Thirty Fathoms Deep

by Ellsberg, Edward

  “You know that from forty to sixty minutes is all the time one of ’em’ll be down; at the most that’s only four hours a day if they go down singly or two hours if they dive in pairs. So our day’s work on the bottom is going to be so short and each minute so expensive that we just can’t go sightseeing.”

  Bob admitted regretfully the logic of the situation and accepted the verdict; at least he could do some shallow diving and that would be something to remember. He went below and crawled into his bunk, but then tossed restlessly for several hours trying to visualise the strong-room he would never see. Finally he dozed off.

  Chapter 15

  In a choppy sea, the Lapwing weighed anchor next morning and steamed slowly into the circle of buoys, headed for the windward spar. The surf-boat came close in and the end of an eight-inch hawser was dropped into it. The ship stopped, the boat stood clear, trailing the hawser over its stern as it made for the buoy. Bill Clark in the stern sheets manoeuvred his boat alongside the buoy, where it pitched up and down as the waves swept by. At bow and stern, two seamen speared the buoy with their boathooks and hung tightly on, while the bowman, leaning down in the water, seized the pelican-hook shackled into the eye of the hawser, threaded the bill of the pelican-hook through the mooring-band on the buoy, closed the hook, slipped down the locking-link and shoved in the toggle-pin to hold it locked. Soaked to the waist, he ducked back into the boat, which immediately let go of the buoy and headed back to the ship.

  Again the boat took a hawser and ran it out to a spar off the quarter. And so, between ship and buoys, the surf-boat shuttled back and forth over the waves, until finally the Lapwing lay like the hub of a huge wheel with four lines radiating from her like the spokes to the buoys out on its rim.

  Paying out one hawser, heaving in another, Carroll centred his ship over the wreck until the descending-line made fast to the rudder of the wreck plumbed up and down alongside his lee rail. He was ready.

  Tom Williams shuffled aft, already encased in a diving-suit. Quickly the dressers, under Joe Hawkins’ directions, attached his weights, tested his gear, and put on his helmet. In a few minutes he was over the side, sliding down the descending-line while the light above faded to a deep blue. The water pressed in, he breathed a little more heavily as he slipped deeper. Finally the light below grew perceptibly dimmer. Tom knew he was near the bottom. He saw in front of him the poop of the Santa Cruz, dropped past it, and in a moment was standing on the rudder.

  As he had been ordered, he unscrewed his knife, cut loose the descending-line, and screwed back the knife. Holding the line carefully, he started out along the bottom, breasting through the water round the stern of the wreck. He moved awkwardly, his heavily weighted feet lifting deliberately one after the other as he went, looking for all the world like a slow-motion-picture walk.

  His lines tautened as he rounded the stern; he signalled for slack and went slowly on to the break of the poop. There he turned, and holding close to the ship towering above, he walked in, keeping his right hand against the wooden hulk.

  Williams paused. A large opening in the bulkhead marked the door to the upper deck. He peered through. It was completely black inside. Again he went along, passed another opening, evidently the entrance to the second poop deck. An iron hinge still clung to it, though the door was gone. He tried the hinge, it was securely fastened. He pulled down a little slack on the line he carried and with a couple of half-hitches tied it firmly to the hinge. The next diver would be able to land closer to the actual job.

  Once more he moved along. A few steps and he came to a sudden stop. Projecting from the bulk-head across his path was a line of broken timbers, running from the mud underfoot up the wooden bulkhead. Tom peered out through his face-plate at them, looked out of the top port in his helmet, and followed the line of jagged planks upward until they vanished in the diffused light. He tried to think, but his somewhat numbed brain worked slowly; the position of the ship on her side also confused him. At last he made it out; he was at the point where the main deck had been torn out of the ship by the explosion; he was looking at the remnants of the deck planking projecting from the poop.

