Treasure Hunters Read online

  ‘Pat?’

  ‘Coming.’ Pat reluctantly replaced the earphones on the hook and left the wheelhouse.

  7 / morning

  Pat woke up to the rich aroma of grilled fish and banged his head on the wooden ceiling. He lay back for a moment, trying to make sense of shadows and beams of sunlight around him and the slight rocking of everything. He gripped the hard edge of his bed.

  Very narrow bed, he thought. Ah. Bunk.

  You’re on the Tub, beneath the upper deck and you should be up there.

  The cabin was below the deck, behind the wheelhouse. He could see a shadowed primitive galley set against the curve of the hull, but it wasn’t being used now. The fish was being cooked above him. He swung from the bunk, thudded on the deck, climbed the steps and moved into a brilliant morning. It was another still day, but light airs feather-touched the surface of the water in passing.

  ‘See, he’s not dead.’ Col was fanning a raised barbeque at the stern.

  ‘Pity, I was going to use him as bait.’ Matt was sharpening a long knife at a low table under a faded blue sunshade.

  ‘Um, hi.’

  ‘We thought we’d let you catch up with your sleep after that long trip,’ Col said.

  ‘Because you are a feeble city slicker,’ said Matt. ‘But here you are. Good. Eat and work.’

  Col flipped one of the grilled fish onto a tin plate, scooped on vegetables with rice, and passed the plate to Pat. ‘I’m going down to see what we’ve got. Want to come?’

  ‘Hey, can I?’ Pat grinned.

  ‘How do you feel?’ said Matt. ‘It’s been a bit of a hike for you to get here.’

  ‘Fine, fine. I slept like a log, even forgot about the mob.’

  Col looked up quickly. ‘Mob?’

  Matt scratched his ear. ‘We ran into the flag crowd. I didn’t mention it because there wasn’t any trouble.’

  ‘The independence people? How many?’

  ‘Oh lots!’ said Pat. ‘They filled the street, banging, shouting and dancing. They had thousands of flags and they put a huge flag on the town’s water tank ’’

  Col shook his head slowly. ‘They shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘Ah, don’t worry,’ Matt said. ‘They didn’t bother us in the town and they won’t bother us way out here.’

  ‘I wasn’t worried about us. I’m scared for them.’

  Matt looked at Col for a moment, then he shrugged. ‘Well, there’s nothing you can do. Hey, Pat, if you are going to dive I need to see your licence and your logbook.’

  ‘Oh yes, sure.’ Pat placed his plate down, rushed to the cabin and came back with the stained book flapping in his hand.

  ‘I meant after breakfast,’ Matt said. ‘You’re not going down straight after a meal, and we want the sun to give us more light down there.’ But he looked at the plastic card with its leering photo of Pat and opened the logbook.

  Pat beamed. A massive amount of work had gone into getting that licence, and yes, he was a little proud of it. The time he spent sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool with heavy gear blowing bubbles. And the questions: What is nitrogen poison? How long can you stay down at thirty metres? What happens to you with the bends? What can you do? And the horror stories: If you swim fast to the surface from deep water while holding your breath you sort of blow up.

  Getting the licence was like doing tests, but the logbook was different. That was a book of adventures; swimming, chasing fish in the shallows, in the deep blue ocean outside Sydney, seeing a seal whip past ’

  ‘Okay?’ said Col.

  ‘It’ll do,’ said Matt.

  Pat frowned for a moment. That’s all? But he shrugged it aside and attacked the fish. ‘Um, what do you think we’ve got down there?’

  ‘Ah,’ Col opened his hands. ‘Who knows? Maybe an old anchor.’ He looked at Matt.

  ‘Probably.’ Matt’s eyes shifted, as if someone was on the Tub listening.

  Suddenly Col laughed. ‘We are a bit superstitious, aren’t we? Seeing demons everywhere.’

  ‘Well, after Lady Jane…’ Matt scowled.

  ‘That was bad. I was so damn sure that I knew where it was I stopped thinking.’

  ‘Touch of the lovelorn.’

  Col glared briefly at Matt. ‘I guess I can grin a bit now. That’s something.’

  Pat concentrated on the fish, feeling he should not be hearing this.

