immediately bond understood why all these barracuda and shark were lurking round the island, how they were kept frenzied with bloodlust by this nightly banquet, why, against all reason, the three men had been washed up half-eaten by the fish.
mr. big had just harnessed the forces of the sea for his protection. it was a typical invention - imaginative, technically foolproof and very easy to operate.
even as bond's mind grasped it all, something hit him a terrific blow in the shoulder and a twenty-pound barracuda backed away, black rubber and flesh hanging from its jaws. bond felt no pain as he let go of the bronze propeller and threshed wildly for the rocks, only a horrible sickness in the pit of his stomach at the thought of part of himself between those hundred razor-sharp teeth. water started to ooze between the close-fitting rubber and his skin. it would not be long before it penetrated up his neck and into the mask.
he was just going to give up and shoot the twenty feet to the surface when he saw a wide fissure in the rocks in front of him. beside it a great boulder lay on its side and somehow he got behind it. he turned from the partial shelter it gave just in time to see the same barracuda coming at him again, its upper jaw held at right angles to the lower for its infamous gaping strike.
bond fired almost blind with the harpoon gun. the rubber thongs whammed down the barrel and the barbed harpoon caught the big fish in the centre of its raised upper jaw, pierced it and stuck with half the shaft and the line still free.
the barracuda stopped dead in its tracks, three feet from bond's stomach. it tried to get its jaws together and then gave a mighty shake of its long reptile's head. then it shot away, zigzagging madly, the gun and line, jerked from bond's hand, streaming behind it. bond knew that the other fish would be on to it, tearing it to bits, before it had gone a hundred yards.
bond thanked god for the diversion. his shoulder was now surrounded by a cloud of blood. in a matter of seconds the other fish would catch the scent. he slipped round the boulder with the thought that he would scramble up under the shelter of the jetty and somehow hide himself above the level of the sea until he had made a fresh plan.
then he saw the cave that the boulder had hidden.
it was really almost a door into the base of the island. if bond had not been swimming for his life he could have walked in. as it was, he dived straight through the opening and only stopped when several yards separated him from the glimmering entrance.
then he stood upright on the soft sand and switched on his torch. a shark might conceivably come in after him but in the confined space it would be almost impossible for it to bring its underslung mouth to bear on him. it would certainly not come in with a rush for even the shark is frightened of hazarding its tough skin among rocks, and he would have plenty of chance of going for its eyes with his dagger.
bond shone his torch on the ceiling and sides of the cave. it had certainly been fashioned or finished by man. bond guessed that it had been dug outwards from somewhere in the centre of the island.
'at least another twenty yards to go, men,' bloody morgan must have said to the slave overseers. and then the picks would have burst suddenly through to the sea and a welter of arms and legs and screaming mouths, gagged for ever with water, would have hurtled back into the rock to join the bodies of other witnesses.
the great boulder at the entrance would have been put in position to seal the seaward exit. the shark bay fisherman who suddenly disappeared six months before must have one day found it rolled away by a storrn or by the tidal wave following a hurricane. then he had found the treasure and had known he would need help to dispose of it. a white man would cheat him. better go to the great negro gangster in harlem and make the best terms he could. the gold belonged to the black men who had died to hide it. it should go back to the black men.
standing there, swaying in the slight current hi the tunnel, bond guessed that one more barrel of cement had splashed into the mud of the harlem river.
it was then that he heard the drums.
out amongst the big fish he had heard a soft thunder in the water that had grown as he entered the cave. but he had thought it was only the waves against the base of the island, and anyway he had had other things to think about.
but now he could distinguish a definite rhythm and the sound boomed and swelled around him in a muffled roar as if he himself was imprisoned inside a vast kettle-drum.
the water seemed to tremble with it. he guessed its double purpose. it was a great fish-call used, when intruders were about, to attract and excite the fish still further. quarrel had told him how the fishermen at night beat the sides of their canoes with the paddle to wake and bring the fish. this must be the same idea. and at the same time it would be a sinister voodoo warning to the people on shore, made doubly effective when the dead body was washed up on the following day.
