DAGO DIVERS
"I'm real glad to be able to call you 'Captain,' my lad," said Kettle,
and Murray, in delight at his new promotion, wrung his old commander's
hand again. "You've slaved hard enough as mate," Kettle went on, "though
that's only what a man's got to do at sea nowadays if he wants
promotion, and it'll probably amuse you to see Grain, who steps into
your shoes, doing the work of four deck hands and an extra boatswain as
well as his own. Grain was inclined to stoutness--he'll soon be thin
again. As for you, you've sweated and slaved so much that your clothes
hang on like you a slop-chest shirt on a stanchion just now. But you'll
fill 'em out nicely by the time you get back to England again. Shouldn't
wonder but what you turn out to be a regular fat man one of these
days, my lad."
Murray stood back and looked humorously over Captain Kettle. The pair of
them liked one another well, but the ties of discipline had kept them
icily apart up to now. Murray's promotion put them on equal footing of
grade now, and they were inclined to make the most of it for the short
time they had together. "Running the _Parakeet_ doesn't seem to have
made you very plump, Skipper."
"Constitutional, I guess," said Kettle. "I don't believe the food's
grown that'd make me carry flesh. I'm one of those men that was sent
into the world with a whole shipload of bad luck to work through before
I came across any of the soft things."
"If you ask me," said Murray, cheerfully, "you haven't much to grumble
at now. Here am I kicking you out of the command of the _Parakeet_, to
be sure. And why? Because whilst you've been her old man you've made her
pay about half what she originally cost per annum, and as out of that
the firm's saved enough to build a new and bigger ship, they're
naturally going to give her to you to scare up more fat dividends.
Lord," said Murray, hitting his knee, "the chaps on board here will be
calling me the 'old man' behind my back now."
"You'll get used to hearing the title," said Kettle grimly, "before you
make your pile. You'll get married, I suppose, on the strength of the
promotion? I saw a girl's photo nailed up in your room."
The new captain nodded. "Got engaged when I passed for my master's
ticket. Arranged to be hitched so soon as I found a ship."
Kettle sighed drearily. "I was that way, my lad. I was married, and a
kid had come before I was thirty. Not that I ever regretted it; by
James! no. But for long enough I was never able to provide for the
missus in the way I'd like, and I can tell you it was terrible gall to
me to know that our set at the chapel looked down on her because she
could only keep a poor home. Yes, my lad, you'll have a lot to
go through."
"Well," said Murray, "I've got this promotion, and I'm not going to
worry about dismals. I suppose you go straight home by mail from
Aden here?"
"Hullo, haven't they told you?"
"My letter was only the dry, formal announcement that you were promoted
to the new ship, and I was to take over the _Parakeet_."
"They don't waste their typewriter in the office. I suppose they thought
I'd hand on my letter if I saw fit. Read through that," said Kettle, and
handed across his news. This is how it ran:--
BIRD, BIRD & CO.,
Ship and Insurance Brokers,
Agents to the Bird
Transport Company.
Managers of the
Bird Steam Company.
[Illustration]
759, Euston Street,
LIVERPOOL,
21st March, 1896.
_Swan_, 375 tons. Captain R. Evans.
_Sparrow_, 461 tons. Captain James Evans.
s.s. _Starling_, 880 tons. Captain Enoch Shaw.
s.s. _Parakeet_, 2,100 tons. Captain Murray.
s.s. Building, 3,500 tons. Captain O. Kettle.
s.s. Building, 3,500 tons. Captain ...
s.s. Building, 4,000 tons. Captain ...
"The superb vessels of the Bird Line!"
_Dear Captain Kettle,--
Having noted from your cables and reports you are making a
good thing for us out of tramping the "Parakeet," we have
pleasure in transferring you to our new boat, which is now
building on the Clyde. She will be 3,500 tons, and we may
take out passenger certificate, she being constructed on that
specification. Your pay will be £21 (twenty-one pound) per
month, with 2-1/2 per cent. commission as before. But for the
present, till this new boat is finished, we want you to give
over command of the "Parakeet" to Murray, and take on a new
job. Our Mr. Alexander Bird has recently bought the wreck of
the s.s. "Grecian," and we are sending out a steamer with
divers and full equipment to get the salvage. We wish you to
go on board this vessel to watch over our interests. We give
you full control, and have notified Captain Tazzuchi, at
present in command, to this effect_.
