and three cups of coffee, it would have given me heartburn.
It was a few minutes after noon when I cleared Grand Harbour, and swung away south and east. I had told my crew to take a day ashore, I would not be fishing.
Chubby looked down at Sherry North, sprawled bikiniclad on the cockpit deck, and scowled noncommittally, but Angelo rotted his eyes expressively and asked, “Pleasure cruise?” with a certain inflection.
“You’ve got a filthy mind,” I scolded him and he laughed delightedly, as though I had paid him the nicest compliment, and the two of them walked away up the wharf.
Dancer romped down the necklace of atolls and islands until, a little after three o’clock, I ran the deep-water passage between Little Gull Island and Big Gull Island, and rounded into the shallow open water between the east shore of Big Gull and the blue water of the Mozambique.
There was enough breeze to make the day pleasantly cool, and to kick up a white flecky chop off the surface.
I manoeuvred carefully, squinting over at Big Gull as I put Dancer in position. When I hit the marks I pushed a little upwind to allow for Dancer’s fall-back. Then I cut the engines and hurried down to the foredeck to drop the hook.
Dancer came around and settled down like a wellbehavedlady.
“Is this the place?” Sherry had watched everything I did with her disconcerting feline stare.
“This is it,” and I risked overplaying my part as the besotted lover by pointing out the marks to her.
“I lined up those two Palms, the ones leaning over, with that single palm right up on the skyline, see it?”
She nodded silently, again I caught that look as though the information was being carefully filed and remembered. “Now what do we do?“she asked.
“This is where Jimmy dived,” I explained. “When he came back on board he was very excited. He spoke secretly with the others - Materson and Guthrie - and they seemed to catch his excitement. Jimmy went down again with rope and a tarpaulin. He was down a long time - and when he came up again, it started, the shooting!
“Yes,” she nodded eagerly, the reference to her brother’s death seemed to leave her unmoved. “We should go now, before someone else sees us here!
“Go?” I asked, looking at her. “I thought we were going to have a look?”
She recognized her mistake. “We should organize it properly, come back when we are prepared, when we have made arrangements to pick up and transport.”
“Lover,” I grinned, “I didn’t come all this way not to take at least one quick look.”
“I don’t think you should, Harry,” she called after me, but already I was opening the engine-room hatch.
“Let’s come back another time,” she persisted, but I went down the ladder to the rack which held the air bottles and took down a Draeger twin set. I fitted the breathing valve and tested the seal, sucking air out of the rubber mouth, piece.
Glancing quickly up at the hatch to make sure she was not watching me, I reached across and threw the concealed cut-out switch on the electrical system. Now nobody could start Dancer’s engines while I was overboard.
I swung the diving ladder over the stern and then dressed in the cockpit - short-sleeved Neoprene wet suit and hood, weight bek and knife, Nemrod wrap-around facePlate and fins.
I slung the scuba set on my back and picked up a coil of light nylon rope and hooked it on to my belt.
what happens if you don’t come back?” Sherry asked, showing apprehension for the first time. “I mean what happens to me?”
“You’ll pine to death,” I told her, and went over the side, not in a showy back flip but a simple use of the steps, more in keeping with my age and dignity.
The water was transparent as mountain air, and as I went head down I could see every detail of the bottom fifty feet below.
It was a coral landscape, lit with dappled light and wondrous colour. I drifted down to it, and the sculptured shapes of the coral were softened and blurred with sea growth and restless with the sparkling jewels of myriad tropical fish. There were deep gullies and standing towers of coral, fields of eel grass between, and open stretches of blinding white coral sand.
My marks had been remarkably accurate, considering the fact that I had been only just conscious from blood loss. I had dropped the anchor almost directly on top of the canvas package. It lay on one of the open spaces of coral sand, looking like some horrible sea monster, green and squat with the loose ropes floating about it like tentacles.
I crouched beside it, and shoals of tiny fish, zebrastriped in gold and black, gathered around me in such numbers that I had to blow bubbles at them and shoo them off, before I could get on with the job.
I unclipped the nylon rope from my belt, and lashed one end securely to the package with a series of halfhitches. Then I rose to the surface slowly paying out the line. I surfaced thirty feet astern of Dancer, swam to the ladder, and. clambered into the cockpit. I made the end of the line fast to the arm of the fighting chair.
What did you find?” Sherry demanded anxiously.
“I don’t know yet,” I told her. I had resisted the temptation to open the package on the bottom. I hoped it might be worth the sacrifice to watch her expression as I opened the canvas.
I stripped my diving gear and washed it off with fresh water before stowing it all carefully away. I wanted the tension to eat into her a little longer.
“Damn you, Harry. Let’s get it up,” she burst out at last.
I remembered the package as being as heavy as all creation, but then my strength had been almost gone. Now I braced myself against the gunwale and began recovering line. It was heavy, but not impossibly so, and I coiled the wet line as it came in with the old tunny fisherman’s wrist action.
The green canvas broke the surface alongside, sodden and gushing water. I reached over and got a purchase on the knotted rope, with a single heave I lifted it over the side and it clunked weightily on to the deck of the cockpit - metal against Wood.
“Open it,“ordered Sherry impatiently.
“Right away, madam,” I said, and drew the baitknife from the sheath on my belt. It was razor sharp, and I cut the ropes with a single stroke for each.
Sherry was leaning forward eagerly as I drew the stiff wet folds of canvas aside, and I was watching her face.
The greedy, anticipatory expression flared suddenly into triumph as she recognized the object. She recognized it before I did, and then instantly she dropped a curtain of uncertainty over her eyes and face.
It was nicely done, she was an actress of skill. Had I not been watching carefully for it, I would have missed the quick play of emotion.
I looked down at the humble object for which already so many men had been killed or mutilated, and I was torn with surprise and puzzlement - and disappointment. It was not what I had expected.
Half of it was badly eaten away as though by a sandblasting machine, the bronze was raw and shiny and deeply etched. The upper half of it was intact, but tarnished heavily with a thick skin of greenish verdigris, but the lug for the shackle was intact and the ornamentation was still clear through the corrosion - a heraldic crest - or part of it - and lettering in a flowery antique style. The lettering was fragmentary, most of it had been etched away in an irregular flowing line, leaving the bright worn metal.
It was a ship’s bell, cast in massive bronze, it must have weighed close to a hundred pounds, with a domed and lugged top and a wide flared mouth.
Curiously I rolled it over. The clapper had corroded solidly, and barnacle and other shellfish had encrusted the interior. I was intrigued by the pattern of wear and corrosion on the outside, until suddenly the solution occurred to me. I had seen other metal objects marked like this after long submersion. The bell had been half buried on the sandy bottom, the exposed portion had been subjected to the tidal rush of Gunfire Break, and the fine grains of coral sand had abrased away a quarter of an inch of the outer skin of the metal.
However, the portion that had been buried was protected, and now I examined the remaining lettering more closely.
wnl “Mere was an extended V or a broken W followed immediately by a perfect “N” - then a gap and a whole V; beyond that the lettering had been obliterated again.
The coat of arms worked into the metal on the opposite side of the barrel was an intricate design with two
