Part 8

“Sure, and that’s the very spirit and image of them I was spakin’ about,” remarked Joyce, triumphantly. “An’ what sort of a ship do you suppose she is, sor?”

“She’s a Spanish galleon, beyond doubt,” rejoined Howard. “She’s the very type of those old treasure-ships. And there are more of the same kind behind her. Look!”

Along the open channel, far away to the sunset, stretched a file of ancient vessels, now in single file, now in double. Not all were galleons, but all plainly belonged to dead and gone ages. While the others of their kind had long ago perished from human sight, here, in this lost corner of the world, these had lingered on, slowly decaying, like the once mighty nation that sent them forth. Howard stared at them in wondering amaze.

But Joyce recalled him to himself. “Did you say treasure, sor?” he insinuated.

Howard laughed. “Oh, yes,” he answered, indifferently. “She’s a treasure-ship, all right, though that isn’t to say that she has treasure aboard. Still, it’s not unlikely. There may be a million apiece for all of us on her--if we could only carry it away. Hold on! Where are you going?”

Joyce was already climbing through one of the open ports of the galleon, but at Howard’s call he paused. “Sure, an’ I’m going to look after that million,” he returned, defiantly.

Howard hesitated. Then he noticed a restless movement of the missionary and eager glances by the two women and laughed. “Go ahead and look for it,” he said. “But be careful. Remember the ship must be rotten through and through; I doubt whether her decks will bear your weight.”

Joyce disappeared, but a moment later stuck his head out of the port again. “She’s better nor she looks, sor,” he averred. “The planks are rotten, but I think they’ll hold. Perhaps your good lady would like to come aboard.”

Howard glanced at Dorothy.

“His good lady certainly would,” she smiled back. A moment later all stood on one of the galleon’s many decks.

Joyce was right. The deck, though rotted, seemed to be reasonably sound, and the stairway leading upward did not give way when Jackson mounted it. As he was the heaviest in the party, the rest felt safe in following him.

Once on the upper deck, the cause of the ship’s plight was evident. All about her, tumbled in inextricable confusion, lay the bones of men mingled with the rust-eaten remains of guns and pikes and sabres. In some places, doubtless where the nameless fight had raged most fiercely, the skeletons were heaped high upon each other. Flesh and clothing alike had long since disappeared, but parts of belts and buckles and fragments of the tinsel of war remained to tell of the bitterness of the fight.

“Probably the work of buccaneers,” explained Howard. “They did not hesitate to attack ten times their number, and often won by the very fury of their assault. Evidently they did this time. Joyce, I’m afraid your million went to make a pirate holiday centuries ago.”

“Bad cess to thim, whoiver they were. But where would it be, sor, if it was on board?”

“I really don’t know. And yet--the hold under the captain’s cabin, aft there, would be a likely place. Suppose you look there.”

Joyce and Jackson hurried away, and soon the sound of dull hammering and the tear of rending wood came to the ears of the others, followed a moment later by a series of triumphant yells. Then Joyce appeared, fairly mad with excitement.

“Hurroush! Hurroush!” he screamed. “We’ve found it! We’ve found it! Tons and tons of solid gold! Kathleen, _mavourneen_, we’re rich--we’re rich! We’ll go back to Galway and buy the little place beyant the hill, and----”

“Whist! Whist! Tim, man! An’ will you first be tellin’ me how you’re going to get yerself away, let alone your tons of gold?”

So absorbed was the party in the discovery of the gold that they forgot everything else--the danger from Forbes, the utter uselessness of the treasure, the necessity of crossing the channel and making their way to the southern coast. Even Dorothy, used to wealth as she was, caught the infection, and babbled away as excitedly as a child.

Howard was the first to recover his poise and to plan for the future. It was, he knew, utterly hopeless to try to tear Joyce and Jackson, or even the missionary away from the galleon until their excitement had spent itself. Indeed, he himself felt positively ill at thought of abandoning the gold, unavoidable as such action undoubtedly was. By rough calculation, he estimated that there were twelve tons of the treasure, worth about six million dollars, under their very feet, free for them to carry away, and yet as utterly unavailable as so much sand. Indeed, in so far as unwillingness to leave it should delay movements of the party, it was a positive detriment.

