CHAPTER 7: THE WORLD TURNS
“Mr Dynamo,” Isabelle exclaimed as Dirk burst through her door for the second time that night. “While your appearance is not without a rugged appeal, it would be polite to knock.”
Dirk opened the curtains and peered out onto the balcony, checking for any sign of intruders, ninja or otherwise. Intruders other than himself, he thought after a moment. He saw nothing but his own ghostly reflection and the swaying jungle.
“Pardon me, ma’am,” he said, “but something’s come up.”
He closed the curtains and turned to face Isabelle. She sat up in bed, a lamp burning at her bedside, a French novel open on her lap. Her night-dress revealed pale, slender arms. She raised one eyebrow, fingers drumming on the cover of the book. No doubting it, Mrs McNair was damned pleasing on the eye, even dressed in bedsheets and disapproval. In fact, a guilty corner of Dirk’s brain figured that school-ma’am sternness was probably part of the appeal.
That and the revolver sticking out from under the book.
“What sort of something could possibly excuse intruding on a lady at this time of night?” Her voice was tinged with indignation. “Especially when you yourself are in such a state of undress?”
Dirk looked down and remembered, for the first time since the clearing, that he was naked from the waist up. Not that he wasn’t happy with his chest, or willing to share it with a willing lady, but Isabelle’s gaze filled him with a strange mixture of pride and awkwardness. Imminent danger was briefly forgotten as he stood, mouth flapping like a guppy, trying to recall what he’d meant to say.
Then Timothy stumbled through the door, panting for breath, and reality rushed in with him.
“But what about the ninja?” Isabelle snapped the lid of her travel case shut. She was dressed now, having disappeared behind a screen while Dirk and Blaze-Simms gave their explanation. Knowing she might be naked behind there had put more of a crimp in Dirk’s story-telling skills than in those of the Englishman. To Dirk, class meant status and struggle. To his friend it was about poise under social pressure, even with a naked lady just out of view.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got anythin’ in dark grey?” Dirk asked. “Blends in better.”
“Mr Dynamo, I am a noble daughter of England, not a footpad.” Clad in black from hairpins to boot-heels, Mrs McNair was as well dressed for night-time escapades as any lady of leisure could be. True, she was no ninja, but then none of them were. “There are certain places to which fashion will not go, and dark grey, apparently like the Americas, is one of them.”
“Just askin’.” Dirk didn’t usually much care for patriotism, any more than he did for fashion. Yet her comment had clawed him somehow, made him feel put down.
“As was I, so please tell me about the ninja.”
“Lost track of him while we were watching the debate.” Dirk peered once more out through the window. “Reckon he’ll catch up with us later. Right now, I’m more worried about our hosts.”
All was quiet in the front grounds of the governor’s mansion. Of course it would be. Everything that mattered here happened around back or in the jungle, out of sight to keep it out of mind.
“How long d’you need to pack, Tim?” Dynamo asked.
“Gosh, I’m not really sure,” Blaze-Simms replied. “There are usually servants for that sort of thing. Twenty minutes, perhaps?”
“You’ve got five.”
Timothy scurried away down the corridor.
“Someone’s comin’.” Dirk dimmed the light and, sheltered in the shadow of the curtains, pointed out across the lawn. Two horses were approaching, shadow creatures silhouetted against the pale, starlit drive. On one a rider sat tall in the saddle, steady with pride and expert horsemanship. Reins trailed back to the other horse, whose rider might as well have been a sack of guano, hunched limp and useless across the beast’s neck.
“Who is it?” Isabelle stood beside him, gazing out through the window.
“Reckon the front one’s that Dahomeyan gal,” Dirk said. “Other could be Omalara or Cullen, or just a bunch of blankets for all I can tell.”
She leaned forward to peer past a partition in the window panes.
“It’s Reginald,” she said. “Look, that’s the shoulders of a man in a suit.”
Dirk nodded. There was a sharpness to the edges of the shadow, the distinct lines that cut off a well-dressed European from God’s world of curves and broken, irregular shapes.
Isabelle was close now. He could smell her body beneath her lavender scent. Getting up close with ladies of her class wasn’t something he was used to, and it was on the distracting side. Her eyes were wide in the soft glow of the lowered lamp.
“What about you, Mr Dynamo?” she asked. “Don’t you need to pack?”
