Treasure Hunters Read online

  A man with a speckled moustache was tying a fishing boat to the Tub in the glimmer of dawn, a fishing boat with its hatch wide open. But Pat shrugged: it was only fresh fish and salt, it wasn’t too bad when you got used to it.

  ‘You sleep a lot,’ Ali said to Pat.

  ‘We were working very late,’ Pat lied.

  Matt and Col moved to help the moustache-man.

  ‘We been fishing all night,’ Ali said. ‘My grandfather, Kakek, has lost his lucky charm and the fish would not come, but I have given the boat better luck. Tonight we sat on a river of fish. We caught so many that Kakek was sure that Kite will sink!’

  ‘Kite? That’s the boat?’

  ‘Yes, my arms are falling off. But you didn’t catch fish.’

  ‘Ah, no. Not yesterday.’

  ‘Just a big rock,’ said Ali.

  Pat opened his mouth then clamped it shut. He didn’t know what he was allowed to say in this dangerous water.

  Ali shrugged. ‘That’s okay. We have all the fish that you want.’ Ali pointed at the fish near the wheelhouse.

  ‘Great.’ Pat looked at the fishing boat. Kite? More like a dead flathead.

  ‘Your boat, it is strange and big.’ Ali shook his head, then smiled sympathetically. ‘But it is the same as the Kite, isn’t it?’

  Well, the Kite was shorter than the Tub and a little higher. It was made from wood like the Tub, but on the bow there was a large painted eye – to find fish? There was a long wheelhouse backing into a cabin and the old man – Kakek – had stepped out of an open doorway, and was fiddling with something. Behind the cabin there was an open hatch and a mass of fish-nets. On a short mast a torn flag was stirring in the dawn air. It looked a bit like the flag on the water tank above the town.

  Pat returned Ali’s smile, partly in guilt. All right, the Kite wasn’t a dead flathead. It was different from the Tub but it wasn’t. They were both working boats. They were like sisters.

  The moustache-man was pulling a plank from the Kite to the Tub. He kicked it into position, then looked up at Matt with a smile. ‘You are Captain Matt?’

  Matt opened his hands.

  ‘Ah, I am Captain Omar. You have my son working for you.’

  ‘Sometimes. He’s a good kid.’

  ‘Ah, he is a birdbrain, he forgets everything. I should feed him to the fishes.’

  Ali curled his lip at him.

  Omar laughed, reached for Ali’s head and rubbed his hair. ‘But he has good eyes. He sees your boat – you have trouble with your lights?’

  ‘Ah, no. They’re turned off deliberately.’

  Omar nodded. ‘Pirates? But Ali sees you in starlight and says we should eat with you. It is all right?’

  Kakek was slowly bringing a steaming black pot towards the plank.

  ‘Ah, um ’’ Col was looking at the black pot, as if it was about to explode.

  ‘It is a great idea,’ Matt said and slapped Omar on the shoulder.

  ‘Illl get the coffee.’ Col moved quickly to the galley.

  Matt and Omar steadied Kakek down the plank but the old man wouldn’t allow anyone to touch his pot. Matt pointed to a spot at the stern to put it but Kakek placed it in front of the bronze lion.

  ‘This is not a rock,’ said Ali in surprise.

  Pat hurriedly swept the coral rubble from the deck, Matt spread a palm mat before the lion and Col brought plates, spoons, forks and mugs of coffee.

  Kakek lifted the lid and a cloud of steam bubbled towards the waking sky. He ladled fish pieces from the pot to a plate.

  Omar grinned and reached for the plate.

  But Kakek pulled it away. ‘This is for the dragon of the water.’ Kakek lowered his head to the lion as he placed the plate before it.

  ‘Hey, that’s my food,’ Omar muttered.

  Kakek lifted his hand, still watching the lion. ‘Thank you for the fish today. Please eat. May we eat a little of your fish ’ Thank you.’ He lifted his head and smiled at Matt. ‘Just in case.’

  Matt nodded. ‘I would have done it too.’

  Kakek filled the other plates with fish pieces, squid slices, chopped brown onion and red chilli. There seemed to be more chilli pieces than anything else.

  Pat saw Col grimacing slightly before smiling at Kakek and pushing the fish stew into his mouth. It looks all right, Pat thought. Smells great, and Matt is shovelling the stuff away. He sipped a small spoonful.

