Although they had been passing through these fields of water ferns
and tree-like forms for only half an hour or so, the boys were ready
to declare that the reality far exceeded even their most sanguine
expectations.
“Of course,” Jack admitted when they commenced talking about their
work, and what a satisfaction it was not to be disappointed, “this
thing will get a bit monotonous in due course, unless we keep on
meeting up with new sights. But then down here in these depths there’s
apt to be something novel happening any old time; just as that terrible
fight between the two species of sharks turned out.”
“We had the same sort of luck out in Africa, remember,” Ballyhoo
reminded the other two chums. “Whenever things got a little dull along
would come something out of the ordinary to liven up the show. When we
got through taking pictures of all the wild animals that could be met
with in the jungle and the forest, why, what followed but that trip to
the black king’s kraal, where we saw his army drill, and watched ’em do
the Lion Dance to the tune of a horrid din.”
The crew had before this fallen away from the ports, and gone back to
their customary work. They saw little that was attractive about those
waving forests of singular submarine growths; though the prospect of
another fight between some of the denizens of the depths would have
brought them rushing forward again.
“Notice how the skipper keeps lunging from side to side as we move
along?” observed Oscar. “He is scouring the ground as he goes forward.
By the time we’ve made several revolutions around Coco Key we’ll know
whether there was any truth in that old yarn about the sunken hulk, or
not.”
“Well,” ventured Ballyhoo, with a shrug of his shoulders that was
intended to express incredulity, “so far as I’m concerned I reckon it
was only a fishy story that some newspaper man got up just to fill
space. You never know how much to believe of anything you see in the
newspapers nowadays, when the reporters are paid for space.”
“The proof of the pudding is the eating of the same,” laughed Oscar;
“so we’ll not quite condemn that yarn until we’ve proved it to be a
bad egg. You’d feel pretty cheap, Ballyhoo, if we really did uncover
something in the shape of an old hulk, whether it held any treasure or
not.”
“Oh! I surely hope they do, for the captain’s sake, yes, and for
Uncle Abner’s, too; because he’s sunk a wheen of good hard cash in
this venture, that he may never get back again. With us, now, it’s
different, I claim, for we’re going about a legitimate business. Let us
get our pictures, and it’s going to line our pockets with gold. That’s
the way to do things, according to my notion.”
“Stop and think,” said Jack, “how would we ever have found such a
glorious chance to accomplish what we’re aiming to do now if it hadn’t
been for this same wildcat treasure hunting expedition you’re harping
on? Sometimes it’s cruel to look a gift-horse in the mouth, Ballyhoo.”
“Kick me, Oscar,” said the other contritely, “for I certainly deserve
it. And after this I’ll try and keep my thoughts to myself, especially
when they run counter to the balance of you. Sure I hope the captain’ll
strike it rich, and locate this Aladdin stuff--or was it King Midas who
had everything he touched turned straightway into gold, even the coffee
he drank at meals?”
Before either of the others could say another word they all became
conscious of a perceptible shock that made the little submarine tremble
all over as though stricken by a monster fist.
“Wow! was that my whale butting into us?” gasped Ballyhoo, who had only
managed to keep himself from falling by clutching a convenient cleat on
the wall.
“We’ve run up against something that was hidden among the waving, giant
water ferns, that’s sure!” ejaculated Oscar anxiously.
They listened. Men could be heard calling out excitedly. The engines
had stopped working, and the boys immediately felt a dreadful fear grip
their hearts--had the motive power been disabled, and would they be
unable to rise again to the surface when the compressed air chambers no
longer contained the elements necessary to keep the imprisoned voyagers
alive?
They may have remembered how the crew of an ill-fated U. S. submarine
out at Hawaii had some accident occur that caused the boat to sink to
the bottom of the sea in a deep hole; and that delay in rescuing her
imprisoned crew resulted in the death of every one in the doomed boat.
Strange how things like this, common incidents under normal conditions,
and simply glanced at in curiosity among other news items, arise to
stagger one when suddenly placed in similar distressing conditions.
“Could it be possible for a hole to be punched in the outside shell of
our bully little boat?” Ballyhoo wanted to know, and his voice quivered
as he asked it.
“Hardly a likely thing,” Oscar told him. “But what I’m really afraid of
is that our engines may be knocked galley-west and hurt so badly that
the engineer can’t possibly repair the same.”
“As a last resort,” Jack added, seriously enough, “there’s a way of
getting out of here through a chamber that can be emptied of water
again and again. And once on the surface a fellow could swim to the
island all right enough. So you see it hasn’t got to the desperate
stage.”
“One of us ought to try and find out what happened, don’t you think?”
asked Jack.
