The Eye of the Tiger

by Wilbur Smith

  I floated down along the massive barrel examining it closely and almost immediately found another cannon in the deeper gloom nearer the cliff. However, three-quarters of this weapon had been incorporated into the cliff, built into it by the living coral polyps.

  I swam in closer, ducking under the first barrel and went into the jumble of debris and fallen coral blocks. I was within two feet of this amorphous mass when with a shock which constricted my breathing and flushed warmly through my blood I recognized what I was looking at.

  Quickly and excitedly I finned over the mound of debris, finding where it ended and. the unbroken coral began, forcing my way up through the sea bamboo to estimate its size, and pausing to examine any opening or irregularity in it.

  The total mass of debris was the size of a couple of railway Pullman coaches, but it was only when I pushed aside a larger floating clump of weed and peered into the squared opening of a gun port, from which the muzzle of a cannon still protruded and which had not been completely altered in shape by the encroaching coral, that I was certain that what we had discovered was the entire forward section of the frigate Daurn Light, broken off just behind the main mast.

  I looked around wildly for Sherry and saw her finned feet protruding from another portion of the wreckage. I pulled her out, removed her mouthpiece and kissed her lustily before replacing it. She was laughing with excitement and when I signalled her that we were ascending, she shook her head vehemently and shot away from me to continue her explorations. It was fully fifteen minutes later that I was able to drag her away and take her up to the whaleboat.

  We both began talking at once the moment we had the rubber mouthpieces out of the way. My voice is louder than hers, but she is more persistent. It took me some minutes to assert my rights as expedition leader and I could-begin to describe it to Chubby.

  “It’s the Dawn Light sure enough. The weight of her armament and cargo must have pulled her down the instant she was clear of the reef. She went down like a stone, and she is lying against the foot of the cliff Some of her cannons have fallen out of the hull, and they’re lying jumbled around it-“

  “We didn’t recognize it at first,” Sherry chimed in again, just when I had her quiet&led down. “It’s like a rubbish dump. just an enormous heap.”

  “From what I could judge she must have broken her back abaft the main mast, but she’s been smashed up badly for most of her length. The cannon must have torn up her gundeck and it’s only the two ports nearest the bows that are intact, -” “How does she lier Chubby demanded, coming immediately to the pith of the matter.

  “She’s bottom up,” I admitted. “She must have rolled as she went down.”

  “That makes it a real problem, unless you can get in at a gun port or under the waist,” Chubby growled.

  “I had a good look,” I told him, “but I couldn’t find a point at which we could penetrate the hull. Even the gunports are solid with growth.”

  Chubby shook his head mournfully. “Man, looks like this place is badly hexed,” and immediately all three of us made the cross-fingered sign against it.

  Angelo told him primly, “You talking up a storm. Shouldn’t say that, hear?” but Chubby shook his head again, and his face collapsed into pessimistic folds.

  I slapped him on his back and asked him, “Is it true that you pass iced water - even in hot weather? and my attempt at humour made him look as cheerfal as an unemployed undertaker.

  leave Chubby alone,” Sherry came to his rescue. Let’s go down again and try and find a break in the hull.” “We’ll take half an hour’s rest,” I said, “a smoke and a mug of coffee - then we’ll go take another look.”

  We stayed down so long on the second dive that Chubby had to sound the triple recall signal - and when we surfaced the pool was boiling. The cyclone had left a legacy of high surf, and on the rising tide it was coming in heavily across the reef and pounding in through the gap, higher in the channel than we had ever known it.

  We clung to the thwarts in silence as Chubby took us home on a wild ride, and it was only when we entered the quieter waters of the lagoon that we could continue the discussion.

  “She’s as tight as the Chatwood lock on the national safe deposit,” I told them. “The one gun port is blocked by-the cannon, and I got into the other about four feet before I ran into part of the bulkhead which must have collapsed. It’s the den of a big old Moray eel that looks like a python - he’s got teeth on him like a bulldog and he and I aren’t friends.”

  “What about the waist?” Chubby demanded.

