Dutch the Diver Part 29

"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 Oak.u.m coolly, "I won't be too c.o.c.ksure 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 Oak.u.m.

"That will do," the latter shouted--"not another foot. Make fast."

STORY ONE, CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

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, Oak.u.m--" 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 bra.s.s 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 Oak.u.m, who stood leaning his back against the bulwark, and staring at the landmarks by which he had found the spot.

"Who's humbugging?" said Oak.u.m, roughly.

"Why, you. It's all sham. There ain't no wreck below there."

"Bah! How do you know?" growled Oak.u.m. "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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.s 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 Oak.u.m 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 sh.e.l.ls.

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 mult.i.tudinous 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 pa.s.sed 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 cl.u.s.ters 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 a.s.surance 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 ma.s.s 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 Oak.u.m was right. The schooner's lying right athwart the galleon."

"What!" cried Mr Parkley, excitedly. "Nonsense!--you are half-mad."