“Good enough, Bob, thanks to you. Nasty dig Pedro gave me, but if you hadn’t taken him out with that tackle of yours, there wouldn’t have been any need for bandages. I guess no one can ever tell me again that a college education is wasted.” He smiled ruefully as his shoulder throbbed. “Well, we’ve got two cripples now; Joe and I’ll make a fine team, each with a lame wing. I guess I’m the luckier though, for I can still run my job, while poor Joe can’t.”
He paused. The ship quivered, the propeller started to throb. Looking out the port, he saw the phosphorescent spray leaping past the rail.
“I guess we’re underway again for El Morro. By this time next week, Bob, we ought to be heading home.”
The thought of home brought a sudden recollection to his mind. He glanced with relief at his young companion.
“For a second, I saw your finish tonight, old man, when Pedro started to knife you. You’d thrown him clean across the bridge; there wasn’t one of us within ten feet of you when that knife started down. I’m certainly thankful Bill Clark’s been a boatswain’s mate long enough to know his marlinspikes; he clipped Pedro with it before any of the rest of us knew what was happening.”
“It was short and sweet,” grinned Bob. “Must have been all over within four seconds — you wounded, Pedro knocked cold, and yours truly opening his eyes again, a little surprised not to feel a knife sticking in his back.” He wriggled his shoulders apprehensively.
Chapter 20
Next morning they were back off El Morro, but it required two days’ work to retrieve the severed hawsers, bring them aboard, and put a long splice in each one where they had been cut. The boatswain’s mate himself did all the splicing, plying the heavy marlinspike with which he had felled Pedro; other sailors helped him tuck through the heavy strands as he worked away from the spot where he had married the two ends of the hawser. Carefully each hawser was made good. Tom Williams and Frank Martin examined the finished job to make sure that it was safe to hold the ship while they dived.
In the late afternoon, Lieutenant Carroll, one arm inside his blouse, took station on the bridge and steered in among the buoys over the wreck, while the surf-boat shuttled to and fro with the repaired hawsers. Shortly after the Lapwing lay as before, firmly moored over the wreck.
Carroll came down the bridge as twilight fell and watched the sun sink behind the pinnacle on El Morro.
“Three days lost,” he said bitterly to Bob, “and our oil’s getting low. It’ll be a close thing now whether it lasts until we get through. I’ve told the chief to cut down all the steam he can. We used up more oil chasing that surf-boat than we’d burn in two weeks out here.” He glanced towards the forecastle thoughtfully.
“Anyway, those two scoundrels are safely in the brig forward where they’ll cause no more trouble. That’s something.”
Dawn came; once more Tom Williams seated himself on the dressing bench where three days before he had been dressed to dive. His rig on, he clambered to the stage and went down, dragging the canvas bag and the light. Down the tunnel, through the passage, into the Santa Cruz; he made his way through the water into the strong-room. He lost no time. His great strength was an advantage in dragging out the heavy pigs — he managed to get twenty bars, half a ton of gold, out of the passage into the tunnel during the fifty minutes that he struggled inside the poop.
His time was up. He was panting deeply, his heart beating rapidly from the exhilaration of the highly compressed oxygen that each breath sent through his lungs. He closed the bag, lashed the mouth firmly with the manila line, and felt blindly round in the blackness of the muddy tunnel for his lamp. He gripped it, signalled on the lamp-cord to haul it up, then signalled to hoist out the bag with its precious cargo. He squeezed against the side of the tunnel as the line tautened and the gold rose past him; the hoisting-line slipped a little and the heavy bag swung against his helmet, driving it sharply into the mud at the side of the tunnel. The bag surged clear and rose; with an effort Tom pulled his helmet free of the clinging clay; his hands groped up and felt his helmet. His face-plates were plastered with soft mud and sand, but a few brisk rubs with his hands and the water washed them clear. Tom opened his air-valve wider, lightened himself a little, and climbed out on the ocean bed. The bag of gold was already on its way up.
Four jerks on his lifeline. He started along the bulkhead for the descending-line, reached it, and paused a moment before giving the answering four jerks to be hauled up. His suit was covered with clay. He rubbed it vigorously; clouds of mud spread through the water, and the Santa Cruz faded from view.
