by Jo Sparkes
A puff of sand startled her. Jill had stopped kicking, and sunk back to the ocean floor. Annoyingly, Mike and Wall still hovered at the exact same spot.
Jill clawed behind her shoulder to snag her tethered console again. This would be so much easier if she had a nice wrist computer…
PING.
Mike shot off as if jet propelled, in a beeline for the now distant Jon. Metal on metal she realized. A diver’s method to communicate underwater.
Jon must have found something.
The Brit dropped right in front of her. Startled, Jill jerked backwards, tripping in her flippers. She floated down, ass first, into the sand.
Wall’s face leaned in to peer into her mask. Expecting her to panic, no doubt. Even more annoying, he himself never touched the sea floor. Instead he hovered horizontal, at whatever spot he chose without so much as glancing at a depth gauge.
When he gave her the thumbs up, she gestured back with a totally different finger.
Wall felt the girl’s exasperation before he noticed the finger. Suppressing a chuckle, he pantomimed squeezing his air valve.
To her credit, Jill tried it, though naturally putting too much in and soaring upwards. He snagged her ankle to haul her back down. And when she merely frowned, compelling him to reach to dump her air, Jill jerked away again. Fortunately for her, he succeeded first.
Now she looked confused. He wished he could explain.
Using a B.C. to control water ‘altitude’ was a delicate art. Experienced divers employed subtle amounts to position themselves precisely; novices used way too much, only stopping when they were hurtling in one direction or the other. And as beginners were over-weighted to begin with, it took time and practice to learn how to float.
Grabbing her attention - and ignoring her glare - Wall used his hands to demonstrate a deep breath in as he rose a foot off the sand. The more minute adjustments were done with the breath, not the B.C. Breathing out, he lowered back to her level. When she made no movement, he repeated it.
Jill caught on. The girl sucked in all the air her lungs could hold, yet stayed firmly planted in the sand. Definitely over-weighted.
Wall moved to help her - slowly, so as not to startle her this time - and saw Jon and Mike hovering above the split in the reef. A ghost image flashed behind them, darting off just as Jill shoved her instrument console at his mask.
A red number blinked insistently on her screen - no wonder she was anxious.
Checking the readout, he chuckled. The damned thing was measuring water temperature. It wasn’t telling of troubles but of the tropics. He calmly pointed to the ‘TEMPERATURE’ on the screen. After a moment, she nodded.
Movement flickered where the ghost had vanished.
Wall turned to watch the thing approach slowly, slow enough he could make out the gray bulge and then the fins. Silently looming behind the unsuspecting men.
A shark.
Do something, his mind screamed. But his body refused. He realized he was holding his breath - something he never did underwater.
Jill erupted in frantic thrashing. The shark veered off and disappeared from view.
She swam straight for the men before Wall could stop her.
Jon looked up in astonishment as Jill flailed her way towards him.
And could only stare as she clutched his arm, dragging him downward with her weight. Wall followed her, something in his very speed a warning. It took Mike’s nudge to turn him round and see.
A timid reef shark, barely five foot, already shying off. Curious she might be, but she’d come no farther. Just a baby - and an absolute beauty.
Remembering the lobster he’d caught earlier, Jon dug into his net bag, grabbed the crustacean and thrust it out.
She was tempted. Altering course, the baby circled back slowly. Coyly. For an instant he imagined feeding her as divers did in videos. How exactly did they hold the food? He wouldn’t want to lose a finger.
It didn’t come to that. The reef shark neared, shied off. Came close again, swerved away. Something worried her, and when he checked, Jon saw an odd swirl in the water, sucking sand off the bottom. Like a dust devil in the ocean.
In all his years he’d never seen anything like it.
When he turned back, the shark had vanished.
Jill couldn't tear her eyes away from the spot where the shark had vanished.
She only became aware of the mass of bubbles free-flowing around her when the Brit reached past her mask to snag her dive console.
