RIGHT away I found that Captain Holstrom knew how to “team” a crew. He
started that checkerboard outfit of his to humping in good earnest after
he and I had planned out the details of setting the stage for the work
ahead of us.
We needed to reach as long an arm as possible toward the wreck.
Inside of four days after we planted our mud-hooks on San Apusa Bar, we
had our string of lighters in place.
First we anchored them and then we linked them with one another by
cables because the sandy bottom inshore from the steamer afforded poor
holding-ground for the anchors. Having a number of lighters hitched
together in this manner, the chain made a sort of spring cable for the
lighter nearest the wreck where the scuffling surges were piling high
over the shoals. The scow nearest the shore thrashed about in rather
lively style, but I figured that I could do my work from it in pretty
fair fashion. At any rate, by our system of cables, we planted the
lighter less than three hundred feet from the upstanding ribs of the
Golden Gate. It was about the best we could do, considering our limited
equipment.
On the fifth day all was ready for me to go down for the first time.
Of course I had been allowed to pick my own helpers, and I had been
giving them lessons for some time. I chose Mate Number-two Jones to tend
hose and lines, and Chief-Engineer Shank was to manage the air-pump.
I had found them to be steady and reliable men. I owned a Heinke
diving-dress which had cost me six hundred dollars, and with the right
men “up-stairs” I was not worrying about my ability to get down and stay
down--even if I had been off my job for a while. As to what I would be
able to accomplish when I got down on ocean’s floor I was not quite so
sure.
While I had been waiting for the lighters to be moored I had pumped
Ingot Ike daily.
He did seem to know what he was talking about--and I had to admit that.
The matter of the treasure of the _Golden Gate_ had crowded everything
else out of his mind, and left his memory mighty dear. He drew a plan of
her with a stubby pencil, and went into minute details of description.
He said the ribs which showed were forward of the room where the
treasure had been stored. The fire had been aft and amidship, and when
she had struck the sand she had buried her nose, and these ribs were
planted so solidly that the surf had not been able to beat them down. As
a quartermaster who had known his ship, he was able to tell me how many
paces aft from the standing ribs should be the spot where the treasure
lay.
They made ready the best life-boat on the _Zizania_ for me and my
equipment, a big yawl with sponsons. Captain Holstrom did not propose to
take any chances with that outfit during the ferrying process. He went
as coxswain, and I was not surprised, of course, to see Keedy scramble
in even before I had lowered my diving-dress over the side. What did
surprise me was to have Miss Kama show up as a passenger. When she
stepped past me and went down the ladder my eyes bugged out. I thought
’twas somebody I had never seen before. She wore knickerbockers, and
was gaitered to the knees, and she went into the life-boat as nimbly
as a midshipman, asking a hand from no one. I could have cracked Keedy
across the face with a relish for the way he rolled his eyes at her.
She showed the good sense of an out-of-door girl who understood a thing
or two when she picked that costume. Embarking and disembarking with
that surf running under a keel was no job for a girl in skirts.
When we came up beside the in-lying lighter we were climbing
white-flaked hills of water and coasting dizzily into green valleys.
Those waves of the old Pacific which had marched across seas from the
lee of the Society Islands were certainly making a great how-de-do in
halting on those sand-bars of the Mexican coast; and inshore there in
the shallows the surf had a nastier fling to it than off where we had
found holding-ground for the old _Zizania_. It was a case of every one
for himself in making the transfer from the life-boat to the lighter.
I was ready to assist the girl, but she set foot on the gunwale, sprang
with the heave of the boat, and landed on deck as lightly as a bird; she
could not have done the trick more neatly if she had worn wings on the
shoulders of that close-fitting sweater.
There was one cheerful moment for me on that day of anxiety; Keedy was
the last passenger out of the lifeboat, and he teetered and made motions
to jump, and flinched and squirmed and backed water like a swimmer
afraid to plunge in. When he did jump at last he stubbed his toe on
the deck of the lighter, and raked that hooked beak of his across the
planks. I grinned at him when he staggered up, holding to his bleeding
nose, and I went to overhauling my diving-dress, whistling a tune.
I found Number-two Jones and round little Romeo Shank to be helpful
handy-Andys after the instructions I had given them. The girl never
missed a motion they made in getting me ready. I felt a warm finger
trying to worm its way under my rubber wristbands, and I turned to find
her looking at me with a great deal of concern. She explained that she
wanted to be sure that no water could leak in, and then she seemed to
think that she had been just a bit forward, and she blushed.