  Tom moved cautiously around the torn woodwork, still keeping close to the bulkhead. Eight feet farther along he came to a similar jagged mass which had been the berth deck. Beyond that had been the hold. He stopped and looked round. A little beyond he saw rising from the sand the gaunt timbers that had formed the frames of the Santa Cruz; on his right the forward bulkhead of the poop rose, dished in a little from the terrific blast which had torn away the decks.

  Tom moved in until he touched the bulkhead, then adjusting his air a little, leaned over and scooped up a handful of the bottom. A dark grey mixture of sand, packed firmly down. That was what they would have to excavate. He dropped the sand; it settled slowly in a cloud through the water.

  Tom shut off his air and shouted into his transmitter: “On deck!”

  On the Lapwing, Carroll, who had been closely watching the trail of bubbles circling forward through the water as Tom worked, answered immediately.

  “Hello, Tom!”

  “Send down the hose!”

  Several sailors lifted the end of a fire-hose over the rail. Just abaft the brass nozzle screwed to the hose, the boatswain’s mate lashed a short manila lanyard which carried a screw shackle on its other end. Clark slipped the shackle round the descending-line, screwed in the pin, and shoved hose and nozzle over the rail, paying out rapidly on the hose as it sank.

  Guided by the shackle sliding down the line, the nozzle vanished and length after length of hose went out after it.

  On the bottom, Williams stood at the hinge to which he had secured the line. Looking up, he watched anxiously, his air exhausting upward in an ever-widening cone of bubbles into the water overhead. The descending-line swayed gently, its easy curve rising and falling as the Lapwing heaved on the surface.

  A glitter on the manila line. Another second and the shackle slipped into view with the hose dangling nearby only a few feet over his helmet. It came down in short jerks and soon was in his hands. He paused, figuring whether it was less effort to untie the lanyard or to cut it, then decided to cut it. Slowly he unscrewed his knife and slashed through the manila, leaving the shackle dangling on the descending-line. Then he replaced his knife in the sheath. He moved away, dragging the hose with him to the spot near the keel.

  Tom’s time was nearly up. He lashed the hose lanyard to a broken timber and started back for the descending-line.

  At the descending-line, he gazed through the hole in the bulkhead into the poop. For hundreds of years no one had gone through that door. What lay beyond? Tom stooped over, crawling on his hands and knees through the dark opening.

  Some hours later, Williams finally reached the surface. When he was undressed, he walked a little unsteadily up the passage. Carroll eyed his gait nervously — something was the matter. Williams had never been affected so before, even in deep water. Hurriedly Carroll ran after him, caught his arm.

  “Are you all right, Tom?”

  Tom steadied himself by holding to a hose-rack.

  “Fine, ol’ man. Never felt better ’n m’ life.”

  A strange odour hit Carroll’s nostrils. Alcohol! He reflected quickly. In some way, Williams must have got at the medical whisky and taken a few drinks before he went down.

  “What a foolhardy thing!” thought Carroll. “Just like a sailor.”

  He beckoned to Martin.

  “Put Tom in his bunk and see he doesn’t break his neck getting down the ladder,” he ordered. “Then tell Fitz I want to see him.”

  Fitz shuffled aft to the quarter-deck and saluted.

  “Fitz, there are a few quarts of whisky in the medical locker. They’re not safe below. Break ’em out, take ’em up to the cabin, and lock ’em up under my berth.”

  Carroll turned attention to Clark, who except for his helmet was completely dressed and ready to go overboard.

  “Bill,
the fire-hose is lashed down right over the spot we want to dig. You start the tunnel. Got it?”

  Clark tried to nod in the affirmative but struck his chin on the breastplate. Joe Hawkins slipped on his helmet, and the dressers assisted him to the stage.

  Three minutes later, Bill Clark, thirty fathoms deep, was fumbling in the water and casting loose the lanyard on the nozzle. He cleared it, faced the bulkhead, paced off ten feet from the broken berth deck towards the keel, then aimed the long hose nozzle at the bottom directly in front of him.

  On deck, Bob Porter, standing by the fire-main, watched the captain closely. The limp canvas hose stretched away to the bulwark and hung loosely in the water.