When he tilted it toward her, she saw the red gauge flashing - not from temperature but lack of oxygen. Her tank was running low. Surely they hadn’t been down so long?
She watched Wall calmly checked his own computer, grasped his air valve. When she only stared he flashed his wrist at her - showing his own depleted tank - and jerked his thumb upwards. Either telling her to surface or asking if she was okay. Probably both.
For all the world as calm as if they had all day.
Shaking herself, Jill fumbled at her B.C. And squished the valve hard, suddenly wondering if she had enough air to inflate.
She did. It took all her will not to rocket to the surface. Without Wall’s steady presence she’d never have succeeded.
The sea brightened, sunlight swelling. Peering down past her fins, she kept an eye out for sharks. When her head burst free of the water, Jill yanked out her regulator and gasped surface air as if her tank had run bone dry. It hadn’t, of course.
Her buddy snatched off his mask, studying her.
“How…” she had to swallow, start again. “My air. I wasn’t down there that long.”
Wall spit out his regulator and grinned. “Fear tends to suck a tank dry.”
“A shark!” Jill told him, hoping the rising emotion in her voice came off as excitement. “Jon tried to feed a shark!”
The man nodded, watching her with those chameleon eyes. Mike called them chameleon - hazel pupils that changed color according to their surroundings.
“Jon,” Wall coolly explained, “is a bloody ass.” And waved her towards the boat.
His splashing crowded her, herding her on. She scrambled awkwardly up the thin aluminum ladder, still wearing her flippers.
“I was nervous,” she muttered. In truth she’d been terrified. “I wanted to put Mike’s machete between it and me.” Why the hell was she telling him this? Let him think she was warning the others, not scared out of her wits.
The blonde appeared above, leaning over the cockpit railing. Smiling, waving. The Brit smiled back.
“I didn’t want to abandon you,” Jill rambled on. “Just hoped you’d follow.”
Her knees collapsed; she sat hard on the platform, tank pinging against the metal. All my limbs are out of water, she told herself. Nothing can bite them now.
It took time to remove her gear. Trembling fingers fumbled the buckles, and peeling the shorty wetsuit off slick skin proved no easier than the full wetsuit she wore in Delaware. When Jill felt Wall observing her she deliberately turned away.
To confront the painted name SADICO.
Free of equipment, Wall stretched long and loud before reaching up to caress Melanie’s face, as she stayed hovering above them. “Feeling better?” he murmured.
The woman nodded. “You were down there so long.”
“Sharks,” Jill blurted out. Melanie started, and Jill realized she’d hoped for that reaction. “Just one,” she added quickly. “Probably not that dangerous.”
“And a fantastic coral reef,” Wall grinned. “Exactly what we hoped to see down here. You’ll love it.”
The woman hesitated before nodding; Wall touched her in concern. “Headache’s really gone, Mel?”
“It’s…better.”
Jill had her own suspicions about the nature of the so-called headache. But then, she hadn’t warmed to Melanie. Even her name was annoying, more appropriate for a novel - the kind with a heroine draped over a handsome male’s arm. So different than the everyday, plain na
mes bestowed on lesser women.
Names such as ‘Jill’.
Turning away, Jill eyed the sparkling sea. “Shouldn’t Jon and Mike be up by now?”
“They probably still have oxygen in their tanks,” Wall replied. She glared back.
“Because they’re not beginners, Jill. They’re much more relaxed, breathing easily.”
“You were out of air.”
“My anxiety level…had elevated.” He grinned suddenly, mounting the stern ladder, swinging his gear up over the railing. “Not fond of sharks myself.”
Jill breathed deep, gasping it all out again in a single blast. Her trembling finally ceased.
The Brit stepped back down to snatch her rig, swinging it up to join his. All the while the painted word ‘SADICO’ mocked her.
Wall pointed; she looked down to see the salvaged pink mask and t-shirt huddling on the platform. Apparently Melanie hadn’t bothered to move either.
Grabbing both, Jill handed him the one before climbing up the stern and on to the cabin roof, where she gently laid out her shirt to dry in the sun.