The next thing I knew she was sturdily fetching one of my twenty-pound
shoes, and stood there holding it ready for my helpers. I had gone
down a good many times in my life, but I went that day with the happy
consciousness of helpful interest in my poor self.
Then they set the helmet on to the breastplate and gave it its
one-eighth turn into the screw bayonet joint, and set the thumb-screws.
My front eyepiece was hinged like the window of a ship’s port-hole, and
this was open. The girl bent down and peered at my face.
“It seems a terrible thing for you to be closed in there--for you to go
down into that raging water,” she said, her face close to mine.
“Wish me good luck, and I’ll go humming a tune,” said I, smiling at her.
“With all my heart I do,” she answered, a catch in her voice.
I shut the frame, and Mr. Shank set the turn-screw. With a man on each
side of me, I scuffed my way to the ladder, and went over the rail
of the lighter. I waited at the foot of the ladder--about ten feet
under--until I felt that little pop in my ears which signals to the
diver that his Eustachian tube is open, and that the pressure is
equalized. Then I yanked the rope to ask for a taut lifeline, and let go
my hold.
The sun was bright and the bed of the sea was of sand, and I found good
light below. There was a heavy sway to the water even on bottom, but
I was strong, and knew how to handle myself. I found my footing, and
started along.
My only tool that day was a peaked-nose shovel. I crawled along, using
it for a push-pole.
I found the bottom to be a succession of bars, which were parallel with
the shore--waves of sand, so to speak, ranging from six to ten feet in
height. It was a slow job working one’s way across them. However, they
assisted me--there was no danger of getting off one’s course. I
needed only to proceed at right angles to the bars. Through my
bull’s-eye in that dim green light I could see ahead for some distance.
So at last I came to the timbers of the wreck. There was a long tangle
of these, a great mass of wreckage hidden by the sea and protruding but
a little way above the sand which the eternal surf had packed down. I
kept along toward shore until I came to the timbers which, so my eyes
told me, must be the ones that marked the location of the wreck. They
went looming up through the water. I clung to one of them and rested. I
was having no trouble with my air, and now that I had reached the scene
of the work that fact comforted me. The movement of the sea in that
shallower water was considerable, and now and then a heavier roller
jostled me about. But I began to plan out a system of lashings that
would anchor me.
Then I got down on my belly, and started to measure paces along the edge
of the timbers, following Ike’s instructions as to distance. There
was mighty little that was encouraging about the spot which I finally
located as the probable site of the treasure-chamber. Sand was billowed
and packed there, and the place was quite free from wreckage. It
occurred to me that the other divers had dug the timbers away at this
point. As I was feeling fairly fresh, I decided to use my shovel a bit.
After five minutes’ toil at that sand I began to perceive why the others
had failed, providing Ingot Ike was correct and they _had_ failed.
In the first place, there was not the footing on that bottom that a
submarine diver needs. I skated about almost helplessly when the heaving
sea clutched at me. When I tried to drive the shovel into the sand I was
pushed back, and the tool made only scratches on the bottom. Without
a prop or a brace, a diver cannot pull or push horizontally with much
force even under the best conditions, and when I did succeed in getting
the shovel into the sand and scooped a hole, the particles began to
settle back, driven by the swaying seas. The giant Pacific was jealous
of the treasure it had engulfed.
There was nothing more for me to do down there that day. I began to feel
that pain above the eyes which warns the diver. I gave the signal for
return, and went back at a lively pace, for the taut line helped.
I saw none of them on the lighter until my helmet had been removed, for
when a diver ascends to the air his bull’s-eye becomes covered with mist
in spite of the wash of vinegar which has kept the glass clear below.
Marcena Keedy was in front of me, looking at my hands, and acting as
though he were wondering where I had stowed the find I had made below.
“Well, it’s there, isn’t it?” he demanded.
“From what little I have been able to find out, I reckon it is there,” I
told him; “and it wouldn’t surprise me much if it stayed there for
some time.” I was in no mood to encourage that polecat, who was plainly
thinking more about that treasure than he was about any dangers I might
have been through. He drew that streak-o’-paint mustache up against his
nose and looked like a dog about to snap. I turned away from him so as
to have something better to look at. There was the girl beside me. She
sure was an antidote for the poison of Marcena Keedy’s evil eye. Her red
lips were apart, and her little hands were clasped, finger interlaced
with finger.
“Thank God you are back safe, Mr. Sidney!”
She wasn’t looking at me as though she were wondering in which pocket I
had hidden an ingot of gold.
“It was not dangerous,” I told her. “It was disappointing, that’s all.”
I ignored Keedy. I looked past him to Captain Hol-strom, and related
what had happened below. It was a mighty interested crowd that stood
around me and listened.
