“Of course I do. I’m not a beginner.”
“In these waters you are. Once we’re under, stay close to me, and don’t go wandering off because something attracts your attention. If I give you a signal, follow it. The anchor line’s our way back to the boat, but we’ll have to leave it to get closer to the reef. Just don’t go putting your hand into any crevices or caves. Moray eels have nasty little teeth, and they lurk around rocks.”
“What about sharks?” That was a question I’d asked before. I had seen the movie, and we had them off Long Island.
“Sometimes they come around, but if you don’t make any sudden movements, you’re probably all right. It’s usually blood or jerky motions that attract predators. Even something shiny like a ring can catch the attention of a barracuda or a shark. I’m glad you’re not wearing any today. A barracuda can be pretty big, and they’re curious fish, but they aren’t likely to attack—or sharks either—unless you make them think you’re prey.”
He was making me thoroughly nervous, but it was necessary to be forewarned when, as he said, I was a novice in these waters.
“I’ll take you over to the Dolphin later,” he went on. “First, we’ll go down and look around. Stay away from the divers—especially if an airlift is being used. If there’s any sudden silting that clouds the water, we’ll go straight up.”
“How deep is it out here?”
“Not very deep—perhaps thirty feet. The water’s fairly warm, so we can go down for a while without a wet suit. Derek’s divers wear wet suits that look like long red underwear. One special warning, Laurel—stay away from coral, no matter how pretty it looks. It can cut deeply, and sting, and even cause infection if you touch the wrong kind.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised. I meant to be careful about a lot of things.
“Maybe you’ll even have beginner’s luck and find something. I’ll take down a mesh bag on my belt, just in case.”
“If Derek’s crew has been searching, won’t they have everything up by now that’s there to be found?”
“They haven’t touched the main treasure—if it’s still in this location. The bottom of the ocean’s alive, and currents shift from day to day, so the sea bottom changes all the time. It can bury what you uncovered yesterday, and uncover something you never saw before. If you find anything, of course it goes over to the Dolphin. Finders aren’t keepers in treasure hunting, when somebody else was there first.”
Marcus helped me with the tank harness and face mask. Not easy in a bouncing boat, but we managed. I tried the regulator in my mouth and breathed good air from the tank. Except for the fins, my weight belt went on last. Marcus warned me against a roll backwards from the deck, or a stride-off, so I went meekly down the boarding ladder and put my fins on in the water. Until he could trust me, I’d have to behave.
Marcus had stripped to swim shorts, and I’d helped with his gear, so he followed me into the water. We would swim against the current going toward the wreck site, he had said, since that would make it easier swimming back to the boat—less energy involved. Our own air bubbles would give us the direction of the water current.
The first liquid shock seemed cool, but I grew used to it quickly and it felt delicious. The sensation of gentle support was always exhilarating. Following Marcus, I flutter-kicked just under the surface, not heading down till we neared the reef.
This underwater world seemed marvelously different from the waters off Long Island. Bands of sunlight cut through a bluish translucence. Schools of fish darted away from us in unison, but as we went deeper, I experienced the wonderful sense of flying that was a release from earthbound heaviness. When I reached the bottom, I finger-walked along the sand, my body equalizing the pressure, so I felt nothing of the weight of water around me. Sand stirred under my fingertips, and tiny clouds of it rose and settled again. The water was so clear that I could see for a hundred feet or more. It was reassuring to glimpse the bottom of the Snapdragon and locate the anchor line we had followed down.
A strange sense of joy filled me. The last time I’d experienced anything like this was in the opposite element, when I’d stood on a mountaintop in Vermont looking out over a great panorama of forest and ranges. I felt the same joyful wonder then, but though this was different, the surge of emotion was the same—an awareness of boundaries removed, of reaching into the limitless.
At the same time I was, as always, sharply aware of Marcus, now swimming beside me. His thick hair stirred in the water, and at this depth it seemed brown instead of red, as though with a life of its own. We were so close at times that we touched, and without all this gear it would be very easy to swim into his arms.
