Part 31

The girl and I were in the lee of the deck-house, to get out of the trades, and we did not see the boat when it came off Keedy’s schooner. Had I seen it coming, Keedy would never have been allowed to board us. But all at once he appeared before the girl and myself. I felt a fierce impulse to get up and beat his face off him, even though my hands were as sore as the exposed nerve of an aching tooth. He got that flash from my eyes, and looked meek for a moment, but then he saw the condition I was in and became insolent.

“Better listen to me,” he said. “I’m on. I know your system. But I should say you’re all in, Sidney. You need help. There’s enough there for all of us. I’ve got two good divers. I’m over here to propose that we call the row off, and I’ll send my men down to work with your contrivance and give you a rest.”

That proposition from Marcena Keedy, after what he had done to us in the matter of that twenty thousand dollars, and after what he had tried to do to us in the affair of the customs men! I felt the language begin to roil in me as the said roiled under the force of my stream from the nozzle.

“Miss Kama,” I pleaded, “won’t you please run away? I want to talk to this dirty dog. And send your father here with a club.”

She did not leave me. She came closer, and gave Keedy a look which would have wilted any other sort of man.

“You can’t afford to be foolish over what’s past and gone,” insisted my ex-partner. “I left because you wasn’t making good--wasn’t holding up our end of the partnership. You fell down. Now if you can deliver goods we’ll call off all trouble and start it over again.”

“Captain Holstrom,” I yelled, “come here quick! Bring your hammer! Hurry! Knock that devil overboard!” I shouted when the captain tore around the corner on the gallop. His eyes were bulged out, and he had his hammer over his head, for I guess he thought from the tone of my voice that pirates had boarded us. His expression did not soften any when he laid eyes on Keedy.

The gambler put up a lean forefinger. “You’d better hark to what I say, friend Rask.” He went over the same talk he had had with me.

“Not by a continental tin damsite!” howled the captain. “And how you have got the gall even to look the way of the _Zizania_, much more come aboard of her, is what gives me a callous over the collar-button. Get off’m here!”

“You don’t dare to drive me, Holstrom, after I’ve come to you with a fair and open proposition--ready to take the first step and let bygones rest. You can’t afford any big talk! Why, you’re only stealing this gold, whatever of it you are getting! This is pirate business--the whole of it. Now you be careful how you try to raise me out of the game.”

That taunt about our rights there at San Apusa came from a rascal and a gambler, but the taunt made me think--and it stung, too. To tell the truth, I had done a little thinking about our rights in the matter of that treasure.

“You’re infernal thieves, and you can’t make yourselves out anything else!” Keedy insisted. “And you can’t afford to throw down another thief who is willing to come in and help.”

Captain Holstrom shot out a swift kick and missed Keedy. He made a crack at him with the hammer, and missed again.

The Keedy person had had experience with the captain, probably, in past times. He ran for the ladder and escaped into his boat.

“You are fools, besides being thieves,” he informed us, standing up when he was a safe distance away, and shaking his fists. “Don’t you understand what I can do to you?” Captain Holstrom returned the fist-shaking with too much alacrity to be misunderstood.

“All right,” bellowed Keedy; “have it your own way, you fools! I’ll do you so good that you’ll never know you were ever in the game.” He was so mad that he let out a little more than he intended to, so I reckoned. “There are men who will pay me more for what I can tell ’em than any rake-off you can give me, anyway.” He was rowed away to his schooner.

“That means?” I suggested, swapping looks with the captain.

“I suppose it means that he is going to blow this thing to the underwriters.”

“Then we are stealing this gold, are we?”

Captain Holstrom fingered his red knob of a nose, and looked away from me.

“I don’t know much about law,” I went on. “I supposed you knew something about our rights in this thing--if we have any. I tell you, it’s going to be pretty tough, Captain, if I’ve been through all this hell only to have all our great hopes grabbed away from us.”

“Men have to take a chance in this world, Sidney. Damn the law in a case like this! The gold was there, and nobody was trying to get it. We had a right to try for it.”

