The Manila Galleon

By Bernard W. Rees

Peter de Vries, rugged and resourceful, is a rogue CIA agent, on the run from the Agency that is trying to kill him. While he is hiding out in a remote tropical island in the Philippines he gets involved in the salvage of a seventeenth century Spanish treasure ship. He meets a beautiful, elegant and refined English woman, an archeologist working at the wreck site. She is intrigued by the mystery surrounding de Vries and puzzled by his unexplained, detailed, knowledge concerning the Spanish galleon and events in the seventeenth century. Peter de Vries is posing as a scuba diver, but explodes into violent physical action on several occasions; in order to protect her, making her suspect there is much more to this other wise quiet man. How and why is he so skilled in deadly combat? How is it he knows so much about the history of the Spanish galleon lying on the bottom of the lagoon? A strong. Independent, feminist she is nevertheless powerfully drawn emotionally and sexually toward this enigmatic man, much against her better judgment and instincts!

The Manila Galleon will grip your from the outset, and will not leg go until the final denouement!

REVIEW

EXPATICA MAGAZINE, EUROPE

Expats have an advantage when writing fiction; doing unusual things in exotic places is often part of the experience of living and working outside your native country. Dutch resident Bernard W. Rees takes us to the Philippines in The Manila Galleon and to China, along the Silk Road and over the Himalayas into Pakistan in The Last Patriot.

Born in Llanelli in Wales, Rees has seen his fair share of the world. He grew up in Kampala, Uganda and Nairobi in Kenya. At sixteen he went to sea and got his first taste of the Orient. He emigrated to Canada in his early 20s where he traded ships and cargo for many years, from "the Americas to the Persian Gulf, China, Japan and Korea".

Following the death of his first wife in 1995, Rees decided he needed "to change my life and do something new". He sold his shipping business and moved to Manila, where, in his spare time, he searched for Spanish treasure ships.

This is when he developed another talent: he pens a good yarn. The main character of The Manila Galleon is Peter de Vries, a rogue CIA agent. Of course rogue CIA agents are common in thrillers these days, and one who has lost his memory isn't that original either. But what really matters is that Rees makes something of this character in this page-turning thriller, with a twist.

De Vries gets involved in the salvage of a 17th century Spanish treasure ship, while at the same time he must avoid the CIA and discover the significance of his dreams about the Galleon and its fatal encounter with Dutch privateers. The sole survivor was a Dutch prisoner, Captain Jeroen de Vries.

Rees wrote his second novel while living in the US from 2003 to 2005. The CIA is there again but this time the main setting is China. This book is heavier than Galleons as it deals with the "major problems facing the world today": energy security, terrorism and the looming potential of conflict between the US and China.

The hero, if that is the correct term, is Owen O' Brien, a cynical, alcoholic journalist and the heroine is an idealistic young doctor working with orphaned AIDS children in China.

Written as a memoir to his daughter, the book recounts how O'Brien comes into possession of secret documents outlining a plan to attack the US. The CIA, which will never hire Rees to do its PR, is again the bad guy as it joins forces with the Chinese to stop O'Brien fleeing with the papers.

If this was Hollywood, the hero would save the day at the last minute. But Rees, a world-wise expat, doesn't go for sugar-coated endings. Not to give too many secrets away, R

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 22, 2003
• ISBN: 9781462825233

Bernard W. Rees

About the Author Bernard Rees was born in Lannelli, Wales, and grew up in Kampala, Uganda, and Nairobi, Kenya. He attended the HMS Conway training ship in Anglesey and apprenticed with the Bank Line, spending several years in the Far East chipping rust and chasing rhumb lines. Later, he immigrated to Canada where he worked in maritime shipping in locales as diverse as Montreal, New York, London and Rio de Janeiro.

Book preview

Copyright © 2003 by Bernard W. Rees.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

19453

Contents

About the Author

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Postscript

Author’s letter to the Reader:

Kent, England—25 December, Christmas Day

To the memory of my father

Bernard W Rees (Sr) 1918-2000

About the Author

Bernard Rees was born in Lannelli, Wales, and grew up in Kampala, Uganda, and Nairobi, Kenya. He attended the HMS Conway training ship in Anglesey and apprenticed with the Bank Line, spending several years in the Far East chipping rust and chasing rhumb lines. Later, he immigrated to Canada where he worked in maritime shipping in locals as diverse as Montreal, New York, London and Rio de Janeiro.

