Kitabı oku: «Dutch the Diver: or, A Man's Mistake», sayfa 9
’Pollo held his tongue, put all the little nose he had in the air, and stalked off with great dignity to his galley.
“What do you propose doing?” said Captain Studwick.
“Lower down the jolly-boat,” said Sam, after indulging in another good scratch.
This was immediately done, and with four men at the oars, and Dutch, Mr Parkley, the captain, and Oakum for freight they pushed off from the schooner.
Oakum took his place in the bows with Dutch, and then, directing the men to row very softly as he directed, they went slowly forward over the limpid waters.
“You keep a good lookout over the side, Mr Dutch Pugh,” said Sam, “and I’ll do the same. It’s so clear that you can see seven or eight fathoms down; and if you see anything particular, give the word, and we’ll stop.”
Heedless of the blazing sun – which, however, made their task very easy, lighting up, as it did, the clear waters below – they zigzagged for hours in all directions from the schooner, seeing below groves and trees of coral of the most wondrous tints, among which darted and played fish banded with gold, vermilion, and azure, silvery-sided, olive, green, and blue of the brightest and every tint. Great shells, almost as gay in colour, were slowly kept in motion by their inhabitants as they crawled over the surface of the many-hued rocks. Shoals of fish played amongst the moving seaweeds, and then flashed away like some brilliant silver firework as the shadow of the boat approached them, its shape being plainly seen on the sand below; and on every side new objects of beauty came into sight. Treasures of natural history there were of every kind, but not the treasure they sought; and at last, worn out with heat and disappointment, Mr Parkley proposed that they should return.
“What an opportunity,” thought Dutch, as, after a growling protest, Sam Oakum seated himself in the bottom of the boat and began viciously to cut off a wedge of tobacco – “what an opportunity we have given those on board for a rising, if there are any suspicious characters there.” And then his heart leaped and his hand involuntarily sought his pistol as he thought of his wife and the danger to which she would be exposed.
“Suppose,” he thought, as he shaded his eyes with his hand, and gazed at the distant vessel, “those two scoundrels should assume the command, and set us at defiance, we could never get back on board.”
Me shuddered as these thoughts gained stronger power over him, and looked from one to the other; but it was evident that no such thoughts troubled them, for as the oars of the four sailors lazily dipped, and made the water flash and sparkle, he could see that his companions, listless with the heat, were leaning back and troubled more with disappointment about the failure.
“Look here everybody,” cried Sam, suddenly, in a voice that, heard in that wonderful solitude, made every one start. “I’m not beat, you know; not a bit of it. Them there ships is to be found – what’s left of ’em – and I’m going to find ’em.”
“I hope you are, Oakum,” said the captain, quietly; “but don’t boast. The first effort has not been a successful one.”
“I never said as I’d find ’em the first time,” said Sam, sharply. “’Taint likely as a man’s going to sail a ship thousands o’ miles and put her right on the spot. You wait a bit.”
No one answered; and, to Dutch’s great delight, they were soon back on board, to find everybody half asleep, and no sign whatever of danger; and though far from being disposed to greet his wife in the old way, he felt, in spite of himself, obliged to say a few kind words as she pressed forward to meet him, her eager eyes telling of her joy to see him back. Then he shrank away with a frown, for it seemed to him that the mulatto was watching them curiously, though the second time he glanced at the man he was busy arranging a brightly-coloured kerchief over his head, before leaning back against the bulwark with half-closed eyes.
Nothing had taken place in their absence, and a dead calm had fallen. The heat was excessive, for not the faintest breath of air came from land or sea; but the beauty of the surroundings seemed to have its effect upon all, even to the lowest sailor; for as the evening came on, and the stars were lighted aloft, there was a dreamy delight in the darkening forest shore, where fireflies flitted; and once more strange whisperings, rustlings of trees, and splashes in the water were heard. But they did not excite the superstitious dread of the previous night; and at last, when most careful arrangements had been made by Captain Studwick to guard against internal and external surprise, watch was set, and the silence of death seemed to tall upon the schooner.