“How did these wind up in the water?” she wondered aloud.
“Wind,” said Melanie.
Twenty minutes later, Jill perched on a cockpit seat to munch her chicken wing. Mike and Jon had yet to appear; her temper alternated between anger and worry.
She’d thought they might be decompressing. A diver had to decompress when he overstayed his bottom time, resulting in too much nitrogen in the blood. Wall, however, scoffed at the notion. Apparently at a depth of fifty-three feet they were more likely to run out of air before bottom time. Wall wasn’t happy because they’d all agreed to stick together.
Actually Jon had agreed. Mike had been less enthused, but then he’d been less enthused about the Brit period. ‘Limeys’ in general - and this one in particular - were too concerned with rules for rules sake.
So where were they?
The cold chicken helped settle her stomach. Her teeth found another bit of meat; her shoulders relaxed. The breeze ruffled her hair and whispered in her ear. Not loud enough, however, to cover the sounds from inside the boat.
“There’s no ice,” Melanie’s voice was petulant.
“Did you try the cooler?” Wall’s tone soothed. Or ought to have soothed - Jill heard the woman’s snort. So much for romance.
A week ago Melanie had been cooing over Wall; over his gallantly paying for her trip, his romantic foreign accent. All the women seemed to love foreign accents.
Jill never had. She actually found them unnerving.
When you got hung up on the different lilt, the odd phrasing, you couldn’t really know what the speaker was truly thinking. Foreign men with foreign brow, she recalled the phrase from somewhere.
And when she did decipher his meaning, the guy was too tepid. Along with Mike she’d protested Jon’s inviting the man, declaring him ‘hesitant and indecisive.’
“Unlike us Sadicors?” Jon had countered. “I should think you’d welcome the change.”
Now, when Jon’s head broke the surface, she flung her picked-over bone at him. “You’re late.”
Mike popped up, yanking his regulator from his mouth. “What are you, his mother?”
“Being late means we can’t dive for…what? Five hours?”
“No more diving today,” her cousin informed her. “We’re heading to Antigua for supplies.”
Jill gaped. “But we just got supplies in St. Kitts.”
Mask and fins slapped on the platform before Mike vaulted out of the sea. “We need new supplies, mermaid. Plans have changed.”
Jon sprang up the ladder, shaking his head like a wet dog after a successful romp. “Turns out, little mermaid, that’s no reef below us.”
He and Mike exchanged a grin.
“That’s a shipwreck.”
Regress
Wall swung out of the cabin into the sunshine, balancing with the roiling gait of the ship under sail.
God, he loved sailing.
There was something about harnessing wind and wave, using skill to travel instead of forcing your way with a motor. Sailing was finesse, adventure. Challenging the elements.
Jon stood at the helm, hand resting on the wheel, eyes scanning the waters ahead as spray bathed his face. Bare-chested, the man’s crystal pendant swung when he leaned to see past the tall mast. A solid twenty-four carat gold chain dangling a crystal worth five bucks.
Apparently Jon believed in metaphysics. A Master Diver convinced his crystal warded off the bends.
Wall found himself smiling from the core of his being. Drawing an echoing one off Jon.
“You honestly think that’s a wreck?”
Jon nodded.
“I saw nothing down there.”
“Sunken ships rarely lie in pristine condition,” Jon leaned out with the boat, seemingly savoring the feel of the wind. “The shape gave it away. Squarish, perpendicular corners. Gotta be man-made.”
Wall’s face must have echoed his doubt. Jon grinned before adding, “Mike and I chipped at the reef in two different spots…found wood beneath the coral. It’s a boat all right.”
“Wood?”
The small man nodded.
“Wouldn’t have expected wood to survive long in warm water.”
“Those reefs have been down there since I was a kid. Much smaller back then - one lump half the size of the other. Mostly buried in sand. Mike figures a storm must have shifted the bottom.” Jon grinned, exultation in his eyes. “Anyway, my father would never have seen them. He’s not a wreck diver.”