“The idea is,” I wound up, “this is no ‘reach-down-and-pick-it-up’
proposition.”
“That’s what I call doing damn little in an hour’s work,” growled Keedy.
“You ain’t down here to tell us how hard that job is. We have heard all
about that from the other divers. You are down here to get that gold.
You bragged around what a devil of a diver you have been, and now when
we have to depend on you, all we get is some more conversation. Have you
got us away down here and let us in on a dead one?”
“If that money was in a faro-bank instead of a sandbank,” I told
him, “you would be just the man to get it out--you have had plenty of
practice in that line. But this happens to be an honest job, and it
needs something besides false cards.”
Then I kept on talking to the captain:
“After giving the thing a good looking-over I have begun to figure on
a few plans. I’ll paw over and size up the stuff on the _Zizania_ this
afternoon and see what there is in stock to help me.” I told Mr. Jones
to unstrap my shoes.
When Keedy saw them peeling off my dress he had a few more remarks to
offer about the kind of a “hot diver” a man was who called an hour a
day’s work. If I had brought up an ingot in each hand from that first
trip he wouldn’t have been grateful; he would have wanted to know why I
did not bring up the whole box.
I had a dirty job of it that afternoon pawing over the old junk on board
that steamer, but I managed to sort out some material that fitted into
my scheme, and it was ferried to the lighter.
I went down again the next morning at sunrise, for the southwest
trade-wind had quieted during the night, and the swell wasn’t quite as
energetic as it had been under the push of the breeze the previous day.
I had the same spectators. Miss Kama, looking like a pretty boy in her
knickerbockers, had plainly determined to keep in the front row, and
I’ll own up that her presence put ginger into my efforts. I reckoned
I’d show her the difference between a man who could do and dare and a
sneering loafer of the caliber of Keedy. A handsome girl usually has an
effect of that sort on a young man.
When I reached bottom under the lighter they lowered an old mushroom
anchor to me. I unhooked it, and started to roll it along the “windrows”
of sand toward the wreck. It took every ounce of strength in me to boost
it up those slopes. I had lashed a crowbar to the anchor stock, and when
I finally got the thing to the wreck and had rested I stuck to the job,
though I had really done as much as was advisable at one descent.
I loosened up a sizable patch of sand with the crowbar, and settled the
anchor in the hole, stock upright. There was no need for me to pack the
sand back; the Pacific Ocean would attend to that part of the job. The
Pacific was altogether too busy in packing sand, though. It did not
discriminate between an anchor which I wanted made solid and treasure
which I wanted set free.
I went down a second time that day. I carried small chains and a broad
shovel. I lashed myself to the anchor’s stock, and with that support as
a fulcrum for my body I dug into the sand with the crowbar, and fanned
out the loose particles with the broad shovel.
But it was like the reverse of the story of the man who set out to carry
water in a sieve. The sand kept running in. If I had been able to stay
down there night and day, and have my meals brought to me, and could
have worked without rest or sleep, I might have been able to dig a hole
in that sand and to keep it dug out until I had come to that treasure.
As it was, I toiled until my head seemed splitting, until blood ran from
my nose, and I felt the first weakness of that peculiar paralysis of the
limbs which divers experience when they pass the limit set for endurance
under water. I lashed my tools to the anchor, and was pulled back to the
lighter.
Human arms had given up--human strength and grit had failed. But I knew
that through the hours of that afternoon, through the watches of the
night, that old, miserly ocean would keep toiling on, rolling sand back
into that hole, patting it down with unseen fingers, locking a door over
the treasure that would serve the purpose better than doors of steel or
bars of bronze. I should find all my labor undone when I came back to
that anchor.
Therefore I did not lark and play when I was dragged over the rail of
the old lighter. I stumbled to my seat, and sat and wiped blood from my
face when the helmet had been twisted off the breastplate.
“Four hours since you went down--you’re sure a wonder!” muttered Shank,
patting my dripping shoulder.
I was embarrassed--a bit shocked--when the girl hurried to me and began
to wipe away the blood with her little handkerchief. I tried to push
away her hands. It didn’t seem right to have her do such a task. But she
resisted me. She kept on.
“You poor boy!” she said--or I thought she said it; I was not sure.
There was pity in her tones--a caressing kind of pity, such as comes
right from a woman’s heart. I was astonished. She had been stiff and
curt toward me--and was rather short with every one else, for that
matter. She had never seemed tender even toward her own father.
But she murmured again in my ear, leaning close to me, “You poor boy!”