“I’m always ready to go.” He felt foolish for the pride he took in the words, but why not be proud of the things you were good at? “Comes from livin’ so long on the road.”
“You’re going like this?” Her hand hovered over his chest. He could feel the air curling around her fingertips.
“How long d’you think it takes me to throw clothes on and off?”
“I’m afraid I couldn’t say.”
Her breath brushed his skin, sending a shiver through him despite the tropical heat. The sort of thoughts it stirred weren’t ones he was comfortable thinking about a married woman, but those same thoughts kept him from backing away.
“Shouldn’t you be going?” Her words were no more than a whisper. “You only gave Timothy five minutes.”
“That’s five Blaze-Simms minutes.” Dirk shook his head. “He doesn’t grasp time too well. If he gets distracted with whatever’s on his mind, it’ll be dawn before he knows time’s up.”
“So we’re...”
Whatever Isabelle was about to say, she didn’t. Talk of Blaze-Simms was enough to snap Dirk’s attention back to what mattered.
“I’ll grab my boots.” He took a step back. “Be ready to go.”
Two minutes later, Dirk was on the landing - booted, shirted and dragging Blaze-Simms from his room. A pile of bags weighed down the Englishman, with clothes, papers and esoteric equipment protruding in every direction. His experimental gun stuck up behind him like an ornate flagpole.
“What state’s the boat in?” Dirk grabbed the largest of the cases. His own luggage consisted of a single carpet bag and the pistol which was, at last, back in its space beneath his arm. He’d experienced Blaze-Simms’s heavy travelling style before, weighed down by everything from callipers and microscopes to silk hankies and spare cravats, and exasperating as it was, there was no point arguing about it. If push really came to shove, if they were down to fight or flight, he trusted Blaze-Simms to cut to what was vital. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford new luggage.
“The old girl’s ready to go whenever we are.” Blaze-Simms wriggled a kitbag up onto his shoulder, freeing up a hand for his walking stick. “The supplies should still be fresh, and enough to last us to the next port. My dodecahedric evaporator can desalinate enough sea water for three. And there was never a chance to use the charts and diving kit, so they’re still in place.”
Cases almost scraping the floor, Isabelle emerged from her room. Dirk had been ready to do the chivalrous thing and take the burden, but she seemed to be coping fine. Certainly better than Blaze-Simms.
“We grab a buggy and horses and head straight for the boat.” Dirk shifted his bags, getting a better balance. “Dawn can’t be far off. We get round to Reinhart’s Spur, do the dive, and get out onto the ocean before we’re spotted by revolutionaries or ninjas or crazy mutant bears.”
The others nodded.
“But before we do that,” he said, “I want a word with Cullen.”
A door creaked open in the hallway below. Without a word, all three of them placed their bags on the floor and reached for their weapons.
By sliding along the wall, Dirk stayed cloaked in shadows until he reached the balcony overlooking the hall. Candl
es fluttered, making the silhouette of the Dahomeyan statue dance against the wall, its sword rising and falling above the open front door.
Bekoe-Kumi stepped across the threshold, unbending beneath the weight of Cullen held in her arms. She strode through the room, casually kicking the door shut behind her, and disappeared beneath the stairs. Another door slammed and Dirk relaxed. He turned to Timothy.
“You fetch the buggy and get her loaded up. Mrs McNair, you’re with me.”
The corridor towards the back of the house smelt of work. The smoke and spices of the kitchen. The damp sheets and detergent of the laundry. The polish, flour and sawdust of the storeroom. It smelt like diligence and round-the-clock labour.
But at three in the morning it was silent. No clatter of pans. No sloshing of buckets. No thump and thud of boxes and sacks. Just tidy rooms off a long, empty passage, Dirk and Isabelle’s footfalls no more than whispers across the floor.
One room was different. Near the end of the corridor a door hung open. Light fell in a bright block across the darkened corridor, and the crackle of a fire crept out beneath a murmur of conversation - one voice weak, another whispering.
Dirk rounded the doorway and looked into the servants’ dining room. Unlike the other rooms at the back of the house this one had windows, though they were shuttered against the night. A fire was lit in the grate, casting a rich glow across the room as it heated a pan of water.
