The answer, issuing simultaneously from a dozen lusty throats, was unanimous and emphatic:
"We've found the Fusi Yama!"
CHAPTER XXII
Von Giespert hears News
"Gott in Himmel!" exclaimed Kaspar von Giespert. "Don't say that you've had no luck."
"Ach, Herr Kapitan," replied Strauss, in the tone of a man repeating a venerable formula, "no luck at all."
For fifteen evenings almost the same exchange of words had taken place. For fifteen days, without respite, even when the sun was directly overhead, the crew of the Zug had laboured, at first with a remarkable display of energy, in their efforts to locate the wreck of the Fusi Yama in the lagoon of Ni Telang. Almost every square yard of the enclosed sheet of water had been swept by means of drags, grapnels, and bighted ropes. Divers had gone down whenever any obstruction had given rise to the hope that the object of the quest had been found, only to ascend with the disconcerting report that the grapnel had fouled a lump of coral rock.
Von Giespert took very little active part in the operations. He was content to leave the "donkey work" to Strauss, and spent most of the day living in a hammock-chair under double awnings.
He had counted upon finding the wreck with the minimum of trouble. As the days passed and Harborough's time-limit grew nearer, von Giespert began to feel anxious, and anxiety soon began to give place to feelings of desperation.