Madge Morton's Victory Part 16

The captain worked with her. Whatever her find might be, it was larger and heavier than Captain Jules had expected. They could afford to spend no more time with it. It was time for Madge to leave the water.

It is difficult to make an imploring gesture in a diver's suit. Yet, somehow, Madge must have managed to do so. For one moment longer the old pearl diver relented. The hole that they were digging in the bottom of the bay was widening before them. A chunk of what looked like solid iron was visible. Then a triangular end came into view. It was rusted until it shone like beautiful green enamel. The top was absolutely flat and of some depth, as it was so hard to excavate.

The time was growing short. Madge had been under the water as long as was safe for any amateur diver. The captain was a man to be obeyed, as she knew instinctively. She gave one more dig into the mud about her iron treasure. It now became plain, both to her and to Captain Jules, that she had found an old iron chest. The captain tugged at it with both his great, strong hands. It was strangely heavy. But he managed to lift it in his arms.

Straightway he gave the signal to ascend; three sharp tugs at his life line. Madge followed suit. But she cast one long backward glance at the watery world into which she might never again descend, as slowly, steadily, the boat tenders pulled up her long life line. Her feet dangled above the sandy bottom of the bay. Now she could see even farther off.

About forty feet from the rapidly filling hole from which she and the captain had extracted the iron chest was a spar of a ship jutting above the sand. The little captain may have been wrong, but it looked like the very spar on which Tania's dress had caught the day she was so nearly drowned. Madge could not tell how far she and Captain Jules had traveled on the bottom of the bay, but she knew they had made their descent at a place no very great distance from the spot where Roy Dennis's yacht had run down their skiff, and Captain Jules had rescued Tania and herself.

Thought travels swifter than anything else in the created world. So Madge's thoughts had reached the upper world before she followed them.

She wondered if the girls would be very sadly disappointed when she returned bearing, instead of a costly pearl, nothing but a rusted iron box!

Would Phil have better luck when she descended to the depths of the bay?

What had happened in the outside world since she had disappeared from it a long, long time ago?

A flare of blinding sunlight smote across the gla.s.s goggles in Madge's copper helmet. She felt herself picked up and lifted bodily into a boat.

Her helmet and corselet were unscrewed. She lay still, smiling faintly as the boat made for her friends who crowded, watching, on the pier. Captain Jules, bearing the small iron chest, landed a moment later. The little captain had been in a new world, into which few men and rarely any women have ever entered. She had been out of her human element, a creature of the water, not of the air, and it seemed to her that she must have lived a whole new lifetime as a deep-sea diver.

Tom Curtis stared anxiously at his watch and smiled into her white face.

He breathed a sigh of relief and of wonder. Captain Jules Fontaine and Madge Morton had been down at the bottom of Delaware Bay exactly thirty minutes!

CHAPTER XVII

THE FAIRY G.o.dMOTHER'S WISH COMES TRUE

Captain Jules decided to wait until another day before taking Phyllis Alden on the journey from which he and Madge had just returned. The old sailor was too deeply thankful to see his first charge safe on land. Poor Miss Jenny Ann could do nothing but lean over Madge and cry; the nervous strain of waiting while the girl was under the water had been too great.

Indeed, even the people who, Madge knew, were not in the least interested in her, appeared dreadfully upset. Philip Holt's face was very pale and his eyes shifted uneasily from Phyllis's to Madge's face.

Phyllis was the most self-possessed of the four girls. She was greatly disappointed at the captain's determination to put off the time for her diving expedition until a later date. But Phyllis was always unselfish.

She realized that her chaperon and her friends had had about as much anxiety as they could endure in one day. Madge had been under the water, and she could not dream of what the others had suffered above, while awaiting her return.

Mrs. Curtis put her arms about the little captain and embraced her with an affection she had not shown her during the summer.

"My dear," she murmured, "will you ever stop being the most reckless girl in the world? What possible good could that wretched diving feat of yours do anybody on earth? If my hair weren't already white I am sure it would have turned so in the last half-hour. Look at poor Philip Holt. He seems as nervous as though you were his own sister."

Madge and Captain Jules had both taken off their heavy diving suits and were soon shaking hands with every one on the pier. Even Roy Dennis and Mabel Farrar, much as they disliked Madge, could not conceal the fact that they thought her extremely plucky.

Captain Jules had laid the iron chest on the ground and for the moment they had forgotten it.

It was little Tania who danced up to it and tried to lift it.

"Show us the pearls you found, Madge," Eleanor begged her cousin at this instant, her brown eyes twinkling.

The little captain looked crestfallen. "I am afraid we didn't find anything of value," she said, trying to pretend that she was not disappointed. "I have only some pretty sh.e.l.ls and stones that I gathered on the bottom of the bay for Tania."

