“How many laid up, Bob?” asked Carroll sadly.
“Well, there’s only eleven of the crew that won’t get out of their bunks for a while,” replied Bob, “but everybody on the ship except me and my tender is shot up or stabbed somewhere. And there were five dead under that tarpaulin on the fantail,” he added mournfully.
It had been a busy afternoon. With Bob’s report on the Santa Cruz, Lieutenant Carroll felt it useless to continue diving; indeed, except Bob, there wasn’t a diver left anyway. With his decimated crew, he had not bothered to unmoor or to pick up his now useless mooring-anchors. They had cut loose the four hawsers, cast off all the mooring-buoys, and let them drift away, while the mooring-wires sank to the bottom; within thirty minutes nothing remained on the surface of the sea to mark the spot where they had toiled for nearly three months.
Meanwhile, the boilers had been lit again, and the Lapwing steamed slowly in toward El Morro Island, towing her surf-boat. Close to the beach, Carroll stopped, headed off shore. He dared not anchor, for with his smashed engine, he could not weigh the anchor once he let it go.
The surf-boat was dragged up under the counter, the pirates compelled to come on board again, closely guarded by armed sentries. The pirate dead were lowered over the stern into the boat, run ashore through the surf. Four trips were required to complete the gruesome task — at last the silent bodies were laid out stiffly on the white sand.
Six at a time, the living pirates were ferried ashore, their arms tightly lashed behind their backs to prevent any attack on the boat crew.
With the last boatload went one rifle, two knives, a breaker of water, forty rounds of cartridges, some matches, and a small package of bandages and medicines.
Carroll went in on the final trip, saw the last group straggle ashore through the surf, and sent a seaman over to carry ashore the matches, medicine, and cartridges, and ensure keeping them dry. He dropped his load far up the beach and raced back to the boat. Already the less wounded pirates were struggling to undo their bonds.
Lieutenant Carroll gazed at the long row of silent forms stretched out on the beach, looked bitterly at the vicious faces of the gory pirates standing near.
In Spanish, he delivered his parting message: “When the Lapwing reaches Boston, we’ll notify the Ecuadorian minister you are here. A ship will someday come to take you away. If you haven’t killed one another off by then, they’ll no doubt hang you all on the wharf at Guayaquil.”
The coxswain started his engine, heading the boat out. A seaman flung the knives ashore and pitched the rifle after them. The fettered pirates flung themselves on the knives, struggling awkwardly to cut themselves loose.
“Adios!” shouted Carroll as the boat plunged seaward towards the Lapwing. A volley of curses rolled across the waves in answer.
The Lapwing stood off a little farther for safety, then swung over her boom and hoisted in the surf-boat. Slowly the ship ran out to the eastward, keeping El Morro astern until they were a league off shore.
Carroll stopped the engine as they drifted across the spot where lay the Santa Cruz. The entire crew (that is those who could leave their bunks) were mustered on the fantail. There were a few brief hours before the rattle of musketry and the din of battle had echoed, the men stood silently at attention while Lieutenant Carroll read the brief service for burial at sea, and reverently, one by one, they consigned the weighted bodies of their five dead shipmates to the deep.
A moment’s silence while they bowed their heads in sorrow, then the captain closed his Bible, and straightened up.
“Boatswain’s mate, pipe down!”
The little group broke up and straggled below to nurse their stiffening wounds.
The Lapwing turned her prow northward, and as the afternoon faded into night, they watched the sharp castle rock on El Morro disappear below the horizon. Carroll, thinking of his broken divers, the cut-up remnant of his crew, his eleven badly wounded men, and the five seamen who had died on his bullet-ridden deck, watched it go without regret. Back aft he saw several sailors shaking their fists at the fatal spot as it vanished from their sight.
The radio crackled, a message went through the air.
From: Lieutenant Carroll, U.S.N.
To: Commandant Naval Station Coco Solo, Canal Zone.
S.S. Lapwing in action with pirate vessel off El Morro Island Stop Coming north with wounded Stop Request convoy and surgeon as soon as possible Stop Signed Carroll. MASTER.
The Lapwing steamed on through the night, Bob standing a watch while Carroll slept.
Day broke to find them well on their way, Peru and Ecuador far astern.
Joe Hawkins on his crutches hobbled to the forecastle, slowly managed to make his way down into the fore-hold, where, with Bob, Bill Clark, and Lieutenant Carroll, they surveyed the heap of golden ingots. Joe’s eyes gleamed as he saw the yellow hoard for the first time; he hefted a few of the bars, feasting his eyes on the remainder.