another of mr. big's refinements, thought bond. another spark thrown off by that extraordinary mind.
well, at least he knew where he was now. the drums meant that he had been spotted. what would strangways and quarrel think as they heard them? they would just have to sit and sweat it out. bond had guessed the drums were some sort of trick and he had made them promise not to interfere unless the secalur got safely away. that would mean that all bond's plans had failed. he had told strangways where the gold was hidden and the ship would have to be intercepted on the high seas.
now the enemy was alerted, but would not know who he was nor that he was still alive. he would have to go on if only to stop solitaire at all costs from sailing in the doomed ship.
bond looked at his watch. it was half an hour after midnight. so far as bond was concerned, it might have been a week since he started his lonely voyage through the sea of dangers.
he felt the beretta under his rubber skin and wondered if it was already ruined by the water that had got in through the rent made by the barracuda's teeth.
then, the roar of the drums getting louder every moment, he moved on into the cave, his torch throwing a tiny pinpoint of light ahead of him.
he had gone about ten yards when a faint glimmer showed in the water ahead of him. he dowsed the torch and went cautiously towards it. the sandy floor of the cave started to move upwards and with every yard the light grew brighter. now he could see dozens of small fish playing around him and ahead the water seemed full of them, attracted into the cave by the light. grabs peered from the small crevices in the rocks and a baby octopus flattened itself into a phosphorescent star against the ceiling.
then he could make out the end of the cave and a wide shining pool beyond it, the white sandy bottom as bright as day. the throb of the drums was very loud. he stopped in the shadow of the entrance and saw that the surface was only a few inches away and that lights were shining down into the pool.
bond was in a quandary. any further step and he would be in full view of anyone looking at the pool. as he stood, debating with himself, he was horrified to see a thin red cloud of blood spreading beyond the entrance from his shoulder. he had forgotten the wound, but now it began to throb, and when he moved his arm the pain shot through it. there was also the thin stream of bubbles from the cylinders, but he hoped these were just creeping up to burst unnoticed at the lip of the entrance.
even as he drew back a few inches into his hole, his future was settled for him.
above his head there was a single huge splash and two negroes, naked except for the glass masks over their faces, were on to him, long daggers held like lances in their left hands.
before his hand reached the knife at his belt they had seized both his arms and were hauling him to the surface.
hopelessly, helplessly, bond let himself be man-handled out of the pool on to flat sand. he was pulled to his feet and the zips of his rubber suit were torn open. his helmet was snatched off his head and his holster from his shoulder and suddenly he was standing among the debris of his black skin, like a flayed snake, naked except for his brief swimming-trunks. blood oozed down from the jagged hole in his left shoulder.
when his helmet came off bond was almost deafened by the shattering boom and stutter of the drums. the noise was in him and all around him. the hastening syncopated rhythm galloped and throbbed in his blood. it seemed enough to wake all jamaica. bond grimaced and clenched his senses against the buffeting tempest of noise. then his guards turned him round and he was faced with a scene so extraordinary that the sound of the drums receded and all his consciousness was focused through his eyes.
in the foreground, at a green baize card-table, littered with papers, in a folding chair, sat mr. big, a pen in his hand, looking incuriously at him. a mr. big in a well-cut fawn tropical suit, with a white shirt and black knitted silk tie. his broad chin rested on his left hand and he looked up at bond as if he had been disturbed in his office by a member of the staff asking for a raise in salary. he looked polite but faintly bored.
a few steps away from him, sinister and incongruous, the scarecrow effigy of baron samedi, erect on a rock, gaped at bond from under its bowler hat.
mr. big took his hand off his chin, and his great golden eyes looked bond over from top to toe.
