RIGHT away I found that Captain Holstrom knew how to “team” a crew. He started that checkerboard outfit of his to humping in good earnest after he and I had planned out the details of setting the stage for the work ahead of us.
We needed to reach as long an arm as possible toward the wreck.
Inside of four days after we planted our mud-hooks on San Apusa Bar, we had our string of lighters in place.
First we anchored them and then we linked them with one another by cables because the sandy bottom inshore from the steamer afforded poor holding-ground for the anchors. Having a number of lighters hitched together in this manner, the chain made a sort of spring cable for the lighter nearest the wreck where the scuffling surges were piling high over the shoals. The scow nearest the shore thrashed about in rather lively style, but I figured that I could do my work from it in pretty fair fashion. At any rate, by our system of cables, we planted the lighter less than three hundred feet from the upstanding ribs of the Golden Gate. It was about the best we could do, considering our limited equipment.
On the fifth day all was ready for me to go down for the first time.
Of course I had been allowed to pick my own helpers, and I had been giving them lessons for some time. I chose Mate Number-two Jones to tend hose and lines, and Chief-Engineer Shank was to manage the air-pump.
I had found them to be steady and reliable men. I owned a Heinke diving-dress which had cost me six hundred dollars, and with the right men “up-stairs” I was not worrying about my ability to get down and stay down—even if I had been off my job for a while. As to what I would be able to accomplish when I got down on ocean’s floor I was not quite so sure.
While I had been waiting for the lighters to be moored I had pumped Ingot Ike daily.
He did seem to know what he was talking about—and I had to admit that. The matter of the treasure of theGolden Gatehad crowded everything else out of his mind, and left his memory mighty dear. He drew a plan of her with a stubby pencil, and went into minute details of description. He said the ribs which showed were forward of the room where the treasure had been stored. The fire had been aft and amidship, and when she had struck the sand she had buried her nose, and these ribs were planted so solidly that the surf had not been able to beat them down. As a quartermaster who had known his ship, he was able to tell me how many paces aft from the standing ribs should be the spot where the treasure lay.
They made ready the best life-boat on theZizaniafor me and my equipment, a big yawl with sponsons. Captain Holstrom did not propose to take any chances with that outfit during the ferrying process. He went as coxswain, and I was not surprised, of course, to see Keedy scramble in even before I had lowered my diving-dress over the side. What did surprise me was to have Miss Kama show up as a passenger. When she stepped past me and went down the ladder my eyes bugged out. I thought ’twas somebody I had never seen before. She wore knickerbockers, and was gaitered to the knees, and she went into the life-boat as nimbly as a midshipman, asking a hand from no one. I could have cracked Keedy across the face with a relish for the way he rolled his eyes at her.
She showed the good sense of an out-of-door girl who understood a thing or two when she picked that costume. Embarking and disembarking with that surf running under a keel was no job for a girl in skirts.
When we came up beside the in-lying lighter we were climbing white-flaked hills of water and coasting dizzily into green valleys. Those waves of the old Pacific which had marched across seas from the lee of the Society Islands were certainly making a great how-de-do in halting on those sand-bars of the Mexican coast; and inshore there in the shallows the surf had a nastier fling to it than off where we had found holding-ground for the oldZizania. It was a case of every one for himself in making the transfer from the life-boat to the lighter. I was ready to assist the girl, but she set foot on the gunwale, sprang with the heave of the boat, and landed on deck as lightly as a bird; she could not have done the trick more neatly if she had worn wings on the shoulders of that close-fitting sweater.
There was one cheerful moment for me on that day of anxiety; Keedy was the last passenger out of the lifeboat, and he teetered and made motions to jump, and flinched and squirmed and backed water like a swimmer afraid to plunge in. When he did jump at last he stubbed his toe on the deck of the lighter, and raked that hooked beak of his across the planks. I grinned at him when he staggered up, holding to his bleeding nose, and I went to overhauling my diving-dress, whistling a tune.
I found Number-two Jones and round little Romeo Shank to be helpful handy-Andys after the instructions I had given them. The girl never missed a motion they made in getting me ready. I felt a warm finger trying to worm its way under my rubber wristbands, and I turned to find her looking at me with a great deal of concern. She explained that she wanted to be sure that no water could leak in, and then she seemed to think that she had been just a bit forward, and she blushed.
The next thing I knew she was sturdily fetching one of my twenty-pound shoes, and stood there holding it ready for my helpers. I had gone down a good many times in my life, but I went that day with the happy consciousness of helpful interest in my poor self.
Then they set the helmet on to the breastplate and gave it its one-eighth turn into the screw bayonet joint, and set the thumb-screws. My front eyepiece was hinged like the window of a ship’s port-hole, and this was open. The girl bent down and peered at my face.
“It seems a terrible thing for you to be closed in there—for you to go down into that raging water,” she said, her face close to mine.
“Wish me good luck, and I’ll go humming a tune,” said I, smiling at her.
“With all my heart I do,” she answered, a catch in her voice.