  “No,” I said, “she’s settled down heavily, and the coral has closed her up.”

  Chubby put on an expression which meant that he had told us so. I could have beaten him over the head with a spanner, he was so smug - but I ignored him and showed them the piece of woodwork that I had prised off the hull with a crowbar.

  “The coral has closed everything up solid. It’s like those old forests that have been petrified into stone. The Dawn light is a ship of stone, armour-plated with coral. There is only one way we will get into her - and that is to pop her open.

  Chubby nodded, “That’s the way to do it,” and Sherry wanted to know: “But if you use explosive, won’t it just blow everything to bits?”

  “We won’t use an atomic bomb,” I told her. We’ll start with half a stick in the forward gunport. just enough to kick out a chunk of that coral plating,” and I turned back to Chubby. “We need that gelignite right away, every hour is precious now, Chubby. We’ve got a good moon. Can you take us back to St. Mary’s tonight?” and Chubby did not bother to answer such a superfluous question. It was an indirect slur on his seamanship.

  There was a homed moon, with a pale halo around it. The atmosphere was still full of dust from the big winds. The stars also were misty and very far away, but the cyclone had blown great masses of oceanic plankton into the channel so that the sea was a glowing phosphorescent mass wherever it was disturbed.

  Our wake glowed green and long, spread behind us like a peacock’s tail, and the movement of fish beneath the surface shone like meteors. Sherry dipped her hand over the side and brought it out burning with a weird and liquid flame, and she cooed with wonder.

  Later when she was sleepy she lay against my chest under the tarpaulin I had spread to keep off the damp and we listened to the booming of the giant manta rays out in the open water as they leaped high and fell to smack the surface of the sea with their flat bellies and tons of dead weight.

  It was long after midnight when we raised the lights of St. -Mary’s like a diamond necklace around the throat of the island.

  The streets were utterly deserted as we left the whaleboat at her moonngs and walked up to Chubby’s house. Missus Chubby opened to us in a dressing-gown that made Chubby’s pyjamas look conservative. She had her hair in large pink plastic curlers. I had never seen her without a hat before and I was surprised that she was not as bald as her spouse. They looked so alike in every other way.

  She gave us coffee before Sherry and I climbed into the pick-up and drove to Turtle Bay. The bedclothes were damp and needed airing but neither of us complained.

  I stopped at the Post Office in the early morning and’my box was half filled, mostly with fishing equipment catalogues and junk mail, but there were a few letters from old clients inquiring for charter - that gave me a pang - and one of the buff cable envelopes which I opened last. Cables have always borne bad news for me. Whenever I see one of those envelopes with my name peering out of the window like a long-term prisoner I have this queasy feeling in my stomach.

  The message read: “MANDRAKE SAILED CAPETOWN OUTWARD BOUND ZANZIBAR 12.00 HOURS FRIDAY 16TH. STEVE.”

  My premonitions of evil were confirmed. Mandrake had left Cape Town six days ago. She had made a faster passage than I would have believed possible. I felt like rushing to the top of Coolie Peak to search the horizon. Instead I passed the cable to Sherry and drove down to Frobisher Street.

  Fred Co
ker was just opening the street door of his travel agency as I parked outside Missus Eddy’s store and sent Sherry in with a shopping list while I walked on down the street to the Agency.

  Fred Coker had not seen me since I had dropped him moaning on the floor of his own morgue, and now he was sitting at his desk in a white shark-skin suit and wearing a necktie which depicted a Hula girl on a palm-lined beach and the legend

  “Welcome to St. Mary’s! Pearl of the Indian Ocean.”

  He looked up with a smile that went well with the tie, but the moment he recognized me his expression changed to utter dismay. He let out a bleat like an orphan lamb and shot out of his chair, heading for the back room.

  I blocked his escape and he backed away before me, his goldrimmed glasses glittering like the sheen of nervous sweat that covered his face until the chair caught him in the back of his knees and he collapsed into it. Only then did I give him my big friendly grin - and I thought he would faint with relief.

