The Eye of the Tiger

by Wilbur Smith

  “First thing Manny will do, he will send his lads out with a pocketful of bread to ask a few questions around the shops and bars. “Anyone seen Harry Fletcherr” and they’ll be queueing up to tell him all about it. How Mister Harry chartered Chubby Andrews’stump boat, and how they been diving looking for seashells. If he gets really lucky somebody will point him in the direction of Frederick Coker Esquire - and Fred will fall over himself to tell all, as long as the price is right

  “Then what will he do? “He will have an attack of the vapours when he hears that I didn’t drown in the Severn. When he recovers from that, he will send a team out to ransack and search the shack at Turtle Bay. He will draw a dud card there. Then the lovely Miss. Lorna Page will lead them all to the alleged site of the wreck off Big Gull. That will keep them happy and busy for two or three days - until they find they have nothing but the ship’s bell.”

  “Then?”

  “Well, then Manny is going to get mad. I think Lorna is in line for some unpleasantness - but after that I don’t, know what will happen. All we can do is try to keep out of” sight and work like a tribe of beavers to get the Colonel’s goodies out of the wreck.”

  The next day the state of the tides was such that we could not navigate the channel before the late morning. It gave us time to make preparations. I opened one of the cases of gelignite and took out ten of the waxy yellow sticks. I reclosed the case and buried it with the other two in the sandy soil of the palm gtove, well away from the camp.

  Then Chubby and I assembled and checked the blasting equipment.

  It was a home-made contraption, but it had proved its efficiency before. It consisted of two nine-volt transistor batteries in a simple switchbox. We had four reels of light insulated copper wire, and a cigar-box of detonators. Each of the lethal silver tubes was carefully wrapped in cotton wool. There was also a selection of time-delayed detonators of the pencil type in the box.

  Chubby and I isolated ourselves while we worked with them, clamping the electric detonators to the handmade terminals that I had soldered for the purpose.

  The use of high explosives is simple in theory, and nerve-racking in practice. Even an idiot can wire it up and hit the button, but in its refined form it becomes an art.

  I have seen a medium-sized tree survive a blast of half a case, losing only its leaves and some of its bark - but with half a stick I can drop the same tree neatly across a road to block it effectively, without removing a single leaf. I consider myself something of an artist, and I had taught Chubby all I knew. He was a natural, although he could never be termed an artist - his glee in the proceedings was too frankly childlike. Chubby just naturally loved to blow things up. He hummed happily to himself as he worked with the detonators.

  We took up position in the pool a few minutes before noon and I went down alone, armed only with a Nemrod captive air spear gun with a barbed crucifix head I had designed and made myself. The point was needle-sharp, and it was multi-barbed for the first six inches. Twenty-four small sharp barbs, like those used by Batonka tribesmen when they spear catfish in the Zambezi River. Behind the barbs was the crucifix, a four-inch cross-piece which would prevent the victim slipping down the shaft close enough to attack me when I held the reverse end. The line was five-hundred-pound blue nylon and there was a twenty-foot loop of it under the barrel of the spear gun.

  I finned down on to the overgrown heap of wreckage and I settled myself comfortably beside the gunport and closed my eyes for a few seconds to accustom them to the gloom, then I peered cautiously into the dark square opening, pushing the barrel of the spear gun ahead of me.

  The dark slimy coils of the Moray eel slithered and unwound as it sensed my presence, and it reared threateningly, displaying the fearsome irregular yellow fangs. In the gloom the eyes were black and bright, catching the feeble light like those of a cat.

  He was a huge old mugger, thick as my calf and longer than the stretch of both my arms. The waving mane of his dorsal fin was angrily erected as he threatened me.

  I lined him up carefully, waiting for him to rum his head and offer a better target. It was a scary few moments, I had one shot and if that was badly placed he would fly at me. I had seen a captive Moray chew mouthfuls out of the woodwork of a dinghy. Those fangs would tear easily through rubber suit and flesh, right down to the bone.

