Though we might have saved our energy, for the wild had its surprise in waiting. The village was silent, deserted, tenantless.
We landed at the square, to call it so, a rude clearing on which the few houses faced, those sprawling, spacious communal dwellings—palaces among huts—that sometimes amaze the explorer along the West Coast. None opposed us. Nothing moved, not so much as a curl of smoke. An insect hummed in the sun like a bullet, and I take no shame to say I ducked. But that was all. And when the groveling Kakwe led us to a wide platform that ran breast high across the front of the largest house we stood with rifles propped and quickened pulses, staring stupidly at the thing we had come this far to find....
Only a box, lying on the middle of the platform, under the shadow of the lofty thatch—a small, brass-bound chest such as sailormen love and ships carry everywhere! "Loot!" snorted Jeckol. "Well—?"
But Cap'n Bartlet had laid hold of another trove, a coil of ringed rubber tubing, neatly disposed about the chest. "What's there?"
"A diver's air pipe," stated the cap'n.
"What about it?"
"It's been cut—top and bottom."
We crowded for a look, and I saw his tanned fist tremble ever so slightly.
"A diver's pipe," he repeated. "A diver, d'you see? They had a diver, and—according to your notions, Peters—" He drew a slow breath. "What—what if that there diver did happen to be overboard at the minute the rush came?"