Thirty Fathoms Deep

by Ellsberg, Edward

  The line swayed more strongly. Bob looked up. He thrilled to see another diver dropping rapidly through the water. Much magnified as Bob saw him through his face-plate, he seemed a ten-foot giant as he shot downward past Bob, an ever-widening cone of bubbles streaming through the water from his helmet like the tail of a skyrocket. He disappeared below. Bill Clark was making the last dive of the day.

  Slowly, stage by stage, Bob rose through all the steps in the decompression-table until he could see the red hull of the Lapwing in the water above, and the mirror-like surface of the sea gleamed over him. At last came the welcome word, “Coming aboard!”

  He gripped the bails, the stage rose, he burst through the surface. His suit suddenly became immensely heavy, and he clung tightly to the stage as it was lifted above the rail and swayed drunkenly inboard. Down came the platform on deck, a bench was shoved in behind his knees, he felt a pair of hands on his shoulders pressing him down. He sat down thankfully.

  Someone seized his shoulders, other hands gripped his helmet. He felt a sharp twist, the joint came loose, and his helmet was carefully lifted off.

  Bob threw his head back and drank in the brilliance of the sunlight, the freshness of the open air. He was up!

  Carroll pushed through the crowd of dressers, gripped his dripping hand, and squeezed it enthusiastically.

  “Great work, Bob! And Joe Hawkins just sent up word from his bunk that he’s proud of you. He said he’s quit worrying about his broken leg now he’s got you to take his turn!”

  Chapter 22

  For two more days the work went on feverishly. About half the gold was brought on board. In the same order, Frank, Bob, and Bill went down. Accustomed to the work, each time they did a little better. On one side of the strong-room, they were down to the bare deck; on the other side, they had removed enough bars to expose one end of a heavy iron chest.

  “We got two days more to try and then we’ll have to clear out,” said Carroll after Bob had come up from his third dive. “No matter how much is left, we can’t risk staying any longer.”

  “Too bad it’s such a tortuous path to the treasure room,” mused Bob. If only the Lapwing could get a straight pull up, we could lift it all in a couple of dives.”

  “Yes, I’ve thought of that too, but there’s nothing in it. If we try heaving, the line has to go round so many corners, including the sharp edge of that hole in the iron, that it’d be sure to saw in half and we’d only lose time. It’ll have to keep on as a mule-hauling job for you divers.”

  Bob felt an inward thrill at the unconcerned way in which Carroll spoke of ‘you divers’; the adventure was more glorious than he had ever dreamed. Trying to look casual, however, he said: “We’ve got to get a look into that chest, even if it means leaving some of the ingots. There must be something special there.”

  Carroll agreed with him, and after discussing it further with the other two divers, it was decided that for the next day Frank should remove and send up the gold over the chest; what time he had left, he was to put in burning away the locks and, if necessary, the hinges; Bob, following him, was to finish the burning job if required and pry open the lid. What he and Bill, who would follow him, should do would depend on what they saw inside the chest.

  The afternoon dragged along. The two divers — boatswain’s mate and chief torpedo-man — lay in their bunks below, resting from the strain of their hour on the bottom. Bob, whom more than ever they felt to be one of them, stretched out in Tom Williams’ empty berth and regaled Joe Hawkins with his descriptions of the strong-room and its contents.

  Joe, his bandaged leg stretched stiffly out on his mattress, looked dolefully at the pair of crutches which the carpenter had made for him.

  “The skipper says in a week I’ll be allowed on deck on them things. And here you ’n Frank ’n Bill are just revellin’ in pigs of gold while I got to stay up here on my back and swear. Just think, you gobs; I’ll never see the inside of that strong-room. ’N that after all I done to break the path through. Even poor Tom got a look before he got his.” He sighed. “I’ll be the only one. ’N ever since I been diving, I dreamed about the time I’d have a chance to swim around in some treasure ship and sort o’ kick the gold round careless like with my lead shoes. Now there’s the gold ’n here ’m I, and I can’t even kick a coil o’ rope. It’s enough to make a diver cry.” He groaned miserably.

  Bill tried to cheer him up.

  “Never mind, Joe. It ain’t nuthin’ to worry over. There’s so much gold down there, you get sick lookin’ at it.”

