Thirty Fathoms Deep

by Ellsberg, Edward

  “Great idea,” thought the skipper. “It’ll keep the quarters below a lot cooler. I’ll have to see they rig the superstructure awning over my cabin.”

  On the forecastle, Martin and another group of sailors were connecting up diving-hoses. Martin himself inserted the leather washers in each joint, supervised while the men tightened the joints, stretched the hoses out on deck, and ranged a lifeline alongside each hose.

  Every few feet, the men stoppered the hose and lifeline together with marline, except the last fifty feet which were to be attached to the diver. This section of the diver’s lines was encased in a canvas sleeve, drawn tightly about the lifeline and air-hose, and carefully sewn up with palm and sailor’s needle. This precaution was to allow as little chance as possible for the lines near a diver to foul in anything while he was working on the wreck — a trick in rigging up which the men had learned on their submarine jobs. When each line had been made up to a length of six hundred feet, Martin coupled it to the air-manifold and put on an air-pressure, while he tried the joints with soap and water. The few joints which showed themselves to be leaky were carefully tightened up, and only after no bubbles at all appeared were the long hoses coiled up and taken aft to be hung abaft the deckhouse ready for use.

  Hawkins and his men finished the awnings, and opened the fore hold; and soon a stream of diving-helmets, lead belts, shoes, lamps, and diving-gear flowed up on deck and aft to the fantail, ready for use.

  Meanwhile on the after end of the superstructure, the electrician was rigging up the telephone sets, testing out the cables, headsets, and batteries; while down below the chief engineer slowly turned over the air-compressors and tuned up for supplying compressed air.

  All over the Lapwing the crew toiled, rigging the ship for working on the bottom. The booms were guyed out over the passages, the diving-stages assembled, the winches warmed up and oiled. A machinist tested out the gauges while the pressure on the diving-mains was gradually built up to a hundred and fifty pounds. Nothing was left to chance; each piece of machinery and equipment was carefully tried out.

  Off the beam, the two boats dragged their endless ways, first eastward, then westward, each time a little farther from the Lapwing and the buoys which marked their starting-points. Easily they rode the swells, the strain on their grapnels holding down their sterns, but they made no strikes, and when noon rolled round the object of their search was still not found. Each boat dropped another buoy to mark the ground it had covered, buoyed off its grappling-line, and ran alongside the ship. The men clambered aboard, hot and hungry. Carroll greeted the two coxswains at the rail; their reports were identical.

  “Not a nibble, Captain.”

  After dinner the boats went out again, with fresh crews but the same coxswains. All afternoon the sputtering of the engines coming across the water showed that the boats were still at their tasks. Darkness came, more buoys were dropped to mark the stopping-points, and the boats came in for the night.

  They had covered an area half a mile long and nearly an eighth of a mile wide; six little yellow cork floats dotted the sea to show where they had searched. But they had hooked nothing, and Bob was plainly disappointed.

  Early next morning, the sweeping started again, working once more to the southward. By night, the boats were fully half a mile away from the ship, but it was the same story — no strikes.

  The third morning, Carroll started the boats sweeping on the north side of the Lapwing, and this was kept up all that day and the next but without result. On deck, the crew was getting restless. The work was all done, the diving-gear ready, the men no longer had anything to do but stretch out on the piles of hawsers on the fantail and watch the slow-moving boats weaving their way over the waves.

  Carroll himself became a little anxious. He checked over all his calculations, took anew the bearings and the ranges, but found nothing wrong. They were anchored in the proper spot as accurately as the data Don Jaime gave would allow. The boats had scraped the sea for nearly a square mile, and certainly the Santa Cruz, if she was anywhere, was inside that square.

  The captain changed his tactics. On the fifth day he started the two boats dragging in the north and south direction, at right angles to the courses they had previously worked on. Possibly the Santa Cruz had sunk still headed west; if so, she would be lying broadside to the new direction and a grapnel would catch her more easily.

  Again the boats started close to the Lapwing and worked away from her, going the second time over the sea-bottom they had once dragged; but in spite of careful sweeping, four more days went by, and they had thoroughly scoured the bottom twice, and yet had discovered nothing.

