Treasure Hunters

by Allan Baillie

  A glimmer of a smile flicked over Pat’s face. He touched the round object in his pocket and felt comfortably furtive.

  5 / token

  The taxi lurched through the town centre, passed a quiet market, a man pushing a cart of fish, and a deserted army outpost, and stopped at a drowsy waterfront.

  Several pompous seagulls strutted around small, brightly painted boats on the yellow sand, critically inspecting them. A pier, its rails heavy with drooping nets, staggered from the beached boats towards the sea to catch a cluster of larger fishing boats. Beyond the pier a long finger of land sheltered the still, green water.

  Matt paid the driver in stained Indonesian notes and lugged Pat’s suitcase from the taxi. The driver tried to haggle over the price, shaking his head so much that his peacock feather looked like an angry bird behind his ear. But he saw Matt’s eyes, sighed and drove off.

  ‘You have found something, then?’ Pat said, pulling the object out of his pocket at last and staring at it. But it didn’t look like anything more than a dog tag.

  Matt nodded at the retreating taxi. ‘Watch it, he’s still looking at us in the mirror.’

  Pat snapped his hand shut. ‘You have found something!’

  ‘Well, no. Not yet.’

  ‘But ’?’ Pat watched the taxi turn a corner then opened his hand so the object flashed in the sun.

  ‘It’s a start.’

  Pat cocked his head and studied Matt’s face. It was hard to get him to say anything at any time. Like his accident. He’d spent weeks in hospital with a broken leg, the black holes of his eyes staring, not saying anything about what had happened. Mum had to get the story from the cops. How the truck had heaved boulders over the road, how another car and driver were far, far more wrecked than Matt and his car. The rest of the story stayed his big deal secret and now he’s got another one.

  ‘Maybe there is something out there.’ Matt said, almost reluctant to surrender that much. ‘We don’t know what or where, but it’s a start.’

  ‘Oh,’ Pat said flatly.

  Matt started to walk down to the pier. ‘What do you think you’ve got?’

  Pat squinted at the object as he followed. A funny eight, some strokes on both sides of the eight and some Middle-Eastern writing. ‘It’s light, it can’t be a coin, right?’

  ‘It’s a tin token. But don’t drop it. It’s worth money. Good money. Put it away now.’

  Matt was smiling at a skinny brown kid sitting on the rail of the pier near a dented aluminium runabout filled with bags of groceries, tools, batteries, fuel drums. But the boy was looking away.

  ‘Hey Ali! Did you sink my boat?’

  The boy grinned at Matt and waved a hand vaguely. ‘Isn’t that beautiful, Captain Matt?’

  Pat saw a very large flag being stretched over a water tank on a distant hill.

  ‘That’s us, now,’ said Ali. ‘Don’t need Jakarta, don’t want Jakarta. Better flag too.’

  Matt patted Ali down a little. ‘It’s great, but take it easy. You don’t want the army hearing you, do you?’

  ‘Ah, they are chasing bandits in the jungle. They catch nobody.’

  ‘Yeah, all right. Just watch it.’

  Ali shrugged. ‘Hey, I looked after your boat pretty good, Captain Matt.’

  ‘Good man, Ali.’ Matt patted him on the shoulder and pushed some notes into his hands.

  ‘I didn’t go with the others to put the flag up, no. And some kids tried to get at the boat, but I chased them off.’

  ‘You’re a tough man, Ali.’ Matt gave him another note as he moved towards the boat.

  ‘That is your boy?’ Ali pointed at Pat.

  As if it was men talking about some little kid, Pat thought. He glowered at Ali.

  ‘Yeah, we’re going fishing.’

  ‘In the bigger boat? I can show you where there are many fishes. So many that you only have to reach your hand to the water to catch one ’’

  ‘Maybe later, okay?’ Matt threw the stern rope off, dropped Pat’s bag on the groceries and jumped aboard.

  For a moment disappointment flickered across Ali’s face, then he grinned at Pat. ‘Hey, I’m Ali.’

  ‘Um, I’m Pat.’

  ‘You know.’ The boy danced about, sparring with a shadow.

  ‘Oh, Muhammad Ali.’

  ‘That’s right, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.’ The grin spread as he punched the air and dodged about.

