by Peter Tonkin
After a disorientating and deeply disgusting ride, they were bodily precipitated into the rear section of a great cavern, split by a rock slide into two ‘eye sockets’ looking away to the north-east. The cavern was a haven to the better part of a million bats and the disturbance of the humans’ arrival, the first such in more than a millennium, sent the cave’s occupants into frenzied flight a little earlier than their usual sunset foray. Two black columns of bats poured out of the twin cave mouths. An external observer might have been forgiven a superstitious shiver seeing two rivers of heaving darkness reaching out like some mystical, magical power from the hollow eyes of that weathered, rocky skull’s face.
The bats were terrified and this compounded the fact that they always urinate and defecate before taking flight in any case. Slimed and showered, terrifyingly aware that there were a range of horrifically antisocial members of the invertebrate world which make their homes in such places, Richard and Sally struggled to their feet. ‘All right?’ choked Richard past a throat seized up with acrid chlorine fumes.
‘ … esss.’
They waded forwards towards the light. The guano came almost to their knees, and Richard’s clearing if streaming eyes were glad to see no immediate evidence of scorpions or centipedes either on the floor or on Sally’s filth-scaled back. As they staggered forward, however, they were guided by the formation of the cave into a narrowing track and here they discovered shocking evidence of previous occupation. The first of this evidence nearly broke Richard’s shins as he walked into it. He stopped, suddenly feeling that he had been thumped with a hockey stick or caught in some kind of trap. Only that latter notion made him thrust his hands beneath the cold, slimy surface of the mephitic ooze around his legs. He reached down shudderingly, felt about gingerly and pulled up what at first glance looked like a thick stick the better part of a metre long. Only as he held it to the light did he recognise it as the thighbone of a gigantic man. As he turned to show his stunning find to Sally, she too stooped and pulled out of the filth something more or less the same size. But Sally’s trophy was no bone. As she swept away the clotted filth with impatient fingers, its outline was revealed. It had a rounded end not unlike the joint on the end of Richard’s thighbone, but it was much bigger, the size of a fist at least. The rest of it curved in a way which told at once what it was. Sally grasped the thick handle just below the fist-sized pommel until the filth oozed out between her fingers and she felt something solid against her palm. She jerked and a blade slid up out of a slime-crusted sheath. The light gleamed against Sally’s teeth as she unwisely risked a smile. She opened her mouth to say something but began to hawk and choke as some of her foul surroundings got in past her lips. She dropped the sheath but held the sword fiercely and looked at him. There was much to be said, about their find if nothing else, but this was neither the time nor the place to say it. Richard motioned like a Neanderthal with his thighbone club and she answered with her sword, like a pirate princess.
Thus armed, they reached the nearest opening. There they stood, facing north-eastwards, looking away across the reef towards the distant wrecks of the ships as the evening sun declined behind them and the sky went to rose-pink above the swarm of bats which came sweeping back like a black storm cloud to descend on its feeding grounds in the jungle and the mangroves below. In from the wrecks came a wind as sweet as wine but any sound it might have carried was lost amid the shrilling of the bats.
‘They’re killing each other down there,’ said Richard hoarsely, gesturing with a dripping arm towards the stricken vessels. ‘I wonder what in heaven’s name is going on.’
‘You want to go find out?’ asked Sally. ‘I’m good at killing. I’ll fit right in.’
Richard looked across at her. He did not doubt what she said for an instant and it brought an odd upwelling of affection in him. ‘The only place we’d fit right in at the moment is a dunghill,’ he said.
Sally looked down at herself and gave a grunt. ‘I could make a fortune in some of the more adventurous bars in downtown Bangkok,’ she said wryly. ‘They love mudwrestling out there.’
‘Nonsense,’ countered Richard. ‘You’re far too old.’
The counter-thrust fell a little flat. Suddenly she was regarding him almost angrily. But then the cold look in her eyes died. ‘I guess you’re right at that,’ she said. ‘I’d rather be clean than rich anyway. Let’s go.’
It was quite easy to get out of the cave. All they had to do was swing themselves down from the lower orbit of the eye socket on to the narrow ledge which stood in place of an upper lip.
