by Wilbur Smith
Out of the fog loomed the dark ungainly shape of an ancient lobster boat. It was on the drift, setting pots, and two men hung over the side, intent on their labours.
I squawked again and one of the men looked up. I had an impression of pale blue eyes in a weathered and heavily lined ruddy face, cloth cap and an-old briar pipe gripped in broken yellow teeth.
“Good morning,” I croaked.
“Jesus!“said the lobster man around the stern of his pipe.
I sat in the tiny wheelhouse wrapped in a filthy old blanket, and drank steaming unsweetened tea from a chipped enamel mug - shivering so violently that the mug leaped and twitched in my cupped hands.
My whole body was a lovely shade of blue, and returning circulation was excruciating agony in my joints. My two rescuers were taciturn men, with a marvellous sense of other people’s privacy, probably bred into them by a long line of buccaneers and smugglers.
By the time they had set their pots and cleared for the homeward run it was after noon and I had thawed out. My clothes had dried over the stove in the miniature galley and I had a belly full of brown bread and smoked mackerel sandwiches.
We went into Port Talbot, and when I tried to pay them with my rumpled fivers for their help, the older of the two lobster men turned a blue and frosty eye upon me.
“Any time I win a man back from the sea, I’m paid in full, mister.
Keep your money.”
The journey back to London was a nightmare of country buses and night trains. When I stumbled out of Paddington Station at ten o’clock the next morning I understood why a pair of bobbies paused in their majestic pacing to study my face. I must have looked like an escaped convict.
The cabby ran a world-weary eye over my two days” growth of dark stiff beard, the swollen lip and the bruised eye. “Did her husband come home early, mate?” he asked, and I groaned weakly. , Sherry North opened the door to her uncle’s apartment and stared at me with huge startled blue eyes.
“Oh my God, Harry! What on earth happened to you? You look terrible.” “Thanks,” I said. “That really cheers me up.”
She caught my arm and drew me into the apartment. “I’ve been going out of my mind. Two days. I’ve even called the police, the hospitals - everywhere I could think of.”
The uncle was hovering in the background and his presence set my nerves on edge. I refused the offer of a bath and clean clothes - and instead I took Sherry back with me to the Windsor Arms.
I left the door to the bathroom open while I shaved and bathed so that we could talk, and although she kept out of direct line of sight while I was in the tub, I thought it was developing a useful sense of intimacy between us.
I told her in detail of my abduction by Manny Resnick’s trained gorillas, and of my escape - making no attempt to play down my own heroic role - and she listened in a silence that I could only believe was fascinated admiration.
I emerged from the bath with a towel wound round my waist and sat on the bed to finish the tale while Sherry doctored my cuts and abrasions.
“You’ll have to go. to the police now, Harry,” she said at last.
“They tried to murder you.”
“Sherry, my darling girl, please don’t keep talking about the police. You make me nervous.”
“But, Harry-“
“Forget about the police, and order some food for us. I haven’t eaten since I can remember.”
The hotel kitchen sent up a fine grilling of bacon and tomatoes, fried eggs, toast and tea. While I ate, I tried to relate the recent rapid turn of events to our previous knowledge, and alter our plans to fit in.
“By the way, you were on the list of expendables. They didn’t intend merely holding a barbecue with your fingers. Manny Resnick was convinced that his boys had killed you-2 and a queasy expression passed over her lovely face.
“They were apparently getting rid of anyone who knew anything at all about the Dawn Light.”
I took another mouthful of egg and bacon and chewed in silence.
“At least we have a timetable now. Manny’s charter which is incidentally called Mandrake - looks very fast and powerful, but it’s still going to take him three or four weeks to get out to the islands. It gives us time.”
She poured tea for me, milk last the way I like it. “Thanks, Sherry, you are an angel of mercy.” She stuck out her tongue at me, and I went on. “Whatever it is we are looking for, it just has to be something extraordinary. That motor yacht Manny has hired himself looks like the Royal Yacht. He must be laying out close to a hundred thousand pounds on this little lark. God, I wish we knew what those five cases contain. I tried to sound Manny out - but he laughed at me. Told me I knew or I wouldn’t be taking so much trouble.
