AS she had done many times in those days of gloom and doubt, the girl came out of her state-room and walked with me. Her companionship was a consolation. She looked up at me from under her tousle of curls and swung along by my side with an easy air of comradeship.
The word “comradeship” best expresses our attitude toward each other. After that explosion of her feelings on board the lighter, when she had kissed me in front of the whole bunch, she had coated herself with just a little ice, and my Yankee reserve and sensitiveness detected it. It was as though she had hinted to me that I would be a cad to presume further because she had taken a woman’s interest in my misfortune. In fact, she had dropped a few words in regard to women making fools of themselves when they are too frightened to know what they are doing.
Furthermore, she stuck to that knickeroocker costume of hers, and I found myself forgetting half the time that she was a girl, for she clambered about over the truck aboard the oldZizaniaas no girl in skirts could, and never needed a hand on her trips to and from the lighter. She wore those clothes with such frank assurance that the garb was the only suitable one for the circumstances, with such lack of self-consciousness, that after a few days it really seemed as if the other men had forgotten that we had a girl aboard.
Perhaps that accounts for the fact that when one of the firemen rushed past us a few minutes later he was using language such as he would not have used had he been properly mindful that there was a lady in hearing.
The fireman came from the depths below-decks, and was chasing the Russian Finn’s monkey. He was so intent on the chase that when the fleeing monkey invaded the sanctity of the upper deck the fireman came along, too. There were several breathless instants in that part of the pursuit which we saw. You will recollect that this monkey had a false end to his mutilated tail—a curved wire, which was covered with cat’s fur. As the monkey fled, screaming and swinging the heavy end of the tail from side to side, the hook caught, first on a stanchion, then on a lifeboat prop. The monkey had not entirely mastered the science of handling that new tail, or else he was too excited just then to remember its limitations. When he had his own pliant tail it didn’t matter if a loop hooked around an obstruction. But now when the wire hooked itself the monkey was obliged to back up and unhook that inflexible loop. Each time he stopped he lost all the lead he had gained on the fireman.
Four times in traversing the upper deck the coal-heaver was near enough to make a crack at the monkey with a grate bar. Each time the monkey unhooked himself just in time to be able to dodge and continue the flight. Finally the fugitive made the ensign mast by a rousing leap, shinned, up, and hung over the dingy gilded ball at the top. I don’t understand monkey talk, but I’m sure that the yells he sent down were just as pure profanity as that which the fireman was howling up at him.
“Hey, there, my man,” I called, “that kind of talk doesn’t belong up here.”
He shut up, gave the monkey a long and blistering stare, and came back toward the ladder. Sweat was running down through the soot on his face, and that face showed that he was in no pleasant frame of mind.
“I asks to be excused,” he said, “but that—” he gulped. “Seeing that I can’t talk about it before a lady and be polite, I asks to be excused again and I’ll be going.”
I followed him to the head of the ladder and stopped him just as he was on the first rounds.
“What happened?”
“We’re keeping up a little steam for the derrick windlass and the pumps, and that gimlet-eyed, snub-nosed hellion got into the bunkers when I was on deck, and turned on my wet-down hose, and shifted twenty tons of dust coal out to where it’s all got to be shoveled back. I’m going down to write out notices for a funeral and, by Jabez! I’ll guarantee to have the corpse ready!”
“Shifted twenty tons of coal!” said I, surprised. “It must have taken him some time.”
“I guess you don’t know what can be done in fine coal with a stream of water when you bore it in,” snapped the fireman. “That wire-tailed gabumpus wasn’t in there five minutes. He has laid in wait and watched me sprinkle coal. He turned her on full bent and bored. I’ll get him, and I’ll get him good!” His smudged face went out of sight down the ladder.
There are some ideas in this life which steal up on a man and whisper to him, and keep whispering for a long time, until at last he overhears—and then he plans and toils, and in the end an invention results.
Then there are other ideas which march up to a man and hit him on the head.
Twenty tons of coal shifted in five minutes by a monkey and a hose! The idea that hit me was like a hammer blow. My head wasn’t clear all at once; I was dizzy. The details were hazy—but there was the idea hammering at me. It was such a glorious idea that I walked aft to that ensign mast, looked up, and took off my hat to that monkey. I know he misunderstood my act. I know he cursed me as another enemy. But I did not care. I had got used to being misunderstood and underrated aboard theZizania.
I turned around and found the girl looking at me with wide-open eyes. “This isn’t insanity,” I told her. “It doesn’t run in the Sidney family. But an idea has just come to me out of a monkey’s prank, and it’s such a wonderful idea that I don’t dare to talk about it until I have thought it over. I guess you’ll have to excuse me, Miss Kama; I’ve got to go into my state-room and pound at that idea while it is hot.”
I did not sleep much that night. I was wrestling with a notion as the old chap in the Bible wrestled with the angel. And when morning came I was positive that an angel of a notion had come to me. I told Captain Holstrom at breakfast that I was not going down that day. But when he turned a doleful look at me I grinned so amiably that he snapped his eyes, thinking, perhaps, that he was not seeing just straight.
“I’ll have something to tell you later, Captain. It’ll sound better to you when I have made certain that we have got stuff aboard here to work out an idea.”
That became my business after breakfast—to hunt theZizaniaover for certain material. I invited Captain Holstrom along with me, and took two men for helpers.
