Death Trance

Twenty-Nine

It took a week for Edward and Forrest and Dan Bass to prepare a reasonably accurate costing of how much it would take to raise the David Dark up from the mudbank to the west of Granitehead; and during that week we dived on the location of the wreck eleven times.

We were lucky: on the fourth dive we found protruding from the mud a row of four decayed timbers, which later turned out to be fashion-pieces which outlined the stern transom. This was our first visual confirmation that the David Dark was actually there, buried in the ooze, and we celebrated that evening with a dozen bottles of California's best.

During the next few dives, we excavated scores of deck-timbers; and it rapidly became clear that the David Dark was lying at an angle of about 30 degrees, with one side of her hull preserved almost up to the spar deck. Edward telephoned a friend of his in Santa Barbara, California, a maritime artist called Peter Gorton; and Peter flew over to help with the preparation of sketch-plans and charts.

Peter dived on the wreck three times himself, groping through the murk to feel the stumpy remains of the stern-post and the black, eroded teeth of the fashion-pieces. Afterwards, silent, absorbed with what he had seen, he sat down in Edward's living-room with a drawing-board and scores of sheets of paper, and created for us a conjectural sheer drawing of what he thought the David Dark actually looked like now, as well as dozens of conjectural body-sections.

I went down myself on the twelfth dive. It was a bright, calm day, and visibility was unusually good. Edward swam along with me, a distorted white companion in a world without gravity or wind. We approached the wreck of the David Dark from the north-east, and when I first saw her it was hard to understand how Edward had missed her during all that year of diving and searching. Apart from the black timbers which had now been excavated from the sloping ooze, the bulk of the David Dark was represented on the sea-bed as a long, oval mound, like an underwater burial-place. During the three cold centuries she had lain here, the tidal streams had scoured around her, creating a natural depression on all sides, and heaping silt on to her upper decks as if they were trying to conceal the evidence of an ancient and unforgiven murder.

I swam right around the wreck, while Edward pointed out the exposed fashion-pieces, and the stern-post, and indicated with a sloping hand just how much the wreck had keeled over when she had sunk to the bottom. I watched Edward cross and re-cross the wreck, flying above the sea-bed at a height of no more than three or four feet, his fins stirring up cauliflower clouds of silt. It was then that I remembered what old Mercy Lewis had told me on Salem Common that day: 'You must stay away from the place where no birds fly.'

This was the place: deep beneath the surface of Salem Harbour. She had warned me, but now it was too late. I was committed to whatever fate was going to bring me; and I was committed to bringing up Mictantecutli, if it was really here.

When we surfaced, Edward shouted across at me, 'What do you think? Fantastic, isn't it?'

I waved, panting for breath. Then I swam back to the Diogenes, and climbed up the diving-ropes on to the deck. Gilly came over and said, 'You've seen it?'

I nodded. 'It's amazing that nobody's come across it before.'

Dan Bass said, 'It isn't really. Most of the time, the visibility is so poor that you could swim within a couple of feet of it and not notice anything unusual.'

Edward came aboard and shook himself like a wet seal. 'It's really extraordinary,' he said, handing his mask to Gilly, and wrestling his head out of his orange Neoprene hood. 'You get this creepy sense that you're trespassing on history… that men were never supposed to discover this wreck. You know what it reminds me of? Those ancient Celtic barrows, which you can only detect from the air.'

'Well,' I said, 'now that we've found it, how long is it going to take us to bring it up?'

Edward blew water out of his nose. 'Dan and I have been talking about this, from a logistical point of view. How many divers and marine archaeologists we're going to need, how many diving-boats, how much excavation equipment. We're going to require warehouse space on shore, too, so that we can store equipment and lay out all the loose timbers we find. Everything we find is going to have to be annotated, numbered, sketched, and filed away for later restoration. Every timber, every spar, every knife, fork, and spoon; every bone; every shred of fabric. Then we're going to require refrigeration storage to keep the main timbers from eroding, and of course somewhere to store the main hull itself, when we eventually bring it up.'

'How eventually is eventually?' I wanted to know.

'It depends on our budget, and the weather. If we have a short diving season this year, and if we can't immediately lay our hands on all the specialized equipment we're going to need, then three or four years.'

Three or four years?'

'Well, sure,' said Edward. He unwrapped a piece of cough-candy, and popped it into his mouth. 'And even that's less than a third of the time it took them to bring up the Mary Rose. Of course we're benefiting from all of their experience; and there's even a chance that we can borrow some of the lifting equipment they developed. Once we've got the budgeting settled, Forrest and I will probably fly over to England and have some detailed meetings with them on the best way to bring up the David Dark with the minimum of damage.'

'But, for Christ's sake, Edward, three or four years'? What about Mictantecutli? What about all those people who are going to be haunted, and possibly killed? What about all those spirits that can't rest?'

'John, I'm sorry, but three or four years is pushing it right to the very limit. If there wasn't this unusual urgency, I'd normally expect to take eight or nine years over an historical salvage job of this magnitude. Do you realize what we've got here? An historic wreck of absolutely incalculable value; the only known surviving wreck from the late 17th century which hasn't even been touched since it first went down. What's more, it was engaged on a secret and extraordinary mission; as far as we know it's still bearing its original cargo.'

I roughly toweled my face and then tossed the towel down on the deck. 'You specifically told me that you were going to bring this wreck up quickly. You specifically said that.'

'Sure I did,' Edward agreed, 'and I will. Three or four years is almost indecently quick.'

'Not if your dead wife is haunting you every night. Not if half the people in Granitehead are being terrorized by their deceased relations. Not if one single life is put at risk; that's not quick.'

