“They have called the turn on us--say that we must get off the coast,” I
told him. “Keedy has bribed them over our heads. I tell you, Jones, I’m
going to get that treasure! I’ve got to get it. This isn’t mere brag
talk. You are posted on my plans, and you believe in them.”
“The scheme does look good to me,” admitted the mate.
“If those men leave here tied up to Keedy they’ll send a gunboat and
shoo us off--and they’ve told Keedy, of course, how to dodge her. Jones,
those men have got to stay aboard the _Zizania_ until I make my try
to-day. And, by the gods! I’ll bring up enough to show ’em that we are
the people. You come with me!”
“What for?”
“We’ve got to lasso those chaps and hitch ’em to the stanchion in my
state-room. They’ve got to stay here till I test out that hose.”
“Look here,” objected Mr. Jones, fumbling at his nose, “seems to me
there’s altogether too much tripping and tying aboard here. It beats a
round-up of steers. We’re going to get into a lot of trouble--we’re in
it now. You wait till the captain gets loose, and see if we ain’t!”
“Tying two more won’t make it any worse than it is. I can’t make you do
what you don’t want to do, Jones, but I believe you’re too much of a man
to let me play this thing single-handed. We’re fighting Keedy now. If
I fail in getting at that gold to-day, all we’ve got to do is to up
mud-hook and steam north--we’ll have to do the same thing if we let
those grafters go over the rail now.” Jones was a cautious man, but
he was a loyal one. I kept on urging, and at last the battle-light
flickered in his pale-blue eyes.
“Blast their thievish souls!” he said. “They’ve taken all the money I
had in my pockets--and now they’re thumbing their noses at decent men.
I’m with you!” We grabbed ropes, rushed up to my state-room, and fell on
the men before they could scramble to their feet.
They were wizened little chaps and we tied them without any trouble.
Then I went below and leaned over the rail where their boat was tossing.
“The gentlemen are staying here for some business,” I told the two
rowers. “They tell you to go back to the schooner and wait till they
signal for you with our ensign.” They didn’t look entirely satisfied,
but they rowed away after I had ordered them to fend off.
I stationed two men at my state-room door and I hunted up weapons and
armed some of the crew. I ordered them to keep off everybody until I
returned from the lighter.
I spoke to Captain Holstrom through his state-room window. I told him
that I would bring him a present before sundown. He did not reply--and
when Captain Holstrom was mad enough to keep his tongue between his
teeth I felt that only murder could express his feelings.
The door was on the hook, and a little brown hand was thrust out to meet
mine.
“Good luck, brave boy!” she whispered. “I know you’ll do it.”
“I can’t fail after that word from you,” I told her.
Then I ran down the ladder and jumped into the boat where my men were
waiting for me.
I found a heavy surge running under our lighter, but the swirl of sand
was no longer darkening the water. I had reckoned right in regard to
that undertow. Keedy’s men were still down and I could imagine them
wasting their strength on the sand which had been packed back overnight.
Our water-hose had already been coupled in makeshift fashion, and the
last work that morning was to wrap the joints as best we could. Then
I set the men at the brakes and told them to “give her tar,” as the
old-fashioned hand-tub foreman would say. The hose was strung about the
deck of the lighter.
After they pumped for five minutes I found that the hose was not so
tight as I had hoped. Wheezing little streams punctured it here and
there, and the joints leaked. From the end of our home-made nozzle of
sheet iron the stream barely trickled. I was disgusted--but I was not
wholly discouraged. When I state this you may see how desperate I had
become. I was resolved to fight that thing through to the last ditch.
I was determined to take that hose down and try it out. I had the misty
and hopeful notion that the pressure of the sea on it might make some
difference, that the wet hose might retain the water better, that after
the plunger had swelled a bit we might get more force.
All those straws and others did I grab at by way of bracing my courage.
The captain of the expedition trussed up in his cabin like a steer
calf--only waiting his opportunity to deal with me!
Two customs men also trussed up--also waiting to deal with me!
