While I did so I tried a little mental arithmetic: 300 pounds avoirdupois at 16 ounces to the pound was 4800 ounces, at 150 to the ounce was almost three-quarters of a million dollars. That was the intrinsic value of the head alone. There were three other sections to the throne, all were probably heavier and larger - then there was the value of the stones. It was an astronomic total, but could be doubled or even trebled if the artistic and historical value of the hoard were taken into account.
I abandoned my calculations. They were meaningless at this time, and instead I helped Sherry to fold the mattress around the tiger’s head and to rope it all into a secure bundle. Then I could use the block and tackle to drag it down to the companion ladder and lower it to the gundeck.
Laboriously-we dragged it to the gunport and there we struggled to pass it through the restricted opening, but at last it was accomplished and we could place the nylon cargo net around it and inflate the airbags. Again we had to step the mast to lift it aboard.
But there was no suggestion that the head should remain covered once we had it safety in the whaleboat, and with what ceremony and aplomb I could muster in the streaming tropical rain, I unveiled it for Chubby and Angelo. They were an appreciative audience. Their excitement superseded even the miserable sodden conditions, and they crowded about the head to fondle and examine it amid shouted comment and giddy laughter. It was the festive gaiety which our first discovery of the treasure had lacked. I had taken the precaution of slipping my silver travelling flask into my gearbag, and now I laced the steaming mugs of black coffee with liberal portions of Scotch whisky and we toasted each other and the golden tiger in the steaming liquor, laughing while the rain gushed down upon us and rattled on the fabulous treasure at our feet.
At last I swilled out my mug over the side and checked my watch.
“We’ll do another dive,” I decided. “You can start the pump again, Chubby.”
Now we knew where to continue the search, and after I had broken out the remains of the case that had contained the head, I saw, -in the opening beyond, the side of a similar crate and I pressed the hose into the area to clear it of dirt before proceeding.
My excavations must have unbalanced the rotting heap of ancient cargo, and it needed only the further disturbance caused by suction of the hose to dislodge a part of it. With a groaning and rumbling it collapsed around us and instantly the swirling clouds of muck defeated the efforts of the hose to clear them and we were plunged into darkness once more.
I groped quickly for Sherry through the darkness, and she must have been searching for me, for our hands met and held. With a squeeze she reassured me that she had not been hit by the sliding cargo, and I could begin to clear out the fouled water with the suction hose.
Within five minutes I could make out the yellow glow of Sherry’s torch through the murk, and then her shape and the vague jumble of freshly revealed cargo.
With Sherry beside me, we moved farther into the hold again.
The slide had covered the wooden crate on which I had been working, but in exchange it had exposed something else that I recognized instantly, despite its sorry condition, for it was almost exactly as I had described it to Sherry the previous evening, even down to the detail of the rod that ran through the locking device and the double padlocks. The paymaster’s chest was, however, almost eaten through with rust and when I touched it my hand came away smeared with the chalky red of iron oxide.
In each end of the case were heavy iron carrying rings, which had most likely swivelled at one time but were now solidly rusted into the metal side - but still they enabled me to get a firm grip and gently to work the chest out of the clutching bed of muck. It came free in a minor storm of debris, and I was able to lift it fairly easily. I doubt that the total weight exceeded a hundred and fifty pounds, and I felt certain that most of that was made up by the massive iron construction.
After the enormously heavy head in its soft bulky mattress, it was a minor labour to get the smaller lighter chest out of the wreck, and it needed only a single airbag to lift it dangling out of the gunport.
Once again the tide and surf were pouring alarmingly into the pool, and the whaleboat tossed and kicked impatiently as we lifted the chest inboard and laid it on the canvas-covered heap of scuba bottles in the bows.
Then at last Chubby could start the motors and take us out through the channel. We were still all high with excitement, and the silver flask passed from hand to hand.
“What’s it feel like to be rich, Chubby?” I called, and he took a swallow from the flask, screwing up his eyes and then coughing at the sting of the liquor before he grinned at me. “Just like before, man. No change yet.”
“What are you going to do with your share? Sherry insisted. ”
“It’s a little late in the day, Miss. Sherry - if only I had it twenty years ago, then I have use for it - and how.” He took other swallow. “That’s the trouble - you never have it en you’re young, and when you’re old, it’s just too late.”
“What about you, Angelo? Sherry turned to him as he perched on the rusted pay-chest, with his gipsy curls heavy “with rain dangling on to his cheeks and the droplets clinging in the long dark eyelashes. “You’re still young, what will you do?” Miss. Sherry, I’ve been sitting here thinking about it, and already I’ve got a list from here to St. Mary’s and back.” It took two trips from the beach to the camp before we had both the head and the chest out of the rain and into the cave we were using as the store room.
Chubby lit two gas lanterns, for the lowering sky had brought on the evening prematurely, and. we gathered around the chest, while the golden head snarled down upon us from a place of honour, an earthen ledge hewn into the aback of the cave.
With a* hacksaw and jemmy bar, Chubby and I began work on the locking device and found immediately that the decrepit appearance of the metal was deceptive, clearly it had been hardened and alloyed. We broke three hacksaw blades in the first half hour and Sherry professed to be severely shocked by my language. I sent her to fetch a bottle of Chivas Regal from our cave to keep the workers in good cheer and Chubby and I took the Scottish equivalent of a tea break.
With renewed vigour we resumed our assault on the case, but it was another twenty minutes before he had sawn through the rod. By that time it was dark outside the cave. The rain was still hissing down steadily, but the soft clatter of the palm fronds heralded the rising westerly wind that would disperse the storm. clouds by morning.
With the locking rod sawn through, we started it from its ringbolts with a two-pound hammer from the toolbox. Each blow loosened a soft patter of rust scales from the surface of the metal, and it required a number of goodly blows to drive the rod from the clutching fist of corrosion.
Even when it was cleared, the lid would not lift. Although we hammered it from a dozen different directions and I treated it with a further laying on of abuse, it would not yield.
I called another whisky break to discuss the problem. “What about a stick of gelly?” Chubby suggested with a gleam in his eye, but reluctantly I had to restrain him.
“We need a welding torch,” Angelo announced. “Brilliant,” I applauded him ironically, for I was fast losing my patience. “The nearest welding set is fifty miles away - and you make a remark like that.”
It was Sherry who discovered the secondary locking device, a secret pinning through the lid that hooked into recesses in the body of the chest. It obviously needed a key to release this, but for lack of it I selected a half-inch punch and drove it into the keyhole and by luck I caught the locking arm and snapped it.
Chubby started on the lid again, and this time it came up stiffly on corroded hinges with some of the rotting evilsmelling contents sticking to the inside of it and tearing away from the main body of aged brown cloth. It was woven cotton fabric, a wet solid brick of it, and I guessed that it had been cheap native robes or bolts of cloth used as packing.
I was about to explore further, but suddenly found myself in the second row looking over Sherry North’s shoulder. “You’d better let me do this,” she said. “You might break something. “Come on!” I protested.
“Why don’t you get yourself another drink?” she suggested placatingly, as she began lifting off layers of sodden fabric. The suggestion had some merit, I thought, so I refilled my mug and watched Sherry expose a layer of clo&wrapped parcels.
Each was tied with twine that fell apart at the touch, and the first parcel also disintegrated as she tried to lift it out. Sherry cupped her hand around the decaying mass and scooped it on to a folded tarpaulin placed beside the chest. The parcel contained scores of small nutty objects, varying in size from slightly larger than a matchhead to a ripe grape and each had been folded in a wisp of paper, which, like the cotton, had completely rotted away.
Sherry picked out one of these lumpy objects and rubbed away the remnants of paper between thumb and