  ‘Great eating,’ Matt said. He lifted his coffee mug. ‘To your fishing.’

  Pat sucked his tongue. He could feel the tingling of the chilli under hot fish, but nothing to worry about. He took a large spoonful.

  Omar reached over to pat the lion. ‘You have been fishing well, too.’

  ‘Ah yes, sometimes we find something with the fish.’

  A soft shadow crept across the lidded eyes of the lion, giving it a glimmer of life.

  Pat swallowed and opened his mouth to let the cool air come in. It was hot, but he could take it. Ali was watching him.

  ‘Do you know of any ships that were sunk around here?’ Col tried.

  Omar waved his hand around. ‘Everywhere. Sulawesi sailboats, Japanese boats from the war, boats like Kite…’ He shrugged.

  ‘He means old wrecks,’ said Matt.

  ‘Ah. Like the lion?’ Omar looked across to Kakek.

  ‘Just a minute.’ Col suddenly rose from the deck.

  Pat’s eyes were pouring like a howling baby’s, his nose was sniffling and there was a blazing bushfire in his throat.

  Kakek was frowning at him.

  Col came back very quickly with a large jug of water and six glasses. ‘I’m sorry, I should have brought this before. He filled the six glasses and passed them round. Pat wanted desperately to grab his glass and empty it down the back of his throat – but Ali was smiling smugly at him.

  Then Col picked up his glass and clinked it against Pat’s. ‘All the best.’ And gulped his water down.

  Pat shrugged at Ali, and tried to seem reluctant to follow Col. At that moment he would have done anything for Col. But it should have been Matt ’

  ‘Now, we were talking about wrecks ’’ Col leaned towards Kakek.

  ‘Ah! The Taketigra!’ Kakek shouted.

  ‘There’s a ship here?’ Col said.

  Kakek blinked at him, shook his head and pointed at the island. ‘Taketigra is waking.’

  The mountain was still a dull shadow shrouded in mist, but the tip of the granite peak was ablaze with sunlight.

  Omar nodded at the peak. ‘A good start for the day. That’s the tiger. The Indonesians – everyone – call it Harimau, but in our village we call it Taketigra. I don’t know why.’

  ‘Oh, not a ship.’ Col said in disappointment.

  Kakek shook his head. ‘I do not know. Perhaps I am not old enough.’

  ‘Maybe we should have the Taketigra on our flag, hey?’ said Ali.

  ‘It looks very good now,’ said Pat, pouring another glass of water.

  Matt looked up at the battered flag on the mast of the Kite. ‘Ah, I didn’t see that before.’

  ‘Ali got the flag,’ said Omar.

  Ali beamed. ‘I had to fight for it from a big kid who wanted to burn it. But I got it. Now it brings luck to Kite.’

  ‘Good effort,’ said Col, but his face was troubled.

  Pat kept on eating his fish stew, slowly, with a lot of rice and water, as the men talked about the fish and the business of keeping a boat running without losing money.

  Ali looked disappointed that they didn’t keep on talking about his flag but he sighed and showed Pat a game from his pocket. For a long while Pat tried to get three small ball bearings in the eyes and mouth of a small dragon in a round box while Ali smirked.

  He thought: Robbie would love this. The ace of a 64 MB of RAM CD battle of dragons beaten by a cardboard and ball bearings game ’

  Kakek pointed at the island, where the mists were lifting from the mountain.

  ‘Ah, we have to l
eave.’ Omar stood up.

  Col saw the hanging fish and reached for his wallet.

  Kakek showed horror in his face.

  ‘No, wait.’ Col hurried to the galley and came back with a jar of coffee and presented it to Kakek.

  Kakek looked at the jar thoughtfully for a moment and took it with a nodded smile.

  Ali frowned slightly, then smiled and pressed the dragon into Pat’s hand.

  ‘Ah, I can’t,’ said Pat, but he had to. He went below, returned with his pocket-knife and gave it to Ali.

  For a moment Ali seemed to be surprised, but he grinned as he took it.

  Kakek glared at Ali in annoyance as he carried the pot back to the Kite.

  Col was watching him go when his eyes caught sight of a slight ripple. He turned to Omar. ‘Maybe you ought to put the flag away,’ he said slowly.

  ‘No, no,’ Ali shook his head. ‘I got it. We are fighting.’