So Jon wanted to impress his father. Wall could identify with that. “Still, if it’s wood, it can’t be too old?”
Jon shrugged. The light in his eyes did not diminish.
“Do you really think there’s anything worth salvaging?”
Jon’s smile grew with each bounce of the Sadicor. “It’s an undiscovered wreck, over forty feet in length. Be a shame not to check it out.”
CLANG.
Wall started; Jon chuckled. “Relax. Mike’s working on Matilda.”
In the galley, Jill plucked two beers from the cooler. The clock on the bulkhead - not the cat clock with the dangling tail, but an expensive brass thing - proclaimed the time to be nearly four p.m. She’d bought Jon the cat clock as a sailboat-warming gift, which he’d inexplicably hung in the dive shop instead.
Inexplicably until she discovered cheap clocks don’t work on boats. Something about all the bouncing around.
Jill sighed.
They were supposed to be setting up a barbecue on Jon’s little island, followed by a night dive to see all the activity after dark. They were supposed to be exploring sea life and coral, not more stupid rocks that everyone swore were really wrecked ships.
Popping the bottle tops, she staggered - the boat was bouncing through waves - to the compressor room.
‘Room’ being a generous term. Closeted in the tiny space stood the compressor used to fill dive tanks. Large and metallic, it barely left enough area for the wall-mounted water trough, which cooled the tanks as air was pumped inside. Mike had named the contraption Matilda, and he took great pride in keeping the thing running.
Squeezing between machine and trough, Jill emerged by the workbench and stool shoe-horned in the back. Mike perched on the latter, plying a screwdriver to Matilda’s inner workings. His back was to Jill, and with the roar of the machine he couldn’t have heard her. She snuck up and stuck the cold bottle against his back.
He merely held a hand out. Sighing, she set the beer in his grasp.
“Thanks, mermaid.”
Taking a long drink of her own beer, she leaned against the wall. “A shipwreck? Really?”
Mike kept working.
“You guys always seem to be wreck diving.”
“Not like this.” Mike flipped the machine off. “Those wrecks at home been picked over by every diver on the eastern seaboard. This is virgin, Jill…no one’s touched this sweetheart.
Anything that sank with her is still there for the taking.”
Tossing the screwdriver aside, he took a long cool drink. And grinned. “Might be a safe. Might even be jewelry. She’s not exactly small. And who knows how old…”
They heard the door bang and a soft curse. Wall stuck his head around Matilda. “We’re making great time, I’m told. Should reach Antigua in another hour.”
Mike’s eyes narrowed at the Brit. “Jon sent you to make sure I wasn’t gonna fill the tanks.”
Wall nodded.
“Tell that little rat bastard - sorry Jill - tell that little rat bastard I’ll fill them while he’s loading supplies.”
Jill didn’t understand. “Why does he care?”
“I hate wasting time while we’re moving, but Jon’s afraid if we hit a whale or something a tank could fall and break a valve.”
Wall stepped closer; Jill pressed back against the compressor. Feeling a metal edge scrape her back, she realized she was doing the personal space thing again, but for the life of her couldn’t stop.
Jon said she needed a lot more personal space than most people. Maybe he had a point.
Her palm flattened on the cold metal, feeling the notches. Main Matilda, the compressor back at the Crusty Porthole in Delaware, also had notches, notches that had steadily increased to the current count of fifteen.
“Breaking a valve off a tank of compressed air could pose a problem,” Wall said dryly.
She counted again. “There’s four notches now! I know there were three before.”
Mike blandly ignored her.
“It’s wrecks, isn’t it? You make a notch every time you guys find a wreck.”
The muscle man kept his face innocent. Disgusted, Jill caught the Brit suppressing a smile and realized he was in on the joke. Annoyed, a tad hurt, she shoved past Wall despite her personal space issues. Inadvertently bumping his lower anatomy, she practically ran out the door.
