Thirty Fathoms Deep

by Ellsberg, Edward

  Aided by two tenders, the captain hurriedly pulled the lead weights and the suit off Tom’s silent body and stretched him on blankets in the inner lock.

  For more than an hour he worked over Tom with stimulants, hot towels, and ammonia, before Tom’s breathing became stronger and a faint glow came back to his white cheeks. Finally he rolled his head and opened his eyes slowly, looking up as if just awakening.

  “Hello, Mr Carroll,” he said, smiling, then closed his eyes and went sound asleep, his bare chest heaving regularly. Martin, undressed now, gently pulled a blanket over Tom. Carroll, covered with perspiration, sank back against the steel side of the tank and gave a sigh of relief.

  “Thank God, he’s all right now!” He clapped Martin on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Frank. You’d have found some way of getting Tom clear even if we hadn’t had the torch!”

  In the late afternoon, Joe Hawkins dived, sliding down the fouled fire-house to the foremast of the wreck. He took with him the end of a four-inch manila hawser, which he secured to the mast to act as a buoy-line in place of the severed wire. That done, he sat down on the cross-trees, and, profiting by Tom’s mishap, had the fire-hose lowered from the surface while he hauled in the slack, until the coupling came down to him. With the spanner wrenches he unscrewed the joint; the upper end of the hose he seized to the new hawser with a few turns of marline while he slowly and cautiously stretched himself out on the cross-trees and turn by turn unwound the lower half of the hose. At last it was free; he sat up once more and coupled up the joint again.

  “On deck!” he called, “all clear! Take up the slack!” The hose to the surface stretched taut. He unscrewed his knife, cut loose the marline lashing; the hose fell away from the mast and faded from sight in the water. Joe signalled to be hauled up.

  A calmer sea greeted them next day. Bill Clark was dressed first, while Tom, his legs still sore from the jolting his lead shoes had given them, reclined on a coil of manila in the stern and watched lazily.

  Clark went over, slid rapidly down, groped his way along to the tunnel, found the hose, and washed steadily ahead. Joe and Frank followed him. Each spent an hour in the hole; by noon the last of the three had started to come up, and the day’s work was done.

  Day by day the digging proceeded. After a few days’ rest, Tom dived again and took his turn with the other three. But the work went slowly; they were down twelve feet with two more still to go to come opposite the treasure room.

  Bill Clark was in the tunnel, fumbling in the darkness to keep the jet of water from the hose aimed properly downward. A swirl of mud and water swept up by his helmet; he could feel the uneven sides of the tunnel as his canvas suit, plastered with blue clay, bumped the narrow hole with every move he made. Occasionally, to make sure of his bearings, he swept his helmet round until it struck the wooden bulkhead of the Santa Cruz; he tried to keep facing that, but in the total blackness he could keep his sense of direction for only a few seconds. Tightly he gripped the hose, played it here and there round his feet, felt them sink deeper in as the jet washed away the clay underneath.

  A heavy blow struck him. The hose tore from his grasp, he felt his helmet jammed into the mud at the bottom of the tunnel. Instinctively he tried to rise. A crushing weight lay on his body. He could not move. A little stream of water started to trickle into his helmet through his exhaust-valve and gathered in a pool under his left cheek.

  Clark felt the water and tried to twist his helmet to get the exhaust-valve on top and stop the leak. He failed.

  The sides of the tunnel had collapsed; he was buried under ten feet of clay and mud at the bottom of the sea!

  Clark ceased struggling for a moment and tried to think. Under the heavy air-pressure, his brain felt muddled, his thoughts came slowly.

  The hose! With that he could wash his way out! He reached for it, found he could not move his arms, could hardly close his fingers. The hose was gone.

  With an effort he forced himself to think again. No hope from the hose. They’d have to dig him out from the topside. He wondered vaguely how long it might take. Breathing was difficult. He couldn’t last long there. How long had they been working on that tunnel? Two weeks? He tried to remember. No, it must have been longer. He supposed he could stand the pressure another hour. They’d do their best from the topside!

