“Off at last!”
“Good-bye, everybody! Take good care of yourselves!”
“Good-bye, boys! I hope this quest proves successful.”
The time for the departure of the Firefly had come at last. The oil-burning yacht was leaving from one of the docks in Brooklyn, and all of the other Rovers had come over to see them off.
“Be careful and don’t let anything happen to you!” called Martha Rover.
“And be sure to send us letters whenever you get a chance,” put in Mary.
“Don’t lose any hairpins, Mary, while we’re gone!” shouted back Andy, in an attempt at light-heartedness, for he could see that the girls, as well as the boys’ mothers, were looking very sober. Of all things, Andy detested seeing a girl or a woman cry.
“Be careful and keep out of trouble,” called Dick Rover. “And if you need any assistance don’t hesitate to send a wireless or a telegram.”
“We’ll be all right, Dad!” shouted Jack. “Good-bye, Mother! Good-bye, everybody!” Then, while the boys and men waved their caps and hats and the girls and the ladies waved their handkerchiefs, the Firefly slid slowly out of her berth by the side of the dock and turned down the East River toward the Bay; and the expedition in search of the lost Margarita was begun.
Jack hated to leave his folks, but there was another pang in his heart which, however, he took good care to keep to himself. He had risked a telegram to Ruth, stating that he was going on the quest, and he had hoped for some sort of reply in return. But up to the hour of sailing no word had been received from the girl who was so dear to his heart.
And up to the hour of sailing no additional information had come in concerning those who were supposed to be responsible for the hold-up in Wall Street. Not a trace of the Browns or the Martells, nor of Ditini and Ronombo, had been received. So far as could be ascertained none of the securities stolen had been offered for sale. Evidently the bandits and all in league with them were keeping well under cover or else they had left for foreign parts.
All of their baggage had been sent to the Firefly the day before, and the boys had arranged with Captain Corning regarding the staterooms they were to use. These rooms were two double ones on one side of the cabin of the yacht. On the other side were staterooms used by the captain and his mate. There were other staterooms further back, and these were assigned to Leif Olesen and his assistant, Nick Amend.
The boys had met the head diver twice, and he appeared to be a man who understood his business, but also a fellow who was far from sociable. But as the diver had not been hired for his society, this lack of sociability counted for nothing with them.
“All we want of him is to locate the wreck and get up the treasure for us,” was the way Fred had expressed himself. “If he’ll do that, he can look as sour as he pleases.”
It did not take the yacht long to run down into the Bay and past the Statue of Liberty, and that evening found them on the rolling waters of the Atlantic heading southward along the New Jersey coast.
“Hope we don’t run into any more bootleggers,” was Randy’s comment. He had not forgotten the trouble occasioned by doing this at the time they had tried to make their way in a motor boat from Nantucket to Cape Cod, as related in “The Rover Boys Shipwrecked.”
“Well, we’ll have to take what comes,” answered Jack.
Only a few fishing vessels came anywhere near them. A coastwise steamer from the south was in the offing, but kept several miles away.
Not to be short-handed in case there was work to do in trying to raise the Margarita or to get what was aboard the sunken steam yacht, Captain Corning had shipped a crew of twelve men, so that there was little or nothing for the Rover boys to do while the vessel was plowing on her way southward. They visited the engineer and his assistant, and also looked in on the cook in the galley, and even took short turns at the wheel in company with the captain and the mate.
“Looks to me as if we were going to have the best kind of weather,” remarked Fred to the mate, on the second day out.
“I hope so,” answered Nat Brooks. “But I’ll tell you more about it later.”
“Why? Do you think there is a storm approaching?” questioned the youngest Rover boy quickly.
“I know we’re getting into waters where you can’t tell much about anything,” was the reply. “You know the old saying, don’t you, about the calm before the storm? Well, this may be such a calm. If you’ll notice, there’s scarcely a breath of air stirring. If it wasn’t that we have our engines going, we wouldn’t be making any sort of headway.”
“Yes, I noticed there wasn’t much wind. I hope it doesn’t blow too hard. We were wrecked down here once, and I wouldn’t like to be wrecked again.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, lad. The Firefly is a staunch yacht, with first-class engines, and it would take nothing short of a hurricane to send her over or on to the rocks.”
With so little to do, the boys spent quite some time looking over the charts and maps which Captain Corning and the old sailor, Henry Swall, had drawn up in trying to locate the sunken Margarita.
“Here is a chart of the northern coast of the state of Yucatan, Mexico,” said Captain Corning. “As you can see, this state is really at the upper end of Central America and directly on the southern coast line of the Gulf of Mexico. In the center of the Gulf, the water is very deep—two or three miles, in fact. But along the coast of Yucatan it shallows rapidly, and there are many sandbars and rocky elevations where the water is less than a hundred feet in depth. Now, Henry Swall was pretty sure that the Margarita went down on a sandbar opposite the village of Vera Sura, a place which was afterwards burned and which has since been abandoned. According to this latest chart, which is a Mexican document, the water there is not over forty or fifty feet in depth. If that is so, we ought not to have any great difficulty in locating the wreck, providing, of course, the shifting sandbars haven’t covered her.”