  “How are you, Mister Coker?” He tried to answer but his voice failed him. Instead he nodded his head so rapidly that I understood he was very well.

  “I want you to do me a favour.”

  “Anything,” he gabbled, suddenly recovering the power of speech.

  “Anything, Mister Harry, you have only to ask.” Despite his protestations it took him only a few minutes to recover his courage and wits. He listened to my very reasonable request for three cases of high explosive, and went into a pantomime to impress me with the utter impossibility of compliance, He rolled his eyes, sucked in his cheeks and made clucking noises with his tongue.

  “I want it by noon tomorrow - latest,” and he clasped his forehead as if in agony.

  “And if it’s not here by twelve o’clock precisely, you and I will continue our discussion on the insurance premiums-” He dropped his hand and sat upright, his expression once more willing and intelligent.

  “That’s not necessary, Mister Harry. I can get what you ask - but it will cost a great deal of money. Three hundred dollars a case.” “Put it on the slate,” I told him.

  “Mister Harry!” he cried, “you know I cannot extend credit.”

  I was silent, but I slitted my eyes, clenched my jaws and began to breathe deeply.

  “Very well,” he said hurriedly. “Until the end of the month, then.”

  “That’s very decent of you, Mister Coker.”

  “It’s a pleasure, Mister Harry,” he assured me. “A very great pleasure.”

  “There is just one other thing, Mr. Coker,” and I could see him mentally quail at my next request, but he braced himself like a hero.

  “In the near future I expect to be exporting a small consignment to Zdrich in Switzerland.” He sat a little forward in his seat. “I do not wish to be bothered with customs formalities - you understand?”

  “I understand, Mister Harry.”

  “Do you ever have requests to send the body of one of your customers back to the near and dear?”

  “I beg your pardon?” He looked confused.

  “If a tourist were to pass away on the island - say of a heart attack - you would be called on to embalm his corpse for posterity and to ship it out in a casket. Am I correct?”

  “It has happened before,“he agreed. “On three occasions.”

  “Good, so you are familiar with the procedure?”

  “I am, Mister Harry.”

  “Mister Coker, lay in a casket and get yourself a pile of the correct forms. I’ll be shipping soon.”

  “May I ask what you intend to export - in lieu of a cadaver?” He phrased the question delicately.

  “You may well ask, Mister Coker.”

  I drove down to the fort and spoke to the President’s secretary.

  He was in a meeting, but he would see me at one o’clock if I would care to lunch with him in his office. I accepted the invitation and, to pass the hours until then, I drove up the track to Coolie Peak as far as the pick-up would take me. There I parked it and walked on to the ruins of the old look-out and signal station. I sat on the parapet looking out across a vista of sea and green islands while I smoked a cheroot and did my last bit of careful planning and decision-making, glad of this opportunity to make certain of my plans before committing myself to them.

  I thought of what I wanted from life, and decided it was three things - Turtle Bay, Wave Dancer II and Sherry North, not necessarily in that order of preference.

  To stay on at Turtle Bay, I had to keep a clean pair of hands in St. Mary’s, to have Wave Dancer II I needed cash and plenty of it, and Sherry North - well, that took plenty of hard thought, and at the end of it my cheroot had burned to a stub and I ground it out on the stone parapet. I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders.

  “Courage, Harry me lad,” I said and drove down to the fort.

  The President was delighted to see me, coming out into the reception room to welcome me and rising on tiptoe to place an arm around my shoulders and lead me into his office.

  It was a room like a baronial hall with a beamed ceiling, panelled walls and English landscapes in massive ornate frames and dark smoky-looking oils. The diamon&paned window rose from the floor to the ceiling and looked out over the harbour, and the floor was lush with oriental carpets.

  Luncheon was spread on the oaken conference table below the windows - smoked fish, cheese and fruit with a bottle of CUteau Lafite “62 from which the cork had been drawn.