As they began their descent back to the open field on the hillside above the jungle, Richard, made formal — perhaps a little pompous — by his awareness of the risk she had taken on his behalf, thanked her for saving him from the tiger. He might have felt less stilted if he’d made a joke of it but he was still disturbed by the anger she had shown at his quip regarding her age as opposed to that of the girls on the Bangkok circuit. She answered lightly that she feared loneliness more than death, which lifted the mood a little, and they began to discuss what they had found. The discovery of a skeleton and a weapon took some of the gloss off their desert island. It was unsettling. Vaguely threatening. Not as bad as if they had discovered footsteps on the sand, but still unpleasant, for all that Sally caressed the weapon lovingly.
‘No tiger’s going to come after us now,’ said Richard, watching her out of the comer of his eye. ‘Not the way we smell.’
‘The skunk defence. I never thought I’d stoop so low.’
‘Better to smell like animal droppings than to become animal droppings,’ he said. But he swung the massive thighbone club a little harder at the thought.
As the jungle closed over them, its shadows deepened by the coming night, she asked the question which had been bothering them both. ‘Who do you think he was?’
‘Heaven knows. It’s a fair guess that was his knife.’
‘Knife? I thought it was a sword!’
‘I don’t know. Look at the size of this thigh. He must have been half a metre taller than I am.’ Richard held the bone in place against himself to illustrate. Even with the lower end held hard against the side of his knee, the knobby hip joint stood nearly at his waist.
‘Jesus! A giant!’
Her tone was half shocked, half teasing; but he took it seriously. ‘There were giants out here,’ he said. ‘Drake is supposed to have met giants coming round the world in fifteen seventy-eight. He had an honest to God battle with them in June of that year. There was supposed to be an island of giants all well over seven feet tall up to the north of Japan somewhere — Magellan found them, I think, though the giants Drake fought must have been in Patagonia.’
‘You know a lot about this stuff, hunh?’
‘I used to read a lot. A good number of sailors do. It’s either that, sport or blue videos most off-watch evenings on most ships.’
‘So what do you reckon to my knife?’
‘Can’t tell until we wash it off. It’d have to be made out of something pretty sturdy to last any time at all under all that bat guano, though. We’d better wash it very carefully. This stuff’s already beginning to eat into my tender bits.’
‘Do tell,’ said Sally. ‘You’re lucky I’m a lady, given the places I’ve got itching and smarting.’
They were fortunate that whoever had chandlered their lifeboat had thought to put in some salt-water soap. Normal soap and washing products will not foam or function very effectively in brine. Salt-water soap, however, allowed them the luxury of a good bath in their shallow bay just as the last of the light began to leave the evening and the last of the warmth began to leave the water. Reaching a brief pinnacle of enforced intimacy, they washed each other’s backs, still checking for leeches and vermin, ensuring that every square centimetre of skin was scrubbed clean of the acidic waste which would have gone to suppurating ulcers overnight. While Richard washed Sally’s back, Sally washed her treasure.
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nbsp; Then, naked, they padded side by side back up the beach. ‘So this giant guy,’ persisted Sally, now clutching a dully gleaming knife of sword-like proportions and apparent antiquity on which she had wasted the last of her soap. ‘When do you reckon he was here?’
‘I really have no idea.’ Richard was impatient to get some sort of fire going and to do something about food. Since their nibble at lifeboat survival rations that morning, he had eaten nothing. It was too late to hunt now but the promise of moonrise glimmered behind the top of the skull-like hilltop they had just vacated. It was not yet seven local time. He felt full of energy. A fire, some crabbing or shellfish gathering. Some coconut hunting by torchlight — if they stayed close to each other and watched out for tigers. If they were careful they might yet eat well and sleep safely. ‘Why don’t we get set up and maybe find something to eat. Then we’ll have a good look at it as soon as we’re settled.’
‘Typical man,’ grumbled Sally. ‘If it isn’t food it’s fornication. The only thing that interests you above the waist is tits.’
‘Hey!’
‘OK. OK. I know. Not fair. I’m hungry and getting chilly too, in fact. A fire and a bit of scavenging. Then we do our archaeology.’
