“You want to keep fresh,” Moran warned him. “If she’s there, she’ll show up before long.”
They waited, Jimmy quietly glancing at his watch now and then; and at last Moran stretched out a pointing hand.
“What’s that, to starboard?” he asked.
For a few moments, during which the tension set their nerves on edge, the others saw nothing; and then a faint ripple broke the glassy surface of the swell. It smoothed out and the long heave swung undisturbed across the spot for a time; but the ripple appeared again, with a dark streak in the midst of it.
“Weed!” cried Bethune. “It must grow on something!”
“I guess so,” said Moran. “It’s fast to a ship’s timber.”
Five minutes later the head of the timber was visible, and in keen but silent excitement they took out a line to it and hove the sloop close up. The diving pumps were already rigged, and when they had lowered and lashed a ladder, Moran coolly put on the heavy canvas dress. He said that, as the show was his, he would go down first. It was with grave misgivings that his companions screwed on the copper helmet and hung the lead weights about him, for neither of them knew anything about the work except what they had learned from a pamphlet issued by a maker of diving apparatus. This they had diligently studied and argued over on the voyage up, but there was the unpleasant possibility that it might not contain all the information needful, and a small oversight might have disastrous consequences.
When the copper helmet sank below the surface and a train of bubbles rushed up, Jimmy felt his heart beat and his hand grow damp with perspiration. He held the signal line and knew the code, as well as the number of strokes to the minute that should give air enough; but he had not much confidence in the pumps. Though he had had to pay a heavy deposit on them, and their hire was costly, they were far from new. The bubbles moved, however, drawing nearer the weed-crusted wood.
Suddenly the line jerked, and Bethune looked at Jimmy sharply.
“More air!” he cried. “Give her a few more revolutions—he’s all right so far.”