My first quest was for hose. TheZizaniacarried canvas hose for fire purposes, stacked here and there on racks. It was not in prime condition, for the oldZizaniahad been condemned along with her equipment as far as Government purposes went.
We got that hose down and measured it, and found rising two hundred feet of stuff that was serviceable. I needed three hundred feet to cover the distance between the lighter and the wreck. I made inquiries about canvas. The steamer had a suit of sails for her two masts, and the sails had been unbent some time before and were stored. Before the day was over Mate Number-two Jones had men at work cutting that canvas and sewing it into hose of a diameter to fit the fire-hose. Of course, it was crude work, but I was obliged to do the best I could with the materials at hand.
That evening I called a conference. Captain Holstrom, his two mates, and Engineer Shank assembled in the wheel-house, and I explained as best I could what my preparations meant.
Remember, please, that at the time of which I am writing hydraulic mining had not been tried, and men in those days had no conception of what a stream of water would accomplish in moving soil.
I told those blinking confrères that I believed I could direct a stream of water on that sand below the sea and bore a hole down to that treasure. The only one in the party who showed one glimmer of enthusiasm was Mr. Shank. And even he did not get up and hurrah. He nodded his head sagely and admitted that “stranger things had happened.”
“But you’ve got to use our steam-donkey for your stream,” growled Captain Holstrom, “and you can’t get theZizaniaany nearer shore than this without wrecking her. You’re only planning on three hundred feet of hose.”
“That’s all I need, Captain. Mr. Shank can build us a plunger-pump with brakes, and we’ll put the whole crew on to the beams, and have ’em give an imitation of a firemen’s muster.”
Mr. Shank nodded again, and allowed that “stranger things had been done.”
“How did you happen to think of this cussed scheme, anyway?” inquired Captain Holstrom, not trying to hide his disappointment.
I promptly decided that I would not confess that the thing had been suggested to me by a monkey with a wire tail. I looked at the scowling captain, and I could imagine the wealth of his language if I should tell him any such thing. So I took all the credit to myself—and it was not much credit I received from those solemn listeners. The most I got out of Holstrom was the sullen statement that no matter what I did next the situation couldn’t be any worse than it was.
The work went on the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. It was slow business making that hose so that it would be anyway water-tight. And the wooden force-pump took a lot of time in the building, rude affair though it was. It had a plunger—two ends of wood on an iron rod, and the brake-beams were long enough so that a dozen men could get a clutch on them.
I don’t remember how much time we used up in getting our makeshift apparatus into such shape as would warrant it being used for the trial.
I do remember this—and remember it all too well!—before we were in readiness for the test of the hose and our pump a small schooner came rolling up the coast and anchored well inside of us, even nearer the wreck than our lighter from which we had been operating.
This was no customs boat. Within a few hours we abroad theZizaniaknew that Marcena Keedy was in command of the new arrival, and that he had brought two divers and was full of hope and curses and brag.
Where Keedy secured his men and his craft we did not know—for social calls were not exchanged between the two vessels. But a lot can be accomplished in a few weeks when a man has greed to prick him, a grudge to settle, and twenty thousand dollars to back him.
Capt. Rask Holstrom had been in the depths of despair before the arrival of Keedy; now he found a hole leading into the subcellar of his despair, and retreated still lower. He had no faith in my new contrivances. He wanted me to abandon work on such folderols and go down and stand over that treasure. He could not seem to see with my eyes. He knew that millions in gold were at the bottom of the sea—I had recovered a sample of it. He felt just as though it lay there unprotected, and that the first-comer would get it. As a submarine diver who had struggled against the difficulties of the situation, I was more serene. I didn’t know what sort of prodigies in the diving line Keedy had secured as my rivals, but I was not ready to admit to myself that they would succeed by ordinary means where I had failed after exerting every ounce of effort.
Using Captain Holstrom’s long telescope, I saw them going down. They went together. Evidently Keedy had concluded that if one diver had failed, two ought to be twice as good, and succeed.
Captain Holstrom remained at the end of his telescope until he acquired a permanent squint. We had hard work to get him to drop the glass long enough to eat. Day after day, as soon as it was light in the morning, he was in the wheel-house, balancing the glass across the window-sill, watching Keedy’s schooner. He evidently feared and expected to see uncounted wooden boxes of ingots come tumbling up over her rail.
My equipment had been almost ready when Keedy arrived, but now another consideration held me back. I did not propose to let the other crowd in on my methods if I could help it. No matter what Captain Holstrom and his associates thought of the feasibility of the scheme, I had a lot of confidence in it, and was not willing that a rival should know enough about it to copy any plans.
Therefore I set my crew at work building a wall of boards about the lighter, leaving only a door for my exit over the side. I wanted to conceal the pumping operations. As to the divers whom I should meet at the scene of the wreck, I trusted to other measures to conceal my system.
I was out on the lighter to superintend the building of the wall, and more especially to oversee the setting of the force-pump and its attachments. I did not like the looks of the sea on that last day of our work. It looked murky and slaty as the big rollers surged under us, and I remembered that it showed that same color on the day when my friendly undertow had helped me. I was tempted to go down and investigate, but I had seen the men from Keedy’s schooner go overboard, and I concluded to keep away from contact with them until I was ready for serious operations.
