"Bad news, Kep. I don't half like it. Did you suspect anyone?"
"Only that first mate. He drank on the sly, and he was the only one who ever came in to yarn with me."
"Well, Kep, it may be all right. But that evil-looking man, if ever his mind was a moment clear, would naturally wonder where you got that bar. It was a shelly-looking piece, and he would judge it came from the sea-bottom, and---- Well, there are a good many 'ands,' for it is always the improbable that happens on the ocean-wave, Kep."
"Nothing is going to trouble me," said Kep, "one way or the other. But now come, let us be going. I've got Dr. McTavish's snake to shoot yet."
CHAPTER XXI
TRAGEDY ON AN ISLAND--A CANNIBAL WITCH
The Breezy would have reached the shores of that marvel island, New Guinea, far sooner, had she not to go south, to lonely Kerguelin, on her voyage, to take some soundings there, and also chart some rocky bottom on the coast of New Zealand, as well.
Kep was permitted to go down to the sea bottom sometimes by day. He wanted to get thoroughly up to the workings of the bell. The invention was altogether so perfect, and at the same time so simple, that he soon mastered it.
It sunk sometimes as low as 350 feet. Strong though the plate-glass windows were, had it sunk much lower the pressure of the water would have smashed them, then you may judge yourself, reader, what a horrible death those inside would have met.
It was at night, when off the New Guinea rocks, that Kep loved best to go down. What a terrible sight it was, the illimitable marine aquarium he saw around him. There was a silent solemnity about it that is indescribable. And not in Dante's Inferno itself could more horrible monsters exist than those which occasionally flitted to and fro in the glare of that submarine flash-light. Here also was beauty mingled with the fearful, for the foliage and flowers of the deep-sea gardens waved and moved in a thousand tints and colour, on the white sands. Sea ferns grow here, ocean cactuses, trees and flowers and shrubs.