Tiger Island, page 2
Sindbad hurried to the ship’s side and saw at once that Haroun was right. The water was sliding silently, inexorably and with terrifying speed up over the reef. He watched it surge in under the keel of the boat and on up the beach beyond. Sindbad waited no longer but gave the order to sail as swiftly as possible away from this accursed place.
As the boom beat its way out of the little bay past the grey, forbidding mangroves, the water closed over the pile of black logs and the agitated, storm-grey chop began to hiss in among the roots of the forest trees themselves. It was only then, when he turned to tell Ali the quickest course away and saw Haroun at the tiller instead, that Sindbad realised what he had done. But by then the island was sinking in earnest and it was far too late to go back.
Ali had run uphill when the terrible roaring began, for there had seemed to be a widening of the path ahead which promised safety. But the promise had proved merely to be an opening of the forest on to a high grass plateau. Ali had dashed wildly out on to this, brandishing his massive, bejewelled knife as though the restless air was attacking him. The instant he slowed, another roar warned him that he was in fact being pursued so he ran on with all his might towards a rugged pile of raw rock which promised some refuge. Only when his hands were fastened on the grey wall did he risk a look behind him, nearly cutting his arm with the knife between his teeth. There on the grass, less than twenty paces behind him, the biggest tiger he had ever seen was trotting inquisitively towards him, its lackadaisical movements gathering into a charge. Wildly, Ali scrambled upwards, feeling the ground continue to tremble beneath his hands as he climbed. The air was full of roaring now as though the tiger was inside his very head. The lone sailor hauled himself atop the grey rock wall and found himself standing at the very peak of the island. And he alone saw and understood. Sweeping across the reef was a great wave. It was this that roared and shook the land, and frightened the animals so. It was a wave such as Ali had never dreamed of, big enough to sink the island and everything upon it. For an instant he stood, then reverently he knelt, hoping he faced Mecca. ‘There is but one God … ’ he began, and his prayer was for his shipmates.
And the one God Allah answered. For the height of the island broke the power of the wave so that Sindbad on the far side of it escaped its destructive force. But the shock of the wave’s impact caused the ground beneath the praying giant to open and he was precipitated directly into paradise.
Sindbad stood at the sharp stem of his ship and watched the island vanish beneath the surface of the sea as he looked in vain for his giant friend. He knew little about the curvature of the earth but he knew well enough that a distant coastline will dip below the horizon. This was something much more dramatic than that, however. This was the whole of what seemed to have been an island diving into the very depths of the boiling ocean. And he knew then that this had been no island but the back of a monstrous sea creature which had been disturbed by the pinprick of his scimitar and by the pain of the fire and had dived beneath the surface to swim away to safety.
And this was the story that Saleh ibn Sa’idabad would tell — among all the others he brought back from the Pearl River and the wonders of medieval China. It would be the better part of a thousand years before Sindbad’s stories were translated into European languages and presented to the public as fairytale romances. But Sindbad knew what he had seen and he noted it. And it was real.
*
Seven hundred and seventy years later, in 1579, it was the captain general from Plymouth who found the island next and named it. Like Sindbad, Captain General Francis Drake used the stars. Like him also, he used the services of yellowskinned drifters snatched at hazard off forbidding coasts. But, unlike the captain from Sohar, the captain general had a compass — and he had maps which he had stolen from the Spaniards. Most especially, he had the complete set of Pacific charts seized from Don Alonso Sanches Colchero on 20 March 1579.
By the end of July, Golden Hind had put the coast of what would one day be California behind her and sailed due west. For sixty-eight days she ploughed straight on along the tracks laid down in Colchero’s chart. On the sixty-ninth day, in the dark before dawn, in the middle of the South China Sea, without having seen any land since America and out of sight of any major land-mass now, Golden Hind ran hard aground. Her keel wedged at once on the tallest pinnacle of the outer fringe of shoals around the Rifleman. The captain general, hurled from his resting place, was among the first on deck, peering through the darkness to try and judge what damage had been done aloft — his first concern, as Sindbad’s had been, for his rigging.
While Captain Francis was thus employed, his young cousin John Drake, though still only fourteen, went out into the cutter with Cook and Flood, two of the seamen, to check the bottom as dawn gathered. They could find no bottom at all on the starboard side. On the port side, however, there was rock and weed, but no sound purchase for a kedge anchor. And for all they strained their eyes in the fading darkness, they could see no sign of land nearby. But then, as full day came, young John’s sharp eyes saw the island which lay less than five miles upwind of them.
In truth, John did not see it first as much as hear it, for in the near-millennium since Sindbad had visited the place, the indri and lemur populations had expanded exponentially in spite of the depredations of the tigers — and the occasional tsunami wave — and the noise they made in their dawn chorus had increased in volume accordingly. The howling chorus swept down across the water and put John suddenly, vividly in mind of Hades. He looked up, his blue eyes narrowing. Across the dazzling expanse of water he saw the hulking shock of rainforested hill-slope. He was on the opposite side of the island to Sindbad, and so the foot of the deep green slopes did not fall darkly and dangerously into mangrove mazes. Instead, they opened invitingly into palm-fringed, white sand beaches.