  Carroll, telephone-receiver clamped over his ear, listened intently.

  “On deck! Turn on the water.”

  The skipper motioned to Bob, who rapidly opened the valve on the fire-main. The hose rounded out, straightened the kinks suddenly, and in a stiff curve swept over the rail into the sea.

  Below, Clark braced his feet firmly in the sand and waited. The hose suddenly bulged out as the water shot through it; the nozzle whipped violently backward and knocked the light diver flat, then writhed away across the ocean floor like a snake.

  A little dazed from the blow, the diver picked himself up, and gritted his teeth, thoroughly mad. He opened his exhaust-valve wider, cut down a little on his control-valve, letting as much air as he dared out of his suit and making himself as heavy as possible.

  Clark looked round. A few feet away a murky cloud was rising into the water. He walked towards it and saw the nozzle whipping backward and forward across the sand. Dropping to his knees, he crawled along and seized the wriggling lanyard.

  Cautiously he drew the nozzle closer until he was able to place his lead-weighted foot on the hose just abaft the nozzle. He gripped the hose firmly with both hands, and rising slowly, dragged it back with him to the bulkhead.

  Once more he spotted his position and turned the hose downward against the bottom. Immediately he was enveloped in darkness. Clouds of mud and fine sand spread through the water, blotting out everything from his sight. By feeling alone, he played the jet to and fro between his feet, and felt them sinking in as the hose cut through.

  He bent forward, bucking the strong kick of the water as it shot out, but soon he found himself in trouble. He breathed heavily from his exertions; he felt almost like a feather in the water trying to hold against the hose. His grip weakened.

  In the darkness, Clark turned his head a little to the left and shouted into his transmitter: “On deck! Turn off the water!”

  On the Lapwing, Lieutenant Carroll thought he heard something, and listened more carefully. Only the roar of the air through the diver’s helmet was audible.

  “Hello, Clark! What do you want?”

  Clark, barely able to stand up, repeated each word slowly.

  “Turn — off — the — water!”

  Only a mushed-up jumble of sounds, mingled with the noise of the air exhausting, came to Carroll’s ear.

  “Shut off your air and repeat!”

  Bill Clark, leaning forward heavily, trying to counteract the thrust of the nozzle, dared not let go even with one hand long enough to shut off his control-valve. Desperately he clung to the nozzle and shouted into the darkness:

  “Shut off the water!”

  On the surface, no one could make him out. The water continued to rush through the nozzle. Clark started to swear.

  The hose tore away from his numbed fingers. He felt a sharp blow against his leg, found himself flat on his back in the mud. A trickle of water leaked through his exhaust-valve and ran down his neck.

  Clark rolled over, painfully got to his knees, gave himself more air to lighten up, and slowly rose to his feet. He took a step in the darkness, fumbling through the water with outstretched arms, bumped into the bulkhead. Turning, he walked in the opposite direction. The water lightened a bit; a few steps farther on he was out of the cloud of mud he had thrown up and in the dim light of the ocean floor.

  Some distance away, the hose was thrashing violently.

  Clark shut off his air.

  “On deck! Turn off the water! I’m coming up!”

  This time he was understood. He watched the jerking of the nozzle slow, the hose go limp. Leaving it lie, the diver moved painfully to the descending-line, and gave the signal to rise.

  When finally he reached the Lapwing and was undressed, he sprawled out on a coil of rope on the fantail. Pulling up his trouser leg, he found a large bruise, blue and yellow, covering his left shin.

  “We’re usin’ too much pressure, Captain. There’s no holdin’ it. Guess that’s where the nozzle belted me when it tore loose.”

  A seaman went on the double to the medical locker for some liniment; Hawkins was soon massaging the leg, as well as Clark’s back where he complained of some stiffness from the strain of bracing himself against the nozzle.

  Martin went over next, retrieved the hose, and dragged it back once more to the bulkhead. He planted his feet at the edge of the little hole in the sand which Clark had dug, let out air until he began to feel the water pressing against his chest, then sang out: “Turn on the water! Easy now!”