  Bob kept to himself as much as possible. He was beginning to lose hope. Even if the ship had been there, perhaps in the hundreds of years which had gone by she had fallen to pieces or sunk in the mud — in either case there was apparently nothing left for a grappling-hook to seize. And when the eighth day’s search was over and the boats came back again, he began to realise that the expedition had reached an inglorious end. A tough condition to have to explain at home. But at least Major Houghton would understand. Lucky for me the major had such a clear head on this thing, he thought to himself. If it were anyone else, I guess I’d never hear the last of it.

  In the cabin that night, while they had their dinner, Bob voiced his fears to Carroll, but he was glad to hear that the skipper did not agree with him.

  “Cheer up, old man, we’re going to wear out half a dozen grappling-hooks round here before we call it quits. And the first two have hardly had the galvanizing rubbed off ’em yet.

  “This dragging is a rotten job. I know for a fact that you can sweep right over a wreck time after time without catching her, but if she’s there, you will, sometime. I was a little worried over whether we had the right position, but everything’s O.K. there. I’ve carefully watched the sun set every night we’ve been here and that bearing over El Morro is a fine mark. Of course it doesn’t set right over the rock from where we are now, because it’s later in the season than when Drake finished the Spaniards off, but Don Jaime couldn’t have made any mistake on that.”

  “But suppose she’s fallen to pieces?” asked Bob.

  “I doubt it. It’s remarkable how long wood lasts in deep water, where the ship-worms can’t get at it. No, if she was ever there, she’s there now, and we’re going to find her. But I’ll try a new tack tomorrow that ought to fetch her.”

  Bob looked at him questioningly. “If it’s so good why didn’t you use it in the beginning? What is it, anyway?”

  “It really requires two ships to work it right,” replied Carroll, “and that’s why I held it up as a last resort. Instead of grappling-hooks, we’ll tow a wire line across the bottom — the Lapwing will tow one end and both the boats will try to tow the other end. I’ll use a one-inch wire hawser I’ve got below. We’ll pay out about three hundred fathoms between us, and if the boats can drag their end, we’ll sweep a path about a hundred fathoms wide each trip. The Lapwing’s a mine-sweeper, you know — that’s what she was built for. If I only had her sister ship, my old Falcon, to drag the other end of that line, we’d be all set!”

  Bob brightened up. Evidently his friend considered disappointments as all in the day’s work. He finished his dinner with considerably more appetite and waited hopefully for the next day.

  The rattle of the anchor chain as the links pounded in through the hawse-pipe wakened Bob in the morning. With the anchor at short stay, the Lapwing moved slowly to the eastward until she reached the line of buoys marking out the swept field on that side, then she came about and pointed for El Morro.

  The two boats in tandem then shoved off from her port side, the surf-boat leading with a heavy towline to the wider motorboat astern. And secured by a stout manila lashing to a Samson’s post on the quarter of the motorboat was the end of the wire hawser.

  The Lapwing stopped while the two boats moved away on her beam, the wire running out over the rail as the r
eel unwound. With fifty fathoms out, the boat paused a moment while Joe Hawkins lashed several old grate-bars to the wire as a sinker; then continued to pull until two hundred and fifty fathoms were out, when a second set of bars were lashed on. The boats then headed up parallel to the ship, and the last fifty fathoms of wire were paid out over the Lapwing’s quarter. The sweep hung in a huge bight, leading sharply down and aft at each end.

  A sharp blast sounded on the Lapwing’s whistle. The boats went ahead, their propellers churning violently; the wake from the surf-boat was plainly marked as it surged round the bow of the boat abaft it. Slowly the two boats made headway with their wire. When he was sure they were underway, Carroll started gradually on his own engine. The sweep changed its direction, taking a wide curve between its two ends, as it started westward.

  With the boats at her side, the Lapwing started on her ninth day’s search. To Bob it seemed as if they were hardly moving; it took thirty minutes to cover the half-mile between the east and the west buoys. They swept a little beyond the western mark, then on a whistled signal, the ship and the boats turned away from each other, came about a hundred and eighty degrees and headed back eastward, straightening out about fifty yards to the southward of the first sweep.

