The Deep

IX

By the time they tied up to Treece’s dock, the sun was resting on the western horizon, a swollen ball of orange.

Treece sniffed the evening air and said, “Going to get messy tomorrow.”

Sanders” impulse was to ask Treece how he knew the weather would change, but by now he could anticipate the answer, something like “Got a feeling” or “You can smell a breeze coming.” So he said instead, “How bad?”

“Maybe twenty knots, out of the south. It’ll bounce us around a fair amount.”

“Can we work?”

“Got no choice. Cloche’ll be working, you can bet on that. It’ll be all right; we’ll weight-up heavy.”

Sanders began to peel off his wet-suit pants, but Treece stopped him.

“We’re not done yet.”

“We’re not?”

“Got to put away the ampules. Can’t leave ’em lying around on the boat.”

“I know, but I figured…” He stopped when he saw Treece pointing overboard at the dark water. “Oh.”

“I want you to know where they are, in case something happens to me.”

“What’s going to happen to you?”

“Who knows? Maybe a terminal case of the ague, or a sudden onset of heebie-jeebies. Maybe nothing. It’s just insurance. There’s a cave underwater at the base of the cliff. Tide washes it, but if we put ’em way back and bury ’em, they’ll stay.” He turned to Gail. “You don’t need to come.”

“I can,” she said, “if you want me to.”

“No. You’ll be more use up here, passing bags to us.”

They rigged two scuba tanks and brought the bags of ampules up from below. Treece half-filled the canvas bags, then handed Sanders a flashlight. “Overweight yourself,” he said. “That bag’ll want to come to the surface. Adam squeezed all the air he could out of the plastic bags, but you can’t get every last bit. If you’re way heavy, you can let your weights drag you and the bag to the bottom. When you get down, follow my light.”

“Okay.”

Treece pointed to a rectangular wooden box on the dock and said to Gail, “Fetch me a fish out of that box.”

“A fish?”

“Aye. It’s full of salted fish. I keep ’em there for Percy. He lives in the cave.”

Gail climbed onto the dock and opened the lid of the wooden box. The smell of fish made her step backward and hold her breath.

“Pick a big one,” Treece called. “Want to keep him occupied so he doesn’t take a shine to us.”

“What’s Percy?” Sanders asked.

“A frightful big moray eel, a green. He’s lived in that cave long as I can remember.

We get along all right, but he’s a hungry bastard, and I like to keep on his good side by giving him dinner now and again.”

Gail reached into the fish box and grabbed the largest tail she saw. She swallowed, to keep from gagging.

“Don’t you keep ice?”

“No need. Salt keeps ’em fine.” Treece took the fish from her. “That ought to keep him busy for a while.” He said to Sanders, “Let me go in first.

I want to see him, make sure he knows what’s going on. Let a bastard like that blind-side you, it’ll be a nasty evening. And don’t go sticking your hands in any holes. For all I know, he’s got relatives in there sharing the rent with him.” He lowered his mask over his face, rolled off the gunwale, resurfaced, and reached for bag, fish, and light.

Sanders followed immediately and found, as Treece had said, that the extra weight and the air trapped in the plastic bags roughly counterbalanced each other, so he sank without effort.

The cove was not deep-fifteen or, at most, twenty feet, Sanders estimated as he watched the beam from his light move between the sandy bottom and the boat above. The canvas bag was cumbersome: it tugged at his left arm, so Sanders pressed it against his stomach and followed Treece’s receding light.

Treece waited at the entrance to the cave-a dark hole, taller than a man, in the craggy face of the cliff. When Sanders joined him, Treece shined his light into the cave and swung it from side to side.

At first, the cave seemed to be empty-pocked gray limestone walls extending thirty feet into the darkness. Then Treece fixed his light on a back corner of the cave and pointed with his finger, and Sanders saw something move.

Slowly, Treece swam into the cave, holding the fish in front of him. Sanders trailed a few feet behind.

At the base of one wall there was a heap of rocks, the result of a partial collapse of the wall ages ago. Treece held the fish up to the wall.

The snout of the moray emerged from a crevice between the rocks and the wall. Sanders had seen morays in aquariums, but never anything to rival the size of the green body that now slithered out of the crevice. It was more than a foot thick, top to bottom, and at least six inches wide.

The moray writhed and twisted until it had extricated as much of itself-about four feet-as it intended to. Then it hung suspended from the rocks, glancing, with its cold pig eyes, at Sanders, at Treece, at the fish. The mouth opened and closed rhythmically, exposing the long needle teeth joined by viscid, mucous strands that glittered in the light.

The head tilted slightly and-so quickly that, afterward, Sanders would not recall having seen it move-seized the fish.

Treece did not let go; he held the fish just forward of the tail. The moray pulled, then stopped, then suddenly began to spin its body, like a rug unrolling, until a chunk of fish belly tore away. The eel backed off, swallowing, its teeth forcing the flesh back into its throat, green skin rippling with the effort. Then it struck again, this time grabbing the fish’s backbone, and yanked the fish from Treece’s grasp. It tried to retreat into its hole, but the fish was too big to fit sideways through the crevice, so the moray contented itself with jamming its prey into the narrow opening and dismembering it from below.

Treece motioned for Sanders to follow him, and, reluctant as he was to turn his back, in darkness, on the moray, Sanders obeyed.

The roof of the cave was about eight feet high, and Sanders saw the beam from Treece’s light shine on it, then saw Treece’s canvas bag floating upward to it. The bag nudged the roof and rested against it. Sanders reached up and placed his own bag next to Treece’s, then joined Treece on the bottom.

They dug a wide, deep hole in the sand and dumped the bags of ampules into it. They leveled off the hole with sand, to keep the bags from floating free, then returned to the boat.

They made three more trips, each time digging a new hole. When they left the cave at the end of the last trip, the moray had devoured all but the last few inches of the fish: the tail still protruded from the crevice, quivering as it was bitten from beneath.

“How big is that thing?” Sanders asked when they were aboard the boat.

“Percy? Never seen the whole of him, but I bet he’s all of ten feet. Soon as it gets full dark, he’ll come out and prowl around. Some night we can go down and see him when he comes out.”

“No, thanks. He looks mean enough in his hole. I don’t want to meet him in the open.”

“What? I thought you shark killers didn’t know the meaning of fear.”

“Look, dammit…” Sanders was annoyed at Treece’s needling, wanted him to stop, but was not eager to provoke a confrontation, nor to beg.

“Don’t get all fired up,” Treece said.

He snapped his fingers at the dog, and she jumped from the boat onto the dock. “Lead the way, Charlotte. See if there’s any brigands lurking.” The dog trotted happily toward the path, sniffing at the underbrush.

Treece pulled the two empty air tanks from the rack and set them on the dock. “Best fill these tonight.”

When they reached the house, they saw a paper-wrapped package outside the kitchen door. Treece picked it up, smelled it, and said, “Supper.”

“Fish?” Gail asked, queasy from the recollection of the fish box on the dock.

“No. Meat.” Treece opened the door and held it for them.

