“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.”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” said Kettle.  “But don’t be surprised if his friends come round and make things ugly.  When those Red Sea niggers get their fingers in a wreck, they think’s it’s their wreck.”

“Let them come.  We were ready for this sort of entertainment when we sailed, and there are plenty of rifles and cartridges in the cabin.  If there is any trouble, we shall shoot; and if we begin that game, we shall just imagine they are Abyssinians, and shoot to kill.  The Italians have a big bill to pay with those jokers, anyway.”  He tapped Kettle on the shoulder.  “And look at those two brass signal guns, Captain.  If we break up some firebars for shot, they’ll smash the side of any dhow in the Red Sea.”

Under the black captive’s guidance, the salvage steamer soon put a term to her search.  For two more hours she threaded her way among surf which broke over unseen reefs, and swung round the capes of a rocky archipelago, and then the pilot gave his word and the engines were stopped and a rusty cable roared out till an anchor got its hold of the ground.  A boat was lowered with air-pump already stepped amidships, and the boat’s crew with eager hands assisted the diver to make his toilet.

“You chaps seem keen enough,” said Kettle, as he watched the trail of air bubbles which showed the man’s progress on the sea floor below.

“They have each got a stake in the venture.”

“I bet they have,” was Kettle’s grim comment to himself.

The kidnapped skipper of the dhow, it seemed, had done his pilotage with a fine accuracy.  The salvage steamer had been anchored in a good position, and between them two divers in two boats found the Grecian’s wreck in half an hour.  Indeed, they had made their first descent practically within hand-touch of her, but the water was full of a milky clay and very opaque, and sight below the surface was consequently limited.

They came up to the air for a quarter of an hour’s spell and made their announcement, and then the copper helmets were clapped into place again, and once more like a pair of uncouth sea monsters they slowly and clumsily faded away into the depths.  A gabble of excited Italian kept pace to the turning of the air-pumps, and of that language Kettle knew barely a score of words.  Practically these people might have weaved any kind of plot noisily and under his very nose without his being any the wiser, and this possibility did little to quell his suspicions.

But still Tazzuchi was all outward frankness.  “It’s as well we brought out this little steamboat just to skim the wreck and survey her,” he said.  “If they’d waited to fit out a big salvage expedition, to raise her straight off, I reckon there wouldn’t have been much left but iron plates and coal bunkers.  These Red Sea niggers are pretty useful at looting, once they start.  The beggars can dive pretty nearly as well and as long in their naked skins as their betters can in a proper diving suit.”