“But wasn’t there any legal way?”

“Oh, a drunken lawyer in San Francisco told me something about power by attorney, but it meant chasing around and getting hold of claims by shippers, or something of the kind--and that meant blowing our plans and letting a lot of grafters in on us. I simply cleared from the custom-house as a trawler and came away, minding my own business.”

“And now somebody else will take the job of minding it,” I complained. I did not have much philosophy or courage about me just then. My hands and feet and shoulders were aching too miserably; and had all my suffering and daring been thrown away?

“Let’s go home, father,” pleaded the girl.

“Go home!” he yelped. “Sail in past the Golden Gate with this gold? Lug it back where coyote lawyers can get their whack at it until they’ve trimmed us for every ounce? Well, I guess--not!”

I wondered if he proposed to sail around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, cuddling those ingots for amusement, the rest of his life; but I had neither strength nor taste for any more complaint or argument at that time. It was a mighty dismal outlook, according to my way of thinking. I saw that I was tied up with a man whose sole notion was to get the gold without bothering his head about how he was going to keep it. Later, Keedy’s schooner frothed out past us, standing to sea, and headed north.

I did not go down again for almost a week. Courage is always a man’s best asset, but courage in the job I had undertaken was pretty near my whole capital. And courage had left me--I had to admit it. I had been doing honest work with all a man’s grit and strength and will. I had wrecked my body and wrenched my soul in effort. Yes, the work part of it was honest, but how about the honesty of our undertaking? I had got some plain words from Keedy--and I got no consolation from Captain Holstrom. I was daredevil enough and plenty in those days, but I was not the sort of a daredevil who would make a successful pirate.

I sat on deck day after day, and bore with my agonies of body and wrestled with my soul. An idea had come to me as I had struggled with that problem of our rights. It was a rather vague idea. Of only one point of it was I sure--its success depended on getting as much of that gold as I could tear out of the sand.

Thinking upon it, hoping that good would come from it, brought my courage back to me. I was again ready to undergo tortures and to face death.

XXXV--SUBMARINE PICKPOCKETS

A NEW arrival off San Apusa Bar had interested us for a couple of days. It was a husky sloop with a leg-of-mutton mainsail--a broad-bellied craft on which a dozen men showed themselves when it sailed past us to take up a position near the ribs of the wreck. This sloop seemed to be of a build to ride the surges easily, and ventured much closer inshore than we had dared to anchor our lighter. The men did not visit us, and displayed no desire to meddle with the secrets of the equipment on the walled-up scow. We wondered who they were, why they were there, and left them alone.

I went down and crawfished my way over the sand windrows, but I could make only slow work of it, for I was stiffened by my days of inaction. But that new idea of mine went along with me for my encouragement.

I had hardly put myself in position, ready to call for my stream of water, when I got a rousing surprise. Down through the sea came rushing a naked man. The depths were fairly clear, for I had not begun to stir the roil with my nozzle. His eyes were wide open and staring, and I reckon that I peered at him through my bull’s-eye with eyes just as wide open. When he arrived close to me he dropped a rock from each hand, his diving weights, and grabbed me, hanging to my belt. I sat right there on the sand and gaped at him. His mouth was shut tight--he was holding his breath.

In a short time another naked man came down like the stick of a sky-rocket. He dropped his rocks and grabbed me, and the first man let go and went swimming up to the surface. Then came a third man and replaced the second.

I began to feel like a candidate for office in the receiving line. I wanted to ask some questions about what this function meant. But for good and obvious reasons I could not carry on a conversation, and I did not know the deaf-and-dumb alphabet.

Along came the fourth man. I noticed that each man wore a narrow belt with a huge knife fastened in it. And that’s all the man did wear. The sight of the knife made me rather nervous. A man under water, straining to hold his breath, his eyes bulging with his efforts, is a savage-looking object at best. These men were plainly Mexicans, and they looked particularly savage. I felt pretty sure that they were not diving down there to cheer me in my loneliness or to ask me to run for mayor.

