stretch of the eastern coast of Java, which Jan recognized; but the spot
where the junk had gone down was one to which passing ships always gave
a wide berth. It was a place of treacherous anchorage, of abrupt,
forbidding, uninhabited shore, and of violent currents that shifted
erratically. So much the better, thought Jan, for his investigations, if
only the pirate junk should prove to have been considerate enough to
sink in water not too deep for a diver to work in. There would be so
much the less danger of interruption.
Jan was on the point of hurrying away from the gruesome scene, which
might at any moment become a scene of excitement and annoying
investigation, when a new idea flashed into his mind. It was over this
precious paper that all the trouble had been. The scoundrels who had
fled would undoubtedly return as soon as they dared, and would search
for it. Finding it gone they would conclude that he had it; and they
would be hot on his trail. He had no fancy for the sleepless vigilance
that this would entail upon him. He had no fancy for the heavy armed
expedition which it would force him to organize for the pearl hunt. He
saw his airy palaces toppling ignominiously to earth. He saw that all he
was likely to get was a slit throat.
As he glanced about him for a way out of his dilemma his eyes fell on a
bottle of India ink containing the fine-tipped brush with which these
Orientals did their writing. His resourcefulness awoke to this chance.
The moments were becoming very pearls themselves for preciousness, but
seizing the brush, he made a workable copy of the map on the back of a
letter which he had in his pocket. Then he made a minute and very
careful correction in the original, in such a manner as to indicate that
the position of the wreck was in a deep fiord some fifty miles east of
where it actually was. This done to his critical satisfaction, he
returned the map to its hiding-place in the dead pirate's belt, and made
all haste away. Not till he was back in the European quarter did he feel
himself secure. Once among his fellow whites, where he was a man of
known standing and reputed to be the best diver in the Archipelago, he
knew that he would run no risk of being connected with a drinking brawl
of Lascars and pirates. As for the dead Englishman, he knew the odds
were that the Singapore police would know all about him.
Jan Laurvik had a little capital. But he needed a trusty partner with
more. To his experienced wits his other needs were clear. There would
have to be a very seaworthy little steamer, powerfully engined for
service on that stormy coast, and armed to defend herself against
prowling pirate junks. This small and fit craft would have to be manned
by a crew equally fit, and at the same time as small as possible, for
the reason that in a venture of this sort every one concerned would of
necessity come in for a share of the winnings. Moreover, the fewer there
were to know, the fewer the chances of the secret leaking out; and Jan
was even more in dread of the Dutch Government getting wind of it than
he was of the pirates picking up his trail.
Up to a certain point, he had no difficulty in verifying the dead
pirate's story. He had heard of the wreck of the Dutch steamer _Viecht_
on a reef off the Celebes, and of the massacre of all the crew and
passengers, except one small boat-load, by pirates. This had happened
about eight months ago. Discreet inquiry developed the fact that the
_Viecht_ had carried about $300,000 worth of pearls. The evidence was
sufficiently convincing and the prize was sufficiently alluring to make
it worth his while to risk the adventure.
It was with a certain amount of Northern deliberation that Jan Laurvik
thought these points all out, and made up his mind what to do. Then he
acted promptly. First he cabled to Calcutta, to one Captain Jerry
Parsons, to join him in Singapore without fail by the very next steamer.
Then he set himself unobtrusively to the task of finding the craft he
wanted and looking up the equipment for her.
Captain Jerry Parsons was a New Englander, from Portland, Me. He had
been whaler, gold-hunter, filibuster, copra-trader, general-in-chief to
a small Central American republic, and sheepfarmer in the Australian
bush. At present he was conducting a more or less regular trade in
precious stones among the lesser Indian potentates. He loved gain much,
but he loved adventure more.
When he received the cable from his good friend Jan Laurvik, he knew
that both were beckoning to him. With light-hearted zest he betook
himself to the steamship offices, found a P. & O. boat sailing on the
morrow, and booked his passage. Throughout the journey he amused himself
with trying to guess what Jan Laurvik was after; and, as it happened,
almost the only thing he failed to think of was pearls.
When Captain Jerry reached Singapore Jan Laurvik told him the story of
the dead pirate's map.