I wondered how all this felt to him. The use of words for communication between us was lost, but I made a circle with thumb and forefinger and waved it at him. His eyes seemed to shine through his face mask, and he returned the gesture. I felt closer to him in sharing this adventure than I’d done on land, where he seemed ready to aggravate me.
When he pointed ahead I saw small scarlet buoys floating in the water, anchored to something in the sand. Divers from the Dolphin were working farther along with hand blowers, and apparently earlier finds had been marked to keep them visible. As I swam between the buoys, I saw that yellow lines had been laced back and forth in a grid that marked the area for divers. We were able to swim above the pattern, and as I looked down through my face mask I saw what seemed at first to be a long rock, half-buried in sand. When Marcus pointed, I realized that it was one of the bronze cannons. Underwater it looked greenish, and when I swam closer I saw two bronze lifting rings cast in the shape of dolphins.
The water around me seemed suddenly charged with electricity. This cannon had ridden the deck of a Spanish galleon, and the hands of men lost in the sea had touched it more than three hundred years ago!
I swam on and saw how close I’d come to the coral reef. Here sea fans waved, and over there was a forest of golden staghorn. It seemed a fantasy world out of dreams—yet as real as it was beautiful.
Another buoy marked an irregular shape that might be a ship’s anchor, and beyond it coral rose massively. I resisted the push of the current while I studied the irregular bank. There in the rock, encased in coral, was the great form of a ship—a ship with broken spars, masts, and timbers, all outlined in living rock. I forgot to breathe for a moment, and then sucked in air.
Marcus was a little way off, and I kicked my way over to nudge him. When he looked around I pointed. He must have sensed my excitement, but he only shook his head, and I knew that whatever I was seeing had been noted before and meant nothing. To treasure hunters, coral growth must often look like old timbers or metal—even to the extent of seeming to take on the shape of a ship.
We swam on, and when he pointed at a section of the grid, I saw stones lying on the bottom. Ballast stones, undoubtedly, that had been packed into holds that would sail empty to the ports Spain had opened in the Caribbean, and from which her ships would sail back filled with treasure from the New World. On the return voyage some of the ballast would be used again if needed, so these stones didn’t mean a ship empty of treasure.
As I swam close, a tiny spot of light caught my eye, and I swam over and poked it with one finger. Silt rose at once, burying the yellow gleam. I fanned sand away gently with my hand and closed my fingers about the drop of light. Something hard pressed into my palm. Holding it up tightly, I showed it to Marcus. He took the bit of metal from me and put it into the mesh bag that floated from his weight belt. His nod of approval told me I’d found something.
Dreamily I swam on, aware of all around me. Sea growth on the bottom swayed gently in the current—like a row of slow-motion dancers in grass skirts. The little fish seemed almost friendly and for the moment unafraid as I watched the marvel of their coordinated movements. They had their own secret signals, just as birds could fly geometrically in a flock.
Lost in this world of new sensation, I didn’t notice when Marcus went o
n ahead, probably expecting me to follow. When I looked around again, silting had risen in the water, blurring my vision, and I could no longer see him. In a moment he would miss me and return, so I needn’t worry, but I wished I’d paid attention to where he’d gone, as he’d told me to do. If the silt didn’t settle, I would go straight up, and the dive boat would orient me. But the sandy fog brought a curious confusion, so that I wasn’t sure which way was up, and which down.
Before I could strike out toward the surface, another diver came into view, kicking toward me. His head was encased in a yellow helmet that was part of his double-tank outfit and breathing apparatus, so I couldn’t see his hair. Black gloves hid his hands, and somehow the loss of human identity seemed unsettling. From behind his mask, his eyes were intent and unblinking in their watchfulness, so I felt that a threat was being directed toward me.
My inability to speak or shout for help was suddenly terrifying. Why a diver from the Dolphin should seem menacing, I didn’t know, but as he swam around me, circling me again and again, deliberately kicking up more silt with his fins so that the water grew more opaque, my sense of danger increased. He was trying to frighten me, and when he came straight at me, bumping me hard, I kicked furiously upward—I hoped it was upward—and felt enormous relief when my head broke the surface.