Inclosed in my wall on the lighter, I was busy about my own affairs, and did not peep to see what was happening in the neighborhood.
Captain Holstrom remained on theZizania, in close companionship of his only intimate of those days—his long telescope. But Kama Holstrom was at my side while I worked, cheering me by her wise little comments, her bright eyes taking all in, her quick mind grasping all the possibilities of my scheme.
It was a rather cheerful little group there in our pen. Even Number-two Jones was whistling in jig time, for all the apparatus was fitting together as slick as a school-marm’s hand in a fur mitten. And then in through the door burst a human thunderbolt in the form of Capt. Rask Holstrom.
He was bareheaded and his gray hair was scruffed up like the bristling mane of a mad bulldog. He was not able to manage words for about a minute, but he wasn’t voiceless by any manner of means. He roared and leaped about and smote his fists together. He picked up our hose and flung it about himself like an insane snake charmer. He kicked at the wooden pump with his stubtoed shoes until I was obliged to push him away. Then he grabbed the hose once more, and reeled it about himself in senseless fury, for all the world like a caterpillar weaving its cocoon. His square face was a war map of rage, and in the center of that face his red nose gleamed like a danger signal.
We stood and gaped at him. There wasn’t much else we could do as long as he remained in that awful state. He paid no attention to his daughter’s questions and appeals.
I took a peep through the cracks of the boarding to see whether the oldZizaniawere still afloat; I had a horrified suspicion that she had sunk or burned. She floated serenely, sweeping up and down on the crested waves.
After letting off his surplus of steam in howls, Captain Holstrom was able to manage speech at last.
“They’ve got it!” he yelled. “They’re getting it! I’ve seen ’em pull two boxes of it over their rail, and they’re dancing jubilee around the deck.” He flung down the coils of hose, and stamped on it, and spat the most vicious oaths I ever listened to.
“They’re getting it—they’ve got it—and all you’re doing here is fooling with a damnation squirt-gun that ain’t no sense and no good—and I told you so in the first place. Keedy was right. I ought to have stuck to Keedy. I’ve known Keedy. He was a friend of mine till you came along and broke us up. I had promised my girl to him. He ain’t setting around darning second-hand canvas”—he kicked the hose—“when he ought to be up and about, doing real business.” He rushed at me and clacked his fists under my nose. “I’m all done with you! I’m going to Keedy and crawfish and offer him the steamer and my equipment for a lay with him and his men. I’ll offer him my girl. You’ll marry him if I have to hold you up in front of the minister by the ears!” he informed her, whirling and shaking his fists under her nose, too. “I’ve had all the silly notions and lallygagging I propose to have, and what I say goes after this. It’s business from now on.”
He started to plunge back through the door like a down through a hoop. A couple of his men were holding a yawl beside the lighter.
I had used my submarine grip on Captain Holstrom once before when he was drunk. I used it now when he was sober—and the grip held. I grabbed him and yanked him back, slammed the door, and set myself against it.
“You can’t dissolve partnership with me in any such way,” I informed him. “Especially not right now, just as I’ve got the world by the tail.”
“I’ll show you whether I can dissolve partnership or not,” he barked; and he began running about the inclosure, roaring threats and peering here and there. He was plainly hunting for a weapon of some sort in order to beat me away from the door.
“Kama!” I called to her—the first time I had ever addressed her so familiarly, but that was no time for niceties. “Kama, it’s no use to plead with your father. He’s no better than a lunatic. He’s going to throw everything into the hands of that thief of a Keedy. It mustn’t be done!”
The captain had found a dub and was coming at me.
She put herself between us. He knew better than to raise his club against her, and he kept dodging back and forth to get past her. He paid no attention to her protests and appeals.
“Mr. Shank—Mr. Jones,” she cried, “take that club away from my father. He is not in his right mind.”
“It would be mutiny—mutiny and State prison,” stammered the mate.
“I’m his daughter—I’ll go into court if it ever comes to that! I order you to do it!”
“Keep the others off, and I’ll do it,” I said in her ear, and I rushed past her.
Holstrom struck at me viciously, but my rush had taken him by surprise. I caught his arm and the stick, and tore the weapon away from him. But to down him and subdue him was a different proposition—and a very husky job he made of it for me.
He was broad and sturdy; he was sober, and he was beside himself with rage. The spectacle of that gold going into the hands of Keedy and his gang had made a lunatic of him for the time being. I got no help from the others. Men of the sea and ships, they had a wholesome tear of what would happen to mutineers when that matter came into court. I struggled with that old rascal until every muscle in me throbbed with the pain of tension, and I thought the blood would burst through my face. No matter about the details of that long fight. But at last I got him down; I rolled him on his face. I pulled his hands together, kneeling on him, and the girl lashed his wrists together when I appealed to her. She lashed his legs as well, for I decided to take no chances with him while he was in that mood.
When I got my breath I leaned over him and spoke my little piece:
“This is tough business for all of us, Captain Holstrom. I don’t know what may come out of it. I’m prepared to take my medicine if I’ve done wrong. But you have started in to run amuck. You ought to know what Keedy is by this time. He has done you once. He would do you worse the next time. If you weren’t crazy at this minute you’d realize it. I don’t propose to stand by and see you heave your best chance over the rail in any such fashion. I demand twenty-four hours to make good on my scheme. Twenty-four hours—that’s all. I know how those men got that gold. I got mine in the same way. But they won’t get any more; I know conditions down there; I’ve been all through it. You listen to me, I say! I’m going to take twenty-four hours—and if I’ve got to keep you tied up while I operate, then it’s tied up you stay. I’ll take all the responsibility of this mutiny, men,” I told the crowd on the lighter. “I’m a partner in this expedition with a signed contract. Twenty-four hours from now I’ll hold out my hands and let you tie me up if I haven’t made good.”
