Black Cat Weekly #26

SHIMA MARU, by James Holding-2

I said, “Your brother was lucky the sharks did not take him.”

Michiko nodded, his broad face showing no emotion.

“Or else,” said Likuva, with a malicious glance toward me, “he was a member of my uncle’s Shark clan.”

Angered at his levity, I began to rise. Michiko said sharply, “Shut up, Likuva. Sit down, Vetuka. Your nephew means nothing by his irreverence. I have not yet told you the ending of my story.”

I squatted down again.

“Did you understand what I said?” Michiko asked. “I said the Shima Maru sank in shallow water. At a spot where the depth was no more than sixteen fathoms on the captain’s chart, which my brother had been privileged to see many times when he served the captain his meals on the bridge and in his day cabin.”

I nodded. “There is an underwater ridge several miles offshore, running east and west. I have fished there.” I looked at Michiko. “Is this the end of your story?”

Michiko drew a slow, deep breath. “Vetuka,” he said, “do you think you could find the spot where the Shima Maru lies?”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because,” said Michiko, “there were fifty thousand gold yen on the Shima Maru when she went down.”

I spilled beer down my chin.

My nephew punched me playfully on the arm. “What do you think of that, Uncle? Is that not even more interesting than your story of Ro?”

“Yes,” I said cautiously, still bewildered, “if it is true.”

“It is true,” said Michiko, enjoying my astonishment.

I said, “Your brother saw the gold, as well as his captain’s navigation charts?” Apparently his brother had seen many things that were not his business.

“Yes,” said Michiko. “My brother had his wits about him always.”

“Clearly,” I said. I took a minute to ponder. “Why would a troopship be carrying fifty thousand gold yen?”

“After unloading its troops in Guadalcanal,” Michiko said, “the Shima Maim was to carry the gold on to the commander of the Japanese base in Rabaul. It said this in the captain’s secret orders, which my brother—”

I waved a hand to interrupt him. “For what purpose was the money to be used in Rabaul?”

Michiko shrugged his shoulders, making the red-and-black flowers on his tropical shirt wiggle in the moonlight. “To bribe the village chiefs? To pay the Japanese troops? Who knows? It is not important. The important fact is that there are fifty thousand gold yen still in the sunken hulk of the Shima Maru.” Michiko wiped sweat from his forehead. “If you help us to find the Shima Maru, Vetuka, a third of the treasure will be yours. I promise it.”

I was silent. I gazed steadily at the moon and wondered why Michiko had allowed thirty-five years to pass before coming to Honiara to seek the treasure. I wondered how he came to know my nephew, Likuva, and had thus learned about me and my boat and my knowledge of Guadalcanal waters. I wondered how he came to speak our island tongue so well.

I asked him these questions. And his answers were given without the hesitations that betoken lies. Until he met Likuva in a waterfront bar in Port Moresby and from him learned about me and my boat, said Michiko, he had had neither the time, the resources, nor the opportunity to seek the treasure of which his brother had told him. After Japan was defeated in the Great War, he left his country, unable to tolerate the presence of her conquerors. He shipped south as a deckhand on a freighter, jumped ship in the Philippines, and worked there on a plantation until, in a quarrel over a woman with a fellow worker, he had killed the man and been forced to spend fifteen endless years in the high-security penal colony of San Ramon in Zamboanga.

Released at the end of his term, he had drifted to Australia and dived for pearl oysters off the north coast for ten years. When the pearl diving palled, he had moved on to New Guinea, finding work as a bartender in a Port Moresby dive. There he had remained for the past eight years; there he had picked up our Melanesian speech from his customers; and there he had heard a drunken customer one night—my nephew, Likuva—speak of an uncle on Guadalcanal. On impulse he had told Likuva his secret. Michiko used his scant savings to book passage for the two of them next day to Honiara where, with my help, they hoped they could recover the golden yen in the Shima Maru. “Will you help us, Vetuka?” asked Michiko.

I saw the eagerness in Likuva’s moon-shadowed eyes and found, for a moment, nothing to say except that fifty thousand Japanese yen seemed scarcely worth the trouble of recovering. “A hundred pounds or so,” I said, “split three ways means very little, Michiko. I can get rich more quickly by fishing.” I gave Likuva a smile.

He did not return it. He said, “Uncle, the yen in the Shima Maru are gold! Gold! Don’t you understand?”

“No,” I said.

“Allow me to explain something, Vetuka,” Michiko said. “Each gold yen has three-quarters of a gram of pure gold in it. Pure gold! Do you have any idea what the gold in fifty thousand gold yen is worth today?”

I shook my head.

“Over three hundred thousand pounds!” Michiko’s voice was laced with the shrillness of greed. “Think of it! One hundred thousand pounds for each of us! You could own a copra plantation if you desired. You could buy a beautiful new fishing boat with inboard engines!”

I was stunned. “A hundred thousand pounds.”

“If you help us find the Shima Maru.”

“I cannot conceive of such vast wealth,” I said. “I charge my customers two shillings and sixpence a pound for bonito—and feel great guilt that I demand so much.”

“You will never need to catch another bonito so long as you live, Uncle,” said Likuva, wheedling. “Will he, Michiko?”