_Yours truly, p.p. Bird, Bird and Co. (Isaac Bird.)_
_To Captain O. Kettle, s.s. "Parakeet," Bird Line, Aden._
"I see they have clapped me down on the bill heading for the _Parakeet_
already," said Murray, "and you're shifted along in print for the new
ship. Birds are getting on. But I've big doubts about three new boats
all at one bite. One they might manage on a mortgage. But three? I don't
think it. Old Ikey's too cautious."
"Messrs. Bird are your owners and mine," said Kettle significantly.
"Oh!" said the newly-made captain, "I'm not one of your old-fashioned
sort that thinks an owner a little tin god."
"My view is," said Kettle, "that your owner pays you, and so is entitled
to your respect so long as he is your owner. Besides that, whilst you
are drawing pay, you're expected to carry out orders, whatever they may
be, without question. But I don't think we'll talk any more about this,
my lad. You're one of the newer school, I know, and you've got such a
big notion of your own rights that we're not likely to agree. Besides,
you've got to check my accounts and see I've left it all for you
ship-shape, and I've to pull my bits of things together into a
portmanteau. See you again before I go away, and we'll have a drop of
whisky together to wish the _Parakeet's_ new 'old man' a pile of luck."
At the edge of the harbor, Aden baked under the sun, but Kettle was not
the man to filch his employer's time for unnecessary strolls ashore. The
salvage steamer rolled at her anchor at the opposite side of the harbor,
and Kettle and two portmanteaux were transhipped direct in one of the
_Parakeet's_ boats.
He was received on board by an affable Italian, who introduced himself
as Captain Tazzuchi. The man spoke perfect English, and was hospitality
personified. The little salvage steamer was barely 300 tons burden, and
her accommodation was limited, but Tazzuchi put the best room in the
ship at his guest's disposal, and said that anything that could act for
his comfort should be done forthwith.
"Y'know, Captain," said Tazzuchi, "this is what you call a 'Dago' ship,
and we serve out country wine as a regular ration. But I thought perhaps
you'd like your own home ways best, and so I've ordered the ship's
chandler ashore to send off a case of Scotch, and another of Chicago
beef. Oh yes, and I sent also for some London pickles. I know how you
English like your pickles."
In fact, all that a man could do in the way of outward attention
Tazzuchi did, but somehow or other Captain Kettle got a suspicion of him
from the very first moment of their meeting. Perhaps it was to some
extent because the British mariner has always an instinctive and special
distrust for the Latin nations; perhaps it was because the civility was
a little unexpected and over-effusive. Putting himself in the Italian's
place, Kettle certainly would not have gone out of his way to be
pleasant to a foreigner who was sent practically to supersede him in
a command.
But perhaps a second letter which he had received, giving him a more
intimate list of the duties required, had something to do with this
hostile feeling. It was from the same hand which had written the firm's
formal letter, but it was couched in quite a different vein. Isaac Bird
was evidently scared for his very commercial existence, and he thrust
out his arms to Kettle on paper as his only savior. It seemed that
Alexander Bird, the younger brother, had been running a little wild
of late.
The wreck of the _Grecian_ had been put up for auction; Alexander
strolled into the room by accident, and bought at an exorbitant figure.
He came and announced his purchase to Isaac, declaring it as an instance
of his fine business instincts. Isaac set it down to whisky, and
recriminations followed. Alexander in a huff said he would go out and
overlook the salvage operations in person. Isaac opined that the firm
might scrape to windward of bankruptcy by that means, and advised
Alexander to take remarkable pains about keeping sober. But forthwith
Alexander, still in his cups, "and at a music hall, too, a place he
knows 'Isaac's' religious connection holds in profound horror," gets to
brawling, and is next discovered in hospital with a broken thigh.
"_I have found Alexander's department of the business very tangled_,"
wrote Isaac, "_when I began to go into his books the first day he was
laid up, and the thought of this new complication drove me near crazy.
Salvage is out of our line; Alexander should never have touched it. But
there it is; money paid, and I've had to borrow; and engaging that
Italian firm for the job was the best thing I could manage. What English
firms wanted was out of all reason. I don't wonder at Lloyds selling
wrecks for anything they will fetch. A pittance in cash is better than
getting into the hands of these sharks_" (sharks was heavily
underscored). "_And what guarantee have I that the firm will pocket even
that pittance? How do I know that I shall see even the money outpaid
again, let alone reasonable interest? None_."
