Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters

“I’ll land the bags in any case and await him, while you return to the port with Dwarro,” replied Edgar.

If the pilot was interested in their proceedings, he must have been a consummate actor, for he took no notice whatever of the sudden change of the boat’s course, but continued to smoke languidly, and to gaze abstractedly into the water as if trying to read his fortune there, while Edgar and Rooney landed the bags, and carried them through the little gate into the Scotchman’s garden. In a few minutes Edgar returned to the boat, stepped in, and pushed off, while the two Chinamen, in obedience to orders, rowed out into the river.

“It’s all right,” whispered Edgar, sitting down beside Joe, “Wilson is at home, and has undertaken to have the bags carried to a place of safety long before any attempt to capture them could be organised, even if Dwarro knew our secret and were disposed to attempt such a thing. Besides, we will keep him under our eyes to-night as long as possible.”

That night, highly elated at the success of their labours, our four friends sat round their evening meal in the pagoda and related their various diving adventures and experiences to the admiring and sympathetic Molly Machowl. They had previously entertained the pilot with unlimited hospitality and tobacco, and that suspected individual, so far from showing any restless anxiety to shorten his stay, had coolly enjoyed himself until they were at last glad when he rose to go away.

On the following morning, too, he was ready with his boat before day-break, and the party returned to the scene of operations at the wreck in high spirits.

It is certain that their enthusiasm would have been considerably damped had they known that exactly three hours after their gold was landed, a party of six stout nautical-looking Malays entered the residence of Wilson, the Scotchman, knocked down Wilson’s servants, gagged Wilson’s mouth, drank up the claret with which Wilson had been regaling himself, and carried off the bags of gold before his very eyes! Fortunately for their peace of mind and the success of their labours, our adventurers did not know all this, but, descending to the wreck with heavy soles and light hearts, they proceeded to recover and send up additional bags of gold.

That day they were not quite so successful. Unforeseen difficulties lay in their way. Some of the gold had been washed out of the treasure-room in their absence, and was not easily recovered from the sand and sea-weed. In order the better to find this, the electric-lamp was brought into requisition and found to be most effective, its light being very powerful—equal to that of fifteen thousand candles,—and so arranged as to direct the light in four directions, one of these being towards the bottom by means of a reflecting prism. It burned without air, and when at the bottom, could be lighted or extinguished from the boat by means of electricity.

Still, notwithstanding its aid, they had not collected treasure beyond the value of about eight thousand pounds when the time for rest and taking their mid-day meal arrived. This amount was, however, quite sufficient to improve their appetites, and render them sanguine as to the work of the afternoon.

“You’d better signal Mr Berrington to come up,” said Joe, who with all the others of the party were assembled in the stern of the boat, anxiously waiting to begin their dinner.

“Sure I’ve done it twice a’ready,” replied Rooney, who was attending to our hero’s life-line while Ram-stam and Chok-foo toiled at the air-pumps.

“What does he reply?” asked Joe.

“He replies, ‘all right,’ but nothin’ more. If he knew the imptiness of my—och! There he goes at last, four tugs. Come along, my hearty,” said Rooney, coiling away the slack as Edgar rose slowly to the surface.

Presently his helmet appeared like a huge round goblet ascending from the mighty deep. Then the surface was broken with a gurgle, and the goggle-eyes appeared. Rooney unscrewed the front-glass, and the Chinamen were free to cease their weary pumping. When Edgar was assisted into the boat, it was observed that he had a small peculiarly-shaped box under his arm. He made no reference to this until relieved of his helmet, when he took it up and examined it with much curiosity.

“What have you got there, sir?” asked Joe Baldwin, coming forward.

“That is just what I don’t know,” answered Edgar. “It seems to me like an iron or steel box much encrusted with rust, and I shouldn’t wonder if it contained something of value. One thing is certain, that we have not got the key, and must therefore break it open.”

While he was speaking, David Maxwell gazed at the box intently. He did not speak, but there was a peculiar motion about his lips as if he were licking them. A fiend happened just then to stand at Maxwell’s ear. It whispered, “You know it.”

“Ay,” said Maxwell, under his breath, in reply, “I knows it—well.”

“I wonder if there are valuables in it,” said Edgar.