Gail said, “Don’t you ever lock your door?”

“No. Like I told you, only the Spanish have faith in locks.”

Inside, Treece said to Sanders, “Fix me a bit of rum while I throw this beast on the fire.”

“Sure.” Sanders said to Gail, “You want anything?”

“Not yet. I’d like to take a shower. I feel like a week-old bass.”

“Know how to work the heater?” Treece said.

“Heater?”

“There’s a gas heater next to the stall. Turn the valve half a turn clockwise and wait about two minutes. That’ll start warming it, and by the time you’re finished showering, it’ll be nice and hot.”

“Thanks.” Gail left the kitchen.

Sanders handed Treece a glass of rum and sipped at his scotch. “Anything I can do?”

“No. Rest your bones.”

Sanders sat at the table and watched Treece light the stove, pour oil into a frying pan, drop in the meat, and dust it with herbs.

When he was satisfied that the meat was cooking properly, Treece turned away from the stove and looked at Sanders. “What’s pecking at your shell?”

“What?” Sanders didn’t understand.

“With the shark business. What are you looking for?”

Sanders thought: Oh Christ, here we go again.

“Nothing. It was stupid. I know that.” He hoped his admission would end the conversation.

“I think there’s more,” Treece said. “I think, inside you, you think you did something ballsy.”

Sanders blushed, for Treece was right. Beneath the knowledge that he had acted stupidly, impetuously, dangerously, there was a little-boy’s pride at having stabbed a shark. Though he would not say so, he had even fantasized about how he would shape the story for telling to friends. He said nothing.

“It’s natural enough,” Treece said. “A lot of people want to prove something to themselves, and when they do something they think’s impressive, then they’re impressed themselves. The mistake is, what you do isn’t the same as what you are. You like to do tilings just to see if you can. Right?”

Though there was no reproach in Treece’s voice, Sanders was embarrassed. “Sometimes. I guess…”

“What I’m getting at…” Treece paused. “The feeling’s a lot richer when you do something right, when you know something has to be done and you know what you’re doing, and then you do something hairy. Life’s full of chances to hurt yourself or someone else.” Treece took a drink. “In the next few days, you’ll have more chances to hurt yourself than most men get in a lifetime.

It’s learning things and doing things right that make it worthwhile, make a man easy with himself. When I was young, nobody could tell me anything. I knew it all. It took a lot of mistakes to teach me that I didn’t know goose shit from tapioca. How old are you?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“That’s not young, but it’s not next door to the grave.

You could start now, and spend another forty years learning about the sea without running out of new things to know. That’s the only hitch in learning: it’s humbling. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.” Treece drained his glass and stood to refill it. “Anyway, all that’s a long way around saying that it’s crazy to do things just to prove you can do ’em. The more you learn, the more you’ll find yourself doing things you never thought you could do in a million years.”

Sanders nodded. He didn’t know whether Treece’s attitude toward him had changed, or his interpretation of Treece’s attitude had changed. He felt curiously privileged, and he said, “Thank you.”

Treece seemed flustered by the remark. He snapped his fingers and said, “The tanks. I almost forgot. Better get that monster fired up now, or she’ll be chugging away all night.”

Sanders followed him out the door and stood with him while he started the compressor and attached the two scuba tanks.

When they returned to the kitchen, Gail was making herself a drink. Her feet were bare and she wore a cotton bathrobe. Sanders kissed her neck; it smelled of soap.

“You taste good,” he said.

“I feel good, all but my sinuses.”

“Headache?” Treece asked.

“Not a real headache. Up here.” She touched the bones above her eyes. “They feel stuffed up. It hurts to touch them.”

“Aye, they’re abused. Adam’ll dive tomorrow. You can tan yourself.” Treece turned the meat in the frying pan, reached into a bin beneath the sink, and took out an assort-ment of vegetables: beans, cucumbers, squash, onions, and tomatoes. He sliced them over a mixing bowl, added a dose of dressing, and stirred the brew with a fork.

The meat was dark red, almost purple, and it tasted strong.

“Do you hang your beef here?” Gail asked, dipping a piece of meat into the salad dressing, to mellow the flavor.

“I don’t know. Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“Like it?”

“It’s… interesting.”

“It’s not beef, y’know.”

“Oh?” she said uneasily. “What is it?”

“Goat.” Treece cut a chunk of meat, put it in his mouth, and chewed happily.

“Oh.” Gail’s stomach churned, and she looked at Sanders. He had been about to take a bite of meat, but now his fork was stopped a few inches from his mouth.

He saw her looking at him, and he held his breath, put the meat in his mouth, and swallowed it whole.

After supper, Treece put his plate in the sink and said, “I’m going for a stroll; probably see Kevin for a while. No need for you to wait up.”

“Anything we can do?” Gail asked.

“No. Enjoy yourselves.” He wiped his hands on his pants and took a bottle of rum from the cabinet.

“Kevin drinks palm wine, home brew. Rot your insides faster’n naval jelly.” He clucked at the dog, who was sleeping under the table, and said, “Let’s go.” The dog struggled to her feet, stretched, yawned, and followed Treece out the kitchen door.

When the gate had closed, and the sound of Treece’s footsteps had faded away, Sanders said, “Nice of him.”

“What?”

“To leave us alone.” He reached across the table and took her hand.

She neither withdrew her hand nor responded to his touch. “Treece was married,” she said, and then she told him the story Coffin had told her.

As he listened, Sanders remembered his conversation with Treece, and he realized that what had seemed like friendly advice had been genuine, heartfelt concern, that Treece had been trying to guide him away from a course that he, Treece, had taken and that had deprived him, forever, of the promise of joy.

Realizing this, Sanders felt a cold fear unalloyed by the thrill of adventure.

“I love you,” he said.

She nodded. There were tears in her eyes.

“Let’s go to bed.” He rose and put the dishes in the sink, then returned and led her to the bedroom.

For the first time, she was unmoved by his love-making, and after a few moments he stopped trying and said, “What’s the matter?”

“I’m sorry… I can’t…” She rolled away from him and faced the wall.

He lay awake for a long time, listening to the chug of the compressor outside. Gradually, the sound of her breathing beside him grew more even, and soon she was breathing in the rhythm of deep sleep.

Sanders’ sexual longing was not pure desire; he felt a need to impress his love upon her, as if to comfort her. But she did not want him-at least did not want what he wanted to give her-and Sanders suddenly found himself annoyed at Treece.

Treece had not told them about his wife, didn’t even know they knew, but somehow he, his past, his grief, had come between them. Sanders knew his annoyance was irrational, but he could not control it.

Finally, he slept. He could not awake at the new sounds that intruded on the still night, the sound of an automobile engine, in different cadence from the compressor motor; the sound of tires crunching on gravel.

It was the wind that woke him in the morning, whistling through the screen and rattling the shutters, blowing straight off the sea and gathering force as it swept over the cliff.

Treece sat in the kitchen, leafing through old papers.

Sanders did not ask if he had found anything new; by now he knew that Treece would speak when he had something to say. So all he said, with a flip of his hand toward the window, was “You were right.”

