During the first half of the voyage he did not find Margaret conversational; she appeared to endure his presence with bare patience. She had plenty of other society on board, but neither did she seem to care much for the men who tried to scrape acquaintance with her with the relaxed etiquette of travel. She appeared to take a fancy for Bennett, however, and spent hours in long talks with him when she was not reading or gazing meditatively from her deck-chair across the dark, unstable sea.
Elliott perceived that he had done wrong, but he did not see how to remedy it. He had indeed been tactless and brutal; he had, or it looked as if he had, tried to force himself upon her while she was virtually his guest. Still, he thought that she might have misunderstood him less violently; and, while he admitted that he had been served rightfully, he felt aggrieved that he had not been served more mercifully. However, since she appeared to have no taste for his conversation, he was prepared, for the present, to dispose of it elsewhere.
But she called him to her that afternoon on deck, and pointed to an unoccupied chair beside her own. He sat down and looked at her with an expression that he tried to make severe, but which failed in the face of her smile.
“Don’t you think it’s very absurd for fellow passengers not to be friends?” she asked.
“Very,” he replied, a little stiffly.
“Come, you see I’m making the advances. You were rude and unkind to me, and you haven’t apologized as you should. Are you sorry?”
“In one way—yes.”
She made a little face. “That’s not good enough. But I’ll let you off. I’ll forget what you said, on condition that you make no more objection to my going where I please. Is it a bargain?”
“I suppose so—for my objections have no effect anyway.”
“Not a bit. They only spoil everything. Don’t you understand,” she went on, earnestly, “that I had to do this? If I had stayed at home, or wherever I tried to make a home, I would have died; I would have gone mad with loneliness and trouble. You don’t know what I have suffered. Perhaps you think I am forgetting it, but it follows me night and day. I daren’t think of it, or speak of it. I have to do something—anything. Don’t you understand?”
“Perhaps not altogether. But you shall go where you like, without let or hindrance,” said Elliott, gravely.
“We’re friends again, then?”
“I think so.”
“Ah, but you must be sure,” she insisted.
“Well, then, I am sure,” he said, laughingly; though in his heart he felt no such certainty. But he saw clearly that friendship would have to do till the treasure-hunt were finished. On that expedition they were comrades and fellow adventurers, and nothing more.
During the remainder of the passage he therefore endeavoured to return as far as possible to the easy spirit of the Hongkong days, though Hongkong was a place of which neither cared to speak. Margaret appeared to welcome this regained camaraderie, and her spirits seemed to grow brighter than at her landing in America. They talked of many things, but they avoided the subject of the treasure-ship; that was dangerous to touch; it was too near their hearts. Yet in the intervals of silence there was an image upon Elliott’s inward eye, an image that came to be almost permanent, of another steamer, this one ploughing through the heated blue of the Indian Ocean, and of two men leaning over her bow, with their faces and thoughts running forward to the same spot as his own. The same sort of vision must have presented itself to Margaret, for she once, though only once, exclaimed:
“Do you think we’ll be in time?”
“I don’t know. It would have been safer if you had let us cable the directions. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve somehow felt that the game was up,” responded Elliott.
“It’s not!” she cried. “I know it. We will be in time. We must.”
“Well, we’re doing all we can,” said Elliott. “We’re due to reach Southampton to-morrow at ten in the forenoon, and the Cape Town steamer sails the next day at noon. We’re cutting it pretty fine.”
TheSt. Paularrived punctually at her dock, and her passengers scattered, most of them taking the steamer special train for London. Elliott saw Margaret established in a comfortable hotel for the day and night, and went down to the steamer offices with Bennett to see if by chance there was any telegram. There was one, and Elliott ripped it open:
“For God’s sake,” it read, “wire clue immediately. Other party at Zanzibar. Can’t wait.“Henninger.”
“For God’s sake,” it read, “wire clue immediately. Other party at Zanzibar. Can’t wait.
“Henninger.”
Bennett read the message, and whistled low. The two men looked at each other.
“Can’t you persuade her to tell us?” Bennett asked.
“No. She’s determined to go.”
“Well, she’ll make us lose the whole thing.” He reflected a moment. “We’ll have to take it from her.”
“I told you what I would do if you tried that,” said Elliott, in an even voice. “I’ll do it; you can count on me. I’m just as keen on getting that stuff as you are, but by fair play. After all, Sevier and Carlton can’t be so much ahead of us, and they don’t know where to look.”
“I expect I’m as quick as you are, if it came to shooting,” said Bennett. “But a row would spoil everything, bring in the police and all sorts of nastiness. But look there—that’s what I’ve been looking at.” He indicated a large placard bearing the sailing dates of the ships of the Union Castle Line for South Africa. “Didn’t you say that our ship sailed Tuesday noon? That card says Monday noon, and that’s to-day, and it’s eleven-forty now.”
“By Jove, that’s so!” said Elliott, looking hard at the card. “The agent in New York certainly said Tuesday. Here,” he called to a clerk. “Is that sailing list right? Does theAvon Castlesail to-day?”
“Sails at noon sharp, sir,” the clerk assured him.
Elliott exploded an ejaculation and shot out of the office. Luckily there was a cab within a few yards; luckily again, it was a four-wheeler.
“Hotel Surry, quick as you know how!” shouted Bennett, and the driver whipped up his horses. There was just eighteen minutes, and to miss the steamer would entail a delay of three or four days, when every hour was worth red gold.
“Won’t you hear reason?” said Bennett. “Won’t you help me to make her give up that map? Everything may depend on this minute.”
“No, I won’t,” countered Elliott, flatly.
“You’re as bad as she is. If I had Henninger here, we’d coerce you; and by Jove, you’d better think what you’ll say to the boys when they hear that you’ve queered the whole game.”
“I’ll take the blame,” said Elliott; though in his heart he disliked the situation almost as much as his companion did.
Fortunately Margaret had not yet unpacked anything, and Elliott brought her down the stairs with a rush, and hurried her into the cab. It was only a few hundred yards to the dock, but as they neared it they heard the gruff warning whistle of the liner.
“Oh, is it too late?” gasped Margaret, who was very pale.
The gangplank was being cleared as the party rushed down the platform; the plank was drawn ashore almost before they had reached the deck. There was another hoarse blast from the great whistle; a shout of “All clear aft!” and then the space between the wharf and the ship’s side began to widen.
“Safe!” said Bennett. “It’s an omen.”
But Elliott pulled the crumpled telegram from his pocket where he had crammed it, and showed it to Margaret.
“I don’t care,” said she, still breathing hard from the race. “We will be there before them. I feel it.”
