03 Underwater Adventure (17 page)

The expected turn in the weather did not come at once; the sea remained calm and the sky clear during the night. Roger took the first undersea watch, thankful that the ocean depths were not yet completely dark. After what had happened to Blake his nerves all leaped up on end like a porcupine’s quills every time a big fish approached or a strange sound struck his

ears.

For a time he hovered like a helicopter above the deck of the Santa Cruz-Then, for something to do, he swam down into the hold and turned on his torch.

At once he saw that there had been a change. Several of the chests of treasure had disappeared.

It could not be Skink’s doing this time because Skink had been on the island, and then with the funeral procession.

Anyone who didn’t know Omo might suspect him, for he had been left alone to guard the wreck during the day. But Roger would as soon suspect his own brother as distrust their Polynesian friend.

At some time when Omo was not watching, the invisible man had made off with more of the loot.

Omo could hardly be blamed for this. He had made frequent visits to the wreck, and that was all that could be expected of him. No man could stay down continually because of the injurious effect of water pressure upon the body. The unseen smuggler had watched his chance and crept in while the wreck lay unprotected.

Certainly he would come back for more. He might even come back at this moment while no one was in sight and the ship appeared to be unguarded.

In a panic, Roger shot up out of the hold into the open and tried to look dangerous. He did not feel dangerous -only scared. Hie dusk was deepening and the moving

objects in the sea were indistinct blobs. They could be fish, or they might all be smugglers, no matter how he strained his eyes he could not be sure which. His hour seemed five hours long, but at last he was relieved by Hal. Before surfacing he took Hal into the hold and showed him the gaps in the cargo.

He was surprised to have Hal accompany him to the surface and on board the Lively Lady.

Hal tore the breathing tube from his mouth and gave vent to his anger.

‘Omo! Get up out of that bunk! Captain Dee! No more sleep tonight! We’re going to start salvaging, right now.’

Omo and the captain crawled out, blinking. ‘Night is no time …’ began the captain.

‘They’re looting the cargo. We won’t give them a chance to take one more doubloon. The small stuff we can bring up in baskets and buckets. The big stuff the Iron Man can handle. Rig him up.’

Everyone hopped to with a will. Captain Ike took charge of deck operations while the others prepared to go below.

The Iron Man rose out of the hold, received Hal as its passenger, and sank into the sea. Two powerful searchlights attached to the chest of the monster were turned on. Hal gave instructions over the telephone, and Captain Ike regulated the cargo boom until the Iron Man was in position to sink-through the open hatch into the hold. There the great arms embraced a huge chest and the signal was given to hoist away.

In the meantime Roger and Omo made a selection from the various baskets, buckets and nets that the ship could offer and descended to fill these containers with small articles. Up and down they went, steadily transferring the treasure of the Santa Cruz to the hold of the lively Lady.

Hour after hour, with occasional rests, and intervals for recharging the tanks, the work went on.

Shortly before midnight Roger found himself alone in the hold. Hal and the Iron Man had gone up to deliver a bronze urn, and Omo had followed a moment later to recharge his aqualung.

Roger was occupied in filling a close-meshed net with gold bullion when he felt a tap on his shoulder. Had Omo returned - or was it the touch of a fish or the tentacle of an octopus?

He swung the beam of his light around and up full into the faces of two masked men. He sprang to his feet and clapped his hand to his side, but his knife had been stolen from its sheath.

He struck out with his fists and had the satisfaction of knocking the aqualung mouthpiece from one man’s mouth so that he must choke and swallow some water before he could recover it. Then he felt his arms gripped firmly and he was pushed up out of the hold and carried away swiftly, his kidnappers, one on either side of him, swimming with powerful strokes of their rubber fins.

Around them sparkled the million lights of the deep-sea fish that had come to feed in the upper waters during the night. The glow faintly illuminated the coral gardens and the lone cross over the scientist’s grave. Then they passed over the labyrinth of rocks.

A little beyond it they came down on the ocean floor beside what appeared to be an enormous boulder. But when the light of the torches picked it up he realized

that it was a Japanese submarine like those he had seen manoeuvring in Truk lagoon.