There were several words erased here, and the writer went on with what
was evidently considered a dramatic finish. "'_But stay,' I say to
myself, 'you have Kettle. He is down in the Red Sea now, doing well. You
had all along intended to promote him. Do it now, and set him to
overlook this Italian salvage firm whilst the new boat is building. He
is the one to see that Isaac Bird's foot doth not fall, for Captain O.
Kettle is a godly man also_.'"
The letter was shut off conventionally enough with the statement that
the writer was Captain Kettle's truly, and ended in a post-scriptum tag
to the effect that the envoy should still draw his two and a-half per
cent. on net results. The actual figures had evidently not been conceded
without a mental wrench, as the erasion beneath them showed, but there
they stood in definite ink, and Kettle was not inclined to cavil at the
process which deduced them.
However, although in his recent prosperity Kettle had assumed a hatred
for risks, and bred a strong dislike for all those commercial adventures
which lay beyond the ordinary rut and routine of trade, he took up his
duties on the salvage steamer with a stout heart and cheerful estimate
for the future. Ahead of him he had pleasant dreams of the big boat that
was "building," and the increased monthly pay in store; and for the
present, well, here was an owner's command, and of course that settled
him firmly in the berth. He had been too long an obedient slave to
shipowners of every grade to have the least fancy for disputing the
imperial will of Bird, Bird and Co.
Murray tooted his cheerful farewells on the _Parakeet's_ siren as the
little Italian salvage boat steamed out of the baking airs of Aden
harbor, and ensigns were dipped with due formality. Tazzuchi was all
hospitality. He invited Kettle to damage his palate with a black Italian
"Virginia" cigar with a straw up the middle; he uncorked a bottle of the
Scotch whisky with his own hand, splashed away the first wineglassful to
get rid of the fusel oil, and put it ready for reference when his guest
should feel athirst; and he produced a couple of American pirated
editions of English novels to give even intellect its dainty feast.
Kettle accepted it all with a dry civility. He had every expectation of
upsetting this man's plans of robbery later on, and very possibly of
coming into personal contact with him. But the ties of bread and salt
did not disturb him. Though it was Tazzuchi who presented the Virginias
and the novels, he took it for granted that Messrs. Bird, Bird and Co.
had paid for them, and he was not averse to accepting a little luxury
from the firm. The economical Isaac had cut down the commissariat on the
_Parakeet_ till a man had to be half-starved before he could stomach
a meal.
The salvage steamer had a South of Europe leisureliness in her
movements. Her utmost pace was nine knots, but, as eight was more
economical for coal consumption, it was at that speed she moved. The
wreck of the _Grecian_ was out of the usual steam lane. She had, it
appeared, got off her course in a fog, had run foul of a half-ebb reef
which holed her in two compartments, and then been steered for the shore
in the wild attempt to beach her before she sank. She had ceased
floating, however, with some suddenness, and when the critical moment
came not all of her people managed to scrape off with their lives in the
boats. Those that stayed behind were incontinently drowned; those that
got away found themselves in a gale (to which the fog gave place), and
had so much trouble to keep afloat that they had no time left to make
accurate determination of where their vessel sank; and when they were
picked up could only give her whereabouts vaguely. However, they stated
that the _Grecian's_ mast-trucks remained above the water surface, and
by these she could be found; and this fact was brought out strongly by
the auctioneer who sold the wreck, and had due influence on the
enterprising Alexander. "Masts!" said Alexander, who daily saw them
bristling from a dock, "don't tell me you can miss masts anywhere."
But, as it chanced, it was only by a fluke that the salvage steamer
stumbled across the wreck at all. She wandered for several days among an
intensely dangerous archipelago, and many times over had narrow escapes
from piling up her bones on one or other of those reefs with which the
Red Sea in that quarter abounds. Tazzuchi navigated her in an ecstasy of
nervousness, and Kettle (who regarded himself as a passenger for the
time being) kept a private store of food and water-bottles handy, and
saw that one of the quarter-boats was ready for hurried lowering. But
nowhere did they see those mast-trucks. They did not sight so much as a
scrap of floating wreckage.
There seemed, however, a good many dhow coasters dodging about in and
among the reefs, and from these Kettle presently drew a deduction.