“Heaven send you’re right. You’re taking a big responsibility,” replied Elliott, gravely.
“That reminds me that we didn’t have time to answer that cable,” Bennett put in. “Never mind. Henninger will be wild, but we had nothing to say.”
It is a long way from Southampton to Cape Town, even when one is not in a hurry. But when life and death, or money, which in modern life is the same thing, hangs upon the ship’s speed, the length of the passage is doubled and tripled, for the ordinary pastimes of sea life become impossible. Shuffleboard is frivolous; books are impertinent, and there is no interest in passing ships or monsters of the deep. The three adventurers hung together, talking little, but mutely sharing the strain of uncertainty. Late one night in the second week, Elliott suddenly proposed poker to Bennett.
“Big stakes,” he said, “payable from our profits later? It’ll kill the cursed time.”
But Bennett shook his head. “I’ve just sense enough left to keep away from gambling now. If we started we wouldn’t stop till we’d won or lost every cent we’ll ever have.”
Elliott acquiesced moodily. The strain was wearing on his nerves, and he went out of the smoking-room and walked along the deserted deck. It was a brilliant blue night; the stars overhead blazed like torches, and the dark line of the foremast plunged through the Southern Cross as the bows rose and fell. The steamer shook with the pulsations of the screws, and the water foamed and thundered back upon her sides, but to Elliott she seemed barely to crawl. It occurred to him that the treasure must be then almost directly east of him, on the other side of Africa.
TheAvon Castleran into a gale off Cape Frio which kept most of the passengers below decks for a day or two. Thence the weather was fresh to the latitude of the Cape, where it became equinoctially blustering. It was not sufficiently rough to affect the speed materially, however, and at last the cloud swathed head of Table Mountain loomed in sight above the long-desired harbour. It seemed as if the long trail was almost done, for success or failure.
Cape Town was swarming with uniforms and campaign khaki, and animated with just renewed peace and the business of peace, but they stayed there only six hours before they caught the boat for Durban.
Here was a check. There was no railroad to Lorenzo Marques, unless they took the long détour through Pretoria, over a line choked with military service, and there was no regular steamer plying. After the two men had spent a fevered day of searching the harbour, however, Bennett discovered a decayed freighter which would sail the next day, and he promptly engaged three passages at an exorbitant figure.
Then there was a day to wait, and two days more at sea, and these proved the most trying days of all. It was so near the goal,—a goal which, perhaps, they would never reach! The sun blazed down hotly on the unshaded decks as the rusty steamer wallowed along at the speed of a horse-car, while they all three leaned over the bows, watching for the first glimpse of the Portuguese harbour.
They reached it just before sunset. A white British gunboat was lying in the English River, and there was little shipping in the bay except native craft. A flock of shore-boats swarmed about the steamer as she dropped anchor, the customs launch having already come aboard.
“See that! By thunder, that’s Henninger!” cried Bennett, pointing to a good-sized and very dirty Arab dhow lying some fifteen fathoms away. She was the nearest craft in the harbour, and there were a dozen or more men moving about her decks. Standing in the stern with a glass to his eye, which was turned on the steamer, was a white man who looked familiar to Elliott as well.
“I believe you’re right. That’ll be his ship. Yes, I caught a flash of eye-glasses on another fellow—that’ll be Sullivan,” exclaimed Elliott, excitedly, and Bennett sent a long hail over the water.
“Ahoy! The dhow! Hen-ning-er! How-oop!”
The man with the glass waved his hat, and two other men hurried up to the dhow’s stern.
“Come along. Let’s go aboard her now,” Bennett exclaimed, on fire with impatience.
Elliott looked sharply at Margaret. She was flushed with excitement, as he could see in the quick tropic twilight, and her lips were set in a determined line. Her baggage was hurried on deck and sent down into a shore-boat at the end of a line, and in another minute they were being ferried to the dhow.
“Elliott! Thank heaven!—is that you at last?” exclaimed Henninger, hurrying up to the rail as the boat hooked on the dhow’s side. “Why in the name of everything didn’t you cable as I told you?”
Henninger’s voice had the same imperious ring, though he was dressed in a very dirty flannel shirt and a pair of duck trousers that had long ago been white, supported by a leather belt. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and arms and face were burned to a deep reddish brown. Hawke and Sullivan were dressed as unconventionally as the chief in costumes to which Sullivan’s gold eye-glasses and urban countenance lent the last touch of eccentricity. In the bow was a cluster of half-nude Arabs.
“I didn’t cable because I couldn’t,” Elliott replied. “I don’t know myself where the spot is.”
“What did you mean, then, by saying you had found it? How are you, Bennett?—glad to see you! What—who’s this?” as his eye fell upon Miss Margaret, who had just clambered over the rail. “We don’t want any women aboard here.”
“This is Miss Margaret Laurie, Henninger,” explained Elliott. “She knows where the place is. She has a map of it, and she’s going with us to show us.”
Henninger bowed in acknowledgment of the introduction.
“No, she’s not going with us,” he said, decisively. “This is no picnic—no place for women. I’ll have to ask you to give us that map, Miss Laurie, at once. We have to sail immediately. We’ve been waiting here, on the raw edge, for over a week.”
“I shall not give you the map,” Margaret returned, firmly. “I am going to sail with you.”
“Then I’m sorry, but I’ll have to take it,” said Henninger, and stepped quickly forward.
“None of that, Henninger,” exclaimed Elliott, but before he could interfere further, the girl had whipped a black, serviceable revolver from the dress, the same weapon which Elliott had seen her use in Lincoln.
“Stop,” she said, directing its muzzle at Henninger’s chest. “I’ll show you my map when we’re out of sight of land.”
Henninger stopped short, looked at her queerly, and finally broke into a small, amused chuckle.
“Put away your little gun, Miss Laurie,” he said. “I fancy I made a mistake. I reckon you can come with us if you want to, if the other boys don’t object. Oh, come, don’t break down, after that gun-play.”
“I’m not—not breaking down,” said Margaret, faintly, but still firmly. “But I think I’d like to sit down.”
Henninger handed her an empty keg, which seemed to be the nearest thing to a chair on board, and she collapsed. The twilight had deepened to almost total darkness.
“Bring a lantern aft, you!” shouted Henninger, and one of the men in the bow made a light and brought it to the stern. His brown Arab face shone in the circle of illumination, an aquiline, predatory profile, and his eyes flashed upon the group of white men around the girl.
Sullivan brought her a tin cup of tepid water into which he poured a little whiskey, and she drank it with a wry face. She glanced around at the circle of roughly dressed men, at the litter of miscellaneous articles that encumbered the deck of the rough native boat, and shuddered. A moist, unhealthy smell came off shore, there was a sound of loud and violent altercation in Dutch from the deck of a neighbouring barque, and a couple of pistol-shots cracked from somewhere along the wharves.
