Secret sea;

  242

  ^.>iji:-i-^
  THE WHEEL OF YEARS

  "Sort of lonely down here," Pete said. "How about a few jokes? Maybe a song?"

  "For crying out loud," Mike said. "He wants jokes. . . . What are you doing, just sitting down there watching the mermaids? Why don't you go to work?"

  "It's a nice day down here. Sun's shining, clouds drifting by. There's a blue-and-gold fish right against the faceplate looking in."

  "Get to work," Mike said.

  With the ice tongs secured to the hoisting line, Pete once more squeezed between the frames and entered the first room. As he walked toward the black doorway, he felt the cold shiver run up his spine and felt the sweat breaking out on his lip again. "I hope that thing is really dead," he said to Mike. "I couldn't go through that performance again."

  "Take it easy, hear?"

  "Don't worry."

  Pete again went into the other room and stepped away from the door. It was much darker than it had been the day before with the sun west of the meridian, and he stood a long time waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom.

  As the shapes of the crates and boxes began to form in the gloom. Pete at last saw one of the tentacles, now pale gray, lying almost at his feet. Cautiously, ready to retreat through the door, he

  SECRET SEA

  touched the thing with the heavy lead weight on his foot. It did not react.

  "I guess it's dead all right," Pete said. "Good."

  Pete walked slowly forward until he found the body of the octopus. Some small crabs were clawing at the slit the knife had made.

  With the ice tongs spread open, Pete swung them down and forced one prong into the knife slit, scattering the crabs. Then he clamped the tongs shut. As he stepped back, he saw again the plastic lens of the light.

  "Fm tying the light above the octopus, Mike. See if it's beyond fixing, will you?" "Okay. Ready to go?"

  "Hoist away." Pete stepped to one side as he felt the hoisting line tighten. The octopus began to slide slowly across the floor, gliding over the crates and boxes, its long tentacles streaming out behind the body. Even dead, the thing made Pete's stomach go weak.

  Mike hauled it through the door, across the empty room, and out between the frames. As Pete saw its tentacles disappear upward, he said, "She's all yours and clear of the ship."

  "I think I'll just keep it and drape it on you if you give me any more trouble," Mike said.

  "If I ever see that octopus again," Pete warned, "I'll cut your share down to only a million dollars."

  THE WHEEL OF YEARS

  "I want to see the first dollar," Mike said. **What're you doing now?"

  "Going out to get a crowbar and a chipping hammer,"

  Pete got the tools and went back into the dark inner room. The first crate he tackled was too much for him—he couldn't get through it—so he went on beyond it to a low, circular lump on the floor covered with marine growth. Slipping the crowbar under it, he prized up and the thing moved.

  "I've found something I can move anyway," he said into the phone. He leaned the crowbar against a box and got the chipping hammer from the belt loop.

  Swinging the hammer took a great deal of effort at that depth. After bringing it down with all his strength the water resistance was so great that the hammer struck with about the force of a six-months-old baby swinging a rattle.

  "You might as well go home. I'll be here for the rest of the summer," Pete said as he rested.

  "What are you doing? Look, Mac, if you don't let me in on what you're doing, I'm coming down there and whale the daylights out of you."

  "Come ahead. But be careful you don't hit bottom when you dive overboard. It's only a hundred and ten feet deep."

  "A wise guy," Mike said in disgust. "Come on, Pete. What's going on?"

  SECRET SEA

  **rm trying to chip the crust ofiF a round lump down here. But it's just like swinging a tennis racket through a barrel of glue."

  Pete went back to work, and the effort took all his breath, so that he couldn't keep talking to Mike. At last he chipped away a half inch of the growth, but there appeared to be inches more of it. "Maybe it'd be better to haul this thing out of here and see what it is after we get it up there."

  '*Maybe," Mike said. "But I don't want to be hauling up all the useless junk in that ship. I'm just a growing boy and even that octopus was heavy."

  "What'd you do with him?"

  "Oh, he's playing around on deck."