Story 1-Chapter XVII.
The Protectors of the Treasure
That night passed away quietly enough, after a discussion as to future proceedings, when it had been decided to leave Sam Oakum to his own devices; for they were so solely dependent upon his success that it would have been folly to interfere.
“It was easy enough at Ramwich to talk about sweeping the sea till we found what we sought,” said Mr Parkley, dolefully; “but now we are here it seems as if we might hunt for our lifetimes without success.”
“And yet that scoundrel discovered the old wrecks,” said Dutch, firmly. “What one man has done another can do. For my part, now we are out upon the adventure, I mean to stop till we succeed.”
Mr Parkley patted him on the back, and looked up smilingly at him; and Dutch’s words seemed to impart spirit to all present.
Sam Oakum had insisted upon taking the first watch, declaring that he was not tired, and wanted to think; and the consequence was that the sun was well up before he put in an appearance on deck after his breakfast.
“Now, Oakum,” said Captain Studwick, rather impatiently, “what do you propose doing? Shall we up anchor and run along the coast a little way, and then anchor and have a fresh search?”
Sam did not reply, for he had his cake of tobacco in one hand and his knife in the other, and he was going to take a piece off for his morning refreshment. But knife and cake remained unemployed as his attention seemed fixed by something ashore. Then the cake was thrust back into one pocket, the knife closed with a snap and thrust back into the other, and he took a glance round.
The ship was now swinging in a different direction to that which it had occupied on the previous day, and this seemed to puzzle Sam for the moment. The tide was low, too, and that made a difference in the surroundings – rocks standing clear of the water that were invisible before, and there was a ravine opened out that was not visible on the previous day.
“She’s dragged her anchor a bit, hasn’t she?” said Sam, at last.
“No,” said the captain, “we were too close to those rocks, so I up with the anchor this morning, and let her drift a couple of hundred yards before dropping it again.”
“Just hand us that double-barrel spyglass o’ yourn, Mr Pugh, will you please?” said Oakum quietly; and when he had set it to the right focus for his eyes, he took a long look at the shore, shut the glass up, returned it, sat down on the deck, and taking out his tobacco and knife hewed off a good piece of the hard cake, and thrust it into his mouth without a word.
“Well, Mr Oakum,” said the captain, at last, with a look of annoyance on his face, “what is to be done next?”
“Send forrard for ’Pollo,” said Sam, coolly.
The captain gave an impatient stamp, but turning to the mulatto, who was by the bulwark, sent him for the black cook.
“You want me, sah?” exclaimed ’Pollo, showing his white teeth.
“So I do, ’Pollo,” said Sam, borrowing the glass again from Dutch, and, after focussing it, placing it flat on the bulwarks, and bringing it to bear on some object ashore. “Now, come here, ’Pollo,” he continued; “stoop down and take a squint through this here glass, and tell us what you see.”
’Pollo stooped down to look through the glass.
“Not that way, you lubber,” cried Sam. “What are you shutting one eye up for? Don’t you see it’s a double spyglass?”
“Oh, yes, sah – I see, sah,” said ’Pollo, bending down for another look.
“Now you’re a-shutting up tother eye,” cried Sam, sharply.
“Was I, sah? Well, so I tink I was. Now, den, I try bofe open togedder. Dat’s him; I see beauful now. All de lubbly trees shinin’ in de sun, and four big long trees lie down top o’ one anoder. All blow down by de wind.”
“And what’s that, ’Pollo?” cried Sam, giving him a slap on the back, as he pointed to a rock lying under the shade of a point right aft.
“Dat am de rock like de wet monkey, Mass’ Oakum, sah. Dere, genelmen, I tell you I find de place easy ’nough.”
“Don’t you think it might be me as has found it?” said Sam, with a grim laugh. “There, gentlemen, I couldn’t answer for those trees being blown down by a hurricane. I looked out for them to take my bearings, and they were gone. I must have seen the rock, too, at low water.”
“Then you think we are near the place?” cried Dutch, eagerly.