Elliott moved closer to her and laid his hand upon her arm.
“I didn’t know it would be like this,” she murmured.
“Don’t be frightened,” said Elliott. “There’s no one here to be afraid of. But don’t you think you had better go ashore, after all? The American consul will make you comfortable till we get back, you know.”
“No—anything rather than that city! I’m not afraid, only tired out. I’ve come all the way from China,” she said to Henninger, “almost without stopping, and here I thought I’d be among friends.”
“So you are,” the Englishman assured her. “Only just look at this boat. We’ve got no accommodation for ladies. You’ll just have to rough it like the rest of us. And there’s some danger; there may be a fight before we’re through. And our own crew would cut our throats if we didn’t keep them cowed. I still think you’d better go ashore and stay there. But if you are willing to take your chances, you’re welcome.”
“I’ll take the risks, of course, and I don’t want any favours because I’m a girl. I’ll just be one of your party. When can we get started?”
“The tide’s on the ebb now, and everything is shipped,” Hawke remarked.
“Yes, no use waiting,” said Henninger. “I’ll speak to the reis. Halloo, Abdullah! Come aft a moment.”
“Who’s the reis?” Bennett inquired.
“He’s the captain, that is, the sailing-master under our orders,” Sullivan explained. “You see, none of us knew anything about navigation. He’s a fine old fellow, on the dead square, and hand and glove with us. We’re paying him a small fortune for the run, and he’s the only man aboard, except ourselves, who knows anything of what we’re after.”
The reis came aft deliberately, a finely athletic Arab past middle age, with an aristocratic coffee-coloured face and a short grizzled beard. He was dressed in spotless white, and wore a short sword and dagger in his sash. Henninger conferred aside with him for a few minutes.
“All right,” said the Englishman, returning. “The anchor will be up directly and we’ll be off. High time, too. Meanwhile, I’d like to hear what you’ve been doing, Elliott. I got your letter from Hongkong.”
Elliott thereupon briefly narrated the surprising developments of the past month.
“I see. You were a bold woman to try to hold us up, Miss Laurie,” said Henninger, grimly. “Other people have tried it, but not often twice.”
“There’s a good chance that we’ll be in time, after all,” said Sullivan.
“Of course we will!” Margaret cried. “What’s that?”
It was the rattle as the crew manned the windlass. The chain cable came in grating harshly, and the dhow glided forward and swung round as she was hove short. A couple of Arabs hauled around the big lateen mainsail, and then came aft to perform the same office for the smaller mizzen-sail, while the reis himself took the helm, which was a heavy beam projecting fully ten feet inboard over the stern. The anchor was broken out and came up ponderously against the bows.
“We’re off!” exclaimed Hawke, boyishly.
The dhow began to move slowly down the river under the ebb-tide, and gradually gathered way in the slight breeze from the land,—the dark land of Africa that gloomed behind them. The treasure hunt was really begun.
Upon the dhow’s after-deck no one spoke for several minutes. Every one of the adventurers was doubtless busy with his own reflection, and there was an impressive touch about this silent putting forth into the darkness—a darkness not so deep as their own ignorance of the end of that voyage. And every one felt instinctively that much would be lost as well as won before that cargo should be raised that had cost the lives of so many men already.
A sudden recollection shook the spell of silence from Elliott.
“That other party at Zanzibar—what about them?” he asked.
“They got there over two weeks ago, just before I left,” Henninger answered. “There were two men. They must have been your friends Sevier and Carlton, by your description, and they were trying to hire some sort of craft and crew. Ships happened luckily to be scarce at Zanzibar just then, and they hadn’t made any headway when I came here to superintend things. Sullivan had chartered this boat already, and I picked up Hawke at Mozambique as I came down. They can’t have much the start of us at the most.”
“And what then?” demanded Bennett.
“Why, we outfitted this dhow, and no joke it was. We were lucky in picking up a full diving outfit. It’s badly battered, but we got it cheap, and it’ll serve. We hired a Berber Arab with it, who used to work on the sponge boats in the Levant and understands it. Then we had to rig a rough derrick apparatus to hoist heavy weights aboard by man-power. We had to get a crew, and provisions and arms—no end of things. It was like stocking a shop. We finished the job five days ago, and we’ve been waiting ever since for a message from you.”
“We’d have murdered you if we could have caught you. We were about ready to go off our heads,” Hawke supplemented.
The dhow was clearing the river mouth, and the Arab skipper hauled her course to the northward. The breeze was fresher outside, and she rapidly increased her speed, rolling heavily under the seas, for she was in light ballast.
“We’ve arranged to take turns standing watches,” said Henninger. “One of us must always be on guard till we get back. I’ll take the first watch, from nine o’clock till midnight, and then Hawke and then Sullivan, three hours apiece. Elliott and Bennett will take their turns the next night, and this arrangement gives two men a full sleep every night.”
“I’ll take my turn,” interposed Margaret.
“No,” said Henninger, in a tone that closed the question. “The rest of us sleep on blankets spread on the deck because it’s so hot, Miss Laurie, but you can have the cabin, or we’ll swing you a hammock amidships. But you’d suffocate in the cabin, I’m afraid. You said you didn’t want any favours, and we can’t give you any.”
Margaret chose the hammock, which an Arab seaman was ordered to sling for her. But no one turned in for two more hours; there was too much excitement in the actual, long-delayed start. But the cool sea-wind brought quiet, and excitement gave place at last to intense weariness.
Elliott spread his blanket beside the rail only a couple of yards from Margaret’s hammock.
“If anything should frighten you in the night, just speak to me and I’ll hear you instantly,” he remarked, as he lay down.
“All right,” she replied; but he felt more than certain that whatever the alarm, she would sooner have bitten off the end of her tongue than have appealed to him for help.
Elliott awoke several times during the night. The dhow was rushing forward at, it seemed to him, tremendous speed, and he was spattered occasionally by smart splashes of foam from over-side. Margaret’s hammock was swaying heavily in the roll, but she appeared to be asleep, and all was quiet on deck. At the stern he could see the white figure of the steersman leaning hard against the tiller, and there was a dark form beside the rail, undoubtedly one of his friends on the watch.
At last he awoke again with a start, to find it broad day. The dhow’s decks were wet; there was a cloudy sky, and a fresh wet wind blowing from the southeast. No land was anywhere in sight; the sea, gray as iron, was covered with racing whitecaps. Looking at his watch, he found that it was half-past five, and he arose and walked aft, feeling a trifle cramped and stiff, to where Sullivan was lounging out the last hour of his duty. Margaret still slept profoundly in her hammock.