"Let's see the map!" said he, chewing hard on the butt of his unlighted
Manila.
Jan passed his copy over. The New Englander inspected it carefully, in
silence, for several minutes.
"'Tain't much of a map!" said he at length disparagingly. "You think the
varmint was straight?"
"In his way, yes," answered Jan with conviction. "He had it in him to be
straight in his way to a friend, which wouldn't hinder him cuttin' the
throats of a thousand chaps he didn't take an interest in."
"When shall we start?" asked Captain Jerry. Now that his mind was quite
made up he took out his match-box and carefully lighted his cheroot.
The big Norseman's face lighted up with pleasure, and he reached out his
hand. The grip was all, in the way of a bargain, that was needed between
them.
"Why, to-morrow night!" he answered.
"Well," said the New Englander, "I'll draw some cash in the morning."
The boat which Jan had hired was a fast and sturdy seagoing tug,
serviceable, but not designed for comfort. Jan had retained her
engineer, a shrewd and close-mouthed Scotchman. Her sailing-master would
be Captain Jerry. For crew he had chosen a wiry little Welshman and two
lank leather-skinned Yankees. To these four, for whose honesty and
loyalty he trusted to his own insight as a reader of men, he explained,
partially, the nature of the undertaking, and agreed to give them, over
and above their wages, a substantial percentage of whatever treasure he
might succeed in recovering. He had made his selection wisely, and
every man of the four laid hold of the opportunity with ardour.
The tug was swift enough to elude any of the junks infesting those
waters, but the danger was that she might be taken by surprise at her
anchorage while Laurvik was under water. He fitted her, therefore, with
a Maxim gun on the roof of the deck-house, and armed the crew with
repeating Winchesters.
Thus equipped, he felt ready for any perils that might confront him
above the surface of the water. As to what might lurk below he felt
somewhat less confident, as these he should have to face alone, and he
remembered the ominous warning of his pirate friend, about the sharks
and the "killers." For sharks Jan Laurvik had comparatively small
concern; but for the "killers," those swift and implacable little whales
who fear no living thing, he entertained the highest respect.
On the evening of the day after Captain Jerry's arrival, the tug
_Sarawak_ steamed quietly out of the harbour. As this was a customary
thing for her to do, it excited no particular comment among the
frequenters of the waterside. By the pirates' spies, who abounded in the
city, it was not considered an event worth making note of.
[Illustration: "THOSE SWIFT AND IMPLACABLE LITTLE WHALES WHO FEAR NO
LIVING THING."]
The journey, across the Straits, and down the treacherous Javan Sea, was
so prosperous that Jan Laurvik, his blood steeped in Norse superstition,
began to feel uneasy. The sea was like a millpond all the way, and
they were sighted by no one likely to interfere or ask questions. Jan
distrusted Fortune when she seemed to smile too blandly. But Captain
Jerry comforted him with the assurance that there'd be trouble enough
ahead; and strangely enough this singular variety of comfort quite
relieved Jan's depression.
The unusual calm made it easy to hold close inshore, when they reached
that portion of the coast where they must keep watch for the landmarks
indicated on the pirate's map. Every reef and surface-ledge boiled
ceaselessly in the smooth swell, and by that clear green sea they were
saved the trouble of tedious soundings. When they came exactly abreast
of a low headland which they had been watching for some time, it
suddenly opened out into the semblance of a two-humped camel crouching
sidewise to the sea, exactly as it was represented in Jan's map. Just
beyond was a narrow bay, and across the middle of its mouth, with a
dangerous passage on either side, stretched the reef on which the pirate
junk had gone down. At this hour of low water the reef was showing its
teeth and snarling with surf. At high tide it would be hidden, and a
perfect snare of ships. According to the map, the wreck lay in some
eight fathoms of water, midway of the outer crescent of the reef. Behind
the reef, where the latter might serve them as a partial shelter from
the sweep of the seas if a northeaster should blow up, they found
tolerable anchorage for the tug. For the preliminary soundings, and for
the diving operations, of course, Jan planned to use the launch. And, in
order to take utmost advantage of the phenomenal calm, which seemed
determined to smooth away every obstacle for the adventurers, Jan got
instantly to work. Within a half-hour of the _Sarawak's_ anchoring he
had the launch outside the reef with all his diving apparatus aboard,
with Captain Jerry to manage the air-pump, and the Scotch engineer to
run the motor.