A table ran down the centre of the room, the communal ground of the household’s servants, a space of rest for those who kept the governor’s house running. A place for them to share their food and thoughts in the time given to them to be themselves, those moments between serving dinner and clearing the plates, between washing the sheets and warming the beds, between the long hard stretches of living for others.
Cullen slouched at the table, looking very comfortable for a man down among the help. Not that the help were there. Most of them, Dirk was sure, were out in the jungle, continuing the council on which he and Blaze-Simms had spied. Only regal Bekoe-Kumi was there, bathing the governor’s wounds. She lingered about the task, the fingers of her free hand entwined with Cullen’s own, heedless of the bandage in which her own shoulder was wrapped. It was a moment of such unexpected tenderness that Dirk was loath to break it.
Cullen saved him from the dilemma.
“What can I do for you, Mr Dynamo?” The governor’s voice was weary and he seemed unable to look Dirk in the eye.
Bekoe-Kumi rose, her face hardening, her body tightening. She pulled a poker from the fire and stood between the two men, a guardian angel with a sword of red hot iron.
“You can give me some straight answers.” Dirk took a step forward into the room.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, old chap.” Cullen had more spirit than Dirk had realised. Even injured and exhausted he put on a good front.
“Don’t be a fool, Reginald.” Isabelle’s skirts brushed against Dirk as she walked past him into the room. “We’ve seen your supposed servants. We’ve seen your monstrously overgrown bear. We’ve seen the way you carry yourself when you think there are no other Europeans around. We’ve only been here two days and already your charade is falling apart. You can’t keep up the pretence any longer.”
“Oh can’t I?” Cullen laughed. “How is Mr McNair? Will we be seeing him soon? Will anyone?”
“You’re right, this is about me.” Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Not your African lover and her alchemist friends.”
“You think you’re better than me?” Bekoe-Kumi leaned forwards, her stare like a drill boring into Isabelle’s brain. “Of course you do. You are white.”
The look Isabelle returned was softer but just as strong. It was not a look that pierced, but one that over-whelmed, swallowing the recipient into its depths.
“I don’t think that I’m better.” She stood steady as the stones beneath their feet. “We are both women. We have both found strength despite the injustices brought by men.” An intensity took hold of her voice. “But I have struggled all my life to get to where I am now. I have never let a man stand in my way once my course is set, and I am damned if I will let you.”
The air was taut with tension, like a palm tree straining in a hurricane, a fraction of pressure away from snapping.
“I am of the ahosi,” Bekoe-Kumi said. “The brides of the King of Dahomey. Do you know what that means?”
“Means the king’s a pretty liberal guy.” Dirk stepped between the two women. He was too world-weary to enjoy a cat-fight, even if he’d fancied Isabelle’s chances. “And you’re well trained in crown wearing and whatever else kings like.”
Bekoe-Kumi narrowed her eyes. There was a squeal of brutalised metal as she pressed the poker point-first against the floor, its whole length buckling under her strength.
“It’s not that sort of marriage,” Isabelle said. “The ahosi are the king’s fighting elite, married to him ceremonially rather than biblically. I met King Glele once, and he said that to be ahosi means to be more than a woman, more even than a warrior. It means to march without rest, to fight without mercy, to stand when around you is nothing but fire, and then to carry the injured men home.”
Suddenly it all made sense. Bekoe-Kumi’s muscled arms, her peerless fighting stance, the perfect indifference with which she watched them, ready to batter Dirk down like a hundred insolent men before. He listened to the half hoop of metal that had once been the poker, rocking back and forth on the cracked granite floor.
“That’s a mighty fine thing,” he said. “It’s always an honour to meet someone who’s made themselves best at what they do. And I’ve been battered so senseless these past few days, there ain’t a part of me left that doesn’t hurt, even before we’ve started fighting. But I’m an American, and you know what it means to be an American? It means not to give a crap about any of that."
“You come to our land and tell us you will do whatever you want, that you don’t care what it means to us?” Bekoe-Kumi glared at him. “Felipe is right. There is only one way to stop the white man.”
She snatched a knife from the table. It glistened in the firelight, a deadly point of steel driven by perfectly toned muscles.
Twisting on the spot, Dirk let the strike slide past him. He brought his fist down where she should have been, hitting only empty space. There was a hiss of severed air and he ducked, just avoiding a deadly swipe from behind. Rolling forward, he grabbed the pot from the fire, turned and came to his feet. Pan and knife clanged against each other. Boiling water steamed across the stones.