It can be readily understood that there were some decidedly red-hot
goads at my back that day to drive me down under the sea.
I had not been able to convince Captain Holstrom that all my work
and struggles and investigation and failures up to then were a good
investment. But as a submarine diver I knew that they had been. I
had been spending my nights on a sleepless pillow, docketing those
experiences and drawing lessons from them--plotting, pondering, and
planning.
When I went down I was ready for my job in so far as a man, by pounding
his brain, can be ready for all emergencies.
I had piled the lead on to myself. Around my body from hips to armpits
I had a canvas belt with five pockets, each pocket holding twenty-five
pounds of shot, part of the junk of the old _Zizania_. Around each leg
above the ankle I fastened another bag of shot holding fifteen pounds.
My helmet had weights weighing thirty pounds. In addition I wore my
regular breast and back weights. That is to say, when I was rolled over
the side of that lighter I, a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound man, was
weighted with about two hundred and fifty pounds of metal.
I went with bare feet and bare hands. I knew that if I ever did succeed
in boring that sand, holding that hose in my hands, my feet would have
to serve as hands for the purpose of feeling out objects.
Keedy’s men had come up before I gave the word to lower me. Number-two
Jones had peered through the cracks of the boarding, and had reported
that they had come over the rail without bringing treasure, and that
Keedy was stamping up and down the deck, wagging his fists over his
head. I could imagine from my own experience what kind of language the
cowardly slave-driver was spewing out.
I found myself on the bottom under the lighter, and started to make my
way toward the wreck. I was loaded like a pack-donkey, outside of the
tremendous extra weight of lead I carried. But I was taking everything
which my judgment counseled as needful for success.
I was obliged to drag with me my life-line, my air-hose, and the heavy
canvas hose for the water. In addition to those, I towed a double line
which was hitched to a pair of ice-tongs, and the points of those tongs
were filed to a sharp point. I carried the tongs at my belt. If I found
treasure I had this method of sending it to the lighter and of dragging
back the tongs to myself. I had had one experience in serving as a
carrier and I did not want to repeat the job.
I tell you, I felt like a mighty poor and puny little ant when I started
away on the bottom of the sea, climbing those sand ridges. The sea
clutched and tore at those wriggling lines, at my air-hose, and was
especially ferocious in tackling that heavy water-hose. It seemed as if
the Pacific resented that scheme of fighting it.
It was a mighty struggle I had. I was tossed and tumbled. I was banged
and buffeted.
But in the end I arrived at the wreck. Under ordinary circumstances that
stunt alone would have finished a diver’s work for a day--but I had left
matters above the surface in such condition that I could not face them
just then.
I dropped my water-hose, and went back fifty feet along the line. Past
experience with the weight of the surges had suggested another trick
with which to fight the giant Pacific. I had brought a small anchor,
and, with this set into the sand as best I cou’d do it, I anchored my
air-hose and water-hose about fifty feet from the wreck. I proposed to
let the ocean wreak the most of its spite on the two hundred and fifty
feet between that anchor and the lighter. I figured that I might be able
to handle the other fifty feet, no matter how ugly the surges were.
I crawled back to the wreck and found my bearings. There were the “cat
scratchings” on the sand where the other divers had spent their energy
that morning. I grinned--I couldn’t help it. They had just had their own
experience with the tricks of a Pacific undertow.
Well, the great and awful moment had come for me!
In the years that have passed since then the vivid memory of that moment
has never left me. I wake up in the night even now, and the thrill of it
shakes me.
If my scheme did not work, what would become of me when I went back to
the surface of the sea?
If my scheme did work, what was I facing down there? I was proposing to
bore into that sand--to sink into it. No such plan had ever been
tried by a human being up to that time. Was I not digging my own
grave?
