My feelings were out of contact with reality. The boxes or tins could have been filled with stones for all I cared. Unable to appreciate the great moment, we were exhausted and silent, but continued our slow-motion poking about the soil as more rectangular shapes became apparent. Bennett strolled over from the gloom, and saw how we were getting on. I lacked enthusiasm, but my memory was good, both qualities uppermost at the sight of him in muddy soil pulling boxes which weighed nearly sixty pounds. He drew one to the edge of the diggings as if it were a celluloid replica, and we gathered around like keen types as he hammered at rust-encrusted bolts and lifted a lid.
The inside was lined with oilcloth. He took off his gloves for the occasion, hands looking more delicate and pink than during the unrolling of a chart, or when at the controls of the Aldebaran. He scooped up dull coins, and we were treated to the unforgettable sound of gold tumbling against gold, which I had never heard before and have not heard since.
Soil and treasure produced a peculiar smell, a mixture of metal and mushrooms. The gold was not ours, nor any Bennett’s till it was transported to where the share-out would take place. Nevertheless, I think we all wanted to dip into the mess of pottage, and perhaps one of us, unwilling to miss a unique experience, would have done so if we hadn’t heard, in the declining wind, the echo of a full-throated scream.
It was uncalled for, an intrusion at the wrong moment, causing more irritation than alarm. None of us moved, perhaps for as long as half a minute, to hear if the cry came again. My direction-finding ears got a fair bearing, and I stood up to point the way. ‘It came from the watercourse.’
Bird cries filtered through the mist. ‘We’ll go and get him,’ Appleyard said.
‘Your work is here,’ Bennett said coolly, ‘not searching for a fool who should have stayed at his post.’
I knew how cold the body could be, as ice went to my stomach and seemed to freeze it solid. But I felt incapable of a long hike up the mountains. ‘He’s injured. We can’t let him die.’
‘He’s had it already.’ Bennett was adamant. ‘If we go off searching for him we’ll be lost in no time – or fall down some precipice.’ The day’s rain sent enormous falls of water rushing to the sea. When the wind dropped, the sound of the torrent was unmistakable. ‘I’m responsible for holding this expedition together, and it’s already split between here and the ship, so I can’t send another two of you into this kind of countryside. If I had twice the crew, I wouldn’t sanction it without fair weather. To look for Bull now – even if it was him we heard – is to risk a real cock-up.’
I’ll never know if he was right, yet he sounded reasonable. We got back to work and, still in daylight, stacked forty boxes like so many bricks on solid ground.
6
We huddled, eating, smoking, swigging whisky from Bennett’s flask, and hoping that the moment to begin our donkey-work would never come. We were to get the gold down to the beach, but in the meantime the last daylight was drawn from the sky like bleach out of a bottle encrusted by the detritus of a wasteland: clouds of swarf, rolls of gunmetal, wisps of green mould, puffs of damp blue, the strangest ochre-coloured sunset I ever saw from a pure-air part of the world. ‘God is up to some funny stuff.’
Rose shielded his eyes. ‘Isn’t He always?’
Appleyard spat. ‘You shouldn’t take His name in vain.’
With darkness the mist drew back. Bennett put a large torch into my hand and looked into the luminous gradations of his prismatic compass. ‘Face the same direction, and when you find the signal-button get in touch with Nash on the flight deck. Tell him to come ashore in the second dinghy with Armatage. Make it as short as you can. We want no interception.’
I held a steady light on the downhill bearing and sent a series of AAAs. Bennett paced behind. ‘Keep on. They’ll see it.’
I lifted my eyes. ‘There’s a star in the sky.’
He had faith, and everything to gain by persistence. ‘We want foul weather. The fouler the better.’
I thought of Bull, dead or dying on the hillside, and hoped for the good of us all that he was alive. After a further string of AAAs the steady white flash of an answer came, and I sent slowly so that Wilcox or Nash could interpret with ease. ‘O K ERE STOP NASH AND ARM CUM SHORE THEN WAIT OK?’
QSL showed that Nash had worked it out and would comply.
‘Send a second signal.’ Bennett spoke as if we were in station headquarters, and I had a full-scale wireless section to look after his traffic. ‘Tell them to beam on us every five minutes.’
Rose was to stay on the hill with the torch and guide us back, while the occasional flash from the flying boat would enable us to locate our beachhead on the way down. Bennett had spent so many weeks working out the drill that he didn’t have to think. He had netted the landscape with pre-computed vertical and horizontal triangles, devising an intricate movement and communications procedure. It was hard to think that slide rule or compass would lead him astray, though with so many stitches in the fabric it was also difficult to see how the pattern could hold.
Nash was as clumsy with a signal lamp as I would have been in a four-Browning turret – but he was effective. The opening and closing lights fused into letters, then words, and the second message was received and understood.
We started, and pressure on my ankles due to humping a half hundredweight metal box made the stint with the theodolite seem like a carefree brush with a football. Bennett, as became his rank, carried nothing, his job being to locate the dinghy and the reinforcements from the flying boat. He frequently stopped to make sure no one spun headlong on the slow descent, or wandered off track with such precious cargo. If I vanished and was picked up by a whaler in six months I’d be richer by twelve thousand pounds. Invest that, and I would live modestly without working for the rest of my life. The haul for Bennett and his backers was a quarter of a million, and the cost of getting it, including the hire of the fuel steamer, could not be above thirty thousand. The well lit picture of a happy share-out in a Hong Kong or Singapore hotel was hard to credit as I stumbled in waterlogged clothes behind Bennett’s shadowy back, which now and again stooped as – counting the paces – he consulted the compass to keep us in the right direction.
A reassuring light winked off-shore. Low clouds held their rain, and the sharp air was sweet. I had forgotten what it was like to move without being breathless. Wandering unladen over such landscape might be pleasant. But like a pack animal I dwelt on nothing, determined that never again would I indulge in such work.
Forty boxes would mean twenty trips uphill and down. The Duke of York’s army would have nothing on us. Even if reinforcements doubled the number of hard shoulders, ten trips would still be needed, which would take fifteen miles of humpbacked walking. Soldiers or mountaineers had done as much, and the daunting prospect was forgotten when a light flickered and we heard Nash’s voice at the beach. ‘You’ve got it?’
Bennett nodded. ‘All we do is fetch it down, and tuck it up on board before daylight.’
‘Not at this rate you won’t. Where’s Bull?’
‘He went missing.’
‘In this place? Couldn’t you stop him?’
‘He just wandered off.’
I took a few seconds to realize who Bennett meant when he said: ‘The wireless operator stayed at his post.’
Nash peered into the darkness. ‘We’d better get going. How far is it?’
Bennett told him. ‘One man will stay here, to guide us in.’
Nash waved his arm. ‘To hell with that, Skipper. The quicker it’s down, the better.’ He lashed a switched-on torch to a surveying pole stuck in the sand. ‘What’s the angle? We can beam on this. Don’t need a man to hold it. The battery will last. The more of us at work the sooner we get back on board to a bucket of cocoa and a ham sandwich!’