“Oh, Harry.” Sherry’s face lit up. “You’ve given us the bad news - now stand by for the good.”
“I could stand a little.”
“You know Jimmy’s note on the letter - B. Mus?” I nodded.
“Bachelor of Music?”
“No, idiot - British Museum.”
“I’m afraid you just lost me.”
“I was discussing it with Uncle Dan. He recognized it immediately. It’s reference to a work in the library of the British Museum. He holds a reader’s card. He’s researching a book, and works there often.”
“Could we get in there?”
“We’ll give it a college try.”
I waited almost two hours beneath the vast golden and blue dome of the Reading Room at the British Museum, and the craving for a cheroot was like a vice around my chest.
I did not know what to expect - I had simply filled in the withdrawals form with Jimmy North’s reference number - so when at last the attendant laid a thick volume before me, I seized it eagerly.
It was a Secker and Warburg edition, first published in 1963. The author was a Doctor P.A. Ready and the title was printed in gold on the spine: LEGENDARY AND LOST TREASURES OF THE WORLD.
I lingered over the closed book, teasing myself a little, and I wondered what chain of coincidence and luck had allowed Jimmy North to follow this paperchase of ancient clues. Had he read this book first in his burning obsession with wrecks and sea treasure and had he then stumbled on the batch of old letters? I would never know.
There were forty-nine chapters, each listing a separate item. I read carefully down the list.
There were Aztec treasures of gold, the plate and bullion of Panama, buccaneer hoards, a lost goldmine in the Rockies of North America, a valley of diamonds in South Africa, treasure ships of the Armada, the Lutim bullion ship from which the famous Lutim Bell at Lloyd’s had been recovered, Alexandra the Great’s chariot of gold, more treasure ships - both ancient and modern - from the Second World War to the sack of Troy, treasures of Mussolini, Prester John, Darius, Roman generals, privateers and pirates of Barbary and Coromandel. It was a vast profusion of fact and fancy, history and conjecture. The treasures of lost cities and forgotten civilizations, from Atlantis to the fabulous golden city of the Kalahari Desert - there was so much of it, and I did not know where to look.
With a sigh I turned to the first page, ducking the introduction and preface. I began to read.
By five o’clock I had skimmed through sixteen chapters which could not possibly relate to the Dawn Light and had read five others in depth and by this time I understood how Jimmy North could have been bitten by the romance and excitement of the treasure hunter. It was making me itchy also - these stories of great riches, abandoned, waiting merely to be gathered up by someone with the luck and fortitude to ferret them out.
I glanced at the new Japanese watch with which I’d replaced my Omega, and hurried out of the massive stone portals of the museum and crossed Great Russell Street to my rendezvous with Sherry. She was waiting in the crowded saloon bar of the Running Stag.
“Sorry, , I said, “I forgot the time.”
“Come on.” She grabbed my arm. “I’m dying of thirst and curiosity.”
I gave her a pint of bi
tter for her thirst, but could only inflame her curiosity with the title of the book. She wanted to send me back to the library, before I had finished my supper of ham and turkey from the carvery behind the bar, but I held out and managed to smoke half a cheroot before she drove me out into the cold.
I gave her the key to my room at the Windsor Arms, placed her in a cab and told her to wait for me there. Then I hurried back to the Reading Room.
The next chapter of the book was entitled “THE GREAT MOGUL AND THE TIGER THRONE OF INDIA.”
It began with a brief historical introduction describing how Babur, descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan, the two infamous scourges of the ancient world, crossed the mountains into northern India and established the Mogul Empire. I recognized immediately that this fell within the area of my interest, the Dawn Light had been outward bound from that ancient continent.
