The Money Stones

by Ian St. James

  McNeil and I looked at him and waited.

  'The surf hits the reef at an angle - like this.' He drew a line in the sand which almost missed his circle. 'See the problem? Line up with the passage and the current will sweep you past. If you're lucky right past. If you're unlucky onto the reef itself.'

  McNeil's eyes widened. 'With engines that size?'

  'Twenty horse power. Any more weight would tear the inflatables apart - any less and the power wouldn't be worth bothering with.'

  'Jesus! Some current.'

  Suddenly I felt cold, despite the heat through the netting. 'But if we can't line up on the passage?' I asked.

  'Line up' on a point a hundred yards up current and a hundred yards out. Then full throttle on the Gardners.

  Under normal circumstances - on flat water say - do that and you'd hit fifty knots inside sixty metres. Out there - with the current running part behind and part across you'll be going even faster but not in a straight line. Get it right and you'll go through the mid point of the passage like a bullet down a rifle barrel.' He smiled thinly. 'And you've got seventy metres on the other side to slow down.'

  'And get it wrong?' McNeil's eyes narrowed.

  'You'll break your back on the reef.'

  He was deadly serious. McNeil and I were silent for a full minute before I asked: 'Have you done this before?'

  'Three times. Each time I think it will be easier. It never is.'

  'Now you tell us.' I stifled my irritation and asked: 'How do we get back? If the outboards won't take the current going in they sure as hell won't take it coming out.'

  'There's a point here.' He marked his circle forty-five degrees from where the passage was indicated. 'The current races past this corner of the reef leaving an area of calm water. Coming out we paddle to the reef, drag an inflatable across and launch from there. We're a hundred metres out before the current catches us and then it's taking us away from the barrier and out to sea. It's a matter of riding the current for a mile or so and then swinging back in an arc to get back here.' He shrugged. 'It takes time but there's no danger.'

  Most of the afternoon was spent stowing cargo aboard the inflatables and by the time we finished, there wasn't a spare inch in any of them. It put enough of a fresh light on the argument about test equipment to make me wonder about it, but if McNeil was struck by the same thought he kept it to himself. After Pepalasis satisfied himself with the weight distribution in each boat everything was lashed into place and made waterproof with protective covers zipped kayak style around the passenger. Then, all now in wet suits, we paddled out of the inlet and into the sea.

  Forty yards from shore Pepalasis gave the signal to pull start the Gardners and the big engines blazed to life with an ear-shattering roar. Even at half throttle, racing inches above the water surface, the sensation of speed was electrifying, so it was an hour before McNeil and I dared use anything like three-quarter power. And the thought of full throttle seemed suicidal.

  We did a series of test runs parallel to the beach, going endlessly up and down, spray flying like mist turned to rainbows by the sun. At five o'clock Pepalasis signalled us back to the inlet. 'Brandy.' He handed us each a hip flask as we came ashore. 'A toast to success.'

  McNeil unscrewed the cap and sniffed cautiously. 'Last time I drank with you, Greek, I slept for twelve hours.'

  Pepalasis exploded into laughter. 'But this time I need you awake.'

  We drank while listening to his final instructions. 'We'll go in convoy, me first, Kirk last. Boats twenty metres apart. No closer - we daren't risk a boat running wild and colliding. When I'm lined up I'll signal - like this.' He raised an arm quickly above his head and dropped it smartly back to his side. To me he said, 'Come in dead astern of me and you'll be okay. As soon as I've signalled I'll hit full throttle and go. You do the same when you've made up the extra twenty metres. But signal Kirk first, understand?' I nodded and he continued. 'Turn your rudder into the current as soon as you feel it. Gently at first, gradually, but as it bites harder keep turning - you'll have full lock on just before you reach the barrier.'

  'Full lock and full throttle?' McNeil shook his head in astonished disbelief.

  'Full lock and full throttle,' Pepalasis repeated sharply. And don't try it another way. If you miss the opening do what you can to ride the current. And pray to God that you stay off the reef. If He answers you send a flare up to let us know you're all right. Then run out to sea, turn and try again.' He'd spoken urgently, his expression more serious than I had ever known it. Now he paused and his voice dropped to little more than a whisper as he added, 'If you hit the reef we'll get you. If we can.'