The fire was easy. While Sally had been hunting that morning, as well as sorting out and making an inventory of the contents of their boat, Richard had collected old coconut husks, bits of palm-tree foliage and some of the bigger pieces of storm wrack and flotsam scattered about. He had spread it out and the heat of the day had dried it well. Nothing had come on to the beach since they had left it and so the potential firewood lay neatly arranged and dry, close at hand. This was easy enough to pile into the classic teepee shape with kindling underneath. Then it was just a case of applying a match and standing well back.
As the moon rose and the fire flared, they began to look for coconuts. But, oddly enough, the first dark, round object they discovered in the white sand was not a nut at all. ‘I’ll be damned,’ said Richard as he squatted in the sand. ‘It’s a cannonball.’ Sidetracked, he began to look for more and soon found another. Then, in direct line from the cannonballs, right down at the waterline — it was low water with the tide just on the turn — they found another odd thrust of metal.
It looked for all the world like the top of a chimney sticking up out of the beach as though a house was buried down there. The chimney mouth was well packed with sand and it seemed as though the whole thing probably was. They explored the sand around it but discovered little beyond the fact that it stood up perhaps eight centimetres proud of the surface. It was circular, about thirty centimetres in diameter on the inside, with a solid raised rim. Their best guess was that it might be some deeply buried cooking pot.
As they tried in vain to loosen it, the moon rose, full and dazzlingly silver. Called by the beauty of that disturbingly close orb, a tiger gave a roar deep within the jungle and, as though summoned by one or the other, a great army of spider crabs came up out of the whispering surf to lay their eggs in the sand. As they heaved themselves out of the water, the crustaceans made an unnerving hissing, bubbling sound which was overlain by the clacking clatter of their legs as soon as they moved. Some of the crabs were huge, the better part of a metre and a half from claw tip to claw tip. Richard and Sally stepped back, shocked, and considered flight as the massive numbers of them became clear. But they were only a few metres from the boat and not far from the fire. They were both armed and this was the feast they had come searching for.
They sprinted back to the boat. Here they could take refuge if they needed to but the crabs wisely avoided the foreign object and the fire so that there was an area which remained clear of their crouching and scuttling bodies. Out from this citadel Richard dashed as soon as he had put some shoes and underwear on. Sally teased him but he remained adamant. ‘I don’t want anything snipped off by accident,’ he said stiffly in the face of her laughter. ‘It’s all right for you, you’ve got less to lose.’
‘I’ve just as many toes!’ she said.
‘Then you’ll be able to skip out beside me and pick up a couple yourself,’ he said.
‘No way! I read my daddy’s copy of Dr No as a girl. Had crab-filled nightmares ever since.’
‘But the crabs didn’t touch her in the book.’
‘No, but they crawled all over her.’ She shuddered. ‘Don’t talk about it.’
He disappeared into the hissing, clattering shadows and returned a few minutes later with one big crab in each hand. His arms were held level with his shoulders and the dead legs dangled down past his waist; the span of his large hands could only just hold the shells of their supper.
Half an hour later, they were sitting more contentedly side by side. Their backs rested against the side of the boat. Each held a roasted claw and was sucking out the sweet, tender meat. The fire in front of them had attained that settled red glow which tells of good cooking heat and the crabs, minus claws, were, upside down, hissing and bubbling succulently in their shells. The sky was velvet black and the stars were low and bright. The moon, as full as a white balloon, was rising inexorably towards its zenith and lighting the bay with a silvery effulgence like the sun shining through thin cloud. The white sand reflected and seemed to multiply the light between the scurrying blackness of the still scuttling bodies. A breeze had sprung up and blew the clacking sound of that army of burbling castanets out to sea.
It also blew the smell of roasting crabs out to sea for the first time in four hundred and twenty years since Drake and his men were here. Some people believe that crocodiles can live for five hundred years or more and if this is true it is possible that the monster that had followed the crabs into the shallows recognised the scent from his youth. In any case, it was a smell that the ten-metre ocean-going predator currently lying as silently as flotsam out in the shallows with only his eyes and nostrils breaking the surface was going to investigate.
‘I gotta go and do what a girl’s got to,’ announced Sally suddenly. She heaved herself to her feet and began to pick her way out into the shadows.
