The River of Diamonds

'You're crazy, Koeltas — you can't beat out by the southern passage!'

He stood by the rail, listening, peering into the fog.

'Shut up!' he snapped in a low urgent voice. There was a flicker in the thin eyes above the Tartar cheekbones. 'Who says so — Shelborne?'

'Yes!'

He gave a derisive, harsh little chuckle. He came close. He was sweating. The smell of fear blended with the bitter, repugnant stench of the oilskin. 'In a moment, we see a rock — there!' He thrust an arm out to starboard. 'We are on course, then — dead between Mercury and Sudhuk. Sudhuk blocks the wind. Past the rock we get a little more wind, maybe. Look for the rock!'

I looked. It wasn't a rock I saw. It was Shelborne's face.

The flatboom was right under our forefoot. Shelborne was at the tiller. He half-rose in the sternsheets. The Malgas was upon him.

'Jesus!'

Kim saw it too. He gave the wheel a spoke or two. The tower of sail eased. The schooner leaned away from the flatboom. Shelborne's face was white and taut against the sealskin collar. Then — faces, oars, rowers were gone, lost in the fog astern. My words would not come when I saw the rock seconds later. Koeltas, too, said nothing, but threw out his hand towards the key-point with the stiff, stylized motion with which the desert Bushman throws his scanty food into the eye of the desert wind to placate his gods. The Malgas, turning at the rock, hung in stays for an agonizing moment. Then her head came round and she moved silently under a full press of sail out to the open sea.

Koeltas said, without preliminary, 'How much diamant?' He seemed to be having second thoughts about my charter, which to him meant smuggling diamonds, not mining them. 'One of my fren's — also a schooner skipper — takes diamant out to the ships fishing out deep — there! Russian. Jan. Maybe Jap, I dunno. He gets five years in jail. Johaar!'

Koeltas fired a volley of crackling vowels and staccato consonants at him. Even for me it was too quick, but here and there I caught the word diamond. Johaar laughed when Koeltas mentioned the Praying Mantis. I was too raw over her loss to join in.

Koeltas said, 'Mister, Johaar, Kim and me like the job. But Shelborne chases us away, us all in the Malgas. Lots of trouble. When he sees the Malgas he shout, voetsak you Malay bastard, get to hell out of my bay.'

'It isn't his bay,' I replied. Simply, and in some detail, I explained that the Mary Zed project was under licence, legitimate, not outside the law. It was almost impossible to convey this last fact to him.

'I must get back to the wreck before Shelborne,' I told them: 'I want to see what I can salvage of my gear, the diving suits especially.'

I wondered how- much damage the Hydrodist had suffered. It was not irreplaceable but it would take time to get a new one. With or without it, by modem or old-fashioned methods, I intended to survey the bay. More than survey it — investigate it. Priority number one was the inside of the Glory Hole. The three of them grinned as I spoke, Kim from the wheel nearby. The wind had died away and the Malgas, despite the spread she was carrying, ghosted along, barely under way.

'I know about wrecks,' said Koeltas. That was the biggest understatement I had heard since coming aboard. I also wanted to find out what Shelborne had put in the binnacle.

Johaar was a jump ahead of me. 'I get the two diamonds in the magnetite?'

'Magnetite! Was that magnetite?'

He grinned. 'I am two years at Oranjemund, driving rotary bucket excavator. Lots of diamonds — too many, a few are meant for Johaar. But they are bladdy slim and clever at Oranjemund. They find my diamonds with an X-ray security check.' He laughed good-humouredly. 'Now I work for Koeltas. The pay is not so good, but it is more fun, eh?'

'What do you know about magnetite?'

'My English good,' he grinned. 'Magnetite inclusions, that is what the boss called it. Every Saturday night we get drunk and play the racehorse game with magnetite. Like a magnet. Little iron horses on the table and you pull the magnetite underneath and make the horses run. Fun!'

Shelborne had played a deep, subtle game to destroy me. Magnetite! In other words, he had put a piece of lodestone, which is a common matrix for diamonds, into the compass housing when he went to look at the barometer. It was a brilliant piece of opportunism, using the storm and wrong sailing directions. No wonder we had fetched up on a reef. No wonder, too, that he had been thoughtful when he had asked on Mercury whether I was the key figure in determining where the Mary Zed would operate. He was planning then to eliminate the kingpin. Shelborne! — I found myself using Koeltas's own savage oaths.

'Yes, Johaar,' I said slowly. And then, if Shelborne could afford to throw away two fair-sized diamonds in a chunk of magnetite, he knew where he could get plenty more. I recalled the Borchardt's magazine also. 'Yes, you can have the two diamonds when we go back.'

He turned to Kim. 'Maybe two, three carat. Aaaaaah! I get so drunk!'

'Johaar,' said Kim. 'Give me five quid. I need a woman bad.'

Koeltas laughed. 'You mean, a bad woman, you bastard you! You see what honest money does, mister? It makes us bad.'

I was tired and I didn't want the unpredictable little skipper changing his mind while I was asleep. The diamonds in the Knight's Cross hung round my neck were enough to make them cut my throat.

'What are you going to do with your share of the diamonds, Koeltas?' I asked.

He paused, as if trying to remember something. What he said was by rote from the catalogue: 'A ship, schooner-rigged, ninety feet long, twenty feet beam, ten feet of hold. Bows like a knife. Planking, American elm and teak. Sail plan…'

I said to myself, in English. 'And a star to steer her by!'

Kim crackled. 'Bugger me!' he said.

Johaar grinned. 'If we hadn't been there when we pulled him off the reef, I'd say he was walking two rows of brandy tracks!'

'Ag, this white lightning — it makes a man do anything,' added Koeltas" 'Pick up your backsides, you lot of Sperrgebiet gamats and get the sails in!'

The Malgas lay in the long swell.

Koeltas said, 'We go in the night, eh?'

He probably knew his way round the bay better by night than by day anyhow. And I needed sleep during that day.

'Good,' I replied. 'Get my clothes dry for me while I sleep, will you? Are you taking the Malgas out to sea until we make the bay?'

Koeltas shrugged. 'We lie up today.'

'Where?'

'There are places. Shelborne won't find us.'

Kim led me below to a stuffy little cubby-hole to take off my sodden, torn clothes. He gave me a doggy blanket and I threw myself down on the hard bunk. I was too exhausted to sleep. There was no doubt that Shelborne had tried to do away with me. Yet there was a curious element of reluctance, of compassion, in his attitude towards me which would not let me write him off as a cold-blooded killer. He himself had hinted that he was on the trail of something. What? Had he killed Caldwell for it. If it were a pocket of diamonds in the Glory Hole there was no need for his elaborate play about a lifetime's search. He could wash enough stones to keep him well-off for life. If it wasn't big, there was no point in trying to do away with me and thus thwart or prevent the arrival of the Mazy Zed. If Shelborne had come along with a strike, Rhennin would have welcomed him liberally; moreover, he might have swayed the court in his favour had he made any attempt to show that he had prospected as his concession entitled him to. He had, by contrast, played down his efforts. Why his concern and thanks about Mary Caldwell — was it reparation for what he had done to her father? Then there was the curious side issue of the U-boat's Knight's Cross. Who was the Rhennin who had been at Mercury in the war? I had to get back to Angras Juntas to equip myself for a new thrust into Shelborne's territory; I would find out from Felix Rhennin then. Last of all, what were the dreaded Bells of St Mary's and why did Mercury shake?