The Dolphin floated nearby, with Marcus waiting for me at the diving platform. The other diver had disappeared. At the ladder I removed my fins and looped them over my wrist so I could climb aboard more easily. Marcus boosted me up, and one of the men gave me a hand. When I was out of my gear, I looked back over the water, but I could see no sign of the other diver. Had I exaggerated the threat? I didn’t really think so.
The aft deck of the Dolphin was cluttered with objects salvaged from the sea bottom, and to me mostly unidentifiable and not very valuable-looking. Marcus introduced me to Captain Curtin, who was in charge, and took out the bit of metal I’d given him. In a moment, crew and divers grouped around us, and I sensed their excitement.
“Is it a piece of eight?” I asked.
Marcus shook his head. “Pieces of eight are silver. It’s not a gold doubloon either, is it, Captain?”
“It’s gold all right,” Captain Curtin said. “Looks like a medallion of the Madonna.” He was a big man with a full beard and faded blue eyes almost lost against his ruddy tan. “Gold never changes underwater. It’s about the only metal that never gives anything up and doesn’t collect coral growth or tarnish.”
I felt pleasantly dazed and a little giddy. I’d gone down to the sea bottom and picked up a gold medallion lost three hundred years before—probably from the Santa Beatriz.
Marcus smiled at me. “I told you—beginner’s luck!”
I took the medallion and turned it about in my fingers. Perhaps some nobleman had worn this sailing back to a Spain he would never see again because a hurricane would blow his ship off course and smash it against the line of reefs. I wondered if his bones lay somewhere beneath the sand where I’d found this medal.
“Derek will be pleased,” Captain Curtin said. “It’s one more bit of evidence that we’ve only touched the edge of what’s down there. Thanks, Miss York—we’d better send you down again.”
I found the air cool now, and someone saw me shiver and brought a terry robe to wrap around me. Marcus borrowed a jacket, and we stayed on deck so he could show me some of the objects that had been brought up from the sea bottom. There were cannon balls by the score, some encrusted forms that were thought to be arquebuses, shards of broken vessels, and the sulphide impression of a silver coin in coral.
“Coral’s crazy stuff,” Marcus said. “It has to grow on something, so it attaches to anything it can find—sometimes even itself. But it can bury one area and leave another close by untouched. It needs oxygen to multiply, so it picks the crevices and angles of anything that sinks to the bottom.”
Captain Curtin nodded. “In the Red Sea coral growths are massive. They turn into huge trees. Here the formations are smaller, but nuisance enough if you have to carve into every coral lump to see what it’s concealing.”
A diver had just come up over the platform, and someone went to help with his tank and harness. I watched closely, to see if this was the man who had circled me under the water. When he stood on deck in his red wet suit and looked around, he spotted me and grinned mockingly. He was the diver I’d met below, and with a shock I recognized him as the unpleasant fellow I’d seen in the garden at Cliff’s house—the man who’d given me an odd, veiled threat about my not being wanted there.
As he went off toward the crew’s cabin area, I grabbed Marcus’s arm. “Who is that man who just came aboard?”
Marcus looked after him. “Eddie? Why—what’s up? That’s Eddie Burch.”
“Eddie—Burch?”
“Sure. The skeleton in Alida’s closet. She was married to him way back when. He works for Derek now.”
My teeth were chattering, not just from cold, and Captain Curtin noticed. “Come along to my cabin. Coffee will warm you up. Besides, there’s someone who’ll be interested to see what you’ve found.”
The captain’s cabin was up a companionway. I followed, slapping along wetly in bare feet, with Marcus behind me. I wanted to tell him what had happened, but there was no chance. When I stepped over a sill into the compact cabin, I saw the woman who sat at a table that had been anchored to the floor. It was Iris York. She greeted me coolly as I came in.