  His shoulders were pinned tightly, but he twisted his head inside the blackness of his helmet until his mouth was opposite the telephone transmitter.

  “On deck!” He listened intently. No answer. He called again. Still no reply. He repeated the call louder. His breath came in short gasps.

  He became a little panic-stricken. Why didn’t the topside answer?

  “On deck!” he screamed, then lay panting, straining his ears against the telephone receivers. Silence.

  He tried to push his mouth closer to the transmitter, came in contact with the puddle of water that had leaked in. Despairingly he grasped the truth. His transmitter was soaked in water, short-circuited, useless! His telephone was dead. He could never notify his shipmates!

  For the first time, cold fear, like a sword, seemed to pierce his heart. He was to die alone in the blackness and the mud, jammed against the hulk of the Santa Cruz. There went fleeting through his mind a vision of her crew — their corpses must be lying on the other side of that bulkhead; he saw himself for all eternity buried there with them. The thought startled him into sudden activity, he struggled violently inside his suit to rise, but only for a moment. His strength was going, he found movement impossible; his arms, his legs, his body were firmly held in the surrounding clay and mud.

  Breathing with difficulty, the exhausted diver ceased struggling. With a conscious effort, he collected his dazed wits, forced himself to think.

  “Keep yer head,” he kept mumbling as if he were counselling another person, “keep yer head! Don’t use up yer strength by gettin’ in a panic. You bin divin’ a long time, Bill. Think!”

  He lay still, trying to breathe more slowly. He felt a bit calmer. Resolutely he forced from his mind the thought of death. But escape was wholly up to himself. Painfully he racked his fuddled brains. The hose occurred to him again. He remembered a shipmate who had washed his way out once. Smith. Fine diver too. No use to him. The hose was gone.

  If only he could let them know on the Lapwing. If his lifeline didn’t break or his helmet tear free of his suit and leave him buried in the mud, they could put the lifeline on the capstan and heave him up through the clay. But he couldn’t signal, and he couldn’t telephone. Damn that water! He wondered if any more had leaked in. He twisted his head a bit to find out. It had. His helmet was already a third full. He threw his head back with a jerk, almost laughed as the situation hit him. Would the pressure get him or would he drown first? He lay quietly in the blackness and weighed the question.

  He tried to think again. No hope from the wash-hose; no hope of being pulled out. What else was there? His thickening mind puzzled over it; his twitching fingers involuntarily tried to work themselves free through the clay.

  He became vaguely aware of touching something with his left hand; unconsciously the fingers clawed a small space clear and grasped a familiar object — the control-valve on his air-hose.

  Like a flash an idea shot through his mind, so dazzling in the hope presented that for an instant it seemed to the prostrate diver as if a brilliant light had flared in the darkness of his helmet. He was saved! He could blow himself out!

  Tightly he gripped the control-valve, half afraid that if he let go his fingers might not be able to work their way to it again. Gradually he swung it wider open. He felt a stronger current of air sweeping into his helmet, expanding his suit. Breathing became easier, part of the load was lifted off his chest, he was able to move his shoulders a trifle.

  He opened the valve farther. His diving-suit swelled out, became more and more buoyant. His helmet started to rise, and he found himself slowly pulled into an erect position. The water ran down his n
eck, from his helmet to his feet. He shut off the air a moment while he made sure. Yes, he was up. The mud started to press in on him again; he took more air, ballooned out his suit, and started slowly to float upward, his bulging suit straining against the harness which held his helmet down on his shoulders and floating him up through the clinging mud. Inch by inch he ascended; suddenly his helmet burst from the darkness into the dim light of the ocean floor.

  Hastily Clark shut off his air, and stopped rising. Only his helmet protruded, he was still buried in mud up to his neck. He paused a moment, in an ecstasy while he drank in the glory of the light after what had felt like an eternity of blackness; then he pulled himself together and muttered:

  “Now comes the real trouble!”

  He fingered the air-valve again. His distended suit made him excessively buoyant; if he were suddenly to tear free of the mud, he would go shooting to the surface without decompression before he could stop himself, and with all the air his blood had soaked up, ‘the bends’ would finish him.

