Kitabı oku: «The Radio Boys Under the Sea: or, The Hunt for Sunken Treasure», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XVII
AN UNCANNY EXPERIENCE
Slowly, almost reluctantly, Phil lowered himself through the jagged aperture that had once been the deck of the ship. Without knowing what might be beneath him he let go his hold and dropped.
He landed heavily and, hampered by the suit, stretched himself full length on what he supposed to be the floor of the cabin. Flounderingly he got to his feet, the headlights throwing a weird radiance about him.
He looked about him and found, as he had supposed, that he was in a fairly good-sized cabin, probably that of the captain of the pirate ship. This would hardly be the place to look for the treasure but, deciding to overlook no chances, Phil prepared to make a thorough survey of the place.
It was a gruesome business, feeling about in that dark cabin, not knowing what awful thing the headlights might rest upon. But, on the other hand, suppose they should reveal a chest, containing a fortune of untold riches!
At the thought, Phil’s breath quickened and he searched rapidly about the cabin, feeling with his hands where the headlights did not pierce the gloom.
Then suddenly, it seemed as though something caught at his foot and he went down sprawling. For a moment the fall knocked the breath out of him and he lay there, the hair beginning to creep on his scalp, his blood frozen in his veins. What had clutched at him out of the dark?
Feeling the need for action, he slowly began to flounder to his feet, expecting every moment to feel again that ghastly touch upon him.
But nothing happened and he stood there for a moment, striving to regain his composure. The thing, whatever it was, had grasped him about the knees. It must, then, be somewhere near the floor.
He bent over, trying to throw the light from his lamps upon the spot where he felt the thing to be. Was it a devil fish perhaps, like the one which had attacked Dick so short a time before? No, because the devil fish would not have let go. He would still be in its grip – .
He bent closer and then an exclamation of horror broke from him. The Thing which he had stumbled over, which had seemed to reach out bony arms to grip him, was a skeleton, a horrible thing lying crumpled up on the floor of the cabin.
Phil did not wait to see any more. In his explorations of the cabin he had found the door and toward this he groped his way. Rotted with years under the sea it gave beneath his touch, the rotten wood parting from the rusted hinges.
Driven by something he didn’t name, Phil made his way forward toward where he supposed the hold of the vessel to be. He would enter no more cabins unless he failed to find the treasure anywhere else. He tried to keep from his mind the thought of that huddle of bones which had once been a man.
It was a difficult passage and a slow one through the bowels of the sunken ship. Often Phil encountered wreckage that he supposed had been made by the explosion of the dynamite. Once the debris was so thick that it took him several minutes to clear it away.
“No treasure yet,” he muttered to himself as he made his way forward. “At this rate I’ll have to have another hack at it. Ho – what have we here?”
The exclamation was caused by the sudden revealing of a large cavern-like aperture that opened up before him. This must be the hold of the vessel and the treasure was more likely to be here than in any other part of the ship.
Once more he felt the wild thrill of the hunt and he plunged forward, his one thought to pierce the mysterious darkness and find what – if anything – it hid from him.
He stumbled and with a great effort kept himself from falling headlong. His lights revealed another skeleton propped up in a sitting position against a great brass-bound chest.
A return of the horror which Phil had felt upon discovery of the dead man in the cabin was mixed with a thrill of the purest excitement.
That brass-bound chest – what did it contain? He lunged forward and with the hooks that served him as hands strove to lift the cover. No use! The chest was padlocked and the top held firm.
Mad with excitement by this time he made his way further into the hold. There was another chest but it, like its fellow, was locked.
Impatiently Phil turned away and then – something glittered in the light of his lamps, something that gleamed faintly yellow.
With a hoarse cry Phil stooped and picked up the shining thing. Gold, gold, the magic touch of it! The joy that throbbed through him was almost pain. The thing that, up to this moment had seemed like a glittering dream was now within his grasp. Where there was one coin there must be more – .
He was on his knees now, groping about the floor of the place, eagerly, searchingly. More – there must be more – . Ah! There, just within the radiance of his lights lay a heap of them, shining, golden things, a fortune lying at the bottom of the sea, waiting to be claimed.
