IN THE DEPTHS
As the steward helped pull up the rubber dress about the body of
Dennis, he spoke in a low voice.
"Beg pardon, sir, but hit looks like you 'ad lost your knife."
Dennis glanced down at the deck where his paraphernalia lay. The
belt and sheath were there; but the large knife, a regular part of
every diver's equipment, was missing.
"That's queer!" he said slowly. "Hm! Probably Corny lost the knife
and didn't notice it. Better get me one from the galley, steward:
it'll take a carving knife to fit that big sheath."
"Yes, sir." The steward slipped off into the mist. The two Kanakas
stood at the pump-wheels, shivering in the mist and talking together.
A moment later the steward reappeared, carrying a long, keenly edged
carving knife. He tried it in the sheath, and it fitted well enough.
"Werry good, sir. All set!"
Dennis liked the little Cockney--he liked the man's thorough
responsibility in his job of watching the pumps. But now, as he
helped adjust the back and breast-pieces, and buckled the belt about
his waist, he felt once more that in this work he was putting himself
in the power of his enemies.
He forced a laugh at the idea; yet it took a supreme effort to
conquer his imagination. They did not want to kill him, of
course--but if they did, how easy in this fog! But that was all
nonsense. There was no question of murdering. The very notion was
folly!
Dennis helped the steward adjust the big copper helmet, and the
Cockney screwed it fast into the neck-plate. A moment later, Dennis
was climbing over the rail. The usual diver's shot-line would carry
him straight down, and besides this, a ladder had been slung over the
stern to assist in the ascent. The steward gave him the four lines,
attached to the rail at intervals which would prevent their fouling
after being attached to the cases, and Dennis slipped down into the
depths.
As always, the steady and regular clicking of the pumps sounded
through his air valves with reassuring effect. Captain Pontifex had
not provided very up-to-date outfits, with telephones and electric
lights and other frills--for this reason no diving work could be done
at night. The suits were good and dependable, however, lacking only
gloves to make them well adapted to this icy water.
Dennis resolutely dismissed all thoughts of possible danger, and
concentrated his attention upon the work in hand.
As Corny had reported, the water down below was clear enough for
work, but the lack of filtering sunlight made it gloomy, grey, and
obscure in details. When at last Dennis felt his feet touch the
bottom, he was forced to stand for a moment and adjust his eyesight
to the altered conditions. Presently he was enabled to descry
objects, and he moved toward the scattered and far-strewn heaps of
boxes which lay between the two sections of the _John Simpson_.
Dennis could see nothing of Pontifex at work below, but in the
present obscurity that was not strange. Besides, the divers, from
waist and stern of the _Pelican_, kept as far apart as possible for
fear of the lines fouling.
Now, as he advanced, Dennis thought that he perceived a dimly moving
shape off to his left to seaward; but it vanished almost instantly.
It might have been some fish, he concluded, or a bunch of drifting
algae. It was now hard upon noon, and the tide was fast on the ebb.
With the strange buoyancy which comes to the diver on the bottom,
Dennis took leaps, one after the other, with a boyish delight. He
cleared no ground this way, however, and soon returned to the slow
progress afoot; there was too much danger of losing his balance and
burying his helmet in the ooze as he came down.
Presently he came to an upright crowbar in a heap of boxes, which
Corny had been using to pry loose each case in order to pass the
bight of a line around it. Dennis found two loose boxes and made
fast two of his lines; but without tying himself to the pile, he
could not use the crowbar--his own buoyancy was too great. So, to
save time, he passed on to some scattered cases ahead.
At this juncture, his remaining two lines fouled about his dragging
air hose. When at length he got them extricated and clear, he had
great difficulty in maintaining his balance against the set of the
tide. But at length he got the first line fast to a box, and with
the second line he secured another.
As he straightened up and grasped his safety-line to signal the
steward that he was ready to ascend, he observed a great shadowy mass
in the water ahead. Accustomed to the gloom by this time, he
perceived that the mass was the after-end of the _John Simpson_,
reaching up through the water on a sharp incline.
He tugged at his line. To his amazement he felt no resistance
whatever. He tugged harder, more sharply--and the line coiled
snakily toward him. At the same instant he heard a sharp click
behind his ear; the safety valve in his helmet had snapped shut. His
air-tight hose and his line had been parted!
