XXXIII—THE HEART OF THE MILLIONS
I WAS about at daybreak next morning. The man who predicted the first eclipse of the sun and was waiting for it had nothing on me in the way of a case of nerves. I kept away from the captain’s state-room. I had plenty on my mind without loading up with any more trouble.
The first thing I saw when I came on deck was a little schooner which was lying-to a few cable-lengths from us. She looked familiar. A boat was slid over her rail. Through the telescope I saw two men in uniform take seats in the stem-sheets. They were those customs chaps who had visited us before and they rowed past us toward Keedy’s schooner. I turned the telescope and saw that somebody in Keedy’s crowd was wigwagging a flag furiously.
I saw something else through the glass. Keedy’s divers were going down and I could imagine with what kind of tongue-lashing he had been urging them to “follow their hand.”
For an instant I had a wild notion of calling for my boat crew and beating them to it. Then I looked out over that quieter sea, and felt sure that the freakish undertow had gone off to play elsewhere.
“Let ’em go down and learn a thing or two,” I said to Romeo Shank, “and then come up and tell Keedy that the Pacific Ocean is something, of a gambler itself when it comes to ‘following your hand.’”
I knew well enough that I’d better stick around pretty close aboard the old Zizania, for I was sure we would be receiving a call from the customs men. They would find our treasury bare, and they would find the captain of the expedition trussed up in his state-room. They would probably come with another “hot rock” which had been dropped in their hat by the prospering Keedy.
Yes, there was only one station for me that morning!
The visitors arrived in less than an hour. They tried to smile when they came over the rail, but it was a mighty sick smile.
I led them into my state-room, and did not pay any attention to their questions about the captain. They talked broken English, and little of it, and so there were no words wasted. In a few minutes I knew what was wanted. We must up killick and get out. We were there without authority; we were breaking laws; we were stealing other men’s property.
I tried to talk about Keedy and his gang. How about them? The officers shrugged their shoulders and scowled at me. Ah, that was the Government’s business, not mine, they told me. They were attending to that case. Had I not seen them going over there also? Yes, all should be used alike—but we must go or else they would report, and a gunboat would be sent to drive us away—yes, to confiscate our ship. So!
Captain Holstrom had been right in regard to them—I found that they were blood-suckers, looking for the juiciest proposition, and Keedy had got next by some plan—perhaps by being a better liar.
I stared at those knaves for a few moments, and did some tall thinking quickly. I was really getting used to quick thinking by that time.
When I jumped up and asked to be excused for a moment they smiled and settled back on the transom. Perhaps they thought that I proposed to raise Keedy out of the game.
I found Mate Number-two Jones on the main deck forward.
“They have called the turn on us—say that we must get off the coast,” I told him. “Keedy has bribed them over our heads. I tell you, Jones, I’m going to get that treasure! I’ve got to get it. This isn’t mere brag talk. You are posted on my plans, and you believe in them.”
“The scheme does look good to me,” admitted the mate.
“If those men leave here tied up to Keedy they’ll send a gunboat and shoo us off—and they’ve told Keedy, of course, how to dodge her. Jones, those men have got to stay aboard the Zizania until I make my try to-day. And, by the gods! I’ll bring up enough to show ’em that we are the people. You come with me!”
“What for?”
“We’ve got to lasso those chaps and hitch ’em to the stanchion in my state-room. They’ve got to stay here till I test out that hose.”
“Look here,” objected Mr. Jones, fumbling at his nose, “seems to me there’s altogether too much tripping and tying aboard here. It beats a round-up of steers. We’re going to get into a lot of trouble—we’re in it now. You wait till the captain gets loose, and see if we ain’t!”
“Tying two more won’t make it any worse than it is. I can’t make you do what you don’t want to do, Jones, but I believe you’re too much of a man to let me play this thing single-handed. We’re fighting Keedy now. If I fail in getting at that gold to-day, all we’ve got to do is to up mud-hook and steam north—we’ll have to do the same thing if we let those grafters go over the rail now.” Jones was a cautious man, but he was a loyal one. I kept on urging, and at last the battle-light flickered in his pale-blue eyes.
“Blast their thievish souls!” he said. “They’ve taken all the money I had in my pockets—and now they’re thumbing their noses at decent men. I’m with you!” We grabbed ropes, rushed up to my state-room, and fell on the men before they could scramble to their feet.