Prologue

Spain colonised the Philippines in the sixteenth century aided by their discovery of what we now call the North and South Equatorial Currents.

A sailing ship can ride this current in a great clockwise arc from Manila, heading northwards past Japan, then eastward across the vast reaches of the Pacific, sometimes drifting as far north as the Aleutian Islands. The fabled treasure ships, known as The Manila Galleons, sailed laden with the spices, silks, ceramics, pearls, ivory and other exotica of the Orient. The final leg caught the southbound California Current to Acapulco where the ships were discharged. The return voyage rode the South Equatorial Current, westward, back to Manila.

The round voyage, all going well, would take five months. On its return, in November or December, The Manila Galleon would be carrying two or three million pesos in silver, letters from the king; instructions from the government in Mexico (of which Manila was a dependency) and official passengers. A new governor, a new archbishop, a team of missionaries or perhaps some grandee fallen from royal favour and banished to the edge of empire. The return of The Manila Galleon was the most important yearly event in Manila. Great celebrations took place upon the vessels safe return carrying its treasure of silver coin.

Spain and the church financed the ships. Built from exotic hardwoods, in the Philippines, at Puerto Galera, they were among the largest and most magnificent galleons ever built. Huge ships, to provide cargo space for the riches of the Orient, upon which Spain built her wealth and influence.

In theory, every citizen of the Philippines had the right to ship merchandise on the galleons. Royal decree however specified three groups as having prior rights to a ‘boleta’. The cargo space on each galleon was divided into 4,000 units, each of which (except for a thousand units owned by the Spanish government) was represented by a ‘boleta’ or ticket. If you held three tickets you had the right for three units of cargo space.

These ‘boletas’ were traded, bought and sold. They were a valuable commodity and pathway to vast wealth. The three groups with prior rights were government, church leaders and the business community in Manila. However, over time, the rich trading families in Manila bought up most of the ‘boletas’ to control the Galleon Trade, as it was known.

One such family, with great influence in Manila, were Spanish aristocrats known by the name Silva. They specialised in pearls and enjoyed a monopoly on the trade in the South Sea Pearl, the rarest, largest and most valuable pearl in the world. In 1611, Governor Silva, of Manila, led a fleet of Spanish ships against the Dutch, sinking their ships off Gilogo Island in the Moluccas. In 1640, his nephew Captain Andries Silva was given command of the largest Manila Galleon ever built. At the request of the influential Silva family she was christened after the crest of their trading emblem the Medusa. Not long after setting sail with the richest cargo in the history of Manila, the ship was attacked by lurking Dutch privateers, disabled and then lost at sea in a typhoon. She sank somewhere off Busuanga Island to the north of Palawan. Captain Andries Silva perished.

There was one survivor. A Dutch heretic, being carried in chains to Mexico, to face torture and death at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. Captain Jeroen de Vries. How he escaped drowning is unknown. He died, peacefully, in his bed in Amsterdam twenty years later, a wealthy man. He left his trading business and estates to his older sons. To his youngest son, who had run away to sea, he left nothing but a curious gold ring and an oilcloth containing a soiled chart of the Spanish Philippine Islands.

Chapter One

The typhoons were fierce that year. Wild beasts tearing at the surface of the sea. Tai Fung, Cantonese for ‘Great Wind’. Sweeping off the South China Sea and clawing at the huddled fishing hamlets on the coasts of western Palawan, as they had done since time immemorial. Boisterous children of Typhon, father of the winds.

The diver squats on the long stern of his outrigger. A copper Buddha, adjusting his goggles over his eyes, his stomach expanding and contracting rapidly. Hyperventilating, his breath whistles through pursed lips. The boat rises and falls on the increasing swells balanced on bamboo outriggers to port and starboard. He is one of the Badjao, a tribe of sea gypsies, the world’s best free divers. Native to the Visayan Islands of the central Philippines.