In this supreme moment, when he faced inescapable death, Tom Dennis
felt none of his previous fear. His brain worked like a clock.
He knew that either from the stern above, or from the water beneath
he had been cut off and left to die. He had been too slow--he had
failed to heed his inward premonitions. And the sheer horror of it
was that he would not die for a comparatively long time. There was
sufficient air in his helmet and in the bellying folds of his rubber
suit to sustain life for several minutes!
What good would this do him? None! What good would it do him to
reach the line he had made fast to boxes? None. This was no
accident. The ends of his lines told him that they had been cut
clean, severed. Those above would disregard any possible signals,
would let him perish miserably. He could depend upon no one. He was
trapped, helpless, murdered!
Then suddenly, Dennis perceived something in the water behind him.
He turned.
Not a dozen feet distant, another diver stood there, helmet turned
toward him watching. Through the thick glass Dennis glimpsed keen
dark eyes, a gleam of white teeth; this was not Pontifex at all.
Recognition came to him, and a thin cry escaped his lips--Dumont!
Here was the murderer!
Dennis gripped his knife, half-minded to retaliate upon this assassin
who had cut his lines; for in the man's hand he dimly caught the
glitter of steel. But, as Dennis tensed himself for the leap, he
checked the movement--another dim figure had appeared!
Amazement held Dennis spellbound, incredulous. There had been but
two diving-suits aboard the _Pelican_; of this he was quite certain.
Yet here upon the sea floor stood three divers!
Dumont--for the second figure was manifestly that of the cook--stood
staring at Dennis as though inviting any hostile movement. But the
third figure suddenly rose in the water with a great leap--rose and
threw itself forward, and went caroming down upon Frenchy, Then the
answer came to Dennis--a diver from the Jap boat! Under shelter of
the fog, knowing themselves unseen, the little brown men had gone to
work!
And as he realized this, Dennis saw the figures of the two other
divers, plunging together upon the bottom, abruptly obscured from his
sight by a red mist uprising through the water. With horrified
comprehension, Dennis realized that the murderer, Dumont, had been
taken unawares, had been caught in his own trap--had cut the lines of
one man only to have an unseen enemy spring upon him and stab him to
death!
Dennis turned, and with a wild leap left the red-smeared scene behind.
The whole affair, from the moment he had heard his helmet valve
click, had not taken twenty seconds, Already there had sprung into
Dennis's brain the comprehension that he had but one bare slim hope
of salvation--almost subconsciously he was aware of it, and almost
upon intuition he leaped upward through the water. He leaped not
toward the _Pelican_, where he knew well that no help awaited him,
but away from her; he leaped toward the shattered and sundered
afterpart of the _John Simpson_.
Speed now meant life. He could not reach the shore in time,
already--was it fact or imagination?--he fancied that his breathing
was getting more difficult, the air in his lungs hot and vitiated.
There came to him the horrible thought of a diver leaping about the
bottom of the sea, leaping in huge bounds of twenty feet upward,
leaping like a mad crazed animal until the air in his suit gave out
and he dropped head-foremost in the ooze. It was a frantic thought.
Upon the heels of it something tugged at the trailing lifeline and
jerked Dennis down head first.
Knife in hand, he recovered his balance, thinking that the Jap diver
had pursued him. But the trailing end of his line had caught in some
obstruction--nothing more. With a sobbing breath of relief, Dennis
slashed away the line and bore onward with a high leap.
That bound gained the crushed decking of the _John Simpson_. The
afterpart of the wreck lay upon a sharply inclined plane, its broken
forward end upon the bottom, the stern high in its nest of rocks. Up
that sharp steep slope crawled Tom Dennis.
To maintain his balance and to keep any foothold upon the slimy
decking was difficult. He clung to the rail with his left hand,
slowly working himself upward. He dared try no leaping here, lest
like a rubber ball he fly over the rail with the seaward current and
drop; and if a diver drops thirty feet he is apt to be crushed all at
once into his helmet by the pressure--and it would not be nice.