  Matt pulled the cord of the motor twice, revved it to life and looked back at Pat. ‘Stop playing around, come on.’

  Pat moved forward, then he stopped.

  There’s something you need to do ’ If you don’t get it right he’ll carry on about having a dumb kid on the boat. What, he’ll say, that head been curdled all those months in Sydney?

  Pat glanced at the bow rope, still tied to the pier, and awkwardly worked it free. He jumped clumsily into the middle of the boat. He looked back to catch a quiet smirk on Ali’s face, as if to say: Okay rich kid, I can do anything better than you ’

  ‘Thought you’d forgotten everything.’ Matt swung the boat in a wide arc away from the pier and the finger of land.

  I get better with practice, Pat thought.

  Ali sat on the rail watching Pat as the boat slid from the pier and the bobbing fishing boats, then he walked away.

  ‘Nice kid,’ Pat said weakly.

  ‘He’ll do.’ Matt opened the throttle into a roar.

  Pat turned away from the rickety pier to face an empty ocean. The low sun sat over a still stretch of water in the waiting silence. There was not a single boat in that water, not a fish to break the surface, not even a rock to nudge the horizon. There was nothing out there but the changing colour of the patterns in the sea and the sky ’

  So big, Pat thought. In this tiny boat we are going out and out to find the end of the world. Okay, okay, they used to believe that in the old old days. With serpents and mermaids.

  He touched the token, pulled it out from his pocket. It was green, ancient green, somewhere between weathered copper and fire-blackened wood.

  Matt nodded at it and called out over the motor. ‘An old woman in the town market offered me that little piece for some American money. They love American dollars. She said she found it in the shallows at the fishing village. I’d been asking around – carefully – about any ship that sank in the water here. A few say that there was a story, but that’s it. Nobody knows what sort of ship, or where or when it sank. Just that it was very old.’

  ‘Ye-ss.’ Pat frowned at the token.

  ‘Yeah, it’s pretty thin. We are fishing.’

  ‘It’s only a token, isn’t it?’ Pat called out. ‘A tin token, like you get in Luna Park?’

  ‘A little bit. Except that Luna Park wasn’t around in 1500.’

  Pat almost dropped it. ‘1500?’

  ‘About that.’

  Pat stared at the token as he held it tightly. Before Captain Cook, he thought, before Magellan sailed round the world, before the Dutch sailed to Indonesia, before the Spanish Armada. Just after Columbus.

  ‘Keep it, keep it.’ Pat pressed the token into Matt’s hand.

  Matt rubbed his thumb over it. ‘Col identified it, but even he doesn’t know what that small hole was for. Anyway the token wasn’t made here. It was made in Malacca. Now that is something.’

  Pat remembered the little he knew of the city of Malacca from chasing information for Matt. An old port, not in Indonesia but Malaysia, between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Now it is known as Melaka. Before Malaysia it had been run by the British, the Dutch, the Portuguese and a few sultans. And that’s all he knew.

  ‘Why is Malacca so important?’ Pat said.

  Matt looked at him and stroked his lip.

  Ah no, he’s going to play games with another secret.

  ‘Better to ask Col. He’s been reading – trying to read - books in Indonesian, Spanish and Portuguese so he knows about everything.’ Matt smiled. ‘Up to a point.�
�

  Great.

  6 / the tub

  Pat tried to get some answers from Matt but it was too hard through the roar of the motor. In the end he gave up, sprawling over his suitcase to watch the boat’s wake spread across the still water. He could wait, everything would come out.

  This is going to be great, he thought, and grinned in the vague direction of home. Hey Robbie! Wake up, I’m talking to you. And you were feeling sorry for me because my Dad had skipped. Like a divorce but worse, with him really gone, not a street away, not to the next suburb but to another country! Well, it’s not like that at all. No, sir. Okay, it’s a bit empty at home with Mum alone, but that’s expected. I mean if your dad is like James Bond you have to put up with a few things.

  But now, hey I’ve been in a scary riot and Dad – Matt – fixed it so cool that he hardly moved a muscle, and in my pocket I have a piece of metal as old as 1500 which may be a treasure map. I’m going to a boat in the middle of the sea to hunt for a lost wreck. Now Robbie, just who’s feeling sorry for who?