That was pretty bold talk, and I’ll confess that I did not know just where I was going to get off. But to let Captain Holstrom run away to that rogue of a Keedy just when I was on the eve of my experiment—to allow Holstrom to hand over everything to that he-devil—was too intolerable.
“We’ll take the captain back to the steamer,” I told the men. “I’m assuming all responsibility.”
“I’ll share it with you,” said the girl, stoutly.
Captain Holstrom seemed to have lost his voice. He stared at us and gasped like a fish newly heaved on deck. He was silent while we carried him to his state-room on the steamer. We left him tied up well and his daughter was his caretaker and jailer by her own choice. She was showing the grit of a young catamount in that emergency.
All of it was about as bad as it could be. But it was going to be worse.
IWAS about at daybreak next morning. The man who predicted the first eclipse of the sun and was waiting for it had nothing on me in the way of a case of nerves. I kept away from the captain’s state-room. I had plenty on my mind without loading up with any more trouble.
The first thing I saw when I came on deck was a little schooner which was lying-to a few cable-lengths from us. She looked familiar. A boat was slid over her rail. Through the telescope I saw two men in uniform take seats in the stem-sheets. They were those customs chaps who had visited us before and they rowed past us toward Keedy’s schooner. I turned the telescope and saw that somebody in Keedy’s crowd was wigwagging a flag furiously.
I saw something else through the glass. Keedy’s divers were going down and I could imagine with what kind of tongue-lashing he had been urging them to “follow their hand.”
For an instant I had a wild notion of calling for my boat crew and beating them to it. Then I looked out over that quieter sea, and felt sure that the freakish undertow had gone off to play elsewhere.
“Let ’em go down and learn a thing or two,” I said to Romeo Shank, “and then come up and tell Keedy that the Pacific Ocean is something, of a gambler itself when it comes to ‘following your hand.’”
I knew well enough that I’d better stick around pretty close aboard the oldZizania, for I was sure we would be receiving a call from the customs men. They would find our treasury bare, and they would find the captain of the expedition trussed up in his state-room. They would probably come with another “hot rock” which had been dropped in their hat by the prospering Keedy.
Yes, there was only one station for me that morning!
The visitors arrived in less than an hour. They tried to smile when they came over the rail, but it was a mighty sick smile.
I led them into my state-room, and did not pay any attention to their questions about the captain. They talked broken English, and little of it, and so there were no words wasted. In a few minutes I knew what was wanted. We must up killick and get out. We were there without authority; we were breaking laws; we were stealing other men’s property.
I tried to talk about Keedy and his gang. How about them? The officers shrugged their shoulders and scowled at me. Ah, that was the Government’s business, not mine, they told me. They were attending to that case. Had I not seen them going over there also? Yes, all should be used alike—but we must go or else they would report, and a gunboat would be sent to drive us away—yes, to confiscate our ship. So!
Captain Holstrom had been right in regard to them—I found that they were blood-suckers, looking for the juiciest proposition, and Keedy had got next by some plan—perhaps by being a better liar.
I stared at those knaves for a few moments, and did some tall thinking quickly. I was really getting used to quick thinking by that time.
When I jumped up and asked to be excused for a moment they smiled and settled back on the transom. Perhaps they thought that I proposed to raise Keedy out of the game.
I found Mate Number-two Jones on the main deck forward.
“They have called the turn on us—say that we must get off the coast,” I told him. “Keedy has bribed them over our heads. I tell you, Jones, I’m going to get that treasure! I’ve got to get it. This isn’t mere brag talk. You are posted on my plans, and you believe in them.”
“The scheme does look good to me,” admitted the mate.
“If those men leave here tied up to Keedy they’ll send a gunboat and shoo us off—and they’ve told Keedy, of course, how to dodge her. Jones, those men have got to stay aboard theZizaniauntil I make my try to-day. And, by the gods! I’ll bring up enough to show ’em that we are the people. You come with me!”
“What for?”
“We’ve got to lasso those chaps and hitch ’em to the stanchion in my state-room. They’ve got to stay here till I test out that hose.”
“Look here,” objected Mr. Jones, fumbling at his nose, “seems to me there’s altogether too much tripping and tying aboard here. It beats a round-up of steers. We’re going to get into a lot of trouble—we’re in it now. You wait till the captain gets loose, and see if we ain’t!”
“Tying two more won’t make it any worse than it is. I can’t make you do what you don’t want to do, Jones, but I believe you’re too much of a man to let me play this thing single-handed. We’re fighting Keedy now. If I fail in getting at that gold to-day, all we’ve got to do is to up mud-hook and steam north—we’ll have to do the same thing if we let those grafters go over the rail now.” Jones was a cautious man, but he was a loyal one. I kept on urging, and at last the battle-light flickered in his pale-blue eyes.
