had waited to get Angelo into the isolation of the island before telling him. He has been known to commit the most monstrous indiscretions - usually in an attempt to impress one of his young ladies.
They listened in silence to my explanation, and remained silent after I had finished. Angelo was waiting for a lead from Chubby - and that gentleman was not one to charge his fences. He sat scowling into the fire, and his face looked like one of those copper masks from an Aztec temple. When he had created the correct atmosphere of theatrical suspense he reached into his back pocket and produced a purse, so old and well handled that the leather was almost worn through.
“When I was a boy and fished the pool at Gunfire Break, I took a big old Daddy grouper fish. When I open his belly pouch I found this in him.” From the purse he took out a round disc. “I kept it since then, like a good luck charm, even though I was offered ten pounds for it by an officer on one of my ships.”
He handed me the disc and I examined it in the firelight. It was a gold coin, the size of a shilling. The reverse side was covered with oriental characters which I could not read - but the obverse face bore a crest of two rampant lions supporting a shield and an armoured head. The same design as I had last seen on the bronze ship’s bell at Big Gull Island. The legend below the shield read: “AUS: REGIS & SENAT: ANGLIA’. while the rim was struck with the bold title’ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY’.
“I always promised me that I would go back to Gunfire Break - looks like this is the time,” Chubby went on, as I examined the coin minutely. There was no date on it, but I had no doubt that it was a gold mohur of the company. I had read of the coin but never seen one before.
“You got this out of a fish’s gut, Chubby?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Guess that old grouper seen it shine and took a snap at it. Must have stuck in his belly until I pulled him out.”
I handed the coin back to him. “Well then, Chubby, that goes to show there is some truth in my story.” “Guess it does, Harry,” he admitted, and I went to the cave to fetch the drawings of the Dawn Light and a gas lantern. We pored over the drawings. Chubby’s grandfather had sailed as a topmastman in an East Indianian, which made Chubby something of an expert. He was of the opinion that all passengers” luggage and other small pieces would be stowed in the forehold beside the forecastle - I wasn’t going to argue with him. Never hex yourself, as Chubby had warned me so often.
When I produced my tide tables and began calculating the time differences for our latitude, Chubby actually smiled, although it was hard to recognize it as such. It looked much more like a sneer, for Chubby had no faith in rows of printed figures in pamphlets. He preferred to judge the tides by the sea clock in his own head. I have known him to call the tides accurately for a week ahead without reference to any other source.
“I reckon we will have a high tide at one-forty tomorrow,” I announced.
“Man, you got it right for once,” Chubby agreed.
Without the enormous loads that had been forced on her recently, the whaleboat seemed to run Wwith a new lightness and eagerness. The two Evinrudes put her up on the plane, and she flew at the narrow channel through the reef like a ferret into a rabbithole.
Angelo stood in the bows, using hand signals to indicate underwater snags to Chubby in the stern. We had picked good water to come in on, and Chubby met the dying surf with confidence. The little whaleboat tossed up her head and kicked her heels over the swells, splattering us with spray.
The passage was more exhilarating than dangerous, and Sherry whooped and laughed with the thrill of it.
Chubby shot us through the narrow neck between the coral cliffs with feet to spare on either side, for the whaleboat had half of Wave Dancer’s beam, then we zigzagged through the twisted gut of the channel beyond and at last burst out into the pool.
“No good trying to anchor,” Chubby growled, “it’s deep here. The reef goes down sheer. We got twenty fathoms under us here and the bottom is foul.” “How you going to hold?” I asked.
“Somebody got to sit at the motor and keep her there with power.”
“That’s going to chew fuel, Chubby.”
“Don’t I know it,“he growled.