'John,' put in Forrest, 'we can't lift that wreck any faster. It's not physically possible. It has to be thoroughly excavated, all the silt and the mud sucked out of it; then it has to be strengthened so that it won't break its back when we winch it out. We have to make endless calculations to determine what kind of stress it's going to stand up to; then we have to construct a custom-built frame to enclose the hull while it's actually raised. You're talking about three years' work there already.'

'All right,' I said, 'but can't we raise the copper vessel first? Excavate the hold, and lift it out separately? How long will that take? A week or two?'

'John, we can't work it that way. If we go charging into that wreck like John Wayne and the Green Berets, we're going to do a great deal of unwarranted damage to the decks, and maybe destroy the value of the entire excavation.'

'What are you talking about? Edward, what the hell's going on here? You said it would take some time to lift the ship up off the sea-bed; all right, that's admitted. But you never said years. I always got the impression that we were talking about weeks, or maybe a couple of months at the outside.'

Edward laid his hand on my shoulder. 'There was never any possibility that we could raise the David Dark in a matter of weeks, and I never gave you the impression for one moment that we could. John, this wreck is a fragile historical monument. We can't treat it like it's a sunken speedboat.'

'But we can get that damned Mictantecutli out of there,' I insisted. 'Edward, we have to. Come on, Edward, they brought up all of the cannon from the Mary Rose way before they brought up the hull.'

'Of course they did; and of course we'll bring up Mictantecutli ahead of the main structure. We may be able to lift the copper vessel out of there by the beginning of next season, if we're lucky. But we can't afford to go crashing in there with crowbars and winches before we know how much of the wreck is actually there, and how she's lying, and how we can best preserve her.'

'Edward!' I shouted at him. 'That Goddamned wreck doesn't matter! Not by comparison! It's Mictantecutli we have to go for, regardless of the wreck!'

'Well, I'm sorry, John,' said Edward, polishing his spectacles, and lifting them up so that he could squint through them and make sure that they were clean. 'Nobody else here feels the same way as you do, and that means that you're outvoted.' s

'I wasn't aware that we were a committee. I thought we were just a bunch of people with the same interest at heart.'

'We are. Well, we are, at least. I don't know whether you are.'

Gilly said, 'Isn't there some kind of compromise we can reach? Isn't there some way we can make it a top priority, getting that copper vessel out of the hold?'

'It is a top priority,' Edward insisted. 'God knows, I'd rather excavate it logically, so that we don't have to lift it before we've annotated and earmarked everything around it, and the deck on which it's lying. But I've already compromised to the point where I'm prepared to winch it up as soon as we've removed the deck immediately above it, as soon as it's accessible, and you can't ask any more of me than that.'

'Edward,' I said, 'I'm asking you to get down there with as many air-lifts as you can lay your hands on, as well as picks and crowbars and whatever else it takes to pull that decking up, and to get in there and find that copper vessel as an absolute Number One.'

'I won't do it,' said Edward.

'In that case, you can forget your financing and you can forget me. You've been stringing me along the whole goddamned time.'

'I never strung you along. I never once promised that I would smash my way into that wreck like King Kong and drag that demon out of there at the expense of the entire integrity of everything we're trying to do here. John — John, listen. Listen to me, John. We're historians, do you understand me? Not scrap merchants, or salvage engineers, or even antique dealers. I know the pressures. I understand the personal anxiety you've been feeling — '

'You don't understand shit!' I yelled at him. 'You and Forrest and Jimmy and all the rest of you down at that museum, you spend all your time up to your ears in dust. Dust, and relics, and crumbling old books. Well, let me tell you something, there's a real world out here, believe it or not, a world where human values count for a whole lot more than history.'

'History is human values,' Edward retorted. That's what history is all about. What do you think we're doing here, except learning about human perspectives? Why do you think we're going to raise this wreck? We want to find out why some of our human ancestors considered it urgent to set sail in the teeth of a terrible storm carrying the skeletal remains of an Aztec demon. Don't tell me that that isn't all about human values. And don't tell me either that we're going to be doing ourselves or humanity any kind of favour if we tear that wreck apart and destroy the incredible historical evidence that we've found here.'

'Well,' I said, more quietly now, 'it appears that you historians and I hold diametrically opposed views of what constitutes a favour to humanity and what doesn't. The best thing I can do right now is to sit here, say nothing, and get off this boat just as soon as it gets back to harbour. This is the finish, Edward. I quit.'

Dan Bass glanced at Edward, as if he expected Edward to say that he was sorry. But there is nobody less forgiving than a riled-up academic, and Edward was no exception. He stripped off his wet suit, tossed it over to Gilly, and then said, 'Let's get back. Suddenly this trip isn't any pleasure anymore.'

Forrest came forward, holding a mug of hot coffee with both hands. 'What about the finance?' he wanted to know. 'What are we going to do without John's father-in-law?'

'We'll manage — all right?' snapped Edward. ‘I’ll go talk to Gerry at the Massachusetts Capital Resource Company. He's been showing some interest in setting the David Dark up as a tourist attraction.'

'Well… if you think you can drum up $6 million,' said Forrest, uncertainly.

'I can drum up $6 million, all right?' said Edward. 'Now, let's get this boat back to Salem before I say something I'm going to regret.'

We turned about, and Dan Bass headed us back towards the harbour. None of us spoke, and even Gilly kept her distance. After we had tied up at Pickering Wharf, I climbed out of the Diogenes straight away, flung my kit-bag over my shoulder, and started to walk back to the parking lot.

'John!' somebody called. I stopped, and turned around. It was Forrest Brough.

'What is it?' I asked him.

'I just wanted to say that I'm sorry it turned out this way,' he told me.

I stood looking back at the Diogenes, and at Gilly folding up the Neoprene wetsuits and dusting them with talcum. She didn't even look up, or turn around to wave goodbye.

'Thanks, Forrest,' I said. 'I feel exactly the same way.'