‘Solid in the sand, liquid in the water,’ called Richard after her.
‘I’m just going to do it on these motherblanking crabs,’ she called back merrily enough, and Richard could tell from her voice she was heading for the water down behind the boat.
‘Watch out for the cannonballs,’ he called. ‘When you’re finished, we’ll take a closer look at that sword.’ He reached across and picked it up. In the combined brightness of fireglow and moonlight the handle gleamed quite brightly and a surprising amount of detail was visible. There was no doubt in Richard’s mind that only gold could have survived the acid environment it had been lying in all these years. And if the handle was gold, the settings for the jewels in it were gold and that great glassy fist-sized thing on the pommel was bound in place with gold wire. But while the handle was gold, the blade of course was not. There was a thin line of etched blackness where the acid bat waste had eaten its way through the joint between hilt and scabbard, but otherwise the blade seemed in remarkably good condition. Slightly curving, nearly a metre long, it looked like razor-sharp Toledo steel. Or was it Toledo? There was a wave to it which told of repeated overlaying and beating, overlaying and beating to achieve the flexibility of a fine killing weapon. That technique spoke more of the Japanese swordsmiths who had fashioned the great swords for the samurai warriors. But this was old. Older than any Toledo work Richard had ever heard of; older than the samurai themselves.
He shook his head in wonder, holding the thing up to the firelight, watching it glimmer wickedly …
The screams blasted him up on to his feet like an electric shock. He whirled so fast his knees nearly gave. Still holding the knife in one hand, he stooped to snatch a burning brand from the fire. Jerking it aloft, he sped past the end of the boat over the heaving beach down to the water’s edge where the orange light from his brand showed Sally floundering helplessly towards him, her face a picture of naked terror.
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Richard’s eyes probed the darkness behind her, trying to see what was so horrifying that it could incapacitate a woman who wrestled with wild tigers. Man-like, he was just beginning to suppose some rat had scuttled too near her when the shadowed space behind her reared and the better part of fifty teeth caught the torchlight, gleaming wickedly, terrifyingly close behind her. The massive crocodile’s lower jaw swooped like the beak of a vulture, preparing to scoop Sally’s flailing legs into its huge maw. ‘No!’ yelled Richard and hurled what was in his right hand. Had it been the knife he would have thrown that, but it was the torch. The flaming length of palm tree spun through the air and exploded on to the monster’s tongue, bouncing back into its throat. Richard’s foot struck painfully against one of the cannonballs he had warned Sally about and he stumbled. But he did not fall. Instead he rushed past the still-floundering Sally and raised the gleaming knife over his head. Once, twice, three times he struck at the snout of the crocodile. The massive saurian, confused by the burning in its gullet, took longer than it might have done to react, then, on the third stab, it jerked its face away, taking the knife with it, wedged into the broad bones behind its nostrils.
The power of that action caused Richard to stumble and he found himself kneeling with another cannonball between his knees. Wildly, he tore it out of the sand and raised it high as he pulled himself, shaking, to his feet. Behind him he was fleetingly aware of Sally pulling herself to her feet and stumbling away while the crocodile also began to turn. But then Sally gave a surprised and agonised scream which jerked the crocodile’s long head back again.
There was no forethought, no planning and no judgement at all in what Richard did then. Had Sally not screamed, had the beast not turned, things would have been different. But what happened was that the crocodile’s head came lashing back so that the side of its jaw hit Richard’s legs and he, with all the power at his command, brought the cannonball down exactly in the centre of its skull, just behind its eyes. The impact slammed the crocodile’s head down into the water with such force that the sword jerked loose in its nose two metres away from Richard. The metal of the ball actually seemed to settle into the shattered skull until it was as deeply embedded as it had been in the sand. The whole body gave the most tremendous sideways lurch, throwing Richard backwards. Wildly, his face suddenly among the sharp-spined crabs’ legs, he floundered away from the dying beast. Another cannonball bashed him on the knuckles. He grabbed it and rose, still on his knees, bringing it down on the long face. The loose knife fell free and Richard caught it up, raising it high above his head. But the crocodile was rolling away down the slope into the deeper water. Whether he had killed it or not Richard would never know for certain, but he had managed to drive it away and that was all that mattered.