Part 25 (1/2)

Discouraged, he wrote on his belt slate, ”Mybe no bottne”

Scotty nodded He lifted his hands in a gesture of inquiry Nohat?

Rick thought about it for a ht! They probably would have to re the shi+p away piece by piece But then what? There was the distinct possibility that the statue was so the sand to see

It was apparent that most of the shi+p was under the sand--if the remainder of the shi+p was still intact But Rick couldn't escape the feeling that Captain Campion would have kept the statue close to him

And that meant in the aft part of the shi+p, the part that was exposed

Scotty hooted twice, pointing at his watch It was time to surface The next dive would be their last for the day

On the surface, Rick sounded discouraged as he said, ”The cabin we uncoveredbut a mile of sand under it And there isn't much of the aft part of the shi+p left to explore, either I guess tomorroe can plan to take the captain's cabin apart board by board”

”We'll need Tony and Zircon for hard labor like that,” Scotty answered

”Notice how quickly you get tired down there? Also, we use air a lot faster ork”

”Let's just sort of ested ”We can probe for any cracks we ht have missed, and I'll take some over-all shots of the wreck Then we'll call it a day”

They followed Rick's plan He took pictures of Scotty, recking bar, prying at likely places in the exposed part of the shi+p But Scotty uncovered nothing of interest In one place his prying disturbed anotherto fasten his needle teeth in the wrecking bar

Acaused them to lose interest in the eel suddenly They looked at each other, then turned and swam toward the apparent direction of the sound At that moment a distant wail struck their ears

The brass ball!

Rick wondered He had heard no boat noise The brass ballautomatically He hooted for Scotty's attention, then pointed toward the cave

Scotty checked his spear gun and motioned for Rick to lead Rick pushed his caht be so that would tell them a little about its mechanism or purpose

As the cave ca upward Thevery far, but there was no one in sight He let inertia carry hiht in the water as he saw that the octopus had moved a little distance fro rong, but it was too late to get out of har-type spear gun pointed directly toward theman held the brass instru, the frogh the water directly at Scotty!

CHAPTER XVII

Trapped in Twenty Fathoms