hem.

"I've always had a bit of a philosophical turn, and I dare say I spent
the best part of five minutes in such thoughts before I went below
to find where the blessed dust was stored. It was slow work hunting,
feeling it was for the most part, pitchy dark, with confusing blue
gleams down the companion. And there were things moving about, a dab at
my glass once, and once a pinch at my leg. Crabs, I expect. I kicked a
lot of loose stuff that puzzled me, and stooped and picked up something
all knobs and spikes. What do you think? Backbone! But I never had
any particular feeling for bones. We had talked the affair over pretty
thoroughly, and Always knew just where the stuff was stowed. I found it
that trip. I lifted a box one end an inch or more."

He broke off in his story. "I've lifted it," he said, "as near as that!
Forty thousand pounds worth of pure gold! Gold! I shouted inside my
helmet as a kind of cheer and hurt my ears. I was getting confounded
stuffy and tired by this time--I must have been down twenty-five minutes
or more--and I thought this was good enough. I went up the companion
again, and as my eyes came up flush with the deck, a thundering great
crab gave a kind of hysterical jump and went scuttling off sideways.
Quite a start it gave me. I stood up clear on deck and shut the valve
behind the helmet to let the air accumulate to carry me up again--I
noticed a kind of whacking from above, as though they were hitting the
water with an oar, but I didn't look up. I fancied they were signalling
me to come up.

"And then something shot down by me--something heavy, and stood a-quiver
in the planks. I looked, and there was a long knife I'd seen young
Sanders handling. Thinks I, he's dropped it, and I was still calling him
this kind of fool and that--for it might have hurt me serious--when I
began to lift and drive up towards the daylight. Just about the level
of the top spars of the Ocean Pioneer, whack! I came against something
sinking down, and a boot knocked in front of my helmet. Then something
else, struggling frightful. It was a big weight atop of me, whatever it
was, and moving and twisting about. I'd have thought it a big octopus,
or some such thing, if it hadn't been for the boot. But octopuses don't
wear boots. It was all in a moment, of course. I felt myself sinking
down again, and I threw my arms about to keep steady, and the whole lot
rolled free of me and shot down as I went up--"

He paused.