Algy, leaning over the other side, gazed with interest at the quickly shelving floor of the lagoon. The colour of the water became more intense and then he could no longer see the bottom. He had a slight twinge of vertigo as he stared into the unfathomable depths. It was as if the machine hung poised in s.p.a.ce on the edge of a precipice, with a pale-blue infinity above and a deep-blue void below. He noticed several fish darting swiftly away and was about to turn when another movement caught his eye.
At first it seemed as if the bottom of the sea was slowly rising to meet them-not all the bottom, but a large circular part of it. It seemed to be bringing two enormous open oyster-sh.e.l.ls with it, two discs of dully-smouldering opalescent white.
It was not until a thick snake-like coil detached itself from the bulk and groped feelingly upwards that he realized he was looking at an octopus, a monstrous horror of the deep, far exceeding in size anything he had ever imagined. For a moment he stared spellbound, stunned into tongue-tied silence . . . and then he screamed.
Biggles, after one glance at the ashen face beside him, had thrust the throttle wide open and kicked the rudder-bar full over to swing round into the wind. But he was too late.
The machine gave a wild lurch and remained motionless, the nose c.o.c.ked high into the air as the tail was drawn down. Glancing over his shoulder, the pilot saw something like a thick rope curled over the end of the fuselage just in front of the tailplanes. A great weight had already dragged half the tail-unit under water.
In the nightmare-like horror of the next few seconds things seemed to happen with a slow deliberation that was appalling, and with such vivid clarity that no detail escaped him. All fear seemed to vanish in the pent-up intensity of the moment, and he watched with the fascination of a spectator. Such movements as he made were purely instinctive.
He saw Tauri spring up out of the cabin, axe in hand, and then run swiftly down the fuselage towards the tail. The axe flashed in the sunlight, swept over and down, sheared through the mighty tentacle and sank with a thud into the woodwork of the hull, where it remained quivering. The tail, released from its ghastly anchor, instantly leapt upwards and sideways. Tauri, thrown off his balance, made a desperate leap for the leading edge of the tailplane, missed it, and disappeared from sight. The machine, churning up a sea of foam, swung round in its own length and leapt forward under the full power of the engine. Tauri came into view, swimming as only an islander can swim; his brown arms flashed through the air like twin propellers and his legs pounded the water like pistons as he raced towards the reef. Behind him surged a great ripple; under it was a broad black shadow.
The pilot throttled back a trifle and touched the rudder-bar lightly to bring the machine in line with pursuer and pursued. As he neared them he swung round the ripple in a wild swerve and bore down upon the swimming native. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a great tentacle break the surface and grope horribly towards his wing-tip, but his eyes were fixed on the man in front, now within thirty yards of the reef. "Catch him !" he yelled.
Algy leaned far over the side, arms outstretched to grasp the gasping Polynesian. Ten yards-five-their hands met. Just what happened after he took the man"s weight and pulled, he never knew. Whether it was the speed of the machine, he was unable to say, but the next second he was in the water, striking out madly towards the reef.
Biggles made a frantic grab at his feet as he disappeared overboard, but missed him.
Behind him, the waving tentacles were within twenty yards. In front was the reef, and there was not room to turn. He thrust the throttle wide open and jerked the joystick back into his stomach. The machine lifted off the water, wobbled for a moment at stalling speed, and then, almost grazing the top of the reef, picked up and soared into the air.
Swinging round in a desperate climbing turn, he could take in the whole situation at a glance.
Algy and Tauri had reached the reef and were scrambling wildly for the highest point.
The octopus, looking like a great bloated spider, lay about fifty yards away in the shallow part of the lagoon. The pilot watched the two men on the reef crawl down the far side and crouch beneath the flying spray of the ocean rollers. Twice he glided down towards the lagoon as if to land, but each time the giant octopus moved sideways towards him and he knew that it was watching him. Landing was obviously out of the question.
Suddenly he swung round and headed away over the open sea towards Rarotayo.
III.
Although Algy knew that Biggles would not have left him unless he had a definite plan in his mind, he watched the machine disappear into the blue distance with consternation.
"We finish altogether, eh, boss?" observed the Tahitian calmly, at last.
"Finish nothing," replied Algy shortly, with a conviction he was far from feeling.
"Big fella him kai-kai us plenty," murmured Tauri philosophically.
"That fella no walk on rocks, eh?" asked Algy in dismay.
"Him walk pretty quick," answered Tauri grimly.
Algy did not reply, but lying on his stomach peered through a tracery of coral to where the monster lay like a dark stain on the water, the stump of its severed tentacle waving gently above the surface.