Over the centuries, well before the Spanish and their fabled treasure galleons came to these islands, the Badjao developed ancestral skills and unique physiology diving for the oyster with the ‘golden lips’. Mother to the South Sea Pearl. The biggest, rarest and most expensive of all pearls.

Nervously, old Masa aborts his dive, sniffing the wind and eyeing the rising swells. Turning, he grunts a command and his bronzed companions haul, hand over hand, on weighted lines. Two lithe divers surface and scramble into the boat.

Y-shaped sail raised, the boat accelerates for the coastline to the east. A grey smudge on the horizon. The swells are now huge. The wind dangerous. Lowering the mainsail and raising a small jib, they run free, surfing the wave crests, supremely confident seamen.

They round a headland of wind-driven palms and run the boat up the white sand beach in the lee of the small island.

Here is shelter until the storm is over. They have done this many times before. Their village of stilt houses, built in the shallows of a lagoon, snuggles on the sheltered eastern side of the main island, too far to reach safely in such conditions. They are graceful and unhurried in their movements. The campsite is familiar to them. Soon a fire is heating water for tea. There will be rice with baked fish caught on the pearl banks. For desert the small sweet bananas known as ‘Señoritas’ in the Philippine Islands.

Then, slow enjoyment of tobacco until the storm blew itself out. Talk. A game of chess. Routine. Nothing unusual to these men born to the sea. The older, experienced crew sort carefully through the valuable oysters. The large ones will be opened with a quick knife thrust, fingers probing for the translucent treasure within. The smaller will be cultivated in wicker baskets at the pearl farm. Hanging, fathoms deep, in the nutrient-rich waters of their traditional fishing grounds. Until maturity the oysters will be watched by family armed with the sawn-off shotguns common to these islands.

The old captain smoked his cheroot in the shelter of a rock, watching his crew working and talking quietly. His eyes roved over his boat noting the wear and tear of hard use. The outrigger was the tool essential to his livelihood. A sacred thing requiring constant care. He eyed his youngest son, Sim. Twenty years old and already skilled at diving and sailing the boat. Absorbed, repairing an outboard motor he had salvaged from the wreck of a yacht. In time, he would have it working. They could go further afield then, in search of the elusive oysters, no longer constrained by the winds. Sim was the clever one. He could read and write and speak a few words of English. Seven years schooling with the Jesuits, bearing scars on his buttocks in remembrance of that faith. A child born of a virgin . . . strange belief . . .

He was a good son. Quick to learn. He wanted to work in the big commercial oyster farms run by foreigners and get training in scuba. The men often talked about the problems of diving for the rare oysters. As the shallow waters were depleted of oysters the free divers were forced to go deeper and deeper. Plunging as far down as eighty metres on the end of a rock weight. Down in the darkness for three minutes with bottom time of a minute placed severe constraints on the diver’s ability to find oysters. Damage to their bodies was chronic. All suffered the deafness and pain of perforated eardrums. This was their traditional way of life and they bore such afflictions stoically.

Sim wanted to buy scuba gear, tanks and compressors. A bigger boat. He talked of finding investors to finance his dreams. This horrified Masa who could not imagine any other way of life. He prayed to the sea gods that Sim would catch the eye of a local girl, soon, and settle down. His dreams would only make him restless. Unhappy. Life was good, as it always had been. They would dive deeper.

As he sat thinking and smoking his watchful eyes caught a flash of white in the heavy surf. Instantly alert, he called out and pointed. Sim was on his feet and running before the sound of his father’s cry had died away.

Consciousness came back in flashes. Between nightmares, in which he was running from faceless pursuers. He felt pain in his head and stiffness in his legs. Movement was an effort.

He thought he heard soft voices. Not recognizable words. Once he opened his eyes to encounter gentle brown eyes, smiling at him. The face of a young girl. This is what heaven is like, he thought, before drifting into sleep.

