03 Underwater Adventure (3 page)

‘Good to have you aboard,’ he said. ‘We’ve been having a tough time - we need you.’

‘I think 1 can help you out,’ said Skink with a confident jerk of his head.

‘Come below and I’ll show you where you can put your things. Then we’ll have breakfast.’

They went down the companionway into the cabin. There was a smell of hot coffee. Omo, who doubled as seaman and cook, was putting breakfast on the table. Blake moved towards the rear of the cabin.

‘You’ll sleep here,’ he said, indicating a bunk in the stem. The bunks were close together there and the headroom was not so good.

But Skink had stopped in the roomier part of the cabin beside the widest bunk.

‘Is this one occupied^’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Blake said, ‘that happens to be mine.’

Again he turned aft but Skink did not follow. I’d be mighty sorry to inconvenience you,’ Skink said, ‘but the fact is I wouldn’t be much use to you if I slept back there. The motion, you know. Rolling I don’t mind, but pitching knocks me out. I’d do better amidships. But of course I wouldn’t think of disturbing you. I’ll just sleep up on deck.’

‘Not on your life,’ said Blake generously. ‘Take my bunk and I’ll move back.’

‘Sure you don’t mind?’

‘Not a bit.’

Skink threw his luggage into the master bunk.

‘Now for something to eat,’ said Blake. ‘Of course we usually have breakfast earlier than this, but we waited for you. Here’s Captain Ike now. Captain Flint, meet Mr Inkham.’ They shook hands. ‘And this is Roger.’

Skink said, ‘Hi,’ in the tone of one who has no time to bother with kids.

‘Omo, Mr Inkham.’

The handsome young Polynesian came forward with outstretched hand, a smile parting his lips to show flashing white teeth set in a face as brown as mahogany.

Skink suddenly took an interest in something else and appeared not to notice the hand. Omo withdrew it and calmly went back to his duties. He showed no resentment.

But Hal was boiling with rage. His fist hardened, his muscles tensed, and he could hardly restrain himself from landing a smashing blow in the middle of Skink’s smug face.

So, Skink thought himself too good to shake hands with Omo! Omo, who was worth a dozen Skinks. Omo, who had more than once risked his life for Hal and Roger. Omo, who had shown such patience and courage during those terrible days on the desert island and on the raft. The brown giant’s education was probably equal to Skink’s and he had something more important that Skink lacked - character. Hal and Omo had sworn to be blood brothers, following the old Polynesian custom. And now that his ‘brother’ had been insulted, all he could do was sit and fume.

Never mind. There would come a day when Skink would answer for this.

The breakfast consisted of tropical fruits, turtles’ eggs, toast, and coffee. When it was finished Skink said,

‘Now, Blake, you might brief me on your set-up. We didn’t have much of a chance to talk in Honolulu.’

‘That’s right,’ Blake said. ‘You really don’t know much about us, nor I about you. But I saw you dive, and that was enough. Anybody who can dive like that …’

‘Thanks,’ smiled Skink.

‘You already know that I’m with the Oceanographic Institute to study sea life and collect specimens. But perhaps you would like to know about this schooner. She’s a fine little ship, sixty feet overall, and carries the triangular Marconi sail, the fastest sail in the world. She also takes a jib and two staysails. She has an auxiliary engine to get her through tight passages. She is equipped with tanks for specimens.’

How did she happen to be fitted up with specimen tanks?’

‘Before I chartered her,’ explained Blake, ‘she had been used by Hal Hunt and his brother to take specimens for their father who is an animal collector. She belongs to Captain Flint here. When they finished their expedition, I chartered her from Flint on condition that he would come along to run her. And since these boys had sailed in her, I employed them too.’

‘So the Oceanographic has given you the power to hire and fire as you please?’ That’s right,’ said Blake

Skink smiled at Hal. It looked to everyone else like a friendly smile, but Hal knew what it meant. Skink intended to see to it that Hal and his brother were fired. Then there would be no one to tell tales.

‘Besides collecting specimens,’ went on Dr Blake, ‘we’re supposed to keep an eye out for sunken ships.’

