Thirty Fathoms Deep

by Ellsberg, Edward

  Hawkins came to the ragged end of the stump. Some large splinters stuck out sharply from it. He grasped one piece, bearing down on it with all his force. It broke free and came clear in his hands. It felt strangely heavy for a piece of wood. Curious, he let it go. It sank like a plummet. Evidently, under that pressure, water had long since been forced into its pores and the wood had lost all its buoyancy.

  Lifting his lines over the mast, he turned in once more towards the ship and started forward. A few feet more and the deck ended. Looking towards what must have been the keel, he could see something which looked like a huge comb rising from the bottom.

  He turned in where once had been the waist of the ship. Abaft was the poop; in front of him some heavy timbers rose like naked ribs from the sand, a few planks here and there still attached to them. The bare frames of the Santa Cruz!

  Turning from the poop, he dimly saw a dark mass, low in the water, not connected by anything to the stern. Evidently the explosion had torn the vessel apart, blown out the ship’s sides, and ripped off the deck amidships. The forecastle and the poop now lay in two separate pieces.

  Moving clear of the shattered framework, Joe signalled for more slack and kept on. Gradually the mass ahead took shape above the ocean floor. When he drew near enough to get its wavering outlines through the water, he saw the forecastle of the Santa Cruz still erect, with the broken foremast rising over it, severed above the cross-trees. And there, caught round the foremast just under the lower yard, was their steel sweep wire, leading sharply upward and swaying gently as the boat which held it rocked on the surface!

  A jerk came over his shoulder on his lifeline, nearly pulling him down. He turned, faced the lifeline, answered back with ‘One’. Shutting off his air, he listened on his phone. Indistinctly he heard: “Time’s up! Stand by to rise!”

  Hawkins opened his control-valve, again the air whistled through. He gave three jerks on his line, the signal to take up the slack, and then started slowly back as the tenders above took in his lines. They drooped in a curve above him; as he came again abreast the poop he moved away to keep his line clear, then cut in astern of the ship. The descending-line seemed to materialise from nothing as he approached it through the water. He clambered up on the rudder, close to the line, and shouted into his transmitter: “At the descending-line!”

  “Joe at the descending-line. Take him up!” called Carroll.

  Williams jerked the lifeline four times. Below Hawkins answered with four, felt a strain come on his lines, and was pulled off the rudder. Grasping the descending-line, he rose slowly as the tenders on deck heaved him in, hand over hand.

  Joe moved up past the poop, rose above the side of the Santa Cruz which lay uppermost. He discerned ragged holes dotting it; a hot fire from the Golden Hind had clearly swept the Spaniard before he sank.

  The poop grew indistinct; when Hawkins rose a few feet farther, it seemed to dissolve in the water and faded from sight altogether.

  The diver was hauled up a little more, then his ascent slowed. Over the phone he heard: “Look out for the stage!”

  Joe threw his head back, looked up through the port in the top of his helmet. Soon he saw overhead, alongside the descending-line to which it was secured by a guide-shackle, the little steel platform.

  “Take me up a little more!” he called. He was hauled up again until he could touch the stage, when he let go of the descending-line and swung himself thankfully on to the platform.

  “On the stage!” he yelled into his phone.

  “Unshackle the descending-line, Joe,” he heard from the deck.

  The weary diver leaned over, unscrewed the shackle-pin, and released the line. No longer held, it swung away from the stage and disappeared.

  Dangling alone a hundred and twenty feet below the surface, Joe paused on the first step of his slow rise to decompress.

  Chapter 14

  Three hours later, Joe Hawkins was swung in over the side. As the stage swayed over the rail, he glimpsed the entire crew massed on the fantail to watch him. The platform landed on deck. Joe felt a bench shoved in behind his knees, and sat down. Tenders swarmed round him to cast loose his weights. Two men gripped his shoulders, two others seized his helmet and gave it a sudden violent twist. It flew part way round and unlocked the joint. Gently the helmet was lifted off his head. His breastplate was unbolted, the dripping diving-suit pulled off.

  Relieved of the crushing weight, he rose and stretched himself.