They were wizened little chaps and we tied them without any trouble.
Then I went below and leaned over the rail where their boat was tossing.
“The gentlemen are staying here for some business,” I told the two rowers. “They tell you to go back to the schooner and wait till they signal for you with our ensign.” They didn’t look entirely satisfied, but they rowed away after I had ordered them to fend off.
I stationed two men at my state-room door and I hunted up weapons and armed some of the crew. I ordered them to keep off everybody until I returned from the lighter.
I spoke to Captain Holstrom through his state-room window. I told him that I would bring him a present before sundown. He did not reply—and when Captain Holstrom was mad enough to keep his tongue between his teeth I felt that only murder could express his feelings.
The door was on the hook, and a little brown hand was thrust out to meet mine.
“Good luck, brave boy!” she whispered. “I know you’ll do it.”
“I can’t fail after that word from you,” I told her.
Then I ran down the ladder and jumped into the boat where my men were waiting for me.
I found a heavy surge running under our lighter, but the swirl of sand was no longer darkening the water. I had reckoned right in regard to that undertow. Keedy’s men were still down and I could imagine them wasting their strength on the sand which had been packed back overnight.
Our water-hose had already been coupled in makeshift fashion, and the last work that morning was to wrap the joints as best we could. Then I set the men at the brakes and told them to “give her tar,” as the old-fashioned hand-tub foreman would say. The hose was strung about the deck of the lighter.
After they pumped for five minutes I found that the hose was not so tight as I had hoped. Wheezing little streams punctured it here and there, and the joints leaked. From the end of our home-made nozzle of sheet iron the stream barely trickled. I was disgusted—but I was not wholly discouraged. When I state this you may see how desperate I had become. I was resolved to fight that thing through to the last ditch. I was determined to take that hose down and try it out. I had the misty and hopeful notion that the pressure of the sea on it might make some difference, that the wet hose might retain the water better, that after the plunger had swelled a bit we might get more force.
All those straws and others did I grab at by way of bracing my courage.
The captain of the expedition trussed up in his cabin like a steer calf—only waiting his opportunity to deal with me!
Two customs men also trussed up—also waiting to deal with me!
It can be readily understood that there were some decidedly red-hot goads at my back that day to drive me down under the sea.
I had not been able to convince Captain Holstrom that all my work and struggles and investigation and failures up to then were a good investment. But as a submarine diver I knew that they had been. I had been spending my nights on a sleepless pillow, docketing those experiences and drawing lessons from them—plotting, pondering, and planning.
When I went down I was ready for my job in so far as a man, by pounding his brain, can be ready for all emergencies.
I had piled the lead on to myself. Around my body from hips to armpits I had a canvas belt with five pockets, each pocket holding twenty-five pounds of shot, part of the junk of the old Zizania. Around each leg above the ankle I fastened another bag of shot holding fifteen pounds.
My helmet had weights weighing thirty pounds. In addition I wore my regular breast and back weights. That is to say, when I was rolled over the side of that lighter I, a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound man, was weighted with about two hundred and fifty pounds of metal.
I went with bare feet and bare hands. I knew that if I ever did succeed in boring that sand, holding that hose in my hands, my feet would have to serve as hands for the purpose of feeling out objects.
Keedy’s men had come up before I gave the word to lower me. Number-two Jones had peered through the cracks of the boarding, and had reported that they had come over the rail without bringing treasure, and that Keedy was stamping up and down the deck, wagging his fists over his head. I could imagine from my own experience what kind of language the cowardly slave-driver was spewing out.
I found myself on the bottom under the lighter, and started to make my way toward the wreck. I was loaded like a pack-donkey, outside of the tremendous extra weight of lead I carried. But I was taking everything which my judgment counseled as needful for success.
I was obliged to drag with me my life-line, my air-hose, and the heavy canvas hose for the water. In addition to those, I towed a double line which was hitched to a pair of ice-tongs, and the points of those tongs were filed to a sharp point. I carried the tongs at my belt. If I found treasure I had this method of sending it to the lighter and of dragging back the tongs to myself. I had had one experience in serving as a carrier and I did not want to repeat the job.