  He was weaving slowly, like a flaring cobra, watching me, and the range was extreme for accurate shooting. I waited for the moment, and at last he went into the second stage of aggression. He blew up his throat and turned slightly to offer me a profile.

  “My God,” I thought, “I once used to do this for fun,” and I took up the slack in the trigger. The gas hissed viciously and the plunger thudded to the end of its travel as it threw the spear. It flew in a long blur with the line whipping out behind it.

  I had aimed for the dark earlike marking at the back of the skull, and I was an inch and a half high and two inches right. The Moray exploded into a spinning, whipping ball of coils that seemed to fill the whole gunport. I dropped the gun and with a push of my fins I shot forward and got a grip of the hilt of the spear. It kicked and thumped in my hands as the eel wound its thick dark body around the shaft. I drew him out of his lair, pinned by a thick bite of skin and rubbery muscle to the barbed head.

  His mouth was opened in a silent screech of fury, and he unwound his body and let it fly and writhe like a pennant in. a high wind.

  The tail slapped into my face, dislodging my mask. Water flooded into my nose and eyes and I had to blow it clear before I could begin the ascent.

  Now the eel twisted its head back at an impossible angle and closed the dreadfully gaping jaws on the metal shaft of the spear. I could hear the fangs grinding and squeaking in the steel, and there mere bright silver scratches where it had bitten.

  I came out through the surface holding aloft my prize. I heard Sherry squeal with horror at the writhing snakelike monster, and Chubby grunted, “Come to papa, you beauty,” and he leaned out to grasp the spear and lift the eel aboard. He was showing his plastic gums in a happy grin for Moray eel was Chubby’s favourite food. He held the neck against the gunwale and, with an expert sweep of his baitknife, lopped the monstrous head cleanly away, letting it fall into the pool.

  “Miss. Sherry,” he said, “you going to love the taste of him.”

  “Never!” Sherry shuddered, and drew herself farther away from the bleeding, wriggling carcass.

  “Okay, my children, let’s have the gelly.” Angelo had the underwater carry-net ready to pass to me, and Sherry slid in over the side prepared to dive. She had the reel of insulated wire and she paid it out smoothly as we went down.

  Once again I went directly to the now untenanted gunport and crept into it. The breech of the cannon was jammed solidly against the mass of debris beyond.

  I chose two sites to place my shots. I wanted to kick the cannon aside, using it like a giant lever to tear out a slab of the petrified planking. The second shot fired simultaneously would blow into the wall of debris that barred entry to the gundeck.

  I wired the shots firmly into place. Sherry passed the end of the line in to me and I snipped and bared the copper wire with the side-cutters before connecting it up to the terminals.

  I checked the job once it was finished and then backed out of the port. Sherry was sitting cross-legged on the hull with the reel on her lap and I grinned at her around my mouthpiece and gave her the thumbs up before I retrieved my spear gun from where I had dropped it.

  When we climbed over the side of the whaleboat Chubby had the battery switchbox beside him on the thwart and it was wired up. He was scowling with anticipation, as he crouched possessively over the blaster. It would have taken physical force to deprive him of the pleasure of hitting the button.

  “Ready to shoot, skipper,” he growled.

  “Shoot her then, Chubby.” He fussed with the box a little longer, drawing out the pleasure, then he turned the switch. The surface of the pool bou
nced and shivered and we felt the bump come up through the bottom of the boat. Many seconds later there was a surge and frothing of bubbles, as though somebody had dropped a ton of Alka Seltzer into the pool. Slowly it cleared.

  “. , “I want you to put the trousers of your suit on, my sweeting, I told Sherry, and predictably she took the order as an invitation to debate its correctness.

  “Why? the water is warm?”

  gloves and bootees also,” I said, as I began to pull on my own rubber full-length pants. “If the hull is open we may penetrate her on this dive. You’ll need protection against snags.”

  Convinced at last, she did what she should have done without question. I still had a lot of work to do before she was properly trained, I thought, as I assembled the other equipment I needed for this descent.

