He was standing on a bed of coral on which lay dark shapes in hundreds, like a cart load of bricks dumped on the ground.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed to himself. "I've come to the wrong shop. This must be the wooden hulk Swaine spoke about. She must have had lead pigs for ballast. Even that lot's worth a fortune at the present-day price for lead."
Hardly knowing why he did so, Villiers lashed one of the pigs of ballast to his shot-rope, then, paying out his distance-line as he went, he made for his real objective—the wreck of the Fusi Yama.
When that vessel's bilge loomed through the water, Villiers found that he was close to the starboard bow. Much of the steelwork had been stripped of its thick covering of weed and barnacles by the force of the explosion, but of actual damage done to the hull there was none.
By a rare slice of good luck, as far as Harborough and his companions were concerned, Strauss had miscalculated the distance and direction of the wreck of the Fusi Yama from shore, and had deposited the explosive charges against the side of the old wooden wreck in the belief that it was the other. The remainder of the gold was still intact. Von Giespert had shot his last bolt, and the missile had gone wide of the mark.
CHAPTER XXIX
A Frustrated Escape
Having made this satisfying discovery, Villiers returned to the surface and reported the good news.
There was, however, much work to be done before the rest of the gold could be removed. The wreck of the Fusi Yama had to be buoyed once more, for, amongst other damage, the former mark-buoys had been destroyed by the explosion. Another guide-rope had to be established between the wreck and the shore, while, owing to the loss of the electric submarine lamp and the generating plant, the remainder of the work under water had to be carried out by the relatively feeble light afforded by the divers' electric lamps.