHAPTER NINE

  BY midday Gregory was sniffing the weather as often as the two Polynesian sailors. “It’s coming,” he remarked. “But not today!”

  Anita laughed. She was rather looking forward to a full-scale storm. She had read about typhoons, but she had experienced nothing more serious than the downpour after a thunderstorm. A typhoon didn’t seem quite real; it sounded more romantic and exotic than dangerous.

  “How about tomorrow?” Helen asked. She was checking their equipment after she had made her first dive and she was depressed by the thought of the little compressed air they had going spare.

  “Tomorrow okay!” Na-Tinn told her.

  Helen glanced at Gregory through her eyelashes. Did he believe that too?

  “Who cares about tomorrow?” Anita said comfortably. “Miss Corrigan’s party will be over by then. It would be a shame if it were to spoil that!”

  But at that moment Helen was more concerned with her own problems. “I hope we have enough compressed air to last out,” she said, still worried. “What about tomorrow?”

  Na-Tinn smelt the air, opening his nostrils wide, his eyes half-closed in concentration. “No typhoon tomorrow morning,” he promised her. “Afternoon?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Wouldn’t like to say,” he said.

  Helen’s eyes met Gregory’s. “That doesn’t give us very long, does it?” she said anxiously.

  “If you can manage today, I’ll go down with you tomorrow morning and we’ll bring up the gold,” Gregory said.

  “But you can’t!” she protested.

  “I can try!” he retorted.

  She leaned back, smiling at him. “And who said that optimism was no substitute for character?” she teased him gently.

  His laughter mingled with hers. “You mind your business and I’ll mind mine,” he offered. “How big a hole have you knocked into the side of the frigate?”

  More than big enough for us to get in and out,” she told him. She shivered suddenly, despite the hot sun. “It looks black inside and rather horrid. I’m not much looking forward to it.”

  “Do you think you can get everything rigged up for us today?” he asked her. “We’ll have to make a quick trip in the morning if we’re going to get away with it.”

  I “I think so,” she agreed. “I’ll have to rig up some kind of lighting. Perhaps we could leave the lines rigged up to a marker buoy and hope that nothing interferes with them overnight.”

  He nodded. “I’ll help all I can from up here,” he said briskly. “You’d better get ready for the next dive.”

  It took a long time to fix up all the necessary wires and to make sure that the powerful bulbs were working. When she switched them on, several curious fish came to see what she was doing. They showed no fear at swimming in and out of the gaping hole she had made in the side of the frigate. She was tempted to put her head through the gap and see what she could see with the help of the lights, but she was very conscious of how little compressed air they had left. There was not enough for her to waste any of it, and she still had such a great deal to do. Gregory had a plan of the frigate in the saloon of the Sweet Promise, but they had got no idea from it as to where the gold had been stored. Helen favoured the captain’s cabin as the most likely place, but to get there they would have to go right through the sunken ship. When she had turned over, she had made things a great deal more awkward for them all.

  When at last she had done, she saw by her gauge that she had only a few seconds in which to surface before her cylinders of air were completely empty. She was cross with herself for cutting it so fine. She liked to come up slowly, without any strain, for she had long ago discovered that most of the bad effects that could follow a dive, like headaches and a feeling of nausea, depended on how one came up. To come up too quickly was never a good idea.

  But there was nothing she could do this time but to surface as quickly as she could. She took in a final deep breath of compressed air and felt herself bobbing upwards like a cork. There was a rushing sensation in her ears and she felt dizzy, but then there was the warm sun on her face and she tore off her mask, spitting out the mouthpiece, and took in some great gulps of air.

  It was Gregory who helped her back on board. “Why didn’t you come up before?” he asked her angrily. “What did you think you were doing?”

  “He’s been as cross as two sticks!” Anita added sourly.

  Helen forced a smile. “It’s all read
y for tomorrow,” she gasped.

  “Why didn’t you take two trips over it?” Gregory demanded, still angry.

  “I keep telling you, we’re running short of compressed air,” she murmured. “I didn’t want to waste any.”

  Anita clapped a hand over her mouth. “Don’t start him off again on that,” she pleaded. “I’ve had nothing else ever since you went down. I don’t think coming out here agrees with him. He’s been like a bear with a sore head all afternoon!”

  Helen smiled despite herself. She felt a great deal better. If he knew how low their stocks were, then she needn’t worry any longer, she thought comfortably. It was pleasant and warm on the deck and she shut her eyes to turn her face to the sun. She must indeed have been tired, for in a few seconds she was fast asleep.

  When Helen awoke, someone had carried her down below and had deposited her on to one of the berths in the forecabin. She wriggled her legs and felt the rough warmth of the blanket that had been flung over her. She sat up quickly and looked out of the porthole. The sun had just set and the last light was falling away below the horizon. In another few minutes it would be completely dark. How on earth long had she been asleep? She glanced at her watch, but she hadn’t got it on. It didn’t really matter, she decided, for the engines were still going so they couldn’t have arrived back in harbour. And the sleep had done her good. She felt as fresh now as she had when she had started!

  A soft knock at the door preceded Anita bringing her a cup of tea.

  “Gregory said to wake you,” she said. “I do think you might have got up earlier, though, Helen. He’s had to do everything to get us back to harbour!”

  “I can’t think why I fell asleep,” Helen apologised. “I don’t usually!”

  Anita sniffed. “Gregory seems to think you’ve been doing too much recently,” she informed her coldly.

  “Has he been beastly?” Helen asked sympathetically.

  Anita looked shocked. “I don’t think Gregory is ever beastly,” she said daintily. “He’s a bit worried, that’s all. Not that he need have been, as I told him. His leg is quite enough for him to worry about!”