  We climbed into the boats, stowed the flasks and followed the Greek out into the open sea. The weather was perfect. A cloudless blue bowl of sky, a slight breeze, water breaking gently from the bows of my inflatable as it followed the arrow-straight course of the Greek's wash. I turned and got a cheerful answering wave from McNeil, the beach receding behind him, the Widgeon already invisible beneath its camouflage.

  Eyes front, correcting my course to stay in line, I smiled, thinking there was a bit of the old woman in Pepalasis after all. No doubt a lot of fuss about very little. McNeil had obviously thought so too. The whole thing was probably exaggerated out of all proportion. Another ruse to add to the bloody mystery of his precious island. I remembered Army manoeuvres off the Welsh coast in the middle of winter and laughed aloud. Now that really was tough going.

  We remained at half throttle, twenty metres apart. The sea began to run a noticeable swell, not rough or frightening, but a nudging reminder that the Pacific is the deepest ocean in the world. I could see the breakers now, still a long way off, a mile away, maybe more; a long white line dipping in and out as the horizon divided the solid blue of the sky from the flickering, heaving mass of the sea below. And the volume of noise increased so steadily and undramatically that I hardly noticed it. Earlier the sound of the Gardner had swamped everything, now its sharper note was insistent but no longer dominant above the growl of the sea.

  We had travelled another half mile when the rudder line jerked unexpectedly in my hands, swinging me off course. We had reached the current. I made the necessary adjustment and brought her round, surprised at such a strong pressure this far out. Pepalasis glanced quickly over his shoulder, checking to see that McNeil and I were still on station. I waved a hurried acknowledgement and hastily returned both hands to the rudder line as the current tugged again.

  The swell grew relentlessly, long oily washes of water dipping and rising like a switchback, down into a trough and then twenty feet up to the crest. And the sea changed colour. No longer blue, but green where it wasn't grey and knotted with white veins of spume, hissing and spitting like a wild cat. And running faster and faster.

  Then I lost the Greek! One moment he was there, in line, twenty metres ahead - the next moment gone, nothing, no sign of him. Instead a wall of solid water reaching to the sky, racing upwards like an avalanche going the wrong way. Over the top. How high? Forty - forty-five - fifty feet? The Gardner was suddenly clear of the water, its blades biting empty air as the boat stood on its prow and threatened to somersault forward. God, where was Pepalasis?

  I was climbing again - higher this time and even faster. And then I saw him, glimpsed him; a small black figure in a yellow boat on a mad green sea, still in line - twenty, maybe thirty yards ahead. A weird half sighting, all fragmented through the towering wall of spray. Thank God! An arm raised quickly up and down. Was that it? The signal? So soon? It had to be. I hit full throttle. Signal McNeil. I did, and hoped he saw it. Go - go - go! For the sweet love of God - go! I hauled on the rudder line and set my strength against the current, abandoning any pretence of steering, of being in control. Look for the gap - the gap in the reef. Visible soon? The air shook with a pounding a hundred times more deafening than the wake of jets on a runway, swamping the sound of the Gardner so completely that it might not have been there. Pepalasis cleared the ne
xt ridge, going fast and straight for the rocks. He must have miscalculated! There was no gap! Just iron toothed rocks smashed by the sea. I glanced to my left, a fury of spray and more rocks - and beyond them more again. Then I saw it. A gap - no spray - just water flowing as fast as the top of a waterfall. We're too far right? Dammit, we must be Pepalasis - dead ahead now crouching low in his boat. Running faster than ever. A split second's view before the sea's spume-laced fingers snatched his boat and hurled it forward. Pepalasis was no more, and I was forty yards from the reef - travelling faster than an express train without a prayer of stopping. Where was the sodding gap? Twenty yards - the rocks as pale as old bones streaked green by the sea. Ten yards. Five. Then - suddenly - unbelievably - mercifully into open water and going fast enough to slip off the edge of the world. No waves - just a mirror flat surface with me skimming over it like a pebble on a mill pond, easing the rudder, slowing.the engine, slowing everything.

