Three to Be Read

by Philip Wylie

  “Sure. About fifteen miles west—and a little north—from here.”

  “Check. Well—about a mile due west, in the Gulf, near a marvelous stretch of grouper reef, is a wreck.”

  “Of what?” Dodson asked.

  Mr. Weber’s eyes twinkled. “That’s the question. It’s a very old wreck. Last year—diving myself—I got two cannon off her. British-made, in 1750. I also got the remains of a Bible—French—published about 1725. But the wreck itself is so much caved in and so grown over with coral that I didn’t have a chance to work out what sort of vessel she was.

  A Spaniard, I suspect.”

  “How’d you find her?” Des asked.

  “Looking for new and better grouper holes in the Beryl. If you want some fun, though, you can go down to that wreck with crowbars and poke around. Might find something—might not.”

  Pierce said, “Great!”

  “It would give me the pure willies even to watch,” Olivia said.

  “What about it, skipper?” Dod asked.

  Crunch nodded. “We’ve run off diving parties before. It’s simple. Rig the pump in the cockpit. I’ve got a ladder that fits the side… .”

  “Then it’s set. Dad?”

  Jerome Brush nodded. “Count me in.”

  “Me, too,” Ramsay said.

  They looked at him surprisedly—as if they’d forgotten his presence.

  “If nobody minds,” he said hastily.

  Nobody spoke for a moment.

  Then Jerome Brush said, “Sure, doctor. I take it you’ve used a diving helmet?”

  Ramsay shook his head. “Never even saw one—except in movies.”

  Pierce groaned.

  “The thing is,” Dodson said diplomatically, “we’d worry about you, doctor.”

  Ramsay sighed softly. “I’ll be content to be a spectator.”

  That relieved the Brushes. Jerome said, “Be a big party, Crunch.”

  “We’ll manage.”

  The morning was hazy, flat calm, brilliant—like all the recent days. Hurricane weather with no hurricanes in view. Crunch had pointed out repeatedly to prospective customers that September was a good month for fishing—that the hurricanes came only at intervals of years—and that the weather, barring a blow, was usually perfect—especially for poor sailors. Muggy and glassy. He’d sold few September trips by that little lecture, however.

  The Poseidon had loaded the diving gear from the Beryl early. The four Brushes and Ramsay came aboard. Olivia had decided to stay on shore with Mrs. Brush. Crunch cast off and Des headed for Scuddy Cay, a small, swampy—looking island almost out of sight of all other land.

  They took careful bearings from the marks Mr. Weber had made on the ship’s chart, but, even so, it was almost an hour after their arrival in the proper area before Marylin yelled from the harpoon pulpit, “Hey, Des—what’s that yonder?”

  It was a dark spot. It became a ship-shaped shadow as the Poseidon drew near.

  Des cut the motors.

  They coasted, marring the immaculate surface. All hands peered over the side.

  Slowly, they came to the spot. Fifty feet down, in water as clear as any spring, they made out every detail of the wreck. She lay on sand. Probably she had been buried in sand for a century or two and laid bare again by the currents only recently—as time went. Even so, she was well shaken down and flattened out in most places and she supported a thick encrustation of corals, sea mats, fans, millepores and other marine growths. Long weeds trailed up from her, bending in the current. A sand shark lay along side of her and, behind the shark, was the big diamond of a dug-in sting ray. Filtering through the staghorn corals, the sea pens and fans, were thousands of fishes of every color. They could make out where some ribs ran and they could see that the forward timbers were still upright. It was as if the Poseidon floated on air-as if they were in a balloon, close to such a landscape as imaginative painters invent to represent the flora and fauna of another planet.

  “Golly!”

  Des said that. And when Des said “golly” in such a tone, there was reason for wonderment.

  “It’s beautiful,” Marylin murmured. “But I’m not sure I’d have the nerve to go down there, after all.”

  “Sting rays?” Dodson chuckled. “They scram when they see you. And that little shark wouldn’t hurt a baby.”

  “It looks octopusy,” she said.

  “They never get big around here.”

  “Morays, then?”