‘Land ho!’ he cried.
‘Boy’s right,’ acknowledged Cook and he bellowed to the watch aboard. ‘Ahoy the Hind! Ahoy! Land ho!’
‘Where away?’ came the distant reply from the forecastle watch.
‘Bugger’s blind,’ muttered Flood. He hawked and spat, calculating.
‘Port beam. Five mile distant. Upwind of you,’ bellowed John, his voice cracking. The island was his and he wanted Captain Francis to know it.
‘Well now, my lads,’ said the captain general as the midday sun stood up above the crow’s nest, ‘the case is this and clear to all. We are well aground upon this rock or shoal and not like to move. Land stands less than five leagues distant but it lies dead upwind of us. We have one cutter and seventy-five souls. It would be an impossible row — and no seaman I have ever known can sail into the eye of the wind. Unless the wind changes, the isle might as well be in the Bermudas. So we are left to our own devices here. And we are left with only one hope beyond the mercy of God. That is to lighten the load so that the next high tide might lift us free.’ Ordnance and cannonballs went first. Then pipes of flour and bales of clothing. The cargo contained some spices — these went too. And then — and only then — the first of the treasure chests. It was a careful calculation on the captain’s part. The chest had to be heavy enough to lighten them. It had to be easily accessible. It had to be solid metal — no jewels or wrought work much of which was destined to adorn the breast of the Virgin Queen. The calculation had to be careful in other ways too — in politicking as well as ship-handling. Drake was not his own master and the treasure in the hold was not his. This was no pirate voyage with the spoils destined to be shared by all — it was a business venture with Drake as Corsair, licensed in secret by his queen. The venture had apparently been funded by Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Francis Walsingham but it was an open secret that these two men — the most powerful at court — were a cover for the Queen herself. To these three, individually and collectively, Drake would have to account for every centavo lost and won — and it was they who would reward his efforts with their bounty in the end.
But there was the great chest taken from the Great Captain of the South Seas. Ever careful, nonetheless, Drake had it bound with brass and sealed with his own seal on a great round plate of lead, so that any man finding it should know who the owner was. Then overboard it went, like the ordnance, on that side of the ship where there was some shallow water at least, pushed with lingering regret by Cook and Flood — and briskly by the captain general himself.
And, miraculously, as though the disposal of that one last chest was a signal to God Himself, the wind changed. The Nor’-Easter which had blown steadily for two months backed even as the greedy green water closed over the weighty chest and it began to blow strongly from the south-west. The Golden Hind shivered as the new wind took her and suddenly she began to move. Under the steady pressure of the new wind, she lifted her trapped keel free and slid like a lady down on to the broad green bosom of the ocean. Drake lost no time in taking their ship down gently from the west but the shallow sloping sand no real danger as a lee shore they heaved Golden Hind short and went ashore, leaving only an anchor watch aboard.
John was amongst the first ashore. The evening chorus was a much more restful business than the cries at dawn. The gentle onshore breeze could not quite contain the fascinating, exotic odours which flowed from the forest wall. The sheer restful beauty of the swathe of beach with its low, smooth rock outcrops at each end and its piles of tinder-dry driftwood convenient to evening watch fires all beckoned to a feeling of calm contentment in the boy and overcame any sense of danger at all.
As darkness gathered, the captain general sent squads of men along the shore and into the forest in search of food. They returned with coconuts and breadfruit, bananas an} all familiar from their earlier voyaging. Those who ventured on to the rocks also discovered massive crabs, their shells almost as broad as the round table in the captain general’s quarters. By the time a fat moon began to rise, all except the anchor watch were resting contented on the sand, full of fresh fruit and sweet crab meat.
Next dawn, they set about hauling the Golden Hind up the gently shelving beach and rocking her over on to one side so that they could scrape all the accumulated weed from her bottom. While this laborious but vital process went on, the captain general consulted his maps and ruttiers and made his plans while his young nephew went out with a hunting party. Crab meat was all very well, but it would not keep seventy-five strapping seamen going for very long alone.
On this side of the island, the forest was slightly lighter and the hunting party had little more to do than stroll through gently thickening groves with their wondering eyes darting from one breathtaking beauty to another, charmed out of their urgent mission, seduced into forgetfulness of their priming. Or, this was the situation until John found the remains of the pig. There, in the middle of a glade of tall trees festooned with liana creepers ablaze with flowers so beautiful that only the huge butterflies outdid them, lay a tom pile of butchered offal. John stopped, horror-struck. He had seen death and destruction enough before — but the implications of this poor beast and what had been done to it were all too quick to sink in. The pig had not been small — its body would have exceeded by far the biggest loaded into the Hind from the Portsmouth shambles. And yet it had simply been tom asunder and strewn around the ground with casual ease.
There came from the groves all too close at hand a low, throbbing roar which built to such threatening intensity that it silenced the whole island. Without further ado the hunting party withdrew to the beach and reported to the captain general.