I’ll admit I was glad to hear her say it--I needed sympathy; but
because I mention the girl and her little ways please do not jump at the
conclusion that I was falling in love. She had overheard a declaration
which established my standing with her and, I suppose, made her feel
freer in my company. Oh no! I was not falling in love!
Sitting there as I did with forty pounds of lead on my feet and eighty
pounds of it across my shoulders, with air in my dress puffing me out
like a giant frog, dripping with brine, and hideous with blood-smeared
face, I wasn’t much to look at in the way of a lover. And outside of the
pity she had never by flicker of eyelid, or tone of voice, or touch of
hand intimated that she was interested in me except as a young man who
was tugging at a hard job and deserved a little encouragement.
“It’s all--all useless--down there--isn’t it?” she asked.
“No; it’s a glorious job, and I’ve just begun on it.”
“But it’s wicked for you to suffer like this.”
“I was never so comfortable and happy in all my life--never so full of
courage.”
Keedy was listening and I felt like tormenting him. He stuck his
face down to mine. It was not a pretty face. His nose was swathed in
absorbent cotton, which was held on with straps of court-plaster.
“Well, let me in on why you’re so happy,” he snapped.
“It doesn’t happen to be any of your business,” I informed him.
“Ain’t I a partner in this thing with you?”
“When I get ready to tell you anything about my work, I’ll see that you
are informed. Or, if you want to make the trip, I’ll tuck you under my
arm and take you down to-morrow. I’d be delighted to do so.” He looked
at me a little while and his eyes narrowed.
That evening I had a talk with Capt. Rask Holstrom.
Marcena Keedy was not in that conference. I walked the upper deck until
Keedy had gone, grunting and growling, off into his state-room. Then
I hunted up the captain where he was lying on the transom in the
wheel-house, puffing at his pipe and looking rather sullen.
I knew what was ailing him. I had refused earlier in the evening to come
into the wheel-house while Keedy was there.
“Being a plain and blunt man, I may as well say what’s on my mind,”
stated Captain Holstrom, sourly. He did not arise. He squinted ar me
from under the vizor of his cap, which was pulled low over his eyes.
“You ain’t dealing with me and Keedy open and frank as your partners.
You ain’t giving us full particulars. You was down four hours to-day,
and came up looking blue and scared, and then just talked flush-dush
with my girl. We ain’t down here for anything except straight business
and results. Your two eyes are the eyes for all three of us. When you
have used ’em down below there we’re entitled to have full report. Me
and Keedy ain’t at all satisfied with the way this thing is running on.”
I sat and looked at him, and waited to hear whether he had any more to
say.
“No, sir, we ain’t satisfied,” he repeated.
“I’m glad Mr. Keedy isn’t satisfied,” I told him. “I wish he would get
so dissatisfied that he would quit this expedition. And I don’t intend
to kowtow to him and make him satisfied.”
“Well, I’ll be damnationed!” exploded the captain, pushing back his cap.
“You needn’t be, Captain Holstrom. What I say doesn’t have any reference
to you at all. I hope my relations and yours will stay as they are--no,
I hope they will improve as you know me better. But that gambler has
grafted himself on to this scheme. He isn’t a practical man, as you are.
He sneers at me and my work--and God knows it’s hard and dangerous work.
He expects impossible things, and it doesn’t do any good to come up out
of that hell of water and explain to him. Every time he opens his mouth
I feel like jumping down his throat and galloping his gizzard out of
him. There! That’s rough talk, but I mean it. If Marcena Keedy doesn’t
handle himself different where I’m concerned there’s going to be serious
trouble aboard here. Hold on a moment! Hear me through. I respect your
good judgment and I know you are willing to work hard. I’m ready to talk
to you at any time when that sneak isn’t around. What you say to him
after that about plans and expectations I don’t care--that’s your own
business. But I’m sorry you don’t hate and distrust him as much as I
do. Now I’ll tell you what I found down there to-day, and how the thing
looks to me.” I told him.
“Then, if all that is so, we may as well up killick and go home, eh?”
I never saw a more disgusted look on a man’s face, or heard a more
melancholy tone.
“I haven’t told you that to discourage you, or to crybaby myself. I’m
giving you the facts, and I hope you’re practical man enough to keep
from sneering about my efforts the way Keedy does. I’m doing all that a
human being can do--but you’ve got to face facts, Captain Holstrom, and
I’ve been giving you facts, I say. That’s the situation--that’s all!
You know as much as I know. If you have ideas, think ’em over and give
’em to me. I’ll keep on trying to think up something myself.” I went
off to my state-room so as to give him time to do that thinking.