"Look here," he said to Tazzuchi one morning, "what price those gentry
ashore having found the wreck already? I guess they aren't out here
taking week-end trippers for sixpenny yachting cruises."
"No," said Tazzuchi, "and they aren't fishing; you can see that."
"Well, I give you the tip for what it's worth," said Kettle; and that
afternoon the steamer was run up alongside a dhow, which tried
desperately to escape. Her captain was dragged on board, and at that
juncture Captain Kettle took upon himself to go below. He knew what
would probably take place, and, though he disapproved of such methods
strongly, he felt he could not interfere. He was in Bird, Bird and Co.'s
employ, and what was being done would forward the firm's interest.
But presently came a noise of bellowing from the deck above, and then
that was followed by shrill screams as the upper gamut of agony was
reached. Kettle was prepared for rough handling, but at information
gained by absolute torture he drew the line. It was clear that these
cruel beggars of Italians were going too far.
"By James!" he muttered to himself, "owners or no owners, I can't stand
this," and started hurriedly to go back to the deck. But before he
reached the head of the companion-way the cries of pain ceased, and so
he stood where he was on the stair, and waited. The engines rumbled, and
the steamer once more gathered way. A clamor of barbaric voices reached
him, which gradually died into quietude. It was clear they were leaving
the dhow behind.
Captain Kettle drew a long breath. They would stick at little, these
Dagos, in getting the salvage of the _Grecian_, and it seemed
preposterous to suppose that once they gripped the specie in their own
ringers they would ever give it up for the paltry pay which had been
offered by Bird, Bird and Co. Their own poverty was aching. He saw it
whenever he looked about the patched little steamer. He felt it whenever
he sat down to one of their painfully frugal meals.
Still, though no man knew more bitterly than Kettle himself from past
experience what poverty meant, and how it cut, the poverty of these
Italians was no concern of his just then. They were paid servants of the
owners exactly as he was, and it was his duty to see that they earned
their hire. He took it that he was one against the whole ship's company,
but the odds did not daunt him. On the contrary, something of his old
fighting spirit, which had been of late hustled into the background by
snug commercial prosperity, came back to him. And besides, he had always
at his call that exquisite pride of race which has so many times given
victory to the Anglo-Saxon over the Latin, when all reasonable balances
should have made it go the other way.
By a sort of instinct he buttoned up his trim white drill coat, and
stepped out on deck. There would be no scuffle yet awhile. With the
specie that would make the temptation still snugly stored on the
sea-floor, the dirty, untidy Italians were still all affability. Indeed,
as soon as he appeared, Tazzuchi himself stepped down off the upper
bridge to give him the news.
"How do you think those crafty imps have managed it?" he cried, with a
gesture. "Why they dived down and cut off her masts below water level.
The funnel was out of sight already. They just thought they were going
to have the skimming of that wreck themselves. No wonder we couldn't
pick her up."
"Cute beggars," said Kettle.
"I've bagged a pilot. If he takes us there straight, he gets backsheesh.
If he doesn't, he eats more stick. I think," said Captain Tazzuchi, with
a wide smile, "that he'll take us there the quickest road."
"Shouldn't wonder," said Kettle. "But don't be surprised if his friends
come round and make things ugly. When those Red Sea niggers get their
fingers in a wreck, they think's it's their wreck."
"Let them come. We were ready for this sort of entertainment when we
sailed, and there are plenty of rifles and cartridges in the cabin. If
there is any trouble, we shall shoot; and if we begin that game, we
shall just imagine they are Abyssinians, and shoot to kill. The Italians
have a big bill to pay with those jokers, anyway." He tapped Kettle on
the shoulder. "And look at those two brass signal guns, Captain. If we
break up some firebars for shot, they'll smash the side of any dhow in
the Red Sea."
Under the black captive's guidance, the salvage steamer soon put a term
to her search. For two more hours she threaded her way among surf which
broke over unseen reefs, and swung round the capes of a rocky
archipelago, and then the pilot gave his word and the engines were
stopped and a rusty cable roared out till an anchor got its hold of the
ground. A boat was lowered with air-pump already stepped amidships, and
the boat's crew with eager hands assisted the diver to make his toilet.
"You chaps seem keen enough," said Kettle, as he watched the trail of
air bubbles which showed the man's progress on the sea floor below.