I tell you, I felt like a mighty poor and puny little ant when I started away on the bottom of the sea, climbing those sand ridges. The sea clutched and tore at those wriggling lines, at my air-hose, and was especially ferocious in tackling that heavy water-hose. It seemed as if the Pacific resented that scheme of fighting it.
It was a mighty struggle I had. I was tossed and tumbled. I was banged and buffeted.
But in the end I arrived at the wreck. Under ordinary circumstances that stunt alone would have finished a diver’s work for a day—but I had left matters above the surface in such condition that I could not face them just then.
I dropped my water-hose, and went back fifty feet along the line. Past experience with the weight of the surges had suggested another trick with which to fight the giant Pacific. I had brought a small anchor, and, with this set into the sand as best I cou’d do it, I anchored my air-hose and water-hose about fifty feet from the wreck. I proposed to let the ocean wreak the most of its spite on the two hundred and fifty feet between that anchor and the lighter. I figured that I might be able to handle the other fifty feet, no matter how ugly the surges were.
I crawled back to the wreck and found my bearings. There were the “cat scratchings” on the sand where the other divers had spent their energy that morning. I grinned—I couldn’t help it. They had just had their own experience with the tricks of a Pacific undertow.
Well, the great and awful moment had come for me!
In the years that have passed since then the vivid memory of that moment has never left me. I wake up in the night even now, and the thrill of it shakes me.
If my scheme did not work, what would become of me when I went back to the surface of the sea?
If my scheme did work, what was I facing down there? I was proposing to bore into that sand—to sink into it. No such plan had ever been tried by a human being up to that time. Was I not digging my own grave?
* Although sticking a statement of fact into writing which
is professedly fiction may be considered supererogation by
the cynical critic, some honest reader may be grateful for a
certain bit of information. Here it is: My old and valued
friend, the diver who recovered the Golden Gate treasure,
still lives at a ripe age and he has detailed to me how he
devised the hydraulic apparatus out of makeshift material,
how he bored into the sand, and how he, with his own hands,
recovered the bullion. Also, the incident of his narrow
escape when the water-hose shifted was a part of his bitter
experience on the bed of the Pacific. I hasten to state
that, so far as the rest of the yam goes, my good friend,
Diver Cook, is not culpable.—H. D.
I sat down on the sand, Turk fashion, like a tailor on his table, pointed the nozzle down, holding it against the sand, and gave the agreed-upon signal for water. It took a long time in coming, and it was an agony of waiting. Then at last I felt the hose swell under my arm. I pressed the nozzle harder against the sand. I cannot describe my delight. I felt that my dreams were coming true, for when I jammed the nozzle down I found that the sand was moving. That stream had merely trickled above the surface, but now a pressure was created when I held the nozzle hard against the bottom of the sea. Yes, the sand moved under me. It began to boil up around me. It swept and swirled in yellow clouds. I realized that I was boring a hole about as big as a barrel, and into that hole I was gradually sinking. I was on my way! I did not know where I was going—but, bless the good Lord, I was on my way! The sand in that boiling water made all dark. Down and down I went slowly, my bare feet searching eagerly.
But though I descended more rapidly as the swirling motion increased, I felt no boxes. Had I, then, happened upon a straggler among the boxes of gold on my earlier trip? Had my rivals also found two more stragglers from the main treasure—loosened boxes which had been forced out of the chamber by the impact of the wreck on the bar or had worked near the surface of the sand by the action of a sucking undertow? If that were true, it meant that Keedy’s men were dumped if they stuck to shovels. Provided I could reach the treasure, and could keep my own system a secret, I was headed toward a glorious victory, and could depend upon the ocean to keep off others—but was I headed toward victory? My feet touched nothing that had square corners. And yet, to the best of my judgment, I had already gone down at least ten feet in that hole in the sand.
Down and down—five feet more, so I reckoned. Then my heart gave a jump. My feet had touched something. It was smooth and hard and flat, and spread under me horizontally. But I soon discovered that it had too large a surface to be a box of ingots. I could not bend over to feel it with my hands, for the rush of the whirlpool of sand and water about me, sweeping upward, would not allow me to force my helmet and the upper part of my body down. I must depend on my bare feet to tell me what I had struck.