“Blast their thievish souls!” he said. “They’ve taken all the money I had in my pockets—and now they’re thumbing their noses at decent men. I’m with you!” We grabbed ropes, rushed up to my state-room, and fell on the men before they could scramble to their feet.
They were wizened little chaps and we tied them without any trouble.
Then I went below and leaned over the rail where their boat was tossing.
“The gentlemen are staying here for some business,” I told the two rowers. “They tell you to go back to the schooner and wait till they signal for you with our ensign.” They didn’t look entirely satisfied, but they rowed away after I had ordered them to fend off.
I stationed two men at my state-room door and I hunted up weapons and armed some of the crew. I ordered them to keep off everybody until I returned from the lighter.
I spoke to Captain Holstrom through his state-room window. I told him that I would bring him a present before sundown. He did not reply—and when Captain Holstrom was mad enough to keep his tongue between his teeth I felt that only murder could express his feelings.
The door was on the hook, and a little brown hand was thrust out to meet mine.
“Good luck, brave boy!” she whispered. “I know you’ll do it.”
“I can’t fail after that word from you,” I told her.
Then I ran down the ladder and jumped into the boat where my men were waiting for me.
I found a heavy surge running under our lighter, but the swirl of sand was no longer darkening the water. I had reckoned right in regard to that undertow. Keedy’s men were still down and I could imagine them wasting their strength on the sand which had been packed back overnight.
Our water-hose had already been coupled in makeshift fashion, and the last work that morning was to wrap the joints as best we could. Then I set the men at the brakes and told them to “give her tar,” as the old-fashioned hand-tub foreman would say. The hose was strung about the deck of the lighter.
After they pumped for five minutes I found that the hose was not so tight as I had hoped. Wheezing little streams punctured it here and there, and the joints leaked. From the end of our home-made nozzle of sheet iron the stream barely trickled. I was disgusted—but I was not wholly discouraged. When I state this you may see how desperate I had become. I was resolved to fight that thing through to the last ditch. I was determined to take that hose down and try it out. I had the misty and hopeful notion that the pressure of the sea on it might make some difference, that the wet hose might retain the water better, that after the plunger had swelled a bit we might get more force.
All those straws and others did I grab at by way of bracing my courage.
The captain of the expedition trussed up in his cabin like a steer calf—only waiting his opportunity to deal with me!
Two customs men also trussed up—also waiting to deal with me!
It can be readily understood that there were some decidedly red-hot goads at my back that day to drive me down under the sea.
I had not been able to convince Captain Holstrom that all my work and struggles and investigation and failures up to then were a good investment. But as a submarine diver I knew that they had been. I had been spending my nights on a sleepless pillow, docketing those experiences and drawing lessons from them—plotting, pondering, and planning.
When I went down I was ready for my job in so far as a man, by pounding his brain, can be ready for all emergencies.
I had piled the lead on to myself. Around my body from hips to armpits I had a canvas belt with five pockets, each pocket holding twenty-five pounds of shot, part of the junk of the oldZizania. Around each leg above the ankle I fastened another bag of shot holding fifteen pounds.
My helmet had weights weighing thirty pounds. In addition I wore my regular breast and back weights. That is to say, when I was rolled over the side of that lighter I, a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound man, was weighted with about two hundred and fifty pounds of metal.
I went with bare feet and bare hands. I knew that if I ever did succeed in boring that sand, holding that hose in my hands, my feet would have to serve as hands for the purpose of feeling out objects.
Keedy’s men had come up before I gave the word to lower me. Number-two Jones had peered through the cracks of the boarding, and had reported that they had come over the rail without bringing treasure, and that Keedy was stamping up and down the deck, wagging his fists over his head. I could imagine from my own experience what kind of language the cowardly slave-driver was spewing out.
I found myself on the bottom under the lighter, and started to make my way toward the wreck. I was loaded like a pack-donkey, outside of the tremendous extra weight of lead I carried. But I was taking everything which my judgment counseled as needful for success.
I was obliged to drag with me my life-line, my air-hose, and the heavy canvas hose for the water. In addition to those, I towed a double line which was hitched to a pair of ice-tongs, and the points of those tongs were filed to a sharp point. I carried the tongs at my belt. If I found treasure I had this method of sending it to the lighter and of dragging back the tongs to myself. I had had one experience in serving as a carrier and I did not want to repeat the job.
I tell you, I felt like a mighty poor and puny little ant when I started away on the bottom of the sea, climbing those sand ridges. The sea clutched and tore at those wriggling lines, at my air-hose, and was especially ferocious in tackling that heavy water-hose. It seemed as if the Pacific resented that scheme of fighting it.
It was a mighty struggle I had. I was tossed and tumbled. I was banged and buffeted.
But in the end I arrived at the wreck. Under ordinary circumstances that stunt alone would have finished a diver’s work for a day—but I had left matters above the surface in such condition that I could not face them just then.
I dropped my water-hose, and went back fifty feet along the line. Past experience with the weight of the surges had suggested another trick with which to fight the giant Pacific. I had brought a small anchor, and, with this set into the sand as best I cou’d do it, I anchored my air-hose and water-hose about fifty feet from the wreck. I proposed to let the ocean wreak the most of its spite on the two hundred and fifty feet between that anchor and the lighter. I figured that I might be able to handle the other fifty feet, no matter how ugly the surges were.