He shook his heavy shoes to wash the clay from them, then satisfied, felt round for the descending-line, gripped it, and seizing his lifeline, jerked it briskly four times.
A strain came on his lifelines, he was pulled off the bottom, hand over hand the tenders started to haul him. To lighten up a bit and ease the weight for them, Tom opened his air-inlet valve wider and screwed down a trifle on his exhaust; air continued to bubble out into the water, but in lesser volume.
He went up a few feet farther.
Tom’s suit started to bulge a little more. Mechanically, he swung his left hand up to his breast, to throttle down on his control-valve and reduce his buoyancy. But hardly had he started the motion when the bubbles suddenly stopped exhausting from his helmet. His suit swelled out with a rush, his canvas sleeves bulged out stiffly, straightening out his arms, he became buoyant and started to float up.
In a flash he realised his danger. The mud had clogged his exhaust-valve, jammed it shut! No air could escape from his suit, but air was still coming in through his air-hose.
Frantically he tried to bend his arm to get his hand on his control and shut off his air, but his over-inflated suit became rigid. He could not bend the sleeves — he was ‘spread eagled.’
His suit ballooned out, giving him tremendous buoyancy. In despair, Tom felt himself shooting to the surface. No decompression!
Faster and faster he rose, his suit swelled out to vast proportions. The water-pressure decreased rapidly, his eardrums surged outward, his head became dizzy. Hazily he could see the water rushing downward past his face-plates. His slack lifelines dangled in an ever-increasing loop beneath him.
Tom’s head swam, his lungs swelled as if about to burst. He made a last feeble effort to bring in his arm and close the valve. It failed. His head fell forward against his helmet, he lost consciousness. He raced upward from the depths.
A second later, he burst through the surface like a tarpon, rose clear of it nearly five feet, and fell back with a tremendous splash into the sea.
On the Lapwing the startled tenders gazed as if petrified. Lieutenant Carroll hurriedly brought them back to life.
“Heave in, heave in on that lifeline!” he yelled, then, “Martin! Clark! On the stage!” The two men jumped aboard. “On the winch there. Up stage!” The stage was hoisted over, lowered until Bill Clark and Frank Martin were standing in the water up to their waists.
Meanwhile the tenders had pulled in over a hundred feet of slack, and the taut lifeline was beginning to haul on Tom, who floated fifty feet away like a balloon; face down, arms outstretched, motionless. Hastily they reeled him in, brought him alongside. The boatswain’s mate pulled him on to the stage.
“Up stage!”
In went the clutch, the stage was jerked over the side, and dropped on deck. Martin whipped out his knife, ripped open Tom’s suit, cut away his harness, his belt, his shoes. Without waiting to unscrew his helmet, Frank and Bill dragged the unconscious diver out of the hole cut in his suit, tore off his telephone headgear, and, seizing Tom at head and foot, ran up the passage with him.
In through the door of the ‘iron doctor’ he was flung; Carroll, Frank, and Bill tumbled after him. The door slammed to, and Bill swung down the dogs.
Carroll sprang for the air-valve and twisted it wide open. Air started to rush in, the pressure rose rapidly, the needle on the gauge inside lifted off the pin and starte
d to revolve.
Tom lay on the deck, Bill and Frank cutting away his clothes. Carroll stared at the gauge. The air sang past — thirty, forty, fifty pounds. Carroll’s ears began to ring. The pressure was coming up too fast for him, but that meant nothing. Sixty pounds, seventy pounds. He started to bleed from the mouth, but still he let the air roar through. He must get the pressure up on Tom and recompress the bubbles in his blood before they stopped his heart for ever. Eighty pounds, ninety pounds — he staggered, clinging drunkenly to the valve while the needle on the gauge danced unsteadily before his eyes. 100 pounds. Enough! He closed the valve. The chamber, oppressively hot from the sudden rush of air, became suddenly quiet.
Clinging to the side of the tank, Carroll reeled to the inner chamber. Tom lay there, his legs doubled up, the muscles over his abdomen twisted into knots, his body covered with masses of purple blotches from the bursting of innumerable small blood-vessels beneath his skin. A bad case of ‘the bends’.
