The moments that he was down seemed interminable.  Suspiciously I watched every move that the men made, fearful that they might do something.  I longed for the technical knowledge that would have enabled me to handle the apparatus.  I tried to quiet my fears by reasoning that Craig must have had perfect confidence in the value of his discovery if he were willing to risk his life on it, yet I felt that at least a show of vigilance on my part might bluff any one off from an attempt to tamper again with the air-supply.  I stuck about closely.

Yet, when there came a hasty signal on the indicator from below, although I felt that he had been down for ages, I knew that it had been only a very short time.  Could it be a signal of trouble?  Had some one again tampered with the apparatus?

Would they never bring him up?  It seemed as if they were working fearfully slow.  I remembered how quickly he had shot down.  What had seemed then only a matter of seconds and minutes now seemed hours.  It was only by sheer will power that I restrained myself as I realized that going under the air pressure might be done safely quite fast, that he must come out slowly, by stages, that over the telephone that connected with his helmet he was directing the decompression in accordance with the latest knowledge that medical science had derived of how to avoid the dread caisson disease.

I don’t know when I have felt more relief than I did at seeing his weird headgear appear at the surface.  The danger from the “bends” might not be entirely over yet, but at least it was Craig himself, safe, at last.

As he came over the side of the trawler I ran to him.  It was like trying to greet a giant in that outlandish suit which was so clumsy out of the water.  Craig’s back was turned to the others, and when I realized the reason I stood aghast.  He had brought up a skull and had handed the gruesome thing to me with a motion of secrecy.  Meanwhile he hastened to get out of the cumbersome suit, and, to my delight, showed no evidence yet of any bad effects.

That he should have made the descent and returned so successfully I felt must be a surprise to some one.  Who was it?  I could not help thinking of Kinsale again.  Was he working for two masters?  Was he still employed by the insurance company?  Was this a scheme to capture all the rich salvage of the ship instead of that percentage to which Everson had secured an agreement with the underwriters?

Kennedy lost no time in getting back to the Belle Aventure with the skull which I had concealed for him.  It was a strange burden and I was not loath to resign it to him.  None of the others, apparently, knew that he had brought up anything with him, and to all questions he replied as though he had merely been testing out the apparatus and, except in a most cursory way, had not made an examination of the ship, although what he had observed confirmed the investigations they had already made from the surface.