“So!” said Millen.
But Carswell paid him no attention. The eyes of the smaller man were fastened on Robby. Suddenly he moved, and suddenly he was staring down into Robby’s face from only inches above it.
“Did I tell you—” whispered Carswell, in a sort of stifled rage, “did I tell you to help him up?”
He reached out and tore Millen’s hand from Robby’s shoulder. He shoved the old man and the lean, tottering body fell back heavily into its chair. Paralyzed with fear, Robby was jerked from beside the chair and pushed roughly toward the door where he and Carswell had entered the gym-room.
“I’ll think up something special for you, young Hoenig!” he said, thinly. Carswell raised his voice. “Hice!”
There was no answer. Carswell turned around. The bald instructor had left the room. Samuels, Carswell’s knockout victim, was standing alone in the middle of the mat, feeling his head as if it ached, and looking bewildered.
“Samuels!” snapped Carswell.
The big young man looked up, cringed, and approached reluctantly.
“Yes, sir?” he said, stopping finally, out of reach of Carswell.
“Come here!” whispered Carswell. “That’s better. Now, tell me. Where’d Hice go?”
“Down to the Supply Deck, to the equipment room, sir.”
“Take this boy down to him. Tell Hice to lock him in the brig.”
“The brig . . . ?” Samuels wriggled, uncomprehendingly.
“The room with the barred window in its door—nevermind!” said Carswell thinly. “Just take the boy to him, I’ll phone the equipment room from here. Get going!” He looked at Robby. “I’ll see you again later, young Hoenig.”
Robby numbly began to follow Samuels.
“He’s a little man!” shouted Millen behind him. “Don’t let him scare you, boy! He doesn’t scare me—he’s just a littleman!”
But Robby felt too miserable to pay much attention. Samuels led him out of the room to a narrow flight of metal stairs. They descended these to the Supply Deck, so named because the ship’s supplies were stored there. Just as the deck with the gym was normally called Forecastle Deck, from the fact that it held the crew’s quarters, and in old sailing ships the crew bunked in the forecastle, or the front cabin of a ship. Above Forecastle Deck would be the deck called Officer’s Country, the quarters of the ship’s officers, and above that would be the Bridge Deck, with the control room and Captain’s cabin.
Remembering all this kindled a small ray of hope in Robby’s mind. At least he knew his way around the tug. If Mr. Lillibulero could just somehow get in to rescue him he couldshow the way out . . .
He roused out of his thoughts suddenly. Samuels had led him to the open door of a room in which Hice was standing.The door had a small, barred window in it.
“Thought you were in the equipment room,” said Samuels, peering past Hice. “Is this the brig? I thought—”
“You aren’t putting him in here!” snapped Hice. “I just got a change of orders on the phone. Put him in the strong room. Here’s the key—you know where the strong room is?”
“Oh, sure,” said Samuels, eagerly, taking the small, narrow key. “That’s the one with all the—”
“I know what’s in it!” snapped Hice. “Just put him in there and don’t forget to lock it behind you.”
Samuels turned and led Robby back down the Supply Deck corridor, past the stairway by which they had descended. He stopped and unlocked a door about ten feet further on.
“All right,” he muttered, opening the door. “Get in!” Robby started to go in, but a noise on the stairway made him turn to look. Coming down the steel treads were two men carrying a limp figure. They reached the corridor and began to take their burden down to the open door where Hice stood—the door with the bars behind the window. Robby had only one glimpse, but that glimpse was sufficient.
The helpless figure they carried was Mr. Lillibulero.
“Go on—get in there!” Samuels growled. He gave Robby a hard shove. Robby stumbled forward and heard the metal door behind him slam to with a crash, and the lock clicked shut.
Mr. Lillibulero Speaks
Too stunned by the discovery that Mr. Lillibulero was also a prisoner, and unconscious and possibly badly hurt as well,Robby paid little attention to his surroundings and sat down heavily on the nearest object, which seemed to be a sack filled with small, hard objects. For a long moment he simply sat where he was, feeling unhappy. It seemed there was no hope left—no hope at all.
