“They’re going away.”
“You see,” Lawrence said. “There wasn’t nothing to worry about. They’re not interested in us.”
“So I was wrong. But they might have been.”
Lawrence did not contradict him, and he guessed that the man had had his own misgivings, even though he might not have confessed to any. He had a feeling that all three of them were relieved to see the launch heading away from them.
Lawrence reduced speed to allow it to get well clear, and by the time they reached the area where the wreck was submerged it had vanished into the haze on the southern horizon. There was now not another boat in sight, and things still could not have been going more smoothly.
“We’re going to be lucky,” King said. “I feel it in my bones. We sure are going to be lucky.”
Fletcher touched wood; there was plenty of it within reach. He still did not trust that luck to last. When had it ever done so?
They had got the bearings almost dead accurate. When he had swum down through those ten fathoms of clear sea-water he could see the stern of the ship ahead of him, and that old four-inch breech-loader which had fired its last round so many years ago. The gun was mounted on a platform above the poop, a kind of metallic mushroom growth springing out of the deck; the barrel, at right angles to the line of the masts, was a thick finger pointing at the ocean bed, as though directing the attention to some object lying there; the breech was closed, just as the last Number Two of the gun crew had left it; the elevating and training wheels were motionless and would remain so perhaps for ever.
Fletcher swam towards the ship and stopped at the stern, one hand resting lightly on the taffrail. Utter silence; utter stillness; even the fishes seemed to have deserted the wreck for the moment. Fletcher could not see the boat from that position; the Halcón Español was hidden by the midships superstructure; but he knew it was there, less than a ship’s length away, waiting for him to come to it.
And the dead men waiting, too.
And suddenly he had no wish to go to it or to them. What would they be like now? Bloated, repulsive, horrifying. Was he to photograph such things? He felt cold, as if the thought had chilled his blood. Why should he do it? What good would it do? Suppose he returned to the surface and reported that he had been unable to find the ship. What could they do? They could not prove that he was lying.
Still he waited there with his hand on the rail, and still the fishes had not returned to the ship. And gradually, insidiously, there crept over him a sense of impending disaster. Something was about to happen; he was sure of it. And perhaps the fishes had also felt that premonition; perhaps that was why they had gone. So he would take an example from them and would go too; would get away from that place where evil seemed to be lying in wait like a dreaded spectre.
He took his hand off the taffrail and was about to thrust away from the poop when it happened. The entire ship trembled and moved, as though the long sleep had ended and now she would lift herself off the bed of the sea, rise to the surface and go steaming on as she had done throughout those early years of the century. But it was no more than a spasm; the movement was not sustained, and she subsided again while a mass of debris that had exploded from the region of the foredeck — pieces of timber, iron, wire-rope, brass and copper, all mixed up with sediment from the ocean floor — rose like a dark and awful cloud.
Fletcher stared at it, not moving, petrified by the sight. He had had that premonition of something about to happen, but he had not dreamed that it would be this. And now he knew for what purpose the launch had been there: divers had been down from it to fix the charge and the timing device; and they must have just completed the task when the second boat hove in sight. That was why they had gone away so quickly; their work had been finished and they had no further reason for hanging around.
These thoughts flitted through his mind in the instant when the explosion occurred, and a moment later he was caught by the pressure of water and it was as though an invisible, irresistible force were carrying him away. He made no attempt to resist it, but allowed himself to be thrust forward until the pressure eased. Then he swam back to the ship and looked at the damage.
They had made a thorough job of it: the boat had disintegrated and there was nothing now that could have been identified as part of it; the Halcón Español no longer existed. As to the bodies, there were objects here and there which might have been parts of a man, but soon they would be gone and there would be nothing; nothing at all to give evidence of the killing that had taken place; nothing that would be worth the expenditure of one millimetre of photographic film.
The ship had sustained some more damage to go with that meted out by the torpedo so many years ago, but this extra injury was of no importance; a sunken vessel could be sunk no deeper. She had stirred for a moment and that was all; now she would lie once again undisturbed, and the fishes would come back to dart and flicker between the holds and superstructure while time stood still. He turned away from the wreckage and began to swim towards the surface.
He could tell by their faces that they knew something had gone wrong. They helped him to climb on board; they helped him to get rid of the mask and the cylinders and the camera.
It was King who asked the question that must have been in the minds of both.
“What happened?”
He told them. They were not surprised; the explosion had been noticeable on the surface; pieces of flotsam had come up and were floating around the boat.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” King said. “You were so long coming up, we began to think—”
“That I’d copped it? If I’d gone in straightaway I should have done. But I hung back, not liking it. That’s what saved me — blue funk.”
“I’m glad it did.” King grinned at him. “We’d have hated to lose you.”
“I’d have hated it too.”
“So they decided to destroy the evidence,” King said. “Well, it was to be expected. It was the easiest way. We were just too late; we should have come yesterday.”
“If we’d come yesterday,” Fletcher said, “maybe they would have been here yesterday instead.”
King gave him a quick glance. “You’re saying they were warned? That they knew what we planned?”
“I don’t know. But it’s a coincidence, isn’t it? Like I said before. And me, I just don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Well, well,” King said; “now we have got something to think about.”
It was Lawrence who broke in then. “Think about it on the way back. I say we better get the hell outa here right now.”
“Okay; let’s go.”
Fletcher had been looking towards the islet. Now he suddenly pointed.
“Look there!”
“Hell!” Lawrence said.
A motor-launch had come into view and was approaching rapidly. Until then it had been hidden by the islet, but now it had come out into the open and was heading directly for the smaller boat.
“The bastards!” King said. “They came back.”
It was possible. It could have been the launch they had seen going away as they approached. It could have gone out of sight, then changed direction, made a detour, and returned under cover of the islet. On the other hand, this might be a different launch, one that had been lurking there all the time. Either way, it made no difference; the odds were a hundred to one that it was not approaching simply to pass the time of day.
“Get this thing moving,” King said urgently.