He turned and looked at the others. Joyce, Jackson, the missionary, and even Mother Joyce, were working as they had never worked before, taking from the hold the golden bars, each a load for a strong man, and staggering on deck with them in their arms. In vain, Howard tried to check them; they only glared at him, cursed, and hurried back for another load. Joyce and his wife, too old for such labor, soon had to give way, crying like children as they did so; but the others toiled on, hot, black with the grime of ages, half ill from the smells of the shut, musty hold. Their muscles cracked; their backs ached; the sweat streamed down their faces, but still they kept on.

Sick at heart, Howard turned from the scene and wandered to the side of the galleon, where he stood, looking east, hoping the end of the zigzag channel might be somewhere in sight. In vain! As far as his eyes could serve, it stretched away.

Disappointed, his glance dropped to the open water of the channel close at hand, and he stood transfixed. Close beside the galleon, moored strongly fore and aft, lay a slender, queer-shaped boat about sixty feet long. It needed not the trained knowledge of the naval officer to tell that it was a submarine.

Intensely modern in its lines, it was as much out of place in that ancient company as would be a rifle in the hands of Cæsar’s legionaries. Howard’s mouth fairly dropped open as he gazed at it.

But in a moment understanding came. This was the means of escape that Forbes had spoken of: safe, quick, and easy for one with the necessary technical knowledge; the gold on the galleon was part of the fortune that he wanted to get home in safety. No wonder he had been eager to enlist Howard’s aid; and he could have had it--had it all, if he had not presumed on his power to grasp the girl, too! Now he would lose all.

Dorothy had tired of the gold and was standing on the deck, looking wonderingly around. Howard called her, and together they descended to the lower deck of the galleon, and, slipping out through a port opposite to that by which they had entered, stepped easily out upon the deck of the submarine, which floated high in the water. With trembling fingers, Howard pushed back the bolts that held the manhole cover in place, lifted it off, and peered into the darkness of the interior. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he promised, glancing up at Dorothy as he swung himself downward.

Soon he was back again with radiant features. “She’s in perfect condition, so far as I can tell without starting the engines,” he announced, “and I guess they are all right. She’s almost the latest type in submarines--gas-engine for running at the surface, and an electric motor for use below. Her oil-tanks are full, and she has an extra supply in glass jars and plenty of other necessary stores. Unless there’s something wrong about her that I can’t see, she’ll get us all to land without the least difficulty.”

“Where did she come from?”

“Straight from heaven, I guess. At least, I can’t imagine how else she got into the sea. No, stop! I believe-- Yes, by George, that’s it. Maybe you remember that a Spanish cruiser was lost at sea two or three years ago--disappeared in a big storm and was never heard of again? If I remember rightly, she had a submarine on board. This may be it. Yes! See! Here’s its name--Tiburon; that’s Spanish for Seashark. That cruiser must have drifted in here with it on board.”

“But where is she? How did this boat get here--to this very place?”

“I don’t know, but I can guess. Forbes must have brought it here. He threw out hints about such a boat the first time I talked with him. Yes, he must have brought it here. How he managed it I don’t know, and I don’t much care. The boat is ours now by that same law of salvage by which he claimed the Queen and her contents. What’s sauce for the goose will do for the gander. But think how marvellous it is that we should have come here, straight as a homingbird--to here! the exact place where he had left his gold and his boat. And, yet, after all, it is not quite so marvellous as it seems, since he could hardly have kept her anywhere except up this channel, and we have been following the line of it for miles.”

“Can we get away on her?”

“Certainly! All of us, and more, too, if necessary.”

“But how will we get through the weed?”

“We won’t go through it. We’ll go under it. The weed isn’t thick, you know--only a few feet at most; it grows on top of the water, which is two miles deep here, and we’ll simply dive under it.”

Dorothy shuddered. “Go under the water, you mean?” she questioned. “Oh! Frank, is it safe?”