“Shouldn’t wonder if there wor,” said Rooney.

“Eight or nine thousand pounds, more or less,” whispered the fiend, quoting words used by Mr Hazlit on a former occasion.

“Ah—jis’ so,” muttered Maxwell.

“Don’t you say a word more, David,” said the fiend.

“I wont,” muttered Maxwell’s heart; for the hearts of men are desperately wicked.

“That’s right,” continued the fiend, “for if you keep quiet, you know, the contents will fall to be divided among you, and the loss won’t be felt by a rich fellow like old Hazlit.”

Maxwell’s heart approved and applauded the sentiment, but a stronger power moved in the rough man’s heart, and softly whispered, “Shame!”

“Why, Maxwell,” said Edgar, smiling, “you look at the box as if it were a ghost!”

“An’ so it is,” said Maxwell, with a sudden and unaccountable growl, at the sound of which the fiend sprang overboard, and, diving into the sea, disappeared from Maxwell’s view for ever!

“Why, what d’ee mean, David?” asked Baldwin, in surprise.

“I mean, sir,” said Maxwell, turning to Edgar with a look of unwonted honesty on his rugged face, “that that box is the ghost of one that belongs to Miss Hazlit, if it ain’t the box itself.”

“To Miss Hazlit,” exclaimed Edgar, in surprise; “explain yourself.”

In reply to this the diver told how he had originally become acquainted with the box and its contents, and said that he had more than once searched about the region of Miss Hazlit’s cabin while down at the wreck in hope of finding it, but without success.

“Strange,” said Edgar, “I too have more than once searched in the same place in the hope of finding something, or anything that might have belonged to her, but everything had been washed away. Of course, knowing nothing about this box, I did not look for it, and found it at last, by mere chance, some distance from the berth she occupied. Why did you not mention it before?”

Maxwell was silent, and at that moment the drift of thought and conversation was abruptly turned by Rooney Machowl shouting, “Dinner ahoy!” with impatient asperity.

While engaged in the pleasant duty of appeasing hunger, our divers chatted on many subjects, chiefly professional. Among other things, Rooney remarked that he had heard it said a diving-dress contained sufficient air in it to keep a man alive for more than five minutes.

“I have heard the same,” said Edgar.

“Come, David,” suggested Joe Baldwin, “let’s test it on you.”

“Ready,” said Maxwell, rising and wiping his huge mouth.

The proposal which was made in jest was thereupon carried out in earnest!

Dinner being over, Maxwell put on his diving-dress; the Chinamen set the pump going, and the front-glass was screwed on. Air was forced into the dress until it was completely inflated and looked as if ready to burst, while Maxwell stood on the deck holding on to a back-stay. At a given signal the pumpers ceased to work, and the adventurous man was thus cut off from all further communication with the outward air.

At first the onlookers were amused; then they became interested, and as the minutes flew by, a little anxious, but Maxwell’s grave countenance, as seen through the bull’s-eye, gave no cause for alarm. Thus he stood for full ten minutes, and then opening the escape-valve, signalled for more air.

This was a sufficient evidence that a man might have ample time to return to the surface from great depths, even if the air-pumps should break down.

“But, perhaps,” said Edgar, as they conversed on the subject, “you might not be able to hold out so long under water where the pressure would be great.”

“Sure that’s true. What d’ee say to try, David?” said Rooney.

Again Maxwell expressed willingness to risk the attempt. The glass was once more screwed on, the pumps set agoing, and down the bold diver went to the bottom. On receiving a pre-arranged signal, the pumps were stopped.

This, let the reader fully understand, is a thing that is never done with the ordinary pumps, which are not permitted to cease working from the time the bull’s-eye is fixed on until after it is taken off, on the diver’s return to the surface. It was therefore with much anxiety that the experimenters awaited the result—anxiety that was not allayed by Rooney Machowl’s expression of countenance, and his occasional suggestion that “he must be dead by this time,” or, “Och! He’s gone entirely now!”

For full five minutes Maxwell stayed under water without a fresh supply of air—then he signalled for it, and the anxious pumpers sent it down with a will. Thus it was found that there was still sufficient time for a man to return to the surface with the air contained in his dress, in the event of accident to the pumps.3

While the divers were engaged with these experiments, Chok-foo was sent on shore in the small boat for a supply of fresh water from a spring near the top of the island.

