Secret sea; (19 page)

bilge—to the keel By the way, what's your

air pressure?"

**Steady on fifty," Mike said. "Volume?" Pete asked. "Five cubic feet a minute." "Fine. Hold both right where thev are." "Okay, fussy. How's about getting on with the treasure hunting?"

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"Restraiii yourself, lad," Pete said. Then he went on talking. "I'm going toward her bow now. .. . I'm close beside her, going around the bow. Those old Spaniards really believe-^ in building tubs. She's round as a beer barrel forward.... Oops."

"What's the matter?" Mike asked, his voice anxious.

"Brother," Pete said, "I almost stepped off the edge of the world. Mike, you ought to se-^ this. The ship is sitting right on the edge of a perpendicular cliff. I don't see how she stays there. .. . I'm going back to the stern now .. . back the way I came."

Pete turned around, being sure his hose and line were free all the time, and walked back down along the side of the ship. He skirted wide around the fallen coral and walked under the great overhanging cabin in which old Admiral Halivera had lived.

"Speak up," Mike said in a little while. "What's going on down there?"

"Just sitting here looking at all the sights," Pete said as he turned and went back to the middle of the ship. "There sure are some beautiful fish down here. Gold and blue and green, all sorts of colors with long strings and streamers."

"Listen, mate," Mike's voice snapped in the

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speaker, "we'll take up nature study later. I want to see some of that gold."

"Keep your shirt on or I won't bring up a red bicycle," Pete said as he stopped in front of the place where the ship's side had been torn open. The great oak frames were so thick with coral that there was hardly space enough between them for a man's body to pass, and as Pete looked at them, they seemed to him to be almost like the bars of a prison.

With the sun overhead now, there were deep black shadows inside the frames.

Pete felt a little shiver sweep up his backbone. "I'm going in past the frames, Mike," he said quietly. "I'll have to stoop to get in so that's going to put a sharp bend in the air hose. Pay it out to me slowly as I pull."

"Inside the ship?" Mike asked.

"Yep. Through the broken place. ... Let me have it." Pete felt the hose coming down, and he made a larger loop. Then, climbing carefully over the sharp, broken coral, he reached the ship. He measured the distance between two frames with one arm and found it wide enough to let him through if he went straight in. Sideways the chest and back weights, the light battery box, and the other equipment made him too wide. But he would have to stoop, or perhaps get down on his knees.

Very carefully, so as not to snag the rubber

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and twill suit on coral or a barnacle, Pete inched his way forward and hunched his shoulders. Then, feeling above his head with his hands and finding nothing, he straightened up.

"Dark in here," he said. "Gloomy. I can't see but a few feet."

"Don't the light work?" Mike asked. "I'm getting it now." Pete unhooked the 100 c.p. hand torch from the belt and felt back along the waterproof cord to the accumulator batteries in the box on his back. He found the switch, and the light went on.

"Works," he said. "But I'd rather have a good bright candle."

"I'll send one down," Mike said. "Do you want it lit or have you got a match?"

"Very funny," Pete said. He swung the light slowly from left to right. "I'm in a hold about twenty feet long, fifteen feet wide. Seems to be empty."

"No oxcart wheels?"

"Nope. There are two doors, one forward, the other aft. Both locked."

Pete reached around and got an Iron-handled, small pickax out of the leather loop on his back. Moving slowly, pulling the line and air hose carefully into the room with him, he went to the forward door and studied the wide hasp and bolt, the ancient heart-shaped lock hanging down from it. Putting the point of the pickax behind

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it, he swung up, rocking against the lock. The old metal crumbled away.

"Lock's off. Now, does the door open?"

Pete pried at it with the pickax, and it fell from the hinges, floating slowly downward. Pete let it fall and then stepped on it.

"Door fell off. There's another room. Looks bigger than this one . . . and darker. I'm going in. . . . By the way, Mike, if I give you a quick signal to hoist away, don't jerk it. The hose is bent into the ship, and there'll be another bend at this door. Just a smooth, easy pull and if it stops coming smoothly, don't heave on it."