I shut the frame, and Mr. Shank set the turn-screw. With a man on each side of me, I scuffed my way to the ladder, and went over the rail of the lighter. I waited at the foot of the ladder—about ten feet under—until I felt that little pop in my ears which signals to the diver that his Eustachian tube is open, and that the pressure is equalized. Then I yanked the rope to ask for a taut lifeline, and let go my hold.
The sun was bright and the bed of the sea was of sand, and I found good light below. There was a heavy sway to the water even on bottom, but I was strong, and knew how to handle myself. I found my footing, and started along.
My only tool that day was a peaked-nose shovel. I crawled along, using it for a push-pole.
I found the bottom to be a succession of bars, which were parallel with the shore—waves of sand, so to speak, ranging from six to ten feet in height. It was a slow job working one’s way across them. However, they assisted me—there was no danger of getting off one’s course. I needed only to proceed at right angles to the bars. Through my bull’s-eye in that dim green light I could see ahead for some distance. So at last I came to the timbers of the wreck. There was a long tangle of these, a great mass of wreckage hidden by the sea and protruding but a little way above the sand which the eternal surf had packed down. I kept along toward shore until I came to the timbers which, so my eyes told me, must be the ones that marked the location of the wreck. They went looming up through the water. I clung to one of them and rested. I was having no trouble with my air, and now that I had reached the scene of the work that fact comforted me. The movement of the sea in that shallower water was considerable, and now and then a heavier roller jostled me about. But I began to plan out a system of lashings that would anchor me.
Then I got down on my belly, and started to measure paces along the edge of the timbers, following Ike’s instructions as to distance. There was mighty little that was encouraging about the spot which I finally located as the probable site of the treasure-chamber. Sand was billowed and packed there, and the place was quite free from wreckage. It occurred to me that the other divers had dug the timbers away at this point. As I was feeling fairly fresh, I decided to use my shovel a bit.
After five minutes’ toil at that sand I began to perceive why the others had failed, providing Ingot Ike was correct and theyhadfailed. In the first place, there was not the footing on that bottom that a submarine diver needs. I skated about almost helplessly when the heaving sea clutched at me. When I tried to drive the shovel into the sand I was pushed back, and the tool made only scratches on the bottom. Without a prop or a brace, a diver cannot pull or push horizontally with much force even under the best conditions, and when I did succeed in getting the shovel into the sand and scooped a hole, the particles began to settle back, driven by the swaying seas. The giant Pacific was jealous of the treasure it had engulfed.
There was nothing more for me to do down there that day. I began to feel that pain above the eyes which warns the diver. I gave the signal for return, and went back at a lively pace, for the taut line helped.
I saw none of them on the lighter until my helmet had been removed, for when a diver ascends to the air his bull’s-eye becomes covered with mist in spite of the wash of vinegar which has kept the glass clear below. Marcena Keedy was in front of me, looking at my hands, and acting as though he were wondering where I had stowed the find I had made below.
“Well, it’s there, isn’t it?” he demanded.
“From what little I have been able to find out, I reckon it is there,” I told him; “and it wouldn’t surprise me much if it stayed there for some time.” I was in no mood to encourage that polecat, who was plainly thinking more about that treasure than he was about any dangers I might have been through. He drew that streak-o’-paint mustache up against his nose and looked like a dog about to snap. I turned away from him so as to have something better to look at. There was the girl beside me. She sure was an antidote for the poison of Marcena Keedy’s evil eye. Her red lips were apart, and her little hands were clasped, finger interlaced with finger.
“Thank God you are back safe, Mr. Sidney!”
She wasn’t looking at me as though she were wondering in which pocket I had hidden an ingot of gold.
“It was not dangerous,” I told her. “It was disappointing, that’s all.”
I ignored Keedy. I looked past him to Captain Hol-strom, and related what had happened below. It was a mighty interested crowd that stood around me and listened.
“The idea is,” I wound up, “this is no ‘reach-down-and-pick-it-up’ proposition.”
“That’s what I call doing damn little in an hour’s work,” growled Keedy. “You ain’t down here to tell us how hard that job is. We have heard all about that from the other divers. You are down here to get that gold. You bragged around what a devil of a diver you have been, and now when we have to depend on you, all we get is some more conversation. Have you got us away down here and let us in on a dead one?”
“If that money was in a faro-bank instead of a sandbank,” I told him, “you would be just the man to get it out—you have had plenty of practice in that line. But this happens to be an honest job, and it needs something besides false cards.”
Then I kept on talking to the captain:
“After giving the thing a good looking-over I have begun to figure on a few plans. I’ll paw over and size up the stuff on theZizaniathis afternoon and see what there is in stock to help me.” I told Mr. Jones to unstrap my shoes.
When Keedy saw them peeling off my dress he had a few more remarks to offer about the kind of a “hot diver” a man was who called an hour a day’s work. If I had brought up an ingot in each hand from that first trip he wouldn’t have been grateful; he would have wanted to know why I did not bring up the whole box.
I had a dirty job of it that afternoon pawing over the old junk on board that steamer, but I managed to sort out some material that fitted into my scheme, and it was ferried to the lighter.