“Well, sir,” said Oakum coolly, “I won’t be too cocksure to a foot or two in a few thousand miles; but if the capen here will send out a kedge anchor in the boat, and drop it about a dozen fathoms towards that rock to port there, and haul upon it till the schooner’s bowsprit pynts dead for them two rocks, so as we has them in a line, I’ll eat my hat if we ain’t right over some part or other of the old wreck.”
A dead silence ensued for a few moments as if every man’s breath was taken away, and then giving his orders sharply a little anchor was lowered down into the jolly-boat; and to Mr Jones was given the task of carrying out the manoeuvre. This was soon done – the anchor dropped over the boat’s side with a splash, taking firm hold directly, and then the hawser was hauled upon by the men on board, till the position of the schooner was altered so that she lay with her bowsprit pointing right across the two rocks indicated by Oakum.
“That will do,” the latter shouted – “not another foot. Make fast.”
Story 1-Chapter XVIII.
Over the Treasure
The hawser was secured and, as the jolly-boat lay alongside, a second small anchor was lowered into her, and carried out and dropped on the other side, the rope hauled taut and made fast, and the schooner now moored in a position which the light current could not affect, though a storm would doubtless have made the anchors drag.
“That’s my job ’bout done, capen and Mr Parkley, sire. I said as I’d put the schooner over the spot; and there she is.”
“But do you really think, Oakum – ” began Mr Parkley.
“I don’t think nothing, sir. There’s the place and that ’ere’s the rock as ’Pollo dived off into the deep water. Ain’t it, ’Pollo?”
“Dat’s true, sah,” cried the black, laughing boisterously.
“Then its ’bout time I browt up the helmets and things, eh?” said Rasp, who had been looking on with inquiring eye.
“Not yet, Rasp,” exclaimed Dutch, who now hurried to the side, and peered down into the brightly illumined depths, an example followed by the captain and half the crew.
The result was disappointing, and Dutch and Mr Parkley descended into the boat, waiting till it was perfectly motionless, and then making use of a large tube which they thrust some feet down into the water, and gazed intently at the rocks, sands, and wonders of the sea below.
This process they followed up as they slowly shifted the boat round from place to place; and each time that Dutch looked up to answer some question from the deck it was to encounter the sinister face of the mulatto, with the scar plainly marked in the sunlight, gazing intently down. For the matter of that so was the face of ’Pollo, the other black, and the rest of the crew; but the countenance of the mulatto alone seemed to strike him, for the peculiarity of its looks, and the eagerness with which, in a partial way, its owner seemed to watch his every action.
“Well, gentlemen,” said John Studwick, in a half-mocking way, “can you see the El Dorado through that piece of brass pipe?”
“Not yet,” said Dutch, quietly. And he went on with his research, seeing fish as brilliant as any he had before noticed, rocks covered with olive green and scarlet weed, that floated out and played in the water, many yards in length; great stones covered with shells and acorn barnacles; sea anemones, whose petals were more delicately beautiful than any flowers he had beheld; but no trace of old ship timber, in the shape of ribs, stern-post, keel, or stem. Nothing but sand, rock, and seaweed; and at last the two sat up in the boat and looked at one another.
“What’s the good o’ you humbugging?” said Rasp, on deck, to self-satisfied Oakum, who stood leaning his back against the bulwark, and staring at the landmarks by which he had found the spot.
“Who’s humbugging?” said Oakum, roughly.
“Why, you. It’s all sham. There ain’t no wreck below there.”
“Bah! How do you know?” growled Oakum. “I know there is, but don’t say as there ain’t been no one near and cleaned it out.”
Hester was standing close by, and heard all this. Her face flushed with anxiety, and her heart rose and fell, as she eagerly listened to the opinions expressed, and thought of the bitter disappointment Dutch would feel if the search was without success.
