“That’s it,” he announced to Henry with a sigh of relief. “They’ve found a wreck. Gee! perhaps they’ve found treasure.”
Henry laughed gayly. “Oh, that’s good!” he
exclaimed. “Treasure in the East River! You must think you’re down in the West Indies or somewhere.”
“Well, I don’t see what’s so awful funny about finding a wreck or treasure in the East River,” declared Frank petulantly. “Lots of boats have sunk here and why shouldn’t one of ’em have treasure on it? I don’t mean millions of dollars worth of gold or jewels of course—like pirates’ treasure—but there might be a box of money or something.”
“You’re way off,” replied Henry. “They wouldn’t leave a wreck here for a week. They’d get it up or blow it up right away. Why, a wreck here would block the channel. No, sir, you heard ’em wrong.”
“I did not!” stoutly maintained Frank. “I know Tom said something about a wreck. I don’t care what you say. How do you know there isn’t some old wreck out there somewhere? It may have been there for years; how would any one know?”
“Why, Mr. Rawlins and Tom aren’t the only divers who ever went down here,” insisted Henry.
“The city and the government and wrecking companies and contractors have divers going down all the time. I’ve watched ’em working heaps of times. Father’s a construction engineer and I know he always has divers at work around New York. Some of ’em would have found a wreck if it had been there.”
“Well, anyway we’ll know pretty soon,” said Frank. “They can’t stay down much longer. They must——”
With a startled cry his words ended and his scared, pale face told Henry that something dreadful had happened. Ringing in Frank’s ears, shrill, filled with deadly terror, the shriek of a boy frightened almost out of his senses, came Tom’s despairing cry—a wordless, awful scream.