‘I am sorry, Charlie. I didn’t know.’
Once again he could not meet her eyes. Once again he felt dirty, because he had not told them about Bristow.
The first time down they did not venture inside the ship. They swam round it, reconnoitring. It was an awesome experience for Keeton to see the decks on which he had walked, the superstructure, the gun platforms, the davits, all engulfed by water in this queer, greenish light that filtered down from the surface. Already marine growths had begun to attach themselves to the vessel, the first step in a process of incrustation that would go on through the years, lending a curious, dreamlike beauty to something that was essentially no more than an iron shell.
The coral on which the ship was lying was like a weird forest in which the trees had become inextricably interwoven, their branches twisted and convoluted, their trunks gnarled and whitened with age until they had become glimmering skeletons. The ship had descended on this forest, crushing out a bed for itself; and there it lay, listing a little to starboard, with the useless propeller and rudder sticking out from the stern.
Keeton looked at Dring just ahead of him. The Australian might have been some imaginary creature from outer space, with the cylinders of compressed air on his back, the glass-fronted mask, the flexible tubes passing over his shoulders and the big rubber fins on his feet. From the exhaust valve in the apparatus intermittent streams of bubbles floated up towards the surface like blobs of molten silver. A shoal of tiny fish darted past and were gone. Up above, the sea rippled like a gleaming skin, breaking the shafts of sunlight into a thousand pieces. And over all was the unnatural deathly silence of this submarine world.
Keeton saw Dring beckoning. They swam up to the surface and climbed on board the yawl.
‘Do you think you’ll be able to manage it?’ Valerie inquired anxiously.
‘Yes‚’ Keeton said. ‘I think so.’
‘Do you, Ben?’
‘I don’t know the inside of the ship‚’ Dring answered cautiously. ‘The Skipper does. If he says we can get to the strongroom I don’t see any great difficulty.’
‘I’ll draw a plan for you‚’ Keeton said.
He led the way into the cabin, found a sheet of paper and drew a rough outline of the Valparaiso.
‘Here’s the shell-hole in the boat-deck. That will be the best way in.’
‘Where’s the strong-room?’ Dring asked.
‘Three decks down. About here.’ Keeton made a mark with the pencil.
‘What about the door? Is it locked?’
‘No. I sawed the padlock off.’
‘So there’s this bit of alleyway to drag the loot through and then it comes straight up through the shell-hole. Is that right?’
‘That’s it. My idea is to take a rope down from the yawl and drag the cases up one at a time. They’re not big.’
‘Could work. Bound to be snags, but I don’t see anything against it.’
‘It’s got to work‚’ Keeton said.
Again the girl looked anxious. ‘You’ll be careful inside that wreck?’
Dring put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘Too true, kid. We’re not looking for trouble.’
Swimming in through the hole in the boat-deck was an eerie experience, but there were no snags. It was like entering a house by the roof. There were jagged projections of iron that had to be avoided, but there was sufficient light coming from above to reveal these hazards. The pallid skeleton of the engineer remained in its tangle of metal, and Keeton felt a momentary shock when he saw the skull grinning at him. But it was nothing; these were only the impotent bones of a man; they could not harm him.
Swimming ahead of Dring, he found the alleyway without difficulty. There was no obstruction between it and the wrecked engine-room; the way lay open before him. He gripped a handrail and waited as Dring secured the lower end of the rope that stretched down from the yawl. Then he moved into the alleyway, pulling himself along the rail.
The light was dimmer here and there was a sliminess under his hand, and his heart was beating faster with mingled excitement and apprehension, for he could not tell what he might meet inside this cave of steel. He came to the place where he and Bristow had stood guard, and it was familiar even in the gloomy submarine twilight. His hand made contact with a cylindrical object, and he realized that this was a fire extinguisher still seated in its bracket waiting for the fire that would never come.
To his immense relief he found that the door to the strongroom was wide open. It had been his one great fear — that the door might have been jammed; but luck seemed to be smiling on him at last.
He moved into the strong-room and groped in the almost complete darkness for one of the cases of gold. His fingers made contact with slimy timber and a handle. Dring came to help him and between them they hauled the case out into the alleyway and down the gentle slope to the engine-room. Here Dring fastened the rope round the box and waited below to guide it on its upward journey while Keeton swam to the surface and climbed into the yawl.
The girl looked relieved to see him; as soon as he had removed his mask she began to question him.
‘Is everything all right? Nothing’s happened to Ben?’
‘Everything’s fine, Val. Give me a hand and we’ll drag up the first instalment.’
He drew in the rope steadily, the girl helping; it came up dripping with sea-water and fell in coils on the deck. It came easily, smoothly, with no snags, and in a very short while the case of gold broke the surface with Dring beside it.
Keeton exulted. ‘We’ve done it! We’ve done it!’
The gold bar lay on the deck and gleamed in the sunlight. The two men and the girl looked down at it in silence. It was as though this bar of metal with its shining yellow eye had hypnotised them all, robbing them of the power of movement and the gift of speech. Then the girl sighed.
‘Why should it be worth so much? What is there about it to make it so valuable? It’s just yellow metal.’
Dring gave a laugh. ‘It’s gold. You don’t have to bother your head about any other reasons. It’s gold.’
‘Come on‚’ Keeton said. ‘Let’s get some more.’
They went down again, and then again. One after another the cases were hauled up and piled on the deck. All too soon for Keeton, Dring called a halt. Keeton wanted to go on; the fever was in his blood and fatigue meant nothing. But Dring was firm; he knew about diving.
‘There’s a limit, Skipper. If you go beyond the limit you start to do crazy things. That’s when accidents happen. We’ve done enough diving for today. There’s always tomorrow.’
Keeton realized that Dring was right, but he was eager to have the gold on board and to get away. He looked out over the sea, and it was empty to the horizon; no sail, no smoke, no mast. But how long would it remain thus? How long before some other vessel moved into that circle of water? How long before Rains and Smith and Ferguson came over the horizon, drawn by the gold as wasps are drawn by a honey-pot?
‘I’d like to get the job finished.’
‘I know, Skipper. I know just how you feel; but you’ve got to take things easy. If not, the job may finish you.’
He had to take Dring’s advice; but he chafed at the delay and was like a caged animal in the restricted space of the yawl. They packed some of the cases in the forward cabin and some in the quarters aft, under the table and in any available corner.
‘It’s going to be cramped when we have the full load‚’ Dring said. ‘But what’s a little discomfort in a good cause?’
That evening Dring brought up the question of his own share of the gold. ‘I’m not greedy. How about twenty per cent for me and ten per cent for Val?’
‘I don’t want anything‚’ the girl said quickly. ‘It frightens me. The whole thing seems wrong somehow.’