  : I took the sealed unit underwater torch, the jemmy bar and a coil of light nylon line and waited while Sherry completed the major task of wiggling her bottom into the tight rubber pants, assisted faithfully by Angelo. Once she had them hoisted and had buttoned the crotch’piece, we were set to go.

  When we were halfway down, we came upon the first dead fish floating belly up in the misty blue depths. There were hundreds of them that the explosions had killed or maimed, and they ranged in size from fingerlings to big sodped snapper and reef bass as long as my arm. I felt a pang of remorse at the massacre I had perpetrated, but consoled myself with the thought I had killed less than a biuefin tunny would in a single day’s feeding.

  We went down through this killing ground, and the light caught the eddying and drifting carcasses so they blinked and shone like dying stars in a smoky azure sky.

  The bottom of the pool was murky with particles of sand and other material stirred up by the shock of the blast. There was a hole torn in the cover of sea bamboo and we went down into it.

  I saw at once that I had achieved my purpose. “The explosion had kicked the massive cannon out of the hull, tearing it like a rotten tooth from the black and ancient maw of the gunport. It had fallen to the bed of the pool surrounded by the debris that it had brought away with it.

  The upper lip of the gunport had been knocked out, enlarging the opening so that a man might stand almost upright in it. When I flashed the torch into the darkness beyond, I saw that it was a turgid fog of suspended dirt and particles which would take time to settle. My impatience would not allow that, however, and as we settled on the hull I checked my time elapse and air reserves. Quickly I calculated our working time, allowing for my two previous descents which would necessitate additional decompression. I reckoned we had seventeen minutes” safe time before beginning the ascent and I set the swivel ring on my wristwatch before preparing for the penetration.

  I used the jettisoned cannon as a convenient anchor point on which to fix the end of the nylon line and then rose again to the opening, paying it out behind me as I went.

  I had to remove Sherry North from the gunport, in the few seconds while I was busy with the line she had almost disappeared into the hole in the hull. I made angry ssigns at her to keep clear, and in return she made an unladylike gesture with two fingers which I pretended not to see.

  Gingerly I entered the gunport and found that the visibility was down to about three feet in the murky soup.

  The shots had only partially moved the blockage beyond the spot where the cannon had lain. There seemed to be a gap beyond but it needed to be enlarged before I could get through. I used the jemmy bar to prise a lump of the wreckage away and discovered that it was the heavy gun carriage that was causing most of the blockage.

  Working in freshly blasted wreckage is a delicate business, for it is impossible to know how critically balanced the mass may be. Even the slightest disturbance can bring the whole weight of it sliding and crashing down upon the trespasser, pinning and crushing him beneath it.

  I worked slowly and deliberately, ignoring the regular thumps on MY rump with which Sherry signalled her burning impatience. Once when I emerged with a section of shattered planking, she took my slate and wrote on it

  “I am smallerh” and underlined the “smaller” twice in case the double exclamation mark was not noticed when she thrust the slate two inches from my nose. I returned her Churchillian salute and went hack to my burrowing.

  I had now cleared the area sufficiently to see that my only remaining obstacle was the heavy timber bulk of the gun carriage which was hanging at a drunken angle across the entry to the gundeck. The jemmy bar was totally ineffective against this mass, and I could abandon the effort and return with another charge of gelignite tomorrow or I could take a chance.

  I glanced at my time elapse and saw that I had been busy for twelve minutes. I reckoned that I had probably been using air more wastefiilly than usual during my recent exertions. Nevertheless, I decided to take a flier.

  I passed the torch and jemmy bar out to Sherry, and worked my way carefully back into the opening. I got my shoulder under the upper end of the gun carriage, and moved my feet around until I had a firm stance. When I was solidly placed, I took a good breath of air and began to lift.

  Slowly I increased the strain until I was thrusting upwards with all the strength of my legs and back. I felt my face and throat swelling with pumping blood and my eyes felt ready to jump out of their sockets. Nothing moved, and I took another lunghil of air and tried again, but this time throwing all my weight on the timber beam in a single explosive effort.