“What do you think of our clipper? I picked her out,” said Sullivan, walking forward to meet him.
Elliott was now able for the first time to get a clear view of the craft upon which he had embarked. The dhow was about ninety feet long and rather broad in the beam, with two masts stepped with an extravagant rake forward, each bearing a great lateen sail. There was a long, knifelike sheer to her cutwater, and a great overhang to her stern, and she was decked completely over, with forward and aft companion ladders leading below.
“She seems to be able to sail,” replied Elliott, glancing at the racing water alongside.
“That’s no lie. The skipper says she can do fourteen knots with the right kind of a wind. Her name’s theOmeyyah, or words to that effect. She’d make a sensation in the New York Yacht Club, wouldn’t she?”
“What’s your crew like? Are they really the tough gang that Henninger said?”
“Oh, I fancy he was piling it on to frighten that girl. She’s dead game, isn’t she? No, the men are all coast Arabs—pretty peaceable lot, I reckon. You see, they’re all of the same tribe as the reis, and he’s guaranteed good behaviour from them. Besides, we’re well armed. There’s a big revolver apiece and a dozen Mauser rifles down below, with a thousand cartridges. Second-hand military rifles can be bought at bargain prices in Lorenzo Marques just now.”
Henninger came aft at that moment, looked earnestly at sea and sky, and drew a bucket of water from over the side for his ablutions. Elliott and Sullivan followed his example; and when Margaret appeared a few minutes later from behind the mizzen-sail, she, too, was served with a bucket of salt water and a towel.
“I’m going to braid my hair as I used when I was at school,” she exclaimed, laughing, after an unsuccessful attempt to reduce the curls to order. Her eyes shone; her cheeks glowed after the salt water, and her voice had a gay ring. For the first time an unwilling conviction began to invade Elliott that perhaps after all this expedition was better for her than to remain in America, brooding and waiting.
“We’ll have the cabin fixed up a little for you, with a wash-stand and a bit of a mirror,” said Henninger. “You can sleep in that hammock, if you like, but you’ll want some corner of your own. No one else will want to go into the cabin; it’s too hot. We live on deck.”
“What else do we live on?” demanded Elliott “Isn’t it nearly time for breakfast?”
“Not for half an hour. And while we’re waiting, perhaps Miss Laurie will—”
Margaret understood, and she silently produced from inside her blouse the folded paper which Elliott had seen at San Francisco.
“This is the map my father made,” she said, opening it and handing it to the chief.
Every one crowded round to look. It was a carefully drawn sketch map of a portion of the Mozambique Channel and the Zanzibar coast, and there was a small island marked with a cross and with its latitude and longitude—S. 13, 25, 8, and E. 33, 39, 18.
Henninger produced a large chart of the East Coast and compared the two. “The place must be just a little south of Mohilla Island,” he said. “It’s two or three hundred miles from Ibo Island, where they’ll look first.”
“How far from here?” asked Hawke, who had come aft while they were talking.
“I don’t know exactly where we are now, but I should think it must be a good eight or nine hundred miles.”
“Good heavens!” Bennett cried in dismay.
“But then it’s five hundred miles or so from Zanzibar, and we may have got started before them. We can run the distance in five or six days, or maybe in less, if this wind holds,” looking up at the gray-streaked southern sky.
“It’ll hold,” said Hawke. “The reis told me last night that the southeast wind blows all the time at this season. It’s a trade-wind, I fancy.”
“And I think,” remarked Henninger, “that there’s a strong current setting north through the channel that will help us two or three knots an hour.”
This important bit of oceanography was indeed corroborated by the chart, and it put the whole party in excellent spirits, not even to be spoiled by the execrable breakfast that was presently brought on deck. Ice, milk, or butter were impossibilities on theOmeyyah, and the provisioning consisted chiefly of American canned goods which did not require cooking, and of mutton and rice which the Moslem in the galley did his usually successful best to spoil. Only in one thing was he an artist; the superb coffee made amends for all the rest.
All that day the log-line was kept running, and showed an average speed of nearly eleven knots, with an increase toward evening as the wind freshened. The adventurers lounged about the decks, with no books to read, with nothing to do, but feeling an exhilaration from the rapid movement of the small craft which a steamer could never give at double the speed. Away to port the coast of Africa showed occasionally as a bluish darkening of the sea-line, and faded again. Two or three dhows like their own passed them beating down the channel, and once a long smear of smoke on the sky indicated a steamer hull down under the eastward horizon.
The second day passed much like the first, but the sun set cloudily, and it rained during the night. At daybreak the wind was much fresher, and it strengthened during the forenoon, veering more to the east. At noon the dhow was heeling over heavily, and an hour later the skipper ordered a reef taken in the mainsail. The good wind continued to smarten until by the middle of the afternoon it was difficult to maintain footing on the sloping and slippery deck. The sky was a flat, windy gray; the sea had not a tinge of blue, and was covered with sweeping white-crested rollers, through which theOmeyyahploughed nobly. Occasionally she took one over the bows with a bursting smash, sending a drenching cascade over the decks clear to the stern. It took two men to hold the kicking tiller-head, and the adventurers clung to the rigging upon the windward side, disregarding a ducking that could not be avoided, for it seemed that oilskins was the one item of equipment that had been forgotten.
“How fast are we going?” Margaret cried to Elliott, trying to keep her wet hair out of her eyes. The rattle and creak of the straining rigging and blocks almost drowned her voice.
“Thirteen knots, last time the log was taken,” Elliott shouted back.
She made a gesture of triumph; at that rate they would surely win. Henninger came up unsteadily, holding to the rail, with his wet linen clothes clinging to him like a bathing-suit.
“The reis wants to run for shelter somewhere on the coast,” he shouted. “He’s afraid we’re running right into a monsoon or something.”
“Tell him to go to the deuce!” cried Elliott. “This is just what we want, and more of the same sort.”
“That’s what I think,” said Henninger, and he retraced his difficult way to the stern, where the Arab skipper himself stood beside the helmsmen. Abdullah seemed to object to the recklessness of his employer, and apparently a violent altercation ensued, but drowned at a distance of ten feet by wind and water. It must have ended in the submission of the reis, for the dhow continued to drive ahead, half under water and half above it.
Meals were only a pretence that day. The hatches had been battened down, and no one left the deck, but Elliott brought a quantity of biscuits and canned salmon from the galley, which every one ate where he stood. It rained furiously that night, and with the rain the wind seemed to moderate, in spite of the fears of the skipper. During the next forenoon it remained intermittently fresh, but remained powerful enough to drive the dhow at an average speed of ten knots all day. By sunset, Henninger calculated that they must have run nearly nine hundred miles, and should sight Mohilla Island the next day, supposing they were neither too far east nor west. It had been impossible to take an observation for the last two days, so that his estimate could not be verified.
