Wealth of the Islands (7 page)

“
If he cuts it any finer, one of these days we
’
ll end up on that reef ourselves!
”
Gregory swore to himself. He pulled the pin out of the anchor-chain and it dropped overboard in a clatter of metal links, gaining a firm purchase on the coral bank below them.

Helen stared over into the water, astonished at its clearness. It was quite easy to make out the rises and falls in the coral shelf and to watch the fish swimming in their shoals of fleeting colour, flashing to and fro up and down the reef in a constant search for food. She could even make out the lines of the
sunken frigate that her father-in-law had once commanded. She shivered at the sight of it, already encrusted and looking quite unearthly under the fathoms of clear water that covered it and the valuable cargo that was somewhere still inside it. She could see where Gregory and, she supposed, Michael had to
rn
back the welded metal in their efforts to gain an entrance, and she wondered why they had not forced a hatch, or even broken in the portholes. She would soon know, she thought, and took a deep breath to calm the nervous quiver of fear within her that came and went just as though she had never dived before.

Gregory fitted the compressed air cylinders to her back, but she tied her own leather belt around her waist, filling it with leaden weights to enable her to sink from the surface. If she were not careful,
sh
e would breathe too deeply, like any amateur, and need more weights to get her down, so she restricted the amount of air she took into her lungs with a calm desperation
born
of her urgency to succeed. For the first time it had come home to her that Gregory might not take her on, that she might fail to prove her worth to the expedition and that he would be only too pleased to turn her away because she was a woman and he didn
’
t like employing women. When she shut her eyes, she had a clear vision of her mother-in-law
’
s delight at her failure, and that steeled her determination as nothing else
w
ould have done.

“
Ready?
”
Gregory asked her.

She nodded and he bent and adjusted the flippers on her feet and
c
hecked the meter on the breathing apparatus.

“
Okay, you
’
re go
!”
he said.

She took her mask in her hand, spat into it and washed it in
the
bucket of salt water that Na-Tinn held out to her. Carefully she adjusted it over her
nose and eyes and then allowed herself to be lowered gently over the side in a kind of rope basket that Gregory had rigged up for that very purpose. The water was deliciously cool and she couldn
’
t wait to be free to dive deep down into it. Above her, Gregory released the ropes and the basket fell away from her. She kicked out away from the
Sweet Promise
, then allowed herself to fall down and down until she was almost level with the coral
shelf
where the frigate lay and could see in intimate detail how the coral had been built up in the last few thousand years, the skeletons of more millions of tiny creatures than man could count, adding to one another and slowly forming a whole mountain beneath the sea to appear here and there as Pacific islands and the typical coral reefs that surrounded them.

Now that she was under water, Helen felt better. Her nervousness had gone. She wished she had prepared her mask with greater thoroughness, for it had misted slightly on the left-hand side. She had probably missed it when she had smeared it with saliva before rinsing it out, she thought, but it wasn
’
t bad and she could see quite well enough for anything she wanted to do.

In all she must have allowed herself quite five minutes to acclimatise herself to her new surroundings. She kept remembering earlier dives she had made with her father and for an instant she longed for his comforting presence swirling through the waters towards her, just as he always had, releasing a fish straight into her face, or pulling one of the half dozen tricks he had never been able to resist. She was remembering the dive on which she had met Michael too. It was here that Michael had died, she thought in a sudden panic. Her skin prickled with fear, but then she looked upwards and saw the dark hull of the
Sweet Promise
above her and the panic subsided. What could go wrong? She wasn
’
t one to
take stupid risks. She would approach the frigate only when she was ready to do so and when she could see her way dear to doing so. So why worry? Gregory couldn
’
t make her take risks she didn
’
t want to take!

She was ready then to go along the shelf to look at the frigate. She saw for the first time how she had fallen away from her original position on to her side, exposing the large, gaping hole where she had battered herself against the reef, causing her to sink. The edges of the hole were too jagged for it to be safe to enter there and Helen could see now that the hatches had become encrusted and joined to the main shelf of coral. It was true that the strands were tenuous enough to be easily broken, but the frigate was right on the edge of the shelf even now and it wouldn
’
t take a great deal to send her over the edge and down into water where it would be too deep to follow her.

Helen moved from her first position to where Gregory had tried to cut away the side of the frigate. It was obviously a long, slow job and it was obvious too that he needed help. She wondered if they had already decided to make their entrance that way when Michael had been there, but she doubted it. All the work looked too recent for that.

