03 Underwater Adventure

by Willard Price

  Dr Blake took out one of the platters and, having no polishing rag, rubbed it on the seat of his bathing trunks. Instead of the grey film that had covered the dish there now appeared a magnificent design of knights on horseback done in what appeared to be yellow gold, white gold and gunmetal.

  Skink pressed forward and ran his fingers over the design. His hand was cramped in a curious way so that it looked like the claw of a bird. But he did not object when Dr Blake replaced the platter in the cabinet.

  They climbed an ancient stairway, pausing now and then to give the frightened octopus population time to move out of the way.

  Some of the beasts walked off daintily on the tips of their tentacles, while others shot away by jet propulsion.

  The second floor and third floor seemed to be given over to individual cabins. The doors were closed and the explorers did not try to wrench them open but left them for later attention. They went on up to the fourth story.

  Here they came out into a single large room, magnificent in its proportions and decoration, and surrounded by small, cunningly designed windows clouded on the outside by marine growth. This may have been the captain’s cabin or, when the governor was on board, was doubtless assigned to him.

  Skink suddenly started back in terror. The others turned their torches in his direction and found him staring at - could they believe their eyes? - a man in full armour seated in a great chafe..

  He sat at ease and seemed to be very much alive although one could not see his face behind the visor of his helmet. He did not rise to greet his visitors but seemed to be studying them with sardonic humour. Perhaps he was enjoying their surprise at finding him there, a Spanish Rip Van Winkle three hundred years old, and to all appearances as healthy and happy as when he had last seen the light.

  Skink, who was a bundle of superstitions, began to shake and had to sit down on a chest. The others tried to put on a bold front - but even they started back in fear when the old don began to smoke his pipe. What else but a pipe or cigar inside that helmet could cause the fine column of black smoke that was coming out through the visor!

  All that was needed now to terrify the beholders was for the man to move. And this he presently did.

  A smile broke over the face of the helmet; one corner of the mouth went up in a one-sided grin. On up it went until the appearance was fantastic. Now it was like one prong of a moustache poking its way out of the helmet.

  Hal started forward and brought his beam to play full upon it. It was the tentacle of a small octopus that had made the helmet its home. Doubtless the black smoke had come from the same creature.

  The tentacle waved about languidly as if it were the tip of a long moustache being stroked by invisible fingers. Then it slowly retreated again inside the helmet.

  Hal’s foot struck something on the floor. He turned his light downward and discovered two more mailed figures lying on the deck. One of them was cramped as if he had died in agony. Beside each figure lay a sword, its outline clearly defined through a film of slime.

  Men did not ordinarily wear armour on shipboard -except in war, or an attack by pirates. Or to fight a duel. That seemed to be the explanation in this case.

  But why did the man in the chair also wear armour? Perhaps he was to fight the winner. The ship had sunk just in time to save him the trouble.

  Whatever the solution of this mystery, one thing was clear - these three magnificent suits of ancient armour would be prized possessions of the Metropolitan Museum. At least this was clear to three of the onlookers. The fourth, Skink, may have had other thoughts.

  Finding that the three apparitions were neither living men nor ghosts, he crept forward to run his covetous fingers over the gold inlay in the steel helmet of one of the fallen warriors, over the neck guard and shoulder pauldrons, the handsomely engraved breastplate, the bulging elbow cops, the rich embossed gauntlets, the greaves that had encased the legs and the footgear made of narrow plates of flexible steel.

  With the back of his sheath knife, Dr Blake prised open one of the several chests in the room. It was full of marble and porcelain statuettes of great beauty. Another contained two gold peacocks set with jewels. Another contained nothing at all but a little deposit on the bottom, all that remained of fine fabrics, perhaps tapestries, perhaps clothing.

  At one side of the room was a large bed and at its foot was - of all things! - a silver bathtub.

