The Eye of the Tiger

by Wilbur Smith

  “Where have you been?“she demanded, “I’ve been sitting here all evening eating my heart out with curiosity.”

  “You are not going to believe it,” I told her, and I thought she might do me a violence.

  “Harry Fletcher, you’ve got ten seconds to cut out the introductory speeches and give me the goodies - after that I scratch your eyes out.”

  We talked until long after midnight, and by then we had the floor strewn with papers over which we pored on knees and elbows. There was an Admiralty Chart of the St. Mary’s Archipelago, the copies of the drawings of the Dawn Light, the notes I had made of the mate’s description of the wreck, and those I had made in the Reading Room of the British Museum.

  I had out my silver travelling flask and we drank Chivas Regal from the plastic tooth mug as we argued and schemed - trying to guess in what section of the Dawn Light’s hull the five crates had been stowed, guessing also how she had broken up on the reef, what part of her had been washed into the break and what part had fallen to the seaward side.

  I had made sketches of a dozen eventualities, and I had opened a running list of my minimum equipment requirements for an expedition, to which I added, as various items came to mind, or as Sherry made intelligent suggestions.

  I had forgotten that she must be a first rate scuba diver, but I was reminded of this as we talked. I was aware now that she would not be a passenger on this expedition, my feelings towards her were becoming tinged with professional respect, and the mood of exhilaration mixed with camaraderie was building to a crescendo of physical tension.

  Sherry’s pale smooth cheeks were flushed with excitement, and we were shoulder to shoulder as we knelt on the carpeted floor. She turned to say something, she was chuckling and the blue lights in her eyes were teasing and inviting, only inches from mine.

  Suddenly all the golden thrones and legendary diamonds in this world must wait their turn. We both recognized the moment, and we turned to each other with unashamed eagerness. We were in a consuming fever of urgency, and we became lovers without rising from the floor, right on top of the drawings of the Dawn Light - which was probably the happiest thing that had ever happened to that ill-starred vessel.

  When at last I lifted her to the bed and we twined our bodies together beneath the quilt, I knew that all the brief amorous acrobatics that had preceded my meeting with this woman were meaningless. What I had just experienced transcended the flesh and became a thing of the spirit - and if it was not loving, then it was the nearest thing to it that I would ever know.

  My voice was husky and unsteady with wonder as I tried to explain it to her. She lay quietly against my chest, listening to the words I had never spoken to another woman, and she squeezed me when I stopped talking which was clearly a command to continue. I think I was still talking when we both fell asleep.

  from the air, St. Mary’s has the shape of one of those strange fish from the ocean’s abysmal depths, a squat misshapen body with stubby body fins and tailfins in unusual places, and a huge mouth many sizes too big for the rest of it.

  The mouth was Grand Harbour and the town nestled in the hinge of the jaws. The iron roofs flash like signal mirrors from the dark green cloak of vegetation. The aircraft circled the island, treating the passengers to a vista of snowy white beaches and water so clear that each detail of the reefs and deeps were whorled and smeared below the surface like some vast surrealistic painting.

  Sherry pressed her face to the round Perspex window and exclaimed with delight as the Fokker Friendship sank down over the pineapple fields where the women paused in their labours to look up at us. We touched down and taxied to the single tiny airport building on which a billboard announced “St. Mary’s Island - Pearl of the Indian Ocean” and below the sign stood two other pearls of great price.

  I had cabled Chubby and he had brought Angelo with him to welcome us. Angelo rushed to the barrier to embrace me and grab my bag, and I introduced him to Sherry.

  Angelo’s whole manner underwent a profound change. On the island there is one mark-of beauty that is esteemed above all else. A girl might have buck teeth and a squint, but if she possessed a “clear” complexion she would have suitors forming squadrons around her. A clear complexion did not mean that she was free of acne, it was rather a gauge of the colour of the skin - and Sherry must have had one of the clearest complexions ever to land on the island.