III
Along the outer face of the reef, at a depth varying from eight to
twelve fathoms, ran an irregular rocky shelf which dipped gradually
seaward for several hundred yards, then dropped sheer to the ocean
depths. In the warm water along this shelf swarmed a teeming life, of
gay-coloured gigantic weeds, and of strange fish that outdid the
brightest weeds in brilliancy and unexpectedness of hue. Where the
tropic sunlight filtered dimly down through the beryl tide it sank into
a marvellous garden whose flowers, for the most part, were living and
moving forms, some monstrous, many terrifying, and almost all as
grotesque in shape as they were radiant in colour. But in that
insufficient, glimmering light, which was rather, to a human eye, a
vaguely translucent, greenish darkness, these colours were almost
blotted out. It took eyes adapted to the depth and gloom to
differentiate them clearly.
In the great deeps, also, beyond the edge of the shelf, thronged life in
swimming, crawling, or moveless forms, of every imagined and many
unimagined shapes, from creatures so tiny that a whole colony could
dwell at ease in the eye of a cambric needle, to the Titanic squid, or
cuttlefish, with oval bodies fifty feet in length and arms like writhing
constrictors reaching twenty or thirty feet farther. It was a life of
noiseless but terrific activity, of unrelenting and incessant death, in
a darkness streaked fitfully with phosphorescent gleams from the bodies
of the darting, writhing, or pouncing creatures that slew and were slain
in the stupendous silence.
Down to these dwellers in the profound had come some mysterious message
or exciting influence, no man knows what, from the prolonged calm on the
surface. It affected individuals among various species, in such a way
that they moved upward, into a twilight where they were aliens and
intruders. Among those so stung with unrest were several of the
gigantic, pallid cuttles. Far offshore, one of these monsters came up
and sprawled upon the surface in the unfriendly sun, his dreadful arms
curling and uncurling like snakes, till a great sperm-whale, of scarcely
more than his own size, came by and fell upon him ravenously, and
devoured him.
Another of the restless monsters, however, kept his restlessness within
the bounds of discretion. Slowly rising, a vast and spectral horror as
he came up into the green light, he reached the rim of the ledge. The
growing light had already made him uneasy, and he wanted no more of it.
Here on the ledge, where food, though novel in character, was unlimited
in supply, was variety enough to content him. Gorging himself as he went
with everything that swam within reach of his darting tentacles, he
moved over the rocky floor till he came to the wreck of the junk.
[Illustration: "FAR OFFSHORE, ONE OF THESE MONSTERS CAME UP AND SPRAWLED
UPON THE SURFACE."]
To his huge unwinking eyes of crystal black, which caught every tiniest
ray of light in their smooth, appalling deeps, the wreck looked strange
enough to attract his attention at once. It was quite unlike any
rock-form which he had ever seen. Rather cautiously he advanced a giant
tentacle to investigate it. But at the touch of the unfamiliar and alien
substance the tentacle recoiled in aversion. The pale monster backed
away. But the wreck made no attempt to pounce upon him. It seemed to
have no fight in it. Possibly, on closer investigation, it might prove
to be good to eat; and he was hungry. In fact, he was always hungry, for
the irresistible corrosives in his great stomach--and he was nearly all
stomach--were so swift in their action that whatever he swallowed was
digested almost in the swallowing. Since coming upon the ledge he had
clutched and devoured two small basking sharks, from six to eight feet
long, and a sawfish fully ten feet long, who had not been on their guard
against the approach of such a peril. Besides these substantial victims,
countless small fry, of every kind, had been drawn deftly to the
insatiable vortex of his maw. Nevertheless, his appetite was again
crying out. He tried the wreck again, first carefully, then boldly, till
the writhing tentacles, with their sensitive tips and suckers, had
enveloped it from stem to stern and searched it inside and out. A few
lurking fish and mollusks were snatched from the dark interior by those
insinuating and inexorable feelers; and a toothsome harvest of anchored
crustaceans was gathered from the hidden surfaces along beside the keel.