  ‘Yesterday a navy boat went towards the island loaded with armed men.’

  ‘Ah.’ Omar sucked a lip.

  Ali stared intently at his father.

  ‘That’s different ’’ Omar said.

  Ali widened his eyes and shook his head.

  Omar flicked his eyes at Ali. ‘Ah, it’s only a few stupid cowboys, they’ll run into a rock. We don’t worry about them.’

  Ali’s face relaxed. ‘We keep the flag up, then?’

  Kakek slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t like it. That’s a warning.’

  Omar snorted. ‘Put some more fish pieces on the lion’s plate.’

  Kakek’s eyes flashed but he said nothing.

  ‘All right, it stays,’ Omar said, but then he dropped his voice to a murmur. ‘But if I see that navy boat it comes down ’’

  Pat looked at the torn flag. You should have asked for that flag for your knife. See how Ali feels then.

  Omar revved the engine as Ali and Kakek cast off the lines and the Kite shivered towards the slumbering mountain.

  Pat scowled at the fishing boat. ‘I didn’t want to give him the knife, at all.’

  Matt thumped Pat on the shoulder. ‘It’s all diplomacy. I’ll give you ten pocket-knives when we find that sunken ship.’

  ‘If,’ Pat muttered.

  ‘Taketigra,’ said Col, tasting the word in his mouth. ‘ Taketigra, Tak – kat – teg – ru, there’s something there. I just can’t grab it.’

  14 / cannon

  They cleared the deck, rolling away the palm mat, washing the dishes, before Col and Pat got into their diving gear.

  Matt patted the lion. ‘How did you go with the books last night?’

  Col pulled on a fin. ‘It is from China, very old. Maybe from the Ming dynasty.’

  ‘Ye-sss,’ Matt’s face was expressionless.

  ‘It is older than 1500 – if it is the real thing. It could be a copy, made twenty years ago. It may be the real thing but it could have been washed from the deck of a looting Japanese freighter in 1943.’

  ‘You know you are a ball of bleakness.’

  ‘Yes.’ Col dropped the word into the still green, as if he’d heard those words many times, maybe from Ana.

  Pat splashed quickly and Matt passed him a metal detector of his own.

  Hey, hey, they are beginning to trust you, Pat thought. He put on the earphones and waved the disc around like a ray gun. He zapped a passing fish but then he swung the disc over Col’s tank, blasting his ears.

  They stroked down to where the bronze lion had been, and fanned out, sweeping the bottom ahead of them. Pat swam through an explosion of rainbow fish, past a plodding, fat, grey fish that was chasing after them, weaved through several orange coral fans, but he hardly noticed them. He was concentrating on the ticking sound in the earphones and the needle of the gauge. He jolted in surprise when a hand came down on his shoulder.

  Col tapped Pat’s mask and pointed at himself. You have to keep an eye on me all the time, okay?

  Pat nodded apologetically.

  Col pointed a finger and wandered towards a high ridge.

  Pat moved slowly across the seabed, concentrating so much on watching Col and the gauge that he almost missed the shape. When he did see it, he stopped dead and sent excited bubbles spinning towards the surface.

  The shape was on his left, half-buried by sand and the rest of it was covered in coral, anemones and shellfish, but he could see enough through that. He wasn’t even looking at the gauge swinging wildly and he didn’t need the roar in the earphones to tell him that it was metal. More than that, as he slid towards the shape he knew what it was. It was thinner than he expected, and it had rings around its length but they didn’t matter.

  It was definitely a cannon.

  Pat turned towards Col and pointed down furiously, but Col ignored him. Pat had to dance like a wooden marionette, frightening a cloud of fish, before Col finally noticed him. Even then, Col seemed to be going to sleep as Pat drifted across to him.

  Pat thought in annoyance: He would sleep in the middle of a frenzy of white sharks.

  Col drifted down to the cannon, touching the barrel as Pat slapped the tanks on his back and beamed.

  Isn’t this great? And I found it!

  Col squeezed his shoulder then he cleared sand from both ends of the cannon and after a while it didn’t look like a cannon anymore. It looked like a rusty tube with funny rings.

  Pat’s metal detector drooped in his hands.