The history covered the period of Babur’s illustrious successors, Muslim rulers who rose to great power and influence, who built mighty cities and left behind such monuments to man’s sense of beauty as the Taj Mahal. Finally it described the decline of the dynasty, and its destruction in the first year of the Indian mutiny when the avenging British forces stormed and sacked the ancient citadel and fortress of Delhi - shooting the Mogul princes out of hand and throwing the old emperor Bahadur Shah into captivity.
Then abruptly the author switched his attention from the vast sweep of history.
In 1665 Jean Baptiste Tavernier, a French traveller and jeweller, visited the court of the Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb. Five years later he published in Paris his celebrated Travek in the Orient. He seems to have won special favour from the Muslim Emperor, for he was allowed to enter the fabled treasure chambers of the citadel and to catalogue various items of special interest. Amongst these was a diamond which he named the
“Great Mogul. “ravernier weighed this stone and listed its bulk at 280 carats. He described this paragon as possessing extraordinary fire and a colour as clear and white “as the great North Star of the heavens’.
Tavernier’s host informed him that the stone had been recovered from the famed Golconda Mines in about 1650-and that the rough stone had been a monstrous 787 carats.
The cut of the stone was a distinctive rounded rose, but was not symmetrical - being proud on the one side. The stone has been unrecorded since that time and many believe that Tavernier actually saw the Koh-moor or the Orloff. However, it is highly improbable that such a trained observer and craftsman as Tavernier could have erred so widely in his weights and descriptions. The Koh-i-noor before it was recut in London weighed a mere 191 carats, and was certainly not a rose cut. The Orloff, although rose cut, was and is a symmetrical gem stone and weighs 199 carats. The descriptions simply cannot be mated with that of Tavernier, and all the evidence points to the existence of a huge white diamond that has dropped out of the known world.
In 1739 when Nadir Shah of Persia entered India and captured Delhi, he made no attempt to hold his conquest, but contented himself with vast booty, which included the Koh-i-noor diamond and the peacock throne of Shah Jehan. It seems probable that the Great Mogul diamond was overlooked by the rapacious Persian and that after his withdrawal, Mohammed Shah the incumbent Mogul Emperor, deprived of his traditional throne, ordered the construction of a substitute. However, the existence of this new treasure was veiled in secrecy and although there are references to its existence in the native accounts, only one European reference can be cited.
The journal of the English Ambassador to the Court of Delhi during the year of 1747, Sir Thomas Jenning, describes an audience granted by the Mogul Emperor at which he was “clad in precious silks and bedecked with flowers and jewels, seated upon a great throne of gold. The shape of the throne was as of a fierce tiger, with gaping jaws and a single glittering cyclopean eye. The body of the tiger was amazingly worked with all manner of precious stones. His majesty was gracious enough to allow me to approach the throne closely and to examine the eye of the tiger which he assured me was a great diamond descended from the reign of his ancestor Aurangzeb’.
Was this Tavernier’s “Great Mogul” now incorporated into the “Tiger Throne of India’? If it was, then credence is given to a strange set of circumstances which must end our study of this lost treasure.
In 1857 on the 16th September, desperate street fighting filled the streets of Delhi with heaps of dead and wounded, and the outcome of the struggle hung in the balance as the British forces and loyal native troops fought to clear the city of the mutinous sepoys and seize the ancient fortress that dominated the city.
While the fighting raged within, a force of loyal native troops from 101st regiment under two European officers was ordered to cross the river and encircle the walls to seize the road to the north. This was in order to prevent members of the Mogul royal family or rebel leaders from escaping the doomed city.
The two European officers were Captain Matthew Long and Colonel Sir Roger Goodchildthe name leapt out of the page at me not only because someone had underlined it in pencil. In the margin, also in pencil, was one of Jimmy North’s characteristic exclamation marks. Master James’s disrespect for books included those belonging to such a venerable institution as the British Museum. I found I was shaking again, and my cheeks felt hot with excitement. This was the last fragment missing from the puzzle. It was all here now and my eyes raced on across the page.
No one will ever know what happened on that night on a lonely road through the Indian jungle - but six months later, Captain Long and the Indian Subahdar, Ram Panat, gave evidence at the court martial of Colonel Goodchild.