It rained again early the next morning, but cleared brilliantly in an hour or two, and the decks steamed. Sullivan, who had learned to take an observation, brought up a second-hand sextant and a chronometer of doubtful accuracy, and these instruments indicated at noon that the expedition was about forty miles south-southwest of the desired point. Allowing for errors, they should sight the wreck before sunset.
The breeze had been gradually failing all day, but it had served its purpose, and it would certainly last till dark. The course was hauled more to the northwest, and Henninger himself ascended into the main-rigging with a good glass, while the rest of the party clustered at the bows. As the dhow glided easily over the shimmering sea, every eye was strained, not so much in search of the island as for sail or steam that would tell them that they had been anticipated at the wreck. About three o’clock Sullivan disappeared from the deck, and Elliott, who had occasion to go below, found him unpacking the rifles and putting clips of cartridges into the magazines.
“It’s time we were getting these things ready,” he remarked, with a grimmer expression than Elliott had ever seen his imperturbable countenance assume.
“Do you think we’ll be in time?” Margaret asked him very anxiously, when he returned to the deck.
“I’m sure I don’t know any more than you do,” replied Elliott.
“If we’re too late, or if the wreck isn’t there—I’ll never forgive myself!” she breathed, desperately.
“You begin to appreciate what you’ve done?” said Elliott, trying to look at her sternly, but his glance softened; he wanted to comfort her, to tell her that it didn’t matter after all whether they found the treasure or not, since there was something better in life than gold. For a moment it seemed to him that she almost expected it, but before the moment was passed Henninger hailed the deck.
“I think I’ve sighted it. There’s something, anyway.”
Hawke burst out into a joyous whoop of excitement. “What direction?” called Bennett. “Any other ship in sight?”
“A little more to port.”
The course was hauled a little more. “No sign of any other vessel anywhere,” Henninger added, after carefully sweeping the horizon with his binoculars.
“Hurrah!” cried Margaret. “I knew we would win!”
“We haven’t won yet. They may have come and gone,” Hawke interposed; and at this reminder every one became nervously silent, gazing ahead. After twenty minutes a whiter spot began to appear upon the blue sea-line.
As the island was gradually lifted, it appeared, as Bennett had described it, to be a good-sized and absolutely barren patch of sand and shingle. It seemed about half a mile long, and a couple of hundred yards wide at the widest point, with a single eminence rising to a height of perhaps a hundred feet near the eastward end. All around it to windward a line of foam and spray marked the dangerous reefs, and a cloud of sea-birds wheeled flashing in the sun overhead. But the gaze of the adventurers was not fixed upon the island, but upon a great heterogeneous mass that stood up among the breakers, white with the droppings of the birds, but still showing the red of rusty iron, a battered skeleton, having no longer any resemblance to a ship, but nevertheless all that was left of the unluckyClara McClay.
The gold-seekers gazed eagerly, and, as regards Elliott at least, with strange emotions of excitement, at the ruins of the vessel they had come so far to see, whose name had been familiar so long, but which none but Bennett had ever seen. But it was not all of the treasure-ship that lay staked upon the reef. She had evidently broken in two, and the forward and larger portion had been swept into the lagoon-like space beyond the rocks, where it could just be made out as a shapeless bulge of iron scarce showing above the surface. In reply to a question from Henninger, Bennett stated that the gold-chests had been in the forehold, and must be, consequently, submerged. Even if they had been in the after portion they must surely have been shaken out of the wretched tangle of plates and rods that formed the relics of that half of the vessel.
The dhow was brought up cautiously, with the lead constantly going, and in eight fathoms the reis gave the order to anchor by Henninger’s direction.
“We’ll find a better anchorage on the lee side of the island,” remarked the chief, “but it’ll be dark in an hour and we’d better lie here for the present”
“Why, aren’t you going to look over the wreck right away?” demanded Hawke, in surprise.
“What’s the use? We can’t do anything to-night.”
“Then I’ll row over there alone. Hanged if I can stay here all night with maybe a fortune within a couple of hundred yards and not go to see if it’s there,” said Hawke.
This speech found an answer in the hearts of all, and Henninger, outvoted, ordered the dhow’s small boat over the side. Margaret’s desire to visit the wreck was overruled, and Sullivan preferred also to remain behind, but the rest of the adventurers rowed themselves toward the reef.
The tide was rising and they were able to bring the boat alongside the wreck, by careful steering. The fragment of the steamer was lying almost upon her beam-ends, so that it was possible to grasp her rail by standing up in the boat. The deck was too sharply inclined to stand on it, however, and was besides deeply covered with the droppings of sea-birds. The deck-houses were quite gone, great cracks yawned in the deck-plates, the hatches and companionways were vast gaping holes, while on the other side the deck seemed to have broken entirely clear from the side plates.
“No use in going aboard,” said Bennett, but Hawke scrambled on hands and knees to the companionway hole, and the rest followed him through the filth. The stairs were gone, but they slid easily to the deck below, where, in the low light that entered freely through a score of yawning gaps in her side, they viewed a scene of ruin even more depressing than that upon the deck. Not a trace of man’s occupancy was left. Everything wooden or movable had been swept out by the wind and sea that had raged through and over the wreck, and they could hear the water washing hollowly in the hold below.
There was nothing to tell whether the ship had been visited before them, and there seemed little possibility of settling this great question that night “We might as well go back,” said Elliott, after they had stared at the desolation for a few minutes.
“No, I’m going to have a look into the hold before I sleep,” Hawke insisted, and he began to clamber down the cavernous gulf that led to the interior of the ship.
Henninger, Elliott, and Bennett meanwhile went back to the deck and perched precariously upon the broken rail while they waited for their comrade’s return. Hawke was gone for a long time, however, and at last a sudden outburst of wild shrieks arose from the bowels of the ship.
“He must have got caught somewhere and can’t get back,” exclaimed Elliott, and they returned below hurriedly. They had scarcely reached the lower deck, however, when Hawke reappeared, dripping wet, with his face distorted with some emotion.
“It’s there! It’s there—tons of it!” he cried, and his voice broke on the words. “Come along! I’ll show you!”