On the near side was the bulge of the escape chamber. One of the men pulled open the trapdoor and Roger was pushed inside, the door closing behind him.

He heard a rushing sound as the water was forced out of the chamber by an intake of air. Then the trapdoor opened under his feet and he tumbled into the hold of the submarine.

Automatically the trapdoor closed and again he heard the rushing sound as the air in the escape chamber was displaced by water. Then the process was reversed and presently the inside trapdoor opened to spill one of his captors into the hold. The other soon followed.

They spat out their mouthpieces and whipped off their masks to reveal faces that Roger didn’t like to look at. If his fate depended upon these thugs, his luck was out for sure. Their faces were twisted into permanent scowls and their eyes were as unfriendly as a moray eel’s.

But apparently they were familiar with submarines -at least they began to push and pull a dozen gadgets as if they knew what they were about. They were too intent upon making a quick getaway to pay any attention to Roger. There was the whoosh of water from the ballast tanks to give the craft positive buoyancy, raising it from the bottom, and the purr of an electric motor, to start the propeller. One man sat at the wheel with his eye on the compass while the other watched the fathometer, showing the clearance between the submarine and the bottom.

Presently the deck under Roger’s feet tilted upward more steeply as if the submarine were coming to the surface and the man who was steering glued his eye to the periscope. After a time the motor stopped, an overhead hatch was opened and the fresh night air flooded in.

One of the men, the one with an ugly scar over his left eye, said in a rasping voice, ‘All right, buddy. End of the line.’

Roger climbed up through the hatch. The men followed, lugging a heavy chest, evidently stolen from the wreck.

‘Just hop off and swim ashore,’ instructed Scarface. ‘Reception committee waiting for you on the beach.’ Roger swam and waded ashore. A dark form stood on the beach. Roger heard a low laugh - it was Skink’s laugh.

‘So nice of you to join us,’ Skink said. ‘We haven’t much to offer, but you may be sure we’ll do our best to make you uncomfortable.’ Scarface waded ashore. ‘Did you leave my note?’ Skink asked. ‘Sure, boss. Tied it to the mast, just like you said.’ Roger’s mind buzzed with questions, but he refused to ask them, knowing he would not get honest answers.

‘Now, if you’ll just follow me,’ said Skink, keeping up his show of mock courtesy, ‘and pardon me for going first, but I happen to know the way.’

He struck off into the thicket, lighting his way with his torch. The two thugs stuck unpleasantly close to Roger and any thought of escaping into the jungle had to be dismissed.

For fifteen or twenty minutes they wormed their way through the brush, then came out before a tent in a small clearing. ‘Be it ever so humble,’ said Skink, ‘it’s home, sweet

home. Make a fire, Chubb. Time for a midnight snack before you get back to the wreck.’

Roger, with a boy’s eternal interest in food, pricked up his ears at mention of a snack.

‘Of course our guest here won’t want anything,’ Skink went on. ‘It’s not good to eat when you’re nervous.’ He played his light in Roger’s face. ‘You are nervous, aren’t you?’

Roger could take no more.

‘Just this nervous,’ he said, and let fly with his fists. Skink, taken by surprise, went down like a ninepin. Roger was on him in an instant, pummelling that smug face.

The two men dragged him off and bashed his head against a tree trunk until he faded out. They left him in an unconscious heap and began their midnight supper.

The Iron Man sank into the hold of the Santa Cruz. Hal, peering through the quartz eyes of the metal monster, was surprised to see that Roger was no longer working where he had seen him last.

Had the boy wearied of his labours and gone exploring?

‘I don’t see Roger,’ Hal telephoned to Captain Ike. ‘Tell Omo to get down here as soon as possible and look for him.’

It was another five minutes before Omo could finish recharging his aqualung and reach the wreck. He systematically searched the hold. Then he went up on deck and explored the two castles. He swam a few yards away from the ship and made a complete circuit around it. Then he rose to the surface and reported to Captain Ike. The captain telephoned Hal.

‘Omo has been all through the wreck and around it. He can’t find your brother.’

‘Haul me up,’ Hal said.