I went down again the next morning at sunrise, for the southwest trade-wind had quieted during the night, and the swell wasn’t quite as energetic as it had been under the push of the breeze the previous day.
I had the same spectators. Miss Kama, looking like a pretty boy in her knickerbockers, had plainly determined to keep in the front row, and I’ll own up that her presence put ginger into my efforts. I reckoned I’d show her the difference between a man who could do and dare and a sneering loafer of the caliber of Keedy. A handsome girl usually has an effect of that sort on a young man.
When I reached bottom under the lighter they lowered an old mushroom anchor to me. I unhooked it, and started to roll it along the “windrows” of sand toward the wreck. It took every ounce of strength in me to boost it up those slopes. I had lashed a crowbar to the anchor stock, and when I finally got the thing to the wreck and had rested I stuck to the job, though I had really done as much as was advisable at one descent.
I loosened up a sizable patch of sand with the crowbar, and settled the anchor in the hole, stock upright. There was no need for me to pack the sand back; the Pacific Ocean would attend to that part of the job. The Pacific was altogether too busy in packing sand, though. It did not discriminate between an anchor which I wanted made solid and treasure which I wanted set free.
I went down a second time that day. I carried small chains and a broad shovel. I lashed myself to the anchor’s stock, and with that support as a fulcrum for my body I dug into the sand with the crowbar, and fanned out the loose particles with the broad shovel.
But it was like the reverse of the story of the man who set out to carry water in a sieve. The sand kept running in. If I had been able to stay down there night and day, and have my meals brought to me, and could have worked without rest or sleep, I might have been able to dig a hole in that sand and to keep it dug out until I had come to that treasure. As it was, I toiled until my head seemed splitting, until blood ran from my nose, and I felt the first weakness of that peculiar paralysis of the limbs which divers experience when they pass the limit set for endurance under water. I lashed my tools to the anchor, and was pulled back to the lighter.
Human arms had given up—human strength and grit had failed. But I knew that through the hours of that afternoon, through the watches of the night, that old, miserly ocean would keep toiling on, rolling sand back into that hole, patting it down with unseen fingers, locking a door over the treasure that would serve the purpose better than doors of steel or bars of bronze. I should find all my labor undone when I came back to that anchor.
Therefore I did not lark and play when I was dragged over the rail of the old lighter. I stumbled to my seat, and sat and wiped blood from my face when the helmet had been twisted off the breastplate.
“Four hours since you went down—you’re sure a wonder!” muttered Shank, patting my dripping shoulder.
I was embarrassed—a bit shocked—when the girl hurried to me and began to wipe away the blood with her little handkerchief. I tried to push away her hands. It didn’t seem right to have her do such a task. But she resisted me. She kept on.
“You poor boy!” she said—or I thought she said it; I was not sure. There was pity in her tones—a caressing kind of pity, such as comes right from a woman’s heart. I was astonished. She had been stiff and curt toward me—and was rather short with every one else, for that matter. She had never seemed tender even toward her own father.
But she murmured again in my ear, leaning close to me, “You poor boy!”
I’ll admit I was glad to hear her say it—I needed sympathy; but because I mention the girl and her little ways please do not jump at the conclusion that I was falling in love. She had overheard a declaration which established my standing with her and, I suppose, made her feel freer in my company. Oh no! I was not falling in love!
Sitting there as I did with forty pounds of lead on my feet and eighty pounds of it across my shoulders, with air in my dress puffing me out like a giant frog, dripping with brine, and hideous with blood-smeared face, I wasn’t much to look at in the way of a lover. And outside of the pity she had never by flicker of eyelid, or tone of voice, or touch of hand intimated that she was interested in me except as a young man who was tugging at a hard job and deserved a little encouragement.
“It’s all—all useless—down there—isn’t it?” she asked.
“No; it’s a glorious job, and I’ve just begun on it.”
“But it’s wicked for you to suffer like this.”
“I was never so comfortable and happy in all my life—never so full of courage.”
Keedy was listening and I felt like tormenting him. He stuck his face down to mine. It was not a pretty face. His nose was swathed in absorbent cotton, which was held on with straps of court-plaster.
“Well, let me in on why you’re so happy,” he snapped.
“It doesn’t happen to be any of your business,” I informed him.
“Ain’t I a partner in this thing with you?”
“When I get ready to tell you anything about my work, I’ll see that you are informed. Or, if you want to make the trip, I’ll tuck you under my arm and take you down to-morrow. I’d be delighted to do so.” He looked at me a little while and his eyes narrowed.
That evening I had a talk with Capt. Rask Holstrom.
Marcena Keedy was not in that conference. I walked the upper deck until Keedy had gone, grunting and growling, off into his state-room. Then I hunted up the captain where he was lying on the transom in the wheel-house, puffing at his pipe and looking rather sullen.
I knew what was ailing him. I had refused earlier in the evening to come into the wheel-house while Keedy was there.
