Cocos Gold

by Ralph Hammond Innes

  I just made it and clung, panting, to the davit. I felt a nightmare terror at being back on that ship. But I could hear Kean’s groans and I went cautiously for’ard. As I climbed over the tangle of the bridge I caught a glimpse of Spike Edwards, his close-lipped, bullethead lying in a pool of his own blood. And on the portside I found Kean, dragging himself painfully along the deck.

  “Are you badly hurt?” I asked as I reached him.

  He turned and his glazed eyes stared at me without recognition. He gave a little grunt of a cough and blood dripped from his mouth on to the deck. “It’s you Johnny, , is it?” he said slowly. “Help me to the wardroom.”

  I put his arm over my shoulder and somehow I got him down the companionway. I took the shiny leather seats from one of the bunks and got him into it, covering him with blankets, for he was beginning to shiver. Then I bathed his face and broke open a cupboard he indicated and gave him a stiff drink. I hesitated then, uncertain what to do. His eyes were closed and his face was thin and white. “I’ll get ashore now and find a doctor,” I said.

  “No good.” His lips barely moved. Then he looked up at me. “Stay here, Johnny,” he said. “A doctor couldn’t do anything for me. I’d be gone by the time you got back. Sit here on the bunk beside me. There are things I have to tell you.” ■

  I didn’t know what to do. “Can’t I try and stop the bleeding?” I asked, for already blood was seeping through the blankets with which I had covered him.

  “No, there’s nothing you can do. And it’s better this way. I’m not in much pain.” His voice was very weak and he kept swallowing uncomfortably. “Sit down,” he said again. And when I had sat down beside him, his fingers closed on my arm.

  “Lean closer, Johnny,” he whispered. “You’re the only one who can help me now. You’ve got to help. Go to Cocos Island and get Irwin’s log. He wrote a log of everything that happened. He told me about it as he lay bleeding to death on the beach. He put it in the cave with the treasure. You’ll not find the one without the other. That’s why I had to go on this trip. I didn’t care about the treasure. It was the log I wanted.” He started to cough then. He had become very excited. He began coughing blood, and then he leaned back and closed his eyes.

  I started to get up. I wanted to get help. But his fingers tightened on my arm. “Don’t go, Johnny. It’s no use.” For a while he lay quite still. Then at last he said, “The men on this ship tonight—beware of them. Spike Edwards is dead, I fancy. But the others are still alive—Mike O’Flaherty, Bugs Harrison, Taffy Davies, and Shorty Mason. And The Rigger, Nat Stavanner. They’re all that’s left alive of the original crew of this boat.” He paused, breathing heavily. Then he went on: “It was after Singapore. Robert Farrer was skipper and I was his Number One. Irwin was Diesel mechanic, Davies and Garrod stokers, Stavanner sparks, O’Flaherty coxs’n, the others A.B.’s. We took ‘ML 615’ to the Fiji Islands and from there we were sent to take a look at Pitcairn Island.” His eyes were closed now and his breathing very faint. “We were able to refuel at Pitcairn Island. That was what decided our fate. We had five fuel tanks—enough for a thousand miles. We filled them all and turned for base. And that night Robert Farrer was shot as he climbed his own bridge. It was The Rigger who killed him. He was the leader of the mutiny. But it was Garrod who had the map. He’d got it from an old sailor whose life he’d saved at Singapore. A map of Cocos Island and the treasure that Captain Thompson buried there. Eleven boatloads—all the wealth of Lima. That was the bug that turned their brains. It had been boiling up all those months in the baking tropical sun.” He was silent for a moment. Then he said: “I should have refused to navigate for them. But I thought I’d get a chance—” His fingers tightened on my arm. “The sleepless nights I’ve spent wishing I’d died with Farrer and the other three men they killed—”