Together they counted their treasure. Three hundred and twenty bars. Bob figured hastily on the bulkhead.
“Five million dollars!” he announced.
The little vessel moved constantly northward. A little past noon, a streak of smoke was sighted dead ahead; it rose rapidly above the horizon, and bore down on them. A little anxiously they watched it, until at last the quartermaster, straining his eye through his telescope, announced: “A destroyer!”
Soon she swept up, a rainbow of spray dancing on each bow as she gracefully split the waves. A thick haze poured from her four funnels as she raced on; they cheered as she rounded astern of them, and the Stars and Stripes fluttered from her gaff.
The Lapwing stopped, the destroyer steamed slowly up, manoeuvred alongside. The two ships rolled gently to the swells, touched an instant. A surgeon leapt aboard; a case of instruments was pitched after him and deftly caught by Bill Clark. The destroyer sheered away and took station on their starboard quarter as the Lapwing started her engine ahead again.
In the starboard passage, Lieutenant Carroll greeted the surgeon heartily.
“Well, if it isn’t Reed!” He shook his hand vigorously. “Bob, meet my old shipmate, Surgeon Reed. He’s fought two submarine campaigns with me, Bob. Surgeon, this is Mr Porter. He’s the only person on the ship who isn’t nearly cut to pieces!”
While they talked, they went below, and soon the surgeon was busy probing wounds, extracting bullets and shell-splinters, bandaging cuts, sewing up gashes.
He paused long over Frank Martin, who was still unconscious. Carefully he felt his skull, explored the jagged cuts in his legs where the bursting shell had struck.
“A slight concussion,” he said at last. “He’ll come round all right.”
The surgeon worked constantly until late into the night before the last wound was dressed, the last bullet extracted. The smell of iodoform permeated the ship from end to end.
“Never saw anything like this before,” exclaimed Surgeon Reed, when at last he closed his instrument case. “Must have been some fight.”
“It shuah wuz, doctuh,” said Fitz, who was carrying his antiseptics. “Why, Ah done killed ten o’ dem pirates by mahself! Ah tells you, a razuh am mighty handy in dat kind ob a scrap!”
The surgeon looked at the slashes on Fitz’s plastered countenance. He nodded his head, whispered to Carroll: “Your mess boy may be telling the truth at that!”
Chapter 24
Ten days later, the Lapwing slipped quietly through President Roads, steamed into Boston Harbour, and ran close up to the Navy pier in South Boston. Heaving-lines shot through the air, hawsers dragged after them, and soon the ship was warped alongside.
On the bridge, Bob Porter stood proudly at Lieutenant Carroll’s side; bronzed and erect, a sailor himself, he looked happily out over the crowd to greet them. On the wharf, four armoured trucks waited; near them a squad of motorcycle police, with machine guns mounted in side-cars, stood grimly by.
Astern a whistle loudly blew four blasts. Carrol
l turned. Their destroyer escort was saying farewell, slipping past them on her way to the Charlestown Navy Yard.
Bob seized the Lapwing’s whistle-cord, and their deep-toned whistle roared out its thanks. Carroll waved gaily as his Navy shipmates disappeared.
Once more they turned to the dock. The gangway was shoved out, a stream of reporters followed Major Houghton on board. While he clambered up on the bridge and affectionately greeted his nephew and the skipper, cameras clicked, movie handles turned, and the reporters pressed forward for an interview.
Major Houghton turned to them.
“Gentlemen, if you will wait in the wardroom below, Lieutenant Carroll will answer all your questions in a moment.” The bridge cleared.
The three reunited adventurers leaned over what was left of the bridge rail, and watched the forward boom swing bar after bar of gold up on deck where Bill Clark and Joe Hawkins tallied it, then turned it over to the bank attendants who staggered over the gang-plank and dropped their burdens in the armoured cars.
In half an hour it was all up. The steel doors on the cars slammed to and were locked inside. A police-whistle sounded, the motorcycles coughed and sputtered, then, with the trucks flanked on all sides by machine guns, the procession bearing the treasure of the Santa Cruz moved briskly off.
For an hour, Carroll and Bob answered questions shot from all sides by the eager correspondents; finally they escaped only because their interviewers had to rush away to get their stories on the wires for the afternoon editions.
The cabin quieted down.
“So you got five millions,” said the banker, breaking the silence at last. “That’s fine!”
