The hawser was secured and, as the jolly-boat lay alongside, a second
small anchor was lowered into her, and carried out and dropped on the
other side, the rope hauled taut and made fast, and the schooner now
moored in a position which the light current could not affect, though a
storm would doubtless have made the anchors drag.
"That's my job 'bout done, capen and Mr Parkley, sire. I said as I'd
put the schooner over the spot; and there she is."
"But do you really think, Oakum--" began Mr Parkley.
"I don't think nothing, sir. There's the place and that 'ere's the rock
as 'Pollo dived off into the deep water. Ain't it, 'Pollo?"
"Dat's true, sah," cried the black, laughing boisterously.
"Then its 'bout time I browt up the helmets and things, eh?" said Rasp,
who had been looking on with inquiring eye.
"Not yet, Rasp," exclaimed Dutch, who now hurried to the side, and
peered down into the brightly illumined depths, an example followed by
the captain and half the crew.
The result was disappointing, and Dutch and Mr Parkley descended into
the boat, waiting till it was perfectly motionless, and then making use
of a large tube which they thrust some feet down into the water, and
gazed intently at the rocks, sands, and wonders of the sea below.
This process they followed up as they slowly shifted the boat round from
place to place; and each time that Dutch looked up to answer some
question from the deck it was to encounter the sinister face of the
mulatto, with the scar plainly marked in the sunlight, gazing intently
down. For the matter of that so was the face of 'Pollo, the other
black, and the rest of the crew; but the countenance of the mulatto
alone seemed to strike him, for the peculiarity of its looks, and the
eagerness with which, in a partial way, its owner seemed to watch his
every action.
"Well, gentlemen," said John Studwick, in a half-mocking way, "can you
see the El Dorado through that piece of brass pipe?"
"Not yet," said Dutch, quietly. And he went on with his research,
seeing fish as brilliant as any he had before noticed, rocks covered
with olive green and scarlet weed, that floated out and played in the
water, many yards in length; great stones covered with shells and acorn
barnacles; sea anemones, whose petals were more delicately beautiful
than any flowers he had beheld; but no trace of old ship timber, in the
shape of ribs, stern-post, keel, or stem. Nothing but sand, rock, and
seaweed; and at last the two sat up in the boat and looked at one
another.
"What's the good o' you humbugging?" said Rasp, on deck, to
self-satisfied Oakum, who stood leaning his back against the bulwark,
and staring at the landmarks by which he had found the spot.
"Who's humbugging?" said Oakum, roughly.
"Why, you. It's all sham. There ain't no wreck below there."
"Bah! How do you know?" growled Oakum. "I know there is, but don't say
as there ain't been no one near and cleaned it out."
Hester was standing close by, and heard all this. Her face flushed with
anxiety, and her heart rose and fell, as she eagerly listened to the
opinions expressed, and thought of the bitter disappointment Dutch would
feel if the search was without success.
Just then her husband said something hastily, which drew the attention
of all on board; and taking hold of a rope, she leaned forward to try
and catch a glimpse of what was going forward, when she started back
with a faint cry of alarm, for a pair of burning lips were placed upon
her hand, and as she snatched it away, and faced round it was to meet
the glittering eyes of the mulatto fixed upon her, with so fiercely
intense a gaze that she shrank away trembling, but not before he had
whispered to her--
"Silence, if you value your life!"
She felt sick with horror as the man glided away, for the tones of his
voice seemed familiar, and her very first impulse was to call her
husband; but the mulatto's words had such an effect upon her, weakened
as she was with long illness, that she dared not speak even to Bessy, to
whose side she crept as an eager buzz of conversation went on.
For, after sitting thoughtfully in the boat for a few minutes, Dutch had
leaned over the side once more, placing his face in the water, and gazed
down at the beautiful submarine grove, when he saw a long, grey body
pass slowly out from amongst the weeds, and woke to the fact that there
were sharks in those waters, this creature being fourteen or fifteen
feet long.
He shuddered at the sight, and thought of the helplessness of any diver
if one of these monsters attacked him. He raised his face to breathe,
and then looked down again, to see the monster part a bed of seaweed,
and as it did so his past troubles were forgotten in the thrill of
delight he felt: for Oakum was certainly right as to the wreck. As the
shark glided slowly on, it parted the weeds more and more, leaving bare,
plainly to be seen, what looked like a stump standing out of the sand,
but which his experienced eye knew at once to be one of the ribs of a
ship, black with age where it was not grey with barnacles and other
shells.
He rose from the water again, with his face dripping, inhaled a long
breath, and once more softly stooped and peered down into the clear,
ambient depths, where the waving seaweed and multitudinous growths
seemed ever changing their colours as they waved gently in the current.
The weed parted by the shark had closed up together once more, and not a
vestige seemed left of the piece of wreck wood; in fact, it might have
been a dream, only that close by where he had seen it before,
half-hidden in the weed, lay the shark, its long, unequal-lobed tail
waving slightly to and fro a few moments, and then the monster was
perfectly still--so quiet that the sharpest eye would have passed it
unnoticed, so exactly was its back in hue like the sand upon which it
lay.
But Dutch knew, dreamer as he had been, that this was no piece of
imagination; and taking the tube once more, and recalling the peculiar
bend of the piece of timber, he began again to examine the bottom,
especially the portion that lay in the shadow cast by the schooner's
hull. According to the bend of the timber, he knew that the wreck, if
wreck it belonged to, must be lying in the opposite direction to the
schooner; and, tracing its imaginary shape, he concluded that there must
be a succession of ribs embedded in the sand, though not visible in the
lines he marked out with his eye.