  Pat smiled lazily at the wake, almost a bitumen highway across the sea, ruler-straight from the boat to the island. He could almost see where the wake had started, just a mark touching the foot of the misty green mountains. Then the pier disappeared and the town began to curl into the water.

  Suddenly he sat up. What if the motor stops? In the middle of the sea? And the sun sets and it gets dark? And a wild storm comes ’

  The motor coughed.

  Pat stared at the motor in alarm. Oh great, you caused that.

  Matt twisted the accelerator and smiled with a touch of embarrassment. The motor shuddered uncertainly, then it roared clear.

  Shut up, Pat thought. What, you reckon you’re a wizard or something? Maybe just a bit of a jinx, that’s all.

  Pat turned to the bow, where the crimson sun was sliding into a glowing sea. It will be gone in half an hour, leaving us alone in the dark. But, but, that’s okay, no worries. The water is dead flat and Matt knows where he’s going. Doesn’t he? Hope he’s got a torch ’

  Pat was trying to work out how to ask Matt about a torch without sounding like a panic merchant, when he picked out a tiny dot on the horizon. ‘The Tub?’ He pointed with forced ease.

  Matt slowed down the motor a fraction so he could talk. ‘That’s it. Col was moving her around, but she’s easy to find.’

  Pat glanced at Matt. ‘Moving?’

  ‘We have to work every day. We couldn’t stop and wait for you.’

  ‘Oh.’ They haven’t got a clue where to look.

  But Pat remembered that Col did have a clue for Lady Jane. Pat knew that it was no good just wanting to find a sunken ship. There were thousands of wrecks but there were millions upon millions of places where they could lie on the bottom of the sea. You had to find a place to start, you needed to know when a ship sank and where. And the ‘where’ might be about the size of Tasmania without that clue.

  Col’s clue for Lady Jane had been nothing more than a Javanese story about a ‘ship with white wings in a storm,’ but that was enough to get him going. He hunted round in libraries, newspaper archives, museums, and looked at Indonesian charts. He found a news story with a witness, and a route, a hurricane, even found rocks that had been given a name meaning Clipper Rocks ’

  But it seems that it wasn’t enough. And they don’t have anything this time – except for a piece of old tin and a couple of people who say that they can remember a very old story about a ship sinking. They don’t have anything at all. Like Mum said, they are playing Peter Pan.

  Maybe ’

  Col was moving the boat around now, acting as if he knew what he was doing. As if there was more than Matt had told you on the island. ‘Then Col knows where to look ’?’

  Matt opened his hands. ‘Let me say that we are a little better off than we would be looking for a Spanish galleon at the South Pole.’

  He’s unloading a little bit as we get near to the boat. Pat tried for more. ‘Because of that token?’

  ‘It’s a start. You get the fishermen talking about seasonal currents, tides and winds. That token could have come from the water that we are working now.’

  ‘All that way?’

  ‘It had plenty of time to do it, or a fisherman could have caught it on his nets and thrown it on the beach. The fishermen have been avoiding our bit of water because their nets were snagging. Most of the time, winds blow from that area to the island. The old ships were very simple and they went with the wind. Assuming the ship wanted to reach the island.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You have to chase every lead.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’ It was better than he’d thought. But not much better. That token could have been dropped from a passing ship at any time. And the nets? They might have snagged on anything at all, rocks, coral.

  Hey, forget about sunken treasure, you’re here on holiday, like Matt tells Mum. You’re going to see the fish, that’s not too bad.

  The sun slipped into the sea before they reached the Tub, but Pat could see its long black silhouette etched against the fire of the sky and he felt a strange tingle in his spine, as if he was coming home.

  He had only ever been on that boat for five days, a year ago, when they were buying it in Darwin. Doesn’t matter, Pat thought. It’s like a puppy. You keep one for a week and just try to take it away then.

  Pat grinned at the dark boat. There was a single mast at the bow, but so short it seemed to have been bitten off by a leaping shark. Behind the mast there was a clutter of battered fuel drums, put there because if they were put below the fumes would reach the aft cabin. The boat’s wheelhouse was just a box sitting in the middle of the deck but near that there was a small crane leaning over the side, like it was fishing for that leaping shark.