"They have each got a stake in the venture."
"I bet they have," was Kettle's grim comment to himself.
The kidnapped skipper of the dhow, it seemed, had done his pilotage with
a fine accuracy. The salvage steamer had been anchored in a good
position, and between them two divers in two boats found the _Grecian's_
wreck in half an hour. Indeed, they had made their first descent
practically within hand-touch of her, but the water was full of a milky
clay and very opaque, and sight below the surface was consequently
limited.
They came up to the air for a quarter of an hour's spell and made their
announcement, and then the copper helmets were clapped into place again,
and once more like a pair of uncouth sea monsters they slowly and
clumsily faded away into the depths. A gabble of excited Italian kept
pace to the turning of the air-pumps, and of that language Kettle knew
barely a score of words. Practically these people might have weaved any
kind of plot noisily and under his very nose without his being any the
wiser, and this possibility did little to quell his suspicions.
But still Tazzuchi was all outward frankness. "It's as well we brought
out this little steamboat just to skim the wreck and survey her," he
said. "If they'd waited to fit out a big salvage expedition, to raise
her straight off, I reckon there wouldn't have been much left but iron
plates and coal bunkers. These Red Sea niggers are pretty useful at
looting, once they start. The beggars can dive pretty nearly as well and
as long in their naked skins as their betters can in a proper
diving suit."
Each time the divers came up from the opaque white water they brought
more reports. Binnacles, whistle, wheels, and all movable deck fittings
were gone already. The chart-house had been looted down to the bare
boards. Hatches were off, both forward and aft, and already the cargo
had begun to diminish. The black men of the district had been making
good use of their time; and as the probabilities were that they would
return in force to glean from this store which they considered legally
theirs, it was advisable to collect as much as possible into the salvage
steamer before any disturbances began.
News came from the cool mysterious water to the baking region of air
above, almost at the second hour of the search, that the _Grecian_ could
never be refloated. In addition to the holes already made in two of her
compartments, she had settled on a sharp jag of rock, which had pierced
her in a third place aft. But at the same time this one piece of rock
was the only solid spot in the neighborhood. All the rest of the sea
floor was paved with pulpy white clay, and in this the unfortunate wreck
had settled till already it was flush with her lower decks. There were
evidences, too, that the ooze was creeping higher every day, so that all
that remained was to strip her as quickly as might be before she was
swallowed up for always.
Tazzuchi asked Captain Kettle for his opinion that night in the
chart-house. "I'm to be guided by you, of course," he said, "but my idea
is that we should go for the specie first thing, and let everything
slide till that's snugly on board here. Birds gave £5,400 for the wreck,
and there's £8,000 in cash down there in a room they built specially for
it over the shaft-tunnel. If we can grab that, it will pay our expenses
and commission and all the other actual outlay, and Birds will be out of
the wood. Afterward, if we can weigh any more of the cargo, well, that
will be all clear profit."
"Yes," thought Kettle, "you want those gold boxes in your hands, you
blessed Dago, and then you'll begin to play your monkey tricks. I wonder
if you think you're going to jam a knife into me by way of making things
snug and safe?" But aloud he expressed agreement to Captain
Tazzuchi's plan.
He felt that this was diplomacy, and though the diplomatic art was new
and strange to him, he told himself that it was the correct weapon to
use under the circumstances. He had risen out of his old grade of
hole-and-corner shipmaster, where it had been his province to carry
things through by rough blows and violent words. He was a Captain in a
regular line--the Bird line--now, and (with a trifle of a sigh) he
remembered that wild fights and scrimmages were beneath the dignity of
his position.
Accordingly, as soon as dawn gave a waking light, the boats were put out
again, and the divers were given orders to let the further survey of the
vessel rest, and put all their efforts into getting the specie boxes on
to the end of the salvage steamer's winch chain. They were quickly
helmed and sent below, and presently an increased cloudiness in the
water told him that they were actively at work. A lot of dhows were
showing here and there amongst the reefs, obviously watching them, and
Tazzuchi was beginning to get nervous.
"We're in for trouble, I'm afraid," he said to Kettle. "That rock on
which she's settled astern has made a hole in her you could drive a cart
through. I suppose it was a tight-fitting hole at first, but as she
settled more and moved about, it's got enlarged same as the hole in a
tin of beef does when you begin to waggle it with the can-opener."