With a tide only half made, the occasional wave was coming in over the reef. Not yet with much force, just a frothing spill that cascaded into the pool, turning the surface to ginger beer with bubbles. However, as the tide mounted so the surf would come over stronger. Soon it would be unsafe in the pool and we would have to run for it. We had about two hours in which to work, depending on the stage of neap and spring tides. It was a cycle of too little or too much. At low tide there was insufficient water to negotiate the entrance channel - and at high tide the surf breaking over the reef might overwhelm the open whaleboat. Each of our moves had to be finely judged.
Now every minute was precious. Sherry and I were already dressed in our wet suits with faceplates on our foreheads, and it was necessary only for Angelo to lift the heavy scuba sets on to our backs and to clinch the webbing harness.
“Ready, Sherry?” I asked, and she nodded, the ungainly mouthpiece already stuffed into her pretty mouth.
“Let’s go. We dropped over the side, and sank down together beneath the cigar-shaped hull of the whaleboat. The surface was a moving sheet of quicksilver above us, and the spill over the reef charged the upper layer of water with a rash of champagne bubbles.
I checked with Sherry. She was comfortable, and breathing in the slow rhythm of the experienced diver that conserves air and ventilates the body effectively. She grinned at me, her lips distorted by the mouthpiece and her eyes enormously enlarged by the glass faceplate, and she gave me the high sign with both thumbs.
I pointed my head straight for the bottom and began pedalling with my swimming fins, going down fast, reluctant to waste air on a slow descent.
The pool was a dark hole below us. The surrounding walls of coral shut out much of the light, and gave it an ominous appearance. The water was cold and gloomy, I felt a prickle of almost superstitious awe. There was something sinister about this place, as though some evil and malignant force lurked in the sombre depths.
I crossed my fingers at my sides, and went on down, following the sheer coral cliff. The coral was riddled with dark caves and ledges that overhung the lower walls. Coral of a hundred different sorts, outcropped in weird and lovely shapes, tinted with the complete spectrum of colour. Weeds and marine growth waved and tossed in the movement of the water, like the hands of supplicating beggars, or the dark manes of wild horses.
I looked back at Sherry. She was close behind me and she smiled again. Clearly she felt nothing of my own sense of awe. We went on down.
From secret ledges protruded the long yellow antennae of giant crayfish, gently they moved, sensing our presence in the disturbed water. Clouds of multi-coloured coral fish floated along the cliffface; they sparkled like gemstones in the fading blue light that penetrated into the depths of the pool.
Sherry tapped my shoulder and we paused to peer into a deep black cave. Two great owl eyes peered back at us, and as my eyes became accustomed to the light I made out the gargantuan head of a grouper. It was speckled like a plover’s egg, splotches of brown and black on a beige-grey ground and the mouth was a wide slash between thick rubbery lips. As we watched, the huge fish assumed a defensive attitude. It blew itself out, increasing its already impressive girth, spread the gill covers, enlarged the head and finally it opened its mouth in a gape that could have swallowed a man whole - a cavernous maw, lined with spiked teeth. Sherry seized my hand. We drew away from the cave, and the fish closed its mouth and subsided. Any time I wanted to claim a world record grouper I knew where to come looking. Even allowing for the magniffing effect of water I judged that he was close to a thousand pounds in weight.
We went on down the coral wall, and all around us was the wondrous marine world seething with life and beauty, death and danger. Lovely little damsel fish nestled in the venomous arms of giant sea anemone, immune to the deadly darts; a moray eel slid like a long black battle pennant along the coral wall, reached its lair and turned to threaten us with dreadful ragged teeth and glittering snakelike eyes.
Down we went, pedalling with our fins, and now at last I saw the bottom. It was a dark jungle of sea growth, dense stands of sea bamboo and petrified coral trees thrust out of the smothering marine foliage, while mounds and hillocks of coral were worked and riven into shapes that teased the imagination and covered I knew not what.
We hung above this impenetrable jungle and I checked my time-elapse wristwatch and depth gauge. I had one hundred and twenty-eight feet, and time elapsed was five minutes forty seconds.
I gave Sherry the hand signal to remain where she was and I sank down to the tops of the marine jungle and