Marcus seated me, poured coffee for us both, and then took the gold medal I still clutched and slid it across to Iris. Captain Curtin stayed near the door, watching.
“Look what Laurel picked up on the bottom just now,” Marcus said.
Iris took the bit of gold and examined it, looking like something carved out of gold herself, with her well-oiled tan, her back and shoulders, arms and legs bare in a white halter and shorts. She sat sideways at the table, her legs crossed—long and golden from thighs to ankles. Her black hair had been released from its pinned-up swirl and hung forward in a thick mass over one shoulder. Around her upper left arm was clasped a band of wide, antique gold. Rather an Egyptian touch, I thought, and yet it suited her. When I glanced at Marcus, I saw that he could hardly take his eyes from Iris. Any woman who looked as she did could have any man she wanted.
The medal seemed not to please her, and she pushed it back to Marcus. New finds probably meant further postponement of her marriage to Derek, since they would intensify his search.
“How did you like diving?” she asked me, though I doubted that she cared in the least. I remembered that Fern had said her sister would be sorry and ashamed of the way she’d behaved in the orchid house, but she showed no evidence of regret to me.
“It was wonderful,” I told her. “Exhilarating. Fern says you don’t care for diving.”
“I don’t even like to swim.” She changed the subject as though it bored her. “I hear you’re going to Casa Marina tonight with Cliff?” She spoke lazily, long lashes half veiling her eyes.
I came to a quick decision, disliking her half-hidden malice.
“Yes, I am. I invited him to dinner, but he said he wanted to take me. Perhaps I can talk to him more freely away from the house. I need to tell him that I know about his plans for a new will, and I want none of that for me. I don’t want him to leave me anything. Certainly not the greenhouse.”
Dark lashes fluttered down as Iris closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, I saw her disbelief. Nothing I said would convince her that I hadn’t come here for whatever I could get from my father. It didn’t matter. I only needed to convince him, and I let the matter of the will go.
“I’d like to know about something that happened while I was in the water,” I said. “A few minutes ago, a diver from this boat tried to frighten me. He swam around, stirring up silt, and then he came straight at me and bumped me hard enough to hurt. I broke away and swam up. I couldn’t see him anywhere then, but while I was on deck, the same man came up fr
om the bottom, and when he took off his helmet, I knew I’d seen him before. He spoke to me yesterday out behind Cliff’s house. Marcus says he’s Eddie Burch. What was he trying to do? Why on earth should he try to scare me?”
As I spoke I wondered if Iris might even have sent him down to torment me. However, she only looked displeased as she spoke to Captain Curtin.
“Ask Eddie to come down here for a moment, will you?” When the captain had gone, Iris turned to me again. “He shouldn’t come to the house at all. Cliff doesn’t want him around, since he disturbs Alida. I wish Derek hadn’t hired him.”
The captain didn’t return, and Eddie came up the companionway alone. Again he wore khaki shorts, his upper body bare and his chest as hairy as his legs. Curving from front to back over one shoulder was a conspicuous white scar—where he must once have been cruelly sliced with some sharp instrument that had gone deep. On land he moved as though the shoulder was stiff, but he overcame this in the water, swimming easily, as I’d had reason to discover.
While he had stared at me deliberately underwater, now his pale blue eyes seemed to shift beyond me evasively, just as they’d done yesterday morning in the garden.
“Why did you try to frighten my sister a little while ago?” Iris asked directly. I noted her use of “sister” in surprise.
Eddie blinked and examined a blistered stain on the ceiling of the cabin. “Scare her? I didn’t scare her. I just gave her a pat on the shoulder. I’m sorry if she got scared.” His look dropped suddenly, disconcertingly, to me, and there seemed a warning in his eyes that contradicted his apologetic words.
“All right, Eddie,” Iris said. “I suppose we’ll have to accept that. But don’t try anything else. And don’t show up around the house again. My father doesn’t want you bothering Alida.”
An angry flush came into the man’s face. “If you want to know—it was Alida who asked me to come,” he said. “God knows, I don’t want to have any truck with her!”
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