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‘You’re drenched‚’ he said. ‘You’d better go and change into dry clothes.’

But she did not go, and he did not urge her. He listened to the stammer of the engine as he steered the yawl into the face of the wind.

Chapter Nine

Trouble

They had lost two days because of the wind, and the yawl was leaking slightly after her encounter with the coral. It was not a bad leak; a few minutes’ work on the pump each day was enough to counteract it, and Keeton was not worried. He had examined the hull under water and had found some gashes but no serious damage.

‘We were lucky‚’ he told Dring. ‘We could have been really piled up on that reef. What happened? Did you go to sleep?’

Dring flared up at the suggestion. ‘So it was my fault? If you’d given us enough sea room it would never have happened.’

It was Valerie who smoothed things over. ‘Stop snapping at each other like children. Never mind who was to blame, let’s be thankful we’re still alive.’

Dring grinned, his temper subsiding as quickly as it had risen. ‘The kid’s right. OK, Skipper? No hard feelings?’

‘No hard feelings‚’ Keeton said. ‘Let’s just curse the weather.’

They resumed diving operations as soon as it was calm enough to do so. But now Keeton was even more acutely aware of the pressure of time. He wanted to have the gold on board and to get away. Each day added to his impatience.

‘Why don’t you take what you’ve got and leave it at that?’ Valerie suggested. ‘Surely there’s enough here. It’s tempting fate to keep going down.’

Keeton shook his head. ‘We haven’t got the half of it yet. Not nearly half.’

There was a fortune on board, cluttering the living space and weighing the yawl down low in the water, but he was not satisfied yet.

‘You’ll sink the boat with gold‚’ Valerie said. ‘You’ll end by losing it all.’

Keeton and Dring had gone down into the Valparaiso so often that they could have found their way to the strongroom almost by instinct; the route down through the shell-hole and along the alleyway was like the entrance to a familiar building; each turning was known, each snag had been passed so many times that they were becoming over-confident, feeling that nothing whatever could go wrong now.

And then something did go wrong.

It happened inside the strong-room. Keeton was groping towards the pile of cases and thinking how much easier the salvage job had turned out to be than he had feared; so many things could have prevented them from getting the gold, but in the event it had been a relatively simple operation. And even the sharks had gone away after the first inquisitive reconnaissance.

He felt for a box, and in the instant that he gripped it he knew that something had happened to his air supply. He could not breathe; he was suffocating. He released his grip and felt an intolerable pounding of blood in his temples. Everything seemed to be spinning round and blood began to pour from his nose.

Then he felt Dring’s hands. He tried to fight Dring off; for suddenly the truth dawned upon him: Dring was trying to kill him. The Australian must have tampered with the air cylinders; he meant to leave Keeton dead in the wreck and get away with the gold. Not content with a quarter share, he intended to take it all.

He struck feebly at Dring, but he knew that his own weakness was too great for him to do anything now. He could not even see Dring; the water had become cloudier, thicker, blacker. And then something burst inside Keeton’s brain and he was falling into a dark pit, deeper and deeper until the ink-black waters engulfed him utterly.

* * *

The sun cast brazen spears at the bleached deck of the yawl, and Keeton opened his eyes. The light struck at him and he groaned, his head hammering.

‘He’s coming round.’ It was the girl’s voice; but it seemed to come from a long way off.

Then Dring’s voice sounded. ‘He’ll be all right. Tough boy, the Skipper.’

Keeton could not understand how he came to be lying on the deck with the sun warming him, but he was glad of the warmth; it seemed to put life back into his body.

‘I thought I was dead‚’ he said, and his voice was a croak.

Dring’s voice sounded louder. ‘You damn nearly were dead, Skipper.’

Keeton began to remember things. ‘You tried to kill me‚’ he said; but there was no anger in him. He was too washed out for anger.

He heard Dring laugh. ‘You thought that? Was that why you hit me? Maybe I should have let you drown, you ungrateful bastard.’

Keeton realized that his head was resting on some kind of pillow. He could see Valerie’s face upside down, and it looked funny that way. He discovered that the pillow was her lap.

He said, confiding in her: ‘He meant to get rid of me so he could have all the gold.’

‘You’re talking nonsense‚’ she said. ‘You’ve been diving too much. If it hadn’t been for Ben you’d have been dead by now.’

‘There was a blockage in the air valve‚’ Dring said, ‘You had me scared for a while. I got you up as fast as I could, but you had me scared.’

‘Me too‚’ Valerie said. ‘With your face all blood, you looked bad when we took your mask off.’

Keeton’s mind was clearing. So he had jumped to the wrong conclusion and had made a fool of himself. Far from trying to kill him, Dring had in fact saved his life.

‘I’m sorry, Ben. I must be going crazy.’

Dring put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Too much diving, Skipper, just like the kid said. How about calling it a day? Up anchor and get the hell out of this. It’s getting on my nerves too.’

‘There’s a devil of a lot of gold still down there. Far more than we’ve lifted.’

‘Let it stay. We can come back.’

Keeton was silent for a while, thinking the matter over. They could hardly take much more gold anyway; the yawl was dangerously low in the water as it was. Perhaps it would be wise not to push the luck.

‘All right‚’ he said. ‘We’ll call it a day.’

Now that the decision had been made, he was as eager as anyone to get away. In his mind this burial place of the ill-fated Valparaiso had assumed a sinister character. It was as though the dead ship were beckoning him, inviting him to return to the cool depths of the sea where he would become just one more grotesque and twisted piece of coral like the engineers trapped for ever in the gloomy wreck of the engine-room.

‘We’ll sail tonight‚’ he said.

Dring nodded. ‘That suits me fine.’

It was the girl who saw the vessel first. She had gone out to scrape some plates over the side, and it was there between the yawl and the horizon, away to the south-east.

Keeton was smoking a cigarette when he heard her excited cry: ‘Charlie — Ben — come here. There’s a boat.’

Keeton crushed out the cigarette with a savage jab of the hand. He beat Dring to the companionway by inches. Valerie was pointing over the starboard side.

‘There! Do you see?’

Keeton saw it. ‘Get my binoculars. Quick!’

She obeyed him. There was a note of authority in Keeton’s voice when he gave orders that permitted no disobedience. She came back with the binoculars, and Keeton took them without a word and focused them on the approaching craft.

‘What do you make of it?’ Dring asked.

‘A sea-going launch.’

‘Our friends?’

‘I wouldn’t mind betting on it.’ He clenched his right fist in exasperation. ‘One more day and we’d have been gone. They could have looked for us until their eyes popped and they would never have found us. Now—’

‘Suppose we left now — at once‚’ Valerie suggested.

‘We couldn’t get away from that launch. Even without the load we’re carrying they could catch us long before nightfall. No: I’m not running from them. Now that they’ve found us I’m going to wait for them.’