I crawled back to the wreck and found my bearings. There were the “cat scratchings” on the sand where the other divers had spent their energy that morning. I grinned—I couldn’t help it. They had just had their own experience with the tricks of a Pacific undertow.
Well, the great and awful moment had come for me!
In the years that have passed since then the vivid memory of that moment has never left me. I wake up in the night even now, and the thrill of it shakes me.
If my scheme did not work, what would become of me when I went back to the surface of the sea?
If my scheme did work, what was I facing down there? I was proposing to bore into that sand—to sink into it. No such plan had ever been tried by a human being up to that time. Was I not digging my own grave?
* Although sticking a statement of fact into writing whichis professedly fiction may be considered supererogation bythe cynical critic, some honest reader may be grateful for acertain bit of information. Here it is: My old and valuedfriend, the diver who recovered theGolden Gatetreasure,still lives at a ripe age and he has detailed to me how hedevised the hydraulic apparatus out of makeshift material,how he bored into the sand, and how he, with his own hands,recovered the bullion. Also, the incident of his narrowescape when the water-hose shifted was a part of his bitterexperience on the bed of the Pacific. I hasten to statethat, so far as the rest of the yam goes, my good friend,Diver Cook, is not culpable.—H. D.
I sat down on the sand, Turk fashion, like a tailor on his table, pointed the nozzle down, holding it against the sand, and gave the agreed-upon signal for water. It took a long time in coming, and it was an agony of waiting. Then at last I felt the hose swell under my arm. I pressed the nozzle harder against the sand. I cannot describe my delight. I felt that my dreams were coming true, for when I jammed the nozzle down I found that the sand was moving. That stream had merely trickled above the surface, but now a pressure was created when I held the nozzle hard against the bottom of the sea. Yes, the sand moved under me. It began to boil up around me. It swept and swirled in yellow clouds. I realized that I was boring a hole about as big as a barrel, and into that hole I was gradually sinking. I was on my way! I did not know where I was going—but, bless the good Lord, I was on my way! The sand in that boiling water made all dark. Down and down I went slowly, my bare feet searching eagerly.
But though I descended more rapidly as the swirling motion increased, I felt no boxes. Had I, then, happened upon a straggler among the boxes of gold on my earlier trip? Had my rivals also found two more stragglers from the main treasure—loosened boxes which had been forced out of the chamber by the impact of the wreck on the bar or had worked near the surface of the sand by the action of a sucking undertow? If that were true, it meant that Keedy’s men were dumped if they stuck to shovels. Provided I could reach the treasure, and could keep my own system a secret, I was headed toward a glorious victory, and could depend upon the ocean to keep off others—but was I headed toward victory? My feet touched nothing that had square corners. And yet, to the best of my judgment, I had already gone down at least ten feet in that hole in the sand.
Down and down—five feet more, so I reckoned. Then my heart gave a jump. My feet had touched something. It was smooth and hard and flat, and spread under me horizontally. But I soon discovered that it had too large a surface to be a box of ingots. I could not bend over to feel it with my hands, for the rush of the whirlpool of sand and water about me, sweeping upward, would not allow me to force my helmet and the upper part of my body down. I must depend on my bare feet to tell me what I had struck.
After a time I knew. It was boiler plate. I could feel the round heads of bolts. Whether this plate formed a part of the treasure-chamber or not I did not know. But it was an obstacle which must be passed. I turned my nozzle in front of me to clear the way. I wanted to reach the end of that iron plate.
In two ticks of an eight-day clock I was in a mess that has been my nightmare ever since. I began to get a thorough education in what sand will do under water when it is submitted to the force of a stream from a hose. The instant I turned that nozzle in front of me the sand rushed in from behind. I was grabbed as tightly as though the eight feelers of a devil-fish had encircled me.
It must be remembered that this whole proposition was an experiment so far as I was concerned. I did not know then how quickly a stream of water can affect great quantities of sand under the sea, let that sand get in motion. Tons can be moved almost while one takes a breath.
This shift was so sudden that I was not prepared for it. My legs were pinioned, and my arms seemed to be clutched at the elbows. The sand was packing in around me from behind. I was so scared that my hands loosened on the nozzle. A roller snatched the hose from my grasp.
The nozzle was upended and began to sizzle away over my head. It kept the sand moving there, and the murky water still swirled about my helmet, and the pack was not allowed to settle on my head. But as to the rest of my body, it was as if I had been immersed in molten metal and it had cooled around me. In a few seconds I was immovable. I was buried completely in sand, except for my wrists and hands. In clutching for the hose, as it had been yanked away, I had raised my hands above my head, and they were now waving in the swirl of the whirlpool. I groped and stretched and strove, and at last I felt the tips of my fingers on the nozzle. I managed, after a while, to tilt it down a bit so that the stream played along my arms to the elbows. The temporary release of my forearms did not help me. I couldn’t get hold of that hose so as to turn the nozzle full upon myself. The sand kept packing more closely about my legs and body.
After a time my aching hands and arms were obliged to give up the fight. I had become so weakened by my struggles and strainings that I was faint—I was as feeble as a baby.
