“Every man for his own line, Keedy. I’m not presuming to tell you how to deal from the box, nor how to size the buried card in stud poker. Nor I don’t need any advice from you when it comes to handling a job of work in tidewater. I’ve waited till I got here to tell you my plans. When I can talk and you can see the layout at the same time, I’ll not be wasting so much breath; even those faro-game brains of yours can take in what I’m getting at. Now, hold right on! This is going to be a square deal, and you can sit close to the jack-pot. Those four lighters are going overboard, and we’ll moor them in a chain between here and the shore. We can splice the cables so as to allow a hundred fathoms between each one. That will make each lighter a sort of a bridle anchor for the others, and we ought to get the inshore lighter mighty nigh the wreck. You can stay on that lighter and have your meals brought if you hanker to.”
He snapped out that last remark while he was backing down the ladder from the bridge to the main deck. The sneer that went with it did not improve the state of Keedy’s feelings.
“I’ll show this aggregation whether I can boss a job or not,” he growled.
I decided right then that if Keedy tried to boss me from that inshore lighter the partnership of Holstrom, Keedy & Sidney would get a fracture in the second joint much wider than the one which was already widening there. I looked after him when he strolled away, and I reckon if he had turned around and given me one of those nasty looks of his just then I would have run after him and hoisted him a good one under the coat-tail—gladly taking the consequences. I had never hated Anson C. Doughty any worse. Keedy had grafted himself on to the project with stolen money—and now he was insulting the rest of us by placing us in the rogue class with himself and in need of watching.
I suppose I looked very blue and ugly and disgusted as I stood there at the rail, scowling first at Keedy and then at the streaming white of the surf which played beyond the ribs of the wreck.
The girl spoke to me. She leaned from the window of the wheel-house, and there was a note in her voice I had never heard before. All her brusqueness was gone. She was sort of confidential and wistful.
“You don’t think much of this scheme, do you, Mr. Sidney?”
I was in the mood to agree with her. “There must be an almighty good reason why those other fellows did not recover the treasure, Miss Holstrom, providing old Ike is right in what he says and that they didn’t get it. I can tell better after I have been down.”
“I have never seen a diver at work. It is very dangerous, isn’t it?”
“That depends on the job. I have been as deep as one hundred and seventy feet, Miss Holstrom, and I felt perfectly safe, though the pressure made my nose bleed. Another time I was down in only four fathoms in the wash of a lee shore, and they couldn’t keep my lines and my air-hose dear, and they pulled me up near dead. That’s a lee shore yonder, and I’m afraid I’m going to find some very good reasons why the other divers didn’t succeed. Sometimes I am tempted to believe that they did get the gold and that old Ike’s talk is simply a dream.”