“Being a plain and blunt man, I may as well say what’s on my mind,” stated Captain Holstrom, sourly. He did not arise. He squinted ar me from under the vizor of his cap, which was pulled low over his eyes. “You ain’t dealing with me and Keedy open and frank as your partners. You ain’t giving us full particulars. You was down four hours to-day, and came up looking blue and scared, and then just talked flush-dush with my girl. We ain’t down here for anything except straight business and results. Your two eyes are the eyes for all three of us. When you have used ’em down below there we’re entitled to have full report. Me and Keedy ain’t at all satisfied with the way this thing is running on.”
I sat and looked at him, and waited to hear whether he had any more to say.
“No, sir, we ain’t satisfied,” he repeated.
“I’m glad Mr. Keedy isn’t satisfied,” I told him. “I wish he would get so dissatisfied that he would quit this expedition. And I don’t intend to kowtow to him and make him satisfied.”
“Well, I’ll be damnationed!” exploded the captain, pushing back his cap.
“You needn’t be, Captain Holstrom. What I say doesn’t have any reference to you at all. I hope my relations and yours will stay as they are—no, I hope they will improve as you know me better. But that gambler has grafted himself on to this scheme. He isn’t a practical man, as you are. He sneers at me and my work—and God knows it’s hard and dangerous work. He expects impossible things, and it doesn’t do any good to come up out of that hell of water and explain to him. Every time he opens his mouth I feel like jumping down his throat and galloping his gizzard out of him. There! That’s rough talk, but I mean it. If Marcena Keedy doesn’t handle himself different where I’m concerned there’s going to be serious trouble aboard here. Hold on a moment! Hear me through. I respect your good judgment and I know you are willing to work hard. I’m ready to talk to you at any time when that sneak isn’t around. What you say to him after that about plans and expectations I don’t care—that’s your own business. But I’m sorry you don’t hate and distrust him as much as I do. Now I’ll tell you what I found down there to-day, and how the thing looks to me.” I told him.
“Then, if all that is so, we may as well up killick and go home, eh?” I never saw a more disgusted look on a man’s face, or heard a more melancholy tone.
“I haven’t told you that to discourage you, or to crybaby myself. I’m giving you the facts, and I hope you’re practical man enough to keep from sneering about my efforts the way Keedy does. I’m doing all that a human being can do—but you’ve got to face facts, Captain Holstrom, and I’ve been giving you facts, I say. That’s the situation—that’s all! You know as much as I know. If you have ideas, think ’em over and give ’em to me. I’ll keep on trying to think up something myself.” I went off to my state-room so as to give him time to do that thinking.
THE old Pacific was in her usual welter next morning.
The big seas were rolling up from the equator, and we could hear them booming in on the coast-line.
As I look back on that nightmare off the bars of San Apusa I think the day when I went down with the anchor was the calmest day of our stay. With the everlasting thrust of the trades behind them the billows rolled, rolled, rolled, rolled—seethed and surged—giant green soldiers with the white plumes, charging that sandy shore. I got to feel after a time that they were soldiers in real earnest, and that they were after me—poor little midget, who was trying to accomplish the impossible.
At breakfast Mr. Shank ventured to remark politely and somewhat nervously that he was supposing I would not try to go down that day.
And I told Mr. Shank rather brusquely that of course I should go down, and added that if we were to wait for smooth water in soundings on the lee shore of the Pacific Ocean in the season of the trades, we should have brought plenty of knitting-work and novels.
Captain Holstrom, from the head of the table, smiled and winked at me with the most cordial expression I had ever seen on his face. I decided that one of my partners was regarding me in a more amiable frame of mind than he had before I had made that little speech to him. Mr. Keedy scowled at me, and I was glad of that mark of his continued disesteem. It occurred to me that perhaps I was weaning the captain from Keedy, for Holstrom snapped his friend up rather short two or three times during the meal.
I went down that day with more weights. The tug of those rollers inshore was tremendous for a buoyant man, even in the comparative calm of the previous day. I realized what I would meet up with this day, and I was not disappointed in my reckoning.
I was tumbled from hummock to hummock of the submarine sand-bars. I was knocked down and then was stood up once more. Sometimes I was lifted off my feet, and then I was rolled and pressed down and pinned to the sand till it seemed that I would never get on my feet again. Part of the time I was thrust ahead as if the Pacific were trying to make me walk Spanish—and then I was yanked backward on all-fours like a big crab.
I knew a whole lot about undertows, and I realized that I was having an experience with a particularly crazy one.
Men who have observed and studied think they have a pretty good line on the notions and the moods of the sea—but take it from me as a submarine diver, they haven’t. If one is standing on a rock and looking out on it, or sailing across it in a safe boat, the ocean becomes a matter of “beautiful surf,” or an expanse more or less hubbly with waves.
But get down into it—get down deep where it can play with you, twirl you, toss you, suck your breath, provided it can throttle your air-hose—where it can work all its schemes and its spite. You will find out that the ocean has a new trick for every day.
There are beaches where persons have bathed in safety for years. Then all at once some day a shrieking man or woman is seized, as though by some hidden monster, and is dragged off to death. That mighty and erratic force is called an undertow. It is now here, now there. It is born out of diverted currents, checked tide rips. It sneaks up bays, seeking prey; it roams along open Peaches. I know a lot more about undertows, but that’s all for now.