“Let Oscar do it,” suggested Ballyhoo; for somehow it seemed that when
something really important had to be carried through the Jones boy felt
considerable more confidence in Oscar’s ability than in his own.
“All right, I will,” promptly spoke up the one indicated. “Both of you
stay here so as not to get in the way. This is a tight fit, you must
remember, and any useless confusion would be next door to criminal.
I’ll be back in a jiffy; the chances are nothing so terrible has
happened.”
With that he left them. Jack and Ballyhoo waited impatiently for his
return, and, of course, conjectured all sorts of miserable things.
Still, their spirits began to brighten in some degree when they noticed
that pretty much all the furore had by now died down.
“Guess we’re not taking in water _very_ fast, anyhow,” said Ballyhoo
bravely.
“I haven’t seen or felt any leak,” agreed Jack, just as if such a thing
as flooding the little compartment where they had their bunks were
possible without a panic among the crew.
Then came Oscar almost crawling back to them, because passing from one
part of the boat to another necessitated considerable of this sort of
thing.
“It’s good news he’s fetching us, I warrant you!” exclaimed the eager
Ballyhoo, “because I can see his face all wrinkled up in a smile.”
Oscar sank down beside them.
“Well, it seems that we certainly butted into something or other that
was quite hidden in among that extra big patch of submarine imitation
trees,” he commenced. “The captain doesn’t know just yet whether any
damage was done, but they haven’t discovered that we’re taking on any
water, and that is a comfort.”
“Bully!” zipped Ballyhoo, drawing in a big breath of relief.
“And the engines, how about them?” demanded Jack.
“Oh! he said they were all right,” Oscar told him. “The engineer shut
off power the very instant we rebounded.”
“Lucky we were going pretty slow at the time, too,” Jack added. “If
we’d been racing along at top speed it would have been good-night for
everybody by now.”
“What do you suppose it was we struck?” asked Ballyhoo.
“Oh! one of those queer ledges that we’ve had to climb over several
times before this,” Jack went on to say. “The floor of the ocean isn’t
always like a level plain, you know. Sometimes there are hills, and
then deep valleys, just as we have them on the land.”
“Somehow or other,” continued Oscar, “Captain Shooks doesn’t quite
believe it was hard rock we struck. He says it didn’t just feel like
it. Still, down in this section there’s a heap of coquina rock, which
you know is really made by myriads of insects building. It looks like
a mass of tiny shells welded together with some sort of cement. The
skipper says coquina rock is lots softer than ordinary stone. It may
have been a bank of that we ran smack up against.”
“Let’s hope so, anyhow,” said Ballyhoo fervently, “because to have
anything injure our boat at this early stage of the game would be
terrible. Jack here has only begun to take his under-the-sea motion
pictures; and then again nary a cent have the treasure hunters found up
to now, to help pay the e_nor_mous expenses of the enterprise.”
“There, the engines are working again,” remarked Oscar. “I suppose
the next move will be to draw back out of this mess of giant ferns
and other plants ten or twenty feet high. They’re all around us, you
notice, boys.”
The boat was moving slowly, and just as Oscar had supposed would be
the case, in a backward direction. It also began to swing to one side
so that quite a broad avenue was left behind, showing where they had
smashed through the aquatic growth.
During this time the boys had their eyes glued to the observation
bull’s-eyes as though more than curious to discover what had lain ahead
of them. The powerful electric searchlights were turned on again as
soon as the engines had started, and they were thus enabled to see with
distinctness.
“I can just make out something ahead there, boys!” Ballyhoo was calling
out.
“Ditto here,” echoed Jack, “and I guess it must be a bank of that
coquina rock Oscar was telling us about. Still, there’s something queer
about it to me.”
“You bet there is,” snapped Ballyhoo, as quick as a flash. “I can begin
to make out a shadowy outline further on. It rises just so high, and
that’s all. If that’s a rock all I want to say is--why, boys, it looks
to me a whole lot like some sort of vessel lying there partly on its
side!”
Oscar laughed aloud.
“This is a big joke!” he exclaimed gleefully.
“In what way?” demanded Ballyhoo, still groping for an answer.
“Why, to think that after we’ve dropped down here with the principal
idea of searching the bottom of the sea around Coco Key for a sunken
treasure-ship that was said to have foundered here ever so many years
ago in one of those hurricanes, we should actually bump the nose of our
boat into the same!”
Jack and Ballyhoo uttered exclamations of amazement.
“Talk about luck!” cried Ballyhoo.
“Do you really mean that you think we’ve found that wreck already?”
asked Jack.
“It looks mighty like it,” came the steady and confident reply, “for
that object we can glimpse there in the midst of the thick growth has
all the earmarks of an old hulk that’s been lying at the bottom of the
sea for scores and scores of years!”