Unable to place my explosive in prepared shot holes, I would now have to use a larger charge than I really wanted and rely on the tunnel effect of the passageway for a secondary shock to drive the panel inwards. I used six half sticks of gelignite, placed on the corners and in the centre of the bulkhead, and I secured them to bolts driven into the woodwork with a slap hammer.
It took almost half an hour to set up the blast, and afterwards it was a relief to leave the claustrophobic confines of the ancient hull and to rise up through clean clear water to the silver surface, trailing the insulated wires behind us.
Chubby fired the shots while we stripped off our equipment. The shock was cushioned by the hull of the wreck so that it was hardly noticeable to us on the surface.
We left the pool immediately afterwards and ran home with rising spirits to the prospect of a lazy day while we waited for the tide to clean the pool of carrion.
In the afternoon Sherry and I went on a picnic down to the south tip of the island. For provisions we took a wickercovered two-litre bottle of Portuguese virws verde, but to supplement this we dug out a batch of big sand clams which I wrapped in seaweed and reburied in the sand. Over them I built an open fire of driftwood.
By the time we had almost finished the wine, the sun was setting and the clams were ready to eat. The wine and the food and the glorious sunset had a softening effect on Sherry North. She became doe-eyed and melting, and when the sunset faded at last and made way for a fat yellow lovers” moon, we walked home barefooted on the wet sand.
The next morning Chubby and I worked for half an hour bringing down the equipment we needed from the whaleboat and stacking it on the gundeck of the wreck before we were able to penetrate deeper into the hull.
The heavy charges I had set against the well had wrought the sort of havoc I feared. They had torn out the decking and smashed in the bulkheads of the passenger cabins, blocking the passage for a quarter of its length.
We found a good anchor point for our block and tackle and while Chubby rigged it, I left him and floated back to the nearest cabin. I played my torch through the shattered panelling. The interior was, like everything else, smothered in a thick furring of marine growth but I could make out the shape of the simple furniture beneath it.
I eased myself through the gap, and moved slowly across the cluttered deck, fascinated by the objects which I found scattered and heaped about the cabin. There were items of porcelain and china, a shattered washbasin and a magnificent chamber pot with a pink floral design showing through the film of accumulated sediment. There were cosmetic pots and scent bottles, smaller indefinable metal objects and mounds of rotted and amorphous material which may have been clothing, curtaining or mattresses and bedclothing.
I glanced at my watch and saw that it was time to leave and surface for a change of air bottles. As I turned, a small square object caught my attention and I played the torch. beam upon it while I gently brushed it clear of the thick layer of muddy filth. It Was a wooden box, the size of a Portable transistor radio, but the lid was beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell. I picked it up and tucked it under my arm. Chubby had finished rigging the block and tackle -and he was waiting for me beside the gunk deck ladder. When we surfaced beside the whaleboat I passed the box up to Angelo before climbing aboard.
While Sherry poured coffee for us and Angelo changed the demand valves to the fresh scuba bottles, I lit a cheroot and examined the box.
It was in a sorry state of deterioration, I saw at once. The inlay was rotten and falling out of its seating, the rosewood was swollen and distorted and the lock and hinges half eaten away.
Sherry came to sit beside me on the thwart and examined my prize with me. She recognized it immediately.
“It’s a ladies” jewel box,” she exclaimed. “Open it, Harry.
Let’s see what’s inside.”
I slipped the blade of a screwdriver under the lock and at the first pressure the hinges snapped and the lid flew off. “Oh, Harry!” Sherry was first into it, and she came out with a thick gold chain and a heavy locket of the same material. “This stuff is so in fashion, you’d never believe it.” Everyone was dipping into the box now. Angelo ripped off a pair of gold and sapphire earrings which immediately replaced the brass pair he habitually wore, while Chubby picked an enormous necklace of garnets which he hung around his neck and preened like a teenage girl.
“For my missus,“he explained.
It was the personal jewellery -of a middle-class wife, probably some minor official or civil servant - none of it of great value, but in its context it was a fascinating collection. Inevitably Miss. North acquired the lion’s share - but I managed to snatch away a thick plain gold wedding band.
“What do you want with that?” she challenged me, reluctant to yield a single item.
“I’ll find a use for it,” I told her, and gave her one of my looks of deep significance, which was completely wasted for she had returned to ransacking the jewel box.
Nevertheless I tucked the ring safely away in the small zip pocket of my canvas gear bag. Chubby by this stage was bedecked with chunky jewellery like a Hindu bride.
“My God, Chubby, you’re a dead ringer for Liz Taylor,” I told him and he accepted the compliment with a graceful inclination of his head.
I had a difficult job getting him interested in a return to the wreck, but once we were in the passenger deck again, he worked like a giant amongst the shattered wreckage.
We hauled out the panelling and timber baulks that blocked the passage by use of the block and tackle and our combined strength, and we dragged it down to the gundeck and stacked it out of the way in the recesses of that gloomy gallery.
We had reached the well of the forward hold by the time our air supplies were almost exhausted. The heavy planking had broken up in the explosion and beyond the opening we could make out what appeared to be a solid dark mass of material. I guessed that this was a conglomerate formed by the cargo out of its own weight and pressure.
However, it was afternoon the following day before I found that I was correct. We were at last into the hold, but I had not expected such a Herculean task as awaited us there.
The contents of the hold had been impregnated with sea water for over a century. Ninety per cent of the containers had rotted and collapsed, and the perishable contents had coalesced into a friable dark mass.
Within this solid heap of marine compost, the metal objects, the containers of stronger and impervious material and other imperishable objects, both large and small, were studded like lucky coins in a Christmas pudding. We would have to dig for them.
At this point we encountered our next problem. At the slightest disturbance of this* rotted maw the water was immediately filled with a swirling storm of dark particles that blotted out the beams of the torches and plunged us into clouds of blinding darkness.
We were forced to work by sense of touch alone. it was painfully slow progress. When we encountered some solid body in the softness we had to drag it clear, manoeuvre it down the passage, lower it to the gundeck and there try to identify it. Sometimes we were obliged to break open what remained of the container, to get at the contents.
If they were of little value or interest, we tucked them away in the depths of the gundeck to keep our working field clear.
At the end of the first day’s work we had salvaged only one item which we decided was worth raising. It was a sturdy case of hard wood, covered with what appeared to be leather and with the corners bound in heavy brass. It was the size of a large cabin trunk.
It was so heavy that Chubby and I could not lift it between us.
The weight alone gave me high hopes. I believed it could very readily contain part of the golden throne. Although the container did not look like one that had been manufactured by an Indian village carpenter and his sons in the middle of the nineteenth century, yet there was a chance that the throne had been repacked before it was shipped from Bombay.
If it did contain part of the throne, then our task would be simplified. We would know what type of container to look for in the future. Using the block and tackle Chubby and I dragged the case down the gundeck to the gunport and there we shrouded’it in a nylon cargo net to prevent it bursting open or breaking during the ascent. To the eyes