"Well?"
"Didn't you hear the report they've just sung off from the boats? Oh, I
forgot, you don't understand Italian. Well, the news is that the rock's
acted as a can-opener to such fine effect that it's split a hole in the
bottom of the strong room, and those gold boxes have toppled through."
"And buried themselves in the slime?"
"That's it. And Lord knows how many feet they've sunk. It's dreadful
stuff to dig amongst--slides in on you as soon as you start to dig, and
levels up. They'll have to brattice as they work. It'll be a big job."
All that day Kettle watched the sea with an anxious eye. In the two
boats men ground at the air-pumps under the aching sunlight. From below
the mud came up in white billows, which danced, and swirled, and eddied
as the air bubbles from the divers' exhaust valves stirred it. And out
beyond, in and among the reefs, and along the distant shore, which swung
and shimmered in the heat haze, hungry dhows prowled like carrion birds
temporarily driven away from a prey.
Tazzuchi and the chief engineer busied themselves in binding together
fragments of fire-bars with iron wire. The Italian shipmaster had a
great notion of the damage his signal-guns could do against a dhow, if
they were provided with orthodox solid shot. As a point of fact they
never came into action. As soon as the second night came down, and the
darkness became fairly fixed in hue, there began to crackle out of the
distance a desultory rifle fire from every quarter of the compass. It
was not very heavy--at the outside there were not a score of weapons
firing, and it could not be called accurate since not one bullet in
twenty so much as hit the steamer; but it was annoying for all that, and
as the marksmen and their vessels were completely swallowed up by the
blackness of the night, it was impossible to repay their compliments
in kind.
Morning showed the damage of one port window smashed, two panes gone
from the engine-room skylight, and the air-pump in one of the boats
alongside with a plunger neatly cut into two pieces. But there was a
spare air-pump in store, and after dawn came, work went on as usual. The
dhows came no nearer, neither did they go much further away. They
pottered about just beyond rifle shot, and their numbers were slightly
increased. Tazzuchi, full of enthusiasm for his artillery, tried a
carefully aimed shot at one of the largest. But the explosion was quite
outdone in noise by the cackle of laughter which followed it. So slow
was the flight of the missile that the eye could trace it. So short was
its journey, and so curved its trajectory, that it came very near to
hitting one of the boats of the divers, and the men working there cried
out in derision that they would catch cold by being wetted by the spray.
"Well," thought Kettle, "these are pretty cool hands for Dagos, anyway.
I'm going to have a fine tough time of it when my part of the
scuffle comes."
That night he had a still further taste of their quality. So soon as
darkness fell, the dhows closed in again and recommenced their sniping.
They kept under weigh, and so it did little enough good to aim back at
the flashes. But Tazzuchi, with half a dozen keen spirits, got down into
one of the boats with their rifles and knives, and a drum of paraffin,
and pulled away silently into the blackness.
There was silence for quite half an hour, and the suspense on the
anchored steamer was vivid enough to have shaken trained men. Yet these
Italian artificers and merchant seamen seemed to take it as coolly as
though such sorties were an everyday occurrence. But at the end of that
time there was a splutter of shots, a few faint squeals, and then a
bonfire lighted up away in the darkness.
The blaze grew rapidly, and showed in its heart the outline of a dhow
with human figures on it. With promptness every man on the steamer
emptied his rifle at the mark, and continued the fusillade till the dhow
was deserted. They had all done their spell of military service, and
they chose to decide that these snipers were Abyssinians, and did their
best toward squaring the national accounts.
Tazzuchi and his friends returned in the boat, safe and jubilant, and
for the rest of that night the little salvage steamer was left in
quietude. With the next daybreak the divers and their attendants once
more applied themselves to labor. Kettle, as he watched, was amazed to
see the energy they put into it. Certainly they seemed keen enough to
get the specie weighed, and on board. Whatever piratical plans they had
got made up were evidently for afterward.
But when day after day passed, and still none of the treasure was
brought to the surface, he began to modify this original opinion.
Tazzuchi--translating the divers' reports--said that the cause of the
delay was the softness of the sea-floor. The heavy chests had sunk deep
into the ooze, and directly a spadeful of the horrible slime was dug
away, more slid in to fill the gap. Of course this might be true; but
there was only Tazzuchi's word for it. The sea was too consistently
opaque to give one a chance of seeing down from above the surface.