"Can't take chances!" thought Dennis, then laughed inwardly at the
notion. Take chances! Why, he was basing his entire hope of
salvation upon chances of which he was totally uncertain! It had
swiftly come to him that by gaining the after end of the wreck, by
crawling up her sloping deck to the stern, he would be out of the
water. But would he? How far had the tide ebbed? He did not know.
He could not remember what time the tide had turned--whether the
wreck would be now uncovered or not.
Then there was the fog; another chance. If the fog had only slightly
lessened, so those aboard the _Pelican_ could see stern of the wreck,
they would finish their work with rifles should Dennis emerge. Thus
there was a double chance against him. Should he find himself out of
water at the stern of the wreck, his only hope then would be that the
fog still held thick as ever.
His ears were roaring now, and paining with an ache that thrummed at
each pulse-beat. The air was steadily growing worse; Dennis paused
to press more air up from his billowing suit, and gained momentary
relief.
It occurred to him that he still had one friend aboard the
_Pelican_--the steward. His knife had been removed purposely; the
steward had noticed its absence; therefore, the little Cockney was
not in on the murder-scheme. Dennis laughed slightly and turned
again to his task of climbing.
Dragging himself up that slimy steep decking was hard work, and he
cursed the tremendous weights that held him down; the buoyancy seemed
gone out of him with his weariness. Then, suddenly, he came to a
dead halt, straining his eyes to look upward and ahead, and keen
despair went through him like a knife.
He had gained the after hatchway which was uncovered and yawned in a
black hole to his right. Directly in front of him was the overhang
of the poop--an eight-foot wall which, owing to the position of the
wreck, deserved its name so far as Dennis was concerned. It overhung
him; in order to go up the ladder in front of him, Dennis would have
to do it hand over hand, or not at all!
For a moment he paused. Pains had seized and were racking him. His
throat and lungs felt afire. He knew that he could not last much
longer, and with a frightful effort he flung himself forward; the
knife, his sole means of escape from the diving-suit, he thrust down
into the sheath of his belt, trusting that it would remain there.
Gripping the stairs of the ladder, Dennis hauled himself up. He
dared spare nothing of energy or effort now; he was staking all upon
one effort. If he failed to reach the poop he was gone.
Strangling, gasping spasmodically for the air that burned out his
lungs, he came at last to the end of the ladder. He got his head
about it; he could see the poop-deck there before him, and he writhed
desperately over the edge of the ladder. With all his lightness in
the water, he nearly failed at that moment. For one sickening
instant he felt himself going backward and down--then, heaving upward
convulsively, he somehow made it safely. For a moment he lay weak
and helpless.
A spasm of strangulation forced him on. He groped behind him for his
knife, found it, and pressed forward. The water was lighter now--he
was near the top. How near? Unless the stern were clear of the
water, he would be lost. There was blood in his throat; his nose and
ears were bleeding. To his terror, he lost his balance and plunged
against the rail, nearly going over. He gripped the rail and hauled
himself onward.
A frightful madness seized him, a convulsive gasping for relief, and
he was near to ripping asunder his diving-suit. His frantic efforts
had exhausted what little oxygen remained; he could press up no more
good air from his suit. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, he found
that some horrible, deadly, agonizing weight was pressing him down.
He could see only the grey dimness around him; red specks were
dancing before his eyes; that awful weight was oppressing him, and
what caused it, he did not know, unless it were death. He came up
against the rounded bulge of the stern-rail. It was the end. He
could go no farther.
"That ends it!" he thought despairingly. "The tide hasn't ebbed
enough."
He fell forward, unable to lift the weight of that copper helmet, for
the oppression was crushing him down. He could not make out what
that frightful weight could be, nor did he care. He reached up with
his knife, as he lay there, and determined to end things swiftly. He
refused to be longer tortured.
With a swift, reckless motion he ripped asunder the breast of his
diving-suit.
To his amazement, nothing happened. No water entered. Instead, came
a breath of cold sweet air that literally brought life into his lungs!
Two minutes later he was sitting up, sobbing the good clean air into
his body! He saw then what had happened--what that awful weight had
been! It had been only the weight of his own body and equipment.
Unknown to himself, he had emerged from the water into the dense
thickness of the fog.
He had won clear!