Michiko shaded his eyes against the moonlight and showed his teeth in a conspiratorial smile. “Never.”

Likuva asked anxiously, “Will you help us, Uncle?”

Why not? I thought to myself, and stood up. “Yes,” I said. “We will make a plan tomorrow.”

* * * *

Before sunrise the next morning, we left my sleeping loft, descended the ridge to the wharf, boarded my boat, and proceeded, at quarter speed, to round Point Cruz and head west along the shoreline of Guadalcanal.

I kept inshore after rounding the promontory, close enough to make out landmarks in the half light of dawn. Government House, the Masonic Lodge, the soldierly ranks of coconut palms on the Lever Brothers plantation slid slowly by on our left.

When I sighted Kakaombono Village I said to Michiko, “This is where the four Japanese troopships that escaped the bombers were run ashore. I will make this the starting point of our search, since the Shima Maru, when she sank, must have been on the same course as they.”

Michiko nodded. He gazed with fascination at the spot on the beach where I pointed.

The sun was rising now. I turned the boat due north toward Savo Island across Ironbottom Sound. The sea was calm, the long smooth swells slightly ruffled by the gentle breeze of dawn. Increasing our speed slightly, I kept my eyes on the depthometer installed at eye level to the left of my windscreen.

Twenty minutes later we reached the underwater ridge I had mentioned to Michiko. Gradually the depth of water under us decreased—from sixty fathoms to forty-two, then to twenty and eighteen. Michiko, who was crouching behind my shoulder in the wheelhouse, was watching the depthometer as intently as I. “Sixteen fathoms, Vetuka. Sixteen,” he murmured.

“Yes,” I said, “the Shima Maru must have gone down on the very top of the ridge. Luckily for us.”

“What do you mean, Uncle?” asked Likuva.

“It will narrow our search.”

“How?”

“Look at the depth gauge, Likuva. And watch it for a moment.”

Two minutes later, the bottom began to drop away below us. At eighteen fathoms, I said, “Do you see, Likuva? We have but a narrow area to search at sixteen fathoms. Less than a hundred yards wide.”

“But,” said Michiko, “many miles in length?”

“Yes,” I replied. “What did you expect? To find the Shima Maru as easily as you find a lump of meat in a cooking pot?”

“Of course not.”

“However,” I comforted him, “I believe our chance of success is good.”

“Why?”

“The troopships were approaching Guadalcanal from the northwest, down the slot between the islands, when the bombers discovered them. Under sudden attack, they must have fled by the shortest route for Guadalcanal. If their escape course led between Savo and Cape Esperance, we can judge within a mile or two where they must have crossed this underwater ridge in their hurry to get ashore.”

Michiko looked more cheerful.

I turned west and followed the sixteen-fathom depth along the ridge top until instinct and experience told me my boat had intersected an imaginary line drawn from Kakaombono beach to a point midway between Savo Island and Cape Esperance. There I killed the motor, checked our position visually against my landmarks, and climbed from behind the wheel. I said to Likuva, “Throw the anchor overboard.”

My anchor was a heavy stone tied to the end of a thirty-fathom line. Likuva lifted the stone from the deck and dropped it overboard with a splash. The line attached to it snaked into the depths. When the stone preached bottom, I tied a white plastic water bottle, empty and capped, to the slack line on the sea’s surface to serve as a marker.

I said to Michiko, “Yours is the honor of the first dive. But beware of sharks. They are very numerous in these waters.”

“I have no fear of them,” said Michiko stoutly. “In ten years of pearl diving I learned to know them well. I ignore them and they ignore me.”

“Let us hope so,” I said, smiling, “for they are my relatives, after all. Only remember that if she is down there, the Shima Maru will bulk large on the bottom and cannot be mistaken. Her sister ships, which I saw on Kakaombono beach, were thirty feet from deck to Plimsoll line. Nevertheless, we will need patience and persistence to find her.”

“Thank you, Vetuka,” said Michiko gravely, although his limbs were shaking with excitement. “I was a professional diver, remember. I know something of the art.” He took several slow, deep breaths, expanding his chest to its utmost with each one, then dived cleanly over the transom of the boat and swam downward with strong strokes until the depth of the water hid him from our sight.

* * * *

By day’s end, Michiko and I, taking turns, had made twenty-two exploratory dives in search of the Shima Maru. After each fruitless dive we moved the boat a hundred yards west along the underwater ridge, anchored, and dived again.

Likuva did not dive. Instead, he quickly learned to handle the boat with great skill, adjusting our positions delicately as I bade him, lest we fail to explore any section of the bottom where the Shima Maru might lie. Michiko could stay under the water far longer than I. Yet I say without boasting that in spite of my advancing years, I held my own with him in this strenuous work, since my eyesight was keener than his and my knowledge of currents and tides superior.

For three days our search continued. Routinely we rose at dawn, hastened to the underwater ridge as the sun rose, and spent the day diving, diving, diving, with only brief pauses to rest ourselves, to eat, and to move the boat to new locations. Then, as dusk approached, we marked the spot of our last dive, returned to Honiara, secured the boat, ate a hurried meal of fish or turtle meat, and fell like logs into the drugged sleep of exhaustion.