They described how they had intercepted a party of Indian nobles fleeing the burning city. The party included three Muslim priests and two princes of the royal blood. In the presence of Captain Long one of the princes attempted to buy their freedom by offering to lead the British officers to a great treasure, a golden throne shaped like a tiger and with a single diamond eye.
The officers agreed, and the princes led them into the forest to a jungle mosque. In the courtyard of the mosque were six bullock carts. The drivers had deserted, and when the British officers dismounted and examined the contents of these vehicles they proved indeed to contain a golden throne statue of a tiger. The throne had been broken down into four separate parts to facilitate transportation - hindquarters, trunk, forequarters and head. in the light of the lanterns these fragments nestled in beds of straw, blazing with gold and encrusted with precious and semi-precious stones.
Colonel Roger Goodchild then ordered that the princes and priests should be executed out of hand. They were lined up against the outer wall of the mosque and despatched with a volley of musketry. The Colonel himself walked amongst the fallen noblemen administering the coup-degrace with his service revolver. The corpses were afterwards thrown into a well outside the walls of the mosque.
The two officers now separated, Captain Long with most of the native troops returning to the patrol of the city walls, while the Colonel, Subahdar Ram Panat and fifteen sepoys rode off with the bullock carts.
The Indian Subahdar’s evidence at the court martial described how they had taken the precious cargo westwards passing through the British lines by the Colonel’s authority. They camped three days at a small native village. Here the local carpenter. and his two sons laboured under the Colonel’s direction to manufacture four sturdy wooden crates to hold the four parts of the throne. The Colonel in the meantime set about removing from the statue the stones and jewels that were set into the metal. The position of each was carefully noted on a diagram prepared by Goodchild and the stones were numbered and packed into an iron chest of the type used by army paymasters for the safekeeping of coin and specie in the field.
Once the throne and the stones had been packed into the four crates and iron chest, they were loaded once more on to the bullock carts and the journey towards the railhead at Allahabad was continued.
The luckless carpenter and his sons were obliged to join the con
voy. The Subabdar recalled that when the road entered an area of dense forest, the Colonel dismounted and led -the three craftsmen amongst the trees. Six pistol shots rang out and the Colonel returned alone.
I broke off my reading for a few moments to reflect on the character of the gallant Colonel. I should have liked to introduce him to Manny Resnick, they would have had much in common. I grinned at the thought and read on.
The convoy reached Allahabad on the sixth day and the Colonel claimed military priority to place his five crates upon a troop train returning to Bombay. Having done this he and his small command rejoined the regiment at Delhi.
Six months later, Captain Long supported by the Indian Perty Officer, Ram Panat, brought charges against the commanding officer. We can believe that thieves had fallen out, Colonel Goodchild had perhaps decided that one share was better than three. Be that as it may, nothing has since given a clue to the whereabouts of the treasure.
The trial conducted in Bombay was a cause c&lyre and was widely reported in India and at home. However, the weakness of the prosecution’s case was that there was no booty to show, and dead men tell no tales.
The Colonel was found not guilty. However, the pressure of the scandal left him no choice but to resign his commission and return to London. If he managed somehow to take with him the Great Mogul diamond and the golden tiger throne, his subsequent career gave no evidence of his possessing great wealth. In partnership with a notorious lady of the town he opened a gaming house in the Bayswater Road which soon acquired an unsavoury reputation. Colonel Sir Roger Goodchild died in 187 1, probably from tertiary syphilis contracted during his remarkable career in India. His death revived stories of the fabulous throne, but these soon subsided for lack of hard facts and the secret passed on with that sporting gentleman.
Perhaps we should have headed this chapter - “The Treasure That Never Was’.
“Not on, cock,” I thought happily. “It was - and is.” And I began once more at the beginning of the story, but this time I made careful notes for Sherry’s benefit.
She was waiting for me when I returned, sitting wakefully in the armchair by the window, and she flew at me when I entered.