* Although sticking a statement of fact into writing which
is professedly fiction may be considered supererogation by
the cynical critic, some honest reader may be grateful for a
certain bit of information. Here it is: My old and valued
friend, the diver who recovered the _Golden Gate_ treasure,
still lives at a ripe age and he has detailed to me how he
devised the hydraulic apparatus out of makeshift material,
how he bored into the sand, and how he, with his own hands,
recovered the bullion. Also, the incident of his narrow
escape when the water-hose shifted was a part of his bitter
experience on the bed of the Pacific. I hasten to state
that, so far as the rest of the yam goes, my good friend,
Diver Cook, is not culpable.--H. D.
I sat down on the sand, Turk fashion, like a tailor on his table,
pointed the nozzle down, holding it against the sand, and gave the
agreed-upon signal for water. It took a long time in coming, and it was
an agony of waiting. Then at last I felt the hose swell under my arm.
I pressed the nozzle harder against the sand. I cannot describe my
delight. I felt that my dreams were coming true, for when I jammed the
nozzle down I found that the sand was moving. That stream had merely
trickled above the surface, but now a pressure was created when I held
the nozzle hard against the bottom of the sea. Yes, the sand moved
under me. It began to boil up around me. It swept and swirled in yellow
clouds. I realized that I was boring a hole about as big as a barrel,
and into that hole I was gradually sinking. I was on my way! I did not
know where I was going--but, bless the good Lord, I was on my way! The
sand in that boiling water made all dark. Down and down I went slowly,
my bare feet searching eagerly.
But though I descended more rapidly as the swirling motion increased, I
felt no boxes. Had I, then, happened upon a straggler among the boxes
of gold on my earlier trip? Had my rivals also found two more stragglers
from the main treasure--loosened boxes which had been forced out of the
chamber by the impact of the wreck on the bar or had worked near the
surface of the sand by the action of a sucking undertow? If that were
true, it meant that Keedy’s men were dumped if they stuck to shovels.
Provided I could reach the treasure, and could keep my own system a
secret, I was headed toward a glorious victory, and could depend upon
the ocean to keep off others--but was I headed toward victory? My feet
touched nothing that had square corners. And yet, to the best of my
judgment, I had already gone down at least ten feet in that hole in the
sand.
Down and down--five feet more, so I reckoned. Then my heart gave a jump.
My feet had touched something. It was smooth and hard and flat, and
spread under me horizontally. But I soon discovered that it had too
large a surface to be a box of ingots. I could not bend over to feel it
with my hands, for the rush of the whirlpool of sand and water about
me, sweeping upward, would not allow me to force my helmet and the upper
part of my body down. I must depend on my bare feet to tell me what I
had struck.
After a time I knew. It was boiler plate. I could feel the round heads
of bolts. Whether this plate formed a part of the treasure-chamber
or not I did not know. But it was an obstacle which must be passed. I
turned my nozzle in front of me to clear the way. I wanted to reach the
end of that iron plate.
In two ticks of an eight-day clock I was in a mess that has been my
nightmare ever since. I began to get a thorough education in what sand
will do under water when it is submitted to the force of a stream from a
hose. The instant I turned that nozzle in front of me the sand rushed in
from behind. I was grabbed as tightly as though the eight feelers of a
devil-fish had encircled me.
It must be remembered that this whole proposition was an experiment
so far as I was concerned. I did not know then how quickly a stream of
water can affect great quantities of sand under the sea, let that sand
get in motion. Tons can be moved almost while one takes a breath.
This shift was so sudden that I was not prepared for it. My legs were
pinioned, and my arms seemed to be clutched at the elbows. The sand was
packing in around me from behind. I was so scared that my hands loosened
on the nozzle. A roller snatched the hose from my grasp.
