The Golden Reef (1969)

by Pattinson, James

  ‘Come on then,’ Keeton said.

  He went down the Jacob’s ladder and the boat came up to meet him, as though offering itself to his service. He stepped on to a thwart and looked up to see Bristow still hesitating, apparently unwilling to take this final step.

  ‘Well, are you coming or aren’t you?’ Keeton shouted. ‘I’m not hanging about here all day.’

  He began to release the shackles, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Bristow scrambling down the ladder. The hazards of the unknown in Keeton’s company obviously scared him less than the known terrors of the wreck with no one to share his vigil.

  They cast off and pushed away from the ship’s side. They rowed for a time, then shipped the oars and stepped the mast. They hoisted the yellow sail and let it fill with the light breeze. They looked back and saw the diminishing outline of the Valparaiso. It was three hours before they lost sight of her, and then it was as though she had never existed; she was swallowed by the ocean, engulfed by the vastness of this world of sky and water.

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever be able to find her again?’ Bristow asked doubtfully.

  ‘I’ll find her,’ Keeton said. ‘If she was sunk in the depths of hell I’d go down there after her. I’d go anywhere for that gold.’

  There was a hint of apprehension in Bristow’s eyes when he looked at Keeton. It was the way a man might have looked at a tiger into whose cage he had been thrust.

  ‘I believe you would, Charlie,’ Bristow said softly. ‘I believe you’d fight the devil himself if he tried to take it away from you.’

  The boat moved sluggishly, making slow progress; it had been built for survival rather than speed. When the wind dropped it lost way and drifted aimlessly.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Bristow said. ‘Do we row to Fiji?’

  ‘There’ll be more wind,’ Keeton said. ‘You can’t expect to get there in a day.’

  But the days passed and the wind came only in light gusts that died away almost as soon as they had filled the sail. At the end of the first week Keeton reckoned that they had made scarcely fifty miles and had drifted helplessly off the correct course.

  ‘We should have stayed on board the ship,’ Bristow said. ‘I knew it was a mistake to trust this tub.’

  Keeton looked at him with contempt. ‘You could have stayed. You had the choice. You were too damned scared.’

  ‘You said we would get to Fiji.’ Bristow sounded like a sulky child.

  ‘And so we shall. In time.’

  ‘If we don’t die of thirst.’

  ‘You’d better drink less.’

  ‘It’s hot,’ Bristow said. ‘I get thirsty.’

  ‘You’ll be a sight thirstier when the water’s gone.’ There was a furnace in the sky glaring down upon them, and the glare sprang up in reflection from all the shifting mirrors of the sea. A million pricking darts of light plagued the eyes of the men in the boat, and each day they waited for the merciful time when the sun would sink below the horizon and the air grow cooler with the coming of night. The nights were like balm. Keeton would gaze up at the glittering stars and in each one of them he would see the colour of gold. It was as though the treasure of the Valparaiso had been flung up in a great spray to splash like paint on the limitless dome of the sky.

  The wind for which he had waited so long came suddenly. It struck the sail of the lifeboat as if with the blow of a fist. The sail billowed, the mast creaked, the boat heeled over and shipped water. Bristow, taken by surprise, was flung off his feet and fell between the thwarts with the salt water pouring over him. He gave a cry of fear, but Keeton snarled savagely at him.

  ‘Get up, can’t you? Give a hand with this sail. Come on, man; you aren’t dead.’

  Bristow struggled up with water dripping from him. The sail was flapping wildly; it seemed to be a live animal fighting with them, striving to break loose. But they gained control and the boat began to move through the water with more purpose than it had previously shown.

  Keeton, with the tiller under his hand, was exultant. ‘Now we’re really on our way.’ He was revelling in this contest with the wind; he was using it for his own ends, taming it, making it his servant. ‘Now we’re moving. Why don’t you sing, Johnnie? Why don’t you look happy?’

  Bristow was not happy; he was listening to the groaning of the mast and watching the sea as the wind scooped it into hollows and built up the ridges and drove them at the boat. He looked apprehensively at the patched side of their unwieldy craft. He shouted at Keeton.

