The Golden Gondola

Chapter 1 ~ 1750-2

He paid no heed, laying first his coat and then his shirt and torn stockings on the dry sand. Then, wearing only his breeches, he walked towards the sea. He braced his muscles.

He was still stiff, his head ached, but nothing worse than that was wrong with him.

Without further comment he plunged into the water.

It was not so cold as it had been the night before and somehow it seemed invigorating. The tide was with him and carried him swiftly towards the wreck, and not for one moment did he feel afraid or even overwhelmed by the lashing waves that carried him down into their green depths and then swept him up towards the sky.

He reached the wreck and with difficulty prevented himself from being dashed against it. It was dangerous, but he managed to squeeze himself round the shattered hull without being crushed between the ship and the rocks. And then, with the agility of a cat, he clambered up the ship onto what was left of her deck.

The tide was going out fast and he thought that it would not be long before the fishermen would be able to take their boats alongside. He glanced back at them and realised that he was only just in time.

He was well aware that anything salvaged from the wreckage of ships that ran onto the rocks along this dangerous coast was considered the lawful property of those who first laid hands on it.

Crawling along the heaving deck he made his way to the companionway. He had to move immediately after a wave and before another came to create more damage. Somehow, instinctively, he got into the rhythm of it. And then, moving below into the bow of the ship filled with water, he began to grope and feel his way.

There was just enough room for him to move and breathe although every wave splashed the dirty water against his face or pinioned him to the mass of loosened wreckage. It was dark and yet the holes in the ship enabled him to see enough.

There was one cabin that he was searching for, one that was his objective. It was on the opposite side of the ship to the rocks and was therefore comparatively undamaged. The porthole had been burst in and in the sunlight he could see what he had expected to find.

It was the body of a woman lying on the floor under about four feet of water. She was being rolled slowly backwards and forwards by the movement of the water. He could see her quite clearly with the sunlight percolating through the open porthole.

She had long dark hair, which floated in the water and her lips were red even in death.

Backwards and forwards she rolled, and then, peering through the water that covered her, Sir Harvey saw that she held something tightly in her hand. It was a velvet box, padlocked and with silver corners such as women use for their jewellery.

Even the battering of the waves had not caused her fingers to loosen. White and somehow tenacious, they still held onto the box as she rolled.

Taking a deep breath Sir Harvey bent down. He took the box from the thin fingers. Her hand, when it relinquished the box, fell away limply as if she no longer had any interest in the only object she had tried to save.

Sir Harvey straightened himself, being, as he did so, flung backwards against the cabin wall by a rush of water pouring into the ship from a mountainous wave.

But the box was his!

Holding it in one hand he breathed deeply. Then he bent down, before the water came flooding in again, to take the pearls from the dead woman’s rounded neck, three rows of them, perfectly matched and with an elaborate clasp set with rubies and diamonds.

Her hair entwined itself around his arm and gently, as if he feared to hurt her, he disentangled it.

Up again he slipped the pearls into his breeches’ pocket and made his way slowly and laboriously back to the companionway. He paused as he reached his own cabin, which was near to it, hesitated for a moment and then a sudden wave sent his head crashing against the wall so that for a moment he was almost stunned.

He did not leave hold of the box he held in his hand, but after a pause he stumbled up the companionway.

When he reached the deck, he was half exhausted and very nearly collapsing for want of breath, fighting against the waves that kept splashing over him, blinding him and half-choking him with their spray.

He heard shouts from outside. The fishermen were approaching. He glanced round and saw a coat floating towards him. He snatched it up and wrapped the box in it and tucking it under his arm jumped from the deck of the piled-up ship into the water below. As he rose to the surface, he found himself near a boat and hauled himself aboard.

“You are a fool, signor,” one of the fishermen said. “You might have killed yourself. Did you get anything?”

“Only an old coat,” Sir Harvey said disgustedly, throwing it down beside him in the bottom of the boat.

“And you risked your life for that?”

The fisherman spat over the side.

“You would risk your life if you realised that everything you possessed was in that broken hulk of wood,” Sir Harvey answered.

He cupped his hand round his mouth.

“Ahoy, there! I will reward any man who salvages my clothes for me. They are in the second cabin below the companionway and there is money, good money, in the pocket of a coat you’ll find there.”

He saw the interest his shouts had aroused. But the fishermen were still wary of climbing onto the ship.

“Money is all very well,” his own boatman told him. “But there’s no knowing if it will be useful in Paradise or, indeed, if you can get it there.”

“Think how sought-after your widow would be with it,” Sir Harvey parried with a smile and his sally evoked a roar of laughter.

One of the fishermen, braver than the others, was now trying to emulate Sir Harvey’s effort in clambering up the side of the ship on the deck. But he had his arm crushed between the rocks and the moving ship and fell back into the sea with a great gash from wrist to elbow.