For there, standing beside the heap of golden coins stood that which at first made Phil’s heart stand still, then race madly on again.
A chest, rotted and burst open scattered its riches lavishly, carpeting the dingy floor with coins and gems. For there were jewels too, although the gold predominated – a handful of diamonds, an emerald, a ruby – .
Never would Phil forget the joy, the triumph of that moment. This treasure, theirs, for the taking!
There were other chests but they were tight-bound like the rest and Phil could only surmise the nature of their contents. If, as it was reasonable to suppose, they contained treasure similar to that which the open chest disgorged, there was indeed a fortune worthy of a king.
So lost was he in the wonder of his discovery that Phil lost all count of time or place. He was brought rudely to a realization of the present by a sharp tug at the line. There came another tug and another a signal which told Phil that, for some reason or other, his friends thought it best for him to return to the surface.
The fellows! He had almost forgotten them in his excitement. Wait till he had told them what he had found. Just wait!
Hastily he gathered up a few of the coins and a gem or two, slipped them into the small black bag he had brought for the purpose and made his way back through the debris-filled hull, careful to keep the line free.
After two or three attempts he succeeded in swinging himself to the deck – or what was left of it – then dropped to the sand of the ocean bed.
Making sure once more that his line was free he tugged mightily as a signal that he was ready for the ascent.
Once more numberless dead fish surrounded him but now they had no terrors for him. He was madly exultant. He had found the treasure! What were a few dead fish against that fact?
Then he had reached the surface. Through the “eyes” of his suit he saw the anxious faces of his comrades. He exulted when he thought how in a moment their expressions would change – .
They hauled him aboard the raft where he carefully placed the small black bag behind him. He didn’t mean that the fellows should see it till he got ready to let them! Then he started to struggle with his suit.
“Better wait to take it off till we get back to shore, Phil. We hauled you up because there’s a bad storm brewing – looks like the beginning of a hurricane.”
“Did you find anything,” cried Steve, eagerly.
“Wait till we get back to shore and I’ll answer your question,” returned Phil, his voice sounding doubly mysterious, coming as it did from within the suit. “In a few minutes I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
Something in his tone made them wild with curiosity but they knew Phil well enough to be sure that for the moment they would get no more from him.
They had no sooner reached land and pulled the boats out of harm’s way when the threatened storm broke furiously. They got Phil out of his suit and made a dash for the shelter of the cave.
Once inside they turned and faced him.
“Now – out with it!” they demanded.
CHAPTER XVIII
GOLD AND JEWELS
For answer, Phil extended the small black bag toward them. Dick grabbed it with a cry and the others crowded around him. Bimbo pressed close, his mouth hanging ludicrously open.
With trembling fingers Dick fumbled with the strings of the bag then plunged his hand to the bottom of it. The hand returned, grasping three golden coins, the first fruits of the treasure.
For a moment pandemonium reigned. The boys acted like crazy men. They grasped each other about the waist and rollicked in a sort of wild war dance about the place, shouting at the top of their lungs. Bimbo’s mouth was stretched in a grin that must have hurt.
“Yassir,” he was saying over and over again, his rich darky voice raised above the din, “I don said ef anybody could find dat dere gol’en treasure, dat man was Marse Phil. Yassir, dis nigger done allus said Marse Phil de greatest treasure hunter what is. Yassir!”
After they had quieted down sufficiently to care to hear details, Phil recounted his adventures in the hull of the ship, not even omitting the part where he had stumbled over the dead man’s bones.
At this part in the narrative Bimbo was seen to gaze apprehensively over his shoulder. Trying to attract as little attention as possible, he crept nearer to the absorbed group about Phil.
However, Bimbo was not the only one who felt an uncanny chill in the atmosphere. For a moment each one had put himself in Phil’s place, had stumbled over some horrible object, the skeleton of a man who generations ago had lived and breathed.
“Gee, Phil,” Tom said, in an awed voice. “I bet a little company would have come in handy just then – something beside dead men’s bones.”
