Part 27

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.

XXXI--A TASTE OF BLOOD

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 old _Golden 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, it _was_ a 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 I _had_ been 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 the _Zizania_, 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.”