After a time I knew. It was boiler plate. I could feel the round heads of bolts. Whether this plate formed a part of the treasure-chamber or not I did not know. But it was an obstacle which must be passed. I turned my nozzle in front of me to clear the way. I wanted to reach the end of that iron plate.
In two ticks of an eight-day clock I was in a mess that has been my nightmare ever since. I began to get a thorough education in what sand will do under water when it is submitted to the force of a stream from a hose. The instant I turned that nozzle in front of me the sand rushed in from behind. I was grabbed as tightly as though the eight feelers of a devil-fish had encircled me.
It must be remembered that this whole proposition was an experiment so far as I was concerned. I did not know then how quickly a stream of water can affect great quantities of sand under the sea, let that sand get in motion. Tons can be moved almost while one takes a breath.
This shift was so sudden that I was not prepared for it. My legs were pinioned, and my arms seemed to be clutched at the elbows. The sand was packing in around me from behind. I was so scared that my hands loosened on the nozzle. A roller snatched the hose from my grasp.
The nozzle was upended and began to sizzle away over my head. It kept the sand moving there, and the murky water still swirled about my helmet, and the pack was not allowed to settle on my head. But as to the rest of my body, it was as if I had been immersed in molten metal and it had cooled around me. In a few seconds I was immovable. I was buried completely in sand, except for my wrists and hands. In clutching for the hose, as it had been yanked away, I had raised my hands above my head, and they were now waving in the swirl of the whirlpool. I groped and stretched and strove, and at last I felt the tips of my fingers on the nozzle. I managed, after a while, to tilt it down a bit so that the stream played along my arms to the elbows. The temporary release of my forearms did not help me. I couldn’t get hold of that hose so as to turn the nozzle full upon myself. The sand kept packing more closely about my legs and body.
After a time my aching hands and arms were obliged to give up the fight. I had become so weakened by my struggles and strainings that I was faint—I was as feeble as a baby.
I have read about men in awful peril who have resigned themselves to die. Mentally I was not resigned when I first gave up struggling—not for some time. I came out of that first faintness, wide awake to my danger, filled with frightful fear, mad with the longing to live. But my case seemed hopeless. The stream was keeping the sand in motion still about my helmet and over my head, but my hands informed me that the pack was gradually settling, that the sand was piling up around my neck slowly but surely. In the boil of that water the particles were drifting over me.
I might live minutes, I reflected—I might linger there for an hour or more—feeling that sand pack around my head until it choked the valve of the helmet or pinched off the current in the air-hose.
Never was I so hungry for life as when I stood there pinioned hand and foot in the Pacific’s bed, feeling the sand piling up against the glass of my helmet, sifting around me to chink the little cranny where the air bubbled from the valve. And all because a stream of water would not swerve ten inches and pour itself in my direction.
Then something surprising happened to my soul in its agony. I’m telling the truth.
When I had made up my mind that effort was useless, that I had done all that I could do, and that death was certain, a strange feeling came to me and took away my fear of death. I fell into a quiet and really exalted frame of mind. I floated in dreams. Cares of earth and worries of the world, lust for gold, and even the love of woman seemed very small matters. What did it all matter? I was dying. Peace came to me.
Is it not probable that kind nature or a kinder God thus smooths the way into eternity when the great moment comes? Men who have been nigh the last gasp have swapped stories with me and we all agree.
I had no notion of the length of time I had been down. In my mistiness of mind I did not bother about time. In the case of a submarine diver, the hours are marked off by his sensations, and he knows when he has stayed down long enough. If my men had told me that I had been on the bed of the ocean for a day and a night I should not have disputed them. I must have been near death, for it is said that when one is dying all of life that has been lived comes before the mind and passes in review, as though the mortal soul were preparing its brief for the use of the recording angel. I remember that this last was a strange idea which came to me there in the sand-pack which was slowly heaping itself over my head.
Then something happened. It was something which should have amazed me, but I reckon that my brain was too numbed to feel amazement.
The nozzle above my head gave a sudden yank and rapped my knuckles. It righted itself. That is to say, it aimed downward and began to pour water directly at and over me. I felt the stream rather than saw it. I could not see in that smother of sand. But my arms came out of the mold in which they had been pinned. I grabbed and groped for that hose with all the desperation that was in me. I held to it with all my strength. It was lucky that I seized it as I did, for I felt the rollers tugging at it once more as though some devil of the sea had given me one more chance in order to tantalize me, and was now resolved to finish me finally.