The nozzle was upended and began to sizzle away over my head. It kept
the sand moving there, and the murky water still swirled about my
helmet, and the pack was not allowed to settle on my head. But as to the
rest of my body, it was as if I had been immersed in molten metal and
it had cooled around me. In a few seconds I was immovable. I was buried
completely in sand, except for my wrists and hands. In clutching for the
hose, as it had been yanked away, I had raised my hands above my head,
and they were now waving in the swirl of the whirlpool. I groped and
stretched and strove, and at last I felt the tips of my fingers on the
nozzle. I managed, after a while, to tilt it down a bit so that the
stream played along my arms to the elbows. The temporary release of my
forearms did not help me. I couldn’t get hold of that hose so as to turn
the nozzle full upon myself. The sand kept packing more closely about my
legs and body.
After a time my aching hands and arms were obliged to give up the fight.
I had become so weakened by my struggles and strainings that I was
faint--I was as feeble as a baby.
I have read about men in awful peril who have resigned themselves to
die. Mentally I was not resigned when I first gave up struggling--not
for some time. I came out of that first faintness, wide awake to my
danger, filled with frightful fear, mad with the longing to live. But
my case seemed hopeless. The stream was keeping the sand in motion still
about my helmet and over my head, but my hands informed me that the
pack was gradually settling, that the sand was piling up around my neck
slowly but surely. In the boil of that water the particles were drifting
over me.
I might live minutes, I reflected--I might linger there for an hour or
more--feeling that sand pack around my head until it choked the valve of
the helmet or pinched off the current in the air-hose.
Never was I so hungry for life as when I stood there pinioned hand and
foot in the Pacific’s bed, feeling the sand piling up against the glass
of my helmet, sifting around me to chink the little cranny where the
air bubbled from the valve. And all because a stream of water would not
swerve ten inches and pour itself in my direction.
Then something surprising happened to my soul in its agony. I’m telling
the truth.
When I had made up my mind that effort was useless, that I had done all
that I could do, and that death was certain, a strange feeling came
to me and took away my fear of death. I fell into a quiet and really
exalted frame of mind. I floated in dreams. Cares of earth and worries
of the world, lust for gold, and even the love of woman seemed very
small matters. What did it all matter? I was dying. Peace came to me.
Is it not probable that kind nature or a kinder God thus smooths the way
into eternity when the great moment comes? Men who have been nigh the
last gasp have swapped stories with me and we all agree.
I had no notion of the length of time I had been down. In my mistiness
of mind I did not bother about time. In the case of a submarine diver,
the hours are marked off by his sensations, and he knows when he has
stayed down long enough. If my men had told me that I had been on the
bed of the ocean for a day and a night I should not have disputed them.
I must have been near death, for it is said that when one is dying all
of life that has been lived comes before the mind and passes in review,
as though the mortal soul were preparing its brief for the use of the
recording angel. I remember that this last was a strange idea which came
to me there in the sand-pack which was slowly heaping itself over my
head.
Then something happened. It was something which should have amazed me,
but I reckon that my brain was too numbed to feel amazement.
The nozzle above my head gave a sudden yank and rapped my knuckles.
It righted itself. That is to say, it aimed downward and began to pour
water directly at and over me. I felt the stream rather than saw it. I
could not see in that smother of sand. But my arms came out of the mold
in which they had been pinned. I grabbed and groped for that hose with
all the desperation that was in me. I held to it with all my strength.
It was lucky that I seized it as I did, for I felt the rollers tugging
at it once more as though some devil of the sea had given me one more
chance in order to tantalize me, and was now resolved to finish me
finally.
I did not know what had happened above to cause the sudden deflection of
the stream. It was enough for me to know that some freak of the waters
had turned the hose. I found out later what had occurred, and I may as
well explain at this point, lest you think I have told merely of a case
of story-book Providence.
I have related how I anchored my lines fifty feet from the wreck. That
anchor, so I found later, had been pulled out of the sand, and the
surges had bellied the water-hose in toward shore, over my head, and the
aim of the nozzle had been changed in the snap of a finger. It surely
had been touch and go with me, for once the surge had taken up the slack
the next wave must have jerked the hose out of my hole. I had grabbed
just in time; I had melted my sand mold and was free.