  Cautiously he opened the valve again, floated up six inches more, then another foot. His shoulders and arms were free, his suit bulged a little further in the water, he started to rise more rapidly. Quickly he closed his control-valve, hit the inside of his exhaust-valve with his chin to open it wider and allow more air to escape. His suit shrank a little, the rising stopped, he sank back a bit. Adjusting his air to keep from sinking, he leaned over and tried to crawl out of the pit — but it was like a quicksand, and when he moved he sank deeper.

  He took a little more air, held himself steady, buried to the waist, and thought again. He dared not risk floating completely out of the mud, he knew he could never stop himself in time. His lifeline, drifting across his face-plate, gave him another idea. If he couldn’t telephone, his arms were free now and he could signal. He seized the line, gave it three jerks.

  A few seconds passed, the line was jerked three times from the surface in answer, then became taut. Clark shut off his air, made himself heavy as the strain came on, then felt his legs being dragged free of the mud. In another second, he was dangling in the water a few feet from the bottom.

  He signalled for slack, was lowered again, sat down on the ocean-bed to rest. Over him, the poop of the Santa Cruz loomed up, silent, immovable. His pounding heart and laboured breathing quieted perceptibly as he gazed at the motionless hulk under which he had been buried.

  “I beat you that time,” he muttered to himself. He rose painfully, retrieved the hose which was whipping round violently a few yards away, and dragged it back. Lashing the hose to his belt so that he could not lose it again, he moved to the edge of the hole, dropped into it, and started to wash out the soft mud and broken clay with which it was filled.

  He had managed to clear out nearly two feet of it when finally the signal came to stand by to come up.

  Chapter 17

  Three more days of burrowing in the muck and the clay, and the shaft was at last deep enough. From the description given by Don Jaime, the hole was opposite a passage in the hold which led aft past the strong-room. The next task was to break through the heavy wooden bulkhead.

  Fortunately, the massive timbers comprising the framing of the wall were on its after side, while the thick planks which formed the bulkhead itself were on the side towards the tunnel. The planking had originally been put on in horizontal strakes; with the ship lying on her side, the planks now were vertical, rising parallel to the tunnel. On what had once been the centre-line of the ship, they ended in a rabbet cut into the frame which here projected through the bulkhead.

  These joints, which came about two feet above the ocean bed, were very carefully examined by Tom Williams, on one of his dives; later, he described their appearance minutely to Lieutenant Carroll.

  When the tunnel was finished, Carroll fitted out his men for the next step. Tom Williams and Joe Hawkins went overboard, one after the other, each carrying a canvas bag full of tools.

  On the bottom, Tom walked slowly to the edge of the shaft, dropped his tool bag, and fished inside it for a tapered steel wedge and a sledgehammer. Joe joined him as soon as he slid down the descending-line.

  Williams gave him the wedge, pointing to a plank rising from the near side of the tunnel. Silently Joe adjusted his air-valves so that he could lie down, stretched himself out flat on the bottom, and, reaching a little above his helmet, shoved the sharp edge of the wedge into the oakum-filled joint between two planks.

  Straddling Joe’s body carefully, Tom lifted his short-handled sledgehammer over his shoulder, swung it down lightly once to measure the distance, then drew back and drove the sledge home with all his might. A sharp ring echoed through the water, and the wedge sank nearly an inch into the joint. Joe let go and crawled away; Tom in three more blows had entered the wedge at least four inches and driven the point right through the planking. A few side raps, and the wedge dropped out.

  From his bag, Joe took a stout crowbar and rammed it into the hole left by the wedge. He slipped a short length of pipe over the handle to increase the leverage; then both divers braced their utmost against the bar.

  The plank gave a little, a few barnacles broke off; they threw their weight against the crowbar, the end of the plank suddenly jumped clear of the rabbet and, fringed with oakum, stuck out an inch or two from the bulkhead.