'good morning, mister james bond,' he said at last, throwing his flat voice against the dying crescendo of the drums. 'the fly has indeed been a long time coming to the spider, or perhaps i should say "the minnow to the whale". you left a pretty wake of bubbles after the reef.'
he leant back in his chair and was silent. the drums softly thudded and boomed.
so it was the fight with the octopus that had betrayed him. bond's mind automatically registered the fact as his eyes moved on past the man at the table.
he was in a rock chamber as big as a church. half the floor was taken up with the clear white pool from which he had come and which verged into aquamarine and then blue near the black hole of the underwater entrance. then there was the narrow strip of sand on which he was standing and the rest of the floor was smooth flat rock dotted with a few grey and white stalagmites.
some way behind mr. big, steep steps mounted towards a vaulted ceiling from which short limestone stalactites hung down. from their white nipples water dripped intermittently into the pool or on to the points of the young stalagmites that rose towards them from the floor.
a dozen bright arc lights were fixed high up on the walls and reflected golden highlights from the naked chests of a group of negroes standing to his left on the stone floor rolling their eyes and watching bond, their teeth showing in delighted cruel grins.
round their black and pink feet, in a debris of broken timber and rusty iron hoops, mildewed strips of leather and disintegrating canvas, was a blazing sea of gold coin-yards, piles, cascades of round golden specie from which the black legs rose as if they had been halted in the middle of a walk through flame.
beside them were piled row upon row of shallow wooden trays. there were some on the floor partly filled with gold coin, and at the bottom of the steps a single negro had stopped on his way up and he was holding one of the trays in his hands and it was full of gold coin, four cylindrical rows of it, held out as if for sale between his hands.
further to the left, in a corner of the chamber, two negroes stood by a bellying iron cauldron suspended over three hissing blow-lamps, its base glowing red. they held iron skimmers in their hands and these were splashed with gold half way up the long handles. beside them was a towering jumble of gold objects, plate, altar pieces, drinking vessels, crosses, and a stack of gold ingots of various sizes. along the wall near them were ranged rows of metal cooling trays, their segmented surfaces gleaming yellow, and there was an empty tray on the floor near the cauldron and a long gold-spattered ladle, its handle bound with cloth.
squatting on the floor not far from mr. big, a single negro had a knife in one hand and a jewelled goblet in the other. beside him on a tin plate was a pile of gems that winked dully, red and blue and green, in the glare of the arcs.
it was warm and airless in the great rock chamber and yet bond shivered as his eyes took in the whole splendid scene, the blazing violet-white lights, the shimmering bronze of the sweating bodies, the bright glare of the gold, the rainbow pool of jewels and the milk and aquamarine of the pool. he shivered at the beauty of it all, at this fabulous petrified ballet in the great treasure-house of bloody morgan.
his eyes came back to the square of green baize and the great zombie face and he looked at the face and into the wide yellow eyes with awe, almost with reverence.
'stop the drums,' said the big man to no one in particular. they had died almost to a whisper, a lisping beat right on the pulse of the blood. one of the negroes took two softly clanging steps amongst the gold coin and bent down. there was a portable phonograph on the floor and a powerful amplifier leant beside it against the rock wall. there was a click and the drums stopped. the negro shut the lid of the machine and went back to his place.
'get on with the work,' said mr. big, and at once all the figures started moving as if a penny had been put in a slot. the cauldron was stirred, the gold was picked up and clicked into the boxes, the man picked busily at his jewelled goblet and the negro with the tray of gold moved on up the stairs.
bond stood and dripped sweat and blood.
the big man bent over the lists on his table and wrote one or two figures with his pen.
bond stirred and felt the prick of a dagger over his kidneys.
the big man put down his pen and got slowly to his feet. he moved away from the table.
'take over,' he said to one of bond's guards and the naked man walked round the table and sat down in mr. big's chair and picked up the pen.
'bring him up.' mr. big walked over to the steps in the rock and started to climb them slowly.
bond felt a prick in his side. he stepped out of the debris of his black skin and followed the slowly climbing figure.
no one looked up from his work. no one would slacken when mr. big was out of sight. no one would put a jewel or a coin in his mouth.
baron samedi was left in charge.
only his zombie had gone from the cave.
