Dominick greeted Everson warmly.  He was a man of about thirty-five and impressed one as having seen a great deal of the world.  His position as purser had brought him into intimate contact with many people, and he seemed to have absorbed much from them.  I could imagine that, like many people who had knocked about a great deal, he might prove a very fascinating person to know.

Kinsale, on the other hand, was a rather silent fellow and therefore baffling.  In his own profession of deep-sea diving he was an expert, but beyond that I do not think he had much except an ambition to get ahead, which might be praiseworthy or not, according as he pursued it.

I fancied that next to Everson himself, Norma placed more confidence in Dominick than in any of the others, which seemed to be quite natural, though it noticeably piqued Gage.  On the part of all three, Gage, Dominick, and Kinsale, it was apparent that they were overjoyed at the return of Norma, which also was quite natural, for even a treasure-hunt has hours of tedium and there could be nothing tedious when she was about.  Asta was undoubtedly the more fascinating, but she was wrapped up in Everson.  It was not long before Kennedy and I also fell under the spell of Norma’s presence and personality.

We hurried through breakfast and lost no time in accepting Everson’s invitation to join him, with the rest, in the little power-boat on a visit to the trawler.

It was Dominick who took upon himself the task of explaining to us the mysteries of treasure-hunting as we saw them.  “You see,” he remarked, pointing out to us what looked almost like a strangely developed suit of armor, “we have the most recent deep-sea diving-outfit which will enable us to go from two hundred to three hundred feet down—­farther, and establish a record if we had to do it.  It won’t be necessary, though.  The Antilles lies in about two hundred and fifty feet of water, we have found.  This armor has to be strong, for, with the air pressure inside, it must resist a pressure of nearly half a pound per square inch for each foot we go—­to be exact, something like a hundred and five pounds per square inch at the depth of the wreck.  Perhaps if Traynor had been diving we might have thought that that was the trouble.”

It was the first reference since we arrived to the tragedy.  “He had only had the suit on once,” went on Dominick, confirming Everson, “and that was merely to test the pumps and valves and joints.  Even Kinsale, here, hasn’t been down.  Still, we haven’t been idle.  I have something to report.  With our instruments we have discovered that the ship has heeled over and that it will be a bit harder job to get into my office and get out the safe than we hoped—­but feasible.”

Kennedy showed more interest in the diving apparatus than he had shown in anything else so far.  The trawler was outfitted most completely as a tender, having been anchored over the exact spot at which the descents were to be made, held by four strong cables, with everything in readiness for action.