Finally he consented to being pulled back on deck and Hal took his place. Hal couldn’t see a thing, he declared, and scoffed at Bee when he was pulled back. But Jack verified Bee’s story. He got them to lower him until he could put his face under the water. At intervals he lifted his head for a breath and then put it under again. When he finally told them to pull him back he was drenched to his shoulders.
“Bee was right, though,” he said. “You can see three or four ribs and something square that might be a deck-house; only I don’t see why a deck-house wouldn’t have floated away. The ribs are covered with barnacles and mussels and seaweed. It looks as though the boat had gone clean over the ledge and broken her back. Probably she was trying to round the island and thought she had lots of room. I wonder who she was.”
“Has she been there a long time?” asked Bee awedly.
“Years and years. My father used to tell about seeing her when I was just a tiny tot. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d been there fifty years or even more!”
“Why couldn’t I see anything?” grumbled Hal. “I’m coming back here some day when it’s calmer.”
“You won’t ever find it much calmer,” said Jack. “And, anyway, there’s a sort of current between the rocks here that keeps the surface blurred. Better have another look now, Hal.”
So Hal tried again, with Jack telling him where to look and what to look for, and had better luck. “She must have been a big old ship,” he said as he wiped the water from his face. “Why, those rib things seem to go down for twenty or thirty feet!”
“Wish I were a diver,” said Bee. “I’d go down and see what’s there. Maybe I’d find a treasure chest or a skeleton or something.”
“What I like about you, Bee,” Jack laughed, “is that you aren’t at all hard to please. Most anything suits you. If you can’t find a lot of gold and jewels you’ll take a skeleton and be satisfied. Say we go for a little trip up the shore, fellows?”