He wondered how Biggles hoped to cope with the horror. There was no point in fetching the boat to their a.s.sistance, for between them and the open sea was fifty yards of creamy foam where the ocean rollers pounded with a force sufficient to smash a boat or a human being to pulp in a moment of time. Whatever was to be done would have to be done before nightfall, for after a night spent on the reef among the crawling horrors, which he knew would come out after dark, dawn would probably find them gibbering lunatics.
An hour pa.s.sed slowly. Several sea-birds had arrived and were circling round them, uttering plaintive cries. For some minutes Algy watched them disinterestedly, and then, with a sudden horrible suspicion in his mind, he crawled to the top of the reef and peeped over. One glance and his worst fears were realized.
With a slow, half-crawling half-rolling motion, the octopus was coming in their direction, attracted no doubt by the actions of the birds.
"We finish together," observed Tauri with pathetic fatalism.
For a few moments Algy came near to panic, and looked at the foaming surf as if considering plunging headlong in. Then a distant sound caught his ear and he listened tensely.
"Other boss he come plenty quick," said Tauri hopefully, pointing to a distant but rapidly approaching speck in the sky.
But the horror was approaching too, with ghastly deliberation. With one accord the two men crawled down as near to the breakers as they dared, and started to work their way along the reef. Progress was slow, for the coral was slippery and razor-sharp in places.
Looking back, they saw the monster crawling up on the reef where they had been a few moments before, but the "Vandal" was roaring overhead now, and the monster stopped, evidently in order to look at it.
Algy anxiously watched the machine for a signal. He saw Sandy wave as the pilot banked; then the machine flattened out and raced straight along the reef, pa.s.sing so close that he could almost touch it. As it roared over the octopus a bulky object hurled downwards and the machine zoomed high.
Algy was unprepared for what followed. A sheet of flame leapt upwards; there was a thundering detonation that shook the reef and the air was full of flying coral. He was flung down heavily by the force of the explosion. He covered his head with his arms until the rain of coral had ceased, and then he rose to his feet and looked towards the place where the octopus had been. A great hole yawned in the coral, but the octopus was swimming strongly towards the deep end of the lagoon. Again the "Vandal" swooped low, and then zoomed high. A column of water sprang skywards and the surface of the lagoon was churned into foam.
The amphibian glided in, and without waiting to finish its run, taxied swiftly towards them.
"Come on !" yelled the pilot from the c.o.c.kpit.
They needed no second invitation. Plunging into the water, they reached the machine in a few strokes and hauled themselves aboard. The engine roared as the pilot opened the throttle, and they soared upwards into the blue.
IV.
"That"s a nice little lot," observed Sandy a few days later as they sat around a table in his bungalow. The objects of their attention lay on a small piece of cloth; they were pearls-seven fine pearls and a number of smaller ones, known as seed-pearls. "Just think what that lagoon must be worth," he mused. "What a pity I couldn"t hit that monster; but I didn"t, and there it is. I damaged it, but it managed to get back into its hole. It may be dead now, but I"m dashed if I feel like risking it. Tauri wouldn"t dive there again, anyway," he added.
"And I wouldn"t land there again," observed Algy emphatically. "It was a bit of luck you had those few sticks of dynamite, or I don"t like to think where I should have been by now!" he concluded soberly.
CHAPTER 6.
BOB"S BOX.
THE FOUR white men on the beach at Rarotayo watched the trim, white-painted schooner feel her way carefully through the opening in the reef and drop her anchor with a splash in the blue, crystal-clear water of the lagoon near to where the "Vandal" swung gently at her moorings.
"It"s the Sea Eagle, Sven Ericson"s schooner," announced Sandy to Biggles. "It"s about his time. He"s a good old scout, one of the old-timers, who has spent his life in the Islands.
Plenty of money, always going home, but can"t tear himself away. You"ll like him. Well, here he comes," he went on, as a boat was lowered and rowed vigorously towards them by two stalwart natives. "You"ll have to stay and meet him if only to hear the latest gossip."
"We"re in no hurry," observed Biggles; "tomorrow will suit us as well as today, provided the weather holds; but if I don"t soon make an effort I shall never go."
A month had pa.s.sed since the affair at Kaisiora, and the crew of the "Vandal" were ready to leave for Australia, where they proposed to sell the machine, or, failing that, have her thoroughly overhauled and then fly her back to England.
"Ahoy there, Sandy!" yelled the captain of the schooner jovially, jumping into the shallow water and wading ash.o.r.e. "Quite a crowd, eh? Time old fellows like me went home when the Islands come to this"-he jerked his thumb ruefully towards the aircraft.
"Heck! What would they have said in the old days?"
"Never mind the old days; come and have a drink," laughed Sandy, leading the way to the bungalow.