  Tom withdrew the bar. From his bag, he took a half-inch wire strap, wound it three or four times about the projecting end of the plank, hammered the turns down tightly, and then slipped one of the eyes through the other. Meanwhile, at the descending-line, where a shackle had guided it down, Joe had received a wire hawser slid down from the Lapwing. He let go of the guide-shackle, dragged the end of the hawser over to Tom, and helped him shackle it into the eye in the wire strap. Tom gave the coils of the strap a final blow with his hammer to make sure they were gripping, then both divers stood back.

  “On deck!” called Tom. “Take up the slack!”

  The hawser tautened and pulled on the strap.

  “All right. Haul away!” cried Tom.

  On deck, the boatswain’s mate threw several more turns of the hawser round the capstan, jerking the throttle open. The capstan groaned under the load, then started slowly to drag the hawser in over the rail.

  Below, the divers saw the wire strap bite into the thick plank as the strain came on and the hawser stretched away to the surface. The joints between the plank and the bulkhead opened a little wider, the oakum seemed to be squeezing out, then suddenly the plank ripped loose and leapt out of the tunnel, dangling its twenty foot length from the hawser.

  “Take her up! She’s all yours!” yelled Joe. The plank disappeared.

  Immediately Tom broke out a pair of devil’s claw tongs from his tool-bag, reached into the opening left by the missing plank, and gripped the next plank, sinking the claws into the wood as deeply as he could by closing the tong handles. The hawser came down the descending-line once more; again Joe cast it loose, dragged it over, and helped Tom to secure it to the tongs.

  Once more the Lapwing heaved. The claws dug into the plank, seized it tightly, and in a moment tore it away. Twice was the operation repeated until altogether four planks running down the side of the tunnel had been removed, leaving a gap in the bulkhead four feet wide.

  A little over an hour had gone by. Tom and Joe lashed their tools to the hawser and started up.

  On the stage at eighty feet, exercising vigorously to assist their decompression, they saw Frank Martin slide by them on his way down, a stream of bubbles shooting from his helmet, leaving an ever-widening trail as he vanished in the depths below.

  Martin landed. He paused a moment, looked up to make sure the lamp-cord he carried was clear of the descending-line, then eased along the poop until he came to the tunnel. He tied one end of a coil of small manila line which he had brought down to a timber projecting overhead, and tossed the coil down the hole.

  He slid down the line, stirring up a fine mud in the tunnel. Immediat
ely the brilliant light of the 1000 watt lamp he carried faded out, shrouding him in darkness.

  Martin felt his feet strike the bottom of the shaft and sink in a little. He swung his lamp in front of his helmet, holding it close to him. Within a range of six inches, he could barely see. He felt round the tunnel and located the side towards the ship. The missing planks left an opening there. Pushing close and kneeling down he thrust the lamp in front of him, squeezed through between two of the now horizontal frames, and found himself lying on his stomach in the hold of the Santa Cruz. He crawled in a few feet farther. The mud of the tunnel was left behind, the water was clearer, he could see a foot or two.

  Curious, he swung his light round. Overhead, about three feet up, was another wooden bulkhead, which had once formed the starboard side of the passage. The diver scanned it closely. The planks were bulging down between the thick stanchions which had braced the bulkhead; apparently the weight of the cargo above pressing down was distorting them dangerously. A little gingerly, Martin examined the planks over him; if they let go, the diver beneath would be crushed flat.

  Lucky we’re not using any dynamite; it’d knock the whole ship down right on top of where we want to work, he thought.

  He crawled along some twenty feet, trying the planks beneath him occasionally by kicking them with his lead shoes. A dull, wooden sound came to him through the water.

  A few feet farther and the sound changed in tone. The bulkhead seemed more solid. He rapped it with the copper toe-caps on his clumsy shoes; a metallic ring came back beneath the wood. Instinctively Martin felt that the iron side of the strong-room was beneath him.

  Swinging his light to and fro, he crawled over the bulkhead, seeking some sign of an opening through it. He found none. He turned and slid through the water towards the keel. Perhaps there might be an entrance near the bottom of the hold.