  Angelo stared at her in a semi-catatonic state as she shook his hand. Then he roused himself, handed me back my bag and instead took hers from her hand. He then fell in a few paces behind her, like a faithful hound, staring at her solemnly and only breaking into his flashing smile whenever she glanced in his direction. He was her slave from the first moment.

  Chubby trundled forward to meet us with more dignity, as big and timeless as a cliff of dark granite, and his face was contorted in a frown of even greater ferocity than usual as he took my hand in a huge horny fist and muttered something to the effect that it was good to see me back. He stared at Sherry and she quailed a little beneath the ferocity of his gaze, but then something happened that I had never seen before. Chubby lifted his battered old sea cap from his head, exposing the gleaming polished brown dome of his pate in an unheard-of display of gallantry, and he smiled so widely that we could see the pink plastic gums of his artificial teeth. He pushed Angelo aside when Sherry’s bags were brought out of the hold, picked up one in each hand and led her to the pick-up. Angelo followed her devotedly and I struggled along in the rear under the weight of my own luggage. It was fairly obvious that my crew approved of my choice, for once.

  We sat in the kitchen of Chubby’s house and Mrs. Chubby fed us on banana cake and coffee while Chubby and I worked out a business deal. For a hard-bargained fee, he would charter his stump boat with its two spanking new Evinrude motors for an indefinite period. He and Angelo would crew it at the old wages, and there would be a large “billfish bonus” at the end of the charter, if it were successful. I went into no detail as to the object of the expedition, but merely let them know that we would be camping on the outer islands of the group and that Sherry and I would be working underwater.

  By the time we had agreed and slapped hands on the bargain, the traditional island rite of agreement, it was midafternoon and the island fever had already started to reassert its hold on my constitution. Island fever prevents the sufferer from doing today what can -reasonably be put off until the morrow, so we left Chubby and Angelo to begin their preparations while Sherry and I stopped only briefly at Missus Eddy’s for provisions before pushing the pick-up over the ridge and down through the Palms to Turtle Bay.

  “It’s a story book,” murmured Sherry, as she stood under the thatch on the wide veranda of the shack. “It’s make-believe! She shook her head at the sway-holed palm trees and the aching white sands beyond.

  I went to stand behind her, placing my arms around her middle and drawing her to me. She leaned back against me, crossing her own arms over mine and squeezing my hands.

  “Oh, Harry, I didn’t think it would be like this.” There was a change taking place within her, I could sense it clearly. She was like a winter plant, too long denied the sun, but there were reserves in her that I could not fathom and they troubled me. She was not a simple person, nor easily understood. There were barriers, conflicts within her that showed only as dark shadows in the depths of her ocean-blue eyes, shadows like those of killer sharks swimming deep. More than once when she believed herself unobserved I had caught her looking at me in a manner which seemed at once calculating and hostile - as though she hated me.

  That had been before we came to the island, and now it seemed that, like the winter plant, she was blooming in the sun; as though here she could cast aside some restraint of the soul which had curbed her spirit before.

  She kicked off her -shoes, and barefooted turned within my encircling arms to stand upon tiptoe to kiss me. “Thank you, Harry. Thank you for bringing me here.”

  Mrs. Chubby had swept
the floors and aired the linen, placed flowers in the jars and charged the refrigerator. We walked through the shack hand in hand - and though Sherry murmured admiration for the utilitarian decor and solid masculine furnishings, yet I thought I detected that gleam in her eye which a woman gets just before she starts pushing the furniture around and throwing out the lovingly accumulated but humble treasures of a man’s lifetime.

  As she paused to rearrange the bowl of flowers that Mrs. Chubby had placed upon the broad camphor-wood refectory table, I knew we were going to see some changes at Turtle Bay - but strangely the thought did not perturb me. I realized suddenly that I was sick to death of being my own cook and housekeeper.

  We changed into swimsuits in the main bedroom - for I had found in the very few hours since we had become lovers that Sherry had an overdeveloped sense of personal modesty, and I knew it would take time before I could wean her to the standard casual Turtle Bay swimming attire. However, it was some compensation for my temporary overdress to see Sherry North in a bikini.