Then it came to me all at once who these men were. As a submarine worker, I was interested, of course, in all sorts of jobs under the sea, and I had read various accounts of the Mexican pearl divers. I knew that they could descend long distances and could remain under water, many of them, for ninety seconds. One man succeeded another, diving in rotation. I remained there without moving, staring at them until I began to recognize faces. They were making me return visits. I realized that they did not propose to carve me--the first man could have done that on his first call. Therefore I got my nerve back and decided to go to work. I signaled for water.

It occurred to me that my new friends might find that the “fogo” I stirred with that hose would be a little too much for them. I resisted an impulse to bat them away from me with that nozzle, a considerable effort in selfcontrol, for my temper was pretty short in those dreadful days.

They stuck to me bravely at first when the sand began to swirl. There was an itching under my ribs when the sand made a pall and darkness settled on me. I was afraid that one of my callers might become peevish and ram his knife into me as a hint not to muddy that water.

It was not easy to hold my position and work with a man anchored to me. But I was not bothered for long.

The tug at my belt ceased suddenly, and I knew that they had given up. They could not find me in that smother.

They resumed operations again when I got up my first box. In working my way out of the hole I decreased the flow from the hose, and when I reached the top of the sand the swirling particles were settling and were being washed farther inshore by the surges. In a clearer sea down came those devils once more, and fastened to me, one by one, like leeches. They tried to clutch the box, but it was too heavy for them. It was hoisted past them up to the surf-boat, and once more I drove the nozzle into the sand and forced them off me with a whirlpool of mush.

They were more bothersome the next time I allowed the sea to clear. Two dove at a time, and grabbed me, and almost lifted me up with them. I was furious, but I did not try to beat them off. I kept on about my own affairs as best I could, and allowed them to hang on to me. There were a dozen of them above, with knives, and I had no hankering to tackle the pack. I was not sure as to their motives, anyway. One rip of a knife would have put me out of business. But they did not offer to use knives.

I did a short day’s work and went back to the lighter. Captain Holstrom had watched their diving operations and was full of eager questions.

That night we doubled the guards on the _Zizania_. But no boat came near us.

My friends were ready for me next day, and resumed the same tactics. I carried a bigger knife, and kept my eye out as best I could. But before I got the stream started they were coming at me three at a time. They kept lifting me off bottom, and I wasted a lot of valuable time and much of my little stock of strength before I got down on the sand and began to bore. They were ready for me again as soon as I got up with a box and the sea had cleared a bit. One of them brought a rope, and tried to get it around a box I was handling, but I had my tongs well set, and my men hoisted the treasure away from them. Then they began to interfere with me so savagely that I quit in disgust and signaled to be pulled up.

I was half crazy with rage, and frantic because this sort of business was putting me where I could not realize on that idea which I was nursing.

After listening to me, Captain Holstrom set his cap well down over his ears, jutting his chin, set his teeth, and called for his boat. He was rowed over to the side of the little sloop. He came back very soon and he was not looking pleased.

“I couldn’t get anything out of that bunch except a few grunts and a lot of jabber,” he reported. “They make believe they can’t understand the English language. They want graft, I suppose. They’d understand, all right, if I was to carry over a slug of gold and dump it over the rail. But I’m about tired of feeding gold to everybody who comes along here.”

“This isn’t our gold to give away to all comers,” I told him. He blinked at me, and did not seem to understand. I did not go into that side of the question any further, for I was not ready for much argument at that time. “I’ll not stand for any more ‘hot rocks,’” I told him.

“Nor I, either,” he agreed. “Begin to feed gold to those chaps, and they’ll think we are scared of ’em and they’ll want the whole mess.”

To show them that I was not scared, I went down the next day, and I had a wire edge on my temper. I balked at starting a knife duel, however, and after a struggle got my hole started.