Having filled his keg, the Chinaman turned his fat good-humoured countenance toward the sea, for the purpose of taking an amiable view of Nature in general before commencing the descent. As he afterwards gazed in the direction of the mainland, he observed what appeared to be a line of sea-gulls on the horizon. He looked intently at these after shouldering his water-keg. Chok-foo’s visage was yellow by nature. It suddenly became pale green. He dropped his burden and bounded down the hillside as if he had gone mad. The water-keg followed him. Being small and heavy it overtook him, swept the legs from under him, and preceded him to the beach, where it was dashed to atoms. Chok-foo recovered himself, continued his wild descent, sprang into the boat, rowed out to his companions in furious haste, and breathlessly gave the information that pirates were coming!

Those to whom he said this knew too well what he meant to require explanation. They were aware that many so-called “traders” in the Eastern seas become pirates on the shortest notice when it suits their convenience.

Edgar Berrington immediately drew a revolver from his pocket, and stepping suddenly up to Dwarro, said sternly:—

“Look here!”

The pilot did look, and for the first time his calm, cool, imperturbable expression deserted him, for he saw that he had to deal with a resolute and powerful man. At the same time his right hand moved towards his breast, but it was arrested from behind in the iron grip of Joe Baldwin.

“Now, pilot,” said Edgar, “submit, and no one shall harm you. Resist, and you are a dead man. Search him, Joe.”

The diver opened Dwarro’s pilot-coat, and found beneath it a brace of pistols and a long sheath knife, which he quietly removed and transferred to his own person. The other men in the boat looked on, meanwhile, in silence.

“Dwarro,” continued Edgar, “you have planned this, I know, but I’ll thwart you. I won’t tie or gag you. I’ll make you sit at the helm and steer, while we evade your friends. I shall sit beside you, and you may rely on it that if you disobey an order in the slightest degree, or give a signal by word or look to any one, I’ll blow out your brains. D’you understand me?”

The pilot made no reply save by a slight inclination of the head, while a dark frown settled on his features.

It was obvious that fear found no place in the man’s breast, for a deep flush of indignation covered his countenance. He merely felt that he must obey or die, and wisely chose the former alternative.

Meanwhile the fleet of boats which had appeared to the Chinaman on the hill-top was now seen by the party in the boat as they drew nearer under the influence of a land breeze—their high sails rendering them visible before the low boat of our divers could be seen by them.

The wind had not yet reached the island, but, even if it had, the divers would not have hoisted sail, lest they should have been seen.

“Ship your oars now, lads, and pull for life,” cried Edgar, seizing the tiller with one hand, while with the other he held the revolver. “You take this oar, Dwarro, and pull with a will.”

In a few seconds the pilot boat was creeping pretty swiftly along the rugged shore of the island, in the direction of the open sea. To lighten her, the little boat astern was cut adrift. Continuing their course, they rowed quite past the island, and then, turning abruptly to the southward, they pulled steadily on until the first “cat’s-paw” of the breeze ruffled the glassy sea.

By this time the fleet of boats was distinctly visible, making straight for the island. Edgar now ordered the sails to be set, and bade Dwarro take the helm. The pilot obeyed with the air of a Stoic. It was clear that his mind was made up. This had the effect of calling up a look of settled resolution on Edgar’s face.

In a few minutes the sails filled, and then, to the surprise not only of Dwarro but all on board, Edgar ordered the pilot to steer straight for the line of advancing boats.

Two of these had changed their course on first observing the divers’ boat, but when they saw it steering straight down, as if to meet or join them, they resumed their course for the island. Presently the breeze increased, and the pilot boat leaped over the waves as if it had received new life.

“It’s a bowld thing to try,” muttered Rooney Machowl, “but I’m afeard, sir—”

He was silenced by a peremptory “Hush” from Edgar. “Get down so as to be out of sight,” he continued, “all of you except the Chinamen.—You two come and sit by Dwarro.”

As he spoke, Edgar himself sat down on an oar, so as to be able to see over the gunwale without himself being seen. To those in the fleet it would thus appear that their vessel was a pilot boat returning from seaward with its skipper and two Chinamen. Whatever Dwarro’s intentions had been, he was evidently somewhat disconcerted, and glanced more than once uneasily at the calm youth who sat pistol in hand at his side directing him how to steer.