  Clear of the crowd round him, waiting until he was undressed, he saw Bob and Carroll leaning against the ‘iron doctor’, looking at him anxiously. He pushed aside the sailors round about and moved towards the skipper.

  “Are you all right, Joe?” asked Carroll with evident concern.

  Hawkins disregarded the question.

  “We hooked her, Captain, no mistake!” he exclaimed. “There’s the poop down there, just like the pictures you see of those old ships of Columbus. It had me guessing at first; I couldn’t line it up with anything, but I soon got the hang of it. She’s on her beam ends over to port and half buried.”

  In the cabin, with the other divers as well as his captain and Bob, Hawkins described carefully what he had seen, the position of both ends of the ship, the distance between them, and the condition of the stern.

  Carroll listened silently as Joe described his dive, the kind of bottom he found, the state of preservation of the hull. When he had finished, the captain commented incisively: “We’re in for it, boys. According to that Spanish story, the treasure room was on the port side below the cabin. That half of the ship is buried.” He pondered the situation, making a rough sketch of the poop.

  “How does that look, Joe?”

  Hawkins corrected it a trifle.

  “She’s deeper in the sand, Captain.” The skipper drew a line a little higher up, showing the rudder post just clear of the bottom.

  “Come to think about it, I suppose the poop’s lying port side down because the gold’s on that side. When she broke in half, she must have rolled over and gone down heavy side first.”

  Carroll drew another sketch of the Santa Cruz as she must have been originally, based on the description of the ship given by Don Jaime, and on some old Spanish prints of galleons of that period which at his request Major Houghton had had picked up in Spain. He went over his sketch while the others watched attentively.

  “Now, she had a high poop, rising two decks above the hull. The strong room was a little abaft the break of the poop, on the orlop deck right here.” He indicated with his pencil. “The only entrance was through a hatch overhead leading down by the captain’s state-room, where there was always a watch set. Don Jaime says the room was lined all over with heavy iron plates to keep any thieves in the crew from breaking in from below.

  “As far as I can judge, with the poop half buried as she lies now, the sand has probably filled her inside to the same level as outside, and that room is about fifteen feet below the bottom, so — ” He drew in the mud line. “Now, Joe, you and the other boys figure out the best way of getting there. Meanwhile I’d better get out on deck and fix this wreck up for a salvage operation.” He put his sketch in his pocket and rose.

  On the fantail, he explained the next step to the boatswain’s mate.

  “We’ve had trouble enough finding this wreck and we don’t want to have to drag for her again. Joe said he tied the descending-line to the rudder; but that’s only manila and it’s likely to chafe through before long. Now we’ve got that wire sweep round the foremast, and it’s trapped under the yard and the cross-trees. It’ll stay until hell freezes over.

  “Bill, you take a screw-shackle, and get over to the motor-boat. There’s an eye in one end of that wire. Shackle the eye round the other part of the wire, bend a small manila line to the shackle to pay it out with, then take the other part of the wire in the boat and steam away with it. The wire’ll render round the mast as you go, and you’ll finish up with a tight loop round the mast and
only a single wire to the surface. Understand that?”

  “Ay, ay, sir.”

  “Be sure you pay out easy on that shackle. If you let it get slack, the wire’ll snarl up and she’ll never render.”

  “I understand, Captain.”

  “All right. When you’ve got the loop jammed tight round the mast, work back and coil all the extra wire down in the boat. When you’re up and down over the wreck, give yourself about five fathoms slack, cut the wire, bend a new eye in it with some wire clamps, and shackle on that round steel buoy you’ve got slung over the deckhouse. With that rig, we’ll never lose her again.”

  Under the boatswain’s mate’s direction, the buoy and the other gear were soon in the surf-boat and the boat was on its way to join its mate a hundred yards off.

  Clark leapt into the motorboat.

  “Here, Carley, lend a hand with this.”

  Together they shackled the eye round the other leg of the hawser, making a running-loop on the wire. They bent a manila line to the shackle with some small stuff which would break easily, then started up the engine, heaved in their anchor and ran out slowly, keeping a good strain always on the small manila line to the shackle as they paid it out. Soon the boat came to a sudden stop, the wire ceased rendering. Evidently the shackle had reached the mast, the loop was fast round it. They pulled hard on the wire to make sure the loop was jammed, snapped loose the rendering-out line, and then started to back down.