I have read about men in awful peril who have resigned themselves to die. Mentally I was not resigned when I first gave up struggling—not for some time. I came out of that first faintness, wide awake to my danger, filled with frightful fear, mad with the longing to live. But my case seemed hopeless. The stream was keeping the sand in motion still about my helmet and over my head, but my hands informed me that the pack was gradually settling, that the sand was piling up around my neck slowly but surely. In the boil of that water the particles were drifting over me.
I might live minutes, I reflected—I might linger there for an hour or more—feeling that sand pack around my head until it choked the valve of the helmet or pinched off the current in the air-hose.
Never was I so hungry for life as when I stood there pinioned hand and foot in the Pacific’s bed, feeling the sand piling up against the glass of my helmet, sifting around me to chink the little cranny where the air bubbled from the valve. And all because a stream of water would not swerve ten inches and pour itself in my direction.
Then something surprising happened to my soul in its agony. I’m telling the truth.
When I had made up my mind that effort was useless, that I had done all that I could do, and that death was certain, a strange feeling came to me and took away my fear of death. I fell into a quiet and really exalted frame of mind. I floated in dreams. Cares of earth and worries of the world, lust for gold, and even the love of woman seemed very small matters. What did it all matter? I was dying. Peace came to me.
Is it not probable that kind nature or a kinder God thus smooths the way into eternity when the great moment comes? Men who have been nigh the last gasp have swapped stories with me and we all agree.
I had no notion of the length of time I had been down. In my mistiness of mind I did not bother about time. In the case of a submarine diver, the hours are marked off by his sensations, and he knows when he has stayed down long enough. If my men had told me that I had been on the bed of the ocean for a day and a night I should not have disputed them. I must have been near death, for it is said that when one is dying all of life that has been lived comes before the mind and passes in review, as though the mortal soul were preparing its brief for the use of the recording angel. I remember that this last was a strange idea which came to me there in the sand-pack which was slowly heaping itself over my head.
Then something happened. It was something which should have amazed me, but I reckon that my brain was too numbed to feel amazement.
The nozzle above my head gave a sudden yank and rapped my knuckles. It righted itself. That is to say, it aimed downward and began to pour water directly at and over me. I felt the stream rather than saw it. I could not see in that smother of sand. But my arms came out of the mold in which they had been pinned. I grabbed and groped for that hose with all the desperation that was in me. I held to it with all my strength. It was lucky that I seized it as I did, for I felt the rollers tugging at it once more as though some devil of the sea had given me one more chance in order to tantalize me, and was now resolved to finish me finally.
I did not know what had happened above to cause the sudden deflection of the stream. It was enough for me to know that some freak of the waters had turned the hose. I found out later what had occurred, and I may as well explain at this point, lest you think I have told merely of a case of story-book Providence.
I have related how I anchored my lines fifty feet from the wreck. That anchor, so I found later, had been pulled out of the sand, and the surges had bellied the water-hose in toward shore, over my head, and the aim of the nozzle had been changed in the snap of a finger. It surely had been touch and go with me, for once the surge had taken up the slack the next wave must have jerked the hose out of my hole. I had grabbed just in time; I had melted my sand mold and was free.
Common sense advised me to quit the job forever. The uncertainties of trying to move sand with a stream of water had been impressed upon me in horrible fashion. But common sense is not allowed to rule a man when he is after gold in this world. I had found out what that stream would accomplish if it was used properly. I had learned one lesson which I could not forget, and I was sure I would not make the mistake of letting the sand catch me from behind again. I knew, on the other hand, what would happen to me when I appeared above the surface without my ransom fee of yellow gold. I preferred to stay and fight sand instead of men. There, in the boil of the roiled water, I resolved to stay down.
I tried another experiment with the hose, and was-, vastly encouraged. I had been worrying and wondering how I would get back out of the hole, for I feared that the-life-line, playing over the edge of the sand, would not allow the men on the lighter enough direct pull; to help me much. Now I needed to rise from the hole for a littleway in order to attack the sand at another angle so as to pass that plate of boiler iron.
I slackened the force of the stream from the nozzle with my palm, and the sand began to pack in below me. The uprush of the swirling water helped me and I was able to work myself slowly upward. Then I began to. bore again.
I realized now that something must have happened to, my anchor, because the rollers were giving me battle for-the possession of that water-hose in fierce style. But I hung on, and found myself sinking into the sand. I went, down more rapidly, for I had already softened the surrounding pack. After the awful experience I had just had, I was more of a lunatic than sane while I made that, second attempt. My brain swirled as dizzily as the water which swept up from the hole. As nearly as I could estimate, I went down at least five yards before I struck anything that was solid. And when my feet, already sore from the grinding of that sand, felt what was below them, the whole of my being gave three cheers—not cheers with, the mouth, but those silent cheers with which a man’s soul yells its joy. I had touched a box. There were its comers—there was its unmistakable shape.
After wild struggles and contortions, I was able to set the points of the ice-tongs into its sides. I gave the signal on the drag-rope, and I could feel the surge of the men on the line. But the angle of the rope over the edge of the hole would not allow them to lift very hard. The box was too far away from the lighter for their efforts to amount to much. But as they swayed away I kept the hose playing upon the box and under it. It did seem damnably slow work. But it came up, inch by inch, slowly and surely, until I was out of the hole, and standing about knee-deep in the sand. I had a tug of war of it then!