Slowly the pressure took effect. Under pressure again, the air which had frothed out in Tom’s veins gradually dissolved; Tom’s circulation grew a little more regular, his convulsed body relaxed. But in spite of hours of working over him as they reduced the pressure according to the diving-tables, Tom was still unconscious; his irregular breathing and faint heart action threatened to stop at any moment.
At last the pressure in the chamber was down to atmosphere; what the ‘iron doctor’ could do for Tom was done. It had given back his life; but medical care was necessary to hold the life in Tom’s terribly strained body.
Carroll, weak from his wound, more weakened by his efforts to save Tom, rose from his side at last and crawled clumsily out through the door.
“If we’re going to save Tom, we’ll have to get him to a hospital quick,” he mumbled to himself.
Once more the mooring-lines, the splices hardly set taut, parted under the blows of the axe. The surf-boat was swung aboard. Again the Lapwing turned her prow eastward and raced for Guayaquil.
The boilers were pushed to their utmost; the ship quivered and throbbed as she attempted to better her sixteen-knot speed; the safety-valves started to chatter as the steam rose to 200 pounds, the safety setting for the boilers.
Carroll watched the funnel belching smoke as the black gang forced the fires; watched the precious steam that might be speeding up the engine blowing uselessly into the air.
His jaws set grimly; he stepped to the voice-tube, rang up the engine room.
“Hello, chief! Carroll speaking. Get a wrench and screw down on all the boiler safety-valves until they hold 250 pounds. And then keep the steam at that!”
A few minutes went by. The leaking of the steam abaft the stack ceased. The smoke grew thicker, long tongues of red flame shot from the funnel, the paint curled up and dropped away.
The stern of the Lapwing vibrated madly as the pistons in the engine pounded up and down under a pressure far beyond their design; the chief bled high-pressure steam direct into the intermediate and low-pressure cylinders; the revolutions of the shaft crawled up until the ship was making nineteen knots and shaking as if each second she would fly apart.
On the bridge, Carroll, haggard and worn, kept his eye on the revolution counter, watched the speed mount, and wondered whether they would be in time.
Bob, from the wing of the bridge, pretending to watch the waves as they rushed by, kept a careful eye on Carroll’s every movement, expecting him to collapse any minute. But the hours went by, and Carroll clung with his one good arm to the rail as the swaying ship plunged on; Fitz brought him coffee and toast; Bob helped him to eat. The afternoon wore on.
A sudden thought occurred to Bob.
“Say, skipper, when shall we get in?”
“At this speed, about ten tonight. Why?”
“Hadn’t we better radio to have an ambulance standing by?”
Lieutenant Carroll nodded and rang the wireless-room. The operator came, a little surprised. Not a message had left the Lapwing since she entered the Pacific. Carroll caught his expression.
“We’ll have to break our silence. Take this: To American Consul, Guayaquil. S.S. Lapwing due Guayaquil ten P.M. tonight with badly injured American sailor stop please have ambulance alongside pier on arrival Signed Carroll, Master.”
The operator went aft. Soon there drifted up on the bridge the crackling of the sending key as the dots and dashes flashed into the air.
“I wanted not to make port at all this cruise,” said Carroll, “for fear that whoever stole your book would jump the ship, but now with those two devils in the brig, we’ll be all right. It’ll be night when we get in; we’ll get Tom to the hospital and see that the consul will have him taken care of; then we’ll get away before dawn, so nobody’ll ever have a chance to get inquisitive.
“And come to think of it, I guess we’d better load up on bunker oil while we’re in. There’ll be mighty little left in the tanks after this run.” He looked at the flames leaping up the stack, scorching the mainmast astern of it. “The chief must be running rivers of oil into the boilers to make ’em do that!” He called the radio-room again, and sent off a second wire, directing that an oil-barge be brought alongside when they came in.
Slowly the hours passed, with no change in Tom. His condition was precarious. The Lapwing pounded on, rolling unsteadily as she forged eastward. Night fell; in the dim gleam of the binnacle, the helmsman, the captain, and Bob Porter stood out faintly in the surrounding gloom. Each bell, Carroll estimated the run from the engine log and pricked their position on the chart. Fitz brought up more coffee; it braced up the weary captain.
