03 Underwater Adventure (16 page)

Hal and Roger ploughed through underbrush, berry bushes, lantana, and a criss-cross of sago palms and pandanus towards the lagoon. They kept their eyes open, but it was not possible to see more than a few feet into the jungle on either side.

‘It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ Hal said. ‘We don’t stand one chance in a million.’

‘What makes you think the stuff is here at all?’ Roger was getting a little fed up with fighting brambles and thorns and the spiked edges of palm leaf stems.

‘Just because I don’t see where else they could take it. If there had been any ship around here we would have seen it. But somehow, the smugglers must have been watching us. When we succeeded in locating the wreck, that made it easy for them. They set out to grab as much of the booty as possible, hide it on the island, and after we leave they’ll bring a ship to carry it away.’

They came out on the lagoon. It was circled by a lovely sand beach, now almost covered by the rising tide. In many places there was not room to walk between the water and the tree roots, and wading through the shallows slowed them up.

Thinking that perhaps Blake had passed this way, they looked for his trail on the submerged beach, but soon gave it up; the ripples of the rising tide would have wiped out all footprints, had there been any.

It was a full hour before they completed the circuit of the lagoon, and another hour before they could rejoin Skink under the breadfruit tree.

They were surprised not to find Dr Blake.

‘That’s strange,’ Hal worried. ‘He should have been here long ago. Something must have happened to him.’

‘Now what could happen to him?’ scoffed Skink.

T don’t know. Perhaps a broken ankle.’

No word could have made more of an impression upon Skink. The vivid picture of Blake’s ankle caught in the jaws of the giant clam, and of Blake’s vain efforts to cut himself loose, made him shiver.

Hal eyed Skink closely. He noticed his trembling fingers, flushed cheeks, and feverish eyes. A walk in the sun could not do this. A horrible suspicion troubled him. He stooped suddenly and jerked Skink’s knife from its sheath.

‘What the devil are you doing?’ complained Skink.

‘I just want to see this knife.’

‘Well, why not?’ said Skink indifferently. ‘But you could have asked for it, couldn’t you?’

Hal studied the knife. Of course Skink would have cleaned it, but it was likely that some trace of blood would be left in the bevelling of the blade or in the grooved design of the handle. He searched carefully but could find nothing. He tossed the knife back to Skink.

‘If I find there’s been any crooked work,’ he began grimly… .

‘Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, Hunt,’ Skink cut in and, rising, started towards the dinghy. ‘If you want to find Blake why don’t you get to it instead of standing there making a stupid fool of yourself?’

The move took Hal by surprise. Skink had seemed reluctant to go in search of Blake, but now he was leading the way.

As for Skink, it had just penetrated his crime-crazed brain that, instead of trying to conceal Blake’s fate, he must reveal it. If Blake’s body were not found they would believe that Skink had done away with him.

Now a new terror possessed his mind. They must hurry, hurry. Suppose the giant clam relaxed its hold. Suppose the body was carried away by the tide. Then Skink would be out of luck for he would have no evidence that Blake had not died a death of violence at his hands.

In the boat they rounded the island, closely hugging the shore. Now and then they shut off the motor and called. There was no answering call.

When they reached the bay of the disaster, Skink’s mind was in confusion. How could he lead them to the spot without seeming to do so? It would be easy if he were at the tiller, but Hal was in the stern seat. Hal was still hugging the shore.

‘Use your head, Hunt,’ Skink said. ‘He wouldn’t climb that hill and down again. He’d swim across.’

Hal stubbornly held his course. ‘There might have been a wide enough beach at the base of the cliff for him to walk around.’

But when he came to the foot of the cliff he found the water so deep that even at low tide there could not have been any beach. Skink was right. Blake must have swum across. Perhaps he had drowned on the way, though why such a good swimmer as Blake should drown was a mystery, unless there had been foul play by Skink.

He circled to a spot where a crossing would naturally begin. Then he shut off the motor and told Roger to row, slowly.

In spite of the lack of evidence on Skink’s blade, he still half expected to come upon the drowned body of Blake with a knife wound between the shoulders.

He fished a mask out of a locker, put it on, and lowered his face into the water so that he could clearly see everything below.