The box was not out of the hole. The rollers tugged at my lines and wrenched at me. Once or twice I was fairly floored. I would fall with my legs pinioned fast, and would lie exhausted until I could get strength to stand up and wash myself free with the hose. In order to get back out of that hole at all, I was obliged to slacken the stream and let the sand pack in under myself and the box—and when the stream slackened I was obliged to drag my legs out of the packing sand.
But I was free at last, bless the good Lord! And I had a box of gold. It was not a mere stray box, salvaged with the help of a freakish undertow. It was a box which I had torn from the heart of the hoard below. Yes, I was sure that I had been to the heart of the treasure. And where I had been the Pacific was already stuffing back the sand, locking the door once more on the gold it had taken for its own. Let Keedy’s men come down! Let them waste their strength. I had the key to that situation—and I alone.
I tugged a signal to shut off the water. And as promptly I gave them pull-up signals on my life-line and on the drag-cord of the tongs. I wanted to get above the sea and breathe the fresh air of the good God, and look into the eye of the blessed sun, and give praises. And, oh, the awful weariness in every bone and muscle of me! I lay down and let ’em pull me back. I had no strength with which to manage that weight of metal which loaded me down.
When they got me upon the deck of the lighter, and had twisted off my helmet, I lay for a long time without words. I motioned to Number-two Jones to remove the cover from the box I had brought. The sight of those ingots gave me the goad once more—ah, it takes gold to make the human soul gallop!=
`````"Gold, gold, yellow gold,
`````Hard to get and harder to hold.”
This quotation burst from Mr. Shank. His round face was radiant, and he came and leaned over me and patted me on the head. He did not seem to have any better way of showing his joy. It was a wildly excited crew which crowded around me; they were still more excited when I sat up on deck at last and told them I was going down again. The fever was in me. I wanted to go back to theZizaniawith gold enough, to convince Captain Holstrom and those knaves of customs men that there was no fluke about our proposition. I wanted to raise that infernal Keedy out of this game for good and all.
It was mighty tempestuous water in the vicinity of the wreck, and putting the lighter nearer was not to be thought of. But I discussed with Mate Jones the possibility of dropping our yawl back toward the wreck at the end of a cable, so that the men could lift the treasure-boxes more directly. We had brought extra men that morning for the pump, and a crew for the surf-boat volunteered. The gold lust was seizing the whole of us.
I went down again, feeling sure that the wicked labor of getting the box up through the sand would be lightened for me.
I took another anchor, and on my way to the wreck I refastened my hose lines to the bottom, rigging the second anchor as a bridle, so that the strain would be eased on the one which I had set into the sand.
Down I bored again, my tongs at my belt, my hose in my clutch. And I stayed down until I had sent three more boxes up to the surf-boat. While I was toiling down there I knew that I was setting a dangerous record for myself—I could not hope to equal it on the days which were to follow. It was plain that I had penetrated to the heart of the treasure, but I had penetrated to other things as well. I found all the sculch and broken crockery of the wrecked pantry and the bar of theGolden Gate. Yes, I sent three more boxes to the lighter; but when I crawled over the rail later my hands and feet were bleeding, and the sand had ground into the wounds. Already my skin showed where the grinding of the boiling sand was wearing the epidermis. Even the rubber of my suit was showing wear.
I was a sorry-looking object when I staggered into Capt. Rask Holstrom’s state-room. He fairly slavered in his rage and tried to leap at me. I reckon I did look like a beaten man. But the next instant my men came tramping in with the boxes of gold. There were four of these glorious boxes, and each one was open and showed the ingots.
“Your friend Keedy got his two boxes by the fluke of an undertow,” I told him. “I have got mine by science and a system which will give us the rest of it. Now, Captain Holstrom, I’ll accept your apologies.” And I cut him loose.
I did not mention any apologies due from me to him. I wanted to rub it into the old squarehead so thoroughly that he would never get the smart of it out of his skin. I wanted to let him know that I had set a ring into his nose, and that if he ever tried to run amuck again I was the man who could catch him and trip him.
He gave me one look, gasped one gasp, and I knew that Capt. Rask Holstrom had abdicated his throne. I was boss. But I had no time to listen to his slobbering thanks just then. I took one of those bars of gold in my bloody hand and started for my state-room. I shook the ingot under the noses of those customs men. And they, too, knew that I was boss when I got through with them. I had not come back that day from hell and the bottom of the sea to mince words with any loafers—Captain Holstrom included.
“Here’s gold worth four thousand dollars in good Yankee money, you low-down renegades. You take it and get off this steamer. If you are good, and come around here like gentlemen about a month from now, perhaps I’ll drop another rock into your hat. I don’t promise—it all depends on how you act. But if you come back too quick—if you try to squeeze us for more rake-off—I’ll go down to headquarters and buy your blessed Government, and have you put into prison or shot—for before this thing is ended here I’ll have more than three million dollars behind me. Now you can either make a dollar quietly or you can make trouble. Suit yourselves.”
I cut their ropes and pushed them out of the room and ordered our ensign set to signal their boat.
I didn’t have to offer them any apologies, either, and I was not in an apologizing mood that day. They did the apologizing while they were waiting for their boat, and I scowled while they were begging me to forgive the mistake they had made.
Yes, I felt pretty much like the boss of the outfit. But when Kama Holstrom came with hot water and a basin and bandages and ordered me into my state-room, I went as meekly as a slave who trembles when the finger of his master is pointed.