  Dr Blake was startled to see an almost naked man stretched out in it until he noticed who the man was. It was mischievous Roger who hopped up, laughing so hard that he almost lost his air.

  What a task it must have been to fill this tub! It was quite innocent of plumbing and must have been supplied by means of buckets laboriously carried up three flights of stairs. Then the ship had found a way to avoid all this bother. She had only to sink to the bottom of the sea and the silver bathtub would remain full for ever without trouble to anyone.

  Blake led the way down to the gun deck and found a companionway descending into the hold. Here there were larger members of the octopus family, but so long as they were not trapped or cornered or otherwise annoyed they did nothing but glare at the intruders. There were also many big fish that had come in through broken hatches.

  The hold was filled with household goods and treasures of fine design and workmanship. Some were Philippine in origin, some Chinese, some Indian, but most of them had evidently been imported from Spain to outfit the governor’s mansion in Manila and had, after his resignation, been on their way back to Spain when the ship sank. There were bronze and stone lanterns, crystal chandeliers, marble statues, large golden vases, a bronze sundial, more efficient timepieces in the form of highly ornamented clocks and bulky watches of the old style with hour hand only, their dials being covered with enamel. There were chests and chests and chests of miscellaneous articles, swords, rings, buckles, chains, necklaces, unset jewels, slugs of pieces of eight, golden doubloons, gold and silver bullion and coins.

  At one place the hull beneath their feet was wrenched open and the sand of the sea bottom pushed through. That told the story of the sinking of the Santa Cruz. Unwieldy because of her heavy castles, she had been twisted by the storm until the strakes of her hull parted and let in the sea. A chest had broken and tumbled its load of gold pieces into the hole.

  Skink moved to pick up some of it but Blake gestured that it should be left as it was.

  Skink was puffing so hard with excitement that he exhausted his main air supply and had to press the lever that gave him his last five-minute reserve. Blake,-realizing that all the tanks must be nearly empty, signalled the ascent. The four masked figures soared up through an open hatch, rose to the broken tops of the masts, hung there for a few minutes to adjust to the change in pressure, then continued to the surface and climbed on board the Lively Lady.

  Roger was bursting with a long-suppressed question.

  ‘Why didn’t we find any men on that ship, except those three?’

  ‘We didn’t find any men,’ Blake answered.

  ‘But the three in the cabin …’

  ‘Those were just empty suits of armour.’

  ‘But there must have been bodies inside, or at least skeletons.’

  ‘When we open those suits I don’t expect to find a human fragment as big as the knuckle on your little finger. The flesh was probably eaten within a few hours by fish and starfish and crustaceans. And within a few weeks the worms and bacteria did away with the bones. Metal and stone and some kinds of wood will last, but not bone.’

  It seemed a grim thought to Roger that men, who think themselves so wonderful, should vanish so quickly while metal, stone and wood last for centuries.

  ‘We’re not so very important, are we?’ he said, a little mournfully.

  Blake laughed. ‘Are you just finding that out? Now, let’s get to work. We’re not going to take a thing from that wreck until we have photographed it from stem to stern, inside and outside. Then we’ll begin removing the cargo.’
r />   ‘Do we have to get a permit from the Trusteeship?’ Hal inquired.

  That’s all arranged. There won’t be any government tax on the property so long as it goes to the museum. And that’s where it’s all going to go.’

  Blake heard a snort behind him and turned to see Skink. Skink at once wiped the smirk off his face and said nothing.

  ‘We want pictures of everything,’ Blake went on, ‘just as it is - the armed men, the chests, the cargo - in black and white, colour, and movies.’ ‘How about a few paintings?’ Skink suggested. ‘That would be very interesting. Why don’t you try it?’ The aqualungs were refilled, the cameras, flash equipment, and painting material assembled, and Blake, Hal, and Skink descended to the wreck.