  ‘That patch may not stand the strain.’

  Keeton was not worried; he had faith in his own carpentry. The boat was as sound now as it had ever been.

  But they had shipped a deal of water and it was swilling about in the bottom. ‘Bail it out, Johnnie; bail it out.’

  Bristow picked up the handbowl and began to bail, throwing the water over the lee side where it sprayed out in a wide arc as the wind caught it.

  The rain came later. It drove at them out of an ink-black sky; it drummed on the stretched sail and played its music on the timbers; it came in a broad slanting river that drenched the men through to the skin. It dripped from the awning and found its way into every corner and every crevice.

  Keeton was chilled. He shivered, and he no longer felt like laughing. The water was collecting in the bottom of the boat faster than Bristow could bail it out. Keeton yelled at him to work harder, and for an answer Bristow flung the bailer at his tormentor.

  ‘Do it yourself then,’

  It was no time for argument. Keeton relinquished the tiller to Bristow and began to bail furiously.

  The squall was brief. When it had passed the sun came out again and the boat steamed. The wind slackened and the sail hung limply. Keeton stripped to the skin and bailed out the remaining water. A tin of biscuits had burst open and the biscuits had disintegrated and had been scooped overboard.

  ‘That’s another cut in the rations,’ Keeton said.

  Bristow looked at him. ‘Do you still think we’ll get to Fiji?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘That makes half of us who’re sure.’

  An hour later there was more water in the boat.

  ‘There’s a leak,’ Bristow said gloomily. ‘What did I tell you? It’s only a botched-up job when all’s said and done. What else can you expect?’

  The water seeped in slowly. It was like an insidious disease, scarcely noticeable, yet deadly in its cumulative effect. It became necessary to carry out bailing operations at regular intervals. The sound of the bowl became an integral part of life in the boat, and the flash of water jetting over the gunwale was as familiar as the yellow sail and the salt-rimmed awning over the bows.

  ‘Suppose it gets worse,’ Bristow said. ‘And suppose we run into another storm. What then?’

  ‘Suppose the sea opens and swallows us. Suppose the sky rains purple ink. Suppose you pipe down.’

  ‘I’ve got a right to talk,’ Bristow mumbled.

  Keeton struck him on the cheek with the back of his hand. ‘I said pipe down.’ He was sick of Bristow.

  Tears came into Bristow’s eyes. He rubbed his cheek but said nothing. He just stared at Keeton venomously.

  So time passed, the days dragging away on leaden feet and the two men hating each other and the quirk of fate that had thrown them together in this joint enterprise. Slowly the drinking water dwindled and still Fiji was no more than a dream forever beckoning them towards a horizon that retreated from them at the same distressful, limping pace at which they approached.

  Keeton forced Bristow to accept a smaller ration of water. Bristow grumbled and was afraid.

  ‘We’re going to die in this boat. We’ll never reach Fiji nor nowhere else. Only a madman would ever have thought we could. You know it, don’t you, Charlie? You know it.’

  ‘I don’t know it,’ Keeton said. He refused to believe that it would end like this, that he would lose the gold.

  They developed sores on
the skin; their bones ached; they could find no comfort in the boat. They could not eat for lack of water to wash the food down, and they were thirsty always. Keeton no longer made any attempt to trim his hair or beard and he had become as unkempt as Bristow. He had been lean even at the start of the voyage; now, after weeks of privation, his ribs showed under the skin of his chest like the bars of a prison. The skin itself was burned almost black by the sun and the sores and scabs were like a disease.

  ‘We should have stayed on board the Valparaiso,’ Bristow whined. ‘We were all right there. Now we’re just going to die.’

  ‘You’d have died anyway. Everybody dies some time.’

  ‘I’m too young to die.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself,’ Keeton said. ‘Nobody’s too young to die. They forgot to fix an age limit.’

  Bristow’s lips trembled. He looked ready to weep. Keeton turned his head away contemptuously.