Roger snapped to attention. Here was something to catch a boy’s fancy. Treasure ships?’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, yes, you might call them treasure ships, although the main thing the oceanographers and historians want is not treasure, but information about how men lived and sailed in the old Spanish days. You see, from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, all these islands were owned by Spain. So were the Philippines. Spanish ships, loaded with the gold of the Philippines, used to come by here, stopping for food and water at these islands, and sailing on to the coast of Mexico, which was also Spanish. There the cargo would be transported overland, then reshipped to Spain. Because the ships could touch at Spanish territory all along the way, it was safer than taking the other route around the world.

‘But these old galleons were none too seaworthy, and many of them went down - along with all the interesting things they carried in their cargo. Some people think that stories of sunken treasure are just stories, but the truth is that thousands of ships lie at the bottom of the sea, waiting to be found. A large proportion of the Spanish losses were along this route because it lies in the path of the typhoons. Few of them have been located because diving technique wasn’t good enough. But now, with all the new diving inventions, the aqualung, undersea sled, bathyscope, and the rest, we ought to be able to do a lot better.’

They went on deck. It would not do to dive too soon after eating. So they stood by the rail and looked down to the colourful hills and valleys of the coral landscape, indistinct now because of the depth.

‘It’s another world,’ Blake said. ‘Nothing like it in the top world. I’ve been diving for twenty years. Sometimes I think I feel more at home down there than up above. It grows on you. At first it seems strange and perhaps a little terrifying. There are dangers, of course, but there are dangers in crossing a city street. After nearly getting knocked down by flying taxicabs, it’s a relief to sink into a world of quiet and peace. Have you ever read Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea?’

The boys nodded. They had all read it.

‘Then you remember that when one of the crew of the Nautilus died, they buried him at the bottom of the sea. I’ve often thought of that. It’s just what I would want.’ Skink laughed a little but Blake went on, ‘I’m quite serious. I have no wife or children, nothing to draw me back to the land. If anything should happen to me, I could ask for nothing better than to be put away in a quiet coral garden like that one.’

He laughed as he noticed their sober faces.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’m not moving down for quite a while yet. Now, let’s get out the gear and plan the day’s work.’

The scorpion in the helmet

It was decided that Hal should go down in a diving suit. Dr Blake considered the diving suit old-fashioned, but there were times when it must be used. The diving suit was an old story to Skink, and Roger was thought too young to risk its dangers.

Hal admitted that he had never been in a suit and could do with a little practice.

Dr Blake ordered Captain Ike to move the schooner to a deeper part of the lagoon.

While this was being done, a heavy rubber diving suit, heavy copper helmet, and still heavier leaden boots were brought on deck. Then came a great coil of lifeline and a still bulkier coil of air-hose. Then a pump, and a compressor.

A scorpion that had been hiding among the gear skittered away across the deck, its slender tail and venomous sting arched above its greenish-white body.

Those things come on board in the baskets of fruit,’ Blake said.

Hal drew on the clumsy suit. Within this waterproof, airproof garment he at once began to sweat profusely.

The suit was so bulky and heavy that he was unable to bend over to put on his boots. Blake fitted them to his feet. Each boot had a thick sole of solid lead and weighed fifty pounds. When Hal tried to walk he found he could scarcely lift his feet.

‘Next, the helmet,’ Blake said. ‘But there’s one valve missing. I’ll get it’

He went down the companionway to the storeroom. Roger was at the bow, attracted by the flashing of a porpoise. Hal was busy inspecting his suit. So there was no one to notice when Skink went to the scuppers where the scorpion had lodged, picked it up deftly by the tail, and dropped it inside the copper helmet.

Blake returned, and with Skink’s help lifted the weighty helmet, let it down over Hal’s head, and locked it to the suit.

The pump was started and air began to come through the hose into the helmet. Hal peered out between iron bars through the narrow window and felt like a prisoner in a death cell. The sun beating upon the suit and the metal helmet made him feel faint.