The divers had been alarmed. The white man they had pulled from the surf could only mean trouble for them. They were suspicious of all authority. Local officials were corrupt. Often allied with drug gangs. The police were feared. Not to be trusted. They were concerned that this man, half drowned with gunshot wounds in his legs, would create problems for their little group. Old Masa was for leaving him on the island to die. Getting clear of him as soon as the storm died down. However, the white man intrigued Sim. He argued strongly for taking him back to their village for treatment, stressing the potential for a reward for saving his life. Reluctantly, the old sea captain gave way to his excited son, on the understanding that the castaway be hidden under some fishing nets and smuggled into their village by night.

In this manner, Peter de Vries was rescued from the surf. He would know only much later how close he had come to death.

Sim was interested in the mystery of the white man from the moment he had seen his body rolling in the surf. Pulling him clear of the water. Working to pump the sea water out of his lungs. Noticing the bleeding from the legs. Signalling to the others to staunch the blood flow he pumped the chest, blew into the upturned mouth and listened for a heartbeat. It was there, faint, but steady. A convulsion, water shot from the open mouth and then hoarse, ragged, breathing. Drying him off they carried him into the shade of the boat. Wrapping him in an old tarpaulin. The white man was of middle height and muscular. Stomach flat. Not flabby like others Sim had seen. Military crew cut. Strong hands. Nails well trimmed. His face, hands and feet were deeply sunburned. The rest of his body was only lightly browned. He was covered in thick golden body hair, which Sim had never seen before. He looked to these fishermen like a golden God. He was circumcised. His face deeply lined. His nose sharp but slightly flattened to one side. He bore several scars on chest and back. A thin old scar crossed his right cheek. Blond stubble grew on his chin. His legs were peppered with gunshot. Bleeding. On the middle finger of his left hand an ornate gold signet ring. Sim tried to remove it. The sea-swollen skin held the ring firm. His teeth large and white. Several gold fillings. If he died, they would remove the gold fillings and the ring.

Who was he? Where had he come from? Why and how wounded? Would they get a reward?

These questions filled Sim’s mind as the days passed and the man rested. Hidden away in their isolated village. Tended by Sim’s gentle sister. An alert, armed, family member watching. Day and night. They would leave nothing to chance. Careful people.

The man who had been known as Peter de Vries drifted in and out of delirium. Dreaming. Awakening briefly to the gentle touch of a young angel and then floating off again into dreamtime. He became a large, red, pumping heart. Loud with the rushing of blood. Then, silence. He cried out in panic, thinking he had died. Sleeping again with cool water touching his lips. He dreamed he was a sea captain on a galleon loaded with treasure. He felt himself drowning. Finding peaceful oblivion in the gentle cradle of the blue depths.

On the third day he opened his eyes to the bright dawn light. Clear headed and feeling stronger. Buoyed by an enormous sense of well being. He stretched, stiffening at the pain in his legs. Where am I? What the hell happened? Who am I? His brain seemed suddenly clouded with mist. A dull throbbing started in his temples. ‘Who am I?’ he screamed in panic.

At his cry the girl came running and a movement in the corner of the room brought an elderly man into his focus. He tried to sit up, but the effort was too much for his weakened frame. ‘Who am I?’ he whispered, as he drifted into oblivion.

He awoke once to the touch of cool liquid on his lips. He heard the laughter of a child and the booming of heavy surf.

He dreamed, again, of the galleon. He the proud captain. Then, shipwreck and a drowning death. The dream haunted his fitful sleep. It tugged at memory. Everything about the ship was familiar. Its movement. The smell of tar and cordage. The rigging and the sweet curve of the sails overhead. A large golden ring on his left middle finger. Ornate snakes coiling and thrashing about the head of the Medusa. Then he became Pegasus, child of Medusa and Poseidon, flying free. Guarding a glittering golden galleon heeling under white sails. Riding the ocean swells as easily and proudly as a swan. Heavy laden to her chain plates. There was intense, almost sexual, pleasure in the image although he could not fathom why it should be so.

Dreaming, he heard again the boom of heavy surf. It came from beyond sleep. He awoke and noticed the pain in his legs was less. He listened to the thundering sound of surf, confused, for a moment. Then, needing to urinate, he opened his eyes and looked around.