“Aye. She’s blowing pretty good. But it’s worse up here than below. We’ll be all right.”

Sanders looked at his watch; it was 6:30. “What time do you want to go?”

“Half an hour, forty minutes. If your girl wants to eat, you better rouse her.”

“Okay.” Sanders couldn’t contain his curiosity.

“Anything new?”

“Bits and pieces; nothing that amounts to much. Diaries—Christ, to hear some of those sailors’ myths, you’d think bloody Fort Knox was on every ship that sailed.”

The ride along the south shore was rough. Corsair slammed into quartering seas, lurching and shuddering and leaving a yawing wake; spray flew over the port bow and splashed against the windows. The dog, who had made a futile attempt to ride on the bow, lay in a dry corner of the stern and complained every time her body thudded against the heaving deck.

David and Gail stood in the cockpit beside Treece, bracing themselves against the bulkheads.

“We can dive in this?” Sanders said.

“Sure. It’s all of twenty knots, but we’ll anchor in the lee of the reef and go along the bottom.”

“What if the anchors don’t hold?”

“Then Orange Grove’ll be the owner of a brand-new pile of wreckage.”

When they were abeam of Orange Grove, Treece turned the boat toward shore. Waves crashed on the reef and burst in plumes of foam.

Sanders had expected that, as always, Treece would pick his way carefully through the reefs. Instead, he lingered seaward of the reefs for a few moments, examining the currents and the patterns of the waves, then pushed the throttle forward and aimed for a spot in the first reef.

“Hold tight,” Treece said. “She’s gonna buck.”

The boat lunged toward the line of rocks. Caught in the surge of a wave, the stern swung around to the right; Treece spun the wheel hard right, and the boat straightened. He throttled back for a second or two, then gunned the engine and headed for the second reef.

By the time they had cleared all the reefs and were cruising in the relatively calm lee, Sanders felt sweat running down his temples into the neck of his wet suit.

“Roller coaster,” Treece said. He saw one of Gail’s hands, still clenched around a handle on the console, and he patted it. “It’s done.”

She relaxed her grip and smiled wanly. “Wow!”

“I should’ve warned you. That’s the only way to clear the bastards in a sea like this. If you time it right, there’s enough water to get over the rocks. But if you try to gentle your way through, the waves’ll bang you into them for sure.”

They did not have to idle in the chop, waiting for Coffin. As soon as he saw the boat cross the reefs, he hurdled the low line of breakers and began to swim.

“Sorry we’re late,” Treece said as he hauled Coffin aboard. “Did a bit of bouncing out there.”

“I “magine. Anchor in the lee?”

“Aye. You willing to get wet today? Girl’s head’s messed.”

“Like to.”

Treece turned the boat toward the reefs. Coffin went forward and examined the anchor lines. “Port and starboard?” he called.

“Aye, with a Christ lot of scope. I’ll give a yell.” Treece gunned the boat through the first two lines of reef, then slowed as he neared the third line. The boat pitched and rolled wildly, with no rhythm, but Coffin-using his thick brown toes as stabilizers, bending and unbending his knees to absorb the shock of the boat’s motion-kept his footing on the bow.

Watching Coffin keep his balance, Sanders smiled and shook his head.

“What?” Gail said.

“I was just remembering. When Treece first said Coffin was going to dive, I asked him if Coffin was any good. Look at him up there. If that was me, I’d have been overboard a dozen times already.”

Gail took his hand.

“Starboard!” yelled Treece.

Coffin threw an anchor at the reef; the coil of rope at his feet whipped overboard.

Treece shifted into neutral and let the boat slide backward until the rope sprang taut.

Coffin put a hand on the quivering rope and said, “She’s bitin” good.”

Treece put the boat in forward gear and ran up the anchor line. He called “Port!” and Coffin threw the other anchor.

When both anchor lines were taut, Treece turned the key, and the engine died, leaving the sounds of the waves banging on the rocks, the wind hissing over the water, and the slapping of the hull on the surface.

Treece said to Coffin, “You’ll want a Desco.”

“Aye. Don’t want a bottle bangin’ around, not in this surge.”

Treece rigged three air hoses to the compressor, checked the fuel level and oil pressure, and started it.

As they dressed, Treece said to Gail, “Not that you’ll need it, but you might’s well learn.” He took the shotgun from the steering console, pumped it until all five rounds had ejected into his hand, and passed it to Gail. “It’ll be all ready to go.

All you do is pull back on the forward grip and press the trigger.”

Gail held the gun gingerly, as if it were a snake. Unconsciously, the corners of her mouth turned down, and she frowned. She worked the action and pulled the trigger; there was a metallic click.

“What do I aim at?”

“You don’t aim. You hold it at your hip. If you put it to your shoulder, it’s like to tear your arm off.

Fire it in the general direction of what you want to hit, and if it’s close enough to you, it’ll come to pieces.” Treece took the gun and replaced the five shells in the chamber.

“I couldn’t,” said Gail.

“We’ll see. One of Cloche’s maniacs comes at you waving a butcher knife, you’ll find you can do the damnedest things.” Treece saw the distress in her face. “Like I said, you won’t have to use it. Likely your biggest concern’ll be keeping your breakfast down.”

Treece went below and returned with six old, unmatched wet-suit gloves, which he tossed on the transom. “Find some that fit you,” he said to the others. “Gonna be grasping for rocks just to stay in one place. And make sure you got enough weight; want to head for the bottom like a stone to get out of this topside trash.”

They went over the side. Sanders started to rise to the surface to clear his mask, but quickly changed his mind: the waves wrenched his body from side to side, sweeping

him to within inches of the bouncing hull. He exhaled and dropped swiftly to the bottom. He could not stand on the sand; the current was less severe than on the surface, but still strong enough to cast him forward and back, like hay in a windstorm. He fell to his knees and crawled toward the reef. Above him, Treece descended fast, dragging two canvas bags and the air-lift tube.

The surge near the reef was worse: waves washing overhead caused bottom eddies that pushed the divers onto the rocks. Sanders tried to stop before the reef, but couldn’t. His hip struck a rock, and he tumbled toward sharp outcroppings of coral. He swung an arm blindly, hit something, and grabbed it: a coral ledge. Without the rubber glove, his hand would have been torn. His body hung horizontally in the current; he saw Treece and Coffin, lying face down in the sand, apparently free from the surge, already digging with the air lift.

Sanders dragged himself forward, hand over hand, until he reached the bottom of the reef. He flattened himself beside Coffin. Though his legs still tended to swing toward the reef, he found that by jamming his knees into the sand he could remain fairly steady. CofHn passed him a bag, then the first few handfuls of ampules.

In an hour, they filled all three bags six times. Sanders made six trips to the surface, there to struggle to hold onto the heaving diving platform and to avoid being swept under the boat while Gail emptied the bags. He was cold and tired, and his sinuses ached. Each descent was more difficult, took longer, for his ears resisted clearing and the sinus cavities above his eyes squeaked in protest.