  Dodson laughed. “The thing in the case of morays is to leave them alone. You stick your hand in their hole, and those big eels can really bite. I ought to know. I got bitten twice diving off Turtle Rocks, in Bimini.”

  Pierce said sarcastically, “What’s your opinion of it, doctor?”

  Ramsay raised his face. “It’s like heaven.” That was all he said.

  Crunch had been watching the motion of the deep seaweeds and also the slow drift of the Poseidon. “I think,” he said, “if we take her north and a shade west and get the anchors holding good, we can drop her straight back, stay right here, and set you down beside her.”

  Des nodded.

  Half an hour later, Dodson, who had matched with his father and brother and won, was in the helmet. Des helped him down the ladder to the water. Pierce began pumping.

  Ramsay came up. “At least—I could do that?”

  Pierce scowled. “Look, doc. I hate to be mean. But this is just what you can’t do.

  Sure as hell—you’d bollix the thing up and old Dod would have to shake off his helmet and swim out of it. It’s deep down there and he’d hurt his ears and bleed his nose and we’d lose the gear and it would be your fault.”

  Ramsay said nothing.

  Crunch thought that it was bad tempered. He also understood Pierce’s feeling about the importance of proper air operation. After all, there were plenty of men on board—reliable men—to keep the pump-handle stroking evenly.

  Marylin picked up a four-foot, narrow, boxlike gadget, which had handles and a glass bottom, and put it over the side. The bubbles rising from Dodson’s helmet were riming the surface and making it hard to see. Through this device, however, as through a glass-bottomed bucket, she had a perfect view. She watched Dodson go down and down and down through the gin-limpid sea. It was a long trip.

  But at last the rope which Crunch and Des were paying out went slack.

  “That wreck stands a lot taller than it seems from here,” she reported. “Dod looks like a pigmy.” She handed the instrument to her father.

  He peered into it. “Well—Dodson’s walking up to the side. He’s giving it a poke with the crowbar. He’s knocked off a lot of coral and junk and stirred up some marl. Now he’s coming out of that. Yoiks! Look at that old stingaree take off for other parts!”

  Crunch took a turn. “He’s apparently going all the way around. Yep. Des—hike up the lines a little. That’s good. Hold it—or you’ll lift him. Right! Now he’s climbing aboard.

  It’s quite a high climb. Now he’s snooping along it. All I can see is the bubbles and his red trunks. He’s in the clear, now. Walking up on what was the cabin or the poop or the forecastle, or something. Now—climbing down the side. Going up to the bows—if they are the bows. Hacking away. I guess he’s trying to bat the coral off in the spot where he thinks her name might be.”

  “Didn’t they have the names on the stern in those days?” Marylin asked.

  “Search me. Guess they did. Anyhow—he’s working on those forward timbers.”

  After a considerable period, Dodson signaled that he would like to be brought up.

  He climbed the ladder slowly after he emerged and took off the gear—with help. His face was enthusiastic. “We ought to be able to find out a lot about her—if the light and the weather stay like this. She’s been messed up and spilled around by the currents. They come in, down there, and give you a shove every now and then. I knocked a lot of guck off her forward part—and found this between two timbers.”
r />   He held out something flat and metallic. He picked up a bait knife and scratched it. It glittered.

  “What is it?” Marylin asked.

  Dodson shrugged. “I wouldn’t swear—but doesn’t that look like gold? And hasn’t it got a bird shape—sort of? I think I’ve seen some Inca or Mayan gold ornaments like that at the American Museum.”

  “For heaven’s sake!” Jerome Brush said then. “It does! Of course—”

  Dodson nodded. “Could be merely a keepsake of one of the crew—or somebody—that got lodged there. But we ought to look. Your dive, Dad.”

  They watched Mr. Brush descend. He shooed away two large barracudas which slid in from nowhere and took a considerable interest—either in him, or his bubble stream.

  Then he attacked the timbers Dodson had worked on—breaking and prizing away the coral—peering at it as it fell, turning it on the sand with his shoe, and squinting through the cumbersome helmet at the revealed timbers. He worked a long while and came up with the report that he had found nothing—no more Aztec gold, or whatever it was, and not even the beginning of a name on the timbers.