“Safe? Surely! I have been down many a time in boats much like this. Of course--I won’t deceive you--accidents are always possible, but there is really little risk, if the machinery works well. And we can’t tell about that till we try. Don’t be afraid, dear. God has been too good to us to let it all come to naught now.”

“I’m not afraid, Frank. I’m not afraid anywhere with you, my king of men.”

Howard had something to say to this, but it is scarcely worth setting down; lovers’ confidences seldom are. By and by he started up. “I’m afraid we’re as mad one way as those people on the galleon are in another,” he smiled. “I’m wasting valuable time that should be used in getting you out of this before Forbes finds us. He’s sure to be looking up this place very soon.”

A thought struck Dorothy. “Oh, those poor people!” she exclaimed. “Can’t you take some of their gold for them, Frank? A little money will mean so much to the Joyces. They are too old to go to work again, and----”

“It would come in rather handy with me, too. But I don’t see-- By George! Yes, I think I do! Let’s look.” He dived down again into the body of the submarine and soon reappeared, his face radiant.

“There is about five tons of detachable lead ballast in the bottom,” he cried, joyously. “We can take it out, and put gold in its place--two million dollars’ worth. If you will wait here. I’ll go and tell the others. Maybe they are tired enough to listen to reason now.”

They were! Howard found them all sitting glumly on the deck of the galleon, glaring despairingly at the great pile of gold bars they had extracted from the hold. One by one they had dropped their loads and sank down where they stood, when, with increasing weariness, the situation had at last dawned upon them. When Howard approached, they did not heed him further than to cast savage glances in his direction. Then they returned to contemplation of the gold.

Howard understood the situation without words. “You oughtn’t to have worked so hard,” he observed, in a matter-of-fact tone. “You, especially, Joyce. And you, Mrs. Joyce. You’ll feel this to-morrow. But now that you have gotten all the gold up here, I’m glad to tell you that I’ve got a boat outside that will carry us, and just about this much gold besides--say a third of a million for each of us. The rest, I’m afraid, we’ll have to abandon.”

XVII

FIVE tons of gold, worth about three million dollars, is not near so hard to move as five tons of coal, for instance, especially when it is put in seventy-five pound bars and there is plenty of tackle handy. It took Jackson, Joyce, and Willoughby only about two hours to dump the lead out of the submarine and replace it with the gold--surely the richest ballast the world ever saw.

Meanwhile Howard, after stationing Dorothy and Mother Joyce in elevated positions where they could watch for the possible approach of Forbes and his men, had set to work to get the submarine into order, oiling the machinery, testing the engines and all the various pumps and motors, and finally starting the gas-engine, which discharged the double duty of driving the boat while on the surface, and of charging the electric accumulators for use below. All this took time, and was not finished until after the last bar of gold had been stored away in place.

Then Howard called the others around him. “Before we start,” he said, “I have something to tell you. Until now I have kept it to myself, because I did not want to rouse any false hopes. Joyce, did you ever hear of wireless telegraphy?”

Joyce scratched his head. “And what’s that, sor?” he demanded.

“Telegraphy without the aid of wires. I didn’t suppose any of you here had ever heard of it, else Captain Forbes would certainly not have shut me in the operating-room of a steamer that had a full outfit in perfect working order. During the time I was confined there I was in constant communication with the naval station at Guantanamo. I told them of our plight, and I will venture to say that the papers of the country are ringing with the story of the Sargasso Sea colony and with our personal adventures. Toward the end--just before Joyce set me free--I got into communication with your father, Dorothy. He was wild with delight to know that you were alive and was about to start to rescue you. In fact, half a dozen vessels are probably now making an effort to break a way through the weed to aid us. If we can get back to the coast and wait, we are tolerably sure to be taken off sooner or later. Now, the question is whether we shall wait or not?”

Joyce and his wife had listened in dazed silence. “Do you mane, sor,” demanded the former, “that you can talk through the air with those quare instruments in that little room?”