“You said something,” replied Phil fervently adding, with a gleam in his eyes that seemed to be reflected from the gold itself, “But when I found that chest burst wide open, spilling out its golden contents, believe me, I forgot all about skeletons and everything else. I even forgot that my oxygen was running low. Say, but that was a sight!”
“You lucky dog,” cried Steve, enviously. “What do you mean by hogging all the fun, anyway?”
“I haven’t,” replied Phil, with a grin. “Didn’t I bring a chunk of it up with me?”
“You sure did,” said Jack Benton, adding, with an attempt to control his own excitement. “Tell me something, Phil. How much wealth, in United States money do you figure there is down there in the hold of the ship?”
“I don’t know,” returned Phil, slowly. “You see there were some precious stones, too and it would be hard for me to give the value of them. Then too, for all we know, the other chests may not contain anything of value at all.”
“Say not so,” cried Steve reproachfully. “What are you trying to do, anyway? Throw gloom on this happy party.”
“Nothing like it,” grinned Phil, adding as he took up the little black bag and emptied the rest of its contents on the table. “Look at that diamond and that ruby. They must be worth a small fortune in themselves.”
The boys gasped. They had been so absorbed in Phil’s story that they had taken it for granted that the handful of coins which Dick had brought forth was all the bag contained. They had not even examined the coins closely. The mere fact that they were gold had been enough for them then.
Now they regarded the exquisite jewels which Phil had brought up from the bottom of the sea almost with a feeling of awe. It seemed impossible that they could be real.
But they were real. Even the boys, inexperienced in such matters as they were, could tell that. And as Phil had said, they were tremendously valuable.
“Were there many more like these?” asked Jack Benton softly.
Phil shook his head.
“There were mostly coins,” he said, “with a handful of gems sprinkled in for good luck. I believe the treasure, in that one chest, at least, was almost all gold.”
“Well, what do we want, the earth?” demanded Dick as he examined the coin he held. “Look here fellows,” he added, “This gold piece is a queer sort of duck. It has Spanish lettering on it – ”
“A doubloon, probably,” said Jack Benton. “And this coin I have is a French louis – ”
“And mine’s a guinea,” broke in Tom with a chuckle. “These guys seem to have gathered their plunder from all parts of the world.”
“I guess it didn’t make much difference to them what nation they stole from,” Jack Benton agreed. “They played no favorites. But say, just listen to that storm, fellows,” he interrupted himself as the wind wailed wildly about the cave. “It’s worse than the gale that greeted us and drove us on the rocks.”
“Sure is a beauty,” said Steve. “Lucky we have a cave to live in. Can’t be blown down, at any rate.”
Phil moved across to the door of the cave and stood looking out into the hurricane.
“It must have been just such a storm,” he remarked softly, as though he were more than half speaking to himself, “in which the pirate ship foundered centuries ago. Seems kind of queer, someway.”
“What seems queer?” said Dick who had come to stand beside him.
“Why,” said Phil, still with that strange air of speaking to himself, “that there should be such a storm on the very day when we have broken into the hull of the dead ship. It’s uncanny – ”
A frightened wail from the corner where Bimbo had taken refuge brought him up short and he faced about with a sheepish laugh.
“Don’t mind me, fellows,” he said. “I guess I’m still a little shaken up from what I saw down there today in the cabin of that poor old hulk. The storm sort of brought it home to me. Well,” he added, striving to make his tone sound matter-of-fact, “suppose we talk over plans for rescuing the treasure. I’ll feel easier when we have it safe right here under our noses.”
What was that strange uneasiness that had taken possession of him? Even in the excitement of making plans and the jubilation of the boys he could not entirely shake it off.
Here they were alone on this island where in all probability no one else had set foot for many years. The adventure of this day had met with success beyond his wildest dreams. The treasure was there – was theirs. All they had to do was to take it. There was no earthly reason to feel uneasy and yet he was uneasy.
All during the long hours – and they sat up way into the night exulting – he was haunted by a sensation of impending evil. Thinking that he was overwrought by the day’s adventure, he tried to dismiss these thoughts but without very much success.