Common sense advised me to quit the job forever. The uncertainties of
trying to move sand with a stream of water had been impressed upon me in
horrible fashion. But common sense is not allowed to rule a man when
he is after gold in this world. I had found out what that stream would
accomplish if it was used properly. I had learned one lesson which I
could not forget, and I was sure I would not make the mistake of letting
the sand catch me from behind again. I knew, on the other hand, what
would happen to me when I appeared above the surface without my ransom
fee of yellow gold. I preferred to stay and fight sand instead of men.
There, in the boil of the roiled water, I resolved to stay down.
I tried another experiment with the hose, and was-, vastly encouraged.
I had been worrying and wondering how I would get back out of the hole,
for I feared that the-life-line, playing over the edge of the sand,
would not allow the men on the lighter enough direct pull; to help me
much. Now I needed to rise from the hole for a littleway in order to
attack the sand at another angle so as to pass that plate of boiler
iron.
I slackened the force of the stream from the nozzle with my palm, and
the sand began to pack in below me. The uprush of the swirling water
helped me and I was able to work myself slowly upward. Then I began to.
bore again.
I realized now that something must have happened to, my anchor, because
the rollers were giving me battle for-the possession of that water-hose
in fierce style. But I hung on, and found myself sinking into the sand.
I went, down more rapidly, for I had already softened the surrounding
pack. After the awful experience I had just had, I was more of a lunatic
than sane while I made that, second attempt. My brain swirled as
dizzily as the water which swept up from the hole. As nearly as I could
estimate, I went down at least five yards before I struck anything that
was solid. And when my feet, already sore from the grinding of that
sand, felt what was below them, the whole of my being gave three
cheers--not cheers with, the mouth, but those silent cheers with which
a man’s soul yells its joy. I had touched a box. There were its
comers--there was its unmistakable shape.
After wild struggles and contortions, I was able to set the points of
the ice-tongs into its sides. I gave the signal on the drag-rope, and I
could feel the surge of the men on the line. But the angle of the rope
over the edge of the hole would not allow them to lift very hard. The
box was too far away from the lighter for their efforts to amount to
much. But as they swayed away I kept the hose playing upon the box and
under it. It did seem damnably slow work. But it came up, inch by inch,
slowly and surely, until I was out of the hole, and standing about
knee-deep in the sand. I had a tug of war of it then!
The box was not out of the hole. The rollers tugged at my lines and
wrenched at me. Once or twice I was fairly floored. I would fall with my
legs pinioned fast, and would lie exhausted until I could get strength
to stand up and wash myself free with the hose. In order to get back
out of that hole at all, I was obliged to slacken the stream and let the
sand pack in under myself and the box--and when the stream slackened I
was obliged to drag my legs out of the packing sand.
But I was free at last, bless the good Lord! And I had a box of gold. It
was not a mere stray box, salvaged with the help of a freakish undertow.
It was a box which I had torn from the heart of the hoard below. Yes, I
was sure that I had been to the heart of the treasure. And where I had
been the Pacific was already stuffing back the sand, locking the door
once more on the gold it had taken for its own. Let Keedy’s men
come down! Let them waste their strength. I had the key to that
situation--and I alone.
I tugged a signal to shut off the water. And as promptly I gave them
pull-up signals on my life-line and on the drag-cord of the tongs. I
wanted to get above the sea and breathe the fresh air of the good God,
and look into the eye of the blessed sun, and give praises. And, oh, the
awful weariness in every bone and muscle of me! I lay down and let ’em
pull me back. I had no strength with which to manage that weight of
metal which loaded me down.
When they got me upon the deck of the lighter, and had twisted off my
helmet, I lay for a long time without words. I motioned to Number-two
Jones to remove the cover from the box I had brought. The sight of those
ingots gave me the goad once more--ah, it takes gold to make the human
soul gallop!
“Gold, gold, yellow gold,
Hard to get and harder to hold.”
