The River of Diamonds

Rhennin didn't ask questions when he saw my face. 'Let's get back to the Mazy Zed,' was all he said.

In his cabin, boiling hot coffee laced with brandy brought some feeling back into my frozen, lethargic limbs. I felt good inside a fisherman's heavy sweater and thick corduroy trousers. My gravel sample was being rushed for a snap assay.

Rhennin confessed that he'd done the waiting by steeling himself as he had during those war-time vigils in a U-boat operations headquarters, sitting gnawing the nail of worry…

'Symbiosis!' he repeated. 'It's just a bunch of Portuguese men-o'-war which have linked up, isn't it?'

I took a big mouthful of coffee. 'No, Felix. They actually surrender functions to become a new creature. It is, in fact, a new animal — and in this extreme case, a highly dangerous one.'

'You say it's like a curtain across the entrance?'

'Yes. It has attached itself to both sides and completely blocks it.'

That would account for Pieterse.'

'Yes.'

'Then how the hell did Dieter break his way in? The hulls — was there any sign of damage?'

I was surprised. 'No, of course not. The screen couldn't harm a U-boat, Felix.'

'But the deadly electrical discharges…?'

'They're fatal to a man, but a U-boat would carve through them and not notice.'

'Then what the devil are you blethering about?' he rapped out.

'Listen,' I said, trying to soothe him, 'for a person to break into the Glory Hole is impossible. On the surface there's the wind, the sea and the blasts of compressed air. Underneath is the jelly-fish curtain. It certainly doesn't account for Gruppe Eisbar… even if it was there over twenty years ago. Nor does it account for the fact that Dieter and the others were apparently unharmed at the graveyard — if we are to believe Shelborne.'

He thumped his fists on the table. 'In God's name, John, what did Shelborne kill them all with? You've accounted for the Bells…'

'It must be the Bells, Felix. It's a bloody clever bit of showmanship taken from nature, but although it's uncanny and noisy, it's harmless. That gas is plain sulphuretted hydrogen — rotten cabbage. It stinks, but it couldn't harm a fly.'

I brushed aside my underwater nightmare. 'Anyway, our Glory Hole monster is easy to dispose of — a load of Koeltas's dynamite drums would destroy it. It's another remarkable thing about the composite jelly-fish that if you rip it apart by force, it reverts to individuals again. All the normal functions reappear in the individual, as if he had never surrendered them at all.'

'We'll do that, then.'

I shook my head. 'Felix, those U-boat crews died of something horrible. They and Dieter died because Shelborne meant them to die. He knows, Felix, he knows!' I looked out at the grim, guano-splashed island. 'The Glory Hole is the diamond fountainhead; it is the parent rock of the Sperrgebiet. Caldwell discovered it. Shelborne killed him for it. He also found out what guards it — that is why he could afford to go away for those ten years, knowing it was safe.'

'Why waste his time becoming a master mariner?'

'It was a long-term plan. The islands are run as sailing ships. To be headman, he had to be a sailing skipper. He came back…'

The telephone rang. Rhennin answered, but his eyes stayed on my face. 'Yes,' he said evenly. 'Yes. I expected it might be, from something I have just heard. Send them to me at once,'will you?'

'The assay?' I asked.

'Yes.'

'How much…'

'Rate of one carat to four tons of gravel.'

'Five times as rich as Oranjemund.'

'Gem quality. Pure blue-whites.'

'From close to the fountainhead.'

'It will be better inside.'

He watched me, silent, while I rummaged around and found what I was looking for, the only stripmap of the Sperrgebiet from Angras Juntas to Hollam's Bird Island. Mercury was marked Merkur, in German fashion. For 100 miles inland, 70 to the south and 130 to the north, the sheet was blank. It was, 'unsurveyed, shifting sand dunes'. Thirty miles to the north-east of Mercury was outlined a mountain with a complex of hills.

I said, 'I'm also going to use Caldwell's strategy — outflank the Glory Hole.'

'Take it from the rear, you mean?'

I nodded. 'See those mountains? It's my bet, just as it was Caldwell's mission, that the ancient river rises there. He got only as far as Strandloper's Water, Maybe the blocked-up mouth is at Strandloper's Water — I don't know. I may have to go only a few miles…'

'It's thirty to the mountains,' he replied sombrely. 'Not far on a map, but eternity in the Namib. Shall I come?'

'No. This is my party, Felix. Besides, you'll have to keep an eye on the crew in the state they are in.'

'We'll start the diamond pumps within the hour,' he said decisively. 'It'll snap those miseries out of them if they're busy. Once the buzz gets round that the assay was rich, it may also help. This Glory Hole creature of yours…'

I laughed. I felt easy now that I was going — to the Namib, to Shelborne's Strandloper's Water. 'Finish him off by sucking him up the Mazy Zed's pumps!'

'Won't it foul them…?'

'No,' I grinned. 'They're soft. Put the main hoses down right outside the mouth, Felix. It should be richer the farther we go inside.'

He didn't catch my mood. 'You remember Shelborne's threat, John? — if we started mining, he would kill the crew?'

I shrugged. 'We've called his bluff over the Bells. We've called it with the guardian of the cavern. I'm still cautious, though — that's why the journey.'

As if in reply to me, the reverberation of the Bells rang against the steel sounding-board of the Mazy Zed.

Rhennin looked uneasy. 'It gives you the bloody creeps.'

'No wonder we couldn't pinpoint it,' I said confidently. 'It originates anywhere round the island on the sea-bed.' I went on, 'Look, before I go off, let's search Shelborne's quarters, you and I, this afternoon. We may find the key to the whole mystery. It mayn't even be necessary for me to go.'

'Excellent,' he said, more cheerfully. 'But you don't intend going alone…?'

'I'll take Koeltas and Johaar,' I replied. Neither will mind leaving the Bells behind.'

'You couldn't have a better bodyguard than those two toughs.'

'I wish Koeltas hadn't had to leave the FN automatic in the Malgas.'

'You can have my Remington repeater. Are our pistols still in the graveyard. I don't remember Shelborne picking them up.'

'He didn't. I'll recover them.'

'Bob Sheriff's boat has weapons…'

'No, Felix. I'm keeping clear. I'll start from the Sudhuk side, which I know is safe.'

He grinned slightly. 'Like the wind — always from the south-west.'

He telephoned a quickfire of orders to bring the Mazy Zed nearer to the Glory Hole by winching her on her anchor cables. Using the run of the sea, the diamond hoses would be dropped to float inside the cavern itself. Two hours later the Mazy Zed was secured as Rhennin, Koeltas, Johaar and I rounded the seal platform in the dinghy and the strong pulse of the pumps began to vie with the Bells.

There was no clue in Shelborne's hut, which we ransacked thoroughly, although we put everything back in place again. Rhennin gave Koeltas the Remington to keep up his morale as the island trembled. Neither he nor Johaar would go for the pistols.

It was already half-dark when there was an oath from Shelborne's quarterdeck and a metallic rattle as Koeltas fed shells into the Remington's magazine.

'He comes!' he exclaimed in patois.

Rhennin and I craned into the darkness. I couldn't see anything, but I could hear the motor.

'Shelborne hasn't got an outboard,' I said.

Koeltas's fear infected us. 'It's someone from the Mazy Zed,' snapped Rhennin. 'I expressly gave orders that no one was to come…'

The red ball of a Very light rose above the jetty.

'Let's get down there!' I didn't care for searching Shelborne's papers, although there was an almost complete lack of anything personal, not a letter even, to associate the man with the place he had occupied for more than twenty years. Once the trommel's handle swung during a severe tremor. In the twilight I thought fancifully of Caldwell's ghost.