“If this chart was made by the Mexicans within the last few years, wouldn’t they be liable to find the wreck in making their soundings?” questioned Jack quickly.
“They might, lad. But I’ve made careful inquiries concerning that, and I can find no government report of the Margarita having been located.”
“But if the center of the Gulf is so very deep, wouldn’t the wreck be apt to slide down from the shore line into the hole?” asked Andy.
“That could happen, my boy. And that, of course, is one of the risks we’re running. My hope is that the Margarita, when she went down, either got caught in the sand close to shore or otherwise got caught on some rocks so she couldn’t slip. Of course, if she slid out into the Gulf and down into deep water, why, our search for her will avail us nothing.”
“But we’ve got a diving bell! We could use that!” cried Fred.
“Not if she went down a mile or two, Fred. Divers can go down to a certain depth, but as yet they’ve discovered no means of going down as far as that. The water pressure is too great.”
It was at this point that Leif Olesen came in and joined in the conversation. The Norwegian spoke fairly good English, although with a strong accent.
“I’ve been on two other hunts for lost ships before this,” said the deep-sea diver. “One off the coast of Norway and the other off the coast of Nova Scotia. In Norway we found the ship and brought everything up that was of value. The job took four months, and for my work I received about two thousand dollars.”
“Well, I’ve promised you more than that, if you’re successful this time, Olesen,” answered the captain.
“What of the second ship you went after?” questioned Jack.
“There we were very unfortunate. We located the ship and worked for ten days to turn her in the sand so that we could get at the things in her cabins. Then a fierce storm came up and we had to run for safety. When the storm was over we went back and hunted everywhere, but the wreck had disappeared, and although we sailed and searched around in that vicinity for a week we were unable to find the slightest trace of her.”
“Gee, that was tough luck!” murmured Randy. “To have it snatched away just when you thought you had it.”
“Well, that’s the luck of the sea,” answered the diver. “You have to take things as they come,” and he shrugged his shoulders and his face took on a sour look.
When the boys retired that night the yacht was pitching and tossing far more than at any time since they had left home. A breeze had sprung up, and this was increasing steadily.
“I shouldn’t be surprised if we got a storm before long,” remarked Jack, as he took a look at the sky. The stars had been out, but now the heavens were gradually becoming overcast. The wind commenced to whistle through the riggings and the boys could make out the dim outlines of whitecaps on the waves around them.
“Do you know, Jack,” said Fred, when he and his cousin had retired to one stateroom and the twins had retired to another, “I can’t say that I like that fellow Olesen at all! And I can’t say that I like his assistant, Nick Amend, either!”
“He certainly doesn’t strike me as being very pleasant, Fred,” was the reply. “But just the same, from the way he talks, I guess he understands his business.”
“Did you notice how eager he was to take in every word that Captain Corning has to say about the treasure? When the captain let slip as to its possible value I saw a light in Olesen’s eyes that I didn’t like. It was like a miser might have when he was gloating over his gold.”
“Well, I suppose the fellow thought it was a shame that he couldn’t pull up that treasure for himself. Nobody likes to dig up gold for the other fellow;” and there the talk came to an end.
The boys turned in, but as it was a hot night in spite of the ever increasing breeze none of them could sleep. Fred and Jack tumbled and tossed in their berths, and so did the twins.
“Gee, I can’t stand this any more!” cried Andy at last. “I’m going to get up and go on deck. I’m sure it’s cooler there.”
“I’ll go up with you,” answered his brother. “I’m fairly smothered down here.”
Slipping on their sneakers and donning light coats over their pajamas, the two boys left their stateroom, walked through the cabin, and mounted the companionway.
“Some blow coming on now!” cried Andy, as they came out on deck to find the Firefly pitching and tossing in the fierce wind. “I guess we’ll cool off all we want to and then some,” he added grimly.
To get out of the worst of the wind, the boys made their way to the side of the upper cabin. Here there was a corner between the cabin and the yacht’s funnel, and here were a couple of deck chairs where they proceeded to make themselves comfortable.
They were sleepy and had almost dozed off in spite of the wind and the pitching of the yacht when Andy, chancing to look up, saw three figures approaching. They were Leif Olesen and two of the sailors.
The three men were talking in Norwegian, but occasionally said a few words in English. Andy listened for several minutes and then caught his brother by the arm, at the same time placing his hand over Randy’s mouth.
“Listen!” he whispered into his twin’s ear. “See those fellows over there? They are Olesen, the head diver, and two of the sailors that were on this yacht when Captain Corning chartered her. They’re talking about the treasure we are after, and I think they’re up to some trick!”