  After a moment his tired voice rallied again. “All the time we were searching in Chatham Bay I smuggled food and stores ashore. Then, when they moved to Wafer Bay, I got my chance. They were all below, drinking. I headed the ML for the shore and dived over the side. I struggled through the jungle to Chatham Bay and set up camp there. About two weeks later the ML’s boat came round the headland and drifted in on the swell. It was Irwin. He was dying from a bullet wound. They’d killed Garrod in drunken anger for bringing them on a fool’s errand. Then they’d forced Irwin, who was no party to the mutiny, to make an electrical gadget for detecting minerals below the surface. And when he tried to escape they shot him too. But the joke of it was he found the treasure.” Kean’s bloodless lips were drawn hard back against his teeth as he laughed without making a sound. “Irwin was by himself when he found the cave. And he didn’t tell them he’d found it. He knew they’d kill him if he did. He set down in the form of a log all that had happened to us since we left Pitcairn Island. Next day he placed the log in the cave. And that night he started to scratch a map showing the position of the cave on the base plate of the starboard engine. Two nights later he tried to leave the ship in the only boat left. But The Rigger saw him and shot him.”

  Kean’s voice had become so weak that I could hardly hear him. He stopped, summoning his strength. “I buried him close by Benito’s Hat. After that I was alone again. White ants, jungle, and rain. Three hundred and eighty-six days.” His heavy waxen lids flicked open and he looked at me. The expression of his eyes was terrifying. He was living it all again. “You’ve no idea what it’s like to be alone, and still to go in fear of your life. All that time I thought they were still somewhere on the island. Then, after I was picked up and brought back to England under arrest and tried, they didn’t believe me at the court-martial. I kept quiet about the map. I didn’t know whether Irwin was lying. I didn’t know what to think. But he wasn’t lying. I had a little money put by and when the ML was offered for sale, I bought her. The map’s there, just as he said. Irwin was clever. No one would think of wiping the grease from a base plate. I dreamed I’d go out there and clear myself and become rich.” His voice suddenly broke. “But it was only a dream. Then Spike Edwards came. The rest you know.” His voice died to a whisper. “I think I’d always known they’d find me. It isn’t because I’m afraid of them that I agreed to go on this trip. No, it isn’t that. Don’t you see, Johnny, it was my one chance to get Irwin’s log.” He stared up at me for a moment. “No,” he sighed, “you don’t believe me, do you? You’re like the officers at that court-martial. You don’t believe me.” He sat up suddenly, coughing blood. “But I’ll make you believe me. Help me down to the engine room. I’ll show you the map.” His teeth were biting through his lips with pain and his hand clawed at my arm. “No, it’s no use.” He fell back, panting. “Johnny,” he gasped. “That map. Take a rubbing of it. Keep it. If ever you go to Cocos Island, remember: send Irwin’s log to the Admiralty. Will you promise?”

  I nodded.

  He closed his eyes wearily. “There’s paper and a pencil in the bookcase there. Go down to the engine room and take that rubbing now. I want to be sure you have it. I want to know that some day people will know I told the truth. I want to die knowing that.”

  I had got to my feet. But then I hesitated. I was sure he ought to have a doctor. “Quick,” he cried. “Be quick. I must know.” Then he fell back, breathing noisily, the sweat glistening on his forehead. “You’ll find it on the base plate of the starboard Diesel, after end. Wipe the grease off with petrol and then take a rubbing. Go on. Hurry, boy,” he added harshly. “If you won’t go, I’ll go myself.” And he half dragged himself from the bunk.

  “No,” I said, for I could see it would kill him. “I’ll go.” I found paper and pencil and dived up the companionway. The ship was very silent. I carefully avoided glancing at the body of Spike Edwards. Yet as I went for’ard the ship seemed peopled with the ghosts of those men who had drunk and killed and found nothing on Cocos Island.

  I climbed into the wheelhouse and then down the iron-grated ladder into the engine room. The engines were dark shadows in the glare of
the naked light bulbs. The crash of the seas outside the thin hull was a mocking, hollow sound. I thought of Irwin, mad with terror and the desire to keep his secret from them, scratching away down here and dying in the boat with a bullet in his guts, calling to them that he’d found it. I started at every shadow in the empty place. But at last I reached the after end of the starboard motor and with a rag soaked in gasoline I began cleaning off the accumulated grease of six years from that base plate.