With hand signals, Sanders asked Coffin to change places with him, to take the next few trips; Coffin agreed. Sanders lay prone at the lip of the hole Treece was digging, and, as the air lift exposed the ampules, snared them before they could be carried away.

Another hour passed-seven trips this time-and Coffin and Sanders changed places again. Rising with the bags, Sanders looked at his watch: almost eleven o’clock.

He clung to the platform and waited for the bags. When Gail handed them to him, he lifted the bottom of his mask and said, “How many?”

“I can’t count them all. Six, eight thousand, maybe ten. I stopped counting at five thousand; you’re bringing them up too fast.”

Sanders made five more trips with the bags, and by now he felt a physical misery more profound than anything he had ever experienced. No specific pain or discomfort was worse than any other: everything felt terrible, even his toes, which were wracked with periodic cramps that forced him to kick in an awkward, inefficient fashion. Hanging on the surface, he looked down and wondered how long it would take him to get to the bottom this time; his last descent had taken so long that by the time he arrived at the reef, enough ampules had been excavated to refill the bags immediately.

He forced himself down through the layers of pain and crawled to the reef. He was settling beside the heap of ampules when a surge hit him. He flailed with his legs, reaching for the bottom, but his legs wouldn’t touch; he was thrust at the wall of coral. In the last seconds before he hit the reef, he raised his gloved hands in front of his face and brought up his knees, hoping to take the impact with his flippers or his arms.

His right knee hit first, and whatever it hit gave way and broke. Then he was spun around and his buttocks hit the rocks, jerking his head backward. The muscles in his neck resisted, but his head hit-not hard, for something cushioned it: a sea fan. He scrambled for a handhold and found a rock, which pulled free and tumbled down the face of the reef, knocking other rocks loose as it fell.

The surge passed, and Sanders lay against the reef, breathing hard, assessing the damage done to his aching body. There were new pains, but none seemed more wretched than those he had had before.

He inched down the reef face, making sure of each handhold before he moved to the next. Glancing to his left, he saw something shine within the bowels of the reef, a twinkle that dulled as soon as the shaft of sunlight moved away. It was in a hole at least two feet deep. Another ray of light coursed into the hole; again a twinkle.

Sanders leaned back against the reef, one leg wrapped around a boulder, one hand clutching a piece of coral. He waved, to attract Treece’s attention, but Treece was intent on the ditch full of ampules. He waited, knowing that Coffin would look up when he noticed that the ampules he was passing back to Sanders weren’t being collected, and a moment later he saw Coffin’s eyes. He pointed at Treece and at the hole in the reef.

Coffin tapped Treece; Treece looked up, set the air lift against the reef, and swam to Sanders.

A cloud passed before the sun, and the shadow crept along the bottom, darkening the water and turning the sand gray. Treece looked at Sanders, raised his eyebrows, and mouthed the word “what.”

Sanders raised his palm to Treece, then pointed to the surface, saying: Wait till the light returns. The shadow moved over the reef and away; arrows of light darted into the hole.

Treece looked, waited, looked again. He nodded his head, made the “okay” sign to Sanders, and plunged his arm into the hole.

Sanders watched Treece’s face as his fingers probed the bottom of the hole; Treece’s eyes narrowed in concentration, brow furrowed.

Suddenly Treece’s eyes snapped wide, his mouth opened, and he yelled in pain and shock. He tried to pull his arm out of the hole, but something was holding it. His shoulder was banged onto the coral, and Sanders saw it twitch. Then, gritting his teeth and bracing his other arm against a rock, he hauled back: The arm came free, dragging with it the writhing, curling body of a rnoray eel, jaws clamped tight on the soft, fleshy juncture of his right thumb and forefinger.

Treece yelled again, incoherently, and reached with his left hand to grab the moray behind the head. But the eel’s body, no longer anchored in the reef, waved in frantic spasms and pulled itself out of reach. The eel trembled and, in a blur of green, coiled itself into a knot; using the body as its own anchor, the head was pulling Treece’s hand through the knot.

Treece could not get at the head, so he pounded the body aimlessly with his left hand. But the eel did not respond: bit by bit, the back-slanted teeth were drawing his hand into the mouth.

Backed against the reef, reflexively retreating, Sanders recalled the size of the moray they had seen the night before. The head was twice, three times, the size of the one attached to Treece. Then Sanders saw the flesh tear away coma crescent rip in the rubber glove, tattered green-tinged skin waving in strips, billowing blood.

The eel unknotted itself, swallowed, and lashed at Treece’s midsection. Treece dodged, snapped his left hand onto the eel’s body, four or five inches behind the head. The head turned, jaws gnashing the water, searching for something to bite.

Treece put his injured hand in front of his left hand and squeezed, the pressure pumping blood from the wound. Ignoring the flailing body, he forced the eel’s head onto a rock and crushed it. The body jerked twice and was still. Treece released his grip, and the eel fell slowly to the sand.

Treece pointed at Sanders, then at the hole in the reef, telling him to reach in and find the object.

Without thinking, scared, Sanders shook his head: No.

Treece jammed his left index finger into Sanders’ chest and again pointing to the hole: Do it!

Sanders reached into the hole. He closed his eyes, listening to his rapid pulse, his labored breathing, anticipating-imagining-a sudden stab of pain. His fingers walked down the coral and felt the softness of sand. Nothing. In its thrashing, the eel could have knocked the object deeper

into the hole, or buried it in the sand. His shoulder was tight against the coral; he could go no farther. His fingers moved left and right, scraping over the bottom, sensing pebbles and bits of coral; then, at the limit of his reach, something hard. He strained against the coral, trying for another half inch, and managed to grasp the object between the tips of his fingers. He pulled it closer, dropped it, recovered it in a solid grip.

He withdrew his arm and opened his eyes. He was alone. The air lift rolled against the reef, bubbling; the pile of ampules lay untouched in the sand. Looking up, he saw Treece and Coffin at the surface. Treece kicked and disappeared onto the boat.

Sanders opened his fist and looked at the object in his palm. It was a gold figure of a crucified Christ, five inches high. The nails in the hands and feet were red gem stones, the eyes blue. Sanders tipped the figure on its side and saw, engraved on the base of the cross, the letters “E.f.”

Treece leaned against the gunwale, while Coffin wrapped gauze around his wounded hand.

Sanders stood on the platform and removed his mask.

“Bad?”

“No. Thank the gentle Jesus for that glove, though. Aiain problem with those bastards is infection.”

“Did you put anything on it?”

“Aye. Sulfa. Forget that: What’d you find?”

Sanders climbed over the transom and handed Treece the crucifix.

Treece examined it, noticed the initials, then held it a few inches from his face. “My God, that’s a piece of work.”

Gail leaned over, careful not to impede Coffin, and stared at the figure. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s more than just beautiful. See the rubies in the hands and feet? The Spaniards almost never used rubies. They liked emeralds; green was the color representing the Inquisition. They argued about the rubies for a hundred years or more. They began to use ’em late, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, but only for the King. Another special thing is, there are no fixings.”

