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He had no answer to that. The question had popped into his mind unbidden. "We didn't take the compressor apart," Scotty reminded him. That was true. But Rick had started it in Charlotte Amalie to be sure it was functioning. There was no oil in it then. He said as much. "You started the compressor at the same time you checked the tanks," Zircon reminded him.
"It's a ship, and a sailing ship at that," Zircon boomed. "We identified what was almost certainly a compass binnacle, probably brass, but there wasn't time to get it free and bring it up. Scotty found what is probably the muzzle of a cannon, buried in the sand." "There's so much growth over everything that it's hard to tell what's what," Scotty added.
"Might as well move in with the people from Scarlet Lake, starting now." He led the way across the room and picked out a table next to two men in loud sports shirts. One man was big, nearly the size of Dr. Zircon of the Spindrift staff. He had red hair and a curly red beard. His eyes were dark and penetrating under bushy red eyebrows.
"I'm giving you all the line we have, about three hundred feet each. If you can't make it, surface. We'll have to splice the two lines together and use just one board." Zircon came to the stern and bellowed, "You forgot these!" He tossed in two fishing floats and coils of line. Those were in case they found the wreck.
With an effort Rick pulled his scattered wits together. His mind began to work again. Obviously, through some miracle Steve and Zircon had arrived on a Navy ship with Jimmy Kelly and a detachment of Navy frogmen. Scotty called from on deck. "It's at the octopus cave, Steve. I saw one of the frogmen drop it there." Steve hauled himself out to the landing stage. He grinned at Rick. "Feeling better?"
For a minute I thought my brain cells were rubbing together." Zircon sighed. "I am stumped. And not only by your Wailing Willie, either. This whole affair baffles me, including the presence of Steve's former tail on this island. Hasn't it occurred to you that those fancy frogmen, as you call them, would have made some overt move by now if they were really interested in us?"
However, this admirable reticence has limits, since, as a scientist, I am also possessed of that inherent trait of curiosity without which no person can succeed in science." Rick exploded into laughter. "And what you're leading up to is, you want to go see what those people are doing!" "Precisely," Zircon admitted. Tony and the boys roared with laughter.
He was tired and relieved. The group crossed over the reef and swam to the beach in front of the cottage. There they gathered at the water's edge and stripped off their gear. For long moments no one spoke, then Zircon asked, "See anything, Rick?" "A little. Enough to get an answer, I think. We haven't discovered a new breed of octopus, because they were installing something in the cave.
Rick took his belt slate and scribbled, "Metal." Scotty nodded. Then both of them turned to look at the patch of marine life. A distant throb, as though of a boat, caught their attention. They looked up, but the surface was invisible. It was Tony and Zircon, Rick decided. They probably had returned to the cottage and found the diving equipment missing.
You've got to go down and look, both of you." "How did you spot it?" Zircon asked. "Scotty did. I thought it was a rock formation and went over it, but Scotty dropped off." "I saw curled plate," Scotty answered. "I knew it wasn't the Maiden Hand, with steel sides, but I didn't think we'd want to pass up a wreck." "You were so right," Rick agreed, grinning.
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