Rembrandt's Ghost

by Paul Christopher

  ‘‘It’s a Japanese Naval Command flag from World War Two,’’ said Winchester, noticing the direction of Finn’s gaze. He set the lamp down on the ledge, picked up a small tin box, and carried it to the hearth. There was a fire already laid.

  He opened the box and took out a small sliver of dark rock and what looked like a broken piece from a carpenter’s plane. He struck the flint and steel together expertly and sparks flew, igniting the wad of tinder in the center of the pile of kindling. Within seconds the tinder had caught and a moment later a small fire was going. Finn found a flat area beside the fire and sat down. Billy joined her. Finn got her first good look at Winchester in the flush of light from the fire as he busied himself with a tin can kettle and something that could have passed for tea leaves.

  The marooned university professor looked like something from a nightmare. He appeared to be in his fifties or early sixties, and was on the short side, but stocky and obviously in good health. The hat on his head was made out of a roughly cured triangular piece of skin from a wild pig, bristles out, but grotesque or not it seemed to be waterproof with a large hanging flap at the back like a Foreign Legion kepi to keep water from running down his neck.

  Beneath the cap, which Winchester tossed unceremoniously aside as he wedged the tin can kettle in the fire, the man’s hair was a long, tangled, gray-blond mess, which he’d obviously tried to trim unsuccessfully. His skin, wherever it was exposed, was darkly tanned, burned almost black, his lips dry and cracked.

  Bright blue eyes, half mad, peered startlingly above a thatch of beard that covered the lower half of his face completely. The clothes were a combination of goatskin, pieces of old nylon sail, and something that might have once been part of a rubberized tarpaulin or army surplus ground cloth—all of it held together by strips of leather, twigs twisted through roughly gouged holes, several lengths of copper wire and a heavy belt cinching the whole thing together in a horrible looking kilt and tunic combination.

  The belt was the only thing that seemed solid in the entire, extraordinary patchwork ensemble. The belt buckle was brass, circular, lovingly polished, and had the same insignia as the naval pennant: a slightly eccentric version of the Japanese rising sun. What had she stumbled into?

  Winchester squatted down in front of the fire and stared into the flames, a lost, yearning look in his eyes. Regardless of the state of his clothing, the professor seemed remarkably fit for a man tossed up on a desert island with nothing but a few odd tools, some bamboo spears, and amateurishly constructed blowguns to provide for his livelihood. It was an impressive feat and Finn told him so.

  ‘‘I’d advise you to strip off your jeans,’’ he replied mildly.

  ‘‘I beg your pardon?’’ Finn said, startled.

  ‘‘You’ve just spent half an hour walking through the jungle on an island in the Sulu Sea,’’ he said, with that terrible, slightly maniacal laugh. ‘‘Leeches. Great big ones. You’ve probably been feeding a dozen of the fat buggers without noticing it.’’

  Finn stared, wondering for an instant if he was joking, then saw that he wasn’t trying to be funny at all. She struggled to her feet, unbuttoning and unzipping as she did so. Beside her Billy was going through the same routine. Winchester smiled, a bemused expression on his face.

  ‘‘It suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t seen a naked woman in quite some time, especially such a beautiful one. You really are remarkably pretty, my dear.’’ He pointed to her thigh. ‘‘There’s a couple,’’ he said. ‘‘Kingdom Animalia, phylum annelida , class clitellata, subclass, hirudineda. That particularly plump group feasting on your blood are brown Hirudo medicinalis, standard three-jawed version. Little teeth like razors. Make Dracula proud, they would. Healthy looking.’’

  Finn looked down at her thigh in horror. The leeches were thick, segmented, mucus-covered obscenities about four inches long. They pulsed slightly as she watched, drawing her blood painlessly. In fact she didn’t feel a thing.

  ‘‘Oh God,’’ she whispered, bile rising in the back of her throat. There were more on her other thigh, and several others lower down on both the front and back of her legs. Her whole body spasmed and she pushed one hand down into her panties and then recoiled. ‘‘Get them off! Get them off!’’

  ‘‘What do we do?’’ Billy yelled.

