"Have yourself the fun, my old," she said. "For me, to sit on a cactus once a trip is enough."
We left Flavio Ortega in charge of the boat, having told him we were looking for a brass marker plate left by Admiral de Torres in 1793.
"Be careful, gentlemen," he said. "There is said to be a— how do you say—una maldicion—?"
"A curse?" I said.
"Yes, of course, a curse. They say there is a curse on this place, from all the bisits of the wicked pirates who preyed on us poor Esspanish peoples. Of course, that is just a superstition; but watch your steps. The ground is treacherous."
We headed inland. Stephen carried the shovels and I, the pick and the goose-necked wrecking bar. Tudor toted the metal detector and Drexel, the lunch.
The weight of my burdens increased alarmingly as we scrambled up the rocky wall that bounded the beach. Above this rise, the sloping ground was fairly smooth, but parts of it were a talus of dark-gray sand made from disintegrated lava. Our feet sank into it, and it tended to slip out from under us.
There was a scattering of low shrubs. Higher, the hillsides were covered with an open stand of the pale-gray pah santo or holy-stick trees, leafless at this time of year. Even the parts of these volcanic islands with a plant cover have an unearthly aspect, like a lunar landscape.
A narrow ravine cut through the terrain on its way to the bay. We had to climb the bluff on the eastern side of this gulch, and our goal lay on the west side. The ravine was too wide to jump, and its sides were too steep to scramble down and up. So we had to hike inland for a half a mile or so until we found a place narrow enough to hop across. Drexel and Tudor were both pretty red and winded by that time.
The day was hotter and brighter than most. Although right on the equator, the Galapagos Islands (or Islas Encantadas or Archipielago do Colon) are usually rather cool, because of the cold Humboldt Current and the frequent overcasts of the doldrum belt. I smeared sun-tan oil on my nose.
I could also not help thinking of Ortega's curse. Most of my friends consider me a paragon of cold rationality and common sense, never fooled by mummeries and superstitions. In my business, that is a useful reputation. But still, funny things have happened to me ...
On the western side of the ravine, we hiked back down the slope. Then we cut across towards the tip of the western point, keeping at more or less the same altitude. When we neared the apex, we stopped to let Tudor set up the metal detector.
As he thumbed the switch, the instrument gave out a faint hum. Tudor began to quarter the area. He moved slowly, a step at a time, swinging the head of the detector back and forth as if he were sweeping or vacuum-cleaning.
Drexel, Stephen, and I sat on the slope and ate our lunch. A handbill given us at Baltra warned us not to leave any litter. Nowadays they are still tougher about it.
The detector continued its hum, getting louder or softer as Tudor came nearer or went further away. It made me nervous to see him close to the tip of the point. The surface on which he was working was fairly steep, so that walking took an effort of balance. If you fell down and rolled or slid, you might have trouble stopping yourself. This slope continued down to the top of the cliff, which here was a forty-foot vertical drop into the green Pacific.
At last, when Tudor was twenty-five or thirty feet from the edge, the hum of the instrument changed to a warble. Tudor stood a long time, swinging the detector.
"Here y'are," he said. "I'll eat my lunch while you fellas dig."
Since Stephen and I were the muscle men, we fell to. There was no sound but the faint sigh of the breeze, the scrape of the shovels, and the bark of a distant sea lion. Once Stephen, stopping to wipe the sweat from his face, cried: "Hey, Dad, look!"
He pointed to the dorsal fin of a shark, which lazily cut the water out from the cliff. We watched it out of sight and resumed our digging. Having finished his lunch, Tudor came forward to wave his detector over the pit we had dug. The warble was loud and clear.
We began getting into hardpan, so that we had to take the pick to loosen stones of increasing size. Then the pick struck something that did not sound like another stone.
"Hey!" said Drexel.
We soon uncovered the top of a chest, the size of an old-fashioned steamer trunk and much distressed by age. Drexel, Tudor, and Stephen chattered excitedly. I kept quiet, a dim foreboding having taken hold of me. Somehow the conviction formed in my mind that, if the chest were opened, one of us would die.
Tudor was nothing to me; I distrust adventurer types. I should be sorry to lose Drexel, a friend as well as a boss. But the thought crossed my mind that I might succeed him as president of the trust company. I was ashamed of the thought, but there it was. For myself, I was willing to take chances; but that anything should happen to Stephen was unbearable.
I wanted to shout: stop, leave that thing alone! Or, at least, let me send Stevie back to the ship before you open it. But what argument could I offer? It was nothing but an irrational feeling—the kind of "premonition" we get from time to time but remember only on the rare occasions when it is fulfilled by the event. I had no evidence.
"Tired, Willy?" said Drexel. "Here, give me that shovel!"
He grabbed the implement and began digging in his turn, grunting and blowing like a walrus. Soon he and Stephen had the chest excavated down below the lower edge of the lid.
The chest had a locked iron clasp, but this was a mass of rust. The wood of the chest was so rotten that, at the first pry with the wrecking bar, the lock tore out of the wood. Stephen burst into song:
He broke off as Drexel and Tudor lifted the lid with a screech of ancient hinges.
"Good God!" said Ronald Tudor. "What's this?"
In the chest, face up, lay a fish-man like that of which a statue stood in the miniature golf course at Ocean Bay. The thing had been bound with leather thongs in a doubled-up position, with its knees against its chest. Its eyes were covered by a pair of large gold coins.
"Some kind of sea monster," Drexel breathed. "Oh, boy, if I can only get it as a specimen for the Museum ..."
Tudor, eyes agleam, shot out two skinny hands and snatched the coins. He jerked away with a startled yelp. "The goddam thing's alive!"
The fish-man's bulging eyes opened. For one breath it lay in its coffin, regarding us with a wall-eyed stare. Then its limbs moved into jerky action. The leather thongs, brittle with age, snapped like grass stems.
The fish-man's webbed, three-fingered hands gripped the sides of the chest. It heaved itself into a sitting position and stood up. It started to climb out of the excavation.
"Jesus!" cried Tudor.
The fish-man was climbing out on the side towards the sea, which happened to be the side on which Tudor stood. Tudor, apparently thinking himself attacked, shoved the coins into his pants pocket, snatched up a shovel, and swung it at the fish-man.
The blade of the shovel thudded against the fish-man's scaly shoulder. The fish-man opened its mouth, showing a row of long, sharp, fish-catching teeth. It gave a hiss, like the noise a Galapagos tortoise makes when it withdraws into its shell.
"Don't—I mean—" cried Drexel.
As Tudor swung the shovel back for another blow, the fish-man moved stiffly towards him, fangs bared, arms and webbed hands spread. Tudor stumbled back, staggering and slipping in the loose, sloping soil. The two moved towards the cliff, Tudor dodging from side to side and threatening the fish-man with his shovel.