The Iron Man rose, clutching a marble statue of Venus that had perhaps once graced the governor’s garden. The black monster and the white goddess in a fond embrace broke the surface, soared into the air, and came down upon the deck. ‘Let me out,’ Hal ordered. The trapdoor was unbolted and he crawled out, immediately calling for his aqualung and mask.

‘Let’s go down and take another look.’

They explored the wreck thoroughly, looking in every nook and cranny to be sure that a giant octopus had not drawn Roger into its hole, visiting the cross on the chance that Roger might have made a sentimental journey to the scientist’s grave, even penetrating the labyrinth of rocks to the cave since Roger might have gone there to see if it was still being used as a transfer point for stolen treasure.

With heavy hearts they returned to the wreck. In the soft glow of the sea life Hal noticed a black object tied to the top of one of the broken masts. He swam closer. It was a bottle. He tore it loose, signalled to Omo, and they ascended to the Lively Lady.

In feverish haste, Hal knocked off the head of the bottle. Inside was a paper. He fished it out and spread it open under the beam of his torch. Hal recognized Skink’s writing.

hunt:

Your brother is being held for ransom. We demand half a million dollars for his release. We make it easy for you to meet these terms. All you need do is return to Truk and leave the wreck of the Santa Cruz to us. Give us one week to remove the treasure. At the end of that time your brother will be delivered to you, unharmed, at Truk.

S. K. INKHAM

The three sat in stunned silence. Hal’s first impulse was to abandon the wreck and return to Truk. He must let Skink have his way. Anything to save his brother. Captain Ike’s and Omo’s thoughts were running in the same direction.

‘Skink wins,’ the captain said. ‘He’s outsmarted us. I always said he was a sly one. Shall I up anchor and make for Truk?’

‘I don’t see what else we can do,’ Omo said.

But Hal’s mind had taken a new tack. Was he going to let himself be outsmarted by Skink? And how about his job? It was easy for the captain and Omo to talk about sailing away. Their duty was to the ship; but his duty was to the Institute. Dr Blake had been instructed to salvage the cargo of the Santa Cruz and now that Dr Blake was no longer here that responsibility was Hal’s.

‘We have a job here,’ he said, ‘- to bring up that treasure. We can’t let ourselves be scared off by a letter from a pack of bandits.’

‘But how about Roger?’ Omo asked.

‘It’s Roger’s job too. He wouldn’t want us to shirk it just to save his skin. He would be humiliated to think that the whole expedition had been wrecked because of him. I know he wouldn’t want it that way. Let’s get on with our job. They won’t be expecting that, and perhaps we can get a lot of the stuff up before they interfere with us. If they do interfere, we’ll give them a fight that they’ll remember.’

The two divers again descended to the wreck, Omo with his aqualung, Hal operating the Iron Man. They worked energetically and the store of treasure in the hold of the Lively Lady grew steadily.

Yet their nerves were on edge because they knew this could not go on without interruption. Something would happen - what it would be they could hardly guess.

Each time they came up they found Captain Ike a little more anxious about the weather. There was every sign of an approaching storm. The barometer had slid from 30 to 29-3 and was still on the way down. But Hal would not consider stopping the work to run for shelter.

It was about two hours after midnight when, as the Iron Man sank towards the wreck, the searchlights picked up a roundish object that Hal at first took to be a whale. As it came closer he saw that it was one of the Truk submarines.

It seemed to be making straight for him and he called over the telephone, ‘Haul up, quick!’

Before the Iron Man could begin to rise it was struck a terrific blow on the right side by the nose of the submarine. The crash set Hal hurling against the steel wall and a shower of broken instruments fell upon him. He called to Captain Ike but got no answer - the wire had evidently been snapped. The impact started the cable spinning off the winch drum and the Iron Man sank to the bottom. There it settled on its side. The lights had gone out and water was leaking in.

Again there was a tremendous crash as the submarine renewed the attack and Hal was battered and bruised in the steel shell. The submarine’s light cast weird beams through the water as it circled and came down beside the Iron Man.

A trapdoor opened and a figure came out. It swam to the rear port of the Iron Man and seemed to be trying to unbolt it. There was a sudden inrush of water as the trapdoor opened and Hal felt his body contract under the pressure.