Gold From Crete by C.S. Forester Read Free Book Online Page B

slowly down on his heels, holding the two loops of rope, for he knew the danger of bending forward while wearing a diving suit - at anything more than a slight inclination from the vertical, the protecting air would bubble out, the water rush in, and at that pressure he would be drowned in a flash. Still squatting, and working in the slime, he prepared to guide the loops of the slings over the ends of the depth charge. He had to keep his head clear and make quite sure that the slings were securely round the thing. The depth charge was not lying quite horizontal, and he put one loop round the lower end and called through the telephone for a pull to be taken on that sling. He felt the rope tighten and the depth charge lurch in the darkness and settle itself horizontally. That was better. He was able to complete his preparations; this was a plain seamanship job, a matter of ropes and weights, to make sure that the depth charge would hang securely in the slings as it was hoisted. If it came loose and dropped again, he could not answer for the consequences. Well, his education in seamanship had begun thirty years ago. His fumbling hands made their last precautionary exploration, then he stood up with a grunt.
    ‘Hoist away,’ he said into the telephone.
    There was just enough light down here, despite the thickness of the water, to see a faint black shadow rise upward in front of his window. It was a shadow lifted in more than one sense, and he felt his spirits rise with every passing second. He wanted to sing now; he even felt like dancing in his leaden boots and breastplate, in the glutinous ooze - high atmospheric pressure certainly played strange tricks with one’s feelings.
    The seconds passed and there was no sign of the depth charge redescending.
    ‘We’ve got it, sir,’ said an eager voice into the telephone. ‘You coming up, sir?’
    ‘Yes. Hoist away,’ said Crowe.
    He realized now how deliciously cool it was down here in thirty feet of water, and he grinned to himself at the thought that the best way to get cool in a New York heat wave was to put on a diving suit and go down to the bottom of the East River.
    His lines tightened and he was dragged out of the clinging mud, slowly upwards, while the light brightened before his window, increasing steadily until, blinding like a flash of lightning, the direct sunlight struck in through the glass. He felt the ladder in his grasp and started to climb to the deck with the assistance of a dozen willing hands. They busied themselves about him, whipping off his helmet, and he stood there blinking; even the humid New York air tasted much more pleasant when it had not previously been forced through an air pump. On the deck beside him lay the great barrel of the depth charge, filthy slime dripping off it onto the deck - that was the sort of stuff he had just been wallowing in. The torpedo gunner was hurriedly detaching the detonator.
    ‘I’d say you ‘ad about five seconds to spare, sir,’ said the torpedo gunner, squinting with a calculating eye at the amount of water that had entered; ‘maybe ten.’
    ‘A miss is as good as a mile,’ said Crowe. It was a cliché, but he did not feel capable of producing any original thought at that moment. Behind him the monkey suddenly chattered from his perch on the ruins of the after gunhouse.
    ‘Damn that monkey!’ said Crowe.
    ‘That’s the last mischief he’ll get up to in this ship,’ said Hammett.
    ‘I’ll wring the little beggar’s neck, shall I, sir?’ said the torpedo gunner eagerly. ’Oh, let the little devil live,’ replied Crowe wearily. It was not easy to condemn even a monkey to death in cold blood.
    ‘Wonder if they’ve got a zoo here?’ said the torpedo gunner. ‘P’raps they’d take him.’
    ‘Maybe so,’ said Crowe. Then he suddenly remembered his appointment with Mr Cockburn-Crossley. ‘Here, get these things off me!’
    Even the best clothes that Gieve’s can supply look rumpled after being