She pulled her sea treasures out of her netted diving bag. Sure enough, the water had dried on them and the sh.e.l.ls and stones appeared quite dull and ugly. There were almost as pretty sh.e.l.ls and pebbles to be picked up at any place along the Cape May beach.

"Why, Madge!" exclaimed Lillian, before she realized what she was saying, "surely, you didn't waste your time in bringing up such silly trifles as these?"

Madge shook her head humbly. "We didn't find anything else but this old iron chest. Captain Jules, may I take it back to the houseboat with me as a souvenir, or do you wish it? Tania, child, you can't lift it, it is too heavy."

Tom Curtis brought the chest to Captain Jules. Some of the crowd had moved away, now that the diving was over. But a dozen or more strangers pressed about the girls and their friends.

"There is something in this little chest, Captain," declared Tom Curtis quietly, as he set it down before the captain and Madge. "I could feel something roll around in the box as I lifted it."

Captain Jules shook the heavy safe. Something certainly rattled on the inside.

There were bits of moss and tiny sh.e.l.ls and stones encrusted on the upper lid of the box. Deliberately Captain Jules sc.r.a.ped them off with a stick.

The houseboat party and Tom were beginning to grow impatient. What made Captain Jules so slow? Philip Holt, who was standing by Mrs. Curtis's side, gazed sneeringly at the operations. He was glad, indeed, that he had not risked his life in descending to the bottom of the bay in search for pearls, only to bring up a rusty chest.

"The box is fastened tightly; it will have to be broken open," remarked Madge indifferently. She was feeling tired, now that the excitement of her diving trip was over. She wished to go home to the houseboat. She did not wish Captain Jules to guess for an instant how disappointed she was that they had found nothing of value on their diving adventure. If only the captain had not dropped the sh.e.l.ls in which there might have been a chance of finding pearls!

Captain Jules had hold of the iron hammer that he used when diving.

Click! click! click! he struck three times on the lock of the iron safe.

Like the magic tinder-box, the lid flew open. Tania's long-drawn childish, "Oh!" was the only sound that broke the tense and breathless stillness that pervaded the group.

A single pearl! The scorned iron chest almost full of shining coins and precious stones! There were coins of gold and silver--strange coins that no one in the watching crowd had ever seen before. Some of them bore dates and inscriptions of English mintings of the early part of the eighteenth century.

Of course, it was incredible! No one believed his eyes. A treasure-chest unearthed after more than two hundred years? It was impossible!

Yet instantly each one of the girls remembered that the pirates had sunk many vessels in Delaware Bay in the latter part of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. In those days many wealthy English families came over with their servants and their treasure to settle in the new country of America.

Phil's book on the history of piracy had recalled this information to the girls only ten days before. It was then, when Madge lay with her head resting in her hands, looking dreamily out over the waters, that she had wondered how anything so remote from her as the story of the early American battles with pirate ships could help her to solve her present troubles? Yet here, like a miracle before her eyes, lay the answer!

The little captain was the last of the onlookers to know what had happened. She was too dazed, perhaps, from her stay under the water.

It was only when Tania flung her eager, thin arms about her beloved Fairy G.o.dmother's neck that Madge actually woke up.

"The fairies who live under the water have given you these wonderful things," whispered Tania. "I prayed that they would come to see you, bringing you all the good gifts that they had."

Captain Jules reached over and set the priceless box before Madge. She was encircled by Miss Jenny Ann and her beloved houseboat chums.

"It is all yours, Madge," a.s.serted Captain Jules solemnly. "You found it, child. I should never have discovered it but for you."

Madge shook her red-brown head. "Captain Jules, that chest is far more yours than it is mine. I should never have gone down under the water but for you. If Phil had only dived first, instead of me, she would have found it, I won't have any of the money or the jewelry unless I can share it with the rest of you."

Then, to Madge's own surprise, she began to cry.

"There, there, little mate, it will be all right," Captain Jules a.s.sured her quietly. "You've had a bit too much for one day. We don't know the value of what we have found just yet, but the old jewelry will make pretty trinkets for you girls. We'll see about the rest later on."

Miss Jenny Ann put her arm about Madge on one side. Phil was on the other side of her chum.

"We will go home now, dear," said Miss Jenny Ann to Madge. "You are worn out from all this excitement."

"I'll look after the girls, Captain," promised Tom Curtis quietly, "then I will come back to you." A flash of understanding pa.s.sed between Captain Jules and Tom Curtis. They had both guessed that Madge's iron box of old jewelry and coins represented more money than the girls could comprehend, and that it was better for the news of the discovery to be kept as quiet as possible for the time being.