“Stop!” Cullen dragged himself to his feet, hunched over the table like a man twice his age. “If we stoop to their level what does that make us?”
His eyes sparkled with unshed tears as he pleaded with Bekoe-Kumi.
“I will not listen to the orders of a white man,” she snarled.
“Then listen to the plea of a man who loves you.” Cullen’s voice cracked, and tears ran down his cheeks. “After everything I’ve lost, I can’t stand to see you hurt too.”
The fierce lines of Bekoe-Kumi’s face soften and she hesitated. At last she stepped back, lowered the knife onto the table and went to stand behind Cullen, helping him back into his seat. But her eyes never left Dirk. Her expression was that of a prize fighter, ready to spring into action at the ringing of the bell.
Silhouetted against the firelight, Cullen waved Dirk and Isabelle into a pair of rough seats. He pulled cigars from his pocket and passed one to Dirk, setting the seal on their truce. Their faces were briefly lit by the phosphorescent flare of a match.
Both men breathed deep lungfuls of rich smoke. There was something strangely relaxing about the moment, the four of them sat companionably around a roaring fire, while the water spilled in the fight steamed away around them. Dirk was reminded of a time he’d shared a peace pipe with Indian braves out on the plains. Tobacco, it seemed, was the great healer.
“I was sent here as a punishment.” Cullen took a dra
g on his cigar, gazing up into the blue skies of memory. “You might not think it to look at me, but I’ve always been something of a rebel. My father was stationed in Paris in the forties, and I was there during the revolution of forty-eight. The atmosphere that year was electrifying. All the way from Brazil to Poland, people were rising up to change the world. I was young and naive, caught up in the romance of revolutions. Even as so many were thwarted, I still believed.
“I kept believing, even as I went through Eton and Oxford, then took up a place in the diplomatic service. But my superiors eventually realised that my views were out of step. They didn’t want to make a fuss - no-one ever does, and father was well respected. So instead of firing me they sent me to the most obscure posting they could find. After all, what harm could a socialist do in Hakon?”
He chuckled, then took another drag on his cigar.
“It took me a while, after I got here, to realise anything was odd.” The far away look returned to Cullen’s eyes. “When I arrived, there hadn’t been a governor for a good five years. They hadn’t given me a secretary or an estate manager, and there was a lot to get into order. Relationships with the guano companies, visits to our neighbours, even getting myself used to the climate. I didn’t bother about the background stuff - the farmers, the dock crews, the household staff. I didn’t have to. There were no problems.”
He faltered, touching his bandaged head with a grimace. Bekoe-Kumi reached out a hand. As their fingers met, his confidence returned.
“Everything worked so damned smoothly.” His eyes followed the smoke trailing from his cigar. “I never thought about what kept it all ticking. Then one day I got up, and I did all the things one does of a morning – get dressed, eat breakfast, take a little stroll round the grounds. Everything looked well, the chaps were at their work, the house and gardens were in order.
“Then I noticed this little old lady, watching me as I took my walk. I was filled with the queerest sensation of deja vu and my imagination ran wild, wondering if she was a witch casting her hex on me. Finally I realised the truth of it, that I had simply been doing the same thing, day after day, for three months. Clothes laid out the same, breakfast on schedule, same chaps in the grounds on my walk, and her there, every day, watching me. That was when I knew that something wasn’t right. The estate was running like clockwork, and I wasn’t lifting a finger to make it happen. Someone was in control, and that someone wasn’t me.
“The next day I woke up early, my guts churning with tension. I was going to confront them, whoever they were. I’d be out on the lawn when that creepy old lady arrived and I’d demand some answers. I got all dressed up and wound up in my most official suit, imagining the look of shock on her face when she turned up for her spying and found that I’d got there first. I strode down the stairs, puffed up with my own smartness. But the moment I saw the hallway I deflated. There she was, waiting for me.
“That day I heard the truth.”
The words poured from Cullen like a confession. The more he talked the more he sat up straight, as if a weight had been lifted from him.
