Silent Death
THE next morning, Stokey climbed into his outfit with much jerking and grumbling. He shot a glance at Hawk, who was seated on a hatch cover beside the compressor. “That must be great stuff down there to make you lose your head over it. You haven’t done that since you were a kid. You ought to know better!”
He grumbled under his breath while he strapped sixteen pounds of shoe on his right foot, “You ought to be in a nut house someplace! Mooning around at twenty fathoms and turning on all the air you’ve got and having to stay in the pressure chamber for three hours after we drag you up! You won’t catch anything happening to me!”
Hawk grinned tolerantly, taking his drubbing as a matter of course. After all, it had been silly to forget to shut off his air after he’d made buoyancy serve its purpose. But then, what was a little palsy to a diver?
Vick looked on from afar, smiling in appreciation, and when the stage took Stokey down to the level of the water, she came close to Hawk.
“I’ll bet that sign down there gives him the jitters, Hawk.”
“Him?” Hawk said. “Give him the jitters? Say, that boy hasn’t got a nerve in his body! One time we were bringing up a war cargo at thirty feet and I got my lines fouled in some cables, and Stokey came down and dragged me out feet first. He had to cut off his lines to get to me, and we were four hours bringing him around.”
“With all the jobs you’ve done, Hawk, why don’t you retire?” Vick sat down beside him and clasped her hands around the knee of her sailor pants. “You must have enough money.”
“Oh,” snorted Hawk, “money! It’s not that—it’s the kick you get out of it. It’s all so…so…well, down there!” He broke off, amused by his lack of adequate words. “You know what I mean. It’s rather grand.”
Vick nodded and rocked back and forth, gazing out across the water. “I know. It gets you. By the way, how deep can you see in that water?”
“Oh, about thirty feet. After that depth, things are pretty indistinct.”
The man on the phone interrupted them. “Stokey says he’s down beside the Ciudad de Oro. He wants to know which side you saw those holes on.”
“Tell him,” Hawk said, “that her bow is pointing north, and he ought to dig around on the port side.”
The operator relayed the message and then, for the next fifteen minutes, the only noise on the forward deck of the Stingaree was the throb of the compressor motor sending its life-sustaining air to Stokey down in the murky depths a hundred and twenty feet below.
Finally Hawk unlimbered himself and stretched. “Ask him if he’s found anything besides cannons.”
“Okay,” said the operator. “Hello, Stokey! Hello! Hey! Wake up!” The sailor turned to Hawk, his face strained. “Must be something wrong with the phone line. He doesn’t answer.”
Unperturbed, Hawk walked over to the rail and gave the lifeline a tug, then held it loosely, waiting for the answering jerk. His mouth tightened and a worrying light showed in his eyes as he pulled the line again. Still no answer.
Just then the buzzer began to rasp out a steady note, and the operator snapped into the phone, “All right! All right! I got it. What is it?” The sailor jumped to his feet and tore the phones away from his head. “I just heard a mumble!” he shouted. “Just a mumble, and something about death! Good Lord! Pull him in!”
With both feet braced against the rail and his hands clenched over the lines, Hawk was bringing Stokey back up.