This quotation burst from Mr. Shank. His round face was radiant, and he
came and leaned over me and patted me on the head. He did not seem to
have any better way of showing his joy. It was a wildly excited crew
which crowded around me; they were still more excited when I sat up on
deck at last and told them I was going down again. The fever was in
me. I wanted to go back to the _Zizania_ with gold enough, to convince
Captain Holstrom and those knaves of customs men that there was no fluke
about our proposition. I wanted to raise that infernal Keedy out of this
game for good and all.
It was mighty tempestuous water in the vicinity of the wreck, and
putting the lighter nearer was not to be thought of. But I discussed
with Mate Jones the possibility of dropping our yawl back toward
the wreck at the end of a cable, so that the men could lift the
treasure-boxes more directly. We had brought extra men that morning for
the pump, and a crew for the surf-boat volunteered. The gold lust was
seizing the whole of us.
I went down again, feeling sure that the wicked labor of getting the box
up through the sand would be lightened for me.
I took another anchor, and on my way to the wreck I refastened my hose
lines to the bottom, rigging the second anchor as a bridle, so that the
strain would be eased on the one which I had set into the sand.
Down I bored again, my tongs at my belt, my hose in my clutch. And I
stayed down until I had sent three more boxes up to the surf-boat. While
I was toiling down there I knew that I was setting a dangerous record
for myself--I could not hope to equal it on the days which were to
follow. It was plain that I had penetrated to the heart of the treasure,
but I had penetrated to other things as well. I found all the sculch and
broken crockery of the wrecked pantry and the bar of the _Golden Gate_.
Yes, I sent three more boxes to the lighter; but when I crawled over the
rail later my hands and feet were bleeding, and the sand had ground into
the wounds. Already my skin showed where the grinding of the boiling
sand was wearing the epidermis. Even the rubber of my suit was showing
wear.
I was a sorry-looking object when I staggered into Capt. Rask Holstrom’s
state-room. He fairly slavered in his rage and tried to leap at me. I
reckon I did look like a beaten man. But the next instant my men came
tramping in with the boxes of gold. There were four of these glorious
boxes, and each one was open and showed the ingots.
“Your friend Keedy got his two boxes by the fluke of an undertow,” I
told him. “I have got mine by science and a system which will give us
the rest of it. Now, Captain Holstrom, I’ll accept your apologies.” And
I cut him loose.
I did not mention any apologies due from me to him. I wanted to rub it
into the old squarehead so thoroughly that he would never get the smart
of it out of his skin. I wanted to let him know that I had set a ring
into his nose, and that if he ever tried to run amuck again I was the
man who could catch him and trip him.
He gave me one look, gasped one gasp, and I knew that Capt. Rask
Holstrom had abdicated his throne. I was boss. But I had no time to
listen to his slobbering thanks just then. I took one of those bars of
gold in my bloody hand and started for my state-room. I shook the ingot
under the noses of those customs men. And they, too, knew that I was
boss when I got through with them. I had not come back that day from
hell and the bottom of the sea to mince words with any loafers--Captain
Holstrom included.
“Here’s gold worth four thousand dollars in good Yankee money, you
low-down renegades. You take it and get off this steamer. If you are
good, and come around here like gentlemen about a month from now,
perhaps I’ll drop another rock into your hat. I don’t promise--it all
depends on how you act. But if you come back too quick--if you try to
squeeze us for more rake-off--I’ll go down to headquarters and buy your
blessed Government, and have you put into prison or shot--for before
this thing is ended here I’ll have more than three million dollars
behind me. Now you can either make a dollar quietly or you can make
trouble. Suit yourselves.”
I cut their ropes and pushed them out of the room and ordered our ensign
set to signal their boat.
I didn’t have to offer them any apologies, either, and I was not in
an apologizing mood that day. They did the apologizing while they were
waiting for their boat, and I scowled while they were begging me to
forgive the mistake they had made.
Yes, I felt pretty much like the boss of the outfit. But when Kama
Holstrom came with hot water and a basin and bandages and ordered me
into my state-room, I went as meekly as a slave who trembles when the
finger of his master is pointed.