I did not know what had happened above to cause the sudden deflection of the stream. It was enough for me to know that some freak of the waters had turned the hose. I found out later what had occurred, and I may as well explain at this point, lest you think I have told merely of a case of story-book Providence.
I have related how I anchored my lines fifty feet from the wreck. That anchor, so I found later, had been pulled out of the sand, and the surges had bellied the water-hose in toward shore, over my head, and the aim of the nozzle had been changed in the snap of a finger. It surely had been touch and go with me, for once the surge had taken up the slack the next wave must have jerked the hose out of my hole. I had grabbed just in time; I had melted my sand mold and was free.
Common sense advised me to quit the job forever. The uncertainties of trying to move sand with a stream of water had been impressed upon me in horrible fashion. But common sense is not allowed to rule a man when he is after gold in this world. I had found out what that stream would accomplish if it was used properly. I had learned one lesson which I could not forget, and I was sure I would not make the mistake of letting the sand catch me from behind again. I knew, on the other hand, what would happen to me when I appeared above the surface without my ransom fee of yellow gold. I preferred to stay and fight sand instead of men. There, in the boil of the roiled water, I resolved to stay down.
I tried another experiment with the hose, and was-, vastly encouraged. I had been worrying and wondering how I would get back out of the hole, for I feared that the-life-line, playing over the edge of the sand, would not allow the men on the lighter enough direct pull; to help me much. Now I needed to rise from the hole for a littleway in order to attack the sand at another angle so as to pass that plate of boiler iron.
I slackened the force of the stream from the nozzle with my palm, and the sand began to pack in below me. The uprush of the swirling water helped me and I was able to work myself slowly upward. Then I began to. bore again.
I realized now that something must have happened to, my anchor, because the rollers were giving me battle for-the possession of that water-hose in fierce style. But I hung on, and found myself sinking into the sand. I went, down more rapidly, for I had already softened the surrounding pack. After the awful experience I had just had, I was more of a lunatic than sane while I made that, second attempt. My brain swirled as dizzily as the water which swept up from the hole. As nearly as I could estimate, I went down at least five yards before I struck anything that was solid. And when my feet, already sore from the grinding of that sand, felt what was below them, the whole of my being gave three cheers—not cheers with, the mouth, but those silent cheers with which a man’s soul yells its joy. I had touched a box. There were its comers—there was its unmistakable shape.
After wild struggles and contortions, I was able to set the points of the ice-tongs into its sides. I gave the signal on the drag-rope, and I could feel the surge of the men on the line. But the angle of the rope over the edge of the hole would not allow them to lift very hard. The box was too far away from the lighter for their efforts to amount to much. But as they swayed away I kept the hose playing upon the box and under it. It did seem damnably slow work. But it came up, inch by inch, slowly and surely, until I was out of the hole, and standing about knee-deep in the sand. I had a tug of war of it then!
The box was not out of the hole. The rollers tugged at my lines and wrenched at me. Once or twice I was fairly floored. I would fall with my legs pinioned fast, and would lie exhausted until I could get strength to stand up and wash myself free with the hose. In order to get back out of that hole at all, I was obliged to slacken the stream and let the sand pack in under myself and the box—and when the stream slackened I was obliged to drag my legs out of the packing sand.
But I was free at last, bless the good Lord! And I had a box of gold. It was not a mere stray box, salvaged with the help of a freakish undertow. It was a box which I had torn from the heart of the hoard below. Yes, I was sure that I had been to the heart of the treasure. And where I had been the Pacific was already stuffing back the sand, locking the door once more on the gold it had taken for its own. Let Keedy’s men come down! Let them waste their strength. I had the key to that situation—and I alone.
I tugged a signal to shut off the water. And as promptly I gave them pull-up signals on my life-line and on the drag-cord of the tongs. I wanted to get above the sea and breathe the fresh air of the good God, and look into the eye of the blessed sun, and give praises. And, oh, the awful weariness in every bone and muscle of me! I lay down and let ’em pull me back. I had no strength with which to manage that weight of metal which loaded me down.