Just then her husband said something hastily, which drew the attention of all on board; and taking hold of a rope, she leaned forward to try and catch a glimpse of what was going forward, when she started back with a faint cry of alarm, for a pair of burning lips were placed upon her hand, and as she snatched it away, and faced round it was to meet the glittering eyes of the mulatto fixed upon her, with so fiercely intense a gaze that she shrank away trembling, but not before he had whispered to her —
“Silence, if you value your life!”
She felt sick with horror as the man glided away, for the tones of his voice seemed familiar, and her very first impulse was to call her husband; but the mulatto’s words had such an effect upon her, weakened as she was with long illness, that she dared not speak even to Bessy, to whose side she crept as an eager buzz of conversation went on.
For, after sitting thoughtfully in the boat for a few minutes, Dutch had leaned over the side once more, placing his face in the water, and gazed down at the beautiful submarine grove, when he saw a long, grey body pass slowly out from amongst the weeds, and woke to the fact that there were sharks in those waters, this creature being fourteen or fifteen feet long.
He shuddered at the sight, and thought of the helplessness of any diver if one of these monsters attacked him. He raised his face to breathe, and then looked down again, to see the monster part a bed of seaweed, and as it did so his past troubles were forgotten in the thrill of delight he felt: for Oakum was certainly right as to the wreck. As the shark glided slowly on, it parted the weeds more and more, leaving bare, plainly to be seen, what looked like a stump standing out of the sand, but which his experienced eye knew at once to be one of the ribs of a ship, black with age where it was not grey with barnacles and other shells.
He rose from the water again, with his face dripping, inhaled a long breath, and once more softly stooped and peered down into the clear, ambient depths, where the waving seaweed and multitudinous growths seemed ever changing their colours as they waved gently in the current.
The weed parted by the shark had closed up together once more, and not a vestige seemed left of the piece of wreck wood; in fact, it might have been a dream, only that close by where he had seen it before, half-hidden in the weed, lay the shark, its long, unequal-lobed tail waving slightly to and fro a few moments, and then the monster was perfectly still – so quiet that the sharpest eye would have passed it unnoticed, so exactly was its back in hue like the sand upon which it lay.
But Dutch knew, dreamer as he had been, that this was no piece of imagination; and taking the tube once more, and recalling the peculiar bend of the piece of timber, he began again to examine the bottom, especially the portion that lay in the shadow cast by the schooner’s hull. According to the bend of the timber, he knew that the wreck, if wreck it belonged to, must be lying in the opposite direction to the schooner; and, tracing its imaginary shape, he concluded that there must be a succession of ribs embedded in the sand, though not visible in the lines he marked out with his eye.
And so it seemed, for as he looked he could make out that the weeds lay in thick clusters in the position they should occupy if they were attached to the timbers of an old ship. Huge corals were there as well, forming quite a submarine forest, but evidently they took the form of a ship where they were most dense; and, to Dutch’s great surprise, the vessel must have been one of nearly double the size of the schooner.
“See anything?” said Mr Parkley, as the young man rose for a few minutes and wiped his brow.
“Yes,” said Dutch, bluntly. “Shark!”
“Ah, there are plenty, no doubt,” said Mr Parkley.
But Dutch did not hear him, for he was once more eagerly trying to trace out in the weeds the shape of the old galleon.
Yes, there it was, undoubtedly; and, to make assurance doubly sure, another shark slowly glided out, about thirty feet to the left of where Dutch saw the first, setting the weeds in motion, and displaying, black and grey with encrustations, three more of the nearly buried ribs of an old ship.
With this help to locality, he could now make out plainly where the galleon lay, and see that she must have been nearly a hundred feet long, and that her stem had struck on the mass of rocks described as those off which ’Pollo had dived; while her stern lay off behind the boat in the dense forest of sea growth. And as Dutch looked on he became more and more aware of the fact that there were watchers over the treasure – if treasure there was – in the shape of sharks. He had already seen two, and now, dimly visible in their lairs, lay no less than five more, of which he could just make out a fin of one, the snout of another, the tail of another, and so on, one gliding slowly out into the sunshine, turning right over so as to show its white belly and great teeth-armed jaws, before dashing after a shoal of bright-coloured fish which had tempted him from his lair.