  Once more Bob opened the valve to the fire-main, but only turn by turn this time. Gradually the hose filled out as the water pulsed through until the pressure rose to forty pounds on the gauge over Bob’s head.

  A call from below: “Hold it! That’s enough.”

  Carroll felt the hose. He could make a dent in it with his thumb.

  On the bottom, Martin played the jet downward, gradually working it in a small circle as the clay and sand of the bottom cut away. Like the diver before, he found himself immediately in an impenetrable cloud of mud the moment the water started; it was only by leaning occasionally against the bulkhead in front that he maintained his sense of direction.

  Martin worked his hour, came up, was followed by Hawkins. It was late afternoon when the latter was hoisted through the surface and the day’s work was done. Hawkins reported that the tunnel seemed about a foot deep and three or four feet across. Not much progress.

  Next day the results were nearly the same. First Hawkins, then Martin, then Clark took their turns with the hose, burrowed into the clay, dug a little deeper. Less time was lost in the divers following one another; the first three men finished their work and the last one was up by noon.

  Immediately after the crew had risen from the mess table, diving started again. Tom Williams came aft to the dressing-bench. Remembering the day before, Carroll watched him carefully as he came down the deck. He was perfectly sober. Satisfied, the skipper let the dressers proceed.

  Tom went over the side and vanished. In a few minutes, he asked for the water, and once again the hose pulsated with each stroke as the pump in the fire-room forced the water through.

  Half an hour went by. Williams ordered the water shut off, reported that he was coming up. The tender watched the lifelines carefully, but evidently Tom had had some difficulty in getting clear, for fifteen minutes went by before the tender felt the line jerk in his hands with the signal that Tom was ready to be hauled up.

  Carroll grew a little nervous at the delay, fearing trouble, but he could hear the air going steadily into Tom’s helmet and as Tom said nothing at all, he felt it best to leave him alone.

  In the middle of the afternoon, Williams was swung in on deck, clinging tightly to the bails as he dropped down. Several dressers swarmed over him, relieved him of his rig, and pulled off his diving-suit.

  He rose unsteadily and swayed as he attempted to walk forward.

  In alarm, Carroll grabbed his arm to prevent him from falling, then let go in amazement and stood aside watching while Tom staggered up the deck.

  Tom Williams was dead drunk!

  His shipmates, as much startled as the captain, assisted the wobbling diver below and tossed him into his bunk where he was quickly snoring while they stood round, scratching their
heads in perplexity mixed with envy.

  Bob and Carroll leaned over the bulwark while the deck force cleared away Tom’s rig and coiled up his lifelines.

  “I knew we’d run into some new troubles, but I never guessed we’d have to contend with divers getting drunk on the bottom.” Carroll swore softly. “That’s the wildest thing I ever heard. It’s bad enough having to look out for ’em when they’re sober. I hate to think of what might have happened to Tom down there if he’d got fouled up in that condition when he couldn’t help himself.”

  “But how could he do it?” asked Bob. “He couldn’t possibly take a drink in a diving-suit. Most likely he was drunk before he went down.”

  “No, Bob, he wasn’t. I noticed him particularly when he went over and he was all right. Besides I’ve got all the whisky on the ship locked in the safe. I can’t make it out myself. Why, a man inside one of those rigs can’t even scratch his own nose if it itches, let alone take a drink. I would have sworn in any court that it wasn’t possible. But, it’s happened all the same and it’s going to be mighty serious. I can’t let Tom go down again. He’d probably get killed. And if those other divers locate the wine he’s found down there and he lets them into the secret of how he manages to drink it at the bottom of the sea, I guess there’ll be mighty little progress on what we came out for.”

  Both puzzled over the problem. On the fantail, in the superstructure, on the forecastle, they saw little knots of sailors in animated discussions. Evidently they also were trying to solve the mystery.

  Bob burst out laughing. Carroll eyed him gravely.

  “What ails you, Bob?” he asked. “Don’t you savvy what this means?”