Part 28

“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 the _Zizania_.

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 the _Zizania_, 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 the _Golden 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.

XXXII--PER MISTER MONKEY

AS she had done many times in those days of gloom and doubt, the girl came out of her state-room and walked with me. Her companionship was a consolation. She looked up at me from under her tousle of curls and swung along by my side with an easy air of comradeship.

The word “comradeship” best expresses our attitude toward each other. After that explosion of her feelings on board the lighter, when she had kissed me in front of the whole bunch, she had coated herself with just a little ice, and my Yankee reserve and sensitiveness detected it. It was as though she had hinted to me that I would be a cad to presume further because she had taken a woman’s interest in my misfortune. In fact, she had dropped a few words in regard to women making fools of themselves when they are too frightened to know what they are doing.

Furthermore, she stuck to that knickeroocker costume of hers, and I found myself forgetting half the time that she was a girl, for she clambered about over the truck aboard the old _Zizania_ as no girl in skirts could, and never needed a hand on her trips to and from the lighter. She wore those clothes with such frank assurance that the garb was the only suitable one for the circumstances, with such lack of self-consciousness, that after a few days it really seemed as if the other men had forgotten that we had a girl aboard.

Perhaps that accounts for the fact that when one of the firemen rushed past us a few minutes later he was using language such as he would not have used had he been properly mindful that there was a lady in hearing.

The fireman came from the depths below-decks, and was chasing the Russian Finn’s monkey. He was so intent on the chase that when the fleeing monkey invaded the sanctity of the upper deck the fireman came along, too. There were several breathless instants in that part of the pursuit which we saw. You will recollect that this monkey had a false end to his mutilated tail--a curved wire, which was covered with cat’s fur. As the monkey fled, screaming and swinging the heavy end of the tail from side to side, the hook caught, first on a stanchion, then on a lifeboat prop. The monkey had not entirely mastered the science of handling that new tail, or else he was too excited just then to remember its limitations. When he had his own pliant tail it didn’t matter if a loop hooked around an obstruction. But now when the wire hooked itself the monkey was obliged to back up and unhook that inflexible loop. Each time he stopped he lost all the lead he had gained on the fireman.

Four times in traversing the upper deck the coal-heaver was near enough to make a crack at the monkey with a grate bar. Each time the monkey unhooked himself just in time to be able to dodge and continue the flight. Finally the fugitive made the ensign mast by a rousing leap, shinned, up, and hung over the dingy gilded ball at the top. I don’t understand monkey talk, but I’m sure that the yells he sent down were just as pure profanity as that which the fireman was howling up at him.

“Hey, there, my man,” I called, “that kind of talk doesn’t belong up here.”

He shut up, gave the monkey a long and blistering stare, and came back toward the ladder. Sweat was running down through the soot on his face, and that face showed that he was in no pleasant frame of mind.

“I asks to be excused,” he said, “but that--” he gulped. “Seeing that I can’t talk about it before a lady and be polite, I asks to be excused again and I’ll be going.”

I followed him to the head of the ladder and stopped him just as he was on the first rounds.

“What happened?”

“We’re keeping up a little steam for the derrick windlass and the pumps, and that gimlet-eyed, snub-nosed hellion got into the bunkers when I was on deck, and turned on my wet-down hose, and shifted twenty tons of dust coal out to where it’s all got to be shoveled back. I’m going down to write out notices for a funeral and, by Jabez! I’ll guarantee to have the corpse ready!”

“Shifted twenty tons of coal!” said I, surprised. “It must have taken him some time.”

“I guess you don’t know what can be done in fine coal with a stream of water when you bore it in,” snapped the fireman. “That wire-tailed gabumpus wasn’t in there five minutes. He has laid in wait and watched me sprinkle coal. He turned her on full bent and bored. I’ll get him, and I’ll get him good!” His smudged face went out of sight down the ladder.

There are some ideas in this life which steal up on a man and whisper to him, and keep whispering for a long time, until at last he overhears--and then he plans and toils, and in the end an invention results.

Then there are other ideas which march up to a man and hit him on the head.

Twenty tons of coal shifted in five minutes by a monkey and a hose! The idea that hit me was like a hammer blow. My head wasn’t clear all at once; I was dizzy. The details were hazy--but there was the idea hammering at me. It was such a glorious idea that I walked aft to that ensign mast, looked up, and took off my hat to that monkey. I know he misunderstood my act. I know he cursed me as another enemy. But I did not care. I had got used to being misunderstood and underrated aboard the _Zizania_.

I turned around and found the girl looking at me with wide-open eyes. “This isn’t insanity,” I told her. “It doesn’t run in the Sidney family. But an idea has just come to me out of a monkey’s prank, and it’s such a wonderful idea that I don’t dare to talk about it until I have thought it over. I guess you’ll have to excuse me, Miss Kama; I’ve got to go into my state-room and pound at that idea while it is hot.”