He was hauled aboard one of the boats, bleeding and cursing, and the other fishermen drew their boats further back and waited.

The tide was running out quickly, at the same time the ship was disintegrating. Great pieces of wood began to fall from the rocks into the sea. There was a noise all the time of splintering and crashing, which had an almost pathetic sound as if it was some live creature that was being destroyed.

The fishermen were all the time filling their boats with anything that was flung within their reach by the waves, a cask of wine, a chair, broken but still recognisable for what it had been originally intended, some clothes and a number of cooking utensils, all of which were snapped up eagerly.

“Will anybody else try their luck at getting inside the ship?” Sir Harvey asked.

“Why don’t you try again?” a fisherman suggested.

Sir Harvey shook his head.

“I would,” he said, “but I am still weak from last night.

“That must be true,” one of them came in. “You are a strong man to have survived it all.”

Sir Harvey smiled at his naïve admiration.

“It is not always strength that counts,” he answered. “Sometimes it is brains.”

“It was strength that kept you alive last night,” the fisherman said. “Or else the Devil looked after his own.”

He spoke as a joke and then, to make sure, crossed himself for fear that his joke should have disastrous results.

Sir Harvey laughed and then pointed to where one man had apparently achieved the impossible and reached the deck of the ship.

“Well done!” he cried. “Wait for the rise and fall of the waves. Move as soon as one is past.”

Emulating Sir Harvey’s own feat the young fisherman scrambled and crawled to the companionway and then disappeared. It was some minutes before he reappeared again spluttering and spitting, but holding an armful of clothes, which he chucked over the side.

“Well done!” Sir Harvey shouted. “Well done! All that my pockets contain is yours.”

He paused and then bellowed again,

“I want a pair of shoes. Don’t forget a pair of shoes.”

Encouraged by the fisherman’s success the other men managed to board the ship. There was blood all over the deck from the cuts they received against the jagged rocks and the splintering wood and yet now things began to come from the cabins in quick profusion. Bedding, clothes, candlesticks, glasses and even pieces of carpet, all to be snatched from the sea by the men waiting below in their boats.

One man was supported out with a great gash on his forehead and lowered down to the men waiting below and just as they finished getting him aboard there was a sudden shout.

“She’s breaking! Look out, she’s breaking!”

The remaining men left inside the ship jumped from the heaving deck into the water just as the ship split in two and the pieces slowly began to sink.

There were more pieces of wreckage floating on the waves and a wild scramble to pick them up and then the men clambered or were hauled into the boats and they all pulled away.

The hull of the ship, the last to remain on the rocks, began to whirl round and round, was flung against the rocks and sucked back again. Now it was getting lower and lower until finally it disappeared altogether and there was only a broken assortment of wood, straw, bottles and filth to show where once it had been.

Still picking up all they could along the route, the fishermen pulled for the beach.

Sir Harvey, picking up the coat he had thrown in the bottom of the boat, stepped out onto the sand. He tucked it under his arm and walked along to where another boat was being hauled in shore, filled with a miscellaneous collection of damp objects, amongst them his own clothing.

He picked his things out one by one and put them over his arm. A coat of blue brocade, another of cherry red satin, breeches looking lank and colourless in their wet state and, last but not least, a pair of shoes.

He put these on quickly, squelching the water out of them with his bare feet and then, feeling in the pockets of the coats, found a purse in the one of blue brocade.

“There are not many crowns in it,” he said, “but what there are I give to you with my most sincere gratitude.”

“You are welcome, signor,” the fisherman grinned. But Gasparo’s eyes were fastened on the buttons of the blue brocade coat.

They were glittering in the sunshine and looking uncommonly like diamonds. Sir Harvey saw his glance and taking up the coat threw it across Gasparo’s shoulders.

“They are, alas, only crystal,” he said. “But accept the coat as a gift, you saved my life.”

The big fisherman’s rough hand went out to stroke the silk material, which even though it was wet seemed to retain its sheen and colour.

“You are letting me keep it, signor?” he asked incredulously.

“It is yours,” Sir Harvey answered.

He turned and walked away up the beach, carrying only two garments besides the black coat he had himself salvaged.

He had gone quite a little way before a shout behind him made him turn his head and he realised that he had left behind his shirt, coat and waistcoat, which he had removed before swimming out to the ship.

Laughing at his absent-mindedness, he walked back and picking them up added them to the bundle in his arms.

The sun was shining now. He could feel it beating on his bare back as he climbed laboriously up the cliff towards the village above.

There were only a handful of cottages and the one where he had been sheltered the night before was by far the largest and the most impressive. He walked up the path and opened the door of the kitchen.