Although there was a considerable fleet of the piratical boats, they were spread out so that a space of several hundred yards intervened between each. Edgar steered for the centre of the widest gap, and his bold venture was favoured by a sudden increase of wind, which caused the waves to gurgle from the bow.

Just as they passed between two of the boats they were hailed by one of them. Edgar kept his eyes fixed on Dwarro, who became slightly pale. The click of the pistol at the moment caused the pilot to start.

“You may inform and we may be caught,” said Edgar, sternly; “but whatever happens you shall die if you disobey. Speak not, but wave your hand in reply.”

Dwarro obeyed. Those who had hailed him apparently thought the distance too great for speech; they waved their hands in return, and the boat passed on. A few minutes more and our divers were safely beyond the chance of capture, making for the mainland under a steady breeze.

Chapter Fourteen.

Miss Pritty’s “Worst Fears” are more than realised

Turn we now to Miss Pritty—and a pretty sight she is when we turn to her! In her normal condition Miss Pritty is the pink of propriety and neatness. At the present moment she lies with her mouth open, and her eyes shut, hair dishevelled, garments disordered, slippers off, and stockings not properly on. Need we say that the sea is at the bottom of it? One of the most modest, gentle, unassuming, amiable of women has been brought to the condition of calmly and deliberately asserting that she “doesn’t care!”—doesn’t care for appearances; doesn’t care for character; doesn’t care for past reminiscences or future prospects; doesn’t care, in short, for anything—life and death included. It is a sad state of mind and body—happily a transient!

“Stewardess.”

“Yes, Miss?”

“I shall die.”

“Oh no, Miss, don’t say so. You’ll be quite well in a short time,” (the stewardess has a pleasant motherly way of encouraging the faint-hearted). “Don’t give way to it, Miss. You’ve no idea what a happytite you’ll ’ave in a few days. You’ll be soon able to eat hoceans of soup and ’eaps of fat pork, and—”

She stops abruptly, for Miss Pritty has gone into sudden convulsions, in the midst of which she begs the stewardess, quite fiercely, to “Go away.”

Let us draw a veil over the scene.

Miss Pritty has been brought to this pass by Mr Charles Hazlit, whose daughter, Aileen, has been taken ill in China. Being a man of unbounded wealth, and understanding that Miss Pritty is a sympathetic friend of his daughter and an admirable nurse, he has written home to that lady requesting her, in rather peremptory terms, to “come out to them.” Miss Pritty, resenting the tone of the request as much as it was in her nature to resent anything, went off instanter, in a gush of tender love and sympathy, and took passage in the first ship that presented itself as being bound for the China seas. She did not know much about ships. Her maritime ideas were vague. If a washing-tub had been advertised just then as being A1 at Lloyds’ and about to put forth for that region of the earth with every possible convenience on board for the delight of human beings, she would have taken a berth in it at once.

We do not intend to inflict Miss Pritty’s voyage on our reader. Suffice it to say that she survived it, reached China in robust health, and found her sick friend,—who had recovered,—in a somewhat similar condition.

After an embrace such as women alone can bestow on each other, Miss Pritty, holding her friend’s hand, sat down to talk. After an hour of interjectional, exclamatory, disconnected, irrelevant, and largely idiotical converse—sustained chiefly by herself—Miss Pritty said:—

“And oh! The pirates!”

She said this with an expression of such awful solemnity that Aileen could not forbear smiling as she asked—

“Did you see any?”

“Gracious! No,” exclaimed Miss Pritty, with a look of horror, “but we heard of them. Only think of that! If I have one horror on earth which transcends all other horrors in horribleness, that horror is—pirates. I once had the misfortune to read of them when quite a girl—they were called Buccaneers, I think, in the book—and I have never got over it. Well, one day when we were sailing past the straits of Malacca,—I think it was,—our captain said they were swarming in these regions, and that he had actually seen them—more than that, had slain them with his own—oh! It is too horrible to think of. And our captain was such a dear good man too. Not fierce one bit, and so kind to everybody on board, especially the ladies! I really cannot understand it. There are such dreadfully strange mixtures of character in this world. No, he did not say he had slain them, but he used nautical expressions which amount to the same thing, I believe; he said he had spiflicated lots of ’em and sent no end of ’em to somebody’s locker. It may be wrong in me even to quote such expressions, dear Aileen, but I cannot explain myself properly if I don’t. It is fearful to know there are so many of them, ‘swarming,’ as our captain said.”