  The President poured two crystal glasses of the deep red wine, offered one to me and then plopped two cubes of ice into his own glass. He grinned impishly as he saw my startled expression. “Sacrilege, isn’t it?” He raised the glass of rare wine and ice cubes to me. “But, Harry, I know what I like. What is suitable on the Rue Royale isra necessarily suitable on St. Mary’s.”

  “Right on, sir!” I grinned back at him and we drank. “Now, my boy, what did you want to talk to me about?”

  I found a message that Sherry had gone to visit Missus Chubby when I arrived back at the shack, so I went out on to the veranda with a cold beer. I went over my meeting with President Biddle, reviewing it word for word, and found myself satisfied. I thought I had covered all the openings - except the ones I might need to escape through.

  hree wooden cases marked “Canned Fish. Produce of Norway” arrived on the ten o’clock plane from the mainland addressed to Coker’s Travel Agency.

  “Eat your liver, Alfred Nobel,” I thought when I saw the legend as Fred Coker unloaded them from the hearse at Turtle Bay and I placed them in the rear of the pick-up under the canvas cover.

  “Until the end of the month then, Mister Harry,” said Fred Coker, like the leading man from a Shakespearian tragedy.

  “Depend upon it, Mister Coker,” I assured him and he drove away through the palms.

  Sherry had finished packing away the stores. She looked so different from yesterday’s siren, with her hair scraped back, dressed in one of my old shirts, which fitted her like a nightdress, and a pair of faded jeans with raggedy legs cut off below the knees.

  I helped her carry the cases out to the pick-up, and we climbed into the cab.

  “Next time we come back here we’ll be rich,” I said, and started the motor, forgetting to make the sign against the hex.

  We ground up through the palm grove, hit the main road below the pineapple fields and climbed up the ridge. We came out on the crest above the town and the harbour.

  “God damn it!” I shouted angrily, and hit the brakes hard, swinging off the road on to the verge so violently that the pineapple truck following us swerved to avoid running into our rear, and the driver hung out of his window to shout abuse as he passed.

  “What is it?” Sherry pulled herself off the dashboard where my manoeuvre had thrown her. “Are you crazy?”

  It was a bright and cloudless day, the air so clear that every detail of the lovely white and blue ship stood out like a drawing. She lay at the entrance to Grand Harbour on the moorings usually reserved for visiting c
ruise ships, or the regular mail ship.

  She was flying a festival burst of signal flags and I could see her crew in tropical whites lining the rail and staring at the shore. The harbour tender was running out to her, carrying the harbour master, the customs inspector and Doctor Macnab.

  “Mandrake?” Sherry asked.

  “Mandrake and Manny Resnick,” I agreed, and swung the truck into a U-turn across the road.

  “What are you going to do?“she asked.

  “One thing I’m not going to do is show myself in St. Mary’s while Manny and his fly lads are ashore. I’ve met most of them before in circumstances which are likely to have burned my lovely features clearly into even their rudimentary brains.”

  Down the hill at the first bus stop beyond the turn off to Turtle Bay was the small General Dealers” Store which supplied me with eggs, milk, butter and other perishables. The proprietor was delighted to see me and he flourished my outstanding bill like a winning lottery ticket. I paid him, and then closed the door of his back office while I used the telephone.

  Chubby did not have a phone, but his next-door neighbotir called him to speak to me.

  “Chubby,” I told him, “that big white floating brothel at the mail ship mooring is no friend of ours.”

  “What you want me to do, Harry?”

  “Move fast. Cover the water cans with stump nets and make like you are going fishing. Get out to sea and come around to Turtle Bay. We’ll load from the beach and run for Gunfire Reef as soon as it’s dark.” “I’ll be in the bay in two hours,“he said and hung up.

  He was there in one hour forty-five minutes. One of the reasons I liked working with him is that you can put money on his promises.

  As soon as the sun set and visibility was down to a hundred yards we slipped out of Turtle Bay, and we were well clear of the island by the time the moon came up.

  Huddled under the tarpaulin, sitting on a case of gelignite, Sherry and I discussed the arrival of Man&ake in Grand Harbour.