He talked about the real life of the island, as shown to him by Omalara. A commune of natives, working together to educate and advance themselves, to create a society hidden in plain sight. In the decades since the death of the Atlantic slave trade, they had fostered their own form of government, taking ideas from the Dahomeyan Great Council and creating a council for all the islanders. A government so radical it was beyond even what the young Cullen had dreamed. A council that remained free from the white man’s influence in the only way it could be - by being invisible to him.
While the European traders and administrators were around they acted like good little locals, bowing and scraping, working the land, keeping talkative children away from visitors. The white man’s indifference to native Africans became an asset, visiting merchants happy to pay them no attention as long as the guano flowed. But out of sight, hidden in their homes or meeting in the depths of the jungle, they were their own masters - literate, democratic, self-supporting, independent of the white man and his reluctantly dispersed wealth. Theirs was a soft revolution, unknown and unopposed.
Suddenly, Cullen was faced with a chance to see his ideals succeed. His posting to Hakon was a dead-end promotion. Curious Cullen with his radical views had been put out to pasture before he was far past thirty. But his containment had become an opportunity. He could support these people. He could help change this small corner of the world.
So an alliance was born. Cullen became the public face of the island society, fending off awkward questions and providing access to the profits of the guano trade. He stopped talking publicly about socialism and started playing the traditional diplomat. He opened up the governor’s mansion as a secret school-house and home to many of the natives. He bought in books on science and engineering, the latest agricultural tools, all manner of modern machinery. Soon the island wasn’t just a social experiment, it was a scientific one too. In laboratories above the stables, the best and brightest, people like Omalara, Felipe and Ubu Peter, found ways to refine and convert the guano. Their ancestors had made dozens of different preparations from the guano, and now they took that further. They created super-fertilisers and growth serums, compounds that would allow them to grow enough crops to become self-sufficient. They experimented with new chemicals, making gunpowder in case they had to defend themselves, and fuel for machines like the warrior statue. The independence and progress they had achieved only made them hungry for more.
“Is that what happened to the bear?” Dirk asked. “One of those compounds?”
Cullen nodded. “I imported animals to experiment on, to see the full effects of the chemicals. Some results were amazing, some horrifying, most short-lived. None were meant to get loose.”
“Might I ask where you fit in?” Isabelle was looking at Bekoe-Kumi, who had remained silent.
“Dahomey trades with Hakon,” Bekoe-Kumi said. “The king knows something of the truth. There is... unity of purpose, if not of ways. I was sent as an emissary. Perhaps that is still my place. Perhaps not.”
She looked at Cullen, then down at her hands, folded in her lap.
A long silence followed. The tension that came from holding in a secret had drained out of Cullen and he sat crumpled in his seat, Bekoe-Kumi waiting patiently on his next words. The others were lost in their own thoughts, trying to process what they’d heard.
Dirk was awash with admiration. These people’s purpose was so pure. To throw off their shackles not through the common approaches of protest and violence, but through learning and progress, it was a magnificent dream and an amazing reality. He wished he could stay and join their struggle, to better himself while bettering the world around him. But there was something more at stake, something that could bring greater learning for all.
“There ain’t no reason why we’ve got to tell anyone,” Dirk said at last. “We’re here to fetch something from the wreck. You folks let us do that, we can leave you in peace, pretend all we saw was sand and sea.”
To his relief, Isabelle was nodding agreement.
But Cullen wasn’t.
“I’m afraid it’s not that easy.” The governor’s face was filled with sadness. “The wreck is very important. It’s a symbol of what this island was, of what it has become. And it’s a graveyard, filled with the victims of a most abhorrent trade, where lost spirits are supposed to roam. Even if I thought you should be allowed to go there, the others wouldn’t let you. No-one is allowed there, not even Omalara. Please, before you come to any more harm, please just go home.”
“I’m sure we can win your friends around.” Isabelle rose from her seat. “Mr Dynamo, we have a tablet to find. Shall we?”
As they stepped through the door Dirk looked back one last time. Bekoe-Kumi was holding Reginald Cullen close, cradling him against a world of pain and disappointment. She held him gently, stroking his hair and whispering soft words of comfort. But the gaze she
fixed on Dirk was one of hate.
With a tug on the horse’s reins, Blaze-Simms brought the buggy to a halt by the weathered pier. Dirk dropped their bags onto the sand and leapt down after them, turning to offer Isabelle a hand.
