There was just no conclusion to be reached after all this debate, except for the one he had reached a week ago, and that was to effect as prompt a recovery of the treasure as possible and to leave the diplomats to argue over a fait accompli. He walked forward to hear from McCullum’s lips how much had been learned regarding this possibility.

McCullum had just finished hearing what the divers had reported to him. They were squatting round his cot, with all the attention of their big eyes concentrated on his face, and with all their clothes draped about them until they looked something like beehives.

“She is there,” said McCullum. Apparently he had been quite prepared to find that some gross blunder or other had been committed, either in plotting the original bearings or in the recent sweeping operations.

“I’m glad to hear it,” replied Hornblower, as politely as he could make himself endure these temperamental liberties of an expert and an invalid.

“She’s greatly overgrown, except for her copper, but she shows no sign of breaking up at all.”

A wooden ship, fastened together with wooden pegs, and untouched by storm or current, might well lie for ever on a sandy bed without disintegration.

“Did she right herself?” asked Hornblower.

“No. She’s nearly bottom up. My men could tell bow from stern.”

“That’s fortunate,” said Hornblower.

“Yes.” McCullum referred to some pages of written notes that he held in his free hand. “The money was in the lower lazarette, aft, abaft the mizzen mast and immediately below the main deck. A ton and a half of coined gold in iron chests and nearly four tons of coined silver in bags.”

“Ye-es,” said Hornblower, trying to look as if that exactly agreed with his own calculations.

“The lazarette was given an additional lining of oak to strengthen it before the treasure was put on board,” went on McCullum. “I expect the money’s still there.”

“You mean—?” asked Hornblower, quite at a loss.

“I mean it will not have fallen through the deck on to the sea bottom,” aid McCuUum, condescending to explain to this ignorant amateur.

“Of course,” said Hornblower, hastily.

“Speedwell’s main cargo was half the battering train of the army,” went on McCullum. “Ten long eighteen pounders. Bronze guns. And the shot for them. Iron shot.”

“That’s why she went down the way she did,” said Hornblower brightly. As he spoke he realized as well the implications of the words “bronze” and “iron” which McCullum had accented. Bronze would endure under water longer than iron.

“Yes,” said McCullum. “As soon as she heeled, guns and shot and all would shift. I’ll wager on that, from what I know of first mates in these days. With the war, any jumpedup apprentice is a first mate.”

“I’ve seen it myself,” said Hornblower, sorrowfully.

“But that’s neither here nor there,” went on McCullum. “Looney here says she is still, most of her, above the sand. He could get in under the break of the poop, just.”

From McCullum’s significant glance when he made this announcement Hornblower could guess that it was of great importance, but it was hard to see just why this should be.

“Yes?” said Hornblower, tentatively.

“Do you think they can break in through the ship’s side with crowbars?” asked McCullum testily. “Five minutes’ work on the bottom a day each for three men! We’d be here a year.”

Hornblower suddenly remembered the “leather fusehoses” for which McCullum had indented at Malta. He made a hasty guess, despite the fantastic nature of what he had to say.

“You’re going to blow up the wreck?” he said.

“Of course. A powder charge in that angle should open the ship at exactly the right place.”

“Naturally,” said Hornblower. He was dimly aware that it was possible to explode charges under water, but his knowledge of the technical methods to be employed was dimmer still.

“We’ll try the fusehoses first,” announced McCullum. “But I’ve little hope of them at that depth. The joints can’t resist the pressure.”

“I suppose not,” said Hornblower.

“I expect it’d mean a flying fuse in the end,” said McCullum. “These fellows here are always afraid of ‘em. But I’ll do it.”

The bulky figure of Eisenbeiss loomed up beside the cot. He put one hand on McCullum’s forehead and the other on his wrist.

“Take your hands off me!” snarled McCullum. “I’m busy.”

“You must not do too much,” said Eisenbeiss. “Excitement increases the morbid humours.”

“Morbid humours be damned!” exclaimed McCullum. “And you be damned, too.”

“Don’t be a fool, man,” said Hornblower, his patience exhausted. “He saved your life yesterday. Don’t you remember how sick you were? ‘It hurts. It hurts.’ That’s what you were saying.”

Hornblower found his voice piping in imitation of McCullum’s yesterday, and he turned his face feebly from side to side like McCullum’s on the pillow. He was aware that it was an effective bit of mimicry, and even McCullum was a trifle abashed by it.

“Sick I may have been,” he said, “but I’m well enough now.”

Hornblower looked across at Eisenbeiss.

“Let Mr. McCullum have five more minutes,” he said. “Now, Mr. McCullum, you were talking about leather fusehoses. Will you please explain how they are used?”

Chapter XIV

Hornblower came forward to where the gunner and his mates were squatting on the deck at work upon the fusehose in accordance with McCullum’s instructions.

“You are making a thorough job of those seams, I hope, Mr. Clout,” he said.

“Aye aye, sir,” said Clout.

They had an old sail spread out to sit on, for the purpose of saving the spotless deck from the warm pitch in the iron pot beside them.

“Five seconds to the foot, this quick match burns, sir. You said one foot of slow match, sir?”

“I did.”

Hornblower bent to look at the work. The leather hose was in irregular lengths, from three to five feet; it was typical of the crossgrained ways of nature that animals could not provide longer pieces of leather than that. One of the gunner’s mates was at work with a slender wooden bodkin, dragging the end of a vast length of quick match through a section of hose. When the bodkin emerged he proceeded to slip the hose along the quick match until it joined the preceding section.

“Easy with that, now,” said Clout. “We don’t want a break in that match.”

The other gunner’s mate set to work with needle and palm to sew and double sew the new length to its neighbour. The joint completed, Clout proceeded to apply warm pitch liberally over the joint and down the seam of the new section. Eventually there would be a hundred and twenty feet of hose joined and pitched and with quick match threaded all the way through it.

“I’ve picked a couple of sound kegs, sir,” said Clout. “Fiftypound kegs, they are. I have bags of dry sand to fill ‘em up.”

“Very well,” said Hornblower.

Thirty pounds of powder was what McCullum wanted for his explosive charge, no more and no less.

“I don’t want to shatter the wreck to pieces,” McCullum had said. “I only want to split her open.”

That was a part of McCullum’s special knowledge; Hornblower could not possibly have guessed how much powder, at a depth of a hundred feet would achieve this result. In a long ninepounder, he knew, three pounds of powder would throw the shot a mile and a half, random shooting, but this was something entirely different, and in the incompressible medium of water, too. With a fiftypound keg and only thirty pounds of powder it was necessary to have some indifferent substance like sand to fill the keg full.

“Send me word the moment you are ready,” said Hornblower, and turned back aft again.

Here was Turner, newly come from the shore, hovering about to attract his attention.