The crew had completed their careening of the port side and were actually winching the Hind over, ready to start on the other side, when the first, smaller, tidal wave struck. It came in ahead of the gathering tide and so they were slow to notice it. It came insidiously but unstoppably, simply gathering itself up over the shoulder of the reef as though it were a spring tide — coming and coming and coming in.
At first, when they began to get their feet wet, they merely laughed at each other, mocking a simple miscalculation. But then they began to realise that the surge of water was not going to stop. The captain general was called and he looked out across the sea. He was struck at once by the change in the aspect of the water and he called everyone to board the ship.
No sooner had the last of them gained the deck, held upright by nothing more than the abandoned anchors, than they all felt the ship stir. ‘Cast off the lines there,’ ordered Drake quietly. And with startling suddenness, there was fifteen feet of ocean where there had so recently been a safe beach, and the tide was still gathering rapidly. It was dark, sinister water, and it was moving with deeply disturbing power.
There was a sort of hissing rumble in the air which was apparent at first to those who scampered aloft at the captain general’s order — and to young John who was first among them. Soon, however, it was audible to all of them, as the voice of the great wave which was still building relentlessly beneath their keel. Across the face of this they sailed, running down the back of the island as they were being swept up and across it. By the time the sails were set and beginning to fill, the game little ship was twenty-five feet above the flat rocks where they had caught the crabs last night and the distant roaring had gathered more force. By the time she was under way, heading determinedly due south across the wind and water both, her keel was above the drowned top of the tallest coconut palm fringing the next underwater bay.
And, all at once, the roaring of the water was subsumed in something stranger still. John, at the mast-head, had the sharpest eyes and the clearest view. It was he who saw the wonder. Just behind the stem of the skimming little sloop, the island canopy gathered itself out of the seething water and the tops of the trees effectively formed a high, green shoreline broken by the tops of taller trees, backed with the last of the dry land of the island’s highest hilltop. And that green canopy was abruptly full of screaming faces; those tall trees abruptly pendant with dark swinging bodies. Every lemur, indri, orang utan, sloth, reptile and insect on the island seemed to be there among the treetops, the howls of the indri giving voice to an apparent plea for mercy as every bird and bat took flight.
And there beyond, on the slope of the island hilltop where an open area still stood just as Sindbad’s steersman Ali had observed it, all the ground-animals huddled together, adding their voices to the screams of the primates in the trees. There, in the distance, young John Drake saw among the milling herds of black backed peccaries and giant forest pigs, the largest, most powerful, brightest-coated and most terrifying tigers he had ever seen. But the tigers stood among the tender little piglets of the black backed peccaries and the tiny, juicy tapirs and did them no harm at all, like the lions in the scriptures destined to lie down with the lambs.
But stranger things were to happen still. Even as that moment passed — and with it the hissing crest of the first, smaller tsunami wave born of a distant earthquake in Japan — so the water level began to fall almost as rapidly as it had gathered in the first place.
Just as the whole of the sea in that region had gathered itself up into that first tsunami, so there followed behind the wave a trough almost equally deep. And, behind the trough, another wave even taller than the first. So, as the Hind pulled back round the outer reaches of the bank one day to be called the Rifleman, what had been a reef now rose as firm ground. What had been the sharp shoal which snagged their keel now stood as a spire high above. And the island, named already for the tigers John Drake had pointed out to his uncle, towered like a distant mountain on the horizon, beyond a five-mile desert of gleaming, weed-infested coral.
To most of the men who saw it, this was close to a miracle. Seamen Cook and Flood, however, were busy with more worldly thoughts. With young John in tow, they sidled up to the captain general. If they could borrow the long-boat, they suggested, it would be possible for them to row across to that coral bank and look there for some of the items cast overboard when the Hind was wedged up there on that spire of rock.
‘Items of weight, such as the ordnance,’ insinuated Cook, ‘may lie directly below the point at which they were cast overboard. It would be a God-given chance, Captain Francis, to recover some of these valuable items.’
His words rang across the suddenly silent deck — and all the men there knew he was certainly not talking about cannon or cannonballs. Captain Francis also thought of that good round chest full of treasure and sealed with his seal. ‘Take my kinsman with you and you may go,’ he agreed at last. ‘But if trouble comes then you may look to God for help — for you may none of you look to me.’
And so it was done. The Hind lay out to sea and the three rowed swiftly to the coral crag uncovered for them by the trough between the waves. Up they scrambled on to the running rocks, overwhelmed by the tinkling chuckle and the silvery tintinnabulation all around. They found one of the cannonballs first, then another, swept along in a straight line towards the distant island by the power of the first wave. In a trice they found a third — then a fourth. Like pearls cast across the surface of the reef, the cannonballs led the three men across the rocks towards Tiger Island and the promise of Captain Francis’s treasure chest.
Again, it was young John who found it, more than halfway in towards the beach. This time, however, his grim companions from the cutter let him take none of the glory of discovery. Instead, they took a handle each and swung the chest high. It was only fear of the captain general which saved the boy’s throat. He knew it — and yet he put the thought aside.