  And then I lost my sense of fear in the excitement of finding scratches on the exposed steel. When I had cleared it all, there was the outline of what looked like a bay. North was indicated and a cross. And below the map was some spidery printing, all scratched with a small file. I cleaned it thoroughly with gasoline. Then I laid the paper over it and ran the pencil back and forth across the back. Gradually the outline of the map and the directions showed white through the lead shading. At last it was done and under the naked lights I was looking at the rubbing just as I have had it reproduced here.

  With the paper in my hand, I ran up on deck and aft to the wardroom. But I was too late. Kean lay sprawled at the foot of the companion where he’d crawled in his impatience to learn the result of my errand. His dark eyes were open and staring, and the bottle of whisky lay spilled and reeking at his side. Somehow I got him on to his bunk and covered him with a blanket.

  And at that moment I heard footsteps on the deck. My feet seemed suddenly incapable of movement. I thought the others had returned. Then a voice said, “Hey, George, there’s a fellow dead over here.”

  And another voice answered, “I’m not surprised. Know what’s in these cases? French brandy.”

  “Smuggling, eh?”

  “Smuggling—and in a British naval ship. Could be mutiny, too. Look at that body. He’s a sailor. And this cap. That’s a naval officer’s cap.”

  I went up the companionway then and almost fell into the arms of the coastguards. I was blubbering with fear, pouring out my story in an incoherent babble that sent them to the Aldis lamp, flickering a message to someone on the shore.

  What followed afterwards I remember as though it happened to me in a dream. They took me ashore and we trudged along the beach to the coast guard cottages by the lighthouse. The beam swung back and forth endlessly across the shingle waste and behind me the spotlight of the beached ML showed the dark ridge of the shore, and all the time I was answering their questions and telling them all that had happened to me.

  They gave me milk that seemed on fire with the rum they had put in it. And then I was asleep. But at the first gray light of day, they had me down in a little white-painted office where two men sat at a desk, one of them with a notebook. “This is the boy I was telling you about,” one of the coastguards said.

  I was given a chair and the smaller of the two men said, “You’re John Keverne?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m a superintendent at Scotland Yard.” He gave me a kindly smile. “You’ve heard of us perhaps.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve come down from London to investigate this business. Now suppose you tell us exactly what happened?”

  So I went over it all again, from the time I went down to stay with Kean on “The Bridge of Orchy” to the moment when I tried to dive overboard, was caught, and Kean ran the vessel ashore. But when I came to the last part, I hesitated. I told them about what had happened on Cocos Island. And left it at that.

  When I had finished- the superintendent looked at me closely. My hand touched the pocket of my jacket and the paper of the rubbing I had taken rustled. But all he said was, “You’ve had a lucky escape, young fellow.”

  A coastguard came in with a message. “I’ve just got the identity of ‘ML 1262.’ ” .

  “Well?” the superintendent asked. ‘

  “It is on the strength of information from the British naval commander, in Germany. Hydrographic boat. It’s on its way now to Cherbourg to pick up a consignment of liquor for the fleet.”

  The superintendent nodded as though it was what he had expected. “Which means that these people had access to information about the movements of fleet ships to and from Germany. That should help.” He got to his feet. “Keverne. You’ll stay here with the coastguards tonight. Tomorrow we’ll take you down to Kean’s houseboat. You mentioned some papers.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And Nick has got to be fed.”

  “Nick? Who’s Nick?”

  “Mr. Kean’s cat,” I answered.

  “Oh.” He smiled. Then in a kindly voice, “Anything you need?”

  “I’d like some food, sir,” I said. “It’s a long time since I last had anything.”

  “Good heavens! Haven’t they given you anything to eat?”

  “I slept,” I answered, for I didn’t want him to think the coastguards hadn’t been kind to me.

  “Get him some food,” he said to one of them. “I’ll send a man down tonight. In the meantime, we’ll get in touch with your guardian.” He clapped his hand on my shoulder. “You’re a plucky kid.”

  And because his voice was kind I felt suddenly guilty at not having told him about the map. But I didn’t see that it could have any bearing on his job of catching the smugglers.