Dawn was approaching, the sky a washed-out grey, pale with excitement at the glory to come. The pier was a black path across a darkly rippling sea, their boat a vague silhouette in the pre-dawn light. Dirk listened to the lapping of waves, the thud of the yacht against its moorings, the creak of something shifting on the boards.
There were other noises too. Small, subtle noises like people made when they were trying not to be seen.
“We ain’t the first ones here.” He stepped onto the dock and the others followed him, leaving the bags where they lay.
“Hello?” Isabelle called out. “Who’s there?”
A match flared, then another, and another, lighting tar-cloth torches down the length of the pier. Beneath them stood a dozen men, Ubu Peter and Felipe among them, all carrying muskets. At Ubu Peter’s feet stood the statue that had guarded the entrance to the governor’s mansion. Its blades twitched and steam trickled from its head.
“Where are you going at this time of night?” Ubu Peter asked.
“Where d’you think?” Dirk kept his hands lowered, trying to stay calm, trying not to provoke. They’d reasoned with Cullen, maybe they could reason with these folks too.
“Tell me.” Ubu Peter’s face was still as a mask.
“The wreck.” These were good people. Dirk didn’t want to fight them, but if they were going to negotiate then it needed to be on honest terms.
“No.” Ubu Peter hefted a pick. “It is the only peace those slave’s spirits will ever have, and it is staying that way.”
“But it’s terribly important,” Blaze-Simms blurted out. “There’s a clue to the Great Library. No-one’s been there in centuries. We’ll find learning that was thought lost forever. This is your chance to be part of...”
“We will not let you near the ship.” Ubu Peter trembled with barely-contained emotion.
“I know you’re an intelligent man,” Isabelle said. “Think about the bigger picture.”
“What picture is that?” He was snarling now, unable to hold back his anger. “The picture where white devils come out of Europe, tell men what to do, drag them half way around the world to die in sweat and chains? Where they make colonies and laws, so that the land is not their own? That picture is big enough. Maybe too big.”
“We can share the knowledge we gather with you.” She held her hands wide, the very image of a peace-maker. “Imagine what your people can achieve with learning that has been lost for centuries.”
“We have enough of your learning. We do not need to sacrifice our independence to have more.”
“But your whole society is based on our learning!” Blaze-Simms was red in the face, clearly frustrated that anyone would stand in the way of learning. “Reading, writing, masonry, crop rotations, the laboratory in the barn, would you have any of that without us?”
“You think we are such savages that we would be homeless, hungry and illiterate without you?” Ubu Peter clenched his fists. “You think only a white man could learn to use bird shit? Yes, we have learned from you. Now we are finding ways to learn for ourselves.”
Blaze-Simms spluttered, dumbfounded.
“We can all learn from each other.” Isabelle’s tone was honeyed. “Surely you and Cullen have shown that. Why waste the opportunity?”
Ubu Peter stood silent a long moment. His companions shifted impatiently, twisting guns in their hands.
“Even if I agreed with you,” he said, “even if I thought your reasons were good, even if I thought that this was something more than hollow words, set to turn us from our path, still I could not let you go on.
“This is not about learning. It is not about the advancement of civilisation. It is about power. It is about white men who come into our world and think they can do as they please. That their view is more important.
“To you maybe learning is most important. Maybe what lies in that wreck is the most precious thing in the world, against which all else pales into insignificance. But to us the wreck is something else. It is a grave. It is a shrine. It is a home to hundreds, thousands, millions who have been lost to us and will never return to the light of day. You may not believe that, but we do not believe in the sanctity of your learning.
“Those who were lost shared a different view from those who took them. To the white slavers, they were not even animals. They were machines, to be worked until they broke beyond repair and then cast into the dirt. To their nations, their villages, their families, they were people to be loved or hated, cherished or ignored, but never to be bought and sold. Did the white man’s view triumph because of reason, because it was right? No. It won because of power.
“Now too, someone’s view must be followed. You assume because you are white, it will be yours. I tell you now, we can not let this happen. If we do, we let your power win. We let the white man continue to hold sway in the land that is ours, land for which we have sweated and bled. This one tiny fragment of hope, where the white devil does not hold sway, will have been lost. We will not have decided our own fate. All we have worked for falls from that single point. Our faith, our power, our hope. That is too precious to be broken for your learning.
“On such moments the world turns. You will not touch the wreck.”