Now as suspicion had got so deep a hold on Captain Kettle's mind, he
began to cudgel his brain for some new method by which the Italians
could serve their purpose. He put himself supposititiously in Tazzuchi's
place, and made piratical theories by the score. Most of them he had to
dismiss after examination as impracticable, others he eliminated by
natural selection; and finally one stood out as practicable beyond
all the rest.
For one thing it did not want many participants; only the actual divers
and Tazzuchi himself. For another, it would not brand the whole gang of
them as criminals and pirates, but (properly managed) would make them
rich without any advertised stigma or stain. In simple words, the method
was this: the gold boxes must be removed from their original site, and
hidden elsewhere under the water close at hand. The friendly slime would
bury them snugly out of sight. The old report of "un-get-at-able" would
be adhered to, and finally the steamer would give up further salvage
operations as hopeless (after fishing up some useless cargo out of the
holds as a conscience salve) and steam away to port. There Tazzuchi and
his friends would either desert or get themselves dismissed, charter a
small vessel of their own, and go back for the plunder; and with £8,000
in clear hard cash to divide, live prosperously (from an Italian
standpoint) ever afterward.
Kettle felt an unimaginative man's complacency in ferreting out such a
dramatic scheme, and began to think next upon the somewhat important
detail of how to get proofs before he commenced to frustrate it. Chance
seemed to make Tazzuchi play into his hand. The air-pump which had been
damaged by the rifle bullet had been mended by the steamer's engineers,
and as there were two or three spare diving dresses on the ship, Captain
Tazzuchi expressed his intention of making a descent in person to
inspect progress.
"I didn't do it before, because I didn't want to make the men break
time, but I can go down now without interrupting their work. Will you
come off in the boat with me, Captain, and hand my lifeline?"
"I'll borrow one of those spare dresses and share the pump with you,"
said Kettle.
Tazzuchi was visibly startled. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that the pump will give air for two, and I'm coming down with
you."
"But you know nothing about diving, and you might have an accident, and
I should be responsible."
"Oh, I'll risk that! You must nursery-maid me a bit."
Tazzuchi lowered his voice. "To tell the truth, I'm going to pay a
surprise visit. I want to make sure those chaps below are doing the
square thing. If they aren't, and I catch them, there'll be a row, and
they'll use their knives."
"H'm!" said Kettle, "I've got no use for your local weapon as a general
thing. I find a gun handiest. But at a pinch like this I'll borrow a
knife of you, and if it comes to any one cutting my air-tube you'll find
I can use it pretty mischievously."
"I wish you wouldn't insist upon this," said Tazzuchi persuasively.
"I'm going to, anyway."
"I'm going down merely because it's my duty."
"That's the very same reason that's taking me, Captain. I must ask you
not to make any more objections. I'm a man that never changes his mind,
once it's made up."
Whereupon Tazzuchi shrugged his shoulders, and gave way.
"Now," thought Kettle to himself, "that man's made up his mind to kill
me if he gets the glimmer of a chance, and, as I'm not going to get
wiped out this journey, he'll do with a lot of watching."
It has been the present writer's business at one time and another to
point out that Captain Owen Kettle is a man of iron nerve; but I cannot
call to mind any instance where his indomitable courage was more
severely tried than in this voluntary descent in the diving dress. The
world beneath the waters was strange and dangerous to him; his companion
was a man against whom he held the blackest suspicion; the men at the
pump (whose language he did not understand) might any moment cut off his
supply, and leave him to drown like a puppy under a bucket. The
circumstances combined were enough to daunt a Bayard.
But Kettle felt that the men in the boat, who helped to adjust his
stiff rubber dress, were regarding him with more than ordinary
curiosity, and, for his own pride's sake, he preserved an unruffled
face. He even tried a rude jest in their own tongue before they made
fast the helmet on his head, and the cackle of their laughter was the
last sound he heard before the metal dome closed the audible world
away from him.
They hung the weights over his chest and back, and Tazzuchi signed to
him to descend. Kettle hitched round the sheath-knife to the front of
his belt, and signed with politeness, "After you."
Tazzuchi did not argue the matter. He lifted his clumsy lead-soled feet
over the side of the boat, got on the ladder, and climbed down out of
sight. Kettle followed. The chill of the water crept up and closed over
his head; the steady throb-throb of the air-pump beat against his skull;
and a little shiver took him in one small spot between the shoulder
blades, because he knew that it was there that an Italian, if he can
manage it, always plants a knife in his enemy.
