Something cold and frightening slithered up my spine, and involuntarily I glanced about me into the dark and forbidding recesses of the hold, almost as if I expected the spirits of the Mogul prince guardians to be lurking there.
Sherry squeezed my shoulder again and I returned my attention to the golden idol, but the sense of awe was so strong upon me that I had to force myself to return to the task of clearing the packing from around it. I worked very carefully for I was fully aware that the slightest scratch or damage would greatly reduce the value and the beauty of this image.
When our working time was exhausted we drew back and stared at the exposed head and shoulders, and the torch beam was reflected from the brilliant suece in arrows of golden light that lit the hold like some holy shrine. We turned then and left it to the silence and the dark, while we went up into the sunlight.
Chubby was aware immediately that something significant had happened, but he said nothing until we had climbed aboard and in silence shed our equipment. I lit a cheroot and drew deeply upon it, not bothering to mop the droplets of seawater that ran from my sodden hair down my cheeks. Chubby was watching me but Sherry was withdrawn from us, wrapped in secret thoughts, turned inward upon herself.
“You found it?” Chubby asked at last, and I nodded.
“Yes, Chubby, it’s there.” I was surprised to hear that my own voice was husky and unsteady.
Angelo who had not sensed the mood looked up quickly from where he was stacking our equipment. He opened his mouth to say something, but then slowly closed it as he became aware of the charged atmosphere.
We were all silent, moved beyond speech. I had not expected it would be like this, and I looked at Sherry. She met my gaze at last and her dark eyes were haunted.
“Let’s go home, Harry,” she said and I nodded at Chubby. He buoyed the hose and dropped it overboard to be retrieved on the following day. Then he threw the motors into gear and swung our bows to face the channel.
Sherry moved across the whaleboat and came to sit beside me on the thwart. I placed my arm about her shoulders but neither of us spoke until the whaleboat slid silently up on to the white beach of the island.
In the sunset Sherry and I climbed to the peak above the camp and we sat close together staring out across the reef, and watching the light fade on the sea and plunge the pool at Gunfire Reef into deeper shadow.
“I feel guilty in a way,” Sherry whispered, “as though I have committed some dreadful sacrilege.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “I know what you mean.”
“That thing - it seemed to have a life of its own. It was strange that we should have exposed its head, before any other part of it. just suddenly to have that face glaring out at one,” she shuddered and was silent for a few moments, “and yet I felt also a deep satisfaction, a good quiet feeling inside myself I don’t know if I can explain it properly - for the two feelings were so opposite, and yet mingled.”
“I understand. I had the same feelings.”
“What are we going to do with it, Harry, what are we going to do with that fantastic animal?”
Somehow I did not want to talk about money and buyers at that moment - which in itself was a measure of how profound was my involvement with the golden idol.
“Let’s go down,” I suggested instead. “Angelo will be waiting dinner for us.”
Sitting in the firelight with a good meal filling and warming the cold empty place in my belly, and with a mug of whisky in one hand and a cheroot in the other, I felt at last able to tell the others about it.
I explained how we had come upon it, and I described the fearsome golden head. They listened in complete and intent silence.
“We have cleared the head down to the shoulder. I think that is where it ends. It is notched there, probably to fit into the next section. Tomorrow we should be able to lift it clear, but it’s going to be ticklish work. We can’t just haul it out with the block and tackle. It has to be protectea from damage before we can move it.”
Chubby made a suggestion, and for a while we discussed in detail how the head should be handled to minimize the risk of damage.
“We can expect that all five cases containing the treasure were loaded together. I hope to find them in the same part of the hold, probably similarly packed in wooden crates and reinforced with hoop iron-“
“Except for the stones,” Sherry interrupted. “In the courtmartial evidence, the Subahdar described how they were packed in a paymaster’s chest.”
“Yes, of course, I agreed.
“What would that look like?” Sherry asked.
“I saw one on display in the arsenal at Copenhagen which would probably be very similar. It’s like a small iron safe - the size of a large biscuit bin.” I sketched the size with the spread of my hands like a fisherman boasting of his catch. “It is ribbed with iron bands and has a locking rod and a pair of head padlocks at each corner.”
“It sounds formidable.”
“After a hundred-odd years in the pool it will probably be soft as chalk - even if it’s still in one piece.”
“We’ll find out tomorrow,” Sherry announced with confidence.
We tramped down to the beach in the morning with rain drumming on our oilskins and cascadwing from them in sheets. The cloud was right down on the peaks, oily dark banks that rolled steadily in from the sea to loose their bomb loads of moisture upon the island.
The force of the rain lifted a fine pearly spray from the surface of the sea, and the moving grey curtains reduced visibility to a few hundred yards so that the island disappeared in a grey haze as we ran out to the reef.
Everything in the whaleboat was cold and clammy and running with water. Angelo had to bale regularly and we huddled miserably in our oilskins while Chubby stood in the stern and slitted his eyes against the slanting, driving rain as he negotiated the channel.
The flourescent orange buoy still bobbed close in beside the reef and we picked it up and dragged in the end of the hose and connected it to the pump head. It served as an anchor cable and Chubby could cut the motors.
It was a relief to leave the boat, escape from the cold needle lances of the rain and go down into the quiet blue mists of the pool.
After withstanding considerable pressure from Chubby and me, Angelo had at last succumbed to veiled threats and open bribes, and relinquished his ticking mattress stuffed with coconut-fibre. Once the mattress was thoroughly soaked with seawater, it sank readily, and I took it down with me in a neat roll, tied with line.
Only when I had manoeuvred it through the gunport, down the gundeck and into the passenger deck did I cut the line and spread the mattress.
Then Sherry and I returned to the hold where the tiger’s head still snarled blindly into the torchlight.
Ten minutes” work was all that was necessary to free the head from its nest. As I suspected, this section ended at shoulder level, and the junction area was neatly flanged clearly it would mate with the trunk section of the throne, and the flange would engage the female slot to form a joint that would be strong and barely perceivable.
When I rolled the head carefully on to its side I made another discovery. Somehow I had taken it for granted that the idol was made from solid gold, but now I saw that in fact it was a hollow casting.
The actual thickness of metal was only about an inch, and the interior was rough and knobbly to the touch. I realized immediately that a solid idol would have weighed hundreds of tons, and that the cost of such construction would have been prohibitive even to an emperor who could support the construction of a temple as vast as the Taj Mahal.
The thinness of the metal skin had naturally weakened the structure, and I saw immediately when I turned it that the head had already suffered damage.
The rim of the neck cavity was flattened and distorted, probably during its secret journey through the Indian forests in an unsprung cart - or possibly during the wild death struggles of the Dawn Light during the cyclone.
Bracing myself in the entrance to the hold, I stooped over it to test its weight, and I cradled the head in my arms like the body of a child. Gradually I increased the strength of my lift and was pleased, but not surprised, when it came up in my arms.
It was, of course, tremendously weighty, and it required all of my strength from a carefully selected stance - but I could lift it. It weighed not much more than three hundred pounds, I thought, as I turned awkwardly under the oppressive load of gleaming gold and laid it gently on the coir mattress that Sherry was holding ready to receive it. Then I straightened up to rest and massage those parts where the sharp edges of metal had bitten into my flesh.