“That’s it exactly, Joyce. I can, and I did. But let me get back to the point. I could give our friends only a very doubtful approximation of our latitude and longitude, so that it may take them a long time to find us, if they ever do. Not hearing further from us, they may conclude that the whole thing is a fake and give up the search. They will certainly have a long and tedious battle with the weed. Altogether, if they get anywhere near the right spot in less than a month it will be most surprising. Certainly they will not in less than two weeks. Now, what can we do during the interval? If we decide to wait for them, we must run down the coast and establish a camp somewhere--as far from the village as we can get. Perhaps I can find another wireless outfit and get into communication with Guantanamo again. Certainly, we can find food and shelter, and all we will have to do will be to wait--supposing that Forbes doesn’t find us, which he will move heaven and earth to do when he finds we have his gold and his boat.

“That is one alternative open to us. The other, of course, is to dive under the weed and start for home at once. If we meet one of the searching steamers, all right; if we don’t, we can get to port under our own power. There is a risk about such an attempt, of course, but I don’t think it’s a very great one. Now, this is the situation: what shall we do?”

Howard paused, and the others looked at each other doubtfully. Finally, Mr. Willoughby cleared his throat. “I confess,” he observed hesitatingly, “that I fear the depths of the sea. I should much prefer to remain on top of it and go home in a steamer. May we not run down this--er--river on the surface and talk it over as we go?”

“Surely. That’s good sense. We’ll do it. Joyce, suppose you run up on the galleon and take a last look for Captain Forbes. Meanwhile, everybody else get aboard. Hurry, Joyce!”

Joyce hurried. In five minutes he came racing back as fast as his legs would carry him. “The cap’n’s comin’,” he cried. “Coming with his whole force. He isn’t three ships away.”

Howard smiled grimly. “Just too late,” he exclaimed. “On board with you, Joyce! Quick! Off we go!” With the word, he cast loose the last mooring, and the Seashark moved slowly away.

As, with gathering headway she rounded the galleon’s high-decked poop, she came in view of a dozen or more armed men, who were rapidly clambering over the wrecks, and who burst into excited babble as they spied the little vessel. An instant later Forbes appeared.

“Curse you!” he shrieked. “I’ll get you yet.” He threw his rifle to his shoulder and fired, his men following suit with a scattering volley.

But at the first sign of hostilities, Howard, who was alone on deck, dropped nimbly down inside the body of the Seashark, and remained, steering by aid of the camera lucida put there for the purpose, until a curve in the channel sheltered the little vessel from the bullets that had pattered harmlessly around her.

For an hour the Seashark dropped swiftly down the slowly widening channel between ever-changing banks of massed ships. In that hour she passed in review the shipping of more than two centuries. Squat-bellied, round-bowed Dutchmen, high-pooped Spaniards, clippers that had made the American flag famous, frigates shot-torn and shattered in the American Civil War, deep-water ships still bearing the indelible imprint of the Chinese trade, steamers old and new--one by one they passed in a progression constantly growing more and more modern. Howard, alone in the conning-tower, glanced at them with wonder; never before had they so impressed him. Until then, nearness had obscured the vastness of the ruin, and only now had the full meaning of it all been hammered into his mind.

But he resolutely threw off the spell, and concentrated his entire attention on the navigation of his little vessel. It was very necessary. The channel, being newly formed, was reasonably clear of weed, but it was impossible to guess how soon its character might change. The smallest patch of vegetation might foul the screw of the Seashark, or might conceal a water-logged spar, floating just awash, that would rip a plate from her bow and send her to the bottom, ending at once the lives of the castaways and their dreams of fortune. In some ways it would be safer beneath the water; yet Howard knew that every turn of the gas-engines was aiding to store up power in the electric accumulators, on which alone they must depend when the time came to dive. He did not dare to go below an instant sooner than he must.

After an hour the channel opened more rapidly, and the weed began to thicken, showing that the edge of the wreck-pack was near. Soon the accumulation grew so thick that it was no longer safe to push through it. Howard glanced at the indicators that measured the power accumulated. “Enough to run us three and a half hours,” he murmured, “or perhaps four. At eight knots, that means about twenty-five miles of distance. Twenty-five miles! Humph! I guess it’s safe.”