And so it seemed, for as he looked he could make out that the weeds lay
in thick clusters in the position they should occupy if they were
attached to the timbers of an old ship. Huge corals were there as well,
forming quite a submarine forest, but evidently they took the form of a
ship where they were most dense; and, to Dutch's great surprise, the
vessel must have been one of nearly double the size of the schooner.
"See anything?" said Mr Parkley, as the young man rose for a few
minutes and wiped his brow.
"Yes," said Dutch, bluntly. "Shark!"
"Ah, there are plenty, no doubt," said Mr Parkley.
But Dutch did not hear him, for he was once more eagerly trying to trace
out in the weeds the shape of the old galleon.
Yes, there it was, undoubtedly; and, to make assurance doubly sure,
another shark slowly glided out, about thirty feet to the left of where
Dutch saw the first, setting the weeds in motion, and displaying, black
and grey with encrustations, three more of the nearly buried ribs of an
old ship.
With this help to locality, he could now make out plainly where the
galleon lay, and see that she must have been nearly a hundred feet long,
and that her stem had struck on the mass of rocks described as those off
which 'Pollo had dived; while her stern lay off behind the boat in the
dense forest of sea growth. And as Dutch looked on he became more and
more aware of the fact that there were watchers over the treasure--if
treasure there was--in the shape of sharks. He had already seen two,
and now, dimly visible in their lairs, lay no less than five more, of
which he could just make out a fin of one, the snout of another, the
tail of another, and so on, one gliding slowly out into the sunshine,
turning right over so as to show its white belly and great teeth-armed
jaws, before dashing after a shoal of bright-coloured fish which had
tempted him from his lair.
So powerful were the strokes of the monster's tail that the water was
all of a quiver, and the long strands of the seaweed waved and undulated
to and fro, displaying here and there more blackened stumps, and showing
how possible it was for anyone to sail a boat over the wreck a hundred
times without catching a glimpse or dreaming of its existence.
"Well," said Mr Parkley, "when you're tired of shark-gazing, we may as
well go on board."
There was only one man of the crew looking over the side now, and that
was the mulatto, who, with half-closed eyes, lazily watched their
actions; the others, finding the business uninteresting, having
adjourned to the shade.
"I'm ready to go on board," said Dutch, quietly. "When shall we begin
work?"
"Oh, at once. Let's ask Studwick to weigh anchor, and try one of the
other places. Ah, my lad, I'm afraid I let my anger get the better of
my judgment. We shall do nothing without the cursed Cuban."
"Think not?" said Dutch, with a smile.
"I am sure of it," said Mr Parkley. "How can we hunt over the whole of
this sea? It would be madness."
"I meant get to work with the apparatus," said Dutch, smiling.
"What are you laughing at?" said Mr Parkley, impatiently.
"At your despondency," replied Dutch. "Old Oakum was right. The
schooner's lying right athwart the galleon."
"What!" cried Mr Parkley, excitedly. "Nonsense!--you are half-mad."
"Over some things, perhaps," said Dutch, gloomily; "but sane enough over
this. Mind, I don't say that there is any treasure there, but the old
fellow has anchored us right across an old wreck."
"Give me that tube," cried Mr Parkley, and he thrust it down into the
water excitedly, looking in all directions.
"There's nothing there," he cried. "I examined that place before."
"But it did not occur to us that the weeds had grown up and hidden the
timbers. Now you watch that clump lying just under the schooner's keel.
Do you see what I mean?"
"Yes, I see."
"Then keep your eye upon it," said Dutch, as he crept softly to the bows
of the jolly-boat, and, taking one of half-a-dozen great boulders that
were used for ballast, he heaved it overboard with a good splash, and
then watched its effects.
As he expected, from half-a-dozen weed masses out darted as many sharks,
to make a dash at the stone as it descended rapidly through the clear
water, and first one and then another turned over to show its white
under-parts before going away sulkily and in disgust.
"Well, what did you see?" said Dutch.
"Sharks! Ugh, the beasts!" exclaimed Mr Parkley, with a shudder.
"What else?"
"Rough stumps of timber amongst the weeds."
"Timbers of the old galleon, no doubt, preserved by the shelly
concretions that have formed upon them and held them together."
"But it's impossible, my dear boy. No man dare go down there; the
sharks would rend him limb from limb. Who could go down?"
"I shall, for one," said Dutch, calmly. "So now let's get on board."
They climbed the side, and, as the news of their discovery spread
through the ship, the excitement became great. Rasp began to bring up
helmets and leaden weights, and ordered a couple of the men to come and
assist with the air-pump, which had to be got up from below.
"But, my dear Dutch," exclaimed Mr Parkley, in despair, "it is
impossible--no one can go down."
"Not at present," said Dutch, smiling, as he looked round and saw that
nearly everybody was gazing over the side. "Perhaps, when I have set
the example, Rasp will not mind following it."
"But the sharks, my dear boy--they would tear you to pieces."
"Let them, if they can," said Dutch, grimly. "I'm not going to be
deterred from the search by a few sharks. And if, as you say, I was
torn to pieces," he added, bitterly, "what then?"
"I tell you I shall not let you risk your life," said Mr Parkley,
firmly.
"And I tell you I shall go down. If anything happens--"
"That sweet little woman will be a widow," said Mr Parkley.
"And who would care?" said Dutch, bitterly. "My dear Mr Parkley, we
are anchored over the treasure, and sharks or no sharks, torn to pieces
or left alone, I go down--Hester!"
He started and turned sharply round, just in time to catch the fainting
woman as she was falling senseless on the deck.