The captain of the Dawn was willing to take us out for a consideration. He was a long time getting away from the jetty, and I grew more impatient every minute, for there was the Gertrude far ahead, and gradually drawing out of sight, while we still delayed. By the time the Dawn had spread her dirty sails to the breeze, the other lugger had diminished to a speck.
The Marquis and I sat side by side on the hatch, watching Sariba and the Basilisk open out into emerald and purple bays, and the tall blue D’Entrecasteaux show up on the far horizon. We did not talk: we were too anxious.
We cast anchor in a wide plain of blue water, with the Gertrude not very far away. She was anchored also, and I saw by the ladder and the trailing air-tube that her diver was down. Looking closer, a second air-tube appeared.
“Why, she has two down,” I said.
“She got a new diver this morning,” remarked the captain of the Dawn. “George the Greek. He’s broke, and has to work. I wish I’d got him myself: he’s a rare fine diver.”
The Marquis and I looked at each other, and there was uneasiness in our faces. The Dawn rolled steadily on a long, windless swell like watered silk; the sappy, luscious green of the island forests rose up beyond the sea; in the near foreground, the Gertrude, with stern pointed toward us, showed two gray spider-threads dropping down into the water. At the ends of those two threads, far down among the coral and the sponges and the beds of weed and shell, crept all along at the bottom of the sea two men, one with the ransom of a king hung round his neck, the other....
What was the other doing?
I did not mean to be very long finding out.
“Run us up as close to the Gertrude as you can, without interfering,” I said.
The captain worked a little nearer. “That’s about as far as I can go,” he said. “And now I’m going to send my diver down. You and his lordship can see everything beautiful. It’s not too deep here—since that Mo got finished off with diver’s paralysis the other day, we’ve shifted to shallower water; this isn’t more than twelve fathom.”