The boat passed over a giant clam, its great jaws open. Then, ahead, he could make out another giant, its jaws closed upon some object, probably a large fish. Coming nearer, he could see plainly what the object was, and his heart sank.

‘Stop rowing,’ he said to Roger. ‘Here he is.’

He dived in, plunged his knife between the slightly separated edges of the shell and worked until he had made an opening large enough to admit his arm. He reached in and sank his knife into the powerful hinge. The huge valves eased apart.

Hal raised the limp body to the surface and the others helped lift it into the boat.

Hal climbed in and stripped off Blake’s sodden shirt. There was no mark on the back or chest. The ankle was deeply cut. Hal thought he could see just what had

happened.

‘He was swimming across and got caught in the clam. He tried to saw off his foot but a knife isn’t much good for that purpose. Before he could finish the tide rose and drowned him.’

One thing was as clear as the sun. Blake’s death had been an accident. Skink was innocent. A fellow of idle boasts and mean tricks, but no murderer. Hal was glad, for he had never wanted to think the worst of Skink.

The three sat silent, each engaged in his own unhappy thoughts, while the dinghy bore its mournful burden to the schooner.

Blake had loved the colourful lands beneath the sea. He had spent much of his life studying their mysteries. Twice he had expressed the wish to be buried, like the seaman in the Jules Verne story, amid the loveliness and peace of the coral gardens.

His wish was respected. Hal and Roger selected the spot.

In a coral garden of surpassing beauty not far from the wreck of the Santa Cruz they came upon a splendid elkhorn coral in the form of a cross. Its erect column stood fifteen feet high and its two arms spanned five feet. But not only in its great size was it superior to the ordinary graveyard cross. It was not built of dead granite or marble. It was a living and glowing cross, the work of millions of Blake’s small friends, the coral architects.

Its surface seemed inlaid with countless jewels of every colour that glowed softly in the light of the sun reaching down through ten fathoms of sea. It was a cross fit for the grave of a king - and the boys felt it was none too good for Blake. With pick-axe and shovel they dug a grave at the foot of the cross.

Returning to the deck, they joined in the service for burial at sea conducted by Captain Ike.

Then the body of the scientist, wrapped first in sailcloth and then in the flag of his country, was lowered over the side. Five pall-bearers, including Captain Ike and Omo who had insisted upon coming along although this was the captain’s first experience with an aqualung, bore the shrouded form down into the depths.

Perhaps there had never been so strange a funeral procession as this. The grotesque masked and tanked figures that looked as if they might have come from Mars proceeded, head downward, pushing towards the bottom by thrusts of their enormous webbed feet.

Reaching the ocean floor, they walked with slow steps through an undersea paradise of great chrysanthemum’ like anemones, stately fans and plumes, clouds of tiny rainbow-coloured fish, to the foot of the jewelled cross.

Reverently they laid the lover of the sea in his coral tomb, filled the grave with pure white sand, and paved it securely with masses of coral.

There were even flowers on the grave, for in the holes of the coral blocks brilliant sea anemones and gorgonias flourished.

These were flowers that would never fade, that would constantly renew themselves through the years and the centuries.

And so, under this carpet at the foot of the living cross in a garden that no building would ever violate, they left their friend to his long rest.

Sadly the mourners returned to the deck of the Lively Lady.

But they could not sit and grieve. There was work to be done. Omo had made frequent inspections of the wreck during the day; now watches must be set for the

night.

‘You take the first, Roger, while there’s still a little light,’ Hal directed. ‘Then I’ll take an hour, then Omo. Then you again. Tomorrow we’ll begin bringing up the cargo.’

‘And who are you to be giving orders?’ inquired Skink coolly. Hal was surprised. ‘Who else? ‘You don’t think you?’

‘Have you forgotten that I was Blake’s second in command?’

‘He never said so.’

‘Perhaps not in so many words. But didn’t he bring me on because I was an experienced diver and you weren’t? Didn’t he give me the job of teaching you and your kid brother how to dive with the aqualung?’

Hal faced him angrily. ‘That was before he found out you were a crook and a coward. Then he put you down to leave on the next plane. And that still holds.’