“Fixings?”

“Holding it together. It wasn’t cast in one piece; they didn’t have the equipment. And there aren’t any pins or nails or pegs. It’s like one of those Chinese puzzles: a lot of pieces that fit together only if you assemble ’em in the right order. Look close, you can see little hairlines where the pieces join. Our friend E.f. was either very rich or very dear to someone very rich.”

Coffin split the end of the strip of gauze and tied a knot.

Treece flexed his hand, grimaced. “Cumbersome bugger.”

“Shouldn’t you see a doctor?” Gail asked.

“Only if I see the red horrors creeping up my arm.” Treece pushed off the gunwale and stood up. He raised his bandaged hand and said to Sanders, “Guess you’re not the only stupid sonofabitch on this vessel. If that’d been Percy, he’d be munching on my neck by now.”

Sanders said, “I thought of that.”

“Adam,” Treece said, “you and David go get the last of the glass and the gun. We’ll take a holiday till nighttime.”

“You’re gonna dive again?” Coffin said. “With that hand?”

Treece nodded. “I’ll go home and rig up something to keep it dry. It’ll do to hold the gun; that’s all it was doing down there anyway.”

They brought up three more bags of ampules, raised the anchor, and crossed the reefs to take Coffin to the beach.

“I’ll stay if you want,” Coffin said to Treece. “You can’t put the glass in the cave with her head messed and your hand messed.”

“No. Get your rest. I’ll call Kevin and have him help.”

“Kevin! You’d trust him?”

“Aye. He’ll take the pennies off the eyes of the dead, but he’s loyal to me.”

“He is, is he?”

“Don’t you start, too. It’s enough I’ve got to worry about old David challenging me every time I draw bloody breath.” Treece saw that Sanders had overheard him, and he smiled. “Sorry. But you are a contentious bugger. Getting better every day, though, I’ll give you that.”

Treece stopped the boat about fifty yards off the beach. “That’s it, Adam. Don’t want to beach her in the surf.”

“No problem.” Coffin looked at the waves. “Still blowin” pretty good.”

“Aye, but she’s swinging around to the west. Ought to be a right nice evening to take a plunge.”

“What time?”

“Say seven. This time we’ll be punctual.”

“Okay.” Coffin peeled off the wet suit and dove into the water.

On the way back to St. David’s, David and Gail counted ampules. She had already bagged a hundred lots of fifty, but two or three times that amount remained, piled on the bunks, wrapped in towels, filling the rusty sink. To keep the ampules from smashing, Treece drove slowly, letting the boat wallow in the rolling seas.

They were still counting and bagging ampules an hour and a half later when Treece nosed Corsair up to the dock.

When they had tied off the last bag, Sanders said, “That’s it: twenty-three thousand two hundred and seventy.”

“So about twenty-eight thousand, all told.”

Treece looked at the heaps of plastic bags on the deck. “We’re going to make the Baggie company rich.”

Gail calculated figures in her head. “At this rate, even if we up it to fifty thousand a day, we’ve got nine or ten days to go.”

“Aye, and that time we do not have.”

After lunch, Treece left the house and walked down the hill. Gail stood at the sink, washing the dishes. Sanders came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and nuzzled her neck. “It’ll take him at least twenty minutes, down and back,” he said. “We could accomplish a lot in twenty minutes.”

She leaned back against him. “You think?”

“Come on.” He took her arm and led her to the bedroom.

They made love, with quiet, gentle passion. When they were finished, Gail saw that David’s eyes were moist. “What’s the matter?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying.”

“All right, you’re not crying. Why are your eyes wet?”

Sanders started to deny that his eyes were wet, but, instead, he rolled onto his back and said, “I was thinking how lucky I am… what it would be like if you died and I knew I’d never ever be able to hold you again. I wonder how he can live with that.”

Gail touched his lips. “I guess you live with memories.”

They heard the kitchen door open. Sanders got out of bed and pulled on his bathing suit.

Kevin stood in the kitchen with Treece. His huge brown belly spilled over his tight tank suit, concealing it almost entirely. The only other clothing he wore was a pair of dusty old wing-tipped brown shoes without laces. The look on his face radiated intense dislike for everything.

Treece patted Kevin’s fleshy shoulder and said to Sanders, “He can’t wait to plunge all this lard into the briny. A regular sea horse. When was your last dip, Kevin? Fifty-five, was it?”

Kevin grunted sullenly.

They walked down the path to the dock. When he saw the ampules in the boat, Kevin’s eyes widened.

“Shit,” he said. “That the lot?”

“No. That’s what we got so far. There’s a whole pisspot left.”

“How many?”

“Who knows?” Treece said, smiling. “This here’s all concerns you.” He started the compressor.

Sanders put on his wet suit. It was clammy and cold. “What about your friend down there… percy?”

“He’ll be in his hole asleep, probably. But you might drop him a fish anyway.”

Sanders looked at Treece’s bandaged hand. “I don’t have to feed it to him, do I?”

“No, just lay it over his hole, or nearby.

He’ll smell it out.”

It took Sanders and Kevin two hours to place the ampules in the cave. Sanders was cold and tired, but Kevin, who wore nothing but bathing suit and weight belt-no wet suit, no flippers-seemed unaffected by the water or the work.

Gripping the diving platform and resting on the surface for a moment before hauling himself aboard the boat, Sanders saw Kevin take the last bag of ampules from Treece and, without a word, submerge.

“I thought he didn’t like the water. He’s a machine.”

“Hates it,” Treece said, “but you give him a task to do and that’s what he is, a machine. If I have heavy salvage work, he’s the one I take; got about ten horsepower inside him, and so much lard that he never gets cold. He’s something of a paradox: greedy as hell, but so surly he can’t work with the people who’ve got the money to pay him.”

“You’ll pay him for this?”

“Aye. He’ll want a hundred dollars, I’ll offer twenty, and we’ll settle for fifty.”

“Not bad wages.”

“No, but he’s good. I could get all manner of idiots for five an hour, but they’d take all bloody day at it, then go drink up the proceeds and blab all over the island about what they’ve been doing. Besides, Kevin doesn’t get much work. I like to do what I can.”

Sanders climbed into the boat and unzipped his wet suit. His chest and arms were goose flesh.

“Go on up and have a shower,” Treece said. “Kevin and I’ll finish up.”

Sanders shivered. “Okay.”

Treece took Sanders’ wet-suit jacket and hung it from a corner of the deckhouse roof.

“Sun’ll bake it warm before tonight.”

The walk up the hill warmed Sanders some, but not enough; he was still shivering when he reached the house. He poured himself a scotch and took it with him to the shower.

When he finished showering, he went to the bedroom. On the way, he caught a glimpse of Treece in the kitchen. He opened the bedroom door quietly-Gail was asleep-pulled on a pair of trousers, and put his wallet in a hip pocket.

Treece sat at the kitchen table, a glass of rum to his right, a pile of papers to his left, and the gold crucifix in front of him.

Sanders poured himself another drink. “Was it what you said? Fifty?”

“Aye.”