  Again the wire tautened out astern and assumed a curve between the towing vessels as they moved slowly ahead. Bob gazed admiringly at the seamanlike way the manoeuvre was performed, then looked to the eastward over the blank sea. A few yellow buoys, the endless swells, the far horizon. He looked aft at the wire over the starboard quarter. What a hopeless task!

  The boats were abeam, the coxswains with their tillers straining to counteract the pull of the sweep dragging them towards the Lapwing. Slowly they all moved along, the Lapwing stopping her engine every few minutes to avoid gaining on her over-burdened boats.

  “Look!” Hawkins from the fantail was pointing excitedly.

  The two small boats, in spite of their engines, seemed to be going astern — they were back on the Lapwing’s quarter. And the sweep, instead of running out in an easy curve astern, now led sharply out to starboard in a straight line!

  “Hard right!” cried Carroll. He seized a megaphone. “Surf-boat there! Head for the Lapwing’s bow!”

  In a moment, the boats were alongside the Lapwing, their bow painters secured to her bitts; the Lapwing which had stopped, kicked ahead slowly on her engine. The sweep stretched out and led down astern, but the ship did not move. They had caught something!

  Hastily Clark in the surf-boat cast free the motorboat astern of him, sheered away from the ship, and steered out over the sweep-wires. On a signal from Carroll he dropped the anchor of a marker-buoy when he was over the spot where he estimated the sloping wire reached the bottom. This done, the Lapwing transferred the other end of the sweep to the motorboat, thus giving her both ends of the wire, carried an anchor out well forward for her and let it go, so as to hold the motorboat with the sweep taut astern of her.

  The Lapwing headed for the spot where the last buoy floated, dropped anchor a little to the southward of it, then paid out cable until she drifted back past the buoy. Over went a kedge anchor on a hawser from the stern; Carroll heaved in on the bower cable and paid out on the kedge until he was abreast of the buoy which Martin picked up with a boathook. The surf-boat came alongside.

  With the ship anchored, Lieutenant Carroll left the bridge and went aft. Nearly the whole crew was eagerly watching the buoy-line. He beckoned to Hawkins.

  “Get your rig on, Joe!”

  Carroll scanned the little group of sailors.

  “Carley.”

  Tom Carley left the rail and saluted.

  “Carley, the surf-boat will take you to the motorboat out there. You relieve Williams as coxswain and hold on until you get further word.”

  A gruff, “Ay, ay, sir!” and Carley dropped over the rail. In a few minutes, Williams was back on deck, and with Clark, who was taken out of the surf-boat, was helping Martin to dress Joe Hawkins.

  Quickly they hauled on his stiff suit, bolted on the breastplate, strapped on his belt, laced on his lead shoes. A brief test of the telephone and they slipped on his headset, then dropped the helmet over his head. Williams gave it a sharp twist to lock the joint; the safety catch dropped into place.

  Hawkins rose awkwardly. Tom and Bill assisted him to the stage where he grasped a bail with each hand to steady himself.

  “Up stage!” ordered Carroll.

  On the superstructure, the winchman threw in his clutch. The stage rose slowly off the deck until it cleared the rail and could be pushed over the side.

  “Down stage!”

  The whip slacked off, the little steel platform dropped. A swell struck it, swirling over Hawkins’ feet. Quickly he submerged, the upper part of his suit bulging out through his harness as the water rose round him. In a moment his helmet was below the surface, and a stream of bubbles floated up behind him.

  The stage paused a minute. In the water, Joe adjusted his air and tried out his exhaust. Carroll slipped a telephone receiver over his own head and lifted the transmitter to his lips.

  “Hello, Joe! All right?”

  “O.K. Take me to the descending-line.”

  Bob leaned over the rail. Tom Williams took a firm grip on the lifelines. Hawkins felt the strain, stepped off the stage, and dangled in the water. Nothing below him now. Clark helped Williams as he dragged the diver forward to the buoy-line. Joe saw it wavering in front of him, grasped it, wound his legs round the manila. He was ready.