  Bob laughed. Frank turned angrily on the brawny boatswain’s mate.

  “A slick little consoler you are, Bill. What ails you, anyway; do you think that’ll make Joe feel better? I always thought boatswain’s mates wuz thick; now I know it!”

  Bill’s face grew red. He looked meaningfully at Frank.

  “Well, I guess nobody’s ever been able to decide which wuz more unreliable — torpedo-men or their torpedoes.”

  “Aw, belay the fightin’,” counselled Joe. “I’ll be content with goin’ down in our own hold when we get headed north and I’m up again, and gettin’ an eyeful of those ingots there. It’ll never be the same, but it’ll do. Say, shipmates, how many bars are there, anyway?”

  When night fell, that question was still being vigorously argued.

  Morning came with a light breeze and an easy roll. Martin went over the side, taking the torch with him, and sent up thirteen ingots. He reported that he had the top of the chest clear and one lock off when his time expired and Carroll ordered him up. He left the torch below.

  There was a long delay before Bob went over. His telephone set failed to work on the test just before his helmet went on. After considerable time lost in testing the cable inside the lifeline, the batteries, the ship end of the circuit, and the instruments, it finally turned out that the transmitter inside the helmet had developed a ground. As the transmitter was soldered into the helmet, it meant using a new helmet and since helmets and breastplates went in matched sets, the dressers had to unbolt the breastplate secured to Bob’s suit and put another in its place before they could proceed. As a result, Frank Martin finished his decompression and was aboard by the time Bob was finally ready to go over.

  Again Bob tested his equipment and found it satisfactory the second time. A short crowbar was lashed to his belt, he took a canvas bag and was hoisted out. He noticed a slight pain in his ears as, near the surface, the waves passed over him and varied the pressure rapidly. As quickly as possible he slid down where the wave-pressure was no longer felt.

  Bob reached bottom, crawled down the ever-forbidding tunnel, worked his way into the passage with his equipment, and saw the torch and the light still hanging in the opening to the strong-room. He slid down a line inside, and with the lamp in front of him, pushed through the water to the spot where the black top of an iron chest protruded through a heap of yellow bars.

  Bob examined the chest carefully. Two heavy hasps, each secured by a massive iron lock, had held down the lid. One hasp had been burned through by Martin, the other, still partly covered, was intact. Bob set his lamp carefully on the deck, and heaved aside the ingots in his way. Soon it was clear.

  Bob picked up the torch, and as he had been trained, turned on the gases and lit it. The banging of the flame startled him at first, but he quickly steadied down and swung the torch to the hasp. He lost a little time in getting preheat enough to make the metal glow, and had to readjust the flame several times before he got the proper mixture in the flame, but when he had it, he was surprised at the speed with which the iron, in spite of the surrounding water, grew red hot and flashed away in a brilliant stream of sparks when the trigger was pressed. A few seconds and the hasp was burned in half. He extinguished the torch.

  Bob felt for the crowbar tied to his belt, gripped it, and cut away the marline holding it. A little clumsily, the diver inserted the wedge point of the bar into the joint between chest and lid, and pried up.
The cover held fast. Evidently the iron had, as a result of its long submersion, practically rusted solid. Bob worked his bar up and down along the joint, gradually sprung it a little, and by fractions of an inch pried up the lid until he could get the full bar entered across one of the corners, when he braced his shoulder under the bar and prepared to burst the cover open.

  On the surface, Lieutenant Carroll, as usual, listened on the diving-telephone. He heard Bob’s laboured breathing as he struggled with the cover and wondered what the chest enclosed.

  “Captain!”

  He looked up hastily. On the bridge the quartermaster was pointing excitedly.

  Carroll turned the telephone over to a tender, ran forward and climbed the ladder to the bridge. Off on the eastern horizon, a thick cloud of smoke was plainly visible; through a telescope he could make out the hull of a steamer already no more than ten miles off. He studied it a moment; with a bone in her teeth, the ship was heading directly for them.

  Carroll dropped his glass discouraged.

  “So they worked a lot faster than I thought they could,” he muttered under his breath. “Well, it’ll be up to the sea lawyers now. Tough, just when we’d done all the hard work.”

