McCullum knew his work, no doubt about that. One day he told Hornblower of the discovery of one of the chests of gold; the next morning Hornblower watched launch and longboat start off with strong-backs erected in their sterns, and blocks and tackles rigged on them, miles of line coiled in readiness, timbers, buckets, everything that human ingenuity could think of for use in this new task. Hornblower watched through his glass as the boats lay together over the wreck. He saw the divers go down and come up again, time after time. He saw the weighted lines lowered from the tackles; more than once he saw the hands begin to haul in on the falls and then desist while another diver went down, presumably to clear the line. Then at the end he saw the hands haul in again, and stay at work, hauling in, coiling down, until at last, between the two boats, something broke water and a yell of exultation came echoing over to the ship.
It was something quite large which was gingerly swung into the stern of the launch—Hornblower could see the stern of the launch sink and the bows rise as the weight was transferred. His calculations had already told him that a cubic foot of gold weighed half a ton—and gold was at a premium, five guineas in paper or more to the ounce. That was a king’s ransom; Hornblower looked at it as the launch came pulling back alongside, a strange object lying in the bottom of the boat, half obscured by weed.
“Those must be wrought iron bars on it,” said McCullum, standing beside him while Jones fussily supervised the transfer to the ship, “and best Sussex iron at that. Steel would have rusted to nothing a year ago, but some of those bars are still whole. The weeds growing from the oak must have been a yard long—my boys had to trim ‘em off before they got the tackles round.”
“Easy there! Easy!” shouted Jones.
“Vast heaving at the yardarm! “ shouted the bos’n. “Now, you at the stay tackle, walk away with it!”
The chest dangled over the deck, balancing on its supporting lines.
“Easy! Lower away, yardarm! Easy! Lower away stay tackle! Handsomely!”
The chest sank to the deck; there were little dribbles of water still flowing from inside it. The gold that lay concealed inside it would have built, armed, and equipped the whole Atropos, have filled her holds with stores for a year, have provided a month’s advance pay for the crew, and still have left a handsome balance.
“Well, that’s one of them,” said McCullum. “I have a feeling that it won’t be so easy to get up the other two. This is the easiest job I’ve ever done, so far. We’ve been lucky—inexperienced as you are, you will never know how lucky.”
But Hornblower knew how lucky he was. Lucky that McCullum had survived a pistol shot in the ribs; lucky that the Ceylonese divers had survived the journey all round Africa from India to Asia Minor; lucky—incredibly lucky—that the Turks had been so complacent, allowing him to carry out the salvage operation in the Bay without guessing what he was doing and without interfering. It was consideration of this good fortune that reconciled him at last to the worry regarding the guarding of the treasure in the lower lazarette. He was the most fortunate man on earth; fortunate (he told himself) and yet at the same time he owed some of his success to his own merits. He had been clever in his handling of the Mudir. It had been a cunning move to accept a bribe to stay here anchored in the Bay, to appear reluctant to do the very thing he wanted most to do. Collingwood would approve, no doubt. He had recovered the silver; he had recovered onethird of the gold already. He would receive a pat on the back from authority even if McCullum should find it impossible to recover the rest.
Chapter XVII
These Mediterranean mornings were beautiful. It was a pleasure to come on deck as the dawn brightened into daylight; usually the night wind had died down, leaving the Bay glassy smooth, reflecting, as the light increased, the intense blue of the sky as the sun climbed up over the mountains of Turkey. There was a refreshing chill in the air—not enough to necessitate wearing a peajacket—so that the increasing warmth of the sun brought a sensuous pleasure with it. During a walk on deck with his mind leisurely working out the plans for the day, Hornblower soaked in the beauty and freshness; and right at the back of his mind, flavouring his pleasure as a sauce might give the finishing touch to some perfect dish, was the knowledge that when he went below he could sit down to a plate of fried eggs and a pot of coffee. Beauty all round him, a growing appetite and the immediate prospect of satisfying it—at least they brought the realization that he was a fortunate man.
Today he was not quite as fortunate as usual, because instead of indulging in solitary thought he had to give some attention to McCullum and his problems.
“We’ll have one more try along the present lines,” said McCullum. “I’ll send the boys down again today, and hear what they have to say. But I’m afraid that chest is out of reach at present. I came to suspect that yesterday.”
Two days ago the second of the three chests of gold had been recovered, but only after an explosive charge had blown a wide entrance into the wreck.
“Yes,” said Hornblower, “that was the substance of your report.”
“It’s not easy to make ‘em go down right in among the wreckage.”
“I shouldn’t think it was,” said Hornblower.
In the dimlylit depths, under the intolerable weight of a hundred feet of water, to hold one’s breath, suffocating, and to make one’s way in among the tangled timbers, must be a frightful thing to do.
“The deck sloped away from the gap in the side, and I fancy the last explosion sent that third chest through and down. The whole wrecks on top of it now,” said McCullum.
“Then what do you propose to do?”
“It’ll be a couple of weeks’ work, I expect. I’ll use half a dozen charges—with flying fuses, of course—and blow the whole wreck to pieces. But I must inform you officially that the result may still be unsatisfactory.”
“You mean you may not recover the gold even then?”
“I may not.”
Two thirds of the gold and nearly all the silver lay already in the lower lazarette of the Atropos–a good second best, but as unsatisfactory as any other second best.
“I’m sure you’ll do the best you can, Mr. McCullum,” said Hornblower.
Already the morning breeze was blowing. The first gentle breaths had swung Atropos round from where she lay completely inert upon the water. Now she rode to her anchor again, with a fair breeze coursing along her deck. Hornblower felt it about his ears.
And for the last few seconds something had been troubling him. Subconsciously he had become aware of something, while he had addressed that final sentence to McCullum, like a gnat seen out of the corner of his eye. He looked over at the pineclad slopes of Ada peninsula, at the square outline of the fort on the summit. The beauty of the morning seemed suddenly to turn harsh and grey; the feeling of intense wellbeing was suddenly replaced by sharp apprehension.
“Give me that glass,” he snapped at the master’s mate of the watch. There was really no need for the glass; Hornblower’s powers of deduction had already reinforced his naked eye, and the telescope merely revealed what he was sure he would see. There was a flag waving over the fort on the peninsula—the red flag of Turkey, where no flag had flown yesterday, nor ever since his arrival in the Bay of Marmorice. There could be only one conclusion. There was a garrison in that fort now; troops must have come back to Marmorice—they must have manned the guns of the fort. He was a fool, a stupid, insensitive idiot, blinded by his own complacency. Now that the revelation had come to him his mind worked feverishly. He had been utterly deceived; the Mudir with his white beard and his innocent anxiety had played upon him the very trick he thought he was playing himself—had lulled him into self-confidence, gaining time for troops to be gathered while he thought he was gaining time to carry out the salvage operation. With bitter self-contempt it dawned upon him that all the work on the wreck must have been carefully noted from the shore. Even the Turks had telescopes—they must have seen all that was done. They must know of the treasure being recovered, and now they had manned the guns guarding the exit shutting him in.