A light shot up over the horizon a little on the port bow. Bob took its bearing on the quadrant; Carroll plotted it and then studied its characteristics through his glasses.
“Mandinga Point Light. We’re right on our course.”
The Lapwing swept into the Gulf of Guayaquil, ran in south of Puna Island, swung to port, slowed while they picked up a pilot, and then headed north towards Guayaquil.
The pilot rang for “Two-thirds speed.”
In broken Spanish, Carroll explained to the pilot that they had an injured man aboard, and must make haste. His explanation finally was understood.
“Ah, si, si, comprendo.” The pilot’s face lit up and he shoved the telegraph over to ‘Full speed’. They swept into the harbour, headed for the quay that the pilot designated. Carroll took charge again.
The Lapwing ran swiftly up to the quay, backed ‘Full speed’. and, with her wheel hard left, swung her starboard side into the quay. Two heaving-lines whistled through the air and landed on the dock. Quickly the hawsers ran out and were tossed over the bollards on the dock. The Lapwing’s capstans heaved in; in another moment the ship was warped into her berth. The watch on deck ran out the gangway.
Carroll left the bridge and hurried to the side.
A knot of loungers gathered on the wharf, watching curiously the ambulance which backed down to the gangway. Two white-robed attendants drew out a stretcher and came aboard, followed by two men, one of whom was evidently an elderly doctor. The other, about Carroll’s age, was an American.
Carroll saluted him. “The American Consul, I presume?”
“Yes, I’m Mr Williamson, the consul here. Glad to meet you.” He shook Carroll’s hand, gazed in surprise at his naval uniform. “I thought this was a merchant ship, but it looks just like the mine-sweepers I’ve seen at Panama. And I see you’re in the Navy. What’s up?”
“It’s a long story, Mr Williamson, I’ll explain later. Meanwhile we’d better get our man ashore.” He turned to the physician. “Buenos noches, señor. Tenga la bondad de veniendo aqui?” and he led the way to the recompression-tank.
In a few minutes, Tom, still unconscious, went over the side in the stretcher, while his shipmates mournfully lined the rail and watched him disappear into the ambulance. The physician and the attendants scrambled in after; with clanging bell, the ambulance shot down the pier and vanished i
n the darkness. Lieutenant Carroll and Mr Williamson followed the ambulance in a cab.
A tug whistled off their port side; the boatswain’s mate threw over the fenders there while a low oil-barge slid alongside in the darkness and tied up. The oil-hoses were run down to her and soon the steady throb of the pumps on the barge was forcing fuel on board the Lapwing.
Bob looked with interest at the heavily loaded barge, her low sides barely visible through the night, and tried to engage its crew in conversation, but he found they spoke so rapidly that his Spanish was not equal to the occasion. With some difficulty he learned that the fuelling process would take three hours, then he returned to the starboard side of the deck to look at Guayaquil.
He could see very little. Lights sparkled here and there over the water; in the distance he thought he could make out the vague outlines of a cathedral. “I guess I’m not seeing much of the world on this cruise,” he thought to himself. “I’ll be able to name every tree and every rock on El Morro, and that’s about all.”
Frank Martin paced the starboard side of the deck while Bill Clark, ashore at the foot of the gangway, kept would-be visitors ashore. Bob watched the boatswain’s mate arguing in broken English with the natives who wanted to stroll over the ship, while Martin saw that no member of the crew either got ashore or spoke to those on the dock.
The loungers on the dock dispersed, and the lights of the city grew scarcer. Eight bells struck, the watch was relieved, but still Martin and Clark clung to their posts. Except for those on duty, the crew of the Lapwing, their hopes of leave in Guayaquil abandoned, went below and turned in. Only the creaking of the pumps on the oil-barge broke the silence on the quay.
Two bells struck. The oil-barge finished pumping, the hoses were disconnected. Bob crossed the deck once more and watched the tug haul her away into the night.
Thirty Fathoms Deep Page 15