  Calm. Only my hands still shaking, my heart pounding, my mind trembling. A different world. A sky I could see again. Soft water - quiet - the dramatic stillness which follows the battering of a storm. And Pepalasis - waving excitedly forty yards away. I twisted to look back, terrified McNeil had failed to make it. But he was close by, shouting, grinning, waving. Pepalasis signalled to cut engines and we called across the water to each other like excited schoolboys, and never was the sound of a human voice so sweet.

  After a few minutes rest we lined up again behind the Greek and followed him towards the shore. Even inside the barrier it was a cruel looking coast line. No white sand here, just a strip of shingle strewn with boulders. We edged slowly past a bluff gouged hollow like a rotten tooth and paddled across shallow water through which strings of weed, like knotted ropes, reached up from patches of greenish white sand on the sea bed.

  Pepalasis pointed to a slab of rock - a hundred feet wide and maybe half as high, garnet streaked grey at irregular intervals, its face as bare as concrete except for a gap like the slot in a machine gun turret. A cave of sorts? The opening three or four feet high and three times as wide. Our entrance to the island?

  McNeil drew alongside, convulsed with sudden laughter. 'Jesus - why bother to keep this place secret? There's not a bugger alive who could get in without the guided tour.'

  After that we unloaded the equipment and supplies, McNeil and I waist deep in water, heaving items one at a time up to Pepalasis in the cave. Last to go were the inflatables themselves. The Greek had rigged up a primitive winch which swung out from the mouth of the cave, but even so it was two hours of backbreaking effort to unhitch the Gardners and raise the still inflated craft from the water. Night had fallen when we finished, and both McNeil and I were close to exhaustion as we climbed out of the sea, and onto the island.

  Three

  There was little to distinguish the next day from the seven which followed, a cruel, punishing, inflexibility about all of them, a subterranean existence like moles in runs, in that cave and those adjoining. The caves stretched for miles, some as large as a concert hall, others no more than tunnels with overhangs low enough to force us to our knees. All in darkness except for the entrance cave itself. I hated it from the start, glad of the dark only when it hid the fear in my eyes from the others.

  Pepalasis had prepared the site well, equipping it with ropes, hoists and winches where possible, but no amount of preparation could have made the work easy. At all levels below the entrance cave we wore mining helmets, and our daily routine was established on the very first morning when Pepalasis led us to the two points in the underground system at which he had found diamonds. To reach the first we followed a tunnel a hundred yards long to an opening twenty yards square - square counting that half of the floor area which was an open hole, with the next level five hundred feet below.

  We abseiled down, clamping a harness around our bodies and hooking it to a single rope secured to the rock face with climbing pitons. The fast drop through darkness was terrifying and I met the ground with a spine crunching jolt which still had me winded five minutes later. After that, another rock corridor, the ground sloping away all the time so that it was difficult not to break into a trot, to reach the second rock chimney. It was as deep as the first but I made a better landing, helped unexpectedly by falling onto softer ground. Another walk, the rock ceiling closing in at intervals, progress made in a single file amidst curses and warnings about the overhang, until we reached a pear-shaped opening some thirty yards wide.

  'This is where I found my first diamonds.' Pepalasis squatted and felt the ground with his hands. 'Once a year it's flooded down here. Hurricanes drive waves across three quarters of the island's surface - in January and February.'

  I was still shuddering at the thought when McNeil asked bluntly:' So where's the kimberlite?'

  'Look at the walls. And the ground here - and here.'

  We looked. I'd learned enough by then to have a vague idea of what to look for. Kimberlite - blue ground which goes yellow near the surface due to the oxidation of the iron content in the rock. But how blue was blue? The rock walls had blue in them right enough but other colours - browns, reds and charcoal, gleamed back under the probe of our flashlights.

  McNeil grunted and walked further down the passage, stopping every few yards, the beam of light from his helmet exploring the surface like a prodding finger. He came back to where we waited. 'And you found diamonds here?'

  'On the ground,' Pepalasis nodded. 'My guess is water carried them down from higher levels.'