I was in one that day off San Apusa. Wind, tide, a current wandering off its course—one of the currents that is uncharted and which is known only by some diver who meets it on its wanderings below the surface, had combined, and had come to play in the vicinity of the wreck of the oldGolden Gate.
I struggled on toward that wreck. Say, I met an old friend of mine. It was the mushroom anchor, and it was doing a sort of jig on top of a sand ridge when I first saw it. Evidently it had been lonesome during the night, and it had come to meet me. It was at least one hundred feet on the sea side of the wreck—and I had left it with fluke buried close to the ribs. If that undertow had dug up that anchor it might be doing other things. That thought came to me like a flash of hope. There’s no telling what an undertow will do when it gets to prancing, you know!
I unlashed the crowbar from the anchor stock and tumbled on over the ridges. I found myself in an opaque yellow light instead of in the green radiance I had found on my other two trips, and I knew that the sand was in motion inshore. When I came to the wreckage of the steamer I did not know my way about. The undertow had been dragging away the packing of sand here and there. More bulk of the débris was displayed, so far as I could judge by touch and by what I could see in the dim light. I groped my way along to the great ribs which showed above water, in order to get my bearing. It was a fight to get there. I was thrashed about and tossed and slatted. I wasn’t exactly sure when I did get there, for other parts of’ the wreck had been uncovered so much that one could easily be deceived in water in which boiled so much sand that it was like working in soup.
However, I toiled back after I reckoned I had located the marker.
Yes, the old Pacific had truly had a change of heart since the day before. The unseen fingers of that freakish undertow had been at work—they were still at work. They were scooping out sand instead of piling it in. I can best describe the appearance of things by saying that there was a smother of sand in the swirling water. Now and then the water cleared when the undertow let go its tuggings for a moment, and I could see parts of the steamer which formerly had been hidden from me.
When I had counted the paces that should bring me in the neighborhood of the treasure, I set my crowbar into the sand with all the strength I could muster, and twisted it around and around in order to loosen the stuff. It was wonderful how quickly the water dragged away what I set free from that pack.
A bottle came bouncing up out of the hole. I dislodged pieces of broken crockery. Ingot Ike had said that the treasure had been stored in a compartment of the ship near the pantry. The sight of that jetsam encouraged me. I stabbed with all my might, drove the crowbar in again and again, struggled to hold myself on bottom, and muttered appeals to that undertow in my frenzy of toil. I do not know how long I worked. I do know that all my sensations informed me that I was remaining beyond my limit of endurance. But the conviction came to me that this was not a chance to be neglected. I was in a fever of hope. I wanted to show that coward of a Marcena Keedy that a strong man could call the bluff of a loafer’s sneers. I wanted to convince Capt. Rask Holstrom that he had not picked out a piker, and perhaps I wanted a girl to give me the smile which success ought to win.
Well—and here’s to the point!—all at once, when I was near fainting, my crowbar struck something which was not bottles or crockery. I managed at last to get the point of the bar under the object. I could not see what it was. I only knew, as I worked the bar, edging it around the thing to dislodge the sand, that the object was oblong and had corners.
My buoyancy and the swing of the rolling sea would not allow me to pry with any great force. I could only pick at the sand and coax the box out. In the end I had it where I could get my fingers under the edges—and there’s one thing a diver can do: he can lift with the strength of a giant, the air in his dress assisting him.
Yes, itwasa box, so I found when I had it out. It was a heavy box even when lifted there under the sea. It was a small box, and there could be only one reason for such a small box being so heavy—it was one of the bullion boxes. Of that fact I was convinced.
I carried several small chains at my belt—my lashings in case of need. I circled the box with chains, and secured it to my body as best I could, then clutched my arm about it for greater safety. As I worked I grew more excited—I had drawn first blood in my duel with the old Pacific. Excitedly I pulled the line to send my signal to the lighter, asking for help on the return. They told me afterward that I gave the emergency signal. Perhaps I did. They had been waiting for a signal for so long that they were in a state of panic. They feared that I had been drowned, for I had been down for horns. When they got my double tug, so they told me later, Number-two Jones gave a yell, called every man on the lighter to the rope, and proceeded to give me a run home in emergency time.
The first yank took me off my feet. Overballasted by the box of gold, I tipped head down, and butted the summit of the first hummock of sand with my helmet. My neck was snapped to one side and my head got a tremendous rap against the side of the helmet. I did not strike ground again until I reached the next ridge. I struck that and bounced, and I think I took a recess on breathing right then and there. I have not much recollection of the rest of that three hundred feet of rush back to the lighter. I know I hit a good many hummocks, and I must have passed away into dreamy unconsciousness when the drag upward through the water to the rail of the lighter began.
They told me that when I came over the rail I was bent double, and it was some time before they saw that I had something tucked in my arms.
I heard somebody shout, “Oh, God, this man is dead!” But I was just getting my wits back then. I opened my eyes. Two of the crew were holding me up, and Shank had my helmet off. He yelled like a maniac:
“I’m wrong! He ain’t!”