Sanders took two tens and a five from his wallet and put them on the table. “Our share.”

Treece contemplated the bills and said, “All right.” He tapped the crucifix with his finger.

“You’ve got that and a hell of a lot more, from your share of this.”

“What’s it worth?” Sanders had no idea of the value of Spanish gold. In metal value alone, there were probably seven or eight ounces of gold-maybe twelve hundred dollars’ worth. The gems were tiny.

“Roughly? If we wanted to sell it, if we could sell it, if we had an open market for it-roughly a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Jesus Christ!” Sanders’ hand jumped, and he spilled scotch on the table.

“Don’t go spending it, “cause more’n likely you’ll never see it. Before there’s a farthing, we’ll have to get the lot up, have it appraised, report it to the bloody government, decide if we want to sell any or all of it, negotiate with the bastards-which can take months-and then, maybe…”

“Still, a hundred thousand! Where’s the value?”

“Premium, mostly, and that’s another problem. Premium’s hard to set; it’s subjective. What’s workmanship worth?” Treece cradled the crucifix in his palm. “Damn, but those Dutch Jews were craftsmen!”

“Dutch Jews? I thought this came from South America.”

“It did. But most of the fine jewelry-the stuff for royalty-was made by Dutch Jews hired by the Spaniards and shipped over to the New World. The Spaniards and the Indians couldn’t do this kind of work. The other thing you pay for is provenance.

That’s what I’ve got to keep looking for, the bloody provenance.”

“Why?”

“Like I told you before, folks are manufacturing stuff left and right and passing it off as Spanish. You have to be able to prove, really prove, where it came from.” Treece slapped the pile of papers. “So it’s back to the bloody documents.”

“E.f. is a name, right? It has to be.”

Treece looked at Sanders as if he had uttered a remark of monumental stupidity.

Sanders flushed. “I mean… it’s not like the ‘D.g.” on the coin, or the other stuff, “King of Spain and the Indies.” E.f. is a person.”

“Aye, it’s a name. And in here I have the names of all the Spanish nobility in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It’s not much help, but it’s a start.”

“Can I help?”

“No. It takes a practiced eye to know what to look for.” Treece handed the crucifix to Sanders. “Here’s a task for you: Figure out how Mr. Jesus comes apart.”

Sanders held the crucifix close to his face.

There was a faint hairline between the Christ’s neck and shoulders, and Sanders tried to turn the head. It didn’t budge. “I don’t know where to begin.” He took a sip of scotch, then failed to disguise a yawn.

“Best thing you could do,” Treece said, “is go fall down for a couple of hours. Three-thirty now; we should leave the dock by six. Earlier, if the breeze hasn’t slacked off some.”

“You’re right.” Sanders finished his drink and went into the bedroom.

Gail was curled, like a baby, on her side of the bed, snoring thickly through clogged sinuses.

Sanders stepped out of his trousers and crawled into bed.

He considered putting his hand over Gail’s nose, to make her change position and, perhaps, stop snoring long enough for him to fall asleep. But suppose he woke her…

The next thing he knew, Treece was tapping him on the shoulder and saying, “Time to get wet again.”

The wind had shifted to the west and dropped to a pleasant breeze, and as they cruised along the south shore in the low sunlight, they could easily see the lines of reef.

Treece gave Sanders the wheel and said, “Just point her straight.” He went below, rooted around in some boxes, and reappeared with a thin rubber kitchen glove and some elastic bands.

“You can’t get that fist of yours in that glove,” Sanders said.

“No.” Treece put the glove on the gunwale, took a knife from a sheath tacked to the bulkhead, and sliced the fingers off the glove. He handed Gail the glove, and she held it for him as he worked his hand into it. He slipped an elastic band around his wrist, sealing the top of the glove, then put on a wet-suit jacket and a rubber diving glove.

“You’re diving?” Gail said.

“How does your head feel?”

“Fair to poor.”

“I’m diving. I don’t think I could suffer being topside with all you experts below, anyway. My imagination’d drive me crazy.” Treece flexed his fingers; he could not close his fist. “Little water won’t hurt. This’ll keep the stink away from the gobblers.”

The lights in the Orange Grove Club shone brightly in the twilight. The setting sun made the surf line glow pink-white, but the beach itself was in shadow cast by the high cliffs. The calm sea permitted Treece to bring the boat to within twenty yards of shore. The beach was empty.

“Where is he?” Sanders asked.

“He’ll be along.” Treece looked at his watch. “We’re five minutes early.”

They waited, rocking softly. Every couple of minutes, Treece gave the engine a brief burst of power, to keep the boat from being swept ashore. The sky blue was darkening quickly.

At 7:15, Treece said, “It’s not like him to be late.”

“Want me to go check?” said Sanders.

“Check what? If he’s late, he’s late.”

“Maybe the hotel people are giving him grief… about using the elevator or something.”

“All right.”

Sanders zipped up his wet-suit jacket and put on his flippers.

Gail said, “Be careful.”

“Of what? There’s nothing on that beach but crabs.”

“I don’t know, but… please.”

“I will.” Sanders put on his mask and fell into the water.

Five yards from shore, Sanders found that he could touch bottom. He took off his flippers and mask and trudged through the small waves. Standing on the beach, he looked left and right; he could see for at least a mile in both directions, and although the light was dim, he could tell that the beach was deserted. He dropped flippers and mask above the high-water mark and started for the cliffs, dark rock curtains looming into the indigo sky. Behind him, to his right, a sliver of yellow was rising over the horizon: a new moon. He heard the muffled thuds and hisses of the waves on the sand and the whisper of wind through the foliage atop the cliffs.

As he stepped into the shadows, he looked up; he could see the rectangular elevator cage outlined against the sky. He walked toward the base of the elevator pole, intending to summon the cage to the bottom of the cliff. He could not see the pole, so he used the cage above him as a guide.

In full stride, he tripped on something and tumbled to his knees.

He couldn’t see anything. Still on his knees, he turned and felt with his hand. The smell of ordure filled his nostrils, and for a moment he thought he had fallen over a defecating animal. Then his fingers touched flesh, cooling: an arm. He drew a quick, shocked breath, felt a rush of fear, and probed with his fingers.

He leaned closer and saw Coffin’s glazed, lifeless eyes staring at the sky. Drying blood trickled from his mouth.

Sanders put his fingers to the base of Coffin’s neck and felt for a pulse: nothing. Then he sprang to his feet and ran.

He stopped at the water’s edge, just long enough to pull his flippers on his feet, then dove over a small wave and swam frantically toward the boat.

“He’s dead!” Sanders gasped as Treece dragged him aboard. “They must’ve thrown him off the cliff.”

Treece squeezed Sanders’ wrist. “You’re sure?”

“Positive! No breathing, no pulse, no nothing.”

“Shitst”

Roughly, Treece cast Sanders’ hand away.

Sanders thought: That’s a strange elegy-shit. But what more was there to say? The expletive was eloquent enough, conveying anger and dismay.