I did not sleep much that night. I was wrestling with a notion as the old chap in the Bible wrestled with the angel. And when morning came I was positive that an angel of a notion had come to me. I told Captain Holstrom at breakfast that I was not going down that day. But when he turned a doleful look at me I grinned so amiably that he snapped his eyes, thinking, perhaps, that he was not seeing just straight.

“I’ll have something to tell you later, Captain. It’ll sound better to you when I have made certain that we have got stuff aboard here to work out an idea.”

That became my business after breakfast--to hunt the _Zizania_ over for certain material. I invited Captain Holstrom along with me, and took two men for helpers.

My first quest was for hose. The _Zizania_ carried canvas hose for fire purposes, stacked here and there on racks. It was not in prime condition, for the old _Zizania_ had been condemned along with her equipment as far as Government purposes went.

We got that hose down and measured it, and found rising two hundred feet of stuff that was serviceable. I needed three hundred feet to cover the distance between the lighter and the wreck. I made inquiries about canvas. The steamer had a suit of sails for her two masts, and the sails had been unbent some time before and were stored. Before the day was over Mate Number-two Jones had men at work cutting that canvas and sewing it into hose of a diameter to fit the fire-hose. Of course, it was crude work, but I was obliged to do the best I could with the materials at hand.

That evening I called a conference. Captain Holstrom, his two mates, and Engineer Shank assembled in the wheel-house, and I explained as best I could what my preparations meant.

Remember, please, that at the time of which I am writing hydraulic mining had not been tried, and men in those days had no conception of what a stream of water would accomplish in moving soil.

I told those blinking confrères that I believed I could direct a stream of water on that sand below the sea and bore a hole down to that treasure. The only one in the party who showed one glimmer of enthusiasm was Mr. Shank. And even he did not get up and hurrah. He nodded his head sagely and admitted that “stranger things had happened.”

“But you’ve got to use our steam-donkey for your stream,” growled Captain Holstrom, “and you can’t get the _Zizania_ any nearer shore than this without wrecking her. You’re only planning on three hundred feet of hose.”

“That’s all I need, Captain. Mr. Shank can build us a plunger-pump with brakes, and we’ll put the whole crew on to the beams, and have ’em give an imitation of a firemen’s muster.”

Mr. Shank nodded again, and allowed that “stranger things had been done.”

“How did you happen to think of this cussed scheme, anyway?” inquired Captain Holstrom, not trying to hide his disappointment.

I promptly decided that I would not confess that the thing had been suggested to me by a monkey with a wire tail. I looked at the scowling captain, and I could imagine the wealth of his language if I should tell him any such thing. So I took all the credit to myself--and it was not much credit I received from those solemn listeners. The most I got out of Holstrom was the sullen statement that no matter what I did next the situation couldn’t be any worse than it was.

The work went on the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. It was slow business making that hose so that it would be anyway water-tight. And the wooden force-pump took a lot of time in the building, rude affair though it was. It had a plunger--two ends of wood on an iron rod, and the brake-beams were long enough so that a dozen men could get a clutch on them.

I don’t remember how much time we used up in getting our makeshift apparatus into such shape as would warrant it being used for the trial.

I do remember this--and remember it all too well!--before we were in readiness for the test of the hose and our pump a small schooner came rolling up the coast and anchored well inside of us, even nearer the wreck than our lighter from which we had been operating.

This was no customs boat. Within a few hours we abroad the _Zizania_ knew that Marcena Keedy was in command of the new arrival, and that he had brought two divers and was full of hope and curses and brag.

Where Keedy secured his men and his craft we did not know--for social calls were not exchanged between the two vessels. But a lot can be accomplished in a few weeks when a man has greed to prick him, a grudge to settle, and twenty thousand dollars to back him.

Capt. Rask Holstrom had been in the depths of despair before the arrival of Keedy; now he found a hole leading into the subcellar of his despair, and retreated still lower. He had no faith in my new contrivances. He wanted me to abandon work on such folderols and go down and stand over that treasure. He could not seem to see with my eyes. He knew that millions in gold were at the bottom of the sea--I had recovered a sample of it. He felt just as though it lay there unprotected, and that the first-comer would get it. As a submarine diver who had struggled against the difficulties of the situation, I was more serene. I didn’t know what sort of prodigies in the diving line Keedy had secured as my rivals, but I was not ready to admit to myself that they would succeed by ordinary means where I had failed after exerting every ounce of effort.

Using Captain Holstrom’s long telescope, I saw them going down. They went together. Evidently Keedy had concluded that if one diver had failed, two ought to be twice as good, and succeed.

Captain Holstrom remained at the end of his telescope until he acquired a permanent squint. We had hard work to get him to drop the glass long enough to eat. Day after day, as soon as it was light in the morning, he was in the wheel-house, balancing the glass across the window-sill, watching Keedy’s schooner. He evidently feared and expected to see uncounted wooden boxes of ingots come tumbling up over her rail.