He saw a thatched dwelling. Walls of woven straw. Through a doorway he saw the dazzling white of a beach and deep blue of the sea. The light hurt him making him dizzy for a moment. By the bed were a gourd jug of water and a bowl of rice. Groaning, he swung his feet off the low sleeping plank and sat up. Nausea sending streams of sweat into his eyes. Startled, he noticed a young man, short and barrel chested, watching him through dark eyes. He pushed himself up and staggered to the open doorway, naked, penis in hand. The pleasure of releasing the pressure of his full bladder was sublime. All he could focus on. Everything else could wait.

He found himself balanced on the edge of a platform which seemed to be floating in the air. He looked about and realised there were other houses huddled around. Stilt houses built over the water. Boats moored close underneath.

Men, women and children were all about. Working at various tasks, talking, laughing. Their voices rising and falling musically. Nobody seemed to be paying much attention to him. A quick glance here and there. Then the children noticed him and started to call to him, giggling shyly. Hiding when he waved, weakly, in response. He felt movement at his ankle and found he was standing amidst a flock of chickens who looked mildly indignant at his intrusion.

Where am I? he thought. What is this place? How did I get here? Who am I? The nausea returned. His head ached. He staggered. Strong hands grasped and held him as he fell.

When he next awoke his head was clear. He felt much stronger. The older man was back. Sitting cross-legged in the corner of the airy dwelling, mending fishing gear. A shotgun stood propped in the corner, close to hand. He seemed friendly, smiling and nodding his head encouragingly as their eyes met.

Sim and his father talked about their visitor. The older villagers were getting anxious as the days passed by. Fearing that word would get out to the authorities. They wanted no trouble and avoided contact with the outside world as much as possible. For their trade in pearls they had established relations with coastal groups over centuries. Tried and trusted middlemen. These coastal tribes, in order to protect their monopoly, carefully guarded the location of the Badjao villages. Still, they were concerned and Sim was coming under increasing censure for bringing the white man here.

The white man was much stronger. He liked to play with the children and had started to swim and walk with them. He was a noisy swimmer. Thrashing and splashing. Scaring away the fish. A poor diver with no breathe in his lungs. The children could far surpass him in diving, much to their merry amusement.

He was carefully respectful of the woman never approaching them closely. With Sim’s sister he tried to converse in English at which she smiled and shook her head. She taught him her name by pointing at herself and mouthing her name, ‘Lette’.

She noticed that a strange thing happened whenever she then pointed to him. He would frown and groan, head in hands. Talking passionately, he seemed disturbed, eyes wild. All this she reported back to Sim and her father.

The white man felt the strength returning to his limbs. He took to joining the children in their games. Swimming and diving with them. To his chagrin and astonishment they could stay submerged much longer than he; even the toddlers. He walked the beach daily and realised that the village and island were situated at the very tip of a jungle-covered peninsula. Inland were rugged mountains. There were about thirty houses built of cane, bamboo and palm, perched on stilts over the water. Underneath were fish traps providing occasional crabs, lobsters and fish as the tides ebbed and flowed beneath the huts. Chickens and ducks roosted all over the place and he could never figure out how ownership was established. Pigs and goats were tethered outside, by the doorways. Each day they were taken ashore to forage along the jungle edge. Herded by young boys. It amused him to see the boys grab the animals in the morning and simply push them into the water for the swim ashore.

The main diet was fish. He loved to watch the outriggers working their way along the reef. The men and boys diving with goggles and home-made spear guns for fish, squid, octopus, lobster. The first day he accompanied them he was humiliated by his clumsiness in comparison to their sharp skill and reflexes. The women gathered sea urchins, cutting them open for the yellow yoke within. He guessed they must barter pearls for the knives, tools, fishing gear, cooking pots and shotguns he saw about. The men were dressed in shorts and usually shirtless although he had noticed a few tee shirts including one bearing the legend

HARD ROCK CAFE—MANILA.