He looked at Gail. Her whole body was shivering, and her breaths were short, almost sobs. She stared fixedly at the water. He went to her and put his arms around her. She did not react to his touch, did not recoil from the cold clamminess of his wet suit. He breathed on her hair and whispered, “Okay… okay.”

She looked up at him and said flatly, “I want to go home.”

“I know,” he said.

“I want to go home now. It can’t be worse than this.”

Sanders started to speak, but Treece, gazing at the cliffs, spoke first: “No goin’ home now. He’s ready to make his move.”

Sanders said, “What move?”

“I imagine he thinks his divers are ready; doesn’t need us any more. I thought we had a bit of time, but we have got no bloody time at all.” He slammed the gear lever all the way forward. The engine growled, the propeller cavitated, then bit into the sea, and the boat lunged toward the reefs.

When they had reached the reef and set the anchor, Treece said to Sanders, “Can she dive?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll…”

“I can dive,” said Gail. “I can’t be alone up here. I’ll get down all right, if I take my time.”

“I hate like hell to leave us empty topside,” said Treece. “Charlotte’s not too handy with a shotgun. But I don’t see we have a choice. He may not try anything else tonight, figure he shook us good enough for one day.”

They dressed, and Gail mounted her regulator on an air tank.

“You two take the lights,” Treece said.

“Keep ’em trained on the nozzle of the gun. Use your free hands to collect the glass. I’ll try not to get ahead of you.” Treece started the compressor and tossed the air-lift hose overboard. “Christ, that monster makes a din. If it weren’t for the bloody gun, we could leave her quiet and use bottles.”

They went into the water and switched on the lights.

Treece looked at David and Gail, nodded his head, and dove for the bottom.

The dog stood on the bow, watching the lights recede into the darkness, sniffing the warm night air.

Sanders and Treece reached the bottom first. Gail lingered behind, descending as fast as her ears and sinuses would permit. There was something different about the air she was breathing; it seemed to have a faint taste, mildly sweet, but it was having no ill effect, so she continued to the bottom.

They were working away from the reef, perhaps ten yards from the little cave, in a new field of ampules.

Sanders’ light was steady on the mouth of the air lift, and he picked the ampules out of the hole one by one.

Gail settled across the hole from Treece and lay on her stomach, a canvas bag at her side.

She felt no tenseness at all, no worry; she was surprised, in fact, at how relaxed she felt. Even when the air lift uncovered an artillery shell, her mind registered it as a thing, not a concern.

Treece did not bother to remove the artillery shell. He dug around it, and when the air lift exposed another piece of ordnance-a long, thicker brass canister-he simply avoided it, too. Soon, however, he could not avoid the shells; they were everywhere, mixed in with thousands of ampules.

Treece signaled for a move to the right, and pushing off the bottom with his left hand, he floated six or eight feet away. Sanders followed directly behind him.

It took Gail several seconds to realize they were gone. She stared at the hole in the sand, thinking vague, dreamy thoughts, enjoying the pretty yellow air hose that snaked through the water after David.

Her eyes followed the hose, and when at last she saw the two men, she ambled casually along the sand, letting her light play on the colors in the reef.

She didn’t want to shine the light in the new hole Treece was digging; she preferred to watch two yellow fish that cruised around the reef and glowed when the light struck them. But she saw Sanders look at her and point insistently at the air lift, so she swung her body around and drifted to the bottom.

She yawned, feeling wonderful-warm and cozy in the black water.

Sanders worked within the beam of his own light, intent on gathering the ampules as fast as he could, face pressed close to the bottom.

It was Treece who first noticed that the radius of light was too small. He raised his head from the hole and saw Gail’s light bobbing aimlessly in the water, beam swinging from surface to bottom and side to side.

By the time Sanders thought to look up, Treece had already sprung. He kicked violently toward Gail’s light, tearing the Desco mask off his face as he moved. He wrenched the light from Gail’s hand and shone it on her face; her eyes were closed, her head hung limply. Treece dropped the light and reached for her head, pulled the regulator out of her mouth, and knocked off her mask. Then he put a hand behind her head and forced her face into the Desco mask. He raised his knee and, carefully, shoved it into her stomach.

Sanders didn’t know what was happening; all he saw was the beam of the other light, lying in the sand. He swung his light upward and found motion, fixed on it, and pushed off the bottom. Treece’s hands surrounded Gail’s head. Weak streams of bubbles-from the mask, from Gail’s regulator, and from Treece’s mouth-shepherded them to the surface.

Treece reached the diving platform, exhaled the last of his breath, and let his mask fall from Gail’s face. He pushed her onto the platform, face down, and, while he hauled himself after her, began to press rhythmically on her back.

Sanders’ head broke water. He saw Treece kneeling, heard him saying, “Come on… give me a hearty one… come on… there we go… there we go… whups!” There was a gagging sound, a splash, then Treece’s voice again, “There we go… one more time… there we go… okay… there’s the girl… one more time… that’s a good one.” Treece sat back on his heels.

“Sonofabitch! That was frightful close.”

Through a fog of semiconsciousness, Gail felt a scratchy pain in her throat and tasted acid, watery vomit.

She was nauseous; a heavy, throbbing ache filled her skull. She groaned feebly and heard Sanders say, “What happened?” Then she felt herself being lifted, and Treece’s voice saying, “Know in a minute.”

Treece lay her on the deck, on her side. He bent over and opened one of her eyes with his thumb. “Okay?”

The other eye felt heavy, but she forced it open and whispered, “Yes.”

Treece picked up her regulator hose and held the mouthpiece under his nose. He pushed the purge valve, and air from the tank squirted up his nostrils. “Lordy.” He grimaced. “By rights, you should be having tea with the Angel Gabriel.”

“What is it?”

“Carbon monoxide.”

“Exhaust?” Sanders said. “From the compressor?”

“Not from the compressor. I told you, it’s vented right.”

“From what then?”

“Someone knew what he was doing, probably backed a car up to the air intake.”

“Tried to kill her?”

“Her or you or me. I don’t imagine they cared which.”

Sanders looked down at Gail. She had propped herself on one elbow and her head hung limply, as if she expected to vomit.

He turned to Treece and snapped, “That is it!”

“That’s what?”

“The end! It’s finished! We’ve lost, and that’s too damn

bad! You turn this goddamn thing around and get us out of here!”

“We can’t,” Gail said weakly. “There’s no…”

“Oh yes, we can! Let him have it all. The gold too. Who gives a shit? It’s better than…”

Treece said, “Calm down.”

“I won’t calm down! Suppose they had killed her. What then? Calm down? Too bad?”

Sanders felt his hands shaking, and he clenched his fists. “No thanks. Not again. He’s not gonna get another shot at her. We’re getting out of here!”

Sanders walked forward to the wheel and searched the instrument panel for the starter button. He had seen Treece start the boat a dozen times but had never paid attention to the mechanics. He pushed one button after another, and nothing happened.

“You have to turn the key,” said Treece. His voice was toneless, matter-of-fact.

Sanders reached for the key, but he did not turn it.

He looked at Treece standing placidly in the stern.

