by Wilbur Smith
“What have you got there, Chubby?” I demanded, and shyly he opened the canvas cover. It was my FN carbine and a dozen spare magazines of ammunition packed into a small haversack.
“Thought it might come in useful,“he muttered.
I took the weapon down into the grove and buried it beside the cases of gelignite in a shallow grave. Its proximity gave me a little comfort when I returned to assist in assembling the water pump.
We worked on into the night by the light of the gas lanterns, and it was after midnight when we carried the pump and its engine down to the whaleboat and bolted it to a makeshift mounting of heavy timber which we placed squarely amidship. Angelo and I were still working on the pump when we ran out towards the reef in the morning. We had been on station for half an hour before we had it assembled and ready to test.
Three of us dived on the wreck - Chubby, Sherry and myself - and we manhandled the stiff black snake of the hose through the gunport and up into the breach through the well of the hold.
Once it was in position, I slapped Chubby on the shoulder and pointed to the surface. He replied with a high sign and finned away, leaving Sherry and me in the passenger deck.
We had planned this part of the operation carefully and we waited impatiently while Chubby went up, decompressing on his way, and climbed into the whaleboat to prime the pump and start the motor.
We knew he had done so by the faint hum and vibration that was transmitted to us down the hose.
I braced myself in the ragged entrance to the hold, and grasped the end of the hose with both hands. Sherry trained the torchbeam on to the dark heap of cargo, and I swung the open end of the hose slowly over the rotted cargo.
I saw immediately that it was going to work, small pieces of debris vanished miraculously into the hose, and it caused a small whirlpool as it sucked in water and floating motes of rubbish.
At this depth and with the RPM provided by the petrol engine, the pump was rated to move thirty thousand gallons of water an hour, which was a considerable volume. Within seconds I had cleared the working area and we still had good visibility. I could start probing into the heap with a jemmy bar, breaking out larger pieces and pushing them back into the passage behind us.
Once or twice I had to resort to the block and tackle to clear some bulky case or object, but mostly I was able to advance with only the hose and the jemmy bar.
We had moved almost fifty cubic foot of cargo before it was time to ascend for a change of air bottle. We left the end of the hose firmly anchored in the passenger deck, and went up to a hero’s welcome. Angelo was *in transports of delight and even Chubby was smiling.
The water around the whaleboat was clouded and filthy with the thick soup of rubbish we had pumped out of the hold, and Angelo had retrieved almost a bucketful of small items that had come through the outlet of the pump and rfallen into the sieve. - it was a collection of buttons, nails, small ornaments from women’s dresses, brass military insignia, some small copper and silver coins of the period, and odds and ends of metal and glass and bone.
Even I was impatient to return to the task, and Sherry was so insistent that I had to donate my halfsmoked cheroot to Chubby and we went down again.
We had been working for fifteen minutes when I came upon the corner of an up-ended crate similar to others that we had already cleared. Although the wood was soft as cork, the seams had been reinforced with strips of hoop iron and iron nails so I struggled with it for some time before I prised out a plank and pushed it back between us. The next plank came free more readily, and the contents seemed to be a mattress of decomposed and matted vegetable fibre.
I pulled out a large hunk of this and it almost jammed the opening of the hose, but eventually disappeared on its way to the surface. I almost lost interest in this box and was about to begin working in another area - but Sherry showed strong signs of disapproval, shaking her head, thumping my shoulder and refusing to direct the beam of the torch anywhere but at the unappetizing mess of fibre.
Afterwards I asked her why she had insisted and she fluttered her eyelashes and looked important.
“Female intuition, my dear. You wouldn’t understand.”
At her urging, I once more attacked the opening in the case, but scratching smaller chunks of the fibre loose so as not to block the hose opening.
I had removed about six inches of this material when I saw the gleam of metal in the depths of the excavation. I felt the first deep throb of certainty in my belly then, and I tore out another plank with furious impatience. It enlarged the opening so I could work in it more easily.
Slowly I removed the layers of compacted fibre which I realized must have been straw originally used as packing. Like a face materializing in a dream, it was revealed.
The first tiny gleam opened to a golden glory of intricately worked metal and I felt Sherry’s grip on my shoulder as she crowded down close beside me.
There was a snout, and lips below that were drawn up in a savage snarl, revealing great golden fangs and an arched tongue. There was a broad deep forehead as wide as my shoulders, and ears flattened down close upon the burnished skull - and there was a single empty eye-socket set fairly in the centre of the wide brow. The lack of an eye gave the animal a blind and tragic expression, like some maimed god from mythology.
I felt an almost religious awe as I stared at the huge, wonderfiilly fashioned tiger’s head we had exposed. Something cold and frightening slithered up my spine, and involuntarily I glanced about me into the dark and forbidding recesses of the hold, almost as if I expected the spirits of the Mogul prince guardians to be lurking there.
Sherry squeezed my shoulder again and I returned my attention to the golden idol, but the sense of awe was so strong upon me that I had to force myself to return to the task of clearing the packing from around it. I worked very carefully for I was fully aware that the slightest scratch or damage would greatly reduce the value and the beauty of this image.