  Winchester seemed amused by their panic. ‘‘Most experts agree that it’s best to do nothing at all. Just let them drop off you when they’ve had their fill. Hot coals or cigarette ends are no good because the creature will regurgitate its own bodily fluids into your system—good way to get all sorts of nasty infections. Salt is hard on the wound. If you really want them off, you can dig your thumbnail into the back of their heads— that’s the part suckered onto you—then sort of slide them sideways and flick them away.’’

  Billy ignored the bloated black horrors clinging to his own skin and started helping Finn frantically reach the leeches she couldn’t get at, flipping them into the fire, where they sizzled and curled into desiccated ashy lumps. As Billy and Finn pulled the bloodsuckers off, Winchester kept up a running commentary on the dangers of the local florae and faunae.

  ‘‘There are seventeen hundred known varieties of parasitic worms hereabouts, a hundred seventy-six species of snake, including pythons, cobras, and kraits, not to mention Russell’s viper. Irritable sod, attacks with very little provocation. A strike from one of those and it’s say your prayers, laddie, because you’ve only got a minute or so left to live, no time for antivenom. Responsible for more human fatalities than any other snake in the world.

  ‘‘Then there’s the diseases . . . malaria, dengue-dengue, cholera, typhoid, rabies, hepatitis. Nick yourself shaving and your jaw might drop off a few days later. Then there’s the spiny little fish that’s attracted to urine and swims up your privates if you give it half a chance. Bathing is not advised, I’m afraid to say.’’ He sighed as Billy plucked the last of the shiny sluglike creatures off Finn and they began to work on himself.

  ‘‘I do miss cheese, though, toasted mostly. You can live fairly well here, lots of fruits and vegetables, not to mention fish and meat, but there’s nothing in the way of cheese.’’ The man shook his head sadly. ‘‘What I wouldn’t give for a bit of Barry’s Bay Cheddar or some Airedale! Maybe a little sliver of Hipi Iti on a cracker. A smear of Waimata blue on some crusty bread.’’ He glanced over as Finn pulled her jeans back on. ‘‘You’d be surprised what a man yearns for when he’s castaway like I was. Surprised indeed.’’

  ‘‘Sorry about losing it like that,’’ Finn apologized as she sat down again. ‘‘That kind of thing gives me the creeps.’’

  ‘‘You have to get used to ‘the creeps,’ as you call them, if you live here,’’ said Winchester with a laughing snort. ‘‘There’s very little here except the creeps. And no cheese at all.’’

  ‘‘You mentioned that,’’ said Billy. ‘‘A distinct lack of cheese by your account.’’

  ‘‘Do you have any idea where ‘here’ is?’’ Finn asked.

  ‘‘Somewhere north of Kagayan de Sulu,’’ answered Winchester. ‘‘If that means anything to you.’’ He shrugged, then took a stick and pulled the tin can kettle out of the fire and set it aside. He went to his shelf and found several tin mugs that looked as though they might have been military issue. He wrapped a ragged piece of cloth around the kettle to insulate it, then poured steaming liquid into the three mugs and handed them around. Finn sipped at hers. It was real tea, dark and very aromatic.

  ‘‘Camellia sinensis,’’ said Winchester, smiling at her surprise. ‘‘The real thing. You’d pay good money for that in a supermarket. Couldn’t be much fresher. Picked it yesterday from a patch of plants I’ve been cultivating up the slope.’’

  ‘‘You were saying about our position?’’ Billy prompted.

  ‘‘Yes. North of Kagayan. I know that much because the ship was north of there when the typhoon struck. We must be pretty well off the ordinary shipping lanes as wel
l.’’

  ‘‘No one ever comes?’’ Finn asked. ‘‘Not even the locals?’’

  ‘‘Not in the three years since I washed up here,’’ said Winchester. ‘‘And there are no locals.’’ He poured himself some more tea and took a slurping sip, smacking his lips. ‘‘I’ll take you up Spyglass Hill tomorrow and show you the lay of the land. Most of the coastline is made up of steep cliffs, at least on the leeward side, and the windward side is all reefs and shoals. No anchorage anywhere.’’

  ‘‘Spyglass Hill?’’ Finn said.

  ‘‘Treasure Island,’’ supplied Billy.

