‘I’m OK, Skipper.’
‘Val seems worried about you. She thinks I ought to lighten the ship, so as to get you to hospital sooner.’
‘How would you do that, Skipper?’ Dring’s voice was hoarse and rather faint. It seemed to cost him some effort to speak at all.
‘There’s only one way it could be done‚’ Keeton said, watching Dring’s face. ‘We’d have to jettison the cargo.’
‘The gold?’
‘That’s the only cargo we have. What do you say? Would you like me to throw the gold overboard? Your share too?’
‘Hell, no!’ Dring said. ‘The kid gets queer ideas into that pretty little head of hers. She’s scared of the gold, that’s what it is. It gives her nightmares. But I’m not scared. I want my share.’
‘Just so long as I know‚’ Keeton said.
He went back to the girl.
‘I’ve been talking to your brother‚’ he said. ‘Ben doesn’t seem to agree with you.’
She looked at him sharply. ‘In what way?’
‘He thinks he’s going to live. He doesn’t want any of his gold chucked into the sea. He seems to have taken a fancy to the idea of being a rich man.’
‘He’ll never be rich.’ Her voice sounded bitter.
‘Why not? With a quarter share of the gold—’
‘Gold! Can’t you think of anything else? He’ll never live to have any of it.’ She spoke vehemently and there was a kind of fire in her eyes. ‘Is that what you want? To kill him so that you can have it all for yourself? Is that it?’
He could not face her accusing eyes. He turned away with a sense of guilt; for the thought had occurred to him also. Though he had tried not to listen to it, somewhere inside him a voice had whispered that if Dring went, with him would go all claim to one quarter of the gold. And because of this he answered angrily:
‘You’re crazy. You get these wild ideas into your head and then you start believing them. But it’s all nonsense. Why should I want Ben to die? There’s enough gold for all of us. Plenty.’
She changed her tone suddenly. She touched his arm with her hand, pleading with him.
‘Won’t you do this for me, Charlie?’
He turned and looked at her, and saw that the fire had gone out of her eyes, quenched by tears. But the tears did not overflow. ‘For you?’
‘And for yourself too. Oh, Charlie, don’t you see what this gold is doing to you?’
‘No, I don’t see. Maybe you’d better tell me.’
‘It’s destroying you. Oh, not in the way it destroyed those other men, but in another way. Hasn’t it caused enough horror already? Haven’t there been enough deaths?’
‘You don’t know how many.’
‘I don’t want to know. All I want is to stop it causing any more. I can’t bear to see it turning you into a—’
She hesitated.
‘Go on‚’ Keeton prompted, his voice hard. ‘Why did you stop? Turn me into a what?’
She looked away from him. ‘Do I need to say it? Can’t you see for yourself?’
‘Are you trying to say that I’m some kind of monster? Just because I want to be rich. Is that such a crime? If so the world is full of criminals.’
She did not answer.
‘Anyway‚’ he said with a trace of bitterness, ‘why are you so concerned about me? What’s it to you if I am destroyed?’
‘What is it to me?’ she said. ‘Don’t you really know? Don’t you know yet that I love you?’
Two more days passed. The winds were light and variable, and the yawl moved sluggishly, utterly alone in a vast expanse of shimmering ocean.
And there could be no doubt that Dring was a very sick man. The bullet was still in his arm and the wound had festered; the entire arm was black and swollen. The very air in the hot, cluttered cabin seemed contaminated with the sickly odour of corrupting flesh.
Valerie did what she could for him, but her eyes accused Keeton. It was as if in looking at him she said: ‘Can’t you see? You are killing my brother.’
He could not meet her gaze; he felt like dirt. He watched for a sign that Dring might be getting better, a sop to ease his conscience; instead, he saw only the inescapable evidence of rapid deterioration. When Dring looked at him now there was accusation in his eyes too; he no longer spoke about his share of the gold; he seemed to know that he would not live to claim it.
That night Keeton sat in the cockpit and thought things over. He thought for a long time, swayed one way and then the other, unable to make up his mind. At last, with a curse, he got up and went down the companionway into the lamp-lit cabin. Valerie was watching beside her brother, her face haggard from lack of sleep. She looked at him when he came in, but she said nothing.
Keeton said nothing either. He picked up one of the cases of gold, carried it out of the cabin and flung it over the side. She must have heard the splash as it hit the water, but when he returned to the cabin she still had not moved, and still she said nothing.
He seized the boxes one by one and threw them into the sea; and the girl watched him in utter silence. As the work progressed he became possessed by a kind of frenzy; he was like a drunkard who, having taken one glass, is hooked and cannot leave off drinking, but must go on and on while any liquor remains. So Keeton went on, the sweat pouring from him in streams; and when he had cleared the saloon he went for’ard to the other cabin and hauled up the gold from there also. And as each box dropped like discarded ballast into the sea so the yawl rode a little higher, became a little speedier, a little more lively in her movement. It was as though she too had felt this dead weight upon the heart and were so much lighter in spirit for the loss of it.
Dawn was beginning to break when the task was completed. There was not a single bar of gold left on board. He went back to the cockpit and found the girl waiting for him.
‘Charlie!’ she said. And then again: ‘Charlie!’
He sat down. He felt drained of emotion and utterly exhausted.
‘Well‚’ he said, ‘it’s what you wanted. We’re poor again.’
‘Don’t be bitter, Charlie, please. Don’t spoil it all now.’
He gave a laugh. ‘I’m not bitter. Why should I be? There’s still a lot of gold left in that wreck.’
She did not answer. She was staring past him, at something over his shoulder. He turned slowly and saw it too. It was a ship.
Chapter Twelve
The Big Wave
Keeton was half-asleep at the helm of the yawl when the girl came out of the cabin. She was carrying a cup of tea in her hand.
‘I thought you might be thirsty.’
He took the mug. ‘You think of everything, Val.’
‘How many more days before we reach the reef?’
‘Depends on the wind. Three or four maybe.’
It had been her own idea to return with him. He had urged her, not with any enthusiasm, to accompany her brother on board the ship; but she had been adamant in refusing.
‘If you really intend to go back for the rest of the gold‚’ she had said, ‘you’ll need help. I won’t let you go alone. Ben is in good hands.’
That was true. The ship had been a passenger-cargo liner, and carried a doctor. She was bound for Sydney, and within a few days Dring would be ashore. He would be all right. Keeton sipped the tea. ‘Do you still hate the gold?’
‘Yes‚’ she admitted. ‘But I know you would have gone for it anyway, and I couldn’t let you go down into that ship alone. I wish I could persuade you to give it up. But you won’t do that.’
‘No‚’ he said. ‘Not now. I can’t.’
She sighed. ‘So that’s how it’s got to be.’
It was that same evening when they saw the wave, small at first in the distance, but growing bigger and bigger until it was like a great hill of water advancing to meet them. It was awe-inspiring, frightening, for it had appeared without warning out of a dead calm sea. It seemed to stretch across their path from horizon to horizon, so that there was no way round, only through or over it.