They tumbled after him at the risk of breaking their necks, for the iron plates hung in torn flaps, and the ladders were broken or gone. But at last they peered down the hatch. The light was faint, coming principally through the great fissures, but they could dimly make out a heap of miscellaneous freight, cases and hogsheads and crated machinery that had tumbled against the ship’s side when she heeled, and now lay in several feet of water. Some of it had actually fallen through the holes in the bottom that had enlarged with pounding on the rocks, but the upper articles of the mass showed above water. Hawke sprang recklessly down upon the pile, and splashed in to his knees.
“Be careful. You’ll break a leg if you slip on those crates,” Henninger warned him.
But Hawke paid no attention. “This is it!” he shouted, his voice resounding hollowly in the hold. He struck his hand upon a wooden box about three feet in diameter. “It’s stencilled with that corned beef mark, and it’s heavy as lead. You can’t stir it. See!” He strained at the case, which refused to move.
“Bennett, please row back to the dhow and bring an axe and a lantern,” Henninger ordered, coolly. “We’ll see what’s in that box. And don’t say anything to them aboard. We don’t want to raise their expectations.”
Bennett must have rowed at racing speed, though the fifteen minutes of his absence seemed an hour to those who awaited him. All four men then descended upon the pile of unsteady freight, where the lantern light showed that the case in question was indeed marked with a stencil that Bennett remembered. But this time the box might really contain corned beef.
The steel would show, and Hawke attacked the case with the axe. It was strongly made and bound with iron, while its water-soaked condition made it the more difficult to cut, but he presently succeeded in wrenching off a couple of boards. The interior was stuffed with hay.
Hawke thrust his arm into the wet packing, and burrowed furiously about. Presently he withdrew it—and hesitated before he exposed his discovery to the light of the lantern. He held an oblong block of yellow metal.
“God!” said Bennett.
They all stared as if hypnotized by the small shining brick that shone dully in the unsteady light. Then Bennett flung himself upon the case and began to rip out the hay in armfuls, swearing savagely when it resisted.
“Here, stop that! Stop it, I say!” cried Henninger. “We don’t want that case gutted—not now.”
He put a powerful hand on Bennett’s shoulder, and dragged him back. Bennett wheeled with a furious glare, that slowly cooled as it met Henninger’s steady gaze. Elliott was reminded of the end of the roulette game at Nashville.
“We must leave it packed,” the chief continued. “We don’t want to go back to the dhow with a lot of loose gold bricks for all the crew to see. We’ll have to trans-ship the cases whole. Is this the only corned beef box?”
They found another heavy case bearing the same stencil and half-buried among the freight under a foot of water. There were no more in sight, though others might have been invisible among the débris. Apparently only a small portion of the treasure had been shipped in the after-hold, but the discovery of any of it proved conclusively that no man had visited the wreck before them. As they rowed back to the dhow they were strangely silent, and Elliott, feeling slightly dazed and drunken, understood their taciturnity.
“Congratulations, Miss Laurie,” said Henninger, as he climbed over the rail. “You’ll be an heiress to-morrow.”
“Was it there?” faltered Margaret; and Henninger handed her the golden brick, after a cautious glance around the deck. She came near dropping it when she took it in her hands.
“How heavy it is!” she exclaimed. “How much is it worth?”
“Two or three thousand dollars,” replied Henninger.
Margaret gave a little gasp. “Here, take it.” She thrust it back to Henninger. “I’m almost afraid of it. I never had so much money in my life at once. I can’t imagine that it’s really true. I hoped, but—please don’t look. I believe I’m going to cry!”
She turned aside and did cry quietly for a couple of minutes, with her head on the rail, while the men preserved an embarrassed silence.
“I’m better now,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m ashamed to be so silly, but it was the excitement, and the waiting, and the success, and—everything. What are we going to do now?”
“We can’t do anything more to-night,” returned Henninger. “We must have light to locate the rest of the stuff, for it’s mostly in the lagoon, you know. At least, we suppose so, for we only found two cases on the wreck. Bennett says he counted twenty-three cases in the forehold, and that will all have to be got by diving. We might get out our diving apparatus to-night and rig the derrick.”
There was not much sleep on theOmeyyahthat night. The diving armour was brought up from the hold, cleaned and oiled, and the air-tubes tested. They mounted the air-pump between decks with its big driving-wheels, adjusted the manometer, coiled the life-line, and made everything ready for the descent. The impromptu derrick was also set up, consisting of a strong spar forty feet long hinged in an iron socket at the foot of the mizzen-mast, with a block and tackle at the extremity and a geared crank at the base. As it was not likely that the cases of hay and gold would weigh over two or three hundred pounds, this rude apparatus would be sufficient to hoist them aboard. Henninger meanwhile cleared out the room that had been prepared below for the reception of the treasure. This was a corner of the after-cabin, partitioned off by three-inch planks, totally dark, and entered only by a low and narrow door fastened with four heavy iron bars, each locked into its socket with a Yale lock. The after part of the dhow had been bulkheaded off from the forward portion with heavy planks, so that no man could gain access to the cabin except by the cabin ladder on the quarter-deck.
These preparations were finished by two o’clock in the morning, however, and there was nothing then to do but wait for daylight. A cool air breathed on the sea, though scarce a breeze stirred; the stars were white fire in the velvet sky, with the hill on the island rising dark against them. The adventurers lounged about the deck, talking in low tones, with their eyes ever fixed upon the indistinct shape of the wreck that lay amid the wash on the surf. But weariness brought sleep after all, and silence gradually fell upon the deck.
Elliott was awakened from violent dreams by some one shaking him. He opened his eyes to find daylight on the sea, though the sun had not yet risen.
“Get up,” said Hawke. “We’ve got to make a long day of it.”
Elliott sprang up, broad awake instantly. The rest of the party were already astir, and in a few minutes the cook brought them coffee, canned salmon, corned beef, and biscuits.
“The first thing is to try to locate the cases that are sunk,” said Henninger, as they breakfasted hastily. “While we’re at it, we must see if we can’t find a way to get the dhow into the lagoon. If we can’t do that, we can’t fish up the chests bodily. We’d have to break them and bring up the bricks one by one, and I’d rather take almost any chances than that.”
“But there must be plenty of water inside the reef,” Hawke remarked. “The wreck’s sunk almost out of sight, and the dhow only draws four or five feet, doesn’t she?”
“That’s so,” said Henninger, gulping down his coffee. “We’ll try it. And, above all things, don’t any of you say the word ‘gold’ above your breaths. That’s a word that’s understood in all languages.”
The meal did not last five minutes, and Henninger, Bennett, and Elliott descended into the boat and pulled toward the line of reefs in search of a gap into the lagoon. They rowed nearly half a mile, and rounded the island to the west, in fact, before they found any opening in the barrier. Here, however, they came upon a gap quite wide enough to permit the passage of the dhow, and in the lagoon there was, as Hawke had estimated, a depth of from one to three and in one spot of five fathoms.