  It gave way, and I felt like Samson who had pulled the temple down on his own head. I lost my balance and tumbled backwards in a storm of falling debris that groaned and grated as it fell, thudding and bumping around me.

  When silence had settled, I found myself in utter darkness, a thick pea soup of swirling filth that blotted out the light. I tried to move, and found my leg pinned. Panic rushed through me in an icy wave and I fought frantically to free my leg. I took only half-a-dozen terrified kicks before I realized that I had escaped with great good luck. The gun carriage had missed my foot by a quarter of an inch, and had fallen across the rubber swimming fin. I pulled my foot out, of the shoe, abandoning it, and groped my way out into the open.

  Sherry was waiting eagerly for news, and I wiped the slate and wrote

  “OPEN underlining the word twice. She pointed into the gunport, demanding permission to enter and I checked my time elapse. We had two minutes, SO I nodded and led the way in.

  Flashing the beam of the torch ahead I had visibility of eighteen inches, enough to find the opening I had cleared. There was just sufficient clearance to allow me through without fouling my air bottles or breathing hose.

  I paid out the nylon line behind me, like Theseus in the labyrinth of the Minotaur, so as not to lose my direction in the Daurn light’s warren of decks and companionways.

  Sherry followed me along the line. I could feel her hand touch my foot and brush my leg as she groped after me. Beyond the blockage, the water cleared a little, and we found ourselves in the low wide chamber of the gundeck. It was murky and mysterious, with strange shapes strewn about us in profusion. I saw other gun carriages, cannonballs strewn loosely or in heaps against angles and corners, and other equipment so altered by long immersion as to be unrecognizable.

  We moved slowly forward, our fins stirring up fresh whirlpools of dirt and mud. Here also there were dead fish floating about us, although I noticed some of the red reef crayfish scrambling away like monstrous spiders into the depths of the ship. They at least had survived the blast in their armoured carapaces.

  I played the beam of the torch on the deck above our heads, looking for the entry point to the lower decks and the holds. With the ship lying upside down, I had to keep trying to relate the existing geography of the wreck to the drawing I had studied. About fifteen feet from our entry point I found the forecastle ladder, another dark square opening above my head, and I rose into it, my bubbles blowing upwards in a silver shower and running like liquid mercury across the bulkheads and decking. The ladder was rotted so that
it fell to pieces at my touch, the pieces hanging suspended in the water around my head as I went on into the lower deck.

  This was a narrow and crowded alleyway, probably serving the passenger cabins and officers” mess. The claustrophobic atmosphere reminded me of the appalling conditions in which the crew of the frigate must have lived.

  I ventured gingerly along this passage, attracted powerfully to the doorways on either hand which promised all manner of fascinating discoveries. I resisted their temptation and finned on down the long deck until it ended abruptly against a heavy timber bulkhead.

  This would be the outer wall of the well of the forward hold, where it pierced the deck and went down into the ship’s belly.

  Satisfied with what we had achieved, I turned the beam of the torch on to my wrist and realized with a guilty thrill that we had overrun our working time by four minutes. Every second was taking us closer to the dreaded danger of empty air bottles and uncompleted decompression stops.

  I grabbed Sherry’s wrist and gave her the cut-throat hand signal for danger before tapping my wristwatch. She under, stood immediately, and followed me meekly on the long slow journey back through the hull along the guiding line. Already I could feel the stiffening of the demand valve as it gave me air more reluctantly now that the bottles were almost exhausted.

  We came out into the open and I made certain that Sherry was by my side before I looked upwards. What I saw above me made my breathing choke in my throat, and the horror I felt turned to a warm oily liquid sensation in my bowels.

  The pool of Gunfire Break had been transformed into a bloody arena. Attracted by the tons of dead fish that had been killed by the blast, the deep-water killer sharks had arrived in their scores. The scent of flesh and blood, together with the excited movements of their fellows transmitted to them through the water, had driven them into that mindless savagery known as the feeding frenzy.

  Quickly I drew Sherry back into the gunport and we cowered there, looking up at the huge gliding shapes so clearly silhouetted against the light source of the surface.