"So! You fly the aeroplane, eh?" observed Ericson, looking Biggles up and down curiously. "I"ve often wondered what aviators looked like. For me, I stay on the water, where I can see what is underneath," he concluded firmly, picking up his drink.
Biggles looked at the weather-beaten face of the giant red-headed Swede, and smiled. "I can see what is beneath better than you can," he told him.
"Eh? What"s that? You can see better than I can from the deck of my schooner? How so?"
"From the air I can see right through the water to the bottom of the sea-unless it is very deep," replied Biggles. Ericson looked at him incredulously.
"He"s quite right, Skipper," broke in Sandy. "Didn"t you know that during the war they used aeroplanes for spotting submarines on the bottom?"
The Swede drew in his breath with a low whistle of surprise. "Why didn"t I know that before?" he muttered half to himself.
He was very quiet during lunch. Once or twice Biggles saw him look up as if about to speak, but each time he changed his mind and frowned, as though wrestling with a difficult problem. Immediately after the meal was finished he took Sandy on one side and spoke to him in an under, tone.
"Ask him yourself;" replied Sandy loudly, with a wink at Biggles, as they settled down in the cane chairs on the veranda.
Ericson looked at the pilot anxiously. "Are you open to consider a proposition-a business proposition?" he asked, a trifle apologetically.
"Certainly," replied Biggles. "We"ll tackle anything within reason; what is it?"
"You"d better tell him the whole story, Skipper," said Sandy, turning to Ericson. "He"ll get the hang of the thing then."
The Swede cut some tobacco off a roll with a clasp-knife, rolled it between his h.o.r.n.y palms, and filled his pipe with slow deliberation.
"Did you ever hear of Robert McKane?" he asked, sending a cloud of pungent blue smoke into the still air. "Never," replied Biggles briefly.
"No? I don"t suppose you would," went on the other, "but you"d have known about him if you"d lived in these parts a few years ago. Big Bob we called him. Well, Bob drifted into the Islands just after I did, and that"d be nearly forty years ago; things were different then. McKane wasn"t his real name, of course, but that doesn"t matter down here; we call a man by the name he chooses down here, and that isn"t always the one he was chris-tened. There was some as said that Bob had been an officer in the British Navy and got chucked out for something or other; others said his wife went off the rails and drove him moost. That"s as maybe. He had a handle to his real name, though, and I happen to know that because"-the Skipper paused reflectively-"but what does it matter?
"Bob and his schooner, the Southern Star," he continued, "were soon known from Singapore to Thursday Island. He took on anything that came along, and what with blackbirding, copra, and sh.e.l.l, he must have piled up a tidy bit of money. He kept it in his cabin; at least, his boys used to talk about the box he had there which he was always popping down to look at, but n.o.body ever saw what was inside it.
"It would be about November, "thirty-five, when he tore the bottom off the Southern Star on an uncharted reef near Gospel Island; I never pa.s.s the place now without thinking about him. He turned up at Port Moresby in a native prahu about a month later and he was never the same man afterwards. He had lost his box. Everybody knew about it, of course, and he had plenty of offers to help, but he wouldn"t take "em, apparently because he didn"t like parting with any share of his boodle.
"It took him a year or two to get enough money together to get another schooner with diving equipment; as a matter of fact, he bought an old junk, which he re-named the Lisbeth, off a c.h.i.n.k trader at Moresby, and off he went to look for the Southern Star. He spent about two years looking, and at the finish he had to put to sea with half a crew. He was so cantankerous that no one would sail with him.
"He lost the Lisbeth in the big blow in the autumn of nineteen-thirty-eight. Two years later he was still looking for the Southern Star, and tales began to be told about the size of his treasure. First it was a bag of pearls the size of pigeons" eggs; then it was the map of a lost gold-mine in the Solomons, and then it was the whereabouts of an old pirate-junk loaded with loot-goodness knows what wasn"t in that box at the finish. "Has Bob got his box yet?" became a sort of byword, and, "When Bob gets his box" meant never.
"The war made no difference to Bob; he still went on looking. He was still looking when an enemy ship sent him to Davy Jones. One of his Solomon boys was taken off Gospel about six months later, and he reckoned he was the only survivor. When the news got out that Bob had gone there was a general rush to Gospel, and I joined it. I spent six months looking for the Southern Star, and so did a lot of others, but it was no go. The trouble was no one could say to within a mile or two where she went down; it was a dark night and there was a big sea running, and she drifted a bit before she settled down. The water isn"t all that deep; in fact, it isn"t more than ten or a dozen fathoms in most places, and that must have made Bob think he ought to find her. But he didn"t; neither did anybody else. Now you understand why what you said to me just now about seeing through the water to the bottom made me think. If the Southern Star is there, and we know she is there, you wouldn"t be long picking up her bearings."