  The sailors in the boat coiled down the wire as it came in over the stern. Carley directed them and helped them to hold down the unwieldy turns as they coiled, lashing the wire every few turns with marline to keep it from snarling. The motorboat was nearly filled with the loose coils before they finally came up and down over the wreck. Binding the wire to the Samson’s post with some manila, Carley and Clark threw an eye into the bight a few fathoms from water’s edge, secured the two parts of the wire tightly together with four wire clamps, and cut the hawser in half with a chisel. Clark passed the new eye to the surf-boat where the crew shackled it to the spherical steel buoy and then tossed it overboard. Clark cut the wire loose from the motorboat. It floated away a few yards, half immersed, and bobbed easily to the waves. The boatswain’s mate looked proudly at it. He had a steel buoy secured to the wreck with a wire hawser. No storms would chafe that away!

  Carley wiped off the grease from the wire, which had smeared his hands, on an old tarpaulin lying over athwart.

  “Well, mates, we got a ring in ’er nose now.” He looked squarely at Clark. “How about it, boatswain? Goin’ to let yer shipmates in on the game?”

  Clark laughed. “It don’t take no Sherlock Holmes to see we’re out here divin’. I guess the boys’ll work it out for themselves.” He leapt across the gunwale into the surf-boat alongside.

  “Take ’er back to the ship, Carley,” he commanded. In his own boat, he gave the engineer one bell, sheered away, and was soon back on deck with his men.

  On the Lapwing, the crew were ranging long wire hawsers up and down both passageways, while Lieutenant Carroll supervised the task of shipping a two-tonne anchor on the port quarter. He was balancing it over the rail, flukes outboard, shank lashed down inside the rail, ready to let go instantly. From the anchor shackle a short wire pendant led to one end of a wire mooring-hawser; to the other end of the hawser a heavy spar-buoy, cut from an old mast, was shackled.

  “We won’t do any more diving for a day anyway, Bob,” said Carroll when the first mooring was ready. “I’ve got to get a decent set of moorings laid out before we start real work.” He turned towards the crew.

  “Boatswain’s mate, heave in the kedge anchor!”

  Clark sprang to the rail, threw a stopper round the hawser astern, took the strain on the stopper. A seaman cast the turns of the hawser off the bitts, dragged the line to the capstan, and threw four turns round it. Clark let go his stopper and motioned to the man at the throttle.

  “Heave round!”

  The capstan started to revolve. The sailor on the hawser hauled it taut, the coils gripped the barrel and the hawser came slowly in over the bulwark, dragging the kedge anchor up with it until the anchor dangled under the counter and was swung in by hooking it with the boom.

  The captain moved to the bridge, the deck watch to the forecastle. Soon the bower anchor also was up and the Lapwing under way again. The boatswain’s mate and his crew laid aft once more.

  Carroll swung his ship round to the westward, circled and steamed out on the bearing line from El Morro, heading directly for the new steel buoy. He slowed as he approached it, taking ranges as he came on. A hundred fathoms off, he stopped the engine and blew his whistle.

  On the fantail, Clark swung an axe on the lashings holding the anchor on the rail and sprang clear. The anchor splashed overboard, the mooring-wire flaked down in the passage shot after it, the long coils of wire whipped back and forth as the sailors stood clear of the quick death in store for anyone whom those twisting coils encircled.

  The anchor hit bottom. The few remaining fathoms of wire ran out more quietly. Clark hooked the spar-buoy with the boom, swung it over the side, and let go. It floated there, a black-and-yellow striped cylinder some twelve feet long and two feet in diameter, with a steel mooring-eye in the end opposite to its own anchorage.

  The Lapwing drifted slowly away from the buoy in the gathering twilight, while a second anchor was being rigged out over the quarter.

  Nearly all the next day was spent in laying out three additional moorings — one north, one south, and one east of the wreck-buoy, and each about two hundred yards from it.