When they got me upon the deck of the lighter, and had twisted off my helmet, I lay for a long time without words. I motioned to Number-two Jones to remove the cover from the box I had brought. The sight of those ingots gave me the goad once more—ah, it takes gold to make the human soul gallop!=
`````"Gold, gold, yellow gold,
`````Hard to get and harder to hold.”
This quotation burst from Mr. Shank. His round face was radiant, and he came and leaned over me and patted me on the head. He did not seem to have any better way of showing his joy. It was a wildly excited crew which crowded around me; they were still more excited when I sat up on deck at last and told them I was going down again. The fever was in me. I wanted to go back to the Zizania with gold enough, to convince Captain Holstrom and those knaves of customs men that there was no fluke about our proposition. I wanted to raise that infernal Keedy out of this game for good and all.
It was mighty tempestuous water in the vicinity of the wreck, and putting the lighter nearer was not to be thought of. But I discussed with Mate Jones the possibility of dropping our yawl back toward the wreck at the end of a cable, so that the men could lift the treasure-boxes more directly. We had brought extra men that morning for the pump, and a crew for the surf-boat volunteered. The gold lust was seizing the whole of us.
I went down again, feeling sure that the wicked labor of getting the box up through the sand would be lightened for me.
I took another anchor, and on my way to the wreck I refastened my hose lines to the bottom, rigging the second anchor as a bridle, so that the strain would be eased on the one which I had set into the sand.
Down I bored again, my tongs at my belt, my hose in my clutch. And I stayed down until I had sent three more boxes up to the surf-boat. While I was toiling down there I knew that I was setting a dangerous record for myself—I could not hope to equal it on the days which were to follow. It was plain that I had penetrated to the heart of the treasure, but I had penetrated to other things as well. I found all the sculch and broken crockery of the wrecked pantry and the bar of the Golden Gate. Yes, I sent three more boxes to the lighter; but when I crawled over the rail later my hands and feet were bleeding, and the sand had ground into the wounds. Already my skin showed where the grinding of the boiling sand was wearing the epidermis. Even the rubber of my suit was showing wear.
I was a sorry-looking object when I staggered into Capt. Rask Holstrom’s state-room. He fairly slavered in his rage and tried to leap at me. I reckon I did look like a beaten man. But the next instant my men came tramping in with the boxes of gold. There were four of these glorious boxes, and each one was open and showed the ingots.
“Your friend Keedy got his two boxes by the fluke of an undertow,” I told him. “I have got mine by science and a system which will give us the rest of it. Now, Captain Holstrom, I’ll accept your apologies.” And I cut him loose.
I did not mention any apologies due from me to him. I wanted to rub it into the old squarehead so thoroughly that he would never get the smart of it out of his skin. I wanted to let him know that I had set a ring into his nose, and that if he ever tried to run amuck again I was the man who could catch him and trip him.
He gave me one look, gasped one gasp, and I knew that Capt. Rask Holstrom had abdicated his throne. I was boss. But I had no time to listen to his slobbering thanks just then. I took one of those bars of gold in my bloody hand and started for my state-room. I shook the ingot under the noses of those customs men. And they, too, knew that I was boss when I got through with them. I had not come back that day from hell and the bottom of the sea to mince words with any loafers—Captain Holstrom included.
“Here’s gold worth four thousand dollars in good Yankee money, you low-down renegades. You take it and get off this steamer. If you are good, and come around here like gentlemen about a month from now, perhaps I’ll drop another rock into your hat. I don’t promise—it all depends on how you act. But if you come back too quick—if you try to squeeze us for more rake-off—I’ll go down to headquarters and buy your blessed Government, and have you put into prison or shot—for before this thing is ended here I’ll have more than three million dollars behind me. Now you can either make a dollar quietly or you can make trouble. Suit yourselves.”
I cut their ropes and pushed them out of the room and ordered our ensign set to signal their boat.
I didn’t have to offer them any apologies, either, and I was not in an apologizing mood that day. They did the apologizing while they were waiting for their boat, and I scowled while they were begging me to forgive the mistake they had made.
Yes, I felt pretty much like the boss of the outfit. But when Kama Holstrom came with hot water and a basin and bandages and ordered me into my state-room, I went as meekly as a slave who trembles when the finger of his master is pointed.