So powerful were the strokes of the monster’s tail that the water was all of a quiver, and the long strands of the seaweed waved and undulated to and fro, displaying here and there more blackened stumps, and showing how possible it was for anyone to sail a boat over the wreck a hundred times without catching a glimpse or dreaming of its existence.
“Well,” said Mr Parkley, “when you’re tired of shark-gazing, we may as well go on board.”
There was only one man of the crew looking over the side now, and that was the mulatto, who, with half-closed eyes, lazily watched their actions; the others, finding the business uninteresting, having adjourned to the shade.
“I’m ready to go on board,” said Dutch, quietly. “When shall we begin work?”
“Oh, at once. Let’s ask Studwick to weigh anchor, and try one of the other places. Ah, my lad, I’m afraid I let my anger get the better of my judgment. We shall do nothing without the cursed Cuban.”
“Think not?” said Dutch, with a smile.
“I am sure of it,” said Mr Parkley. “How can we hunt over the whole of this sea? It would be madness.”
“I meant get to work with the apparatus,” said Dutch, smiling.
“What are you laughing at?” said Mr Parkley, impatiently.
“At your despondency,” replied Dutch. “Old Oakum was right. The schooner’s lying right athwart the galleon.”
“What!” cried Mr Parkley, excitedly. “Nonsense! – you are half-mad.”
“Over some things, perhaps,” said Dutch, gloomily; “but sane enough over this. Mind, I don’t say that there is any treasure there, but the old fellow has anchored us right across an old wreck.”
“Give me that tube,” cried Mr Parkley, and he thrust it down into the water excitedly, looking in all directions.
“There’s nothing there,” he cried. “I examined that place before.”
“But it did not occur to us that the weeds had grown up and hidden the timbers. Now you watch that clump lying just under the schooner’s keel. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, I see.”
“Then keep your eye upon it,” said Dutch, as he crept softly to the bows of the jolly-boat, and, taking one of half-a-dozen great boulders that were used for ballast, he heaved it overboard with a good splash, and then watched its effects.
As he expected, from half-a-dozen weed masses out darted as many sharks, to make a dash at the stone as it descended rapidly through the clear water, and first one and then another turned over to show its white under-parts before going away sulkily and in disgust.
“Well, what did you see?” said Dutch.
“Sharks! Ugh, the beasts!” exclaimed Mr Parkley, with a shudder.
“What else?”
“Rough stumps of timber amongst the weeds.”
“Timbers of the old galleon, no doubt, preserved by the shelly concretions that have formed upon them and held them together.”
“But it’s impossible, my dear boy. No man dare go down there; the sharks would rend him limb from limb. Who could go down?”
“I shall, for one,” said Dutch, calmly. “So now let’s get on board.”
They climbed the side, and, as the news of their discovery spread through the ship, the excitement became great. Rasp began to bring up helmets and leaden weights, and ordered a couple of the men to come and assist with the air-pump, which had to be got up from below.
“But, my dear Dutch,” exclaimed Mr Parkley, in despair, “it is impossible – no one can go down.”
“Not at present,” said Dutch, smiling, as he looked round and saw that nearly everybody was gazing over the side. “Perhaps, when I have set the example, Rasp will not mind following it.”
“But the sharks, my dear boy – they would tear you to pieces.”
“Let them, if they can,” said Dutch, grimly. “I’m not going to be deterred from the search by a few sharks. And if, as you say, I was torn to pieces,” he added, bitterly, “what then?”
“I tell you I shall not let you risk your life,” said Mr Parkley, firmly.
“And I tell you I shall go down. If anything happens – ”
“That sweet little woman will be a widow,” said Mr Parkley.
“And who would care?” said Dutch, bitterly. “My dear Mr Parkley, we are anchored over the treasure, and sharks or no sharks, torn to pieces or left alone, I go down – Hester!”
He started and turned sharply round, just in time to catch the fainting woman as she was falling senseless on the deck.