When our working time was exhausted we drew back and stared at the exposed head and shoulders, and the torch beam was reflected from the brilliant suece in arrows of golden light that lit the hold like some holy shrine. We turned then and left it to the silence and the dark, while we went up into the sunlight.
Chubby was aware immediately that something significant had happened, but he said nothing until we had climbed aboard and in silence shed our equipment. I lit a cheroot and drew deeply upon it, not bothering to mop the droplets of seawater that ran from my sodden hair down my cheeks. Chubby was watching me but Sherry was withdrawn from us, wrapped in secret thoughts, turned inward upon herself.
“You found it?” Chubby asked at last, and I nodded.
“Yes, Chubby, it’s there.” I was surprised to hear that my own voice was husky and unsteady.
Angelo who had not sensed the mood looked up quickly from where he was stacking our equipment. He opened his mouth to say something, but then slowly closed it as he became aware of the charged atmosphere.
We were all silent, moved beyond speech. I had not expected it would be like this, and I looked at Sherry. She met my gaze at last and her dark eyes were haunted.
“Let’s go home, Harry,” she said and I nodded at Chubby. He buoyed the hose and dropped it overboard to be retrieved on the following day. Then he threw the motors into gear and swung our bows to face the channel.
Sherry moved across the whaleboat and came to sit beside me on the thwart. I placed my arm about her shoulders but neither of us spoke until the whaleboat slid silently up on to the white beach of the island.
In the sunset Sherry and I climbed to the peak above the camp and we sat close together staring out across the reef, and watching the light fade on the sea and plunge the pool at Gunfire Reef into deeper shadow.
“I feel guilty in a way,” Sherry whispered, “as though I have committed some dreadful sacrilege.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “I know what you mean.”
“That thing - it seemed to have a
life of its own. It was strange that we should have exposed its head, before any other part of it. just suddenly to have that face glaring out at one,” she shuddered and was silent for a few moments, “and yet I felt also a deep satisfaction, a good quiet feeling inside myself I don’t know if I can explain it properly - for the two feelings were so opposite, and yet mingled.”
“I understand. I had the same feelings.”
“What are we going to do with it, Harry, what are we going to do with that fantastic animal?”
Somehow I did not want to talk about money and buyers at that moment - which in itself was a measure of how profound was my involvement with the golden idol.
“Let’s go down,” I suggested instead. “Angelo will be waiting dinner for us.”
Sitting in the firelight with a good meal filling and warming the cold empty place in my belly, and with a mug of whisky in one hand and a cheroot in the other, I felt at last able to tell the others about it.
I explained how we had come upon it, and I described the fearsome golden head. They listened in complete and intent silence.
“We have cleared the head down to the shoulder. I think that is where it ends. It is notched there, probably to fit into the next section. Tomorrow we should be able to lift it clear, but it’s going to be ticklish work. We can’t just haul it out with the block and tackle. It has to be protectea from damage before we can move it.”
Chubby made a suggestion, and for a while we discussed in detail how the head should be handled to minimize the risk of damage.
“We can expect that all five cases containing the treasure were loaded together. I hope to find them in the same part of the hold, probably similarly packed in wooden crates and reinforced with hoop iron-“
“Except for the stones,” Sherry interrupted. “In the courtmartial evidence, the Subahdar described how they were packed in a paymaster’s chest.”
“Yes, of course, I agreed.
“What would that look like?” Sherry asked.
“I saw one on display in the arsenal at Copenhagen which would probably be very similar. It’s like a small iron safe - the size of a large biscuit bin.” I sketched the size with the spread of my hands like a fisherman boasting of his catch. “It is ribbed with iron bands and has a locking rod and a pair of head padlocks at each corner.”
“It sounds formidable.”
“After a hundred-odd years in the pool it will probably be soft as chalk - even if it’s still in one piece.”
“We’ll find out tomorrow,” Sherry announced with confidence.
We tramped down to the beach in the morning with rain drumming on our oilskins and cascadwing from them in sheets. The cloud was right down on the peaks, oily dark banks that rolled steadily in from the sea to loose their bomb loads of moisture upon the island.
The force of the rain lifted a fine pearly spray from the surface of the sea, and the moving grey curtains reduced visibility to a few hundred yards so that the island disappeared in a grey haze as we ran out to the reef.
Everything in the whaleboat was cold and clammy and running with water. Angelo had to bale regularly and we huddled miserably in our oilskins while Chubby stood in the stern and slitted his eyes against the slanting, driving rain as he negotiated the channel.
The flourescent orange buoy still bobbed close in beside the reef and we picked it up and dragged in the end of the hose and connected it to the pump head. It served as an anchor cable and Chubby could cut the motors.
It was a relief to leave the boat, escape from the cold needle lances of the rain and go down into the quiet blue mists of the pool.
After withstanding considerable pressure from Chubby and me, Angelo had at last succumbed to veiled threats and open bribes, and relinquished his ticking mattress stuffed with coconut-fibre. Once the mattress was thoroughly soaked with seawater, it sank readily, and I took it down with me in a neat roll, tied with line.
Only when I had manoeuvred it through the gunport, down the gundeck and into the passenger deck did I cut the line and spread the mattress.
