Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [38]
Tyndall went back to the beach where his dinghy was anchored and without having called for him, Ahmed was suddenly at his side. Without a word they pushed the boat into the moonlit water and Ahmed took the oars. Ahmed had been in the camp of the Bugis men to hear news from the area he once called home. He had not been back since he was rescued by Tyndall two years ago from an uninhabited island in the Timor Sea. A cyclone had sunk the Broome pearling lugger Ahmed was working on and he had been the sole survivor. Ahmed believed Allah had sent Tyndall as his saviour and ever since had been his devoted and loyal offsider.
Good as their word, the following day several Aborigines set out with Tyndall and Ahmed in dugout canoes to travel down the coast to the place of the pearls. Ahmed and Tyndall were not as proficient paddling the canoe as the Aborigines were and they struggled to keep up. The bulky and crude dugouts slid down the coast, weaving between reefs and over sand bars until they came to where a swampy river emptied into the sea and mangroves shrouded the shoreline. They pulled into shore and the men settled themselves on the narrow strip of grey sand amidst the sprouting tips of roots and mangrove shoots. They explained the water had to leave and so they waited.
When at last the tide ebbed, the men took long sticks and began prodding and wiggling for shell with their feet.
Soon, amid whoops of laughter, they picked up fat shells, sealed tight and crusted with a covering of slimy growth and miniature crustaceans. Ahmed and Tyndall prised the shell halves apart to reveal the meat and muscle lying in the iridescent shell. Before long three shells had yielded small gleaming round pearls which Tyndall slipped into his pocket with great satisfaction. They worked through the day, piling the dugouts with unopened shells. Finally, as the tide rose, they pushed out and with the canoes low in the water paddled in the twilight back to the trepang island.
Tyndall was elated. Now he knew where the beds were he could make dry shell pearling a profitable sideline. What’s more, the Aborigines had told him there were other pearl beds further south and out to sea.
An idea began to form in Tyndall’s mind. Over the past twenty years pearling had become a highly lucrative activity despite periodic slumps in the world market for mother-of-pearl and disasters such as the cyclone that wiped out forty luggers and several hundred men. It was an industry pursued by wild risk takers who were fiercely competitive and secretive about the pearls they found. But if he had access to a rich source, aided by his friends’ local knowledge, and a partner with capital he could expand to make this a serious operation and challenge the existing pearling masters.
That night as he sat by the fire with Ahmed he couldn’t resist opening more shells while the trepangers went about their work, the fascination of mother–of–pearl and the lure of possible pearl finds had him hooked. He rolled the shining mooncoloured globules in his palm and said at last to Ahmed, ‘Friend, I’m thinking of becoming a pearler. We’ll start off dry shelling with the schooner but hopefully we’ll soon be able to get a new boat.’
Unfazed, Ahmed merely nodded. ‘We build a number one lugger, tuan.’
‘We’ll work out of Cossack to start with, but no one must know about this place. Soon enough we’ll make our way and head for Broome … I think this is the break that I’ve been looking for.’
‘It is fate, the time is right, tuan.’
Tyndall grinned at Ahmed’s devout Muslim belief that fate ruled their lives and that there was little either of them could do to alter what was preordained. His calm acceptance of the good and the bad that life threw at them sometimes irked Tyndall, but right now he, too, felt the gods were on his side.
CHAPTER SIX
Conrad Hennessy did not think of himself as a brave man. To him bold and brave men tackled feats he could only marvel at from the safety of his hearthside armchair. They were reckless,