“The worst of it is that many of the boatmen and small traders on the coast,” said Aileen, “are also pirates, or little better.”

“Dreadful!” exclaimed her friend. “Why, oh why do people go to sea at all?”

“To transport merchandise, I suppose,” said Aileen. “We should be rather badly off without tea, and silk, and spices, and such things—shouldn’t we?”

“Tea and silk! Aileen. I would be content to wear cotton and drink coffee or cocoa—which latter I hate—if we only got rid of pirates.”

“Even cotton, coffee, and cocoa are imported, I fear,” suggested Aileen.

“Then I’d wear wool and drink water—anything for peace. Oh how I wish,” said Miss Pritty, with as much solemn enthusiasm as if she were the first who had wished it, “that I were the Queen of England—then I’d let the world see something.”

“What would you do, dear?” asked Aileen.

“Do! Well, I’ll tell you. Being the head of the greatest nation of the earth—except, of course, the Americans, who assert their supremacy so constantly that they must be right—being the head, I say, of the greatest earthly nation, with that exception, I would order out all my gun-ships and turret-boats, and build new ones, and send them all round to the eastern seas, attack the pirates in their strongholds, and—and—blow them all out o’ the water, or send the whole concern to the bottom! You needn’t laugh, Aileen. Of course I do not use my own language. I quote from our captain. Really you have no idea what strong, and to me quite new expressions that dear man used. So powerful too, but never naughty. No, never. I often felt as if I ought to have been shocked by them, but on consideration I never was, for it was more the manner than the matter that seemed shocking. He was so gentle and kind, too, with it all. I shall never forget how he gave me his arm the first day I was able to come on deck, after being reduced to a mere shadow by sea-sickness, and how tenderly he led me up and down, preventing me, as he expressed it, from lurching into the lee-scuppers, or going slap through the quarter-rails into the sea.”

After a little more desultory converse, Aileen asked her friend if she were prepared to hear some bad news.

Miss Pritty declared that she was, and evinced the truth of her declaration by looking prematurely horrified.

Aileen, although by no means demonstrative, could not refrain from laying her head on her friend’s shoulder as she said, “Well then, dear Laura, we are beggars! Dear papa has failed in business, and we have not a penny in the world!”

Miss Pritty was not nearly so horrified as she had anticipated being. Poor thing, she was so frequently in the condition of being without a penny that she had become accustomed to it. Her face, however, expressed deep sympathy, and her words corresponded therewith.

“How did it happen?” she asked, at the close of a torrent of condolence.

“Indeed I don’t know,” replied Aileen, looking up with a smile as she brushed away the two tears which the mention of their distress had forced into her eyes. “Papa says it was owing to the mismanagement of a head clerk and the dishonesty of a foreign agent, but whatever the cause, the fact is that we are ruined. Of course that means, I suppose, that we shall have no more than enough to procure the bare necessaries of life, and shall now, alas! Know experimentally what it is to be poor.”

Miss Pritty, when in possession of “enough to procure the bare necessaries of life,” had been wont to consider herself rich, but her powers of sympathy were great. She scorned petty details, and poured herself out on her poor friend as a true comforter—counselled resignation as a matter of course, but suggested such a series of bright impossibilities for the future as caused Aileen to laugh, despite her grief.

In the midst of one of these bursts of hilarity Mr Hazlit entered the room. The sound seemed to grate on his feelings, for he frowned as he walked, in an absent mood, up to a glass case full of gaudy birds, and turned his back to it under the impression, apparently, that it was a fire.

“Aileen,” he said, jingling some loose coin in his pocket with one hand, while with the other he twisted the links of a massive gold chain, “your mirth is ill-timed. I am sorry, Miss Pritty, to have to announce to you, so soon after your arrival, that I am a beggar.”

As he spoke he drew himself up to his full height, and looked, on the whole, like an over-fed, highly ornamented, and well-to-do beggar.