  Pete took another vicious swing with the hammer and kicked up a little whirl of dust which floated slowly away in the gloom.

  When it was gone, something shone dull and soft where the hammer had fallen.

  Pete stared at it and then bent low, so that the faceplate was almost touching, and looked at it. Then he touched the glowing spot with his finger. It felt smooth and warm.

  "Mike," Pete said quietly, "we've found it."

  "The gold?"

  "I think so. . . . I'm almost sure. Send the line down."

  "The line's down, dope. What does it look like?"

  THE WHEEL OF YEARS

  "A lump of rock."

  "How do you know it's gold?"

  "I don't. But I think it is. I chipped a place clear on it and it shines."

  "Might be brass."

  "Could be," Pete said. But, looking at the dull, glowing spot, he knew, somehow, that it was not brass. Suddenly, as he stood still, he thought of Johnny. We're almost to the end of the long road, Pete said to himself.

  Outside the ship Pete got the saw and went slowly along the break in the planking, peering in between each frame. At the first frame after the bulkhead of the empty room he sat down on a lump of coral which had been blasted away and began sawing at the bottom of the frame.

  It was very hard work and he had to stop frequently to rest. Mike kept demanding to see the gold, and Pete finally explained to him that he was cutting a hole in the side of the ship where the room was so that he could get the round thing out the shortest way and not have to drag it through the door, the empty room, and then upend it and roll it between the frames.

  "You're panting like a yard dog," Mike remarked. "Do you want me to step up the pressure and volume?"

  "Might try it," Pete said. "Feels like I haven't had a decent breath for five minutes. And send down a sandwich."

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  "Ham on rye and double malted be all right?"

  Pete laughed and went back to work. When he had cut away all the frames clear of planking, he had a hole in the side of the ship about eight feet long and five high.

  "I've got a hole in her. How long have I been down?"

  "Thirty-six."

  "Jeepers! That's about the limit. But I'll try to get the cargo net under it before I come up. Then perhaps we can snake it out after I get topside."

  "It's been there a long time," Mike said slowly. "It can stay another hour or so if you want to come up now."

  "I'll stay another four minutes. But give me a stand-by at thirty-nine."

  "Okay."

  Pete dragged the heavy net through the hole. As he prized up a side of the round thing, the effort made his breath rasp and he realized that he was close to the limit. He jammed the net under half the thing, then prized up the other side, pulling the net all the way under. As he roved the cargo hook through the corners of the net, Mike said, "Stand by—thirty-nine, Pete."

  "I've got her and am coming up."

  It took thirty-three minutes for Pete to make the ascent and when he finally got out of the diving suit he was too tired to do anything but sit in the cockpit and sweat.

  THE WHEEL OF YEARS

  "Want me to start hoisting, Pete?"

  "Might as well. But I'm pooped."

  "I can do it alone, maybe."

  Mike went over to the boom and started hauling. "Coming easy," he said.

  "Sliding across the floor. The tough part will be getting it through the hole."

&nbs
p; "Jammed now," Mike said after he'd gotten fifteen feet of line on deck.

  "Don't force it. Might part everything. I'll go back down in an hour or so."

  "No. She's free again." Mike's voice was getting excited. "Anything else to stop her, Pete?"

  "Don't think so." Pete was too exhausted to have much interest, and he didn't even look aft at Mike straining as he heaved in on the line.

  "Halfway up," Mike said, taking a turn around a bitt and stopping to pant. "If this turns out to be a brass cannon, I'm going to jump on you."

  "Best opportunity you'll ever have. I could hardly whip you now with both hands tied behind my back."

  Mike snorted and went back to hauling.

  "There she is," he said after a while. Then his voice dropped as he peered over the side. "Pete, that's nothing but a chunk of coral."

  Pete pushed himself up with his hands and walked slowly to the rail. In the bright sunshine

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  the round thing looked brown and shapeless as it lay half awash in the cargo net.

  His feet dragging with fatigue, Pete went forward, got another line, secured the end to a halyard winch, and brought the other end over to Mike. **Jump down and make her fast."

