Madge Morton's Victory Part 15

Phyllis knew that there was but one way in which she could follow her chum's course below the surface of the water. She could watch her life and air lines. Captain Jules had made it plain to Phyllis that all the time the diver is under water small ripples will appear near his air line. These bubbles are caused by the air that the diver breathes out from the valve in the side of his diving helmet.

Phyllis watched the lines doggedly. Captain Jules was to keep Madge under water only about fifteen or twenty minutes, but at that a minute may appear longer than an hour.

Suddenly Phyllis Alden discovered that the man who was tending Madge's air pump seemed to be working less vigorously. He pumped unevenly. Once he swayed, as though he were about to fall over in his seat.

In a second it flashed over Phyllis that the man was ill. He was a strong, red-faced individual, but his face turned to a kind of ghastly pallor. It was all so quick that Phil had no time to speak from her boat.

Philip Holt, who was in the same boat with the man, grasped the situation as quickly as Phyllis did. With a single motion he took the tender's place at the air-pump. Phil saw that he was pumping away with vigor.

At this moment Phil turned to speak to Tom Curtis. "Tom, how long have they been under the water?" she whispered.

"Ten minutes," returned Tom, glancing hastily at his watch.

"It seems ten hours," murmured Phil, as though she dared not speak aloud.

Tug, tug! Phil thought she saw Madge's air line give two desperate jerks.

Two pulls at the line was the diver's signal for more air. Phil knew that without a doubt. Yet Philip Holt seemed to be pumping vigorously. At least, he had been only the second before when Phil last looked at him.

Again Phil saw Madge's air line jerk twice.

Tom Curtis and the two men in Captain Jules's boat were vainly trying to interpret some signals that Captain Jules was making to them. The two boats were at no great distance apart.

"I am afraid something is the matter below, Phil," Tom Curtis turned to mutter hoa.r.s.ely. But Phyllis Alden, who had been sitting near him a moment before, was no longer there.

Phyllis believed she saw that Philip Holt was only pretending to pump sufficient air down to Madge. She may have been wrong. Who could ever tell? But Phil knew there was no time to discuss the matter. One minute, two minutes, five or ten--Phil did not know how long a diver at the bottom of the water can be shut off from his supply of fresh air and live. She did not mean to wait, to ask questions, or to lose time. Phil made a flying leap from the skiff that held her to the one in which Philip Holt sat by the air-pump. She landed in the water, just alongside the boat. Quietly, though more quickly than she had ever moved before in her life, Phil climbed into the boat and thrust Philip Holt away from the air pump. In the minute it had taken her to make her plunge she had seen Madge's signal again, but this time the line jerked more feebly than it had before.

Phil set the pump to working again; the signal answered from below, "All is well!"

The tender had recovered from his attack of faintness and resumed his work at Madge's airline.

But Philip Holt sat crouched in the bottom of the boat, his face white with anger. What would Phyllis Alden's action suggest but that he was trying to suffocate Madge in the water below?

Whether or not Philip Holt meant to stifle Madge Morton he himself never really knew. The impulse came to him as he placed his hands on her air-pump. It flashed across his mind that it was Madge who had tried to injure his prospects with Mrs. Curtis, and who had kept him from going down with Captain Jules to search for the pearls that he firmly believed would be found at the bottom of the bay. It was while these thoughts pa.s.sed through Philip Holt's mind his pressure on Madge's air-pump had wavered. But Phyllis Alden had discovered it. She gave him no opportunity either for action or regret.

CHAPTER XVI

A STRANGE PEARL

Madge felt herself in a great fairy world peopled with giants. Every thing below the water is magnified a thousandfold. Slowly she went down and down! The fishes splashed and tumbled about her, hurrying to get away from this strange, new sea-monster that had come into their midst.

The little captain felt no mental sensation except one of wonder and of awe; no physical impression save a pressure as of a great weight on her head and a roaring of mighty waters in her ears. She no longer had any idea of being afraid.

