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Updated: May 12, 2025
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.
"No," said Tazzuchi, "and they aren't fishing; you can see that." "Well, I give you the tip for what it's worth," said Kettle; and that afternoon the steamer was run up alongside a dhow, which tried desperately to escape. Her captain was dragged on board, and at that juncture Captain Kettle took upon himself to go below.
But at a pinch like this I'll borrow a knife of you, and if it comes to any one cutting my air-tube you'll find I can use it pretty mischievously." "I wish you wouldn't insist upon this," said Tazzuchi persuasively. "I'm going to, anyway." "I'm going down merely because it's my duty." "That's the very same reason that's taking me, Captain. I must ask you not to make any more objections.
Tazzuchi and his friends returned in the boat, safe and jubilant, and for the rest of that night the little salvage steamer was left in quietude. With the next daybreak the divers and their attendants once more applied themselves to labor. Kettle, as he watched, was amazed to see the energy they put into it. Certainly they seemed keen enough to get the specie weighed, and on board.
With the specie that would make the temptation still snugly stored on the sea-floor, the dirty, untidy Italians were still all affability. Indeed, as soon as he appeared, Tazzuchi himself stepped down off the upper bridge to give him the news. "How do you think those crafty imps have managed it?" he cried, with a gesture. "Why they dived down and cut off her masts below water level.
You must nursery-maid me a bit." Tazzuchi lowered his voice. "To tell the truth, I'm going to pay a surprise visit. I want to make sure those chaps below are doing the square thing. If they aren't, and I catch them, there'll be a row, and they'll use their knives." "H'm!" said Kettle, "I've got no use for your local weapon as a general thing. I find a gun handiest.
In fact, all that a man could do in the way of outward attention Tazzuchi did, but somehow or other Captain Kettle got a suspicion of him from the very first moment of their meeting. Perhaps it was to some extent because the British mariner has always an instinctive and special distrust for the Latin nations; perhaps it was because the civility was a little unexpected and over-effusive.
He even tried a rude jest in their own tongue before they made fast the helmet on his head, and the cackle of their laughter was the last sound he heard before the metal dome closed the audible world away from him. They hung the weights over his chest and back, and Tazzuchi signed to him to descend.
The funnel was out of sight already. They just thought they were going to have the skimming of that wreck themselves. No wonder we couldn't pick her up." "Cute beggars," said Kettle. "I've bagged a pilot. If he takes us there straight, he gets backsheesh. If he doesn't, he eats more stick. I think," said Captain Tazzuchi, with a wide smile, "that he'll take us there the quickest road."
I'm a man that never changes his mind, once it's made up." Whereupon Tazzuchi shrugged his shoulders, and gave way. "Now," thought Kettle to himself, "that man's made up his mind to kill me if he gets the glimmer of a chance, and, as I'm not going to get wiped out this journey, he'll do with a lot of watching."
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