  McNeil swung the short handled axe and began to work an area a few feet wide. I watched and waited, my excitement growing by the second, knowing that most of the world's diamonds have been found in the alluvial terraces of river beds, and that's exactly what we were standing in - the dried up bed of an underground river.

  'So what's the plan?' McNeil asked, still crouched on his knees examining the rock, not looking up.

  'We take diggings from here back to the base camp and pan there.'

  'Without a conveyor?' McNeil stood up. 'Jesus! How much d'you plan to shift? A tub a day?'

  'We can manage the vertical lifts easily enough with simple gravity hoists. The real sweat will be the haul down the tunnel and I can rig up drag lines of sorts using the Gardner engines. Hard work of course, but - ' the Greek shrugged, 'but I'm planning to shift a ton or more a day.'

  McNeil thought about it and then grinned at me. 'I hope you're fit. Because you will be, after a week of this.' His teeth gleamed white in his dust-stained face. 'Or dead.'

  I drew the worst job. Mainly because I lacked specialised knowledge, but there weren't any soft jobs going anyway. So I worked at the rock face filling the tubs, with the other two taking turns to help me. We'd fill nine of the tubs and then one of us would make the journey to the bottom of the rock chimney on the third level to start the Gardner engine. The Greek had rigged up an ingenious pulley system which dragged two lines in from the workings - the lines threaded around the tubs so in theory all we had to do was to guide them over the uneven ground with the Gardner doing all the work. But in practice the tubs kicked and bucked like wild things, catching outcrops of rock and smashing against our shins as we fought to keep them upright, spilling a regular ten per cent of their contents on each journey. At the bottom of the shaft the Gardner was switched off to conserve fuel and Pepalasis or McNeil would strap on the abseil harness and begin the climb upwards. The ascent is made up the rock face, hauling body weight all the time until the top is reached. Even the Greek lacked the strength in his shoulders to make the journey without one rest, taken by clamping the harness tight on the rope, fixing the feet firm on the rock face and hanging back in mid-air, allowing tired muscles to gather themselves for the final assault upwards. Once one of them reached the top I sent the first tub of ore upwards, on the end of a rope which led over a pulley to another tub filled to a compensating weight which was lowered at the same time. When all nine tubs were raised I climbed up and we worked our way to the other
chimney and hoisted to the first level in the same way, a second Gardner pulling drag lines in to the foot of the shaft. Then I returned to the digging alone, leaving them to make the final shift to base camp while I set to filling another nine tubs. McNeil and Pepalasis took turns at panning the ore at the entrance cave - base camp - and generally I had filled most of the next quota by the time one of them joined me to begin the.whole process over again.

  Each lift took two hours and we did six a day, twelve hours of unrelenting punishment, straining muscles which screamed for rest after the first two lifts. At night we slept in hammocks, exhausted and still in our wet suits. Base camp was well organised with plenty of evidence of the Greek's previous visits - coils of ropes, more tubs, even an oil stove for cooking an evening meal.

  In two days we shifted three tons of ore. And found nothing. Depression applied its own drag to tired muscles, heartache added to backache, and the drudgery of the work seemed unending. Pepalasis took it in his stride, talking of the next day with the unfaltering optimism of a born prospector, but McNeil's reaction was different and difficult to interpret. I expected him to crow a bit - after all, he'd been sceptical from the outset and results so far justified his opinion. Yet he seemed more puzzled than anything, as if something troubled him, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Whatever it was he kept it to himself, and I was too tired to be more than casually curious - until the third day, when something happened which turned my interest to suspicion, and suspicion to downright hostility.

  It was mid-morning. We had made two lifts and I was alone at the rock face, coaxing aching muscles and preparing to start again, when I saw a light at the far end of the tunnel. At first I assumed it was McNeil coming to join me, Pepalasis having worked the previous lift. But then the light stopped. For a minute or two it remained perfectly still, maybe sixty yards away. And then it went out. My skin prickled under the wet suit. I fixed my gaze on the point where the light had been and tried to keep my imagination from playing tricks on me. Then, a minute later, the light was back on again, farther back in the tunnel this time, stopped or moving so slowly that I was unsure which. For no reason I could think of I extinguished the light on my own helmet and sat in total darkness, my eyes staring back down the tunnel.