  Blake went inside and proceeded to photograph, with the help of flash, the cargo and the dramatic scene in the upper cabin. He also made notes on what he saw -and just as he had been astonished at the sight of the man in the big chair, the man in the chair should have been surprised to see this curious creature with a mask on his face and a tank on his back, calmly seated on a chest and writing on a slate with a slate pencil.

  The water dimmed the effect, but when the slate dried off the writing would stand out clear and white. Blake had learned this method, as well as the trick of writing on a zinc pad with a lead pencil, from William Beebe. A third method was to write with a graphite stick on sheets of sandpapered xylonite, a waterproof substance rather like celluloid. Such notes made on the spot were necessary to an accurate and scientific record, because after rising to the surface it was so easy to forget exact details.

  Hal, outside the ship, was taking general views of the wreck as it lay in the sand, the gun deck and bulwarks, and the two picturesque castles. He was especially interested in the long beakhead of the ship, heavily carved with animals, monograms, crowns, serpents, and floral ornaments, and terminating in a splendid bronze figurehead of Neptune rising from the sea. He could already see that striking work of art in an alcove of its own in the Metropolitan Museum. Perhaps below it there would be a caption referring to the expedition of the Lively Lady and naming the scientists who had discovered the Santa Cruz’

  He saw that someone else was much interested in the figurehead. Skink was painting a picture of it Seated on a coral block, with a board-backed canvas on his knees, he was having unexpected troubles. The board wanted constantly to jump away from him and soar to the surface. In trying to keep it down he lost hold of his brush and it immediately ‘fell up’ out of sight. Considerably annoyed, he pulled another brush from his belt. He squeezed colour from tubes on to his palette and was astonished when a tube labelled red gave out green paint and one marked yellow emitted grey. He knew from experience that red blood looks green at a depth of sixty feet, but had not realized that his paint would be affected in the same way.

  Small fish swarmed between him and his canvas so that he could hardly see what he was doing. They were very curious to know what was going on and while some of them nosed their way over the picture, smearing the lines, others pressed their noses against the glass of his mask.

  He was disconcerted to find that as fast as he put colours on his palette, they disappeared, and he had to squeeze out more. Then he observed that the fish were eating his colours. They evidently had a good appetite for oil paints.

  Nevertheless he kept at it and made a picture. It took many colours to paint the rainbow tints of the corals and seaweeds and sponges and gorgeous tropical fish that surrounded the old figurehead which was itself covered with marine growth of every tint and shade.

  At last he put his head on one side, inspected the finished work, and told himself that he had created a masterpiece.

  Blake appeared on the gun deck and signalled the others to come up. They did so and he led them into the stern castle. There a surprise awaited them. The table had been set for lunch.

  Blake had brought down with him a tin lunch box in which he had placed three small cans of sausages and three bottles of Coca-Cola. These he had now placed on the table and gestured his companions to sit down on the long bench. This they did, but waited in some bewilderment to see how Blake proposed to eat and drink under water.

  As a matter of fact, Blake himself had never tried it before, but he had seen the divers at Weekiwachee Springs, Florida, calmly chew celery and drink pop at a depth of thirty feet. He had no celery, but sausages ought to serve instead.

  With the point of his knife he cut open his can and extracted a sausage. He removed the aqualung mouthpiece from his mouth. For as long as it would take to eat this sausage, he would have to do without air.

  He puckered his lips, pressed the end of the sausage against them and forced it slowly in, taking care not to leave any opening on either side of the sausage where water could enter. He pushed the sausage all the way in and the lips closed over it. Then he munched contentedly while the smile of a Cheshire cat came over his face. He replaced his mouthpiece and breathed.

  Hal and Skink followed his example, and the process was repeated until all the sausages were gone. But there still remained the puzzling problem of how to drink a bottle of Coca-Cola ten fathoms beneath the sea.

  When Dr Bake prised off the cap of his bottle a strange thing happened. Since the pressure outside was so much greater than that inside the bottle, sea water immediately entered and compressed the contents. But a little sea water did no harm, and Dr Blake pressed the mouth of the bottle to his lips.