  ‘‘Quite so,’’ said Winchester. ‘‘The place where old Captain Flint had his booty buried.’’

  ‘‘And also the name of Long John Silver’s tavern in Bristol,’’ added Billy.

  ‘‘Quite so!’’ said the professor, raising one very shaggy eyebrow. ‘‘You really are quite the scholar!’’

  ‘‘It was my favorite book as a child,’’ said Billy. ‘‘That and The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff.’’

  ‘‘The Once and Future King,’’ murmured Winchester. ‘‘T. H. White.’’

  ‘‘The Bull from the Sea by Mary Renault,’’ countered Billy.

  ‘‘C. S. Lewis and the Narnia tales,’’ sighed Winchester longingly. ‘‘Not quite as good as cheese, but close. I haven’t read a word in print these three long years.’’

  ‘‘Now that you’ve had your little literary discussion maybe we should get down to business,’’ said Finn. ‘‘So far I’ve had leeches, Japanese swords, Chinese soldiers, and cheese. I’d like to know just what the hell is going on, Professor Winchester. If you know, that is.’’

  ‘‘Call me Ben,’’ said the untidy man in his goatskins.

  He struggled to stand, went to his shelf, and lifted the lid on one of the baskets. He came back to the fire, sat down again, and tossed two glitteringobjects through the flames to land at Finn’s and Billy’s feet. One was a small gold bar stamped with the chrysanthemum seal of the Nippon Ginko Bank. The other was a heavy gold coin two inches across with a square hole in the center and a Chinese character stamped in each of the four quadrants of the circle.

  ‘‘Would you believe me if I added a mysterious giant submarine and a six-hundred-year-old Chinese galleon-junk the length of a rugby field? The bones of rhinoceroses and lions and giraffes where there couldn’t possibly be? A war that’s gone on for more than half a century after peace was declared? A treasure beyond compare hidden within the ancient core of a volcano? An island that eats ships and men and has been doing it for a thousand years?’’

  ‘‘Frankly,’’ said Billy, ‘‘it sounds quite mad.’’

  Winchester let out one of his crowing laughs that echoed into the farthest shadows of the enormous hidden cavern. ‘‘You think that sounds insane, young man? Listen, and I’ll tell you a story.’’

  21

  ‘‘This is what we know for a fact,’’ said Winchester, settling comfortably back on his haunches. ‘‘Once upon a time, the late fourteenth century to be precise, a man named Zheng He was born in northern China, probably Yunnan Province. He was a Muslim and his father and his grandfather were members of the governor’s court. When the Ming emperor captured Yunnan, Zheng He was taken prisoner, made a slave, and castrated.

  ‘‘He was made a servant in the Imperial Court in Peking. In due time he was impressed into the army and made a name for himself, rising through the ranks entirely on merit, sort of like a Chinese Richard Sharpe or Hornblower. Oddly, for a man born into the deserts of Uzbekistan, Zheng He joined the Imperial Navy and eventually became an admiral.’’

  ‘‘I read a book about this,’’ said Billy. ‘‘Someone wrote a book about him not too long ago. They say he even discovered America about fifty years before Columbus.’’

  Winchester nodded. ‘‘The book was called 1421. It’s based on some controversial maps. Whether or not he discovered America may be conjecture, but Zheng He’s activities in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean are well documented. He sailed out of Nanking in enormous fleets of junks, from small eight-oared patrol boats a hundred feet long to monstrous, six-hundred-foot-long treasure junks that carried crews of a thousand men and were big enough for caged, live cargoes of everything from Egyptian dung beetles to giraffes and elephants from the African veldt.’’

  ‘‘You seem to know a great deal about all this,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘When you’re on a research ship for several months at a time you watch whatever they have in their video libraries. The Tumamotu had quite a good selection. Mostly in French, mind you, but I muddled through.’’ The man smiled. ‘‘And we do actually have our own television shows in New Zealand, you know. It’s not all Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings.’’

  ‘‘Sorry,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘Quite all right, dear. That’s what one gets for living at the bottom of the world ten thousand miles from the mother country.’’

  ‘‘And proper cheddar,’’ laughed Billy.