“I’m mighty glad you’re wrong, Shank,” I told him. My voice was pretty feeble, but the memory of that box came back to me, and my thoughts were dancing even if I couldn’t dance with my body just then.
I tried to look around after that box, but I lost interest in it the next instant. It’s pretty hard work for me to tell you what happened, and tell it in a matter-of-fact way, as I’m trying to tell the rest of this yam. When I looked around I saw Kama Holstrom on her knees a little way from me, her face as pale as the white foam on the waves, her eyes wide open. I think her ears had been closed by horror when Shank had let out his first yell.
“You’re alive!” she cried. And the next instant I was very much alive, for she leaped up and ran to me, and threw her arms around my neck and kissed me squarely on the mouth. Then her face was no longer white. It flamed.
“I didn’t mean to—I am sorry—it was a mistake!” she gasped, and she broke out and cried like a baby. But I caught her hand before she could get out of reach of me, and pulled it to me and kissed it.
“Ah, if Ihadbeen dead you would have waked me up,” I told her.
“I’ve a blamed good mind to kiss you myself!” roared old Holstrom from somewhere behind me. Then he let out a whoop and came and capered in front of me.
“You’ve brought up twenty thousand dollars’ worth of gold!” he informed me. “Five ingots, with the assay mark on ’em, and each worth four thousand dollars. That’s the kind of a diver you are, Sidney! All together, men! Three cheers for the greatest sea diver that ever wore lead shoes!” And the men gave the cheers while he pounded his fists on my back.
I got a view of Marcena Keedy when I turned my head around. Mr. Keedy was not showing any interest in my condition—not he. He was sitting on deck with the open box hugged between his knees, and he was feeling over those bars of gold like a lover fondling his lady’s cheek.
“I can’t say I’m stuck on the style of that critter,” mumbled Shank in my ear. “He yanked that box away from you before we had fairly swung you inboard and before anybody knew you was alive. He pried it open, and has set there making love to it ever since.”
Old Ike was squatting in front of Keedy on his haunches, and was drooling like a hound watching a butcher.
“It’s there! I’ve always said it was there. It’s there all bright and shining. They all have hooted at me because I have said it was there. Now what do you think?”
“Nobody has been a game sport in this thing except you and me,” said Keedy, sticking an ingot up under Ike’s nose. “Nobody would back your hand till I came along. I’ve had to talk everybody over before anybody would do anything. I know how to play a hand with a buried card in it. I’ve played that hand to the limit, and now see what has happened. When you fellows are passing cheers around you’d better hooray for the man who has turned the trick—for the man who kept at it till he got you down here.”
He gave me a nasty side-glance and snuggled the box under his legs just as though he had recovered property which belonged to him.
“Where there’s one there’s the rest of ’em, eh, Sidney? You have found the nest of the beauties, eh? Well, do we get another nice little box to-day? We may as well open the game with forty thousand while we’re about it.”
Shank was leaning close to me, unscrewing the wing nuts between the breastplate and my collar-band. He began to swear very soulfully in an undertone, and he kept on swearing when he got a look from me that indorsed all his sentiments in regard to Mr. Keedy.
“There are three millions down there—and twenty thousand is only a flea-bite,” declared the callous knave. I don’t believe he noticed that I was half dead when I was pulled up—or cared a rap about my condition, anyway. “I’m strong for bulling the game when it’s coming your way. What do you say, Sidney, if we make the first day’s ante forty thousand?”
“Captain Holstrom,” I said, “a man who has been banging the soul out of himself for five hours in a divingsuit is in no condition to talk to a skunk like that over there. Can’t you say something?”
I must confess that the captain did rise nobly to the occasion. A tugboat man who has spent most of his life fighting for berths in the maze of shipping along the San Francisco water-front needs considerable hot language in his business, and Captain Holstrom was in good practice.
“So I’ve got the two partners against me now, have I?” snarled Keedy. “I had to fight to get the two of you into the proposition, and now that you’re making good I’ve got to fight both of you to keep the thing going, have I? Thanks for the hint as to how you propose to hold cards—but I serve notice right now that you can’t whipsaw me between you.”
He looked as evil as a door-tender in Tophet, but his threats did not trouble me.
That evening something happened that indicated further cleavage of associations on board theZizania, whose checker-board crew had set an example early in the cruise.
Ingot Ike came to the captain and myself in the wheel-house.
“Now that we’re beginning to haul in the bright and shining stuff that makes the world go round I’d like to know where I’m going to get off when the divvy comes,” said he. And he was more than a little insolent in the way he said it. It was a good guess that he had absorbed more or less of the insolence of his new running-mate, Marcena Keedy.
Captain Holstrom was pretty short with the man. He informed old Ike that when the work was done and we knew what the profits would be he would be handed a lay which would make him comfortable for life. “That was the understanding between us when we started out on the gamble,” said the captain. “You haven’t got a dollar ahead now—you never did have. A lot of money wouldn’t do you any good, anyway. You don’t know how to keep it or how to spend it.”