  It was the first time I had really had an opportunity to look at her openly. The most striking single thing about her was the texture and lustre of her skin. She was tall, and if her shoulders were too wide and her hips a little too narrow, her waist was tiny and her belly was flat with a small delicately chiselled navel. I have always thought that the Turks were right in considering the navel as a highly erotic portion of a woman’s anatomy - Sherry’s would have launched a thousand ships.

  She didn’t like me staring at it. “Oh, Grandma - what big eyes you’ve got,” she said, and wrapped a towel around her waist like a sarong. But she walked barefooted through the sand with an unconscious push and sway of buttock and breast that I watched with uninhibited pleasure.

  We left our towels above the high water mark and ran down over the hard wet sand to the edge of the clear warm sea. She swam with a deceptively slow and easy stroke, that drove her through the water so swiftly that I had to reach out myself and drive hard to catch and hold her.

  Beyond the reef we trod water and she was puffing a little. “Out of training,” she panted.

  While we rested I looked out to sea and at that moment a line of black fins broke the surface together in line abreast, bearing down on us swiftly and I could not restrain my delight.

  “You are an honoured guests” I told her. “This is a special welcome.” The dolphins circled us, like a pack of excited puppies, gambolling and squeaking while they looked Sherry over carefully. I have known them sheer away from most strangers, and it was a rarity for them to allow themselves to be touched on a first meeting and then only after assiduous wooing. However, with Sherry it was love at first sight, almost of the calibre that Chubby and Angelo had demonstrated.

  Within fifteen minutes they were dragging her on the Nantucket sleigh ride while she squealed with glee. The instant she fell off the back of one, there was another prodding her with his snout, competing fiercely for her attention.

  When at last they had exhausted us both and we swam in wearily to the beach, one of -the big bull dolphins followed Sherry into water so shallow it reached to her waist. There he rolled on his back while she scratched his belly with handfuls of coarse white sand and he grinned that fixed idiotic dolphin grin.

  After dark while we sat on the veranda and drank whisky together, we could still hear the old bull whistling and slapping the water with his tail, in an attempt to seduce her into the sea again.

  The next morning I gamely fought off a fresh onslaught of island fever and the temptation to linger in bed, especially as” Sherry awoke beside me with the pink glossy look of a little girl, and her eyes were clear, her breath sweet and her lips languorous.

  We had to check through the equipment we had salvaged from Wave Dancer, and we needed an engine to drive the compressor. Chubby was sent off with a fistful of banknotes and returned with a motor that required much loving attention. As that occupied me for the rest of the day, Sherry was sent off to Missus Eddy’s for camping equipment and provisions. We had set a three-day deadline for our departure and our schedule was tight.

  It was still dark when we took our places in the boat, Chubby and Angelo at the motors in the stern and Sherry and I perched like sparrows on top of the load.

  The dawn was a flaming glory of gold and hot red, promise of another fiery day, as Chubby took us northwards on a course possible only for a small boat and a good skipper. We ran close in on island and reef, sometimes with only eighteen inches of water between our keel and the fierce coral fangs.

  All of us were in a mood of anticipation. I truly do not believe it was the prospect of vast wealth that excited me then - all I really needed in my life was another good boat like Wave Dancer - rather it was the thought of rare and exquisite treasure, and the chance to win it back from the sea. If what we sought had been merely bullion in bars or coins I do not think it would have intrigued me half as much. The sea was the adversary and once more we were pitted against each other.

  The blazing colours of the dawn faded into the hard hot blue of the sky as the sun rose out of the sea, and Sherry North stood up in the bows to strip off her denim jacket and jeans. Under them she wore her bikini and now she folded the clothes away into her canvas duffle bag and produced a tube of sun lotion with which she began to anoint her fine pate body.