Skink smiled with tolerant insolence. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve changed my plans. I’m staying right here and you’re going to take my orders.’ He heard a snort from Captain Ike and turned upon him viciously. ‘And so are you, you rickety old bag of leather and bones!’

A long arm attached to the bag of leather and bones began to swing, and when the open palm slapped Skink’s face the force was sufficient to knock him clear across the deck in a heap under the gunwale.

‘Mutiny! Mutiny!’ screamed Skink. ‘By the Holy Harry, I’ll show you who’s master here!’

He leaped below and came up at once with a revolver.

‘Now, line up against that rail. I’ll give each of you just one second to say who’s boss. If you can’t decide in that time I’ll put you where you won’t have to decide anything any more. Get going! Line up!’ He brandished the revolver.

There was no rush to the rail. Instead, Hal began to move towards Skink.

‘Get back!’ yelled Skink, hopping up and down like a madman while his revolver wobbled wildly. ‘Get back or I’ll slug you!’

‘Careful, Hunt,’ advised Captain Ike. ‘He’s gone crazy. He’s apt to do anything.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Hal said. ‘He hasn’t the nerve to shoot. When he kills he goes round about - with a sidewinder in a pocket, a scorpion in a helmet, a stonefish to do his killing for him …’ He stopped and stared at Captain Ike. ‘Or a giant clam!’

It came to him like a blinding flash of light. He did not know how, but somehow Skink had used the giant clam to accomplish the death of Dr Blake. It was exactly the sort of thing he would do - the sort of thing he had done with the sidewinder, the scorpion, and the stonefish. And when he had failed to warn Roger of the shark, when he had pretended the winch was out of order - it was all in the same pattern. His mind could not move except through sneaking, underhanded trickery. He lacked the courage to do anything straight out. He would not shoot

Hal moved closer.

‘One more step and you get it!’ screamed Skink. His face was black with fury and his eyes bulged.

Hal made not only one more step, but a swift half-dozen. He struck the revolver out of Skink’s hand and it flew over the gunwale into the sea. He gripped Skink by the throat and bore him down to the deck.

But Skink was as muscular and slippery as an eel. He slid out from under, leaped up, and kicked Hal in the face - or where Hal’s face would have been had he not lifted it at just the right moment so that his opponent kicked an iron stanchion instead. Skink howled with pain.

The general laughter made him more furious. He pulled off his weighted belt. It was loaded with six lead discs each weighing a pound.

He swung the belt with all his force at Hal who retreated behind a mast. The belt whipped around the mast, the end of it slapping back towards Skink, and two pounds of solid metal caught him squarely on the side of the head, nearly knocking him out.

First the stanchion and now the mast - it seemed to the onlookers that the ship itself was fighting Skink. The Lively Lady was up in arms against him.

He tore the boom crutch from under the boom. It was a scissor-like support of very heavy wood, designed to keep the boom from swinging. Skink leaped up on to the rail in order to bring this weapon down like a club upon Hal’s head.

A fresh breeze was blowing and at this instant the heavy boom swung to leeward. It swiped Skink from the rail and dropped him into the sea.

The Lively Lady had had the final word. She seemed to have said, ‘Get off my clean decks and never come back.’

Skink put his hand on the ladder. Then he heard Hal’s warning voice:

‘If you come back on this ship you will be put in irons and held for the murder of Dr Blake.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous …’ began Skink.

But when he glanced up at the row of angry faces looking down at him over the rail he knew it was useless to go on. His shipmates and his ship didn’t want him. He had fooled them for the last time.

Well, almost the last time. He looked towards the island. It was a mile away, an easy pull for a good swimmer. He turned his back on the Lively Lady and struck out.

Hal was distressed and looked to Captain Ike for counsel.

‘Should we have held him? We could overtake him in the dinghy and bring him back.’

Captain Ike shook his head.

‘Let him go, lad, and good riddance. You couldn’t have proved anything against him in court. There was no witness. There was no evidence that he laid a finger on Blake. No, you’ll have to leave his punishment to the sky and the sea. And if I’m not mistaken …’ He peered at a rolling formation of white and black clouds in the west, ‘the sea and sky are getting ready to punish somebody.’