“There really is no way out, is there?”

“No.”

The two men faced each other for a few seconds.

Then Treece bent down and touched Gail’s shoulder and said, “How you feeling?”

“Better.”

“Stay topside; breathe deep. The shotgun’s by the wheel. Let me show you something.” He helped her to her feet, led her to the compressor, and pointed to a wing nut on the side of the machine. “See that? If you see a boat coming or you hear something—if anything happens you don’t like-turn that nut half a turn to the right. It’ll shut off the compressor. We’ll be on the surface in a fine hurry, I promise you.”

“Okay.” Gail hesitated. “I meant to ask you…”

“What?”

“What will you do with Adam?”

“Leave him where he lays. Nothing we can do for him; he’s gone where he’s going.”

“What about the police?”

“Look, girl…” There was a hint of testiness in Treece’s voice. “Forget all the

law-and-order nonsense. There’s no one going to help us. We survive, it’s thanks to us; we don’t, it’s our own fault. Tomorrow morning, somebody’ll find Adam and call the police, and they’ll come, all efficiency, and cart him away and write in their little pads that Adam went wandering out to the cliffs at night-drunk, they’ll say-and fell overboard. We go to the police, they’ll come to the same damn conclusion, only comfor appearances-they’ll make us spend days answering dumb-ass questions from the paper-pushers. Police are a waste of time.”

Treece motioned Sanders aft to the diving platform.

When the two men had assembled their gear, Sanders said to Gail, “You’ll feel better if you lie down.”

“I’m okay. You be careful.” She smiled.

Treece made the thumbs-up sign, Sanders responded, and they jumped backward into the water.

Gail watched Sanders’ light as it descended toward the light that lay on the bottom, her light. That light was picked up, and the two beams moved together across the bottom, stopped and fuzzed as the mist of sand permeated the water.

She shivered and raised her eyes to the dark cliffs.

She tried to envision what Coffin’s body looked like, crumpled in the sand. She shook her head to rid herself of the thought, walked forward, and took the shotgun from the shelf in front of the wheel. She sat on the transom, cradling the gun in her lap-hating it, afraid of it, but grateful for it.

A noise behind her: splash, bump. She jumped off the transom and spun, cocking the gun and aiming it at the water. A hand broke the surface and reached for her; it held a canvas bag full of ampules. Gail put the gun down and, trembling, reached for the bag.

Sanders lifted the bottom of his mask. “You all right?”

“Yes.” She emptied the bag onto the tarpaulin on the deck. “I almost shot you, that’s all.”

“If they come, I don’t think it’ll be in a submarine,” Sanders said. He took the empty bag from her and dropped below the surface.

Gail knelt on the deck and began to count ampules, groping for them in the dark.

With only two divers working, the collecting went slowly. Each time Sanders surfaced, Treece stopped digging in the hole, for fear of unearthing ampules that would be swept away in the tide.

Waiting for Sanders to return, he moved to the reef and probed with the air lift. He dug at random, finding ampules in one spot, artillery shells in another, nothing in another. He came to a small pocket in the reef, where the coral receded about five feet from the reef face and formed a kind of cove. He concentrated on the cove, touching the air lift to the bottom and watching the sand vanish up the tube.

Sanders returned and tapped Treece on the shoulder. Treece nodded, intending to return to the field of ampules, and routinely checked his watch.

The wet-suit sleeve covered the dial, so, to read it, Treece had to cradle the air lift under his right arm and use the fingers of his right hand to peel back the left sleeve. It was eleven o’clock. Treece let the sleeve fall back into place and moved his right arm away from his side, to drop the air lift into his hand. He missed it; his bandaged, rubber-covered hand did not respond quickly enough, and the air lift fell to the bottom. It hit the sand and bucked; Treece lunged for it with his left hand, caught it, and wrestled it under control. Then he saw a gleam.

As it bounced on the bottom, the tube had moved to the right side of the little cove and, always hungry for sand, had gouged a hole on its own. The gleam was at the bottom of the hole.

Treece gave Sanders his light and motioned for him to train both lights on the hole. Then, like a surgeon exploring an incision, Treece lowered the air lift to the gleam. His left hand hovered near the sand, to catch the object if it was wrenched free and flew toward the tube; his right held the tube a foot off the bottom, diluting its power to a point where it barely disturbed the grains of sand.

It was a pine cone, about the size of a tennis ball, perfectly shaped of gold. Each of the countless ridges on the pine cone was topped with a tiny pearl.

Delicately, Treece plucked the pine cone from the sand and held it beneath the lights. Motes of sand passing between the pine cone and the light made the gold shimmer.

A canvas bag hung off Sanders’ wrist. Treece reached into the bag, set the pine cone gently on the canvas bottom, and resumed digging.

Another gleam: a half-inch circle of gold.

Treece pinched it between his fingers and pulled; it would not come. He stripped more sand away and saw that the circle was connected to another circle, and that one to still another: a chain of gold.

When twenty links where exposed, Treece was able to pull the rest of the chain free with his hand. It was seven or eight feet long. Treece pointed to a clasp at the end of the chain. Sanders looked closely and saw the engraved letters “E.f.”

Treece dug for a few more minutes and found nothing.

He put the gold chain in the canvas bag and pointed upward.

“Careful with that,” Sanders said as he handed the bag to Gail. He passed her one of the lights. He heard Treece surface beside him and said, “How come we’re quitting? Maybe there’s more.”

“Maybe, but it’s too late to get it all now, and I don’t want to do a half-ass job and leave a bloody great ditch down there for someone else to spot.”

“It’s incredible!” Gail said, shining the light on the pine cone in her palm.

“Turn off that damn light!” Treece said. The light snapped off. “Someone on the cliffs with glasses could pick that out clear as day.”

Treece climbed aboard, turned off the compressor, told Sanders to haul in the air hoses, and started the engine. He looked back at Sanders, who was coiling the hoses neatly on the deck.

“Don’t bother with that. Just throw it on board.

Soon’s you’re done, take the wheel.”

Treece stepped onto the gunwale and walked forward, impatiently nudging the dog out of the way.

Sanders brought the air lift aboard and hauled on the hose.

“Take the wheel,” Treece called.

“Just a sec.”

“Now, dammit!”

Sanders looked at Gail and handed her the hose.

“Here. You finish it.” He took the wheel.

“Put her in gear,” Treece said, “and give me a bit of throttle. Want to run her up the anchor line.”

Sanders obeyed. Treece hauled the anchor aboard and came aft. As he dropped into the cockpit, Sanders said, “What’s the rush?”

Treece did not reply. He relieved Sanders of the wheel and pushed the throttle full ahead.

There was no conversation on the way back to St.

David’s. Treece stood at the wheel, preoccupied. David and Gail coiled hoses and counted ampules.

Nor did Treece say anything when they reached the house a few minutes before one o’clock. He poured himself

a glass of rum, put the pine cone and chain on the kitchen table, and pulled a box of documents out of a closet. He nodded when the Sanderses said good night.

At four o’clock that morning, Treece identified E.f.