All the men carried ornate knives. Sharp and well used. The women wore wrap-around, colourful, cloth. Heavy bangles on the arms and legs. Seashell, brass, silver and here and there gold. The women were graceful. Small boned. Shapely, expressive hands and feet. Some of the younger girls were very attractive, exuding a kind of innocent sexuality. Coyly flirting with their dark, almond, eyes as he would pass them and smile. Lette was beautiful. He saw her twice a day, when she brought him food. He was very careful with the women. Fearing giving offence. He was acutely aware of the precariousness of his situation. He knew he was amongst natives somewhere in the Philippines. How he had got here was a mystery. He had no idea who he was. At first he had been terrified. Identifying with the character in the repetitive dreams of the galleon. Yet, upon waking, realising that he was someone else. He knew he was in the modern world. He recognised the shotguns, the watches that some of the men wore and once he heard music he remembered from a small transistor radio playing in a nearby hut. He simply could not seem to remember who he was. Vague memories. A beach house. Travel. An office. Computers. The underwater world was very familiar to him. He recognised and could name many of the fish and corals. But when he tried to remember who he was, the details of his life, it was as if there was a hole in his mind. A foggy hollow through which vague, familiar shapes could be glimpsed. And always, the dream. Night after night.

A wooden ship of centuries ago. A Spanish galleon. He, the captain. Confident, at home with the workings of the ship and the sea. Confused scenes of battle, storm and shipwreck. Drowning. Peace in the blue depth.

Every day was the same. He would rise at dawn and eat the rice, fish and coconut that Lette would bring him. Gracefully presenting the tray to him with two hands, arms outstretched. She walked like a cat and used her hands like a Balinese dancer. Flowing, supple, gestures. Her nails were painted blue and silver.

He often joined the men in the fishing boats working along the reef. By gestures he made his wishes known and one boat or another would stop and take him aboard. The men were polite.

Unlike the children they did not laugh at his efforts to dive and catch fish. He became more proficient with the three-pronged fish spear and caught a few fish. Once a large squid, which brought a rush of chatter from the native divers. That night he found some of it in the rice broth Lette served him.

Other days he walked the beach and thought over his situation. He strained to remember something about himself. Then the migraine would come, sharply, bringing sweat and nausea. He stopped trying to recall anything. It was then, during the waking day, that a face would float into his mind. No name. Sometimes a snatch of conversation or a familiar piece of music. Once he saw a vision of himself laughing. Drinking beer in a dark, smoky, bar. Then it was gone. Nothing more.

He had noticed the larger outriggers were used for pearl diving and carried crews of several men. Many were motorised although they all carried the masts and sails stowed in the boats. They would vanish for days at a time returning loaded with shell. It was evident that in these pearls lay the real economy of this place. The pearls were what provided the watches, radios, outboard motors, guns and other artefacts of modern civilisation.

One night the elderly man who shared his hut showed him a bag of pearls. They cascaded through his horny old hands in a bewildering assortment of colours; black, pink, gold and a translucent silver. Some were pea sized while others glowed, big as walnuts, in the flickering lamplight. The old man saw the white man’s eyes widen and smiled as he poured the pearls back into a leather pouch. He pointedly picked up his shotgun and started to clean it with loving attention. His gold fillings sparkling as he grinned, again. Eyes watchful. The white man recognised the warning clearly. He suddenly smiled back, opening his hands wide and shrugging his shoulders.

The old man laughed and brought out the ivory chess set for their evening game. A ritual they both enjoyed, since through the game, the language barrier dissolved. The white man rarely won although his game was improving rapidly. He thought that he had once played the game well. Perhaps a long time ago. Now he was recovering a lost skill. He felt a great relief that his thinking ability did not seem to be affected by his memory loss. The large ivory chess pieces were smooth and polished from years of use. They looked very old. He wanted them. He felt strongly drawn to them. They felt oddly familiar in his hands. He had noticed, stamped into each piece, a stylised depiction of a woman’s head. Looking closer he could see that her hair was actually a mass of writhing snakes. Medusa, one of the three Gorgons. He remembered that Perseus had killed Medusa, cutting off her head. It puzzled him how he could access this knowledge when he couldn’t even remember his own name? Something about the Medusa tickled at the edges of memory and then was lost. There was something significant in the image. But what and why?