  Mike took a frog leap over the life rail, secured the line, and came hand over hand back to the deck.

  Pete shuffled back to the winch, and as he began to crank the line in, he felt dizzy and sick with fatigue. As Mike grunted at the hoist and the cargo net rose slowly from the water, Pete said, "Forty minutes down is too long. For me anyway. Maybe it's all right if you're just admiring the scenery, but it's too long for steady hard work down there. After this, half an hour."

  "Okay. You look sort of green around the gills." ^

  "Let's get this thing on deck and call it a day, Mike. I don't want to go down again."

  "Don't blame you. Okay, heave!"

  At last they got the thing up to deck level and swung it with the boom in over the side and dumped it on the stern.

  Pete looked at the lump without interest and went to the companion hatch. "I've got to turn in, Mike. Must be an old man. You take her back to the island, will you?"

  THE WHEEL OF YEARS

  "Sure. Turn in, Skipper. Fll bring you something to eat if you want."

  "No. Thanks, Mike. Just rest my weary bones."

  After Pete stretched out on his bunk, he began to wonder whether the chart of time down and decompression time coming up that had come with the diving outfit was right. If, he thought, I'm this shot after every time down, I'll collapse after a few days of hard work down there.

  But his thoughts trailed off into sleep.

  Pete was dreaming about the octopus, and when something grasped his shoulder, he came surging up out of the bunk ready to fight.

  Mike backed away. "Take it easy, boy."

  Pete grinned. "What's up?"

  "Nothing. Only you've been asleep for five hours. It's almost sunset. How do you feel?"

  Pete climbed down out of his bunk. "Fine. Back to battery. . .. We in the lagoon?"

  "Been there. Think you can make it topside?"

  "I feel okay, Mike, really. That nap did the trick."

  "Well, come on up. I want to show you this brass cannon."

  "No kidding," Pete said. "Is that what it is?"

  Mike nodded.

  Pete snorted. "Beat myself into a stupor for a cannon."

  The sun was just sinking as Pete followed Mike

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  up into the cockpit. The first thing Pete noticed was the mess all over the stern of the ship. Bits and pieces and chunks of coral were scattered around, slime and wet dirt covered the teak planking, and a set of his best wood chisels was scattered around. Pete was beginning to frown when a ray of sunlight flashed up from the deck.

  In the middle of the mess there was a solid disk.

  Pete walked over slowly and looked down at it.

  "Haven't got it all cleaned off yet," Mike said. **But you can make out some of the carving on It. See, right in the middle there's a guy's head. Looks like a big tongue flapping out of his mouth. Then those pointed things around it. Like a compass card—eight of them. And there's all sorts of carving all over it."

  THE WH^EL OF YEARS

  Pete stood in silence looking down at the glowing thing.

  "Nobody would go to all that trouble to carve on a piece of brass, would they, Pete? Look, there're all sorts of houses and people's hands and animals. See, that thing looks like a goat's head and that looks like a snake. They wouldn't do all that on brass, would they, Pete?"

  "It's a calendar, Mike," Pete said quietly. "Aztec. They called it the Wheel of Years."

  "Is it brass, Pete?"

  Pete got down on his knees in the mess and licked the bare metal. "No. Not brass."

  "Then it's gold?"

  Mike was looking up at him, and his face was different from the face Pete had grown accustomed to. There wasn't any belligerence in it any more, Mike's lips weren't set tightly together in almost a sneer, and his eyes looked big and deep.

  "It's gold, Mike."

  Mike went over and sat down in the cockpit. "The red bicycle," he said quietly. "With chromium all over it."

  Mutiny

  or three days, which to Pete seemed years, they worked hke slaves. Pete, resting only between loads, made three descents a day, staying on the bottom thirty-five minutes each time. This kept him five

  minutes at thirty feet, ten at twenty, and fifteen minutes at ten feet, with a total ascent time of thirty-three minutes for each time down. Pete knew that he was dangerously close to collapse and that he was flirting with the ''bends"

  MUTINY

  but, ever since he had stood and looked down at the golden Wheel of Years, Pete had had a strange sense of impending danger.