At the first plunge into the water she had shut her eyes, but now, as she approached the bottom of the bay, she kept them wide open.

The water was clear as crystal, like the reflection in a mammoth mirror.

She could see nearly fifty feet ahead of her. Captain Jules walked just in front of her, swinging his great body from side to side, peering down into the sandy bottom of the bay. Madge discovered that the only way in which she could get a view, except the one directly in front of her, was by turning her head inside her helmet, to look through her side window gla.s.ses. The goggles over her eyes gave her just the view that a horse has with blinkers.

There were hundreds of things that Madge would have liked to confide to Captain Jules. However, for once in her life, she was compelled to hold her tongue. Her eyes, her hands, and her feet she could keep busy. Now and then she gave a little e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of wonder inside her copper helmet at the marvels she saw. No one heard her cry out. Captain Jules wasted no time. He was exceedingly business-like. He motioned to Madge just where she should go and what she should do, and she obediently followed.

There were long, level flats of sand in the bottom of Delaware Bay, like small prairies. Then there were exquisite oases of waving green seaweed, gardens of sea flowers and ferns, and hillocks of rocks, with all sorts of queer sea animals, crabs, jelly-fish, and devil-fish, scurrying about them.

Caught in the moss, encrusted on the rocks, sunken in the yellow sands, were opalescent, shining sh.e.l.ls and pebbles, each one more beautiful than the last. Madge did not realize that if she carried these sh.e.l.ls and pebbles above the water they would look like ordinary stones. Every now and then the young diver would stoop and drop one of them in her netted bag with a thrill of excitement.

Again and again Captain Jules had a.s.sured Madge that she must not expect to find any pearls of much value in Delaware Bay. There were few pearls in edible oysters. The beds about Cape May were meant to supply the family table, not the family jewels. Of course, it was true, the Captain admitted, that a pearl did appear now and then in an ordinary oyster. Yet this was an accident and most unlikely to occur.

Madge had really tried not to believe that she was going to find any kind of prize in the new world under the water. In spite of all her efforts she had been thinking and planning and hoping. Perhaps--perhaps she would find a pearl of great price. Then her troubles would be at an end.

All this time Madge had been breathing naturally and comfortably inside her helmet as she traveled along the bed of the bay. She was so unconscious of any difficulty that she was beginning to believe that she was, in truth, a mermaid, and that water, and not air, was her natural element. Suddenly she felt a little uneasy, as though the windows of her room had been closed for too long a time. It was nothing, she was sure.

The stifling sensation would pa.s.s in another second.

At this moment Captain Jules gazed hard at Madge. He had never forgotten his charge for a moment. But all seemed well with her, and the captain thought he saw ahead of him something that was well worth investigating.

He dropped on his knees in the soft mud. With him he had a small hammer and a fork, not unlike a gardener's. Shining through some green sea moss so soft and fine that it might have been the hair of a water-baby, Captain Jules had espied some glittering sh.e.l.ls. To his experienced eye the glow was that of mother-of-pearl. It is the mother-of-pearl sh.e.l.l that usually covers the precious pearl. The old sailor set to work. Madge was eagerly watching him, when once again the faint stifling sensation swept over her. Surely it was not possible to faint in a diving suit.

Besides, Madge's heart was beating so furiously with excitement that it was small wonder she could not get her breath. She believed that Captain Jules was about to discover a wonderful pearl. He had wrenched the sh.e.l.ls free and was trying to open them. Madge stood some feet away from him, quivering with excitement.

"'And the sea shall give up its treasures'," she quoted softly to herself as she watched.

The next moment her hands made an involuntary movement in the water. Had she been on land her gesture would have meant that she was fighting for breath. To her horror she realized that she was slowly suffocating.

Something must have happened to her air-pump above the water. She was not faint from any other cause, but was getting an insufficient supply of fresh air.

At this moment Madge proved her mettle. She remembered Captain Jules's injunction, "Keep a clear head under the water and there is nothing to fear." She knew the signal for more fresh air, and gave two hard, quick pulls on her life line. Then she waited. Relief would surely come in a moment.

