Rick thought about it for a moment. Tony had been right! They probably would have to remove every board in sight, carrying the ship away piece by piece. But then what? There was the distinct possibility that the statue was somewhere under sand, and they had no way of removing the sand to see.
It was apparent that most of the ship was under the sand—if the remainder of the ship was still intact. But Rick couldn't escape the feeling that Captain Campion would have kept the statue close to him. And that meant in the aft part of the ship, the part that was exposed.
Scotty hooted twice, pointing at his watch. It was time to surface. The next dive would be their last for the day.
On the surface, Rick sounded discouraged as he said, "The cabin we uncovered might not even have a deck. There may be nothing but a mile of sand under it. And there isn't much of the aft part of the ship left to explore, either. I guess tomorrow we can plan to take the captain's cabin apart board by board."
"We'll need Tony and Zircon for hard labor like that," Scotty answered. "Notice how quickly you get tired down there? Also, we use air a lot faster when we work."
"Let's just sort of make a survey this time," Rick suggested. "We can probe for any cracks we might have missed, and I'll take some over-all shots of the wreck. Then we'll call it a day."
They followed Rick's plan. He took pictures of Scotty, with wrecking bar, prying at likely places in the exposed part of the ship. But Scotty uncovered nothing of interest. In one place his prying disturbed another moray, who demonstrated his anger at the intruders by trying to fasten his needle teeth in the wrecking bar.
A metallic clang caused them to lose interest in the eel suddenly. They looked at each other, then turned and swam toward the apparent direction of the sound. At that moment a distant wail struck their ears.
The brass ball!
Rick wondered. He had heard no boat noise. The brass ball must be operating automatically. He hooted for Scotty's attention, then pointed toward the cave.