Yes, and Ravi was reunited with Josephine and me with my Newgaters—Mary Wade, Molly, Maggie, and the rest. Ian and Mairead were given a cabin on the Lee and they are in it quite often. Ian does have duties other than that of making another Irish baby with Mairead, he being Jaimy's First Mate over on the Cerberus, but still, he manages to get over here quite a bit. I think Captain Fletcher is being kind to him in that regard.
Me, I don't get to see Jaimy at all. Ah well, I know he is busy. So am I.
Yes, we sailed, we sang, we danced, we ate, we drank, and we got to that spot off the coast of Mindanao where rests the Golden Buddha.
Chapter 67
When we came upon the buoys marking the spot, and Cheng Shih's navigators took bearings and assured us we were in the right place, I left the deck of my Lorelei Lee and said to Higgins, "Please, John, my swimming suit, if you please. And my goggles and fins, too."
He is not all that happy to do this. Please be careful, Miss...
Oh, bother, Higgins, you know I always am.
Soon I am rigged up to dive, and I step out onto the deck of the Lorelei Lee.
Cheng Shih is waiting by the diving bell, which has been placed on the deck, ready to go. Seeing me dressed as I am, she immediately orders every male to face away. The Chinese sailors do it, as they are the only ones who understand what she says.
I figure I'll do some exploratory free dives first, and so I go to the rail. Cheng Shih watches, I believe a bit fearfully, as I adjust goggles, tug down bottom of suit, and dive in.
The water is clear—not Caribbean clear, but clear enough, more green than blue—and I can see my way.
I grab one of the marker buoy lines and head down.
Hmmm ... Nothing yet at about one hundred feet, but then I didn't expect anything. I mean, Cheng Shih would have had some pretty expert divers working on this thing. No, so back up to prepare the bell.
As the bell is being readied, there is an unlooked-for setback. From behind me I hear a thud, a cry, and a splash, and I turn to see that Chi-chi, who had been lurking nearby, attentively awaiting any order from Cheng Shih, had been struck and knocked over by the boom as it was being swung over the deck to pick up the bell. I look over the side just in time to see him and the soles of his slippered feet disappear below the surface.
I wait a second to see if any will go to his aid. None do.
Damn! At least this time I'm dressed for it. I arc myself over the rail and dive into the water.
The water, although not as clear as those blue-green Caribbean waters, is clear enough for me to see him sinking down, down, ever farther down into the depths, his pigtail sticking straight up from his head, his arms and legs thrashing about in panic.
What no sailor—be he Chinese or Brit—seems to know is that if you have a lungful of air and hold it tight within you and stop struggling, you'll bob right back up to the surface. 'Tis plain that Chi-chi, also, does not know that, for he flails away in vain, sinking ever lower.
I follow the stream of silver bubbles that leads down to him, grab his pigtail, then kick hard to bring us both back to the surface. When he hits the air, he sputters and coughs, and pukes up great quantities of saltwater. His eyes roll about wildly, but he seems all right otherwise. I get us to the ladder that's rigged on the side of the Lorelei Lee, and hands reach down to pull him aboard.
I expected some expressions of joy at the rescue of what has to be a valued servant, but I hear none. Instead Cheng Shih lets fly a string of Cantonese invective, pointing an accusing finger at Chi-chi, who stands there trembling, very wet and very abashed and sheepish.
Hey, it wasn't his fault, I'm thinking, getting ready to climb into the bell. Leave the poor guy alone, for heaven's sake. Course I don't say that to Cheng Shih, who seems right steamed.
She ends with "Meng chi jyut! Suen ta!"
Chi-chi bows to her and then comes to stand next to me.
"What's going on?" I ask of Brother Arcangelo. "What did she say to him?"
"She called him a stupid, ignorant, clumsy worm," he replies. "And she directed him to go to you."
"To me? Why?"
"Because, my dear but inept student of the world's philosophies," sighs the indulgent churchman, "the Chinese have a belief that if you save a person's life, you have interrupted his karma, his destiny, and are therefore responsible for him the rest of his life."
What?
"It is true, Miss. He is now your slave. Cheng Shih has given him to you."
"But I won't have it," I say, aghast. "I am against slavery in any form."
"If you refuse, they will merely throw him back in the water to complete his karmic journey to the bottom of the sea."
I throw up my hands in exasperation. I will never understand anything. "Let's get to diving. That's something I know about. Karma, indeed!"
I go over to the bell. Higgins, with towels at the ready, stands nearby with Ravi, regarding poor Chi-chi standing woefully next to me, then casts his eyes upward toward Josephine perched in the foretop and murmurs, "My, my, Miss, how your tribe doth increase."
I cut the ever-so-droll Mr. Higgins an evil glance and readjust my goggles.
My diving bell is hoisted off the deck and I go to get under it, but Cheng Shih grabs my hand and looks in my eyes. She seems anxious and looks dubiously at the bell with its many signal lines trailing out beneath its bottom edge.
"I'd rather have you, Golden Child, than any ten Golden Buddhas," she says. "Do not do this, dear one."
Brother Arcangelo barely finishes translating this when I squeeze her hand. "Don't worry, Beloved Shih. I will be all right. We have a bargain and I must do my part."
