‘Who? You don’t mean the captain.’
‘Who else?’ said Tom. ‘He was the only one aboard.’
‘I never would have believed he’d do a thing like that.’
‘I know. But what else can you believe?’
‘Well, I believe we’ve got to get word to Hal Hunt right away.’
‘How can we do that? Do you think we have a phone in this dinghy? Hunt is two hundred feet down. We have no aqualungs. I can’t swim that deep without a tank and neither can you.’
The other scanned the horizon. ‘There she is.’ About three miles off lay the ship of the Undersea Science Foundation, the Discovery. “They have a phone. We’re lucky that the ship is down wind.’
He jibed the sail and let out the sheet to get the full benefit of the breeze. The little boat sped towards the Discovery. On board, they found the captain.
‘We’re from the Flying Cloud,’ Tom said.
‘Nice to have you, boys. Make yourselves at home.’
‘No, this is not a social call. Our ship is gone. Did you see her leave?’
‘No. We were busy below decks.’ He raised his binoculars and searched the sea where the ship had been.
‘We want to phone Hal Hunt,’ Tom said.
‘Yes, you’d better do that. Phone’s right over there.’
Hal was stunned by the news. ‘Can’t understand it,’ he said. ‘Why did the captain sail off without telling me?’
‘Perhaps something happened to the phone,’ suggested Roger, never dreaming how close he was to the truth. ‘All that gold and stuff. You don’t suppose Captain Ted…’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’d stake my life on that man.’
‘Where’s Kaggs?’ said Roger. ‘He was just going to the church. He should have been back long ago.’
Hal thought of the bag that was supposed to be full of Bibles. And he thought of the Flying Cloud’s hull, full of gold. It didn’t take any great feat of arithmetic to put the two together.
‘Kaggs! That rascal!’
He phoned Dr Dick. ‘Our ship is gone. We think it must have been stolen.’
‘Stolen! Who could have …’ Then he thought of the murderer and thief he had fired that morning. ‘I can guess,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘We want to go after it. May we borrow the hoversub?’
‘Right away. It will be in front of your house in five minutes.’
Chapter 21
The chase
It was there in less than five. The same pilot who had taken them to the Mariana Trench was at the controls.
It was not necessary to stop on the way up for decompression since the sub was charged with the same helium they had been breathing below, and at the same pressure. The hatch was closed and they shot upwards.
Reaching the surface, the hoversub leaped into the air like an acrobatic whale and skimmed along twelve feet above the sea supported by its column of down-rushing air.
‘It was just about here that she lay,’ Hal said. He noticed the scraps of paper.
‘Look,’ he said to the pilot. ‘Follow those. He wasn’t heading for Brisbane or Sydney. This line would take him to one of the deserted bays north of Cairns. Smugglers use them to get their stolen goods ashore. If we find the ship we’ll be landing on the surface. Ease the pressure out of this thing very slowly so that by the time we get there it will be the same as the air pressure.’
When there was no more paper to be seen the pilot looked at his compass and held the hoversub to exactly the same direction. The Magic Carpet sped over water, reefs, sand spits and coral islands with equal ease. The ship, of course, had been compelled to go round these bits of land, so by now it might be a little to one side or the other of the compass course. The pilot kept watch ahead, Hal out of the right window, and Roger out of the left.
Things were not going too well on board the Flying Cloud. Captain Ted made another brave effort to take back his ship from the pirate Kaggs.
When Kaggs was not looking, the captain picked up a belaying pin. This was like the heavy club used by the police. He stepped up quietly behind Kaggs and brought the weapon down with terrific force.
Kaggs moved his head just in time and the belaying pin did nothing but graze his right temple and cheek, bringing the blood.
He wheeled about and struck out with both fists, one landing under Ted’s jaw and the other in his solar plexus. The stunned captain fell to the deck, unconscious. Before he could come to Kaggs seized a coil of rope and tied him up, hand and foot.
There,’ he said triumphantly, ‘now he’ll give me no more trouble.’
He had no sooner spoken the words than there was a grinding sound beneath his feet and the vessel shuddered to a stop. It had run up on to a reef.
He had thought that he knew how to handle a ship. But he had never had this experience before. How do you get a ship off a reef?
He shook the captain. ‘Wake up, you son of a gun. Wake up and do something.’
It was no use. He must do something himself. The wind pressing on the sails was pushing the ship inch by inch farther up on the jagged coral. The razor-sharp edges of coral were sawing into the hull. A bubbling sound beneath told him that one of the strakes had been broken and sea water was coming in.
He kicked the unconscious captain. He wished he had not punched him quite so hard. Well, the first thing to do was to get down the sails. He did this, then went down and turned off the engine. Now he hoped the ship would slide back into deep water. It did not. He turned on the engine, and put it in reverse. That should pull her off. But she did not move. The water was sloshing round Kaggs’ feet.
The water ought to be pumped out. Did the ship have a pump, and if so where was it?
He went up and gave the captain a rousing kick. Ted opened his eyes.
‘Get up, you lazy beggar. We’re stuck on a reef.’
A feint smile came over the captain’s face.
‘Don’t forget,’ he said. ‘You’re the boss. Get it off.’ He closed his eyes and seemed to go to sleep.
Kaggs realized that the captain could not help him so long as his hands and feet were bound. He got down and began to untie the knots. Then he tied them tighter than before. So long as this fellow was tied up he couldn’t get into mischief.
Kaggs had another idea. The gold. The hull was full of it. It was very heavy. If it were thrown overboard …
The idea made him sick. Had he gone through all this just to lose the treasure after all? But he could think of nothing else to do.
He was so occupied that he hardly noticed something leap out of the sea, perhaps a whale or a marlin. He went down into the hold. He looked sadly at the tremendous store of gold bars. He could live beautifully the rest of his life on this fortune. It would all have been his if he hadn’t been so careless as to let the ship run aground.
Oh well, there was nothing to do but get rid of it. He gathered as many as he could carry and staggered up the companionway. There seemed to be a shadow above him. He looked up and saw Hal and Roger waiting for him.
So that thing leaping out of the sea - it had not been a whale or a fish. Kaggs dropped the gold bars and they clattered down the steps. He began to reach for his gun.
He was stopped by a sharp command, ‘Hold it!” It came from the captain, freed by the boys, and now standing with a ready gun in his hands.
Kaggs knew when to be tough and when to be sweet. He smiled pleasantly. ‘I was just trying to save your ship,’ he said. He came up on deck.
‘So that’s your idea of how to save it,’ Hal said. ‘Steal it and then run it on a reef. What will we do with him, captain?’
‘Put him in the brig. It’s La the fo’c’sle.’
The brig was an iron cage in which trouble-making sailors could be locked up. Kaggs was introduced to his new quarters and the key turned in the lock.
‘That will take care of him for a while,’ Hal said, ‘until we get the police. Where’s the phone?’
> ‘There it is,’ said Captain Ted, pointing to the broken pieces on the deck. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to forget the police for a while. The first thing to do is to get the ship off. The tide is rising. As soon as it’s high, perhaps she’ll float. In the meantime I’ll turn on the pump and get rid of some of this water.’
But at high tide the schooner was still fast on the coral.
‘We need an anchor astern,’ the captain said, ‘but we have no dinghy to carry it out.’
‘Magic Carpet can do that,’ Hal suggested. He looked for the hoversub. It was gone. The pilot was already speeding it back to Undersea City.
‘Roger and I will take it out,’ Hal suggested. They stripped and swam aft about a hundred feet with the anchor. There they dropped it and swam back to the ship.
Ted already had the electric capstan turning, tightening the line on the anchor. That should gradually drag the ship back off the reef.
The line to the anchor tightened more and more until it was as taut as a bowstring. The ship gritted its teeth on the coral which cut a larger hole in the bottom. Suddenly the line to the anchor snapped in two.
All they had done was to lose an anchor.
The ship had been dragged back just far enough to make the situation worse. Now the hole was not half choked by the reef, but in deeper water so that the hold was filling faster than ever. More water came in than the pump could take out. If this went on the ship would slide off the reef, only to sink stern first.
Roger’s thoughts were far away. He was thinking about Captain Cook. Captain Cook, the great navigator who had discovered Australia, had his ship run aground in exactly the same way very close to this very same place. He had saved his ship. Roger remembered how he had done it.
‘Let’s fother it,’ he said suddenly.
Captain Ted had not read much history. He smiled indulgently. What was this nonsense?
‘What do you mean - fother?’
‘Captain Cook did it. Why can’t we? Have you got an old sail around the place?’
‘Over there - in the locker.’
Roger got it and spread it out on the deck.
‘How about some tar?’ Roger asked.
Captain Ted was getting annoyed. ‘What is all this nonsense?’
But Hal now remembered what Captain Cook had done. ‘The kid’s on the right track. Let him have the tar.’
He helped Roger smear the tar thickly over the canvas.
Then they carried it aft and let it down over the stern. They drew it up under the hull so that it covered the hole.
The pressure of the sea pushed the tarred sail up against the hole so firmly that the inflow of water was shut off.
‘Well, I’ll be hornswoggled,’ said Captain Ted. ‘I’ve sailed these seas for fifty years but I’m learning something new every day.’
Chapter 22
Safe harbour
Now the pump could really do its work. Within an hour it had sucked up all the water in the hull and poured it overboard. With this load removed, the ship was several tons lighter than before.
The line from the capstan back to the anchor was repaired. At the next high tide the power was turned on in the electric capstan, the line tightened, the ship groaned and creaked over the coral, and was drawn back over the reef into deep water.
Captain Ted went down into the hold. He came back, beaming.
‘It works. Not a drop of water coming in. That Cook fellow was pretty smart. Now, where do you want to go? On to Smuggler’s Bay?’
‘No,’ Hal said. ‘What’s the nearest port with inspectors, a good bank, and a dry dock where we can get the hull repaired?’
That would be Brisbane,’ said Captain Ted. ‘Perhaps you can help me get these sails up.’
The breeze was good and the ship sped away on its new course. Roger clambered up the ratlines to the crow’s nest. His keen eyes searched the sea for reefs. The ones above the surface were easy to see. But there were many others under water. They might be far enough down so that the ship could pass over them, or they might be only two or three feet below the surface. These he could not see, but he could spot them by the colour of the water. Deep water was a deep blue, shallow water was a light blue or tan or coral-pink. When he saw one of these danger tints ahead he would shout down to Captain Ted at the wheel and the course would be altered to go round the reef.
These waters were much too perilous to be crossed at night. So when darkness came on, the ship was moored in the lee of a small island and the sails furled.
In the morning the first light found the Flying Cloud on its way again to Brisbane. The ship finally circled the last island and entered Moreton Bay.
‘Here we are,’ Captain Ted announced.
Roger scanned the shore. He had expected to see a large city. He saw nothing but subtropical Jungle -palms, flame trees, papaya, frangipani, orchid trees, and monster trees two hundred feet high that the captain called bunya-bunyas.
‘But where is Brisbane?’ Roger wanted to know.
‘Oh, we’re not quite there yet. It’s twenty-five miles up the Brisbane River. It’s a twisty river, and dangerous. We’d better get down the sails and crawl up to town by engine.’
The city, when they got to it, seemed very fine indeed.
‘You’d never think it was founded by murderers and thieves,’ said Captain Ted. ‘That was more than a century ago. Britain had so many criminals she didn’t have prisons big enough to take them all. So she shipped thousands of them out here. This was a very tough town in the beginning. But the sons and grandsons of the criminals grew up to be fine citizens and now this is one of the best cities in Australia. That’s Kangaroo Point ahead. We can dock on the other side of it.’
They had no sooner docked than Australian customs officials came aboard. They saw the tanks of fish. ‘What is this, a floating aquarium?’
‘Some specimens we took off the Great Barrier Reef,’ Hal said.
‘Do you expect to sell them here?’
‘No. They will be trans-shipped to the United States. Will there be any duty on them?’
‘No. We’re not interested in fish. Do you have any other cargo?’
‘Well.’ Hal said, ‘there are a few little items down below.’
The men went below. They came back with their eyes fairly popping out of their heads.
‘Do you realize you have a fortune down there?’
‘Yes, we realize it,’ said Hal.
‘What do you propose to do with it?’
‘Give half of it to you -1 mean the Australian government. It’s from a wreck. The wreck was in Australian waters - so Australia gets half of the gold. Can you appraise it?’
‘No. That’s taken care of by another department. We’ll phone Government House for an inspector.’
Hal was worried. He knew how slowly some governments act. ‘I hope it won’t take too long,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to stay here more than a week or two.’
Hal did not have to wait a week or two. The inspector arrived in fifteen minutes. Australia was not so slow after all. With the inspector were three police officers.
The inspector and police went below and saw the stacks upon stacks of gold bars.
The police noticed the man in the brig. One of the officers asked, ‘Who are you?”
‘Just an unfortunate seaman.’
‘Why are you in here?’
‘The captain put me here. He’s a brute. You really ought to arrest him.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘John Smith.’
The officers came up and one of them said, ‘Who’s the captain of this ship?’
‘I am,’ said Captain Ted.
‘What has this John Smith done?’
‘John Smith? Who’s that?’
‘The man in the brig. He says his name is John Smith.’
Captain Ted laughed. ‘John Smith, says he? His name is Merlin Kaggs.’
‘Kaggs? Did you say Merlin Kaggs?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘We’ve been looking for a man by that name for the last eight months. He killed a pearl diver on Thursday Island. Then he disappeared. Where has he been all this time?’
‘Meet Hal Hunt,’ said Captain Ted. ‘He can tell you all about him.’
‘He’s been underwater,’ Hal said.
‘What do you mean? What’s he been doing?’
‘He’s been pastor of a church at the bottom of the sea.’
‘Look here,’ said one of the officers sternly. ‘This is serious business. Don’t try to be funny.’
‘I’m not,’ said Hal. ‘Have you heard of Undersea City?’
‘Seems to me I’ve read something about it. Is that where he’s been hiding?’
‘You’ve got it,’ Hal said.
‘Did you know him well?’
‘We lived in the same house with him.’
‘It’s lucky he didn’t try to kill you.’
Hal smiled but said nothing.
‘He did try to kill Hunt and his brother,’ said the captain, ‘by dumping a landslide on them from the Great Barrier Reef.’
‘Forget it,’ Hal said. ‘He’s a little unbalanced up here.’ He tapped his head.
‘All the more reason why he should be put away,’ said the officer. ‘But there’s another thing and I’m afraid it involves you, captain. We may have to book you on suspicion of attempted grand theft.’
Captain Ted’s jaw dropped. ‘What have you got against me?’
‘We have a plane that watches for any ships heading for Smuggler’s Bay. Now that we see what valuable cargo you were carrying, we have good reason to suppose that you were planning to land it there.’
Hal spoke up. ‘You have it all wrong, officer. Kaggs stole the ship and tied up the captain. Kaggs hoped to unload the gold at Smuggler’s Bay. But he wasn’t too good a sailor. He ran the ship on a reef and punched a hole in the bottom. We caught up with him, untied the captain, and Kaggs was clapped into the brig. If your plane came around again the pilot must have noticed that after we got under way we no longer headed for Smuggler’s Bay but straight for Brisbane. And here we are - prepared to hand over half of the treasure to the Australian government. Doesn’t that prove we weren’t interested in any smuggling?’
11 Diving Adventure Page 15