  ‘‘Real Stilton,’’ said Winchester, a wistful note in his voice.

  ‘‘Enough about cheese,’’ said Finn. ‘‘What about these fleets of yours?’’

  ‘‘Zheng He’s career was a brief one, only twenty years. In that time he made seven of his voyages. Perhaps, as some theories say, he even circumnavigated the world. Over those twenty years and seven voyages, he lost a number of ships during typhoons. One of those ships was a full-sized treasure junk that eventually wound up here as it made its way back to China. From the evidence and the historical data we have on typhoons, it was probably in the fall of 1425. Zheng He’s ships were magnificently designed, complete with watertight compartments. The ship probably survived almost intact, along with its cargo and most of its crew. The main trade route was closer to mainland Vietnam, so they were clearly blown far off course by the winds. From my own observations I’d say that close to six or seven hundred people suddenly found themselves castaway. The historical record also shows that Zheng He’s ships traveled with a large number of women on board.

  ‘‘Over the years and centuries here, the population seems to have stabilized at a little more than eight hundred. There was breeding stock on the ship that washed up here, cattle, goats, swine, fowl—enough to provide an agricultural base. Most of the animals Zheng He’s people were bringing back to the Ming court died off unless they managed to interbreed with the domestic faunae. There is a particularly vicious sort of wild boar that seems to have some relation to the African warthog and a few small deer, but the lions and elephants and giraffes died out for lack of habitat.’’

  ‘‘Jurassic Park in the Sulu Sea,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘Something of the sort. More like the Island of Dr. Moreau,’’ replied Winchester. ‘‘It’s been more than five hundred years since the ship was wrecked. In that time the locals have very little idea of the outside world. They’ve become like cargo cult aborigines, worshipping the remains of their past but having very little idea of the meaning of those relics.’’

  ‘‘Cargo cult?’’ Billy asked.

  ‘‘Native people who worship manufactured objects. It was something my mother was interested in. After World War Two, all sorts of native tribes in New Guinea started worshipping straw effigies of the airplanes that had dropped supplies by parachute. The idea was if they prayed the airplanes and their wonderful cargo would return. The idea dates back to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century explorers who first interacted with aboriginal people.’’

  ‘‘So these survivors eventually began worshipping the remains of the ship?’’

  ‘‘Something like that. The ship itself is long gone, but the treasure and a number of other artifacts were taken to a large cave next to the Punchbowl. It’s still there.’’

  ‘‘The Punchbowl?’’ Finn asked.

  ‘‘It’s what makes the whole place tick, so to speak.’’ Winchester smiled.

  ‘‘You’ll have to explain that,�
�’ said Billy.

  ‘‘Better if I show you,’’ answered Winchester. ‘‘Tomorrow, after we get some rest.’’

  Finn slept dreamlessly and woke to the unearthly smell of bacon and eggs. She sat up, blinking, and found a bright-eyed Winchester huddled over a frying pan made out of the bottom of a large tin can and a bamboo stick. Billy was already up and about as well, a simple wooden plate in each hand.

  ‘‘Mozambique guinea fowl eggs,’’ said Winchester. ‘‘One of the old admiral’s better castaways. They seemed to have prospered here. The bacon’s cut from one of the warthog variants I mentioned to you. Sunny-side up or overeasy?’’

  ‘‘Any way they come.’’ Finn yawned, blinking the sleep out of her eyes. She sat up. ‘‘Too bad there’s no coffee.’’ She took a loaded plate from Billy and a utensil carved from wood that was a combination fork and spoon.

  ‘‘But we do have coffee,’’ said Winchester, handing her a steaming mug with his free hand. Surprised, Finn took a swallow. It was delicious.

  ‘‘It tastes just like Starbucks,’’ she laughed.

  ‘‘It is Starbucks,’’ said Winchester. ‘‘Sulawesi, from Torajaland. A whole container of it washed up a week or so ago. Some freighter in trouble, no doubt. It happens more often than you’d think. I ground the beans myself, the old-fashioned way—mortar and pestle.’’

  ‘‘Starbucks, bacon and eggs, and Chinese treasure,’’ said Billy, spooning up his breakfast with the wooden utensil. ‘‘Will wonders never cease?’’