  “Lower away!” called the skipper.

  Tom slacked out rapidly and Joe’s helmet disappeared from sight. The stream of bubbles rose farther and farther away from the ship as Joe went deeper and the current affected them more and more.

  Fifty feet, a hundred feet, a hundred and fifty feet of air-hose vanished silently over the rail. Hawkins was making a swift descent. A few seconds more and the lines stopped running out.

  A pause. Carroll listened intently on the telephone. He heard the roar of air through Joe’s helmet. It ceased a moment. Joe was turning off his air. Carroll pressed the receiver tightly to his ear. In a strangely flat, faraway tone, came the message from the bottom:

  “On the Santa Cruz!”

  The strain vanished. Carroll’s hat went sailing into the air.

  “Got her!” he yelled.

  To Bob, the sky seemed suddenly to brighten. The nine days’ search was over, at last they had their ship!

  Frank Martin leaned far out over the rail with a boat-hook, speared the captain’s hat as it drifted by, and gave it to him with a grin. Water dripped down Carroll’s neck as he jammed the shapeless cap back on his head, but disregarding that, he listened intently on the diving-telephone.

  Chapter 13

  At the bottom of the sea, Joe Hawkins peered out curiously through his face-plate. Against the dark grey background of the ocean floor there rose a few feet in front of him a vague shape, fading out altogether a short distance away. The anchor of his descending-line rested on the bottom at his feet. Dimly he could discern the outlines of a vessel, but the shape seemed unnatural. Not to lose his contact with the surface, he dragged the buoy-line anchor with him as he moved slowly towards the ship, breathing heavily from his exertion. Twenty feet and he was touching something. He leaned over to examine it. A rudder. He unscrewed his diving-knife from its sheath, cut loose the anchor, screwed back his knife, and secured the descending-line to an iron band projecting from the rudder.

  Hawkins walked back a few steps, a fine cloud of mud rising through the water under each foot as he moved, almost as if he were walking on a dusty road. He turned and looked again, trying to figure out what he saw. It had the shape of no ship he had ever heard of.

  “Guess this pressure must be getting me. I can’t see straight,” he muttered to himself. To clear his head, he felt for the exhaust-valve on his helmet, eased the spring, then opened wide the control-valve on his air-hose. A gust of air swept through his he
lmet, his suit bulged a little more over his chest; large masses of air bubbles streamed from the back of his helmet and disappeared in the water overhead.

  He took a few deep breaths, then looked again. Ah! Now he saw what was wrong.

  The rudder was lying horizontally, the rudder-post just clearing the bottom.

  The Santa Cruz was lying on her beam ends, half buried in the ocean floor!

  He walked slowly back until again he touched the ship, then looking upward first to make sure that there was nothing overhanging to foul his lifeline, he went cautiously round the stern. Vaguely he could make out the framework of the high poop, square ports cut through, tier over tier. The wood framing was white with the clusters of barnacles which in the centuries had grown there, layer on layer; the dark ports stood out sharply in contrast. Here and there a fleck of gold shone through, the gilding no doubt of the richly ornamented stern, where the growth had not adhered.

  The diver came to the end of the poop. Already the rudder had faded from his view. He looked along the vertical deck which rose steeply from the bottom at his feet. It seemed to merge into the dark water a little beyond.

  Hawkins looked up. His lifeline still led away at an angle, clear of the ship, but the long sweep of line was straining on him, tending to pull him over. He leaned forward, as if facing a heavy windstorm, and proceeded. The pull was too great; he made no headway.

  Bracing both feet in the hard sand, he seized his lifeline with both hands, pulled it twice. In a moment he felt two answering jerks, then the line started to slack off and hung in an easier curve. Again he started ahead.

  The deck rose up alongside him, a greyish white like the poop; some dark holes here and there marked where hatches had been cut through. He bumped against something and stopped. The thick stump of a mast stuck out from the deck, blocking his path. He walked outboard, carefully scanning the mast to make sure no rigging shrouded it to foul him as he went. He saw none. Evidently the manila cordage had long since disintegrated and been swept away.