I struck something new that day in the ruck at the bottom of the hole. I found ingots loose in the hodgepodge of pantry wreckage. A wooden box had been smashed. I had a slit and a sort of deep pocket in the canvas overalls affair which protected my India-rubber suit. As my toes located loose ingots, I sifted the mush of sand with the fingers of one hand, captured the gold, and stuffed it down into the deep pocket. I came up with a box, and my breeches were bagging with gold.

Then came the climax of my strained relations with those greaser divers. I’ve heard of pickpockets operating everywhere, almost, but I reckon that I’m the first and only man who ever had his pockets picked at the bottom of the sea. The first devil who got to me as the sand settled, in groping for a handhold on my dress, felt the loose ingots. He got one, but he did not get away with it. Trouble or no trouble, knives or no knives, I had got to the limit of my temper. I gave him a jab with the end of my sheet-iron nozzle, and as near as I could judge I took a hunk of meat out of him as neatly as a woman could operate on dough with a doughnut cutter. The edges of that nozzle had been whetted on sand until they were as sharp as a razor blade. The fellow drooped that ingot and darted upward, blood streaming behind him. Another diver was coming down to take his place, but when I jabbed at him with the nozzle he whirled like a fish and went up, giving me an awful kick when he started.

I reckoned I had thrown down the gage of battle, and I was not minded to stay there and meet the pack, for I was weak after my extra struggle down in the hole. It had been a tedious job gathering that loose gold. I saw the box started on the way to the surf-boat, gave the emergency signal, and was yanked back to the lighter at a lively clip.

Later that day, being in a proper and ugly frame of mind, I tucked a rifle under my arm and had myself rowed to the neighboring sloop. I found the spokesman of the crew ready to talk English that day, all right. But when our conversation was ended I had received a surprise. No demand was made on me for a “hot rock.” I found that I was dealing with men who had deeper motives. It took me some time to understand that they were not holding out for a big offer. The man at the rail wrinkled his nose and sneered when I angrily told him that was what they were after.

“It’s what I’d expect a gringo to tell me,” he said. “But we are not here to do business with thieves. You have no right to be here. You may pick and steal, but it will not amount to _that!_” He snapped his finger above his head. “We shall do our business with those who will have the gold in the end, with those who can pay and will pay. And we have a man who will see that we are paid.”

My wits had been sharpened while I had toiled at San Apusa Bar. I was able to see farther into the ways of guile than before I had met a man like Marcena Keedy. I had a flash of suspicion that was almost instinct.

“So you think you have made a better trade with that renegade, Keedy, do you?” I flung at him.

I was sure I had guessed right; the man’s face betrayed him.

“Oh, we are honest men--not thieves,” he called back. “We do not deal with thieves. We came here to stop you from stealing. But you do not stop. Now we shall see. We have kept our knives in our belts. But you have set us an example. You have tried to kill a man who did not offer to hurt you.” He leaped up on the rail, and aimed a long finger at me. “We can fight the way you do. If we catch you there on bottom again you’ll be pulled up with six of these sticking in you.” He patted the knife in his belt.

There are men who can threaten and who cannot impress others. It is easily docketed as bluster. There is another kind of a man who gives you a look and a word, and you know that he means what he says. I went away from that sloop feeling that if I were desperate enough just then to commit suicide, an easy way had been opened for me.

I went and tumbled into my berth, and viewed the ruins of that idea which I had been building so prayerfully. It looked to me then, in my despondency, as if Keedy was holding mighty good cards. If he had decided to turn informer, he could demand and would undoubtedly receive a noble rake-off. It was probable that he _would_ inform--for that would be his natural, lazy method of making his money out of the thing. The posting of the pearl divers in behalf of the underwriters would be an additional feather in his cap; on the other hand, if he proposed to come with a backer and new equipment--having discovered my system--he had good reasons for leaving men behind him who would hold us in check. If Keedy returned with steam-pumps he could rip the bottom out of the Pacific. Our makeshift equipment would not be two-spot high.

And how soon could he return, whether he came piloting the underwriters or came on his own hook as a rival “thief”? I talked with Captain Holstrom on that matter the next day. He rubbed his nose and scruffed his hair, and could not guess.

I asked the captain for his estimate of the amount of treasure in our chest. He told me that we had rising three-quarters of a million.

“Captain, it has become a matter of touch and go--live or die--with us. With less than a third of that gold in our hands, we’re in no position to do business when the pinch comes. I’m going after the rest of it!”

“But you said you knew them greaser pickerel would poke their knives into you. God knows I’m hungry for the rest of the treasure, Sidney, but I’m no Marcena Keedy.”

“I’m going down at night, Captain Holstrom.”

“It can’t be done.”

“It _can_ be done. After I get my stream started I’m in the dark even when the sun is brightest. I know the way from the lighter to that wreck, all right. I’ve dragged my way there times enough with a trail of blood behind me,” I told him, sourly. “It can never be any worse than it has been. We’ll take extra chances, moor the lighter nearer the wreck, get rid of the surf-boat and crew, and leave those greasers guessing.”

I want to say, to the credit of the captain, that he opposed this undertaking of mine. His daughter--But I will not dwell on that point. It harrows my soul now to remember the manner in which I opposed my obstinate and reckless will to her honest grief and her almost frantic protests.

I went down that night. I gave ’em three boxes before midnight. I ate a lunch, and gave ’em one box more before I quit.

I have no ambition to make this story a rival of Fox’s Book of Martyrs. I have already given some idea of the physical state I was in. I think I became numb to pain, accustomed to agonies. I cannot explain otherwise how I ever kept on, night after night. I haven’t the courage to write down what I suffered.

But out from under those grinning greasers--grinning their sneers at us daytimes--I dragged one and one-half million dollars’ worth of gold ingots inside of two weeks--and they never suspected that I was under water.

During the last of that nightmare, I felt as if I were working with my chin over my shoulder. I was looking for trouble. I was expecting disaster. I was scared to the marrow. I am not referring to any feelings I had on account of the pearl divers. Their bug eyes had never detected me in what I was about. I knew that darkness protected me more surely from any attack by them than iron walls would have done.

But I worked nights with the constant feeling that the red and green eyes of a steamer were coming up over the horizon. When I was awake daytimes I peered into the northern sky hour after hour, expecting and dreading to see the trail of smoke which would announce the coming of Marcena Keedy and those whom he had notified.

My conferences with Captain Holstrom had been scant and rather brusque. There were some points in that idea of mine that I had not thought out to my own satisfaction, and I had not found the captain to be especially helpful in attacking problems. He was wholly taken up in helping to pull that gold in over the rail, in storing it, in guarding it.

His daughter knew why I stared at the northern horizon, and why desperate worry added to the other woes I was suffering in that tophet of toil. She had resigned herself to the situation when I had persisted in keeping on. She became, as before, my wistful nurse. She talked to me as she would have soothed a madman whom she hoped to win back to sanity. Well, I was a lunatic in those days--there’s not much doubt of it. It was madness made up of fear, desperation, agony of physical pain, lust for gold--all forcing me to do work which no sane man could have accomplished in my condition of body.

She dared to break her usual silence on the matter of the treasure when we were on deck one afternoon after my sleep. She had been gazing at me sorrowfully while I stared into the north.

“Oh, what use is it--this dreadful work and worry? You have told me that you feel like a thief in it all. You sit and stare into the north as though you were a wicked man, instead of being so brave and successful in the most wonderful work a man ever did. You are getting their gold for them. But you feel that they are coming to take it all away--and call you a thief. You cannot deceive me as to your thoughts.”

I had to acknowledge to myself that her woman’s intuition was in fine working order. I understood what men were, naturally, in affairs where big sums of money were involved. These men, provided Keedy had done as I supposed he had, would have Keedy’s lies about us to inflame them still further in addition to their natural greed.

But she was no quitter on one point. She clenched her little fists and kept on: