“I’ve been trying it ever since we dropped anchor, and it hasn’t been a success; you don’t know my father.” He gave Jimmy a steady look. “He means you to be his companion, and although I’ve no claim on you, I want you to promise that you’ll take care of him.”
Everything considered, it struck Jimmy as curious that he should be the recipient of this request; but he sympathized with Aynsley, and imagined that his anxiety was justified. Clay had treated them harshly, but he was ill and apparently powerless to injure them further.
“Very well,” he promised. “I’ll do the best I can.”
“Thanks!” responded Aynsley in a grateful tone. “I can trust you, and I’ve a notion that my father feels safe in your hands; though he’s not confiding, as a rule.”
“If you’ll wait a minute we’ll give you some coffee,” Bethune said hospitably.
“No, thanks!” replied Aynsley. “I must get back before I’m missed. There’d be trouble if my irascible father guessed why I’d come here.”
He jumped into the dinghy and sculled her silently into the mist that drifted between the vessels; and half an hour later Clay came off with the diver in the gig. His face had a gray, pinched look, and Jimmy noticed that he breathed rather hard after the slight effort of getting on board the sloop.
“I think you had better let me finish the job, sir,” he said. “You’d be more comfortable if you waited quietly on board until we brought up the case.”
“I’m going down,” Clay answered shortly. “You might not be able to get at it without my help.”
“Anyway, you can wait until we break through the deck. It will shorten the time you need stay below.”
After some demur, Clay agreed to this; but he suggested that Moran and Bethune should clear the ground instead of sending his own diver, and in a few minutes they were under water. It was some time before they came up, and when they had undressed Clay looked hard at Bethune.
“Yes,” said Bethune; “I think it’s big enough.”
“Give me that brandy,” Clay said to a steward in the waiting gig, and turned to Jimmy when he had drained a small wineglass. “Now we’ll get to work as soon as we can.”
Jimmy went down the ladder and Clay followed him steadily across the sand. The tide was low, the stream slack, and the dim green water was filled with strange refractions of the growing light above. The sloop rode overhead, a patch of opaque shadow, and the wreck loomed up, black and shapeless, in front. They reached her without trouble, and Jimmy switched on his lamp and carefully cleared Clay’s air-pipe and line before he crawled into the dark gap. The man seemed to move with greater ease and confidence than he had shown on the previous day, and Jimmy felt reassured as he guided him along the side of the shaft tunnel. Glancing at the long streamers of weed that wavered mysteriously through the gloom, he remembered the sense of fear and shrinking he had had to overcome on his first few descents. It looked as if he need not be anxious about his companion.