A piece of rolled oilcloth, squared in red and black, served as the chessboard. The old man played fast. Assuredly. After several nights the white man saw he used a series of set openings. Predictable. After that he began to win a few games. The old man was cunning though. It would be a while until they would be evenly matched. These evening hours were happier ones. Concentration calmed his anxious mind.

While he felt stronger every day he was held by a strange lethargy. He knew he had to get out of the village and to civilisation. Get help. Find out who he was. He was isolated. Nobody spoke English. While the villagers responded to his gestures and fed him, he felt disoriented and lonely.

Occasionally, playing with the children, he could relax and forget his predicament. Then recollection of his strange situation would flood back, together with a fatalistic laziness that he associated with the head injury and the hole in his memory.

The dream ruled his nights. Always the same golden galleon. It had become so familiar that he felt at home on the ship, coming to know her well on all points of sail. Every detail of planking and rigging. One night he saw the golden lettering on her stern—

MEDUSA

—and admired her beautifully carved bowsprit. Pegasus leaping forward with mighty wings spread. He remembered, from where he knew not, that Pegasus was the child of a coupling between Medusa and Poseidon. God of the sea. How did he know that? It puzzled him. He thought the dreams must be a consequence of his head injury. Certainly, a bizarre experience. The dreams seemed more real to him, at times, than the daily life he was living. He thought of himself as floating weightless in a pical limbo. A magical Cali ban’s Island where nothing was as it seemed. Sometimes he wondered if the dream were real and the native village the dream. A sense of total unreality and slow madness came over him at times, but he found he couldn’t get worked up about it. He felt he was waiting for something to happen, but what? It was as if some powerful force held him in its grip and if he struggled, sent a knifing migraine to punish him for his presumption.

He felt, strongly, that something was about to break in this situation. A rational part of his brain told him he was suffering from illusions, brought about by his head injury. Caliban’s Island, what was that? Shakespeare! What in the hell did he know about Shakespeare? Unbidden, there arose in his mind lines that flowed easily, ‘Be not afeard the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not . . . ‘ Yes, Lette was sweet Ariel and the island was her music! The migraine cut through his brain. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, trying not to think.

The old man gently tapped the floor to indicate his chess move had been made. Watching the white man he experienced a flash of insight. The blue-eyed gringo was troubled in his soul. Look, how the sweat was streaming down his agonised face. Yet, he straightened and considering the board through narrowed eyes, made his move. He was a strong one. He had courage. A depth to him the old man, experienced in judging character, could sense with his inner eye. He would talk to the witch doctor. Perhaps she could release the devils tormenting the man’s body and mind.

One morning, the white man opened his eyes with a new optimism and a flood of energy. Today, something is going to happen, he thought. He had dreamed again that night. He saw, with the clarity and immediacy that made it seem so real, his ship under attack by Dutch privateers. Heavy cannon fire, smoke and the dismasting and crippling of the Medusa. Even now, awake, he was appalled at the burning hatred consuming him toward the Hollanders. A thought reverberated through his mind, which made no sense awake, Hollanders! Heretics! Spawn of the devil!

He breathed deeply to calm himself as he lay thinking of his dreams. What had brought them on? What was their significance? Their emotional intensity frightened him. The vivid detail involved was disturbing. He wondered, Am I losing my mind? Yet, apart from his troubling memory loss, he felt sane enough. He was beginning to feel that the dream was ‘real’, somehow. Certainly resonating, almost like a memory, deep within him. The dream was meaningful. Important, in a way that he could not verbalise.

During the waking day, he felt lost, adrift, a non-person. No identity. No purpose. No function. Fleeting shadows, loose wisps of memory, teasing and tantalizing him. Pictures swam up out of the mists in his mind, vanishing the moment he turned his conscious attention to them. Then the pain of migraine. Vicious, a sentry guarding the treasure chest of memory.

As the sun rose light flooded the hut and he made out the huddled form of the old man, asleep on a mat in a corner. A cock crowed and a dog barked. Yes, today something would happen! He yawned, stretching, looking at his body, noting with satisfaction the healed wounds on his legs. Shotgun pellets. How and why he had been shot puzzled and frightened him. However, he accepted it as a part of the mystery of who he was, or had been. He had already learnt not to think about it, to avoid the migraine headaches which accompanied any attempt to figure out his identity. He felt physically fit. His sun-browned body was hard. Lean from the daily diving and fishing along the reef. His head wound had healed, leaving a small scar on his temple. He sported a scraggly beard and his brush cut was beginning to grow out.

