I broke off my reading for a few moments to reflect on the character of the gallant Colonel. I should have liked to introduce him to Manny Resnick, they would have had much in common. I grinned at the thought and read on.
The convoy reached Allahabad on the sixth day and the Colonel claimed military priority to place his five crates upon a troop train returning to Bombay. Having done this he and his small command rejoined the regiment at Delhi.
Six months later, Captain Long supported by the Indian Perty Officer, Ram Panat, brought charges against the commanding officer. We can believe that thieves had fallen out, Colonel Goodchild had perhaps decided that one share was better than three. Be that as it may, nothing has since given a clue to the whereabouts of the treasure.
The trial conducted in Bombay was a cause c&lyre and was widely reported in India and at home. However, the weakness of the prosecution’s case was that there was no booty to show, and dead men tell no tales.
The Colonel was found not guilty. However, the pressure of the scandal left him no choice but to resign his commission and return to London. If he managed somehow to take with him the Great Mogul diamond and the golden tiger throne, his subsequent career gave no evidence of his possessing great wealth. In partnership with a notorious lady of the town he opened a gaming house in the Bayswater Road which soon acquired an unsavoury reputation. Colonel Sir Roger Goodchild died in 187 1, probably from tertiary syphilis contracted during his remarkable career in India. His death revived stories of the fabulous throne, but these soon subsided for lack of hard facts and the secret passed on with that sporting gentleman.
Perhaps we should have headed this chapter - “The Treasure That Never Was’.
“Not on, cock,” I thought happily. “It was - and is.” And I began once more at the beginning of the story, but this time I made careful notes for Sherry’s benefit.
She was waiting for me when I returned, sitting wakefully in the armchair by the window, and she flew at me when I entered.
“Where have you been?“she demanded, “I’ve been sitting here all evening eating my heart out with curiosity.”
“You are not going to believe it,” I told her, and I thought she might do me a violence.
“Harry Fletcher, you’ve got ten seconds to cut out the introductory speeches and give me the goodies - after that I scratch your eyes out.”
We talked until long after midnight, and by then we had the floor strewn with papers over which we pored on knees and elbows. There was an Admiralty Chart of the St. Mary’s Archipelago, the copies of the drawings of the Dawn Light, the notes I had made of the mate’s description of the wreck, and those I had made in the Reading Room of the British Museum.
I had out my silver travelling flask and we drank Chivas Regal from the plastic tooth mug as we argued and schemed - trying to guess in what section of the Dawn Light’s hull the five crates had been stowed, guessing also how she had broken up on the reef, what part of her had been washed into the break and what part had fallen to the seaward side.
I had made sketches of a dozen eventualities, and I had opened a running list of my minimum equipment requirements for an expedition, to which I added, as various items came to mind, or as Sherry made intelligent suggestions.
I had forgotten that she must be a first rate scuba diver, but I was reminded of this as we talked. I was aware now that she would not be a passenger on this expedition, my feelings towards her were becoming tinged with professional respect, and the mood of exhilaration mixed with camaraderie was building to a crescendo of physical tension.
Sherry’s pale smooth cheeks were flushed with excitement, and we were shoulder to shoulder as we knelt on the carpeted floor. She turned to say something, she was chuckling and the blue lights in her eyes were teasing and inviting, only inches from mine.
Suddenly all the golden thrones and legendary diamonds in this world must wait their turn. We both recognized the moment, and we turned to each other with unashamed eagerness. We were in a consuming fever of urgency, and we became lovers without rising from the floor, right on top of the drawings of the Dawn Light - which was probably the happiest thing that had ever happened to that ill-starred vessel.
When at last I lifted her to the bed and we twined our bodies together beneath the quilt, I knew that all the brief amorous acrobatics that had preceded my meeting with this woman were meaningless. What I had just experienced transcended the flesh and became a thing of the spirit - and if it was not loving, then it was the nearest thing to it that I would ever know.
My voice was husky and unsteady with wonder as I tried to explain it to her. She lay quietly against my chest, listening to the words I had never spoken to another woman, and she squeezed me when I stopped talking which was clearly a command to continue. I think I was still talking when we both fell asleep.
from the air, St. Mary’s has the shape of one of those strange fish from the ocean’s abysmal depths, a squat misshapen body with stubby body fins and tailfins in unusual places, and a huge mouth many sizes too big for the rest of it.
The mouth was Grand Harbour and the town nestled in the hinge of the jaws. The iron roofs flash like signal mirrors from the dark green cloak of vegetation. The aircraft circled the island, treating the passengers to a vista of snowy white beaches and water so clear that each detail of the reefs and deeps were whorled and smeared below the surface like some vast surrealistic painting.
Sherry pressed her face to the round Perspex window and exclaimed with delight as the Fokker Friendship sank down over the pineapple fields where the women paused in their labours to look up at us. We touched down and taxied to the single tiny airport building on which a billboard announced “St. Mary’s Island - Pearl of the Indian Ocean” and below the sign stood two other pearls of great price.
I had cabled Chubby and he had brought Angelo with him to welcome us. Angelo rushed to the barrier to embrace me and grab my bag, and I introduced him to Sherry.
Angelo’s whole manner underwent a profound change. On the island there is one mark-of beauty that is esteemed above all else. A girl might have buck teeth and a squint, but if she possessed a “clear” complexion she would have suitors forming squadrons around her. A clear complexion did not mean that she was free of acne, it was rather a gauge of the colour of the skin - and Sherry must have had one of the clearest complexions ever to land on the island.
Angelo stared at her in a semi-catatonic state as she shook his hand. Then he roused himself, handed me back my bag and instead took hers from her hand. He then fell in a few paces behind her, like a faithful hound, staring at her solemnly and only breaking into his flashing smile whenever she glanced in his direction. He was her slave from the first moment.
Chubby trundled forward to meet us with more dignity, as big and timeless as a cliff of dark granite, and his face was contorted in a frown of even greater ferocity than usual as he took my hand in a huge horny fist and muttered something to the effect that it was good to see me back. He stared at Sherry and she quailed a little beneath the ferocity of his gaze, but then something happened that I had never seen before. Chubby lifted his battered old sea cap from his head, exposing the gleaming polished brown dome of his pate in an unheard-of display of gallantry, and he smiled so widely that we could see the pink plastic gums of his artificial teeth. He pushed Angelo aside when Sherry’s bags were brought out of the hold, picked up one in each hand and led her to the pick- up. Angelo followed her devotedly and I struggled along in the rear under the weight of my own luggage. It was fairly obvious that my crew approved of my choice, for once.
We sat in the kitchen of Chubby’s house and Mrs. Chubby fed us on banana cake and coffee while Chubby and I worked out a business deal. For a hard-bargained fee, he would charter his stump boat with its two spanking new Evinrude motors for an indefinite period. He and Angelo would crew it at the old wages, and there would be a large “billfish bonus” at the end of the charter, if it were successful. I went into no detail as to the object of the expedition, but merely let them know that we would be camping on the outer islands of the group and that Sherry and I would be working underwater.
By the time we had agreed and slapped hands on the bargain, the traditional island rite of agreement, it was midafternoon and the island fever had already started to reassert its hold on my constitution. Island fever prevents the sufferer from doing today what can -reasonably be put off until the morrow, so we left Chubby and Angelo to