Long after his comrades were sleeping soundly he lay staring into the dark. Once he caught himself straining his ears to catch some fancied sound.
The storm had died down and the night, save for the low drumming of the waves on the beach, was so still that he could almost hear his heart beat.
What was he listening for, he asked himself. The night was breathless. He could have heard nothing. Then, calling himself all kinds of a fool he turned over and went to sleep.
He woke, struggling through a sea of unconsciousness, with the distinct feeling that an unseen presence was near him. Not fully awake, he sprang to his feet, revolver in hand.
Was it imagination that the figure of a man, vague and indistinct as the night itself, slipped from the cave? His vision was blurred with sleep. Impatiently he rubbed a hand across his eyes.
With a bound he was at the door of the cave – outside, straining his eyes in an effort to pierce the shadows.
There was nothing. No sign, no sound save the monotonous moaning of the waves upon the beach.
He walked a little way, searching, his revolver held ready for action. Still he saw nothing. Reluctantly he turned back toward the cave.
He lay down again but not to sleep. For a long time he lay there, watchful, alert. As the first faint grey of dawn tinged the sky he relaxed his vigil and fell asleep.
CHAPTER XIX
A PERPLEXING MYSTERY
It was not hard in the reassuring sunlight of the “morning after” for Phil to tell himself that his experience of the night before had been nothing more than a peculiarly vivid dream.
There was the temptation to tell the fellows about it, but on second thought he decided to hold his peace. The memory of how they had laughed when he had thought he heard a shot was still with him and he was not anxious to give them the chance to laugh a second time.
Besides, as has been said before, he was almost convinced himself that his imagination had played a trick upon him. And yet – that man’s figure, sinister, stealthy, stealing from the shadows of the cave into the blackness of the night. He could have sworn at the moment that he saw it. Was it possible for his eyes so to betray him?
Since there was no one to answer the question for him, Phil wisely decided to leave it unanswered and put the incident, as far as was possible, completely out of his mind.
This was not so hard a task, either, seeing that there was plenty to occupy his mind in excited plans for the recovery of the treasure.
However, these plans were destined to be nipped in the bud. For the sun which, early in the morning had given promise of a glorious day, went suddenly behind a cloud and there was that dead, breathless stillness in the air which the boys had come to know invariably presaged a storm.
“Confound the luck,” growled Dick, as together they stood outside the cave, looking uncertainly at the threatening sky. “Seems to me the storm we had yesterday should have cleared the atmosphere – ”
“We’re in for another one, just the same,” said Jack Benton, his own face clouded with concern. “It’s hard luck just when we fairly had our hands upon the treasure but after all it only means a delay of a day or two, perhaps only a few hours. You know how soon these tropical storms pass.”
“I’m for trying it, anyway,” said Dick, who was always impatient of delay. “What do you say Phil?” he added, turning to his chum.
But Phil slowly shook his head.
“Can’t be done, old boy,” he said. “It would be suicide to go out in the teeth of one of these storms. You ought to have seen enough of them by this time to know that. Guess we’ll have to wait till the weather decides to be nice.”
Bimbo nodded his head approvingly.
“That’s whar you shows yo’ common sense, Marse Phil,” he applauded. “’Taint no use invitin’ d’undertaker to make us a visit. He’s done likely t’ come wivout no invitation, anyways – ”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Phil curiously with the grin he always saved for Bimbo.
“Ah means, Marse Phil,” returned the black boy, emphatically, “thet there aint no luck, no how lingerin’ on this island. Mah advice to you, Marse Phil is dat you grab dat treasure an’ skip out o’ here as fas’ you legs kin carry yo’. Yassir, Marse Phil, ef yo was to ask dis nigger for advice dat’s what he’d be tellin’ yo’.”
The other boys and Jack Benton were frankly grinning but Phil was still curious.
“What makes you feel that way, Bimbo?” he asked. “Anything ’special.”
The darky scratched his head with a puzzled expression.