Biggles nodded. "You"re right," he agreed. "We could cover fifty square miles while a diver was covering fifty yards."
"Well, if you"ll find the wreck, I"ll get the box up," offered Ericson. "I"ve got the latest diving equipment and a good diver. If you like the idea, I"ll tell you what I"ll do. I"ll take my schooner to Gospel with plenty of stores; there is a good lagoon there, like this one, for you to land on. You find the wreck, I"ll get the box, and we"ll split the profit. How"s that?"
"Suits me," replied Biggles. "How long will it take you to get to Gospel? We shall have to run down to Australia first for a complete overhaul, and you may have to cache petrol for me at one of the intermediate islands if Gospel is outside my range, but we can settle that later. Suppose we say we"ll meet six weeks from today at Gospel? That will give us both plenty of time."
"Do me fine," agreed the Swede.
"I"m positively aching to know what"s inside that box," declared Algy.
II.
The airmen leaned over the rail of the Sea Eagle watching the diving operations with interest.
Their plans had worked out well. After a badly needed overhaul they had flown the "
Vandal" to Gospel Island without incident or delay, and had arrived at the rendezvous a day before the appointed time. They had located the Southern Star on their second trip.
The ill-fated schooner was lying some miles south of the reef that had sent her to the bottom, which probably explained why the others had failed to discover her.
They had marked the spot by dropping a buoy, and all that remained to be done was for Ericson to fulfil his part of the bargain. His schooner had been quickly brought to the place, the diver had gone over the side, and the entire crew awaited developments with intense interest. Hardly a ripple disturbed the surface of the ocean; in fact, it was so calm that Biggles had landed the "Vandal" on the open sea near the schooner, to which it was now moored.
"I shall be thrilled to death to see what is inside that box," murmured Algy, as they watched the line of bubbles rising to the surface, showing where the diver was at work.
"So shall I, after the talk there has been for all these years," admitted Ericson. "Whatever it is it must be pretty valuable for a man like Bob to spend half his life looking for it.
h.e.l.lo, yes?" he called suddenly into the telephone he was holding, and then to the others, "He"s got it," he announced in a voice which he strove to keep calm.
They had to curb their impatience for nearly half an hour before the diver, with a small barnacle-encrusted chest clasped in his arms, broke the surface and was lifted aboard.
Ericson seized the chest, giving a ringing cheer, which was taken up by the entire crew, and with the airmen at his heels hurried to the cabin, where he placed it on the table.
He examined the heavy padlock, rushed from the room, and reappeared a moment later with a hammer and cold chisel in his hands. "Stand clear!" he cried, and the airmen stepped back to avoid the swing of the hammer. Three blows and the lock snapped. The Swede lifted the lid and peered inside.
He took out a small leather bag, which jingled unmistakably as he untied the string and poured a stream of fifty or sixty golden sovereigns on to the table. "He didn"t spend all his money looking for those," he mused.
He extracted another small bag and rolled twelve or fifteen good-sized pearls into his palm. "Nor for those," he muttered, with a puzzled air.
Next came an old newspaper.
"Nor for that," observed Biggles dryly, from the far side of the table where he was standing.
Ericson looked back into the box, lifted out a folded sheet of tissue-paper,, and stared at something that lay under it. The airmen saw him blink, bend forward and stare again. An extraordinary expression crept over his face, leaving it oddly white. His jaw sagged foolishly and he sucked in his breath with a sudden gasp. He raised his eyes to the others and his lips formed the words, "The treasure," but no sound came.
"What-?" began Biggles, but a shrill cry of alarm on deck cut him short. A babble of voices broke out, a medley of sounds in which one word stood out clearly.
Ericson jumped as if he had been shot and darted to the barometer. "The bottom"s dropped out!" he gasped and sprang for the companionway. He reached the deck with Algy at his heels and yelled a volley of orders. Pandemonium had broken loose.
Algy took one glance upwards and swung round to look for Biggles. "Come on!" he cried shrilly. He heard the lid of the box slam below, and then Biggles bounded up the steps and joined him. On his face was an expression that Algy had never seen there before.
"What was in the ?"
"Get aboard your boat if you"re going, but you had better cut it adrift and stay with me,"
roared Ericson. "I"ve slipped my cable. It"ll hit us within five minutes."
Biggles looked around. The sun was no longer shining, but glowed in the sky like a great amber-coloured globe. A mist obscured the horizon; above it, from the south-east, a broad indigo belt was racing across the sky towards them at incredible speed. A sinister oily calm lay on the water. "Great Scott !" he gasped, darting towards the stern, where the "Vandal" was moored. Smyth had already cast off, but was hanging on to the ship"s painter. "Quick!" snapped Biggles, dropping into the c.o.c.kpit.