  “All these anchors may look like a waste of time and money,” said the captain to Bob Porter as he was working on his second mooring, “but I’d never let a diver work on a wreck without them. When one of our men is down below, his air-hose is actually his thread of life. If anything breaks that, he’s in for a terrible death. Now a ship that is just anchored, especially in deep water, will swing to her anchor, depending on the wind, the sea, and the tide, and you can’t hold her in one place. But if a diver’s working from her, particularly if he’s inside a wreck, the ship’s got to stay in one place. If she swings away, she may break his lifeline; even if there’s enough slack on deck to pay out as she goes, swinging round is pretty sure to get his lines fouled up in the wreckage below; he’s got to have a constant lead to his lines to be sure they keep clear. The only way to insure that on a ship is to moor her, and that’s what we’re doing here. Before we start real diving, we’ll have four lines out, one to each of these moorings we’re planting, and the old Lapwing will stay in one spot regardless of what happens, unless the wind gets so strong that we can’t hang on. Whenever that happens the diver comes off the bottom and work stops.”

  In the late afternoon the last mooring went over the side, and a ring of gaudily painted spar-buoys encircled the wreck, with the bright yellow steel ball floating in the centre to mark the wreck itself.

  The Lapwing anchored a little clear of the field, and after supper the divers gathered again in the little mess room to work out the campaign with Carroll.

  There was little discussion and no difference of opinion. The only path to the strong room lay in digging a tunnel through the bottom along the bulkhead at the forward end of the poop, tearing away the wooden bulkhead, burning through the iron sides of the strong-room, and dragging the gold out through the tunnel.

  “Sounds simple enough,” said Tom Williams, his huge frame spread out on the table over the sketches, “but I s’pose it’ll be like all the other jobs — a lot of new nuts to crack that you bust your guts gettin’ away with.”

  “You took the words right outta my mouth,” agreed Martin. “Why can’t these blasted wrecks sink respectable like and right side up so’s a sailor can work on ’em? Each one of ’em always seems worse ’n the one before!”

  The brief discussion ended and the divers filed out, leaving Bob Porter alone with the captain. A little hesitantly at first, Bob
broached the subject of diving himself. As he feared, his plan met with little enthusiasm, but undiscouraged he pressed his point. Carroll, however, could not see it. In his own case, he explained, he had spent months diving in a tank only twenty feet deep under Clark’s tutelage, before he had ever gone down in deep water. Not until the feel of the rig submerged and the operation of it had become second nature, had his instructors felt it wise to let him go down at sea. Even then, they considered diving such a dangerous business that it was only the urgency of getting first-hand knowledge of his salvage operations that overbore all opposition and took him to the bottom to work on the submarines with the other divers.

  “Perhaps you’ll appreciate my position and yours better now, Bob. We’ve got four experienced men to do this job, and it’s going to be dangerous enough for them. I can’t let you get down on that wreck just for adventure. I’d like to go down myself, but I’m not diving on this cruise because I’m the only one on the topside who can direct the work or look after the ship. If I got in trouble down below, there’d be nobody left to carry on up here. As captain of this ship, I can’t risk the expedition going to smash by diving myself.

  “Now if anything happened to you, I’d neither be able to explain to your uncle, nor forgive myself. Just to show you what it means, I can tell you this: no diver can get his life insured — none of the companies will take the risk. When you get home you can verify that. Get an agent to show you his forms; they all have a little printed clause stating that the applicant does not intend to work under water. Think it over. They’ll insure soldiers, sailors, aviators, but not divers.”

  Bob’s face fell.

  “If you say no, that settles it, but I had hoped to be a little more than a spectator. Well, I suppose I can tend the lifelines anyway.”

  “You can go a little farther than that, I guess,” Carroll assured him. “If the boys have time, when we haven’t got anybody on the bottom, you can get in a rig and go over the side on the stage and down a little way as often as you want. You won’t get much pressure, but you’ll at least get the hang of being under water. If we had the opportunity, after a while you might go all the way down for a look with one of the other boys to keep an eye out for you, but as it is, every minute on the bottom is going to count for a lot, and I’m afraid we can’t risk the delay.