"Okay," Mike said.

"I'm inside the other room," Pete said in a moment. "Darker'n a Stetson hat. Only a few feet of the outboard bulkhead's off. ... I wish I had a decent light! This thing penetrates about five feet."

Mike's voice was trembling a little. "Stop griping, for the love of Mike! What's in there?''

"Something," Pete said, slowly moving forward toward the shadowy shapes the small light showed. "Don't know what."

"Doesn't the gold shine?"

"Mike, everything down here is covered W'th gunk a foot thick," Pete said. "But there are shapes of things on the deck. Might be boxes or crates. I'll try one with the pickax. What's the time?"

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"Twenty-eight minutes."

"Yipe! I'll have to come up in a little whils." Pete took three more steps into the gloomy room and put the lamp down on one of the vague shapes rising from the floor. He was about to raise and swing the pickax when a movement caught his eye.

For a moment Pete wasn't sure whether he had actually seen anything or whether it had been the shadow of a fish or even his own shadow. He wasn't even sure of the direction. With the pickax back over his shoulder, he stood perfectly still, looking carefully into the arc of light made by the torch.

Then he saw the movement again. Advancing slowly across the flat top of the object the light was sitting on was a thinnish, grayish line. As Pete watched, it flowed toward the light like a gray stream of molasses.

And it got thicker where it came over the edge, although the tip of it going toward the light was still thin and rounded.

For a moment Pete thought that it was some sort of underwater worm. He was on the point of ignoring it and going on with the downward swing of the pickax when he suddenly saw a second thin thing beginning to stream toward the light.

Pete lowered the pickax to the floor and then stood perfectly still. Slowly, picking out the mov-

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ing streams in the black shadows, he followed them back and saw at last a shapeless mass of something only slightly less dark than the shadows. Peering at this, Pete then saw, and recognized, two pale yellow spots almost at the top of the mass of shapeless gray.

"Mike," Pete said, almost whispering. "Mike! Octopus. Hoist away. Hoist away!"

"Stand by," Mike's voice instantly replied.

As the line tightened, Pete reached out slowly for the light.

He was too late. One of the flowing streams slid up over the plastic lens, slid into the darkness behind the case. As Pete moved slowly backward toward the door, he felt a sudden hard jerk at his back where the light cord went into the battery box.

Then it was pitch-dark. Pete's knees went weak and panic swept him like a hurricane. He wanted to turn and run, to scramble out of the darkness in which that horrible thing lived.

Pete, his stomach ice-cold and reeling, fear drying his throat, stumbled over something and would have fallen except for the steady pull on the life line from Mike far above. As waves of horror kept pulsing, Pete felt as though he could not stand it down there; that he would have to get out of the suit so that he could escape.

Then Mike's familiar, flat, ordinary voice

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steadied him like a dousing with cold water. "Bear a hand, I'm hungry," Mike said.

Pete turned when he reached the area of light coming in through the broken place and squeezed back out on the ocean floor. Clearing his Lne and hose, he said, **A11 clear of the ship. Hoist away."

Then he could hear Mike talking to himself. "Down thirty-three minutes at one hundred and . .. and . . . eight feet. Thirty-three, thirty-three. Let's see . . . bring him up at twenty-five feet a minute. Stop him at thirty for four minutes. Then twenty for eight and at ten for thirteen minutes. Holy cow, half an hour before I can eat."

Then Mike said, "How big was the octopus?"

"Plenty," Pete said as he adjusted the outlet valve and started to rise steadily upward.

"Big enough to be dangerous?"

"Yep," Pete said.

"Do you think that's where the treasure is?"

"I wouldn't be surprised."

"Then we'll have to dynamite that rascal out of there."

Pete, without thinking, shook his head and banged one ear against the helmet. "Ouch," he said.