  Though I was tired, I was too excited to sleep. After a huge breakfast I persuaded one of the coastguards to take me down to the ML. The wind was whistling across the miles of flat shingle and the sky was gray with cloud. But when we reached the scene of the previous night’s activities, I felt suddenly disappointed. The ML was still there, with her bows crushed into the steep shingle beach. Men were unloading the packing cases on to lorries. The bodies of Spike Edwards and Kean had been removed. Everything looked very ordinary. I suddenly felt exhausted. And when we got back to the coast guard station, I sat in a chair in front of a fire and went to sleep.

  That night a burly police officer arrived in a car, bumping and slithering across the shingle. The next morning we left together for Brighton in a gale that was driving the waves in a smother of white against the shingle of the beach. At Hastings he stopped at a news agent’s and came out with a bundle of papers under his arm. “You’re quite a little hero,” he said, and tossed them into my lap. “Looks like one of the coastguards talked.”

  The first paper that I opened was the Morning Record and there on the front page was a picture of myself—I recognized it as having been taken out of the school photograph of last term’s rugger team—and in big letters beside it: boy hero beats navy hoax smugglers. And underneath was the whole story, just as I’d told it to the superintendent.

  At Brighton we drove straight to Tower Quay. The police officer parked the car close by “The Bridge of Orchy” and we went on board. I unlocked the door to the companion. As I did so I saw a man come out of the shelter of one of the sheds. “Newspaperman, I shouldn’t wonder,” the officer grunted. “You want to mind what you say to them, young fellow. It’s a pretty dangerous gang you’ve got yourself mixed up with.” But I couldn’t help feeling a thrill of excitement at having a newspaperman hanging around waiting to interview me. My mood, however, was quickly dissipated by the atmosphere of desolation in the ship.

  There was no sign of Nick as we went into the saloon. Everything was just as I’d left it. The milk and food I’d left out seemed untouched. It was strange to be in that place and know that its owner would never return. The officer looked about him and then began to examine the contents of the drawers. There was a movement in the corner and Nick crept out from underneath the foot of the further bunk. He slunk quietly along the side of the saloon, avoiding the wicker chair that stood empty before the dead stove. He seemed half wild. I caught the glint of his green eyes in the shadows. Then he came over to me and stood looking at me, tail down and motionless. He gave one mew, a forlorn sound that might have been a question, then he slunk past me and up the companionway on to the deck.

  “Where are the papers you spoke of?” the police officer asked.

  I got them out o
f the drawer and handed them to him. Then I went up on deck to find Nick. He was sitting by one of the ventilators, gazing out across the estuary to the salt flats. I picked him up. He made no protest and I stroked him, trying to comfort him. I was convinced he knew his master was dead.

  Somebody spoke my name. I turned with a start, the cat in my arms. There was a flash. The cat squirmed. Two men were standing on the deck. One had a camera.“That Kean’s cat?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  He grinned delightedly. “What a picture!”

  The other man grunted agreement and came forward. “I represent several London papers,” he said. “Mind if I ask you a few questions? You’re the big story at the moment, you know. Every boy in the country will be envying you your experience. And Cocos Island—that’s a real treasure island, you know. Not just a storybook island. There’ve been dozens of expeditions there. You’re the luckiest kid alive. Did they really plan a trip to Cocos Island? Or did you make it up?” he added suspiciously.

  “0f course I didn’t make it up,” I replied angrily.

  “What, all that about the men mutinying and Kean navigating the ML to the island?”

  “It’s true,” I said.

  “Then if it’s true, why were they going back? Don’t tell me they’d got hold of another map?”

  “They knew where it was,” I answered.

  “How?”

  But I turned toward the other man. I was getting muddled by the questions. I couldn’t remember how much they knew already. “Listen!” he said. “Kean was a mutineer, wasn’t he? He was a party to the killing of Lieutenant Farrer. He was a mutineer and a smuggler.”

  “He was not,” I answered hotly, thinking of Kean’s white face against the bloodstained pillow of the bunk.

  The man laughed. “He fooled you—that’s it, I suppose. But he didn’t fool the court-martial. He was dismissed from the service, wasn’t he? And now he planned to take them back to Cocos Island.”