  Chubby and Angelo reacted with undisguised horror. They held a hurried and scandalized consulation after which Angelo was sent forward with a sheet of canvas to rig a sun shelter for Sherry. There followed a heated exchange between Angelo and Sherry.

  “You will damage your skin, Miss. Sherry,” Angelo protested, but she drove him in defeat back to the stern.

  There the two of them sat like mourners at a wake, Chubby’s whole face creased into a huge brown scowl and Angelo openly wringing his hands in anxiety. Finally, they could stand it no longer and after another whispered discussion Angelo was elected as emissary once more and he crawled forward over the cargo to enlist my support.

  “You can’t let her do it, Mister Harry,” Angelo pleaded. “She will go dark.” “I think that’s the idea, Angelo,” I told him. However, I did warn Sherry to take care of the sun at noon. Obediently she covered herself when we ran ashore on a sandy beach to eat our midday meal.

  It was the middle of the afternoon when we raised the triple peaks of the Old Men and Sherry exclaimed, “Just as the old mate described them.”

  “We approached the island from the sea side, through the narrow stretch of calm water between the island and the reef. When we passed the entrance to the channel through which I had taken Wave Dancer to escape from the Zinballa crash boat, Chubby and I grinned at each other in fond recollection, then I turned to Sherry and pointed it out to her.

  “I plan to set up our base camp on the island, and we will use the gap to reach the area of the wreck.”

  “It looks a little risky.” She eyed the narrow channel with reserve.

  “It will save us a round journey of nearly twenty miles each day - and it isn’t as bad as it looks. Once I took my big fiftyfoot cruiser through there at full throttle!

  “You must be crazy.” She pushed her dark glasses up on top of her head to look at me.

  “By now you should be a good judge of that.” I grinned at her, and she grinned back.

  “I am an expert already,” she boasted. The sun had darkened the freckles on her nose and cheeks and given her skin a glow. She had one of those rare skins that do not redden and become angry when exposed to sunlight. Instead it was the kind that quickly turned a golden honey brown.

  It was high tide when we rounded the northern tip of the island into a protected cove and Chubby ran the whaleboat on to the sand only twenty yards from the first line of palm trees.

  We off-loaded the cargo, carrying it up amongst the palms well above-the high-water mark and once again covered it with tarpaulins to protect it from the ubiquitous sea salt.

  It was late by the time we had finished. The heat had gon
e out of the sun, and the long shadows of the palms barred the earth as we trudged inland, carrying only our personal gear and a fivegallon container of fresh water. In the back of the most northerly peak, generations of visiting fishermen had scratched out a series of shallow caves in the steep slope.

  I selected a large cave to act as our equipment store, and a smaller one as living quarters for Sherry and me. Chubby and Angelo chose another for themselves, about a hundred yards along the slope and screened from us by a patch of scrub.

  I left Sherry to sweep out our new quarters with a brush improvised from a palm frond, and to lay out our sleeping bags on the inflatable mattress while I took my cast net and went back to the cove.

  It was dark when I returned with a string of a dozen big striped mullet. Angelo had the fire burning and the kettle bubbling. We ate in contented silence, and afterwards Sherry and I lay together in our cave and listened to the big fiddler crabs clicking and scratching amongst the palms.

  “It’s primeval,” Sherry whispered, “as though we are the first man and woman in the world.”

  “Me Tarzan, you Jane,” I agreed, and she chuckled and drew closer to me.

  In the dawn Chubby set off alone in the whaleboat on the long return journey to St. Mary’s. He would return next day with a full load of petrol and fresh water in jerrycans. Sufficient to last us for two weeks or so.

  While we waited for him to return, Angelo and I took on the wearying task of carrying all the equipment and stores up to the caves. I set up the compressor, charged the empty air bottles and checked the diving gear, and Sherry arranged hanging space for our clothes and generally made our quarters comfortable.

  The next day, she and I roamed the island, climbing the peaks and exploring the valleys and beaches between. I had hoped to find water, a spring or well overlooked by the other visitors - but naturally there was none. Those canny old fishermen overlooked nothing.