The doorway darkened and Lette entered with morning breakfast. Sweet bananas dipped in brown sugar and cooked in boiling oil. Delicious! She awoke the old man and served him first.

Coming over to the white man, she smiled shyly as she passed him the fruit. Her sloe eyes glowing with pleasure. He felt himself responding warmly and smiled back. ‘Good morning, Lette.’ She giggled and said something in her rapid-fire tongue, pointing outdoors, making little ‘hurry up’ movements, hands fluttering.

He ate, rinsed out his mouth and pulling on the tattered shorts he had been given walked outside.

Waiting for him on the balcony were two men. One was the young, powerfully built man he had seen once before. Intelligent, dark eyes watching him. He did not smile but rose in a fluid movement and placed a stained and battered canvas bag at the white man’s feet.

The other man was very tall and thin. He stooped slightly and the white man thought of a fish-hunting crane, poised in the shallows ready to strike. Ascetic. Wearing a crisp, white barong the loose shirt worn in these islands. At his collar a small gold cross. A Catholic priest. ‘Good morning, Mr de Vries!’ he smiled politely and held out his hand.

Shocked, the white man shook the extended hand. Who was this man? Did I know him? He knows who I am, he thought. He stammered, ‘de Vries, de Vries, is that my name? Who are you?’ He staggered and would have fallen had not the young man grasped his elbow and eased him down onto a stool.

Both men sat down on stools and stared at him.

‘Allow me to introduce myself, Mr de Vries.’ His voice was deep, powerful, and his English diction careful and precise. ‘My name is Father Herrera. The young man here was my pupil for some years at our Jesuit seminary school, which provides an education for the more promising children of these people, the Badjao. His name is Sim. He plucked you from the sea. You owe him your life.’

The white man opened and closed his mouth. He began to sweat. ‘I—I don’t remember anything. I seem to have lost my memory. Maybe my head injury. . . ?’ He looked up at the priest.

‘Why do you call me Mr de Vries?’

Sim pointed at the canvas bag and muttered something in his own language to the priest, who motioned him to be quiet.

‘Sim went back to the island where they found you, to search for any clues that might throw some light on your situation. He found a deflated life raft and this bag. Open it,’ he suggested, nodding at the bag.

A strange dread seized the white man. His hands trembled. He felt a reluctance to open the bag, as if there were going to be something unpleasant in it. Something he did not want to see. Pandora’s box, perhaps . . . full of unpleasant surprises.

‘Please, Mr de Vries, open the bag,’ spoke Father Herrera, leaning down and pulling open the zipper.

Inside was another plastic, waterproof, bag. Pulling on the Velcro flaps he lifted it onto his lap and opened it. The two men watched him intently.

He picked out a leather folder and found it contained an American passport. His fingers trembled as he opened it. Sweat began to pour down his face and the knifing of a migraine seized him once again. Forcing his blurred eyes to focus he saw his own image staring back at him. An enigmatic smile. Hair groomed. Clean-shaven. White business shirt and dark jacket. Red tie. Peter de Vries. Born, Montreal, Canada, 1946. Profession, Banking. ‘Peter de Vries?’ he blurted out, looking at the two men.

‘Yes, it is undoubtedly your passport, Mr de Vries. Why don’t you look at some of the other items? Perhaps there will be something there that will trigger a memory.’

He found a wallet containing money, credit cards and a Citibank account card. A compass and a wrist computer, both designed for diving. A gold Rolex watch. A small leather diary. A toilet bag. A Swiss Army knife inscribed

TO PETER, LOVE KATE.

An inlaid silver propelling pencil bearing the legend

WARRINGS MERCHANT BANK.

A leather cigar holder containing three Monte Cristo cigars and a plastic tube holding a rolled up chart. Soiled and yellowed, it looked antique and he saw what appeared to be Spanish lettering in stylised calligraphy.

His vision swam and he