  He didn't know what caused it, nor when it would materialize, but that first night he had said to Mike, "Things are going too smooth, Mike. Tve got a feeling that everything's going to break loose in a little while."

  For a moment Mike hadn't said anything, but at last he looked up. "So have I," he had said quietly.

  "Maybe it's the weather," Pete had said. "Maybe this fine spell we've been having is going to wind up with a bang and we'll catch another storm. Or maybe the Santa Ybel is going to slide down the precipice. I don't know what it is, but I feel the threat of something."

  "It's not the weather, Mac," Mike had said, ' "and the Santa Ybel isn't going anywhere. It's old Razorface. He's going to show up, Pete. I feel it in my bones."

  For a moment Pete had stood in silence in the blacked-out cabin watching Mike cleaning the last of the marine growth from the Wheel of Years. Then he had nodded. "I think so, too. So let's get that stuff out of there as fast as we can, Mike. Then get the masts back in and get going." "Suits," Mike had said. "But you've got the heavy end of it. Skipper. All I do is haul it up." And—after three days—Pete could agree that

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  he had the heavy end. The job of moving the heavy crates and getting the cargo net under them and secured so exhausted him that the sound of harsh, ratthng breathing in the helmet seemed almost a normal state of affairs. And when he stood, shaking with fatigue and dizzy with it, and watched the hoisting rope snaking the stuff out through the hole he often thought that he could not move another muscle.

  After the third day the topside of the Indra was piled with crates. At first Mike had opened them, prying open the heavy iron chests or breaking off the hinges, or splintering the heavy wood. But he soon stopped, for it was hard work and the reward was always disappointing, for the treasures inside were scummy and tarnished black. Just lumps in a bed of ooze. And he didn't have time to bother.

  On the third day Pete watched a big crate slide slowly toward the opening and then turned away from it to swing the repaired light slowly around inside the room. The sun was so far down that, outside the cone of light, the room was dark. The bones of the man showed dull as ivory. The empty moUus
k shells had been crushed by the movement of the heavy crates. Pete advanced slowly and, for the first time, noticed a roughly square hole through the bottom of the ship. He stooped to examine it and then looked curiously at the skeleton lying close to it. The light brought out

  MUTINY

  the shape of something among the bones and Pete picked it up and looked at it more closely. It was a long knife with a gold hilt encrusted now with growth.

  That man whose bones now littered the floor had sunk the ship, Pete decided. He remembered the writing in the log of the Santa YbeL The weather had been fair, the ship sailing full and by, and suddenly, without explanation or apparent cause, she had started to sink. Pete turned the knife slowly in his hands and wondered at the strength of the man who had deliberately cut open the bottom of the ship. He wondered, also, if Uemac had known before he started that he was going to die when he finished opening the ship to the sea.

  But now the room was empty. As Pete turned slowly back to the hole in the side, which made a dim, glowing square, he began planning how to get into the rest of the ship. In the middle of the overhead of this room was a hatch, closed and, Pete was ready to bet, battened down tight. Around the rest of the ship, only cracked in places by the explosion of the depth charges, was a wall of coral twenty feet thick.

  Pete decided that he would have to start cutting through one of the walls of this room and he dreaded the effort he knew it would take. He also dreaded the thought of finding another octopus waiting for him in the next hold.

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  "That's all there is, Mike," Pete said. "This hold's empty. Start me up."

  "Can you wait a minute, Cap'n? I haven't got this last lump on deck."

  "Sure."

  Pete crouched and went out through the opening and then sat down on one of the lumps of coral. In the faint and dying light he watched the schools of small fishes swim in and out of the range of his vision. Pete had noticed long before that fish were not afraid of him as long as he was completely under the water. They were even curious and would come up and press against the faceplate, peering in at him with their big, unblinking eyes. But if he was half in and half out of the water, they would not come anywhere near him.