They hung the weights over his chest and back, and Tazzuchi signed to him to descend. Kettle hitched round the sheath-knife to the front of his belt, and signed with politeness, "After you."
Tazzuchi did not argue the matter. He lifted his clumsy lead-soled feet over the side of the boat, got on the ladder, and climbed down out of sight. Kettle followed. The chill of the water crept up and closed over his head; the steady throb-throb of the air-pump beat against his skull; and a little shiver took him in one small spot between the shoulder blades, because he knew that it was there that an Italian, if he can manage it, always plants a knife in his enemy.
He reached the end of the ladder and slid down a rope. He felt curiously corky and insecure, but still when he reached the bottom he sank up to his knees in impalpable mud. He could foggily see Tazzuchi a few paces away waiting for him, and he went up to him at once. If the men in the boat, acting on orders, cut his air-tube, he wanted to be in a position to cut Captain Tazzuchi's also with promptness.
However, everything went peacefully just then. The Italian set off down a track in the slime, and Kettle waded laboriously after him. It was terrible work making a passage through that white glutinous ooze, but they came to the wreck directly, and, working round her rusty flank, stood beside a great shallow pit, where two weird-looking gray sea-monsters showed in dim outline through the dense fog of the water.
Sound does not carry down there in that quiet world, and the two new-comers stood for long enough before the two workers observed them. But one chanced to look up and see them watching and jogged the other with his spade, and then both frantically beckoned the visitors to come down into the pit. Tazzuchi led, and Kettle followed, wallowing down the slopes of slime, and there at the bottom, in the dim, milky light, one of the professional divers slipped a shovel into his hand and thrust it downward, till it jarred against something solid underfoot.
It was clear they had come upon the gold boxes, and they wished to impress upon the visitors, in underwater dumb show, that the find had only been made that very minute. It was a strange enough performance. Half-seen hands snapped red fingers in triumph. Ponderously booted feet did a dance of ecstasy in three feet of gluey mud. And meanwhile, Kettle, with a hand on the haft of his knife, edged away from this uncanny demonstration, lest some one should slit his air-tube before he could prevent it.