I plant a kiss on her cheek and give her a rakish wink.
She lets go my hand and I get under the bell and onto the seat.
Let's go.
Hello, Bell, it's been a while since we've explored together, hasn't it? Good to see you're still in fighting trim, strong of iron wall and thick of glass window, protecting my frail self down here in the awful depths, eh?
The bottom of the diving bell is, like any ordinary church or tower bell, completely open, and I can look down through that opening, past my dangling feet, as if through a clear lens. Professor Tilden, the supposed man of science who first convinced me to go down in this rig, maintained that it was the atmospheric pressure that kept the water out of the bell. Well, it keeps it out to a degree, but the deeper you go, the more the water creeps up the inside, the air inside being compressed, you see. Me, too, it seems—compressed, I mean—as I found out that time when I swam up to the surface outside of the bell after being so compressed, resulting in great, stupid, glorious rapture, and then great pain as the gases compressed in my body elected to bubble out through my joints. The bends, it is called, and Dr. Sebastian, my good friend and scholarly associate, said I was lucky to have survived. Believe me. I am much more careful now.
The surface of the water below my dangling feet, which started out a scant few inches above the bottom edge of the bell, is now about eighteen inches below my toes.
As the bell sinks, with me tucked inside, I think on things...
After I bring up the Buddha, the terms of the bargain will have been met, and the Lorelei and the Cerberus will sail off—with all my friends, and yes, with Jaimy, too, and I will be left behind on the Divine Wind with Cheng Shih...
I look out and all is just green beyond my window. It is bright but grows darker as we go ever downward.
Thinking of Jaimy gone brings a tear to my goggled eye. But hey, maybe I've already caused enough trouble for the poor lad and maybe he'd be better off with someone else—someone who isn't in trouble all the time, someone who would be content to stay in that rose-covered cottage while he is off at sea, a loving soul to raise his children and wait longingly for his return from the merciless ocean. Someone ... but, sadly, not me. Yes, I'm sure that would be best.
I squeeze my nostrils together and blow to clear my ears of the increasing pressure. Swallowing helps, too. I work up a gob of spit, swallow it down, and am rewarded with a click in each ear ... Good ... Hmmm ... Still just green out there in the South China Sea...
But I cannot feel too sorry for myself ... for did I not sign on for a life of adventure when I first set foot on the Dolphin back there on that dock in London? I did, so maybe being the treasured possession of a female Chinese pirate is part of that adventure ... And after all, as companion to Cheng Shih, I shall see wondrous sights—China itself, and maybe the Great Wall, and Japan and Korea, and don't forget my Cathay Cat, no, don't forget him, nor the Kangaroo, nor any of those figments of my overactive imagination, and there will be other, even more magical things...
I lean back and wait as I go ever deeper.
...But not to see Amy again, nor Randall, nor any of my friends at the Lawson Peabody School, ah, that will be hard, indeed. But, hey ... wait a minute, Amy—that day when Randall came back to us, all resplendent in his new U.S. Marine uniform.—did not that goose walk over my future grave, making me shudder? Yes, it did, and is that not proof that I will someday return to Dovecote, if only to be put in the ground? Or is it just a silly superstition? I don't know, I—
Wait! The bottom is coming up!
A waving field of sea grass suddenly appears below me, I reach for the STOP signal cord and give it a hard yank. The bell stops its descent about twenty feet above the bottom and hangs there slowly swinging about.
Well. Time to have a look about, eh?
I adjust my goggles to fit tighter about my eye sockets, check the straps on my foot fins, take three deep breaths, holding the last one, and then slip out under the lower edge of the bell.
The bed of sea grass extends in all directions, with a patch of bare sand here and there. Small fishes dart about ... some bigger ones, too, but none so large or so fierce as to cause me worry. I give a kick and float out over the slowly undulating seaweed.
Nothing to be seen, yet. Everything is relatively flat, unlike that place off Key West, with its chasms and drop-offs, where at last I located the Spanish treasure galleon Santa Magdalena, the source of all my riches and all my current trouble. It wasn't the Magdalena's fault, though. It was due to my inherent and all-consuming greed... But never mind, girl, that's done with—keep your mind on your present work.
The expanse of grass seems endless, and I fear that we shall go through a long process of exploring the bottom, bit by bit, by moving the position of the Lorelei Lee a small degree each day. But wait, over there's the line of one of the marker buoys that were dropped on the day the Buddha first took his salty dip. Must check, but first...
Back to the bell for some quick breaths, and then back out again to follow that buoy line to see where it might lead. Putting my hand upon it, I see that the other end of the line disappears into an especially dense thicket of grass. Testing it, I feel that it is still securely held by whatever weight was attached to it. That weight turns out to be heavy enough to support me as I go, hand over hand, down the length of the line.
I feel a sudden surge of underwater current, and the grass parts beneath me and...
There you are, you sweet thing.
The Buddha smiles beatifically up into the light, glowing all golden and beautiful. And, oddly, it does seem that enlightenment of some sort streams from his calm and benign countenance. He appears to be just as happy down here in the depths as up there in the air. I feel the same way, too, sometimes. There is a serenity down here beneath the sea, all clear and bright, that I often do not find up there, and I like—