“Safe enough now, I imagine,” said Benton, answering the unspoken question of them all. “What do you say we put out again?”
“Aye, aye,” cried Steve joyfully. “Can’t be too soon to suit me. What are you doing, Phil.”
“Trying to get into this suit again,” replied Phil, his hands fumbling with his undersea armor. “This rig is about as comfortable as a hair shirt.”
“Mighty handy when the sharks come snooping around, just the same,” laughed Jack Benton as he and Tom helped to adjust the clumsy suit.
“Oh I don’t know,” Phil’s voice came muffled to them from inside the hideous head gear. “I’d just about as soon play around with a shark as this thing.”
And how could he know that soon he would remember those words and under circumstances that would live with him in the form of nightmare for many years to come? Perhaps it was just as well that he didn’t know!
Once more they put off from shore, Phil remaining on the raft eagerly impatient to descend once more to the ocean bed, to probe at last into the mysteries of the treasure ship. What would the dynamite-torn hulk reveal to him? He had hard work to keep his teeth from chattering with excitement.
“Steady now, Phil, old man,” he heard Steve yell to him as he slipped over the side of the raft and felt the water gurgle up about him.
“Be sure you don’t come up without a fistful of gold,” added Tom, and by way of response Phil shook a claw at them.
Slowly the water crept up to his lips, to his eyes, and then he knew that he was fully submerged, moving downward, ever downward toward the open hatch.