  But Col cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘There was a lady and she left. So I spent more time inside books, chasing bits of history, until I stumbled across Lady Jane, a clipper carrying Chinese diggers’ gold to Singapore and Canton ’ You know about this, and the hurricane and the Clipper Rocks. We dived for weeks, but there was nothing there, nothing at all. Maybe a Javanese poet saw the ship from the rocks, it doesn’t matter. It sank somewhere between here and Singapore. We can’t find it, it’s gone.’

  ‘But we have another ship!’ Matt clapped his hands brightly.

  ‘If we’re lucky,’ mumbled Col.

  ‘We’re lucky. I feel it in my bones. Pat, where’s the Malacca token?’

  Pat groped in his pocket and for a horrible moment he thought he had lost it. But he clutched it and put it on the stained wooden table. He looked at Col. ‘Oh, Matt said you would be the guy to talk to about the token.’

  ‘You mean the trap?’

  ‘Trap?’

  8 / trap

  Col picked up the token, turning it in his fingers, making a flicker of a sun-spark play over his face. ‘Different people look for different things when they hunt for a wreck or open up an ancient tomb. Some search in the hope of getting the glorious feeling of a gold digger finding a nugget. To pull from the bottom of the sea, or from a reef in a black hole, something the world dreams of, has to be a wonderful feeling.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Matt moved towards the air-compressor.

  ‘I don’t knock it. It’s partly why I’m here now, why I’m not a teacher anymore. But there is something else. It’s like digging out a dinosaur bone from an ancient swamp. If you’re lucky, you find out which dinosaur. What was he doing – chasing smaller dinosaurs, or just strolling? Why did he die at that particular moment? So many stories, and all of them change us a little today.’

  Col flattened the token on the table. ‘So it is with this. We know it was made in Malacca in around 1500. We don’t know how it got to the shallows off this island, in a different sea five hundred years later. We do not know the significance of the small hole it has. Maybe if we find a ship we will solve its riddles ’ But we know enough of its history to make it breathe.

  Pat squinted dubiously at the token.

  Col looked at Pat’s face and laughed. ‘All right, all right. 1500. What do you know about it?’

  ‘Well, it was before Captain Cook, before Magellan sailed round the world –’

  ‘Stop right there. Don’t go any further. In 1509, five Portuguese caravels – you know what they are?’

  ‘Sort of. Old ships.’

  ‘Wait.’ He jumped up, hurried to the wheelhouse and came back with a large black book. He sat down next to Pat and opened the book to some sepia sketches of a threemasted ship being loaded from a dock and at sea. The ship was built up at the stern and the bow, which looked like two little castles on the water.

  ‘That’s what they sailed in around 1500. Caravels. How’s your imagination?’

  Pat remembered the panics on the plane, in the taxi and the dinghy. ‘Too good.’

  ‘Try it then, the Tub has got the full length of a caravel, even if it hasn’t the height. Columbus sailed across the Atlantic in the Tub without the engine. No wonder the crew wanted to mutiny! The caravels weren’t comfortable, the sailors and the soldiers would sleep anywhere – on the hatches, on the dark corner of the deck – the cook would have his stove shoved against the rail, the helmsman had to control the ship with a massive tiller ’’

  Pat looked at the sketches and at the Tub, imagining the size of the caravel. He took away
the wheelhouse, the crane, drums at the bow and suddenly there was the high castle - the quarterdeck – the thick masts and the drooping sails.

  He could almost step into the feet of the helmsman in the sketch – call him Diego. He is leaning against the long trunk of the tiller, feeling the faint tremble of the water flowing past the rudder.

  Diego is bigger than you, thought Pat – he has to be, working with that tiller – but not by that much. Maybe a few years older, he might have started sailing on this caravel as young as you. His father made him look after some sheep all the time. It is very hard to carry on a conversation with a mob who can only say ‘baa – baa – baa?’ So one morning he said ‘bah!’ and ran away to sea.

