"Two thousand five hundred pesetas," whispered Jaures to himself. "A good price for a little swim."
Without troubling to remove any of his clothes, although he kicked off his canvas shoes, Enrico cautiously descended a flight of steps until his feet touched the water. Listening to assure himself that no one was about, he glided in as noiselessly as an eel, and swam with slow, steady strokes under the counter of the tramp and close to her wall sides until he gained her bows.
Taking his bearings of the airship's mooring-buoy, he resumed his easy progress cautiously lest feathers of phosphorescent spray should betray his presence.
A quarter of an hour's swim brought him up to the mooring-buoy. With considerable difficulty, for the large barrel-shaped buoy was coated with barnacles and slippery with seaweed, Enrico contrived to draw himself clear of the water.
Again he waited, listening to the sounds emanating from the airship a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet overhead. The wire hawser, acting as a conductor, enabled him to hear with great distinctness, and possessing a good knowledge of English he was able to pick up scraps of conversation between the crew. That helped him but little, for they were talking of matters as remote from the topic of the great race as the Poles.
Enrico Jaures next devoted his attention to the shackle that secured the thimble spliced in the end of the cable to the big ring bolt of the buoy.
He grunted with satisfaction when he discovered that the shackle was threaded and not secured by a forelock, but at the same time he found by the sense of touch that whoever had been responsible for the job had done his work well by securing the pin by means of a piece of flexible wire.
This latter Jaures managed to cast loose, then, with the aid of his marline-spike, he began to unfasten the shackle-pin, pausing occasionally as the strain on the wire rope increased.
At last the deed was accomplished. The shackle-pin clattered upon the rounded surface of the buoy and rebounded into the water; but almost simultaneously Enrico Jaures found himself being whisked aloft. A snap-hook at the end of a wire had caught in his belt, and there he was, suspended ignominiously like a horse being slung on board a ship, already a hundred feet or more above the surface of the sea.
His first impulse was to cut loose his belt and drop, but a downward glance at the dark unfathomable void made him abruptly change his mind.