“We’ll need to be mighty careful in using this stuff,” cautioned Benton. “Dynamite works a great deal more powerfully under water than it does on land. It sure would be unhealthy for Phil if we didn’t get him up and removed to a safe distance before the charge goes off. Playing safe is a good policy when you’re dealing with such ticklish stuff as dynamite.
“Sure,” said Phil, “that charge won’t be set off before we’re at a safe distance. Everything ready fellows? All right, let’s go.”
Heavily-laden they got down to the water and piled the apparatus onto the stout raft. Then they got into the little dory and rowed as fast as they could with the cumbrous load in tow, out to the spot where radio had told them the sunken ship lay hidden.
Then Phil donned the diving suit and, with several sticks of dynamite hugged carefully to his chest was slowly lowered over the side of the raft, down, down, down into the unexplored depths of the ocean.
As on that other time, he was filled with a wild excitement. His heart beat thumpingly within the narrow confines of the diving suit. He felt a sort of awe at exploring the mysteries that were generally hidden from human eyes. This was indeed a different world into which he was being slowly lowered, a world filled with vivid-colored creatures which were strange to him.
Down and ever down—while the color and shape of these dwellers under the sea became more brilliant and bewildering. Distorted, grotesque shapes brushed past him to disappear into the shadows beyond the radius of the lights which flung their rays through the water.
As he sank deeper and the weight of the water increased, Phil noticed as he had done before how the radiance from these lights diminished, the rays seemingly thrown back upon themselves by the density of the water.
When at last his feet sank into the soft sand at the bottom of the sea, he could see only a little distance ahead of him.
“However, that distance would be enough,” he told himself, thrilling with the thought of what he was about to do. He, Phil Strong alone at the bottom of the ocean with the treasure.
But perhaps, after all, there was no treasure. The thought chilled him. Suppose the gold they believed to be stored in the hatches of the sunken ship had only existed in the old pirate’s imagination. Suppose they had come all this distance on a wild goose chase.