He brought the boat to a stop, and spoke to those in the semi-darkness below.

“Well,” he queried, “have you decided? Is it go ahead, or land and wait?”

No one answered, and in the stillness he heard up-channel the far-off chug-chug of a boat rapidly driven. “Humph!” he exclaimed, bending down again. “Forbes seems to have been well supplied with boats. He’s after us in a steam-launch. That settles the question definitely. We’ve got to dive. If any one wants to take a last look at this marvellous place, now is the time.”

No one spoke.

Howard laughed. “What!” he exclaimed. “Nobody? Joyce, don’t you want to see the last of your old home?”

Joyce shook his head. “Faith,” he answered, “I’ve seen enough of it to do me for the rest of my life.”

“Jackson?”

“New York’s good enough for me.”

“Mr. Willoughby?”

The missionary looked up. “Man! Man!” he cried. “How can you think of such things when we are about to plunge into uttermost peril of our lives? Rather, let us pray.”

“Pray by all means, Mr. Willoughby. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, you know. Dorothy, don’t you want to look?”

But Dorothy, too, shook her head. “No, Frank,” she answered. “I never want to see the horrible place again.”

“Then down we go. Here comes Forbes, by the way.”

Around a curve, up-channel, appeared a steam-launch, still far off, but rapidly approaching. Howard stood up and waved his hand sarcastically; then, with rapid motions, snapped on the manhole cover, cut off the gas-engine, and threw on the electric starting-lever. Then, as the little vessel started forward, he turned the diving-rudder downward.

Instantly the Seashark slid gracefully down beneath the ripples. From her little turret sprang out a sword of white light that pierced the water before her, while within a score of tiny bulbs illumined the darkness. Down she went; down, down, till the gage at Howard’s hand showed that a depth of fifty feet had been attained; then slowly he shifted the diving rudders until the boat held steadily to her depth, the rudders just balancing her tendency to rise to the surface. “All set,” he called down cheerily, but without moving his gaze from the front. “Nothing to do now but go ahead. Make yourselves comfortable. We won’t come to the surface for three hours, and perhaps longer.”

No one answered. The experience, utterly new to them all, was sufficiently terrifying to destroy the desire for conversation. Shut up in this tiny shell which might any moment prove their tomb, fifty feet below the surface of the ocean, driving forward blindly into the unknown, it would have taken one braver--or more callous--than any there to make merry. Howard, used as he was to submarine work, might have cheered them up, had he not been compelled to give all his attention to driving the vessel.

For the dangers, though not what the rest vaguely conceived, were by no means imaginary. Let the Seashark rise a few feet above the level at which she ran, and she might easily smash herself against a more than ordinarily deeply sunken wreck. Let her plunge too deeply, and the increased pressure of the water might force its way in at some weak spot, and crush her like an egg-shell. Let her power give out too soon, at a spot where she could not come to the surface to run her gas-engine, and so replenish her accumulators, and they would all perish miserably. On Howard rested all the responsibility, and he had no time to give to anything else.

XVIII

ONE, two, three hours slid by, and, at last, Howard, his eyes fixed on the gage of the accumulators, saw that the power was getting low, and began to watch anxiously for some gleam of light that, striking down through the water, might show a break in the mantle of weed overhead. In vain! Everywhere blackness ruled. Several times he slowed down and turned off the headlight, hoping that, with its effulgence removed, he might see the longed-for gap. After each attempt he went back to driving the Seashark along at her maximum eight miles an hour.

This could not last forever. Rapidly his anxiety grew. The Seashark had been beneath the water for four hours, and his accumulators were nearly bare. To try to break through the weed was dangerous, but not more so than to remain below until all the power was gone. At all risks they must reach the surface.

For a scant ten minutes longer Howard held on, now very close beneath the mantle of weed, then stopped altogether, and waited for the reserve buoyancy of the Seashark to carry her upward.