She had been down a good time now. The fish accepted her presence and swam in and out of her arm
s
and legs casually as they did through the branches of coral that surrounded them. She was playing with a small green fish that blew itself up until she thought it would burst when she stroked its back, when she noticed that Gregory had come down to join her. He tapped his watch significantly and pointed towards the surface. Helen glanced down at her own watch and was astonished to see that she had only ten minutes of compressed air left
.
She breathed deeply to facilitate her rise to the surface,
enjoying the bubbles that spun out from her breathing apparatus and danced up to the surface ahead of her. Then at last she broke through the surface and could feel the heat of the sun on her face. A second later Gregory was there beside her, and they had both whipped off their masks and had wrenched the air nozzles out of their mouths. To Helen
’
s inexpressible relief, Gregory was smiling.

“
Well?
”
she challenged him.

He shook his head so violently that drops of water sprayed all over her.
“
It was a nice, cosy dive,
”
he agreed.
“
Now we must get down to some work. Come on board and I
’
ll explain what I
’
m aiming at.
”

Helen needed no second invitation. She climbed aboard, as agile as she had always been, and stood watching the water drip off her on to the deck, laughing with a sudden warm gaiety that she hadn
’
t heard from herself for a long, long time.

“
I take it you enjoyed yourself?
”
Gregory suggested, amused.

“
I certainly did! I
’
d almost forgotten what a feeling of freedom diving gives one.
”

“
It
’
s hard work too,
”
he warned her.

She shook out her hair and grinned.
“
Who
’
s afraid of hard work
?”
she retorted.

“
Now that
’
s what I like to hear, a dedicated woman,
”
he drawled. Helen wasn
’
t sure how to take that, so she didn
’
t bother to answer. She followed him meekly down into the cabin and looked at the plans he spread out on the table for her benefit, trying not to drip water all over them. It was clear that formerly the frigate had lain the right way up and she wondered what had happened to turn her on to her side, as she was lying now.

“
When did you start to cut your way in through the metal plates?
”
she asked.

“
After Michael—
”
Gregory broke off, his face
solemn and angry.
“
No matter, it
’
s what we have to deal with now that matters. And we don
’
t want anyone rocking the boat from now on, or she
’
ll fall off the ledge altogether. You can see that, can
’
t you?
”

Helen nodded.
“
You have all the equipment?
”
she
checked with him
.

“
Enough. I
’
ve been trying to do it all myself so far. It
’
s been a difficult season and the weather was against me too. It
’
s difficult to believe now what it can be like in the rainy season and what can happen when a typhoon comes along!
”

“
Here?
”
Helen exclaimed surprised.
“
I didn
’
t know there were any extremes here in the Islands!
”
She blushed, conscious that she was exposing her ignorance to eyes that might well not be kindly.
“
I
’
d imagined that the weather was always like it is today,
”
she finished lamely.

“
I suppose it mostly is,
”
he agreed equably enough.
“
But when it does choose to do something different, it
’
s pretty wholehearted about it. The rains go on and on for weeks when they come. The typhoons are usually short, sharp and unpleasant, but we get warning of them now, so it isn
’
t as bad as it was once.
”

He turned away from the maps abruptly and got out the blowlamp equipment, which was so designed and fuelled that it worked well under water.

“
Have you used this before
?”
he asked her.

Helen shook her head.
“
But I
’
ll learn,
”
she said eagerly.

“
We
’
ll see,
”
he answered dryly. He went on to explain exactly how it was to be used and she repeated the lesson like a half-witted child until she felt she would burst if he made her go through it even once again.

“
You may be impatient now,
”
he told her,
“
but things look different down there. You can burn yourself pretty badly and do untold damage to your breathing
equipment. If you don
’
t know exactly what to do, it can be the difference between life and death.
”

He was right, of course. She admitted that. But she could well imagine how Michael would have reacted to being told the obvious again and again by a man who didn
’
t even trouble to wear shoes around the Islands.

And yet she couldn
’
t fault him when it came to his administration of the salvage operation. That worried her too, she admitted to herself, for she could well imagine Michael underrating such a man. She might have done so herself if she hadn
’
t been startled into awareness by the animal attraction the man had for her. She was so aware of him that she couldn
’
t possibly miss the dedication he had for his job under that lazy, charming buccaneer exterior, but as for Michael she couldn
’
t be sure. She racked her brains trying to remember what he had written to her about Gregory de Vaux, but she could remember nothing that wasn
’
t the merest platitude. Oh, Michael, she thought, was that why you died
?

“
Are you ready to go down again?
”
Gregory broke into her thoughts, his voice edgy with his distaste for using a woman for such a task.

“
Yes, I
’
m quite ready,
”
she said.