  ‘Hello puppy,’ Pat said. Ugly puppy, but it was great to see it again.

  Matt cut the motor. They glided towards a low landing against the hull and Pat grinned. They hardly needed the landing to step onto the Tub, but he could see it would be a great help for getting in and out of the water. He suddenly wished tomorrow had come. As the dinghy thumped against the landing a shadow flitted silently from the wheelhouse. A man’s bare skull gleamed in the twilight, his muscles sliding smoothly under his brown skin as he caught the dinghy’s bow. The man jerked his head up and flashed his teeth.

  Pat shied back. Pirates have taken over the boat!

  ‘How’s it going, Pat?’ said the man.

  Pat smiled weakly in embarrassment. ‘Good, good, Col.’ He took his hand and stepped up to the Tub.

  ‘You looked a bit worried before,’ Col cocked an eyebrow. ‘Have I changed?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Pat shook his head vigorously. ‘Not much.’

  Pat had seen Col in Darwin a year ago. Back then he had had a bald patch, a burnt red face and spotless casual clothes: ironed short-sleeved shirt, light trousers and a new pair of deck shoes. Back then he had been a teacher and he had looked like a teacher. But now? Now almost the only hairs on his head were his eyebrows, he was burned teak brown and he wore no more than a ragged and hopelessly stained pair of shorts and a pair of thongs. He looked like a native fisherman.

  From that moment Pat envied him.

  ‘Anything?’ Matt started to pass the groceries from the boat.

  ‘I have found the thing that snagged the fishermen’s nets. Nothing but a ridge.’

  ‘Pity.’

  Pat sagged just a little. You were right, he thought. Just great.

  ‘But there is something,’ Col said with a flicker on his lips.

  Matt caught the flicker as he lifted the box. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wouldn’t leap around yet, but there’s a bump down there.’

  ‘On the profiler?’

  ‘But no ferrous.’

  Martians talking, Pat thought.

  ‘But you said –’

  ‘I lowered the metal detector,’ Col said. ‘There’s metal down there.’

  ‘B
ut no iron. Well, let’s have a look.’ Matt leaped on the Tub and walked quickly to the wheelhouse.

  Pat followed Col. The Tub had gained a few things since the last time he had been aboard. There were shelves of worn books in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Indonesian – these were Col’s – but below these were an aluminium box with a green bubble on the top, some sort of printer and a set of earphones. Two other boxes were jammed between the radio, the engine controls, the compass and the old wooden wheel.

  ‘Boy,’ said Pat. ‘They look like something out of Star Wars.’

  Matt grunted. ‘Their prices are from Star Wars, and they have not found a bent nail yet.’

  ‘They will, they will.’ Col said, patting the odd printer with affection.

  Matt flicked on the light, pulled the paper from the odd printer and studied it. The printout looked a bit like a map, with contours showing a gentle plain and a sudden bump. ‘It’s not much, is it?’

  ‘What does it mean?’ Pat frowned.

  Col touched the odd printer. ‘That’s a sub-bottom profiler. It uses low frequency ultrasonic sound waves to penetrate under the seabed. Next to it is the proton magnetometer, which works like a compass. You’ve held a compass close to a hunk of iron? Like that. It’s good with ferrous metal – iron, steel – but no good at all for any other metals. So we have the earphones for the metal detector.’

  Matt reached for the earphones. ‘The detector is still down there?’

  ‘I saw you coming, so I left it. We’re anchored so we may still be close enough to hear.’

  Matt held one earphone to his head.

  Col smiled at Pat. ‘That metal detector down there is a coil with a battery-powered magnetic field. Metal – any metal – can disturb the field.’

  Matt shrugged. ‘Well, it’s dead now. Let’s get the boat unloaded before it gets too dark. And then we’ll pull it up before some fish has a go at it.’

  Col and Matt tramped from the wheelhouse to the boat, leaving Pat alone with the boxes flickering and humming. Pat hesitated and snatched the earphones from their hook.

  He could hear a gentle hissing, like a slow current at the bottom of the sea, and nothing else. He was beginning to take off the earphones when they peeped once at him. He jammed the earphones back on his head, as if he was reaching down the wire after that sound. There were three sudden clicks and he was about to shout for Matt and Col but there was nothing else.