“That ain’t any of your business!” declared Ike, with heat. “We have begun to get up that gold. We’ll get all of it. It’s there, just as I said it was. I want ten per cent, of all that comes over the rail, and I want it without any strings on it.”
“And if you got it laid into your hand you’d be around in six months borrowing from me,” said the captain. “If this thing comes out as it ought to, I’ll put enough in trust for you to pay you a hundred dollars a month as long as you live. Now go off and dream of that, and be happy.”
“Happy your Aunt Lizy!” yelped the old man. “See here, me and Keedy is the whole thing in this, and—”
Captain Holstrom arose and grabbed Ike and tossed him out of the wheel-house door.
“Them two fellows,” he confided, wrathfully, to me, “will be charging me board on this trip, besides taking all the profits for themselves, if I don’t watch out.”
I did not confide to the captain any of my doubts that evening in our talk. I was hoping for the best. I had recovered one box with the assistance of my enemy, the old Pacific. I understood the queer and notional quirks of undertows. I realized that history might not repeat itself in this case—but the Pacific coast was new to me, and I was not ready to believe that I had happened on the only case of an undertow scooping sand instead of piling it and packing it. I went to bed, tired as a hound after a chase.
And I went down into the sea again the next day, still hoping. Yes, I was fairly confident—so confident that I carried a pair of ice-tongs. My experience of the day before had shown me that this tool was just the thing with which to grapple one of those boxes and lift it from the sand.
There was plenty of motion in the depths of the sea. But I realized that it was not the motion of the day before. The swaying water thrust me ahead over the hummocks with more force than it pulled me backward. The water was clear and green once more. Where, oh, where had my undertow gone?
I had ground my crowbar into the sand where I worked the day before. I could not find it, and after a survey I saw it had been covered by the drifting sand. Portions of the wreck which had been in sight were hidden again. The hole where I had wrought so valiantly was filled and smoothed. It is wonderful how quickly currents of water can make changes in sand. I had seen instances before in my submarine jobs; now I was beholding a more striking case. After inspecting the scene I judged that the treasure was buried more deeply than ever. The ocean had plenty of loose sand with which to work, and had used it. I tell you honestly I never suffered such an awful feeling of disappointment. The pang was worse because I had been successful once.
It was as though my enemy, the ocean, had decided to give me one bite of the fruit of success in order to whet the appetite of my expectations. It had not relented in order to do that—it had played a devilish trick on me.
It had shown me that the millions were there—money-enough for all that life or love might require in this world. I had got a peep—had got one taste—and the malicious ocean had tucked it all out of reach once more, and was making faces at me with the wrinkles of that hard-packed sand.
It was useless to remain down and exhaust myself. I signaled, and returned to the lighter.
As soon as my bull’s-eye cleared after I came up out of the bubbling water I saw Keedy. He was perched on the rail near the life-line coils, looking down at me like a fish-hawk eying its prey. For a moment I was glad I did not have another box. I enjoyed his disappointment.
Then, after my helmet was off, I told Captain Hol-strom that a change in current had piled up the sand and that nothing could be done that day.
“That’s it!” raged Keedy, smacking his fist into his palm. “You wouldn’t take my advice yesterday. You wouldn’t follow your hand when the cards were running right. I understand about those things. That was the time to double the ante! I know how to play the game for what it’s worth. There ain’t any brains in this whole outfit except what I’ve got under my hat. I see it’s up to me to go down there and show you how to do this thing.”
“I’ll be out of this diving-dress in a few minutes,” I told him. “You’re welcome to use it.”
I had a wild hope that he was mad enough to go down—angry enough and gold-hungry enough. It would have settled the case of Keedy if he had gone down—soaked with rum and tobacco as he was. But he swore and walked away and jumped into the life-boat—so much of a coward that he wanted to put as great a distance between that dress and himself as he could.
I can describe the happenings of the next two sad weeks in two words, “Nothing doing!”
Not that I didn’t go down. I went every day. I tried all kinds of tools. I sat up nights to think, and worked days under water until they had to pull me back to the lighter, riding on my back over the sand hummocks, so weak that I could not use my feet and drag my lead-weighted shoes. But the old Pacific had given us our one mouthful of bait, and now was mocking us. If I loosened sand the ocean took that sand and piled it higher over the treasure. And all the time Keedy glowered and growled and swore, and said I was not half trying.
One morning Captain Holstrom came banging on my state-room door before I was awake. He tried to tell me something, fairly frothing at the mouth, but the words tumbled over each other so rapidly that I couldn’t understand. He was jabbing a slip of paper at me, and I took it and read:
To Holstrom and Sidney,—With two partners working against me, I claim the partnership is broken. After this I’ll work on my own hook, and I’ll have a man who is a real diver, not a dub; and I warn you not to bother me in any way.
“Partnership broken!” yelled the captain. “And how do you suppose he has broken it? He sneaked away in the night. He took Ike and four of my crew and the best life-boat. But that ain’t the worst. He took the gold—all of it! Took the twenty thousand. He had the key to the safe.”
“Why did you let him have the key to the safe?”