  He walked to the rail. Aft the tenders ‘fished’ Bob’s lifeline. He shook his head. “Might as well leave the rest down there,” he thought. Aloud he called: “How long’s Mr Porter been down?”

  The timekeeper looked at his watch.

  “Only twenty minutes, sir.”

  “Never mind,” ordered Carroll, “bring him up right away!”

  He picked up his telescope again, scanned the fast-approaching ship. Peru had only a few cruisers; which would it be? The Esmeralda most likely; she was their fastest.

  The strange ship was only a few miles off now, but bows on, it was difficult to make her out. Even over her bow though she looked queer. No cruiser he ever knew had such a low bridge.

  A question flashed through his mind. Odd it hadn’t occurred to him before, he thought. Was she a cruiser after all?

  “Boatswain’s mate!”

  Bill Clark ran forward, looked up for the word.

  “Pipe all hands! Tell Frank Martin to send up those cases of rifles, all the pistols we’ve got, and break out that machine gun! On the double!”

  The shrill pipe and Clark’s hoarse calls rang below decks. In a trice, practically the whole crew was on deck, madly tearing away the covers to the after hold. A mile away the stranger came on; on the Lapwing rifles, Colt automatics and ammunition poured up from below and were feverishly served out to the crew. The Browning machine gun — barrel, tripod, belt — was heaved up on deck, dragged to the forecastle. Methodically Frank Martin assembled the gun, loaded the belt, masked the gun behind the anchor engine, and crouched behind it.

  The strange ship swept on. Lieutenant Carroll scanned it for the last time; it was certainly not a warship. He heaved a sigh of relief — no one else could molest them.

  The Lapwing lay port side to the intruder; Bob’s lifelines led down that side into the water, as far below he clung to the descending line. They had not lowered the stage for him. Carroll surveyed the scene rapidly.

  “Tenders there!” he shouted. “Take Porter’s lifelines round the stern to the starboard side and tend him from behind the deckhouse! And watch you decompress him right!”

  The tenders waved acknowledgment, slacked the line out together with the hoses to the torch which Bob was bringing up, dipped them under the stern and ran the lines forward up the starboard passage, out of sight of the approaching ship. Only the descending-line now rose over the port side.

  Carroll looked aft. His portside passage was lined with armed men.

  “Below there!” he ordered, “all hands down below the bulwarks. Clark, send half a dozen men into the superstructure! Let ’em take cover behind the motorboat!”

  Six men swarmed up the ladder, flattened out behind the gunwales of the heavy boat.

  In silence Carroll watched the fast-approaching steamer. Thirty rifles gleamed over his side, waiting. With his one good arm, he fingered the Colt strapped to his left leg. The other ship was only four hundred yards off, a little on their quarter, heading to pass just inside their port quarter mooring-buoy. She was closer now, he could read the name on her bow — El Fuego.

  Carroll seized his megaphone; with difficulty his one arm held it to his lips.

  “El Fuego there! Keep off or we’ll fire!”

  No answer. He dropped the megaphone.

  “Quartermaster, break out the colours!”

  A little ball of bunting ran up to the masthead. The quartermaster jerked the halliards, the ball burst, and Old Glory floated defiantly above the Lapwing.

  As if in answer, a man sprang to the stern of the other ship, hoisted away on a line to a gaff on their mainmast. A dirty white sheet fluttered from her superstructure, rose slowly to the gaff. Carroll trained his glasses aft, looked at the figure manning the halliards.

  His jaws snapped firmly. As he thought. Tom Carley. He dropped the glasses, watched the strange flag flapping upward.

  In black paint against the white background, a crude skull and a pair of crossed bones stood out starkly. The Jolly Roger floated once more over the Spanish Main! As it reached the gaff, a hoarse cheer rose from the pirate ship and rolled across the water to the silent Lapwing.

  Looking down from his bridge over the low deck of the steamer, Carroll saw a swarm of men, at least a hundred, crowding her rail, bunched on her poop. Knives flashed, pistols were brandished aloft. He examined them through his binoculars — a swarthy crew of varied colours; the scum and riffraff of all nations. White black, yellow, red — negroes, Chinamen, Indians, half-breeds — leaned over El Fuego’s sides, flashed their weapons, and hurled a chorus of yells and oaths across the rapidly shrinking bit of sea between the ships.

