Yes, I felt pretty much like the boss of the outfit. But when Kama Holstrom came with hot water and a basin and bandages and ordered me into my state-room, I went as meekly as a slave who trembles when the finger of his master is pointed.
XXXIV—AMONG THIEVES
I DID not go down next day, and I watched the descent of Keedy’s divers with indifference that was pretty nigh serene. Captain Holstrom stamped around restlessly, for he couldn’t seem to get it into his mind that the Pacific Ocean was on guard. But he did not venture to make any suggestions to me, and I decided that I had trained him in pretty fair shape.
I had good reason for delaying my next descent. It would not do to take chances with my diving-dress, which was showing signs of being frayed by the swirling sand, and I put in a busy day with the two Joneses, stitching an extra canvas suit to wear over the rubber dress. I improved on the ice-tongs by having a set of steel spring hooks made so that by means of long handles I could push them over a box without stooping and fumbling. Also I had a long rod of steel turned out for me, and with this I could probe the sand for boxes.
I had no way of knowing whether Keedy or his divers suspected that I had secured any treasure. I knew that after a night of action of the sea there would be few traces left where I had disturbed the sand. But I also knew that Keedy would certainly be wondering why we had built the wall around the lighter, and therefore we doubled the guards who had spent the night there since we had installed the pump, and gave the men orders to shoot any man who tried to climb on board.
We started work on a bigger and more elaborate pump, having tested out the principle of the thing by means of the first one. I needed more stream. While Shank was building this I went to work again, using the old equipment.
I waited each day until the other divers had been down and had climbed back into the sunlight, empty-handed. Then I slid overboard from our lighter as secretly as possible, and did my day’s work. I averaged three boxes a. trip by working myself to the limit of my endurance. It was reported to me that Keedy climbed into the rigging of the schooner whenever the surf-boat was eased back toward the wreck, and that he remained there on watch. How much he saw we did not know, but the men in the boat crowded together whenever a box was raised. From what I learned afterward, I found that Keedy thought we were operating some kind of a dredge, and that his divers reported to him that we were not making any impression on the sand. So he sat calmly in the rigging, spying on what he could see, and reckoning that we were wasting our time the same as his crew.
Before the end of a week the new pump was finished and I had almost five hundred gallons a minute at my command.