  And now he can see a large compass before him, but he can’t see where he’s going. It’s like looking out of a tunnel, with the quarterdeck over him and sleeping sailors lying against the dark walls. Outside the tunnel he could see the foot of the mainmast, wide, with pulleys as big as watermelons and rope too thick to get a hand around. Then there was the cook with his stove, sailors eating, a singer with a tambourine and the solid wall of the other castle at the bow ’

  Matt pulled a cord like a motor mower and the air-compressor coughed into life. He began to fill the long tanks near it.

  ‘They were rough, those ships,’ Col said. ‘But they were good enough for Columbus in 1492 and Diopo Lopes de Sequeira in 1509. Call him Old Sec. When Old Sec led five caravels into the harbour of Malacca his crews must have been goggling. They would have been used to the few ships of Lisbon, Cadiz, maybe creaking London, but this was completely different ’’

  Diego hears the excited shouting, sees the sailors pulling down the sails, but he cannot see anything of Malacca. He has to listen to an old carpenter who clings to some steps and passes messages to him from the captain on the quarterdeck. ‘West, north-west, steady, steady, north-north-west, steady.’ Then the last sail is dropped, and the anchor is splashed down.

  Only then can Diego let go of the tiller and walk out of the tunnel to the sun-baked deck. At last he can see…

  Pat lifted his eyes from the book, looked at the quiet island, at the shimmering town and the empty water.

  Col said: ‘A little more than a hundred years before Sec’s arrival, Malacca was a tiny port with some fishermen and pirates. But in 1400 a murderous Javanese prince moved in and the port grew. The prince made friends with China, married a princess from Pasai, Sumatra, and the port began attracting trade. By 1509 Malacca was trading Chinese silk, gold thread, porcelain, Pasai pepper, Indian cloth, tapestries, Borneo gold, Moluccan spices, Burmese silver, teak, Malaccan tin, Banda Island feathers, Arabian perfumes, pearls, even Venetian glass. When Sec’s small flotilla sailed into Malacca they had reached the richest, busiest port in the world ’’

  Diego stares at the crowded water in amazement. He could remember watching Lisbon’s busy river port when he was looking after the sheep on the rocky hills. He used to watch grey ships being hauled onto muddy banks where new planks, rudders and masts were fitted to replace the old. He would stare at heavy caravels creaking slowly up the river, unloading and loading for days before they sailed to the open sea. He had wished that he were on each ship that left, until one day he actually was on one of them. Back then, he had thought that Lisbon was the centre of the world.

  Not anymore. The harbour of Malacca makes Lisbon seem like a deserted mud bank and he cannot understand how he managed to reach the ship’s anchorage without hitting several ships. The Portuguese caravels are jostling with dhows from the Red Sea and India; galleys from Sumatra, Java and Borneo; massive junks from China. The ships are surrounded by many sampans taking the cargo ashore or delivering new cargo.

  ‘Heya, watch it, Diego, you’ll catch a fly!’ A soldier with a black beard slaps Diego on the shoulder.

  Diego clicks his mouth shut but smiles at him.

  Blackbeard nods at a junk that is longer and higher than a caravel. ‘I like the look of that. Do you think it would sail better than us, with all the bamboo in the sail?’

  Diego is used to questions from Blackbeard. That creaking man has been wandering around the ship, examining things from the day it sailed. He is a soldier but if he keeps on asking questions he will sail the caravel as well as Diego. Almost. ‘No, it can’t be as good as ours.’

  ‘Oh, why?’

  ‘If it was any good we would have done it first.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  Diego looks beyond the bustling harbour at the city. Past the anchored ships lies a slow, deep river that divides Malacca into two separate cities. Most of the ships are south of the river in the deep water, close to a steep hill with a gleaming mosque, a cemetery and a marble palace on its peak. But the sampans and the other little boats scurry to and from the anchored ships across the brown flood of the river to the other part of the city.