"What's the matter?"

"Bumped my head. . . . No dynamite."

"Why not?"

"Mike, the ship is absolutely teetering on the

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edge of that cliff. I believe I could push it over with a crowbar. If she goes over, she'll drop down to a thousand feet. . . and that'll be the end of the cartwheel."

Mike stopped hoisting, and Pete floated at thirty feet below the surface. Through the suit he could feel the diflference in temperature already.

**What are you going to do then? Can you snake the stuff out with the octopus in there?"

"Not me, brother," Pete said. ''Vm not going in there with him again. .. . He got the light."

"He did! Holy smoke, what are we going to use for light?"

"Search me."

Mike's voice was disgusted. "Oh, what a mess!"

"Yeah," Pete said quietly. "A mess."

Mike began hoisting again, then stopped him at twenty feet. Then for thirteen minutes at ten feet. Pete paddled over close to the Indra and, lying just under her, studied her bottom.

"The bottom's still pretty clean," he remarked.

"Come out from under there and talk to me," Mike said. "Are you just going to wait until that octopus dies of old age?"

Pete paddled out from under the boat and lay on his back looking up at the liquid silver of the sea's surface.

"You look like an overgrown sausage down

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there," Mike declared. "Can you see me? Vm waving my arms."

**Save your strength. The surface of the water is just Uke a mirror. But I can see myself beautifully. I look pretty good."

"How about taking an ax down and cutting off those arms?" Mike asked.

"There are eight of 'em. While I was cutting ofiF one, the other seven would be taking this diving suit apart, probably starting at the air hose."

"How about that shark chaser? Maybe it'll chase him out of there."

"FU try it. But I'm afraid it won't."

"How about some kind of poison?"

"Haven't got any."

"How about taking a wire down from the storage batteries? Hook one side to one arm and the other to another. Then I'd throw the switch and you could watch him fry."

"Haven't got enough wire. And who would do all the hooking up? That thing's arms are a good six feet long, Mike."

"Wow. How big around are they?"

"At the butt they're about the size of the main gafiF."

"That big! How big do those things get anyway?"

"That's a statistic in which I'm only remotely interested," Pete said. "The one down there is big enough for me."

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Pete's time was up, and Mike hoisted him to the surface. Pete climbed slowly up the little ladder over the stern and got on deck. Mike pulled the phone connection ofiF and began unscrewing the helmet. As he took it ofif, he unconsciously pushed the **talk" button on his mouthpiece and said, "Well, what are we going to do?"

Pete patted him on the shoulder. "Remember me?"

Mike looked up and then grinned as he took the telephone off. Then he stopped grinning as Pete shucked out of the heavy, hot diving suit. "What are you going to do about that octopus, Pete?"

Pete didn't look up as he unlaced the weights from his feet.

"I don't know—yet, Mike," he said. "Right now that thing's got us licked."

The Conflict Is Joined

JDack in the lagoon, the Indra hidden behind the mangrove reef, Pete walked slowly along the sandy beach. The sun was going down into the calm western sea, the world seemed at peace. The things which made noise

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by day became silent, and the things which made noise by night had not yet started. The only sounds were those the sea made against the white sand of the beach—a faint, liquid riffle—and the sound of the dying wind in the fronds of the coconut trees. There was also the noise made by Mike, who was trying to cut open a fresh coconut with a Boy Scout ax.

In Pete's mind there was no peace. As he walked slowly along, watching first one foot and then the other sink into the sand, he knew that there was only one thing for him to do. But he could not, yet, force himself to admit it. He could not stop thinking all around the one thin^ and ?o straight to it and think about it alone. The only way to get the octopus required an immense amount of absolutely ice-cold courage. Not the courage of men in battle when death is all around them, when there is no time to stop and think about whether you're brave or not, when there are other men close beside you. This thing Pete had to do took courage from the beeinning, it would take courage all the way through to the end, and the courage would be a lonelv thing.