  One night Keeton awoke under the awning from a troubled sleep and saw the moon low in the sky beyond the stern of the boat. For a while he lay there staring at it, in that hazy middle state that lies half-way between sleep and wakefulness. The moon looked so close that it was as though he could have stretched out his hand and grasped it. But then a shadow came between him and the moon, and in that moment he became fully awake.

  The shadow was Bristow, and there was something about Bristow’s movements that roused a sudden grave suspicion in Keeton’s mind. He saw Bristow’s head turn as he glanced towards the awning, and then he stooped and began to fumble with something in the bottom of the boat. Keeton watched him; he saw Bristow lift some object towards his mouth and throw his head back in the unmistakable action of drinking; he heard the faint sigh of satisfaction that Bristow gave after he had drunk.

  Keeton’s anger burned up in him as it had not burned since the day when the cat had been killed and the bullet had whined past his ear. Bristow was committing now an even greater crime, and this time there was no excuse of drunkenness to urge in mitigation: he was stealing the water, the precious liquid that was worth more now than gold; he was helping himself while he supposed Keeton to be asleep. And how often before this had he done so? How many times had he secretly dipped into the breaker to quench his thirst, not caring two pins for the rights or wrongs of the matter but intent only on satisfying his own desires?

  Keeton crawled out from beneath the awning. ‘You damned swine, Johnnie,’ he said, and there was an edge of steel in his voice. ‘You damned, filthy, thieving swine.’

  Bristow was startled; his head jerked round and the mug fell with a metallic clatter from his hand.

  ‘Charlie! I thought you were asleep.’

  Keeton stood up. ‘You bet you thought I was asleep. That’s why you were sneaking the water, you bastard.’

  ‘Now, look, Charlie—’ Bristow began. Keeton clenched his fist and hit Bristow on the mouth. Bristow gave a squeal like a pig that has been hurt. Keeton hit him again and he staggered back into the sternsheets.

  ‘Keep away from me, Charlie. Keep away.’

  Keeton followed him and hit him on the side of the head, and Bristow fell against the tiller.

  ‘I’ll keep away from you, Johnnie. I’ll keep away when I’ve finished what I’m going to do and not before.’

  Bristow began to grope about for some weapon with which to defend himself, and his hand fell on the tiller. He managed to free it from the rudder and swung it at Keeton like a club. The tiller struck Keeton on the neck, and the pain of the blow seemed to mingle with his anger, almost blinding him. Before Bristow could swing the tiller again Keeton seized it and wrenched it from his hands. Bristow began to whimper.

  ‘Don’t hit me, Charlie. No, don’t hit me.’

  In an effort to escape he made a sudden crouching dash towards the centre of the boat. Keeton lashed at him with the tiller and he fell across a thwart and lay there.

  ‘Get up,’ Keeton said.

  Bristow did not move.

  ‘It’s no use shamming,’ Keeton said. ‘You’re not hurt yet. Not like you’re going to be.’

  Still Bristow made no movement and no sound. Keeton stepped over the thwart and gripped Bristow’s shoulder, shaking him. There was a strange limpness about Bristow. Keeton left off shaking him. He touched the back of Bristow’s head and felt something warm and slippery on his fingers.

  He was surprised, because he had not imagined that he was hitting Bristow very hard. Yet when he touched the end of the tiller the substance was there too, and he knew that it was blood. With a feeling of revulsion he cast the tiller away from him; it struck the gunwale and fell into the sea. Keeton was scarcely aware that he had lost it.

  He shook Bristow again. ‘Wake up, Johnnie, wake up.’ It was like shaking a sack of grain.

  He found the bailer, scooped up some water and poured it over Bristow’s head. The head did not move.

  Again Keeton felt angry with Bristow, but for a different reason. What did he think he was up to, playing this trick?

  ‘Damn you, Johnnie; you aren’t dead. I didn’t hit you that hard. You know I didn’t. Why don’t you get up? Damn you; you can’t be dead.’

  Dead! No, it was not possible. Bristow was either shamming in order to avoid further punishment or he was unconscious. Unconscious! Of course, that was the answer; the blow had knocked him out but he would be all right in a minute or two.