But he finally looked around him. Now he saw why the room had been called the “strong room.”
Not only was it a room with a particularly heavy-looking door without a window, but there was only one small porthole. In one comer stood a large, bright steel safe with a glass box on its door. Inside the glass box was a set of gears and cogs of the sort found under the front and back covers of an alarm clock. It was the time lock mechanism of the safe.
On the other side of the room was a stand—half empty—but still containing perhaps thirty or forty sonic pistols and rifles. At the sight of them, Robby’s spirits gave a bound upward. But a closer look showed that the stand was locked with a heavy padlock, and Robby’s spirits sank again. It was too bad, thought Robby. The sonic weapons he saw were hand versions of the mounted cannons used to stun killer whales and predatory sharks with a burst of vibrations in the ultrasonic range. He would have been able to use one of the rifles to break the lock of the door.
Stacked up like bricks against the wall beyond the arms rack were oblongs of silvery metal. And covering most of the floor were a number of heavy plastic bags like the one on which Robby was sitting.
Robby stared without much curiosity at the silvery bars and the bags. Then suddenly he came awake as if he had been jabbed by the idea which had just popped into his head. Bars of metal? he thought. Bags of... ?
Hastily, he got up and fumbled with the spring-snap of the wire drawstring fastening the top of the bag.
For a second it seemed the wire would resist his fingers, it was so stiff. Then it snapped open, and Robby spread the top. He looked inside.
The bag was filled with small, flat pieces of metal with square comers. For a second, Robby felt he must have been wrong in having that idea of his. But then he took one of the pieces out of the bag, and saw he was right after all.
What he was looking at was a coin, in spite of its roughly square shape. Robby had read about such coins in several books about buried Spanish or pirate treasure. What he was holding was a real, actual piece of eight.
It was not round because of a curious reason. Coins like the one Robby held were technically known as cobs. The name came from the Spanish term cabo de barra, which in English meant “cut from a bar.” This was a quick way of making coins used back in the days when so much silver from the New World was flowing to Spain.
The coins were made from square slices of silver, cut off the end of a silver bar. After these slices were cut off, they were heated up and stamped with Spain’s royal coat of arms. In spite of their square shape, they were worth just as much as the round pieces of eight minted in Spain. Their proper original name was piaster or peso. They were called “dollars” by English-speaking colonials. Familiarity with this coin caused the United States to call its official monetary unit the “dollar” in 1792. Their value was equal to eight reales,which was a smaller Spanish coin. Reales in the early days of the American colonies were also known as “bits” to English-speaking people—from which comes the expression “two bits” in English for a twenty-five-cent piece.
Robby looked at the hundreds of coins and the stacks of bars which must be bars of silver. This could only be the“million in old coin and bar silver” to which Carswell had referred when he asked Millen if the old man thought that amount could buy the red-haired man.
I’m rich! thought Robby, excitedly.
But then he realized he wasn’t. All this treasure was for no use as long as he was locked up w
ith it. His excitement faded. Ben Gunn, the marooned sailor in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Robby now remembered, had discovered the same thing where the pirate loot buried by Captain Flint was concerned. In fact, with all that gold, the poor sailor had spent most of his lonely nights on the island dreaming of cheese.
For the first time it occurred to Robby that treasure might not be all the wonderful sort of possession he had supposed it to be. Ben Gunn had found that he wanted cheese more than gold. Robby now discovered that he wanted freedom more than all the silver now available to him, and went over to lookout of the porthole. It was small, but not too small for someone as thin as he was to squeeze through. But outside there was water, thirty feet deep. If Robby should be so foolhardy as to open the porthole—and if he could—water under double the pressure at the sea’s surface would come thundering into the room. It would toss the bags and silver bars around like toys and crush Robby in a second. Even if he could get out safely, there was no place he could go without a water lung but the dark surface of the open sea above.