  There are no hills on the northern side of the river. The boats tie up in many wharfs, and men lug their cargoes through high protective palisades towards warehouses. Beyond the warehouses there are crowded markets, streets of shops and houses. There are plush houses – merchants’ houses? – surrounded by orchards and flowers. The two halves of Malacca are linked by a broad wooden bridge where bullock carts, street sellers, soldiers, merchants, even an elephant jostle together ’

  Col said: ‘Some merchants were probably handing around tokens like that in the streets on that day,’ Col said. ‘And Old Sec just wanted to do business with those merchants ’’

  Pat looked at the shimmering token. ‘But ’’

  ‘But the reputation of the Portuguese had reached Malacca long before Sec’s little flotilla sailed in. Other Portuguese had been attacking Arab fleets and ports from Mozambique to the Red Sea, so when the merchants of Malacca saw Sec’s ships they ran around the streets in fright. But the Sultan’s chief minister, Matihir, calmed them down by telling them that he would destroy their ships so completely that the Portuguese would be terrified to ever sail again into Malaccan waters. So as Sec comes ashore to talk about trade, Matihir plots an ambush. Sec gives Matihir a gold necklace and Matihir promises the moon, all the while bringing in troops and elephants from the jungle and gathering a fleet of sampans in a hidden cove.

  ‘Sec goes back to his ship feeling very good indeed, so good he lets sixty of his men go off in rowboats to explore Malacca. Must have been exciting. They could smell the city and they had known nothing like this – pepper, cloves, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg – it was as if they were rowing into a chef’s larder ’’

  Diego is still on his caravel and he’s annoyed about it. After all, this is why he gave up his corner in his father’s stone house and his mother’s rich lamb stew – to see this fabulous city! The ship is anchored, the sails have been dropped, there is nothing for a helmsman to do, but he has been left on the deck. His father would be leaning on his knees and roaring with laughter at him. ‘You stupid cock-eyed crow, you run away from your place, the house and your sheep, for what? Nothing but a glance at an Asian port from a distance! Hah!’

  Blackbeard leans on the rail beside him. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get a chance.’

  ‘If I’m lucky,’ Diego mumbles. He can almost hear his father’s cackle.

  Blackbeard turns around and smiles.

  ‘Why are you so happy? You’re stuck here too.’

  ‘That’s nothing. I just had a thought. Which way is Lisbon?’

  Diego sighs a little and points west for the dumb soldier.

  ‘Ah, but it can be reached this way – east – as well. Maybe Malacca is halfway round the world. Now that is something.’

  This makes Diego’s head hurt so he stops talking and watches the ships’ boats approach a wharf. He notices several sampans slowly surrounding the caravels. The sampans are loaded with Malays armed with krises – rippled blades. A lot of these men are climbing onto their ship, smiling at Diego as they talk trade with the captain.

  But Blackbeard has been looking at those ripple-blad
e knives. He nudges Diego: ‘We must move.’

  Diego moves towards the nervous sailors and Blackbeard slides towards the captain on the quarterdeck. The captain reads Blackbeard’s eyes and quietly orders the sailors and soldiers to ease the knifemen back onto their sampans. Everything is very quiet.

  Very quickly Blackbeard pushes Diego and a couple of other sailors into the ship’s last remaining boat to row quickly for Sec’s ship to warn him.

  Diego is rowing and so he sees the crowded sampans only as he passes them. He sees many men with knives and some of them look angry. But Blackbeard doesn’t look worried as he pushes the boat through the crush.

  They reach Sec’s ship. Sec is playing chess at the quarterdeck with a Malay chief, surrounded by men with krises flashing in the sun. Blackbeard motions Diego and the others to stay in the boat while he climbs towards Sec. He is quietly murmuring in Sec’s ear when there is a wild shriek from the shore.

  ‘Treachery! Treachery!’

  Sec leaps to his feet, yelling at his men to drive the knifemen from the decks. Blackbeard pulls his short sword to fight through the knifemen then leaps from the ship back to the boat, shouting to row, row! He steers through the sampans and towards the shouting on the wharfs. As he heaves his oar, Diego sees men fighting all over the decks of Sec’s ship, but the knifemen are being driven into the water. Then cannons are turned onto the sampans.

  Blackbeard battles through the jostling boats and sometimes Diego has to stop rowing a few times and use his oar as a weapon. They reach the Portuguese on the wharf and see they are fighting desperately against a wave of the Sultan’s soldiers and cannot get to their tied boats. Blackbeard and his men free the boats and help the trapped men retreat. Of the sixty Portuguese landed on Malacca about forty escape from that wharf. Then Diego furiously rows back to the ships through lances, arrows and leaping men ’