  Keeton kneeled down and put his ear against Johnnie’s face. There was no audible sound of breathing. He lifted Bristow’s wrist and felt for the pulse. There was nothing.

  He let the wrist drop and drew away from Bristow, withdrawing to the far end of the boat. And there he stayed for the rest of the night, waiting for Bristow to get up, yet knowing in his heart that he would never do so.

  In the early light of morning Bristow lay across the thwart with the dried blood and matted hair visible on the back of his head. When Keeton, mastering his reluctance to go near, touched the body he found that it had already stiffened.

  ‘I didn’t mean to do it, Johnnie,’ he muttered. ‘You made me mad, but I didn’t mean to kill you, believe me, I didn’t. It was an accident.’

  Yet even in this moment of remorse the thought crept into his mind that now there was no one with whom he had to share the gold. The treasure of the Valparaiso was his now, all his. If he could get it.

  But Bristow had to be lifted out of the boat; he could not be left where he was to rot, for that would be the ultimate horror.

  Keeton put his arms round the body and tried to lift it, but could not do so. He sat down, trembling from the exertion. He could not believe that Bristow, even at his fattest, had ever been as heavy as that; it was as though death had turned the flesh to lead, defying him to lift it. It did not occur to him at first that it was not Bristow who had grown heavier but he who had become weaker; he no longer possessed the strength that he had once had; he was a sick man now, sick from privation. And yet somehow Bristow must go.

  ‘If he stays,’ Keeton muttered, ‘I shall have to go. There’s not room for the two of us now.’

  He got to his feet and put his hands under Bristow’s armpits and dragged him to the side. By exerting all his efforts he managed to lift Bristow’s head and shoulders on to the gunwale. He rested then, gasping for breath, his mouth dry and salty. Bristow, face downward on the gunwale, looked as though he were praying. With a muttered curse Keeton bent down and seized the dead man’s legs; he lifted them and with a final heave toppled the body over the side.

  There was surprisingly little splash. Keeton looked over the gunwale and saw the shark. It must have been there all the time, waiting, as if it had known that Bristow would be coming to it.

  Keeton closed his eyes, but he could not shut out the sound of that sudden flurry in the water. After a while the sound died away. He opened his eyes and saw the stains on the thwart like dry paint.

  Keeton was alone in the boat now. The days slipped by and the boat drifted, without purpose, without aim, a piece
of flotsam moved by the wind and the current. As time passed Keeton became weaker; he no longer made any attempt to bail out the water in the bottom of the boat, but after reaching a certain level it stopped rising, perhaps because the leak had sealed itself. Sometimes a kind of madness seized him; he made croaking shouts of defiance, daring the sea to come and take him, shaking his bony fists at the sky. In one of these fits he picked up the sextant and flung it away; it fell with a momentary glitter of reflected sunlight and was lost beneath the enigmatic surface of the ocean. The charts followed it, fluttering down like autumn leaves and floating for a time before, sodden and limp, they lost their buoyancy and succumbed to the irresistible pull of gravity.

  He lost track of time. He knew that the days burned away under the harsh glare of the sun, that the nights were haunted by dreams of Bristow and the shark beneath the keel; but he kept no record of their passing. He felt an overpowering lassitude; his bones ached, but the pain of hunger scarcely troubled him any more; he had become used to it, or maybe it had withered away inside him like a dried-up flower.

  He could hardly believe that he was only twenty years of age. He seemed to have grown old and weary. He had had only this small portion of life and now it was almost gone.

  One morning he was too weak to crawl out from the shelter of the awning in the bows. He lay on the mattress, not moving. He lay there all day and all night with his eyes closed. He did not know when the next day dawned.

  Chapter Ten

  Return to Life

  Keeton could see a line of rivets above his head. He tried to puzzle out how they came to be there. There were surely no rivets in the awning. He was still worrying over this problem when he heard the voices.

  I should be dead, he thought; but instead I am still alive and imagining things. Or perhaps, after all, I died in the boat and have come to another life, that life the preachers always talked about – the hereafter.