  Carroll was far outnumbered. If that mob ever boarded the Lapwing, his little crew would be overwhelmed. He dared not wait longer.

  On the off side of the bridge, he leaned over the weather cloth and called to the little group on his forecastle hiding behind the anchor engine.

  “Cut loose on their bridge!”

  The barrel of the machine-gun swung aft, Martin squinted along the sights, depressed his breech a little. He squeezed the trigger.

  A sharp rattle broke the stillness on the Lapwing. A stream of fire spurted from the black muzzle. A hundred yards off splinters started to fly from the wood sides of El Fuego’s pilot-house; in a few seconds it was riddled with holes. Martin, crouching behind his gun, saw the helmsman let go of the wheel and drop in a heap. The ship suddenly swung away from her course, started to sheer off. An officer leapt for her telegraph and signalled the engine to stop. Grimly Martin sprayed his stream of flying steel across her bridge. The man at the telegraph clutched his side, staggered, and fell. Martin ceased firing. The enemy ship stopped and began drifting slowly towards them.

  The black muzzle of an old field gun was shoved over the pirate’s rail. Looking down, Carroll saw the gun crew rapidly slewing their piece forward. He heard the breech slam.

  Lieutenant Carroll leapt for his rail.

  “Rake their forecastle!”

  The chief torpedo-man pivoted the Browning, depressed a little, and swung towards the cannon aimed at him.

  A flash and a roar from El Fuego. Carroll flung himself to the deck. A shell screamed across the water, tore through the bridge screens on the Lapwing, and threw up a huge column of spray as it burst in the sea beyond.

  The drumming of the machine gun started again. Carroll, peering through the hole torn in his bridge, watched the bullets spatter against the steel bulwark of the pirate, ricochet harmlessly into the water. His machine gun was mounted too low to fire down behind the pirate’s rail. Carroll crawled to the after side of his bridge, shouted to the men in the superstructure crouching behind the motorboat: “Rapid fire on that field-gun crew!”

  The crackling of rifles answered his cry,
but unfortunately his men were merchant seamen, not marksmen; their fire at long range was inaccurate.

  A blinding flash from the field gun; another shell whistled towards them, bursting with a terrific crash on the forecastle. Splinters flew in all directions, Carroll saw his forward-bridge screens torn to shreds as bits of steel hurtled over his prostrate form. He looked down at the ruin on his forecastle; the anchor engine, torn from its bed, lay across the dismounted machine gun. Frank Martin, his head covered with blood, was lying against the lee rail; a seaman, nearly blown apart by the explosion, hung limply over the windlass.

  Carroll groaned. His best defence was gone. He watched the ineffective fire from his superstructure, saw the gun crew behind the rail fifty yards off working madly to reload their ancient field piece. Unless he could silence that gun, the Lapwing was gone. He pulled himself to the edge of the bridge, peered down on deck. In the line of sailors stretched out behind his port rail firing across it, he saw his boatswain’s mate.

  “Clark!” he shouted.

  Bill Clark looked up, saw his captain beckoning. He clutched his rifle, slipped forward, keeping down low, until he lay just below the bridge.

  “Bill,” said Carroll rapidly, “that field gun’ll clean us up in a few more rounds. These lubbers up here can’t hit anything, and the crowd below is too low down to make their fire effective. Get up in the crow’s nest and see that that gun is silenced!”

  Clark nodded. He reached into an ammunition box behind the rail and jammed his pockets full of cartridge clips. Keeping low, he ran through the mess room to the starboard side, caught a brief glimpse of Bob’s tender struggling to haul him up a few feet. Clark slung his rifle across his back, climbed up the superstructure, sprang for the Jacob’s ladder, and scrambled up the mast. As his figure showed sharply against the sky, bullets started to shriek past him. He clung to the swaying ladder, looked to port, saw the muzzle of the field gun training on the mast. A flash. A shell screamed by the mast, the ladder swayed violently. Clark gritted his teeth as he swarmed up. “That’s your last shot!” he breathed grimly.