They rowed eastward again toward the wreck. The sunken part of theClara McClaylay in about twenty feet of water, and had been swept round till it rested almost at right angles to the other half. It had, like the stern, toppled abeam, so that the decks lay almost perpendicular, and about three feet of the side rose above the water. The funnel was broken off, as well as the masts, and on looking down through the clear water it appeared that the engines had burst loose and smashed through the side of the steamer. A medley of wheels, rods, and cranks were visible, and the bottom was scattered thick with coal. Otherwise, probably owing to the protection afforded by the water, this portion of the steamer did not appear to have suffered so severely as the after half.
They rowed all around the sunken mass of iron that revealed nothing of what it might contain.
“There’s the hatch where I went down,” said Bennett. The hatch was still closed, and was some eight feet under water.
“Diving will be the only way to go down there again,” Elliott remarked.
“Yes,” said Henninger. “No use looking at it from here. Let’s get the dhow up alongside.”
They regained the dhow as the sun rose, and the reis got theOmeyyahunder sail. There was just wind enough to move her, and the boat led the way and conned her in, through the gap in the reef and across the lagoon till alongside the rusty bones of the wreck. Here the anchor dropped with a short cable to keep her from drifting, and as a further precaution the boat carried a second cable with a kedge anchor, and fixed it among the rocks of the reef.
“Now,” said Henninger, when they had returned aboard, “where’s the diving-suit? I’m going down.”
“I thought you said you had an Arab expert for the diving,” said Elliott, in surprise.
“So we have, but I’m afraid to send him down till I’ve had a look first. The gold cases may have burst, and you don’t know what sights he’d see. I don’t trust this crew, so I’m going below myself this time.”
“By thunder, I wouldn’t crawl into that wreck in a rubber jacket, not for a ship-load of gold,” said Bennett, earnestly. “We don’t know whether the diving-machine works right. Better try it on the dog.”
Henninger appeared struck by this consideration, but after a little hesitation he persisted in his purpose. Hawke brought the suit on deck, the rubber and canvas jacket, the weighted shoes and the copper helmet, and Henninger accoutred himself under the directions of the Berber expert. Before the helmet was screwed on, the air-pumps were tested again, and appeared to be efficient. A couple of Arabs were stationed in the waist to turn the big wheels that drove the pumps, and Henninger’s head disappeared inside the helmet with its great goggle eyes.
He puffed out remarkably as the air was pumped into the suit, and Elliott and Hawke assisted him to stagger along the deck, and over the dhow’s rail. Thence he stepped down upon the uncovered part of the steamer, and slid down the sloping deck till he was entirely submerged. A string of bubbles began to arise.
Every one on board, except the men at the pumps, lined the rail and watched him eagerly. He checked himself at the hatch, looked up and waved his hand. Then he attacked the hatch with a small axe, and after a few minutes’ chopping and levering it gave way, and he wrenched the cover off. It sunk slowly, being water-logged. There was a square, black hole, and after peering into it for a few seconds Henninger slipped inside and vanished.
The life-line and the air-tube slowly paid out, and the bubbles sparkled up intermittently from the hatch. Henninger remained in the hold for about ten minutes, when his grotesque form emerged like a strange sea-monster, and he crawled up the slanted deck again, and came above the water. Sitting on the broken rail of the steamer, he shouted to them, but his voice came inarticulately through the helmet, and, seeing his failure, he gesticulated at the derrick.
“He wants us to lower the grapples,” exclaimed Elliott. He ran to the crank and touched it, looking at Henninger, and the helmet nodded affirmatively.
With the assistance of a couple of the crew, the beam was swung round over the wreck, and the grappling-hooks lowered. Henninger caught them as soon as they were within reach, and he descended once more into the hold, carrying the irons with him. He was out of sight for a longer period this time, but he reappeared at last, and clambered with difficulty aboard the dhow.
“Hoist away,” he said, as soon as the helmet was unscrewed. “I’ve got one hooked.” His face was much flushed, and he rubbed his eyes dizzily.
“What did you find?” queried Hawke, with excitement.
“All the freight is piled in a heap, higgledy-piggledy, and it’s pretty dark down there. I made out the cases we want, though, or at least some of them. I had forgotten that it’s so easy to lift weights under water. I heaved those crates and hogsheads around like a dime museum strong man. The irons are hooked on one of them. Let’s get it up.”
At the word the Arabs at the crank began to revolve the handles. The long spar rose, and an iron-bound, wooden packing-case, about three feet in diameter, appeared at the hatch, and swung dripping out of the water. The dhow heeled slightly at its weight.
“Inboard,” commanded Henninger, and the reis translated the order. The beam was swung around till the case hung directly over the after hatchway of the dhow, and, being lowered, it descended accurately out of sight.
Every one rushed down the ladder to look at it as it lay in the centre of a widening pool on the planking, with the grapples still fast. But there was nothing to see; the markings on the box had been almost obliterated by water, though the false stencil could still be made out. On the other side letters had been painted with a black brush, presumably the forwarding directions, but nothing could be made of them. Hawke went out and returned with an axe, but Henninger checked him.
“Why, aren’t you going to open it?” said Hawke, staring.
“Better not. We know well enough what’s in it. We’ve got to hurry, work day and night, and get away from here as quick as ever we can.”
“Oh, confound it! We’ll have to open one of them, anyway. We may have made a mistake. Aren’t we going to see any of the plunder?” exclaimed Elliott and Hawke, and Margaret added her entreaty.
“All right, go ahead,” Henninger gave in. “Open it carefully, though, for we’ll want to close the box again. Sullivan, please keep an eye on the hatch to see that nobody looks down.”
Hawke released the grapples, and they dragged the case into the cabin, where, with some difficulty, one of the boards of the cover was pried off. A mass of wet, foul-smelling hay appeared below, and Hawke began to drag this out upon the floor, where it made a great pool of sea-water.
The hay was packed very tightly, but in a few seconds Hawke encountered something solid, and brought it to light. It was a dead yellow brick of gold, exactly similar to the one already acquired.
Hawke continued the disembowelling of the case until the floor was swimming with water and heaped with sodden hay, and the pile of yellow blocks grew upon the floor. At last the box was empty.
“Twenty-five,” remarked Henninger, who had been counting them as they came out. “We might as well weigh them. There are small scales in the storeroom,”—which Elliott at once fetched.
The scales, which were not strictly accurate, indicated the weight of the first brick at a trifle under eight pounds, and the others all gave the same result. Evidently they had been run in the same mould.