  “We have time,” Crunch said, “for another dive. Then maybe we should knock off for lunch. After all—this weather will probably hold and we’ve got the afternoon. We can also come back tomorrow if we want.”

  Ramsay had gone up forward and was peering into the water from the harpoon pulpit when Pierce descended. Direct visibility there was not much blurred by the breaking bubbles. He watched Pierce—feeling as helpless and, in a sense, as alone as he had ever felt in his life. They would not even let him man the pump. They had no confidence in him in any way. They detested him. And they were—excepting for the cracks Pierce made—being decent even about that. He was too wretched to stay near them, too burdened with self-reproach and feelings of inferiority to take a turn at what Marylin called the looking glass.

  She was using it, now—reporting what she saw.

  He could see it, too. Pierce went down and down as Crunch and Des payed out rope. He touched the sand, picked up the crowbar his father had left stuck in it, and advanced upon the coral-covered prow. This he assailed with tremendous energy. Soon, the muck he stirred up obscured him from view.

  Ramsay rolled over on his back and let the sun burn down on his face. He was tan, now-as tan as any Brush. Any sporting, athletic, enormously energetic young Brush.

  He was in as good shape. He should and could have enjoyed the trip—if only it weren’t taken as a game with tricky rules, and played every inch of the way competitively. Such competitiveness, he thought sadly, was for kids—or for men in a war—but not for the pleasure of grown people.

  It was then that Marylin screamed.

  He sat up instantly and leaned in order to see around the cabin. She still held the glass-bottomed box.

  “Ohhhh!” she screamed. “The whole forward end fell over on him!”

  Ramsay rolled and looked down. There was a vast cloud of murk. The current was clearing it except at one edge, where a struggle was going on.

  He looked astern again. Des pulled on the lifeline—gingerly and then hard. It was dead—caught.

  Jerome Brush had grabbed the box. His voice was awful. “I can begin to see, now! Pierce is there—lying there—flat! Pinned by timbers I think! My God—the helmet’s slipped off him—or he’s gotten himself free of it! Pull!” An instant later he yelled, “Stop pulling! You’re hauling him farther under! The line goes from him—beneath the beams—then up. He’s trying to get his legs out!”

  Des, paper pale, looked to Crunch for direction. Crunch seized the box and stared.

  “What do you make of it?” the father asked imploringly.

  Crunch was as white as Des. “Give a heave on the air line, Des. The helmet’s pinned, too—and we gotta get it up because somebody’s gotta go down there and dig him out. He’ll never last long enough—”

  Mr. Brush snatched the box away and stared. “Drowning!” he shouted. “Drowning before my eyes!”

  “Shut up!” Crunch ordered. That stopped that. Des was trying. Ramsay and Dodson were at his side. Crunch came in. All four hove on the air line. It broke.

  Crunch said hoarsely, “Get out the dinghy anchor, Des. We’ll make a grapple. He might still be able to hang on—if we can get it straight to him …”

  “You’ll never pull him from under those timbers!” the father said hoarsely. “And he’ll be unconscious in a few more seconds… .”

  Dodson leaped on the gunwale to dive.

  Crunch grabbed him. “Don’t waste your strength.” He pulled Dodson back. “It’s sixty feet.”

  Des came with the anchor.

  Ramsay took it and went over the side with a jump and a splash.

  Nobody moved.

  Nobody had noticed that he had been stripping off clothes and breathing and gulping air.

  There were no bubbles, now.

  They could see.

  See everything. See Pierce digging crazily, in the sand beneath his pinned legs.

  See the line that went from his waist under the beams. See the helmet, smashed and held by timber and broken coral. The clearing of the remnants of forward structure had undermined them or weakened them and an eddy of current had done the rest.

  Ramsay went down—slowly, it seemed, clinging to the anchor. He landed about fifteen feet from the doomed man. He walked forward, slowly, it still seemed, carrying the anchor. He apparently patted Pierce on the back. Pierce clawed at him and then layover on his side. Ramsay took a stance and tried the beams. They moved a little—stirred up muck—but not enough. He picked up the anchor again and looked about. He saw the crowbar and recovered it after a struggle. He walked back, carrying the bar now, and set it under the beams. He bent his back and the beams moved farther. He hunted again, found a chunk of coral, and shoved it in with his knee as he levered the beams.