But of the bodies of the pirates that had gone down in the sudden
foundering there was nothing left but bones, which the myriad scavengers
of the sea had polished to the barren smoothness of ivory.
While the pallid monster was occupied in the investigation of the wreck
those two great bulging black mirrors of his eyes were sleeplessly alert
to everything that passed above or about them. Once a swordfish, about
seven feet long, sailed carelessly though swiftly some ten feet
overhead. Up darted a livid tentacle, and fixed upon it with the deadly
sucking disks. In vain the splendid and ferocious fish lashed out in the
effort to wrench itself free. In vain it strove to plunge downward and
pierce the puffy monster with its sword. In a second two more
tentacles were wrapped about it. Then, all force crushed out of it, it
was dragged down and crammed into the conqueror's horrible mouth.
[Illustration: "UP DARTED A LIVID TENTACLE, AND FIXED UPON IT."]
While its mouth was yet working with the satisfaction of this meal, the
monster saw a graceful but massive black shape, nearly half as long as
himself, swimming slowly between his eyes and the shining surface. At
the sight a shudder of fear passed over him. Every waving tentacle
shrank back and lay moveless, as if suddenly paralyzed, and he flattened
himself down as best he could beside the dark hulk of the wreck. Well he
knew that dark shape was a whale--and a whale was the one being he knew
of which he had cause to fear. Against those rending jaws his cable-like
tentacles and tearing beak were of no avail, his unarmoured body utterly
defenceless.
The whale, however,--not a sperm, but one of a much smaller, though more
savage, species--the "killer,"--did not catch sight of the giant
cuttlefish cringing below him. Intent on other game, he passed swiftly
on. His presence, however, had for the moment destroyed the monster's
appetite. Instead of continuing his search for food, he wanted a
hiding-place. He could no longer be at ease for a moment there in the
open.
Just behind the wreck the rock wall rose abruptly to the surface of the
reef. Its base was hollowed into a series of low caves, where masses of
softer rock had been eaten out from beneath a slanting stratum of more
enduring material. The most spacious of these caves was immediately
behind the wreck. It was exactly what the monster craved. He backed into
it with alacrity, completely filling it with his spectral and swollen
body. In the doorway the convex inky lenses of his eyes kept watch,
moveless and all-seeing. And his ten pale-spotted tentacles, each
thicker at the base than a man's thigh, lay outspread and hidden among
the seaweeds, waiting for such victims as might come within reach of
their lightning snap and coil.
[Illustration: "A SINGULAR FIGURE, DESCENDING SLOWLY THROUGH THE
GLIMMERING GREEN."]
The monster had no more than got himself fairly installed in his new
quarters, when into the range of his awful eyes came a singular figure,
descending slowly through the glimmering green directly over the wreck.
It was not so long as the swordfish he had lately swallowed, but it was
thick and massive-looking; and it was blunt at the ends, unlike any
fish he had ever seen. Its eyes were enormous, round and bulging. From
its head and from one of its curious round, thick fins, extended two
slender antennae straight up toward the surface, and so long that their
extremities were beyond the monster's vision. It was indeed a
strange-looking creature, but he felt sure that it would be very good to
eat. In their concealment among the many-coloured seaweeds his tentacles
thrilled with expectancy, and he waited, like some stupendous nightmare
of a spider, to spring the moment the prey came within reach.
It chanced, however, that just as the strange creature, descending
without any movement of its fins, did come within reach, there also
appeared again, in the distance, the black form of the "killer" whale,
swimming far overhead. The monster changed his plans instantly. His
interest in the newcomer died out. He became intent on nothing but
keeping himself inconspicuous. The newcomer, unconscious of the terror
lying in wait so near him and of the dark form patrolling the upper
green, alighted upon the wreck and groped his way lumberingly into the
cabin, dragging those two slim antennae behind him.