“Nosah, Marse Phil,” he said at last with the air of one striving for the exact truth, “Ah cain’t go so far’s t’ say they’s anythin’ ’special makes me know dis island ain’t no good place to linger in, but Ah knows it aint, jes’ the same. I don’ feel it in my bones – yassir, Marse Phil, I don’ feel it.”
“Well, as long as you confine the feeling to your bones, Bimbo,” said Jack Benton, dryly, “I guess it can’t do anyone any harm.”
“Why, you old gloom hound you,” cried Steve, clapping poor Bimbo on the back with a force that made him wince. “What do you mean by saying this island isn’t good luck. What do you call the finding of the treasure, eh? I suppose that was bad luck!”
Bimbo shook his head, still wearing the puzzled look.
“No sah,” he said and turned toward the cave adding something under his breath that sounded like “yo ain’t got dat treasure, yet, no sir, you aint got dat treasure, yet.”
Steve looked after him exasperated, then turned to Phil.
“What do you suppose the fellow means?” he asked.
Phil shrugged.
“He doesn’t know himself, probably,” he answered. “Darkies always do look on the black side of things.”
“Maybe due to their color,” grinned Tom, and so the thing passed off with a laugh.
By this time the sky had darkened until it was almost like night on the island and a wind had risen. The boys knew that any further adventuring for the treasure was off, for that day at least, and so they resigned themselves to the inevitable. Not without a good deal of grumbling, however, for their disappointment was keen. They had counted on having part of the treasure safely stowed away by nightfall.
And that was not the worst of it. The storm, unlike the others which they had encountered, refused to blow over in a few hours. It continued all that day and the next and well into the next. Even though the wind had abated most of its fury it seemed to the exasperated boys as though the rain would never stop. It came in a steady sheeting downpour until it seemed as though the heavens must be emptied of every drop of moisture. And still it rained.
Although there was no chance at present of salvaging the treasure, the boys refused to be held prisoners with in the cave. Putting on rain coats and boots and drawing their caps down over their eyes, they plunged out into the beating rain with a sense of defying the elements. This was on the afternoon of the third day.
“Maybe if the rain sees we don’t scare for it, it will get tired and stop,” said Tom boyishly as they trudged along, heads down, collars turned up about their ears.
“I hope so, but I doubt it,” returned Dick, gloomily. “Looks as if this state of things were going to continue for another week at least.”
Jack Benton and Bimbo had declined to accompany the boys, the former because he felt it necessary that some one should stay at the cave, and Bimbo because he disliked wet weather in general.
“I wonder what that old boy has on his mind,” said Dick, speaking of Bimbo. “He sure thinks this island is all to the bad. I wonder if he knows anything that we don’t know.”
“What a crazy idea,” snorted Tom. “What could he know?”
Again it was on the point of Phil’s tongue to speak of the shadowy figure he thought he had seen, but again he restrained himself. He wasn’t going to be laughed at.
They had reached a rise of ground which overlooked the ocean, and as Steve glanced out toward the water he suddenly grabbed Phil’s arm and pointed.
“Look at that whale out there,” he cried. “And there’s another one.”
“Why there’s a whole school of them,” cried Tom, excitedly. “Say, I’m glad I lived to see this.”
“They seem to be all-fired excited about something too,” observed Steve. “I wonder what’s up.”
“A sword fish,” said Phil, beneath his breath. “He’s after them – attacking the whole bunch single-handed.”
Sure enough, following Phil’s pointed finger the boys saw a gigantic fish of peculiar shape flashing in and out among the whales attacking promiscuously. The water was lashed to a froth by the frantic efforts of the great mammals to get away from their tormentor and soon the surface of the water showed streaks of blood.
“My, he’s sure some fighter, that swordfish,” said Steve admiringly. “I’d hate to have him for an enemy.”
“Look,” cried Tom delightedly. “The whole bunch is making for deep water routed by one sharp-toothed fish. You have to hand it to him.”
They had started on again when suddenly they felt a sickening sensation, as if the earth were rocking beneath their feet. Then, before they could even guess what was happening to them there came a terrific upheaval that flung them from their feet.
There was the sound as of a mighty roar – as though the universe were crackling and breaking about them.