He reached the end of the ladder and slid down a rope. He felt curiously
corky and insecure, but still when he reached the bottom he sank up to
his knees in impalpable mud. He could foggily see Tazzuchi a few paces
away waiting for him, and he went up to him at once. If the men in the
boat, acting on orders, cut his air-tube, he wanted to be in a position
to cut Captain Tazzuchi's also with promptness.
However, everything went peacefully just then. The Italian set off down
a track in the slime, and Kettle waded laboriously after him. It was
terrible work making a passage through that white glutinous ooze, but
they came to the wreck directly, and, working round her rusty flank,
stood beside a great shallow pit, where two weird-looking gray
sea-monsters showed in dim outline through the dense fog of the water.
Sound does not carry down there in that quiet world, and the two
new-comers stood for long enough before the two workers observed them.
But one chanced to look up and see them watching and jogged the other
with his spade, and then both frantically beckoned the visitors to come
down into the pit. Tazzuchi led, and Kettle followed, wallowing down the
slopes of slime, and there at the bottom, in the dim, milky light, one
of the professional divers slipped a shovel into his hand and thrust it
downward, till it jarred against something solid underfoot.
It was clear they had come upon the gold boxes, and they wished to
impress upon the visitors, in underwater dumb show, that the find had
only been made that very minute. It was a strange enough performance.
Half-seen hands snapped red fingers in triumph. Ponderously booted feet
did a dance of ecstasy in three feet of gluey mud. And meanwhile,
Kettle, with a hand on the haft of his knife, edged away from this
uncanny demonstration, lest some one should slit his air-tube before he
could prevent it.
He had seen what he wanted; he had no reason to wait longer; and
besides, being a novice at diving, his lungs were half burst already in
the effort to get breath, and his head was singing like a tea-urn. The
gold boxes were there, and if they were not brought to the surface, and
carried honestly to Suez, the matter would have to be fought out above
in God's open air, and not in that horrible choking quagmire of slime
and cruel water. And so, still guarding himself cannily, he got back
again to the boat, and almost had it in him to shake hands with the men
who eased him of that intolerable helmet.
Now far be it from me to raise even a suspicion that Captain Owen Kettle
resented the fact that he had been robbed of a scuffle when the little
salvage steamer actually did bring up in Suez harbor with the specie
honestly locked in one of her staterooms. But that he was violently
angry he admits himself without qualification. He says he kicked himself
for being such a bad judge of men.
The _Parakeet_ was in when they arrived, rebunkering for the run home,
and Murray came off as fast as a crew could drive his boat to
inquire the news.
He saw Tazzuchi on the deck and accosted him with a vigorous handshake,
and a "Hullo, Fizz-hookey, old man, how goes it? Who'd have thought of
seeing you here? Howdy, Captain Kettle. Had good fishing?"
"Do you know Captain Tazzuchi?"
"Somewhat. Why, we were both boys on the _Conway_ together."
"You're making some mistake. Captain Tazzuchi is an Italian."
"Oh, am I?" said Tazzuchi. "Not much of the Dago about me except the
name."
"Well, you never told me that before."
"You never asked me, that I know of. I speak about enough of the lingo
to carry on duty with, and I serve on an Italian ship because I couldn't
get a skipper's billet on anything else. But I'm as English as either
of you, and as English as Birds--or more English than Birds, seeing that
they come from somewhere near Jerusalem. Great Scot, Captain Kettle,
can't you tell a Dago yet for sure? Where have you been all your days?"
Murray laughed. "Well, come across and discuss it in the _Parakeet_.
I've got a case of champagne on board to wet my new ticket."
"Stay half a minute," said Tazzuchi, "we'll just get those boxes of gold
down into your boat, Murray, and ferry them across. I sha'n't be sorry
to have them out of my responsibility. They're too big a temptation to
leave handy for the crew there is on board here."
"Phew!" said Kettle, "it's hot here in Suez. Great James! to think of
the way I've been sweating about this blame' ship without a scrap of
need of it. Here, hurry up with the lucre-boxes. I want to get across to
the old _Parakeet_ and wash the taste of a lot of things out of
my mouth."