Eye of the Tiger Part 27

Slowly I removed the layers of compacted fibre which I realized must have been straw originally used as packing. Like a face materializing in a dream, it was revealed.

The first tiny gleam opened to a golden glory of intricately worked metal and I felt Sherry's grip on my shoulder as she crowded down close beside me.

There was a snout, and lips below that were drawn up in a savage snarl, revealing great golden fangs and an arched tongue. There was a broad deep forehead as wide as my shoulders, and ears flattened down close upon the burnished skull - and there was a single empty eye-socket set fairly in the centre of the wide brow. The lack of an eye gave the animal a blind and tragic expression, like some maimed G.o.d from mythology.

I felt an almost religious awe as I stared at the huge, wonderfiilly fas.h.i.+oned tiger's head we had exposed. 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 Chubby was watching me but Sherry was withdrawn from us, wrapped in secret thoughts, turned inward upon herself.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 a.r.s.enal 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 succ.u.mbed 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 gun-deck and into the pa.s.senger 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 f.l.a.n.g.ed clearly it would mate with the trunk section of the throne, and the f.l.a.n.g.e 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 k.n.o.bbly 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 ma.s.sage those parts where the sharp edges of metal had bitten into my flesh. 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 h.o.a.rd 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 pa.s.s 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 rea.s.sured 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 ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.sed from hand to hand.

"What's it feel like to be rich, Chubby?" I called, and he took a swallow from the flask, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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 a.s.sault 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 tool-box. 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 ma.s.s 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 forefinger to reveal a large s.h.i.+ny blue stone, cut square and polished on one face.

"Sapphire?" she guessed, and I took it from her and examined it quickly in the lantern light. It was opaque and I contradicted her.

No, I think it's probably lapis lazuli." The sc.r.a.p of paper still adhering to it was faintly discoloured with a blue dye. "Ink, I should say." I crumpled. it between my fingers. "At least Roger, the Colonel, took the trouble to identify each stone. He probably wrapped each piece in a numbered slip of paper which related to a master sketch of the throne to enable it to be rea.s.sembled."

"There is no hope of that now," said Sherry.

"I don't know I said. "it would be a h.e.l.l of a job, but it would still be possible to put it all together again."

Amongst our stores was a roll of plastic packets, and I sent Angelo to ferret it out. As we opened each parcel of rotted fabric we superficially cleaned the stones it contained and packed each lot in a separate plastic packet.

It was slow work even though we all contributed and after almost two hours of it we had filled dozens of packets with thousands of semi-precious stones - lapis lazuli, beryl, tigees eye, garnets, verdite, amethyst, and half a dozen others of whose ident.i.ty I was uncertain. Each stone had clearly been lovingly cut and exactingly polished to fit into its own niche in the golden throne.

It was only when we had unpacked the chest to its last layer that we came upon the stones of greater value. The old Colonel had obviously selected these first and they had gone into the lowest layer of the chest.

I held a transparent plastic packet of emeralds to the lantern light, and they burned like a bursting green star.

We all stared at it as if mesmerized while I turned it slowly to catch the fierce white light.

I laid it aside and Sherry dipped once more into the chest and after a moment's hesitation brought out a smaller parcel. She rubbed away the damp crumbling material, that was wound thick about the single stone it contained.

Then she held up the Great Mogul diamond in the cupped palm of her hand. It was the size of a pullet's egg, cut into a faceted cus.h.i.+on shape, just as Jean Baptiste Tavernier had described it so many hundred years ago.

The glittering array of treasure we had handled before in no way dimmed the glory of this stone, as all the stars of the firmament cannot dull the rising of the sun. They paled and faded away before the brilliance and l.u.s.tre of the great diamond.

Sherry slowly extended her cupped hand towards Angelo, offering it to him to hold and examine, but he s.n.a.t.c.hed his hands away and clasped them behind his back, still staring at the stone in superst.i.tious awe.

Sherry turned and offered it to Chubby, but with gravity he declined also.

"Give it to Mister Harry. Guess he deserves to be the one."

I took it from her, and was surprised that such unearthly fire could be so cold to touch. I stood up and I carried it to where the golden tiger's head stood snarling angrily in the unwavering light of the lanterns and I pressed the diamond into the empty eye socket.

It fitted perfectly, and I used my bait-knife to close the golden clasps that held it firmly in place, and which the old Colonel had probably opened with a bayonet a century and a quarter ago.

I stood back then, and I heard the small gasps of wonder. With the eye returned to its socket the golden beast had come to life. It seemed now to survey us with an imperial mien, and at any instant we expected the cave to resound to its crackling wicked snarl of anger.

I went back and took my place in the squatting circle around the rusted chest, and we all stared up at the golden tiger head. We seemed like wors.h.i.+ppers in some ancient heathen tire, crouched in awe before the fearsome idol.

"Chubby, my old well beloved and trusted buddy, you will earn yourself an entry on the t.i.tle page of the book of mercy if you pa.s.s me that bottle," I said, and that broke the spell. They all recovered their voices competing fiercely for a turn to speak - and it wasn't long before I had to send Sherry to fetch another bottle to lubricate dry throats.