IV
When Jan Laurvik, in his up-to-date and well-tested diving-suit, went
down through the green twilight of the sea, he was doing what it was his
profession to do, and he had few misgivings. He had confidence in his
equipment, in his skill, and in his mate at the rope and the air-pump,
Captain Jerry. For defence against any obtrusive shark or sawfish he
carried a heavy, long-bladed, two-edged knife, by far the most effective
weapon in deep water. This knife he wore in a sheath at his waist, with
a cord attached to the handle so that it could not get away from him. He
carried also a tiny electric battery supplying a strong lamp on the
front of his head-piece just above his eyes.
From his long experience in sounding and in locating wrecks, Jan Laurvik
had acquired an accuracy that seemed almost like divination. His
soundings, in this instance, had been particularly thorough, because he
did not wish to waste any more time than necessary at the depth in which
he would have to work. He was not surprised, therefore, when he found
himself descending upon the wreck of a junk. Moreover, as it was not an
old wreck, he concluded that it was the junk which he was looking for.
The wreck had settled almost on an even keel; and as he was familiar
with craft of her type, he had no difficulty in finding his way about.
It was in the narrow, closet-like structure which served as the junk's
cabin that the pirate had said the pearls would be found. The door was
open. Turning on his light, which struggled with the water and diffused
a ghostly glow, he found himself confronted by a hideous little joss of
red-and-gilt lacquer. He knew it was lacquer, and of the best, for
nothing else, except gold itself, would have withstood the months of
soaking in sea-water. Jan grinned to himself, there within his rubber
and copper shell, at this evidence of pirate piety. Then it occurred to
him that a man like the pirate captain would probably have turned his
piety to practical use. What better guardian of the treasure than a god?
Dragging the gaudy deity from his altar, he found the altar hollow. In
that secure receptacle lay a series of packages done up with careful
precision in wrappings of oiled silk. He knew the style of wrapping very
well. For all his coolness, his heart fell to thumping painfully at the
sight of this vast wealth beneath his hand. Then he realized that the
pressure of the water, and of the compressed air in his helmet, was
beginning to tell upon him. In fierce but orderly haste he corded the
packages about his middle and turned to leave the cabin. He would make
another trip for the lacquer god, and for such other articles of value
or _vertu_ which the junk might contain.
Jan turned to leave the cabin. But in the doorway he started back with a
shudder of dread and loathing. A slender, twisting thing, whitish in
colour and minutely speckled with livid spots, reached in, and fastened
upon his arm with soft-looking suckers which held like death.
Jan knew instantly what the pale, writhing thing was. Out flashed his
knife. With a swift stroke he slashed off the detaining tip, where it
had a thickness of perhaps two inches. The raw stump shrank back, like a
severed worm, and Jan, leaping clear of the doorway, signalled furiously
to be hauled up. But at the same instant two more of the curling white
things came reaching over the bulwarks and fastened upon him--one upon
his right arm, hampering him so that he was almost helpless, and the
other upon his left leg just above the knee. He felt his signal promptly
answered by a powerful tug on the rope. But he was anchored to the wreck
as if he had grown to it.
Never before had Jan Laurvik felt the clutch of fear at his heart as he
did at this moment. But not for an instant, in the horror, did he lose
his presence of mind. He knew that in a pulling match with the giant
devil-fish of the deeps his comrades in the boat far overhead would be
nowhere. He had made a mistake in leaving the cabin. Frantically he
signalled with his left hand, to "slack away" on the rope; and at the
same time, though hampered by the grip on his right arm, he managed to
slash off the end of the feeler that had fixed upon his leg. On the
instant, whipping the knife over to his left, he cut his right arm
clear, and sprang back into the doorway.
Jan's idea was that by keeping just inside the cabin door he could
defend himself from being surrounded by the assault of the writhing
things. He knew that in the open he would speedily be enfolded and
crushed, and engulfed between the jaws of the monstrous squid. But in
the narrow doorway the swift play of his blade would have some chance.
He gained the doorway. He got fairly inside it, indeed. But as he
entered he was horrified to see the thick stump, whose tip he had shorn
off, dart in with him and fix itself, by its bigger and more
irresistible suckers, upon the middle of his breast. With a shiver he
sliced off the fatal disks, in one long sweep of his blade; then turned
like a flash to sever a pallid tip which had fastened upon his helmet.