“Because he howled around that he ought to have some office as a partner, and wanted to be treasurer. He has trimmed us for twenty thousand, and he’ll use that money to fit out another expedition. He has done us good and proper, and there ain’t anything sensible we can do about it.”
I reflected a few moments, and decided that, considering the kind of a project we were working on, we could not afford to chase Keedy and howl. In the opinion of certain persons interested in that wreck, we might appear as thieves, ourselves, if the thing became known in Frisco.
I tried to say something to Captain Holstrom about being well rid of Keedy, but I do not think he heard me. He was too busy stamping about and swearing. That was truly a dark-blue morning on theZizania.
They were certainly weary and hopeless days which tagged on after that. I kept going down, for I hoped to meet up with another obliging undertow. But San Apusa Bar did not seem to be a popular resort for undertows.
In about ten days we got another hard jolt. A little schooner came swashing up in the lee of theZizania, and a boat was rowed off to us. The two men who leaped over the rail introduced themselves as Mexican customs officers for the district off which we lay, and they wore the uniform to prove their identity. It had been reported to them, they said, that we were seeking treasure from the wreck of theGolden Gate, and they told us we must stop such business at once and sail away or we should lay ourselves liable to arrest and imprisonment. They had a lot to tell us about what the law was, but I have forgotten. Maybe they were giving us straight law, and maybe they were not. Neither Holstrom nor I knew.
The captain did know men if he did not know law—and he was a man who had mighty keen sense for a crook’s trail, having had a lot of experience with crooks on the water-front. He rubbed his red knob of a nose for some time, and listened. Then he invited the customs men into his sanctuary of the wheel-house, and called me along with them.
“I know all about who has been talking this over with you, gents,” he told them. “I reckoned he would make down the coast in that life-boat he stole from me. He stole that boat, he stole my men, he stole what else he could lay his hands on here. He is a yaller-faced faro-dealer. He never told the truth, he never dealt square cards, he has always cut a corner on every man he had business with. I don’t want to see you fooled. I’m the captain of this steamer. You can see I’m something of a man. This is my partner, and you can look at him and see that he is no crook. I’m going to get right to the point, gents. Do you want to do business with a square man or a crook? You might as well be open with me. Men have to live down here in Mexico. I know all about this customs business along the coast. You’ve got to do business to live.”
They blinked hard, but they did not protest.
“I don’t know how much of a ‘hot rock’ he dropped into your hat, but I’m prepared to drop in a bigger and a hotter one.”
I had never heard that expression about a “hot rock” before, and I was obliged to listen a little while longer in order to understand that Captain Holstrom was talking thus bluntly about a bribe.
“In one case you’re doing business with a crook—a thief. He’ll turn around and do you when he has used you. In this case you are dealing with a man who has a name along the water-front, who owns this steamer, and who is here to make a dollar for himself and for you. You are men with brains and you can size up chaps pretty well. I’ll bet you didn’t like the looks of that whelp with his cat’s eyes and his mustache cocked up—come, now!”
They blinked harder.
The captain leaned to me and whispered in my ear: “Run and tell Kama to give you every gold piece she has got in her pocket. Dig over your own pockets. Tell the Joneses to dig. Bring it here. I’ve got to keep ’em on the run with conversation.”
I returned with my collection, and the captain added the contents of his own pocket, banging the coins on the transom. Then he swept the money into a little sack and drove the sack down into the trousers pocket of one of the officers.
“That’s only posting a little forfeit that we’ll do as we agree,” cried Captain Holstrom, heartily. “We are here where you can watch us, gents. But you can’t watch a fly-by-night like that coyote who has been lying to you about us. Keep your eyes out—stand by us—and you’ll get a ‘hot rock’ in your hat that you’ll need both hands to hold up. We’ll see the other man’s stake and then raise him out of the game—and if we don’t, then come and seize the steamer.”
He followed the men to the rail, shook hands with them half a dozen times, and they returned most urbane grins when they rowed away.
As soon as they were out of ear-shot the captain cursed them in horrible fashion and shook his clenched fist at them under pretense of waving farewells.
“So that’s what Keedy done as quick as he got down coast to a port, hey? Cleaned us out of what he could lug, and then sent them critters here to finish the job. He probably thinks he is going to make a clear field here for himself by strapping us for every cent, and then setting the customs on to us as soon as he can drop another ‘hot rock’ into their hat so as to raise us out.”
“Don’t those men feel bound in any way after taking money from us?” I asked him.
“They feel bound till the next fellow gets to ’em, my son. Do you see what we have got cut out for us? By the jumped-up Judy, we’ve got to get that gold—and we’ve got to keep ahead of everybody else in getting that gold, because them custom-house blood-suckers are going to stick to the juiciest crowd. I don’t know what kind of an outfit Keedy proposes to bring back here, but he has got twenty thousand dollars in his fist, and a man can do a lot of business on charters with twenty thousand dollars. And we haven’t got a sou markee.”
He stamped into the wheel-house, shaking his fist above his head, and I walked up and down the upper deck, thinking some thoughts which I do not care to call back to mind.