“We’d have got the rest of it if it hadn’t been for those pirates and their confounded ship!” exclaimed Bob. “Why, there’s at least four millions left! And I’ll bet if we go back, we can tunnel under El Fuego and get to the strong-room again!”
“Maybe you can if you go back,” said Carroll laughingly, “but I’m through! And I’ll bet you’ll have to get a new set of divers too. This gang has had enough!”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Bob at last. “They’re all banged up. But I’d give my eye-teeth to see what was in that chest. I nearly had it open when the fight started and you called me up,” he added regretfully.
“Well, I’m curious too,” said Carroll, “but it’s going to be one of the things I’ll have to pass the rest of my life without finding out. No more salvage expeditions for me!”
They discussed the division of the treasure. It was unanimously agreed to divide it into five equal parts.
For his work in fitting out the salvage expedition and supervising the diving, Lieutenant Carroll received one share — a million dollars. For conceiving the idea and for his work on the wreck, Bob also received a full share. In consideration of his risk and the expense of financing the Lapwing, Major Houghton was to take a full share.
The fourth share was to be split in four equal parts; one of these, amounting to a quarter of a million dollars, was to go to each of the four divers. The fifth and last share was to be split into thirty-five parts, with one part, about thirty thousand dollars, going to each of the twenty-five members of the crew who survived, and two parts, or sixty thousand dollars, going to the relatives of each one of the five sailors who were killed off El Morro.
“That looks like an equitable distribution,” announced the banker when it had all been written out, “but I’m afraid I can’t abide by it.”
Bob looked at his uncle in pained surprise and flushed violently.
“If you’d seen how those men fought the sea down there and finally fought to save the gold, you wouldn’t complain!” he snapped out heatedly.
“That’s exactly why I can’t agree, my boy,” announced Major Houghton pleasantly. “I can’t take my share. I’ll reimburse myself only for the hundred and fifty thousand dollars it cost to fit out. I’m going to divide the rest of it between the divers, the crew, and the Navy Relief Society to look out for the families of other sailors who have lost their lives.”
Bob flushed even more deeply, apologising profusely to his uncle, while Lieutenant Carroll, seizing the banker’s hand, wrung it vigorously.
“You’re a man after my own heart, sir!” he exclaimed.
Carroll stepped into the passage, looked aft, and shouted: “Boatswain’s mate!”
Bill Clark ran forward as fast as his wounded leg permitted, saluted his captain.
“Muster all hands!”
For the last time, the boatswain’s pipe whistled through the ship. The crew tumbled up and fell in on the fantail. Major Houghton looked them over. Bandaged legs, bandaged arms, livid slashes on their faces bore witness to what they had gone through.
On his crutches, Joe Hawkins stood alongside his much-bandaged shipmate, Frank Martin, while Bill Clark leaned on the rail next to them. In the rear, the twenty-five sailors and firemen stood at attention as well as possible.
Carroll drew a yellow form from his pocket.
“Men, I’m glad to say that a cable came this morning from the American Consul in Guayaquil. He says Tom Williams left the hospital there yesterday well but weak, and is on his way north. He’ll be with us again in about fifteen days.”
A yell broke out, for Tom had been a favourite with all hands.
But when Carroll next read out the agreement for the distribution of the treasure — and added the bonus that each man would get from the major’s share, the cheering broke all bounds. Their dreams of wealth were realised at last. The sailors suddenly broke ranks and rushed ashore to celebrate their luck.
The major’s car drew up to the gangway. He looked at it, then shook hands with Lieutenant Carroll.
“Come, Bob, we’d better go. Will you join us at dinner tonight in Brookline, Lieutenant?”
Carroll shook his head.
“Tomorrow, Major, I’ll be glad to. Tonight I’d rather stay on board.”
They left. Soon the divers followed them ashore. Only Fitz remained on board to serve his dinner. After the meal, he too went on leave.
Night fell, the waves lapped against the deserted ship. A few loungers, strolling down the pier, saw only a solitary officer, rambling idly beneath the moon over a silent vessel. But as Lieutenant Carroll wandered from fantail to diving-station, from the ‘iron doctor’ to the bridge, from forecastle to superstructure, he saw the silent Lapwing once more peopled with her crew, the divers struggling on the bottom, facing the unseen dangers of the depths; once more he felt the swift rush of the pirates down the fantail and heard the fierce cries of battle. And, as he looked out upon the peaceful city and the quiet docks, he half wished himself back in the Pacific, a league off El Morro, moored once more over the Santa Cruz.
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