  But Col didn’t seem to be disappointed. He kept on looking around, first in the sand near the cannon then he swam to the crumbling edge of the ridge. For a few minutes he floated above a small hill of seaweed and rocks, before pushing to the lip of the ridge. Pat followed him without having the faintest idea what he was doing. Col held onto a seaweed strand, looked up to the gleaming surface of the sea and then reached up with his own long metal detector, almost breaking the surface of the water.

  Col frowned at Pat for a moment, shrugged and swam to the Tub.

  Pat shook his head and kicked after him. What’s wrong?

  Matt read Col’s face as he pulled him from the sea. ‘Not good?’

  ‘Pat found a cannon.’

  Pat almost slapped his hands together. It was a cannon.

  ‘Right, great!’

  Pat flashed a smile. Suddenly it was better. ‘Yeah, are we going to bring it up?’ Pat slopped around on the deck eagerly.

  ‘Maybe later.’ Col said. ‘It needs to be treated very carefully. It’s better down there, out of the air.’

  Matt looked up. ‘How old?’

  ‘It’s got rings around the barrel and there’s no butt.’

  Matt mouthed Col’s words slowly, as if he was building an image in his head. ‘God, it is there ’’ He was whispering.

  Col frowned. He didn’t seem to know what Matt was saying. ‘It may be all right. But ’’

  Matt rocked his head back. ‘What’s worrying you?’

  ‘It seems to be on its own. Nothing near it.’

  ‘The wood would be gone, and the iron fittings.’

  ‘All the same ’’

  ‘What, you think some guys one dark night threw the cannon – and the lion – overboard?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You know you’re a pain, don’t you?’ Matt muttered.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Pat stared at the men uncertainly.

  Col shrugged. ‘There’s a ridge down there and it’s not too far from the surface. Maybe we should call it a reef. And there’s a pile of rocks at its foot, as if they had fallen from the top.’

  Pat nodded. ‘Like a ship hit the reef in a storm.’

  ‘The kid said it all,’ Matt said. ‘It’s down there, just waiting.’

  Pat glanced at Matt. Hey, I am Pat. Remember?

  ‘Maybe there was no storm,’ Col said. ‘Maybe it was a day like this and they ran slowly onto the reef. Maybe they had a chance of saving their ship.’

  ‘What, they threw out everything he
avy to get off the reef?’

  ‘Just enough to move the ship.’

  Matt thought about it for a moment then he waved Col’s suggestion away. ‘No. It’s down there! I can smell it.’

  Col studied Matt’s face. ‘What do you think we’ve got down there?’

  ‘Ah ’’ Matt sucked his lip.

  Pat leaned forward. Yes, come on ’

  ‘Well?’

  Matt shifted his eyes away, reluctant to speak. ‘That cannon – rings around the barrel and no butt – it’s old, very old, too old to be Dutch or English.’

  ‘It’s got to be from a Portuguese caravel,’ Col helped.

  ‘And there is the Malacca token – around 1500. And that ’’ Matt jabbed his thumb at the glaring bronze lion.

  Col looked at the lion, and breathed. ‘You think it is the Flordo Mar!’

  Matt lowered his head – Pat had never seen him do that before – and hunched. ‘It’s a possibility.’

  ‘It is not! No hope at all, a snowball in hell. You are a nut.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Pat stared at Matt and wondered what the hell was the Flor do Mar…

  15 / flor

  Pat sat under the shade cloth at the stern, running his thumb over the Malacca token and watching bubbles erupting on the slick water, tracking Col and Matt as they moved around on the bottom. There’s not even a current down there, he thought.

  He tried to picture them as they worked the metal detectors slowly across the seabed, digging a little with their trowels, waving at each other. He could feel the excitement in those bubbles now – even from Col – and he wanted desperately to be down there with them. Especially now that he knew what the Flor do Marwas.

  All right, someone had to be on board, and it was his turn. But still ’

  Down there is a ship and what a ship! If Matt is right, you’ll get a better knife than the one Ali pinched from you ’ Oh, come on, that’s peanuts. You’ll get a bike and a jet-ski, and a computer that talks; Kilroy will get a dinosaur bone, Mum will get a new house with a swimming pool, and Matt will come home ’

  Pat pulled his eyes from the bubbles and shook his head almost violently.

  Ah no, no.

  He stared at the island, at a whiff of black smoke rising from the mountain towards a heavy, dark cloud. He squeezed the Malacca token as he tried to cram his head with Matt’s story until there was no room for anything else.