Was he going to collapse before he even got into the water? Then what would Blake think of him?

All told, the helmet, suit, and boots weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. It was as if he were trying to carry a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man. The perspiration rolled down his face. Leaning heavily upon Roger and Skink, he shambled over to the rail.

Dr Blake had lowered a short ladder. Hal sat on the rail and the three men helped him to get his heavy feet over and down on to a rung of the ladder. Then he slowly descended the ladder into the water.

The feet seemed to become lighter when they went under the surface. When his suit and helmet had also submerged, he was free of the terrific weight.

But he still felt like a prisoner awaiting execution. He could do little for himself. His fate was in the hands of the men above. If that pump stopped he was done for.

If his hose buckled, he would get no air. If they let him down too fast he would get the ‘squeeze’, and if they drew him up too fast he would get the ‘bends’.

And he could not forget that he had an enemy above, one who would stop at nothing to get him out of the way.

His feet touched bottom. He stood in a fairyland of grotesque coral figures, pink monsters, purple fans, blue and gold trees with branches like the antlers of a moose.

The airline attached to his helmet and the lifeline fastened to his shoulder strap went up, up, and disappeared through the roof. It looked like a roof, a roof of frosted glass. He could not see through it. He could see the hull of the ship where it sank into the water, but above the waterline everything was invisible. He could not see Roger peering down, or Dr Blake at the pump, or Skink paying out the lifeline and hose.

But he suddenly realized that too much was being paid out. As soon as he touched bottom the two lines should have been held taut. Instead, more had come down, and coils of the black hose and white lifeline lay on the lagoon floor beside him. He must be careful not to get tangled in those loops.

He practised walking. It was an awkward business. He had to lean far forward like a falling tree. It was a hard job to pull up a foot, advance it, and put it down again. The stiffness of his suit, now puffed up with air, made every move difficult.

Suddenly he received unexpected and unwanted help. One of the strong currents that stagger across the bottom of Truk lagoon caught him in the back and pushed him forward a dozen feet. He had no time to see what this did to his lifeline and hose. He had no sooner steadied himself than a reverse current carried him fifteen feet backwards and sideways.

He clung to a coral branch as the currents tried to make sport with Mm. With his free hand he pulled in the slack of his lines.

He noticed unhappily that the air-hose was tangled in a staghorn coral. Any pull on it against the coral cut off his air supply.

Then he felt something moving in the helmet. Something was crawling through his hair. It made a shiver run up and down his backbone.

He could not get at it with his hands. There was nothing to do but keep on trying to free his airline.

The many-footed thing was walking over his right ear now. He closed his right eye as it crossed his eyelid. It crept down his nose.

Now he could see it and what he saw made his blood freeze. It was a scorpion.

He had a wild desire to crash his head against the inside of his helmet to smash the evil creature. But he knew that at the least movement the scorpion would bury its sting in his face. The poison would flow into his flesh. It might not kill him, but might easily make him unconscious. Then he would fall, his air-hose would be buckled against the coral, and without air he would be done for.

Even if he smashed it with a quick blow it would have time in its death struggle to stab him. Suppose it plunged its lance into his eye? Then he would go around the rest of his life with one eye. If there was any rest of his life.

He must keep steady and cool. After all, he was used to dealing with wild things. He had let tarantulas and black widows walk over his hand. He knew that if you didn’t bother a wild creature it wasn’t likely to bother you.

So he tried to forget the thing that was now crawling over his lips and chin and concentrated on freeing his airline. He edged forward in his clumsy armour to the staghorn around which his line was locked. He must do this job himself, for he knew he was too far down for those at the surface to see his trouble. He had been told to jerk on the lifeline if he wished to be hauled up. But he could not be hauled up until that airline was loose.

Now the thing was on his throat and still going down. If it tried to get through under his collarband it would almost certainly be squeezed and would strike.

Hal tried to control the trembling that made his hands unsteady as he worked over the tangled airline. It was maddening to feel the thing explore his collarband, go around his neck, and then around again. Every impress of its feet felt like the prick of a needle.