  By breathing out into the bottle he displaced the contents which thereupon flowed into his mouth. He drained the bottle. When he took it from his lips the sea water filled it with a sudden thud. Hal and Skink faithfully followed the same procedure.

  After a little more work they surfaced and boarded the Lively Lady.

  ‘You’re just in time for lunch,’ cried Roger.

  ‘Thanks,’ Blake answered. ‘We’ve had lunch!’

  But it took very little pressure to persuade them to sit down to some of Omo’s good cooking. However, before they could eat, Skink must show them his masterpiece.

  With a flourish, he uncovered his canvas.

  Everyone tried to be polite, but it was very difficult not to laugh. Roger turned red and nearly choked. The captain suddenly remembered something he had to do on deck.

  It was really .a terrible mess. Every colour swore at all the rest. Not one of the colours was what it had seemed to be at the bottom of the sea. Because of the peculiar way in which water absorbs light, nothing was now what it had been under the filter of ten fathoms of blue water.

  All Skink could do was to say dolefully ‘Well, if you’ll just come down to the bottom and look at it, you’ll see it’s pretty good.’

  But since no one was particularly interested in a picture that had to be viewed at the bottom of the sea, his offer was not accepted.

  After the second lunch everyone took a siesta - everyone but Skink, He excused himself with ‘I want to go down and make another try at that picture.’

  When he came back an hour later with a blank canvas, Hal asked him what had gone wrong.

  ‘Oh, I had bad luck,’ Skink said. ‘I had the picture almost finished when a school of about a hundred parrotfish came along and ate every bit of paint off the canvas.’

  Hal studied Skink’s sly face. It just might be true, but it was a pretty big story.

  Could it be that Skink had not been painting at all?

  But what else could he have been doing? He surely could not steal anything from the wreck. He had no place to hide it. He wore nothing but brief bathing trunks that certainly afforded no hiding-place for a suit of armour or a chest of bullion.

  Hal dismissed his suspicions and turned to his laboratory work. But he was still uneasy and finally decided to go down and take another look at the wreck.

  As he sank slowly towards the bottom he thought he saw at a considerable distance a roundish black object hovering in the blue. It looked like a small submarine, but of course it couldn’t be that. It must be a lar
ge fish, perhaps a black manta.

  He thought no more of it and landed on the deck of the Santa Cruz. Entering the stern castle, he was surprised to see the doors of several of the wall cabinets hanging open. Inside, there was nothing. The fine platters, plates, goblets and all had disappeared.

  His heart pounding with excitement, he half-walked, half-swam up the stairs to the upper cabin. The armoured man had risen from the chair and departed. The two men who had been lying on the floor had vanished.

  He went down into the hold. Here everything seemed to be as it had been. The thief, or thieves, had not had time to make away with all the cargo. But they had certainly made a good beginning.

  Had they taken the splendid bronze figurehead? He rose through the hatch and swam to the bow. The figurehead was gone.

  Some instinct told him that the stolen treasures must be near by. He descended to the sand and circled the ship. There were large trees of elkhorn coral and much small growth, but no hiding-place for loot.

  He systematically made another circle, twenty feet farther out. Then another. And another.

  At last, about three hundred feet to port of the vessel, he came upon bottom of a different character. Here there were huge igneous rocks left by some ancient volcanic upheaval. Between the great boulders were cracks and caves and these he explored carefully, watching out for the moray eel and the octopus which love such retreats.

  In the heart of the labyrinth he came upon a grotto penetrating so far back under the rocks that he had to use his torch. He had a sudden shock when the beam of light picked out a man standing quietly near the back wall of the cave. Then he saw that it was the life-size Neptune, the figurehead of the Santa Cruz.

  Around it were all the other stolen articles, including the silver and gold tableware and the three suits of armour.