Then Sherry and I returned to the hold where the tiger’s head still snarled blindly into the torchlight.
Ten minutes” work was all that was necessary to free the head from its nest. As I suspected, this section ended at shoulder level, and the junction area was neatly flanged clearly it would mate with the trunk section of the throne, and the flange would engage the female slot to form a joint that would be strong and barely perceivable.
When I rolled the head carefully on to its side I made another discovery. Somehow I had taken it for granted that the idol was made from solid gold, but now I saw that in fact it was a hollow casting.
The actual thickness of metal was only about an inch, and the interior was rough and knobbly to the touch. I realized immediately that a solid idol would have weighed hundreds of tons, and that the cost of such construction would have been prohibitive even to an emperor who could support the construction of a temple as vast as the Taj Mahal.
The thinness of the metal skin had naturally weakened the structure, and I saw immediately when I turned it that the head had already suffered damage.
The rim of the neck cavity was flattened and distorted, probably during its secret journey through the Indian forests in an unsprung cart - or possibly during the wild death struggles of the Dawn Light during the cyclone.
Bracing myself in the entrance to the hold, I stooped over it to test its weight, and I cradled the head in my arms like the body of a child. Gradually I increased the strength of my lift and was pleased, but not surprised, when it came up in my arms.
It was, of course, tremendously weighty, and it required all of my strength from a carefully selected stance - but I could lift it. It weighed not much more than three hundred pounds, I thought, as I turned awkwardly under the oppressive load of gleaming gold and laid it gently on the coir mattress that Sherry was holding ready to receive it. Then I straightened up to rest and massage those parts where the sharp edges of metal had bitten into my flesh. While I did so I tried a little mental arithmetic: 300 pounds avoirdupois at 16 ounces to the pound was 4800 ounces, at 150 to the ounce was almost three-quarters of a million dollars. That was the intrinsic value of the head alone. There were three other sections to the throne, all were probably heavier and larger - then there was the value of the stones. It was an astronomic total, but could be doubled or even trebled if the artistic and historical value of the hoard were taken into account.
I abandoned my calculations. They were meaningless at this time, and instead I helped Sherry to fold the mattress around the tiger’s head and to rope it all into a secure bundle. Then I could use the block and tackle to drag it down to the companion ladder and lower it to the gundeck.
Laboriously-we dragged it to the gunport and there we struggled to pass it through the restricted opening, but at last it was accomplished and we could place the nylon cargo net around it and inflate the airbags. Again we had to step the mast to lift it aboard.
But there was no suggestion that the head should remain covered once we had it safety in the whaleboat, and with what ceremony and aplomb I could muster in the streaming tropical rain, I unveiled it for Chubby and Angelo. They were an appreciative audience. Their excitement superseded even the miserable sodden conditions, and they crowded about the head to fondle and examine it amid shouted comment and giddy laughter. It was the festive gaiety which our first discovery of the treasure had lacked. I had taken the precaution of slipping my silver travelling flask into my gearbag, and now I laced the steaming mugs of black coffee with liberal portions of Scotch whisky and we toasted each other and the golden tiger in the steaming liquor, laughing while the rain gushed down upon us and rattled on the fabulous treasure at our feet.
At last I swilled out my mug over the side and checked my watch.
“We’ll do another dive,” I decided. “You can start the pump again, Chubby.”
Now we knew where to continue the search, and afte
r I had broken out the remains of the case that had contained the head, I saw, -in the opening beyond, the side of a similar crate and I pressed the hose into the area to clear it of dirt before proceeding.
My excavations must have unbalanced the rotting heap of ancient cargo, and it needed only the further disturbance caused by suction of the hose to dislodge a part of it. With a groaning and rumbling it collapsed around us and instantly the swirling clouds of muck defeated the efforts of the hose to clear them and we were plunged into darkness once more.
I groped quickly for Sherry through the darkness, and she must have been searching for me, for our hands met and held. With a squeeze she reassured me that she had not been hit by the sliding cargo, and I could begin to clear out the fouled water with the suction hose.
Within five minutes I could make out the yellow glow of Sherry’s torch through the murk, and then her shape and the vague jumble of freshly revealed cargo.
With Sherry beside me, we moved farther into the hold again.
The slide had covered the wooden crate on which I had been working, but in exchange it had exposed something else that I recognized instantly, despite its sorry condition, for it was almost exactly as I had described it to Sherry the previous evening, even down to the detail of the rod that ran through the locking device and the double padlocks. The paymaster’s chest was, however, almost eaten through with rust and when I touched it my hand came away smeared with the chalky red of iron oxide.
In each end of the case were heavy iron carrying rings, which had most likely swivelled at one time but were now solidly rusted into the metal side - but still they enabled me to get a firm grip and gently to work the chest out of the clutching bed of muck. It came free in a minor storm of debris, and I was able to lift it fairly easily. I doubt that the total weight exceeded a hundred and fifty pounds, and I felt certain that most of that was made up by the massive iron construction.
After the enormously heavy head in its soft bulky mattress, it was a minor labour to get the smaller lighter chest out of the wreck, and it needed only a single airbag to lift it dangling out of the gunport.