For the first and only time since their descent to the bottom of the bay Captain Jules had temporarily neglected Madge. He certainly had not expected to find any pearls in so unlikely a place as Delaware Bay; yet the sh.e.l.ls he held in his hand were most unusual. The thrill of his old occupation seized hold of the pearl fisher. His big hands fairly trembled with emotion. He felt, rather than saw, Madge jerk her life line twice, but it never dawned on him that her signal for more air might fail to be answered.

Madge signaled again. A loud buzzing seemed to sound in her ears. Her tongue felt thick and swollen. She could not see a foot ahead of her. All the dazzling, shimmering beauty of the world under the water had pa.s.sed into blackness. The little captain's eyes were glazing behind the gla.s.s windows of her helmet. She felt that she must be dying. But she had strength to give one more signal. Air! air! How could she ever have believed that there was anything in the world so precious as fresh air?

Madge had a vision of a field of new-mown hay in her old home at "Forest House." The wind was blowing through it with a delicious fragrance. Had she the strength to pull her life line once again? The water that she loved so dearly was to claim her at last. She made a motion to go toward Captain Jules, but she had no control of her limbs.

Then Captain Jules became aroused to action. He realized that Madge had signaled for air, not once, but several times. This meant that her signal had not been answered. The captain had been for too many years a deep-sea diver not to guess instantly the girl's condition. The groan inside his helmet came from the bottom of his heart. Captain Jules's hands shook. He dropped the sh.e.l.ls that he believed might contain priceless pearls down into the soft sand in the bed of the bay.

It was at this moment that Tom Curtis and Phyllis Alden, as well as the captain's boat tenders, caught his confusing signals from below. More fresh air was pumped down the tube to Captain Jules, but not to Madge.

Phil's leap and quick work at Madge's air-pump must have taken place not more than three minutes afterward, but they were horrible, agonizing moments. Madge hardly knew how they pa.s.sed. Captain Jules suffered the regret of a lifetime. How could he have been so unwise as to entrust the safety of this girl, whose life was so dear to him, to the perils of a diver's experiences? In the few weeks of their acquaintance Madge Morton had become all in all to Captain Jules Fontaine.

There was but one thing for Captain Jules to do for his companion. He must signal to have her drawn up to the surface of the water again, trusting that she would not suffocate for lack of air in her ascent.

Madge was near enough to lay her hand on Captain Jules's arm. Phil's relief had come just in time. The life-giving fresh air from the world above pressed into her copper helmet. It filled her nose and mouth, it poured into her aching lungs. She received new life, new energy. Now she was no longer afraid. She did not wish to go above the surface of the water. Surely all above was now well. She yearned to continue her adventures on the under side of the world.

She it was, not Captain Jules, who dropped down on her hands and knees to grope for the captain's lost pearl sh.e.l.ls.

But the sand had covered them up forever, or else the water had carried them away!

Captain Jules wished to take Madge out of the water immediately, yet he yielded for a minute to her disappointment. What treasures had they lost when he threw the mother-of-pearl sh.e.l.ls away? Neither of them would ever know. The old diver looked about in the soft mud, while Madge raked furiously near the spot where she thought the sailor had dropped the sh.e.l.ls. Captain Jules walked on for a little distance. He had seen beyond them a tangled ma.s.s of other sh.e.l.ls and seaweed and it occurred to him that the water might have carried his sh.e.l.ls into some hidden crevice nearby.

But Madge never left her chosen spot. Deeper and deeper she dug. What a swirl of mud arose and eddied about her, darkening the clear water in which she stood! The little captain's hammer struck against something hard. Was it a rock embedded in the sand? Yet a distinct sound rang out, as of one metal striking against another!

Madge did not know how she summoned Captain Jules back to her side. She was wild with curiosity and excitement. Captain Jules was smiling behind his copper mask. The young girl diver had probably found a piece of old iron cast off from some ship. Still, she should unearth whatever she had discovered so near the dark kingdom of Pluto.