  Then he looked for more coral of the right size.

  Pierce had stopped moving—after one small, last series of threshings and twistings.

  “He’s dead,” the father groaned.

  Crunch, lined with the rest along the rail, said, “He’s got ten minutes sure—twenty, maybe—and possibly even more—if Ram can get him!”

  Two of those minutes passed. No one at the rail moved.

  Then Dodson stood. “I’ve got to try for it. Got to.” He dove.

  He swam down and down and down and then, when still far short, he turned and swam up. Des grabbed him at the ladder.

  “No use,” Dodson whispered. “No use at all. I can’t make it.” He shuddered.

  Crunch hardly paid him heed. He saw, now, that Ramsay was looking up. Three minutes. Ramsay kicked off.

  Crunch left the gunwale. He got out another crowbar and went below. He came back with a shovel—kept in a locker to dig the Poseidon off mudbanks, when and if necessary.

  Ramsay broke water. He swam—with his strange stroke-to the ladder. He was breathing hard. “Shovel.”

  “Right here,” Crunch said.

  “‘Nother anchor.”

  “Bar do?”

  Ramsay nodded.

  He came out, chest high, on the ladder. He belched and began to draw immense, whistling breaths. He showed signs of strain, but not of undue strain. In fact Crunch thought that, before he let go again, he half-grinned at Marylin.

  He went down with the shovel in one hand and the heavy, second crowbar in the other. Down and down in the clear, bluish water. He landed a little nearer to the inert, pinioned body of Pierce Brush. He went back to work in the same, methodical-looking way. Actually, it was the weight of water that slowed his movements. They lined the gunwale again, watching. Marylin whimpered softly—and did not know it. Mr. Brush prayed gently, continuously. Crunch held his own breath as long as he could—and did not know it—and did not notice when he let it out.

  “It’s inhuman,” Dodson finally whispered.

  Crunch said, “No.”

  They looked.

 
Ramsay prized on the beams and shoved in his coral wedges—looked—repeated—looked—and levered again. Sand and marl swirled around him and around the unconscious, drowning man.

  Now Ramsay took the shovel and began to dig. Two minutes. He kept digging.

  Two minutes and a half. He tried Pierce’s shoulders and dug again. Then he set his hands under Pierce’s armpits, leaned with the running current, and pulled, furrowing sand with his heels. The inert form slid forward, Ramsay took another hold. The figure moved again.

  Three minutes.

  He looked up but he tried one more time.

  Pierce came free.

  Ramsay started up with him.

  Crunch nudged Dodson. “You can dive down and help now,” he said. “That was a pretty long time.”

  Dodson dove—and helped Ramsay the last twenty feet.

  Water poured from Pierce’s stomach and lungs. Ramsay advised on how to get it out most efficiently. Mattresses were laid on deck. Pierce was stretched on them. Ramsay began artificial respiration. He already had his wind back. “… and I know how,” he said.

  “I’ve done this often.”

  He worked. “Get blankets—make coffee—head for Key West—and have somebody ready to spell me.”

  Crunch pulled anchor and tore for Key West.

  Des took the second turn at artificial respiration.

  Crunch looked searchingly, tensely, at the swift effort in the cockpit. He saw that the father was close, again, to cracking. He called, “Take the wheel here, will you, Mr. Brush? Keep this course! You’ll see the town in a few minutes. I’ll call on the ship-to-shore and have a pull motor and an ambulance at the closest dock.”

  The engines roared.

  The Poseidon shot across the slick sea.

  And, suddenly, there came an enormous yell from Dodson. “He coughed! And he’s breathing!”

  Des worked on.

  Dodson sat on the fishbox and his eyes filled with tears. “Tough old monkey! The tough old monkey!” Then, suddenly, he looked for Ramsay—and found him kneeling at Pierce’s side. He was, after all, a doctor of medicine. He was something else, Dodson realized.