“The latest quotation for pure gold, as I suppose this is, was twenty-five dollars an ounce, or thereabouts. At that rate, how much is each of these bricks worth? Remember, these scales weigh sixteen ounces to the pound.”
“Three thousand, two hundred dollars,” replied Hawke, after making the calculation. “The whole case will total up—let me see—eighty thousand dollars!”
“I counted twenty-three cases in the forehold, and there are two at least in the after-hold,” said Bennett.
“Two millions,” said Hawke.
“Two millions!” whispered Margaret, and at her awed tone Hawke burst into a high-pitched roar of laughter. Bennett caught the contagion, and then Elliott, and they laughed and laughed, a shrill nervous peal, till they could not leave off.
“Stop it!” shouted Henninger.
“We’ll never have a chance to laugh like this again,” Hawke managed to ejaculate, and there was a renewed outburst.
“Brace up. You’re all hysterical!” said Henninger, sharply, and they gradually regained self-control. “Come,” he continued, “we’ve got to get the rest of that stuff aboard. Hawke, you and Miss Laurie will repack that box again just as it was before. Make a memorandum of the number of bricks in it, and, Miss Laurie, you will keep a tally of the boxes as they come down.”
This time, Elliott volunteered to go below, and he donned the diving-dress, and lumbered over the side. It was easy enough to slide down the steep slope of the steamer’s deck; in fact, he scarcely knew when he became submerged, but it required a summoning of all his courage to jump into the black gulf of the hold.
He floated down through the water as lightly as a falling leaf, however, and landed without a jar upon a miscellaneous mass of tumbled freight. There was a faint green-gold light in the place, and at first it was hard to distinguish anything, but as his eyes grew more accustomed to the strange gloom he made out the articles of cargo distinctly. There were boxes and cases of every size and shape, with barrels and bales and shapeless things in crates—very much the same heterogeneous mixture, in fact, as he had seen in the after-hold.
The air began to buzz in his ears, and according to directions he knocked his head against the valve in the back of the helmet and released the pressure. The coolness penetrated through his armour; and, but for the rubbery taste of the air he breathed, he found the situation decidedly pleasant, for the depth was too slight to cause any feeling of oppression.
He examined the cases, bending his helmet close over them, for it was not easy to make out their almost erased markings. He found that he had been standing on one of the gold chests, and he hitched the tackles to it, astonished to find that he could move its heavy weight with considerable ease. He signalled through the life-line, and the case was hoisted up, and disappeared out of his sight.
By the time the grappling-hooks returned empty upon him he had found another of the treasure-cases, which he at once sent aloft. He secured four cases in this way, and sent them up in about twenty minutes; and then, beginning to feel a slight nausea from the hot, rubber-flavoured air, he climbed out and made his way aboard the dhow.
Henninger took his place, and sent up two more cases, making seven that were stored in the dhow’s cabin. The first one had already been repacked, and Hawke and Bennett were busy stacking the chests in the strong-room, lashing each one strongly to ring-bolts to prevent shifting when the dhow rolled. They opened two more just enough to see that there was certainly gold in each, and closed them again. The heavy weight of the cases was evidence of the amount.
All day long the work went on, under the full blaze of an equatorial sun. The dhow’s decks ran with water from the dripping chests, and down below the cabin was flooded, for the boxes were like sponges. With the exception of Margaret, the adventurers were drenched to the skin, and the work grew increasingly difficult when it became necessary to shift the cargo about in the steamer to find the gold cases. When at last it seemed that all had been taken out, the tally showed only fifteen in the strong-room, while Bennett had counted twenty-three in the hold. The missing ones would have to be discovered, and Henninger went down again to search for them.
“I wonder what the crew are thinking of all this,” Margaret remarked to Elliott. He had paused at the entrance to the strong-room where she was keeping tally in a note-book as the precious cases came aboard.
“I don’t know what they think. I know what the reis told them,” returned Elliott. “He told them that we’re wrecking the steamer and taking out a lot of cases of cartridges for the sake of the brass and lead. He knows all about it, of course, but the crew would never dream of so much gold being in her.”
Margaret shivered a little. “Things have gone almost too smoothly since we sailed. I felt certain that we would get here in time, and I was right. But now I feel, I hardly know how, as if something was going wrong. I wish we could leave the rest of the gold and go away. We have more than we need now.”
“Oh, no,” Elliott expostulated. “And there are two more cases in the after-hold, which won’t be easy to get out.”
“I have been nearly happy,” she broke out, after a silence, “happier than I ever expected to be again in my life. I feel almost ashamed of it, after all that I suffered such a little while ago. I see now that it was a dreadful thing for me to come on this expedition; I am surprised that you let me do it. But everybody has been so nice to me. If I had been the sister of all these men they couldn’t have treated me with more respect and real kindness. Aren’t you almost glad I came, after all?”
“Yes,” said Elliott. He hesitated. “Do you know why I wanted all this money?” he went on, bending toward her. “It wasn’t for myself.”
“What, then?” said Margaret, faintly. “No, don’t tell me,” she exclaimed, “not yet. Let’s be comrades the same as ever, and we haven’t got the gold yet, anyway.”
“Then I’ll tell you when we do get it,” Elliott answered; and at that moment another case came down the hatch, and Bennett followed it, breaking off the conversation. But the girl’s “not yet” left a glow of excitement and exultation in Elliott’s heart for the rest of the day.
Two more of the missing chests were located at last and sent up. A fourth had been burst; it might have been the very one which Bennett had opened while imprisoned in the hold, and the contents were scattered. After some consultation, Elliott went down again and sent the bricks up in a canvas sack, three at a time, packed in hay to disguise the weight. By the time this was accomplished, it was near sunset, and already growing too dark to see in the hold. Henninger fumed impatiently, but without electric lights it was impossible to work under water after sunset. Besides, the boxes in the after-hold could not by any possibility be reached that night.
Elliott struggled that night between sleepy exhaustion and excited wakefulness, and the rest of the party were in a similar state. All night long he could hear frequent movements; a dozen times he started up anxiously at some sound, only to find that it was the armed guard over the hatchway, but toward morning he slept heavily for a couple of hours.
Work was resumed as soon as a diver could see in the steamer’s hold. After looking through all the mass of freight, and turning over much of it with a lever, the missing cases were at last discovered, and one by one hoisted aboard.
“Now for the other half of the ship,” said Henninger, turning his eyes toward the wreck on the reef. “I rather fancy we’ll have to dynamite a hole in her side—good God!”
They followed his pointing finger and stood stupefied. Off the eastward end of the island a small steamer was lying, a faint haze of smoke drifting from her funnel, and the red British ensign flying at her peak.