He was about to turn away from the porthole in despair, when he noticed he could see light through it. He stepped closer and peered out. The light was from the lighted cargo bag where Carswell’s men were securing La Floridana. As Robby watched, a dark figure swam past it, silhouetted for a second against the light glowing around the edges of the flap to the bag, then disappeared. A moment later it swam past again.
Robby’s hopes leaped up. For the figure was not the figure of a man in water lung and swim fins. Nor was it the figure of a large fish like a grouper or a shark. It was the streamlined shape of a Steller’s sea lion. It was Mac.
There could be only one reason Mac was out there. With Mr. Lillibulero gone, he was searching for Robby.
Robby ran and got a piece of eight from the open sack. He tapped with it on the glass of the porthole in the rhythm in which he was used to tapping the side of the Point Loma Station to call Mac. If Mac would only hear the sound of it and get his impulse to rescue Robby now . . .
A moment later, Mac’s questioning, dog-like nose was bumping up against the outside of the porthole. Robby’s spirits leaped upwards. It was true. Mac was trying to rescue him.
It would not have been easy for a human being without a face plate or goggles to look into an underwater room from the sea outside and recognize anyone. But this is because the human eye is designed to operate in the air. Mac’s was designed to operate underwater—he was, as a matter of fact, short-sighted above water. He recognized Robby at once, and showed it by his attempts to push his way through the porthole and join him.
Meanwhile, Robby was thinking furiously, his hopes high once more. With Mac to help him, he could easily make it either to the surface or to the airlock of the tug. Mac could tow him much faster than Robby himself could swim. But the problem was to get out to Mac.
Robby took another look at the porthole. It was, he saw,designed to swing open on a hinge, if the tug happened to be above water. Underwater, as now, it was not only shut, but fastened tight against water pressure by two large turnbuckle screws. Of course, for the real ocean depths, machinery would lower a steel shutter over the whole porthole. No turnbuckle screws could resist the water pressure half a mile down.
But the shutter was not down over it now. If Robby could open the porthole he could get out. The only difficulty was the matter of the double water pressure outside.
However, Robby was thinking. He turned around to look at the room. The only other apertures were the door and a ventilator set in the ceiling to supply the room with air. The door, Robby knew, would be designed to seal itself against any leak of water under pressure. So would the ventilator. It might be possible after all, not only for him to escape, but, with luck, to rescue Mr. Lillibulero. Robby took hold of the nearest turnbuckle screw and tried to loosen it.
For a while it seemed that he was not going to be able to move the handle of the screw. It had been set too tightly. Mac disappeared from outside the porthole, as Robby struggled on with the turnbuckle.
The handle moved under his fingers only a fraction of an inch, but he felt it give.
He heaved once more. Again it budged, a fraction of an inch... an inch... a quarter turn...
And a high-pitched hissing sounded in the strong room. Robby looked at the edge of the porthole beside the turnuckle. There was nothing to be seen. But then, he felt it—a fine, invisible spray of moisture, cooling his hand.
He turned to heave on the other turnbuckle screw as Mac reappeared. In a few seconds, fine jets of water were spraying the edges of the porthole.
Robby loosened the screws as much as he dared and sat down to wait. Water was shooting into the room and streaming down the wall below the porthole. Soon the rising flood forced him to stand up. Robby was not afraid of water,although his parents taught him to respect it. But waiting like this as the sea poured into a locked room was more than a little frightening. He heard a clang from the ventilator above him and, looking up, saw that automatic machinery had sealed it off with a metal plate behind the grill.
The water came in slowly but steadily. Soon it was lapping around his knees. Then it was up to his waist. It rose around his chest and Robby began to find it difficult to keep his feet solidly on the floor. Shortly he bobbed off his feet and began to float about, paddling slightly to keep his head up above the water, and floating ever nearer to the ceiling.
But by this time the amount of water coming in had lessened. Robby finally paddled over to the porthole, now completely under water. He reached down and loosened the turnbuckles all the way. They turned easily. Water bubbled and fountained up around the window, then stopped. When it was still, the water in the strong room was up to about eleven inches from the ceiling.
But it had stopped coming in.
Robby’s plan had worked. The room had sealed itself when the water had started coming in, and the air had been compressed more and more until its pressure was equal to the pressure of the entering water. All the air that had filled the whole room before was now squeezed into the small space left between the water and the ceiling.
And—the pressure in the room was now the same as the pressure of the deep water outside. Robby could safely open the porthole.
He ducked under the surface of the water and did so, now, swinging the circle of thick glass inward on its hinge. Mac immediately stuck his head through from the outside, but found his body was too big to let him get all the way inside.He stayed where he was for the moment, watching Robby and looking like a sea-lion-shaped cork stuck in the mouth of a bottle. Perhaps, thought Robby, Mac was finally wanting to rescue him.
Meanwhile, Robby had lifted his head once more up into the air and was breathing rapidly and deeply. This was an exercise used by pearl divers in ancient times, and known as“hyperventilation.” Its purpose was to cram into Robby’s lungs as much air, and into Robby’s bloodstream as much oxygen, as possible. After a few minutes he began to feel a little giddy from the extra oxygen. He held his breath and ducked under the water. But Mac was still in the porthole. He had not been trying to rescue Robby after all. He had been trying to join Robby inside.
Robby finally had to push Mac back out of the way, and once he did so, he had no trouble wriggling through the porthole. Outside, the water seemed dark after the light of the strong room. Also, without a face plate, he could not see well under the water. He caught hold of the rope around Mac’s neck, and urged the sea lion to tow him up and forward along the hull of the tug toward where he thought the airlock must be.
A moment later, he stubbed his fingers on the button Red Carswell had struck earlier to open the airlock, when he had had Robby in tow. Robby struck it, and the metal flap began to open downward. Mac pulled back, unwilling to enter the place where he had been tied to a locker, once before. So Robby swam in alone and punched the upper of the two buttons to the right of the inner door.
The flap whined shut behind him and a second later, the level of
water in the airlock began to drop. In a moment Robby had his head above water and could breathe again. But so effective had been his hyperventilating that he did not feel desperate for oxygen at all. Nor was this surprising. As Robby knew, some pearl divers had been known to dive to depths of eighty feet and return to the surface, using this method. Of course, their lung capacity had been greatly built up by practice.
But he wasted no time congratulating himself now. He turned his attention to the lockers along the airlock wall. The third locker that he opened revealed his water lung, lying on top of Red Carswell’s ghost captain costume. Robby snatched it up and buckled it on—only he did not stop there.
Without hesitating, he picked up the ghost costume itself and began to climb into it. The waterproof plastic of which it was made was slick and rather stiff in his fingers.
This was the idea he had back in the strong room when he had first thought about how to get out of the porthole. On top of that flash of imagination had come the knowledge that he could get this water lung from the tug airlock—and that meant that he could also, if he wished, get the costume.
For what Robby had remembered in that instant was that Carswell, like Mr. Lillibulero, was only an inch or two bigger than he was himself. In the costume, no one would be able to tell it was Robby and not Carswell, walking about inside the tug.
However, now that he actually stood in the airlock with the costume in his hand, Robby felt his courage waning. It was one thing to think about dressing up like the red-haired man, another thing entirely to do it.
His heart was thudding uncomfortably as he put the suit and mask on. He stopped at the door, spotting a grill ands witch for what was evidently an intercom to the corridor beyond the